THE CHURCH PERIODS
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
Revelation 2:1-7
c. 90-200 A.D.
“fully purposed”
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
IV. The Condemnation
Rev. 2:4-7
(Rev 2:4)
Nevertheless I have
somewhat against
thee, because thou
hast left thy first love.
Ephesus
“fully
purposed”
A. The
Pioneers of
Bible
Deviations
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
Setting the Stage!
 Through these man
(church fathers), we will see
the development of the two
lines of Bibles (we see in
the Book of Acts ):
A biblical line
A non-biblical
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
Setting the Stage!
 The (Main) Apostolic Church Fathers
1. Clement of Rome (30-100 AD)
2. Ignatius (80-115 AD)
3. Papias (60-130 AD)
4. Epicurus (50-120 AD)
5. Basilides (133 AD)
6. Polycarp (69-155 AD)
7. Justin Martyr (100-165 AD)
8. Origen (184-254 AD)
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
 It was through the Apostolic Church
Fathers, and those of the Ephesus
Church period who followed their
leadership, that we see the 1st
deviation from the Word of God.
 They
began to use
words, and phrases, and
concepts that can not be
traced biblically
Ephesus
“fully
purposed”
A. The
Place of
Bible
Deviations
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
The importance of knowing what was
happening in Alexandria, Egypt
 It will be a key to understanding
what will see in the other 6 periods of
Church history
 The family of manuscripts from
which every version of the bible in the
last 100 years has been translated
comes out of Alexandria, Egypt.
1. The social
life of
Alexander
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
 The City of Alexander was founded
in 332 B.C. by an epileptic demoniac
named Alexander the Great.
 The city was named after him, and
after his death, he was preserved in
honey, and put on display in a glass
coffin in Alexandria.
Alfred Edersheim, The life and times of Jesus the
Messiah (Grand Rapids, Mich: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 1971)
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
In the ancient world, the city would
have been comparable to our New York
or Las Vegas.
 The city had paved and lighted
streets, running water, and sewers.
These modern conveniences were a
result of Alexandria’s booming
economy..i.e. The city exported 20
million bushels of grain annually.
Gerritt P. Judd, A history of Civilization ( New York:
Macmillan Co.,1966)
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
 Will Durant says, Of Egypt's
8,500,000 population its capital had
now some 800,000 second only to
Rome; in industry and commerce it was
1st. “Everyone in Alexandria is busy”
says a letter, questionably Hadrian’s;
“everyone has a trade; even the lame
and blind find work to do.”….
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
…Here, among a 1000 other articles, glass,
paper and linen were produced on a large
scale. Alexandria was the clothing and
fashion center of the age, setting styles and
making the goods..It was also a tourist
center, equipped with hotels, guides, and
interpreters for visitors coming to see the
pyramids and the majestic temples of
Thebes. The main avenue, 67 feet wide, was
lined for the 3 miles with colonnades,
arcades and alluring shops displaying the
fanciest products of ancient crafts.
Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, vol. 3, Caesar
and Christ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944)
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
 Herodas wrote, Alexandria is the
house of Aphrodite, and everything is
to be founded there wealth,
playgrounds, a large army, a serene
sky, public displays, philosophers,
precious metals, fine young men, a
good royal house, an academy of
science, exquisite wines, and beautiful
women. (Durant, The story of Civilization, 2:593)
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
Durant adds, The city was notorious
for the generosity of its women and the
number of its step-daughters of joy;
Polybius complained that the finest
private home is Alexandria belonged
to courtesans. Women of all classes
moved freely through the streets,
shopped in the stores, and mingled
with the men. (Durant, The Story of
Civilization, 2:593)
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
He continues,
They made a volatile and inflammable mixture,
quarrelsome and disorderly, intellectually
cleaver and irreverently witty, shameless in
speech, skeptical and superstitious, loose in
morals and gay in mood, fanatically fond of the
theater, music, and public games. Dio
Chrysostom describes life there as “a
continuous revel..of dancers, whistlers, and
murderers.” The canals were alive with
merrymakers in gondolas at night on their 5
mile sail to the amusement suburb of Canopus.
There were musical contests that rivaled the
horse races in raising excitement. (Durant, The
Story of Civilization, 3:500)
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
Alexandria was also the educational,
medical, and scientific center of the
world, and became famous for it’s great
library, with over 700,000 papyrus rolls.
Because of that, intellectualism
became a high priority in Alexandria.
“Durant wrote, Books had to meet the
tastes of the learned and critical
audiences, sophisticated by science
and history.” (Durant, The Story of
Civilization, 2:608)
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
H.G. Wells wrote,
Wisdom passed away from Alexandria and
left pedantry behind. For the use of books
and substituted the worship of books. Very
speedily the learned became a specialized
queer class with unpleasant characteristics
of its own..a new type of human being, shy,
eccentric, unpractical, incapable of
essentials, strangely fierce upon trivialities of
literary detail, as bitterly jealous of the
colleague within as of the unlearned withoutthe Scholarly Man.
H.G. Wells, The Outline of History, rev.(Garden city, N.Y.
Garden City Books, 1961)
2. The
religious
life of
Alexander
PHILO
 Philo lived from 20
B.C. to 50 A.D.
 He is a Jew
He’s called the
Rabbi of the “Great
Synagogue” in
Alexander
 He Establishes a
theological school in
Alexander
Warning!
What does God Say
about Egypt?
(Gen 49:29) And he charged them,
and said unto them, I am to be
gathered unto my people: bury me
with my fathers in the cave that is
in the field of Ephron the Hittite,
(Exo 13:19) And Moses took the bones
of Joseph with him: for he had straitly
sworn the children of Israel, saying,
God will surely visit you; and ye shall
carry up my bones away hence with
you.
(Deu 17:16) But he shall not multiply
horses to himself, nor cause the people to
return to Egypt, to the end that he should
multiply horses: forasmuch as the LORD
hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth
return no more that way.
Exodus 15- God calls Israel out of there.
Matt 2:15– God calls is son out of Egypt.
Acts – Records no missionary activity
there.
(Deu 4:20) But the LORD
hath taken you, and
brought you forth out of
the iron furnace, even out
of Egypt, to be unto him a
people of inheritance, as ye
are this day.
Jer. 42-44
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
Philo
 A Jew like Philo had no business in a
place like Egypt.
 He wasn’t alone “A 2nd century
census reveals that over 40% of the
800,000 people in the city were Jews
(Durant, The Story of Civilization,3:499-500)
 Is this the place you think that God
would preserve his “best and most
reliable manuscripts”
Philo’s purpose in the school was to
take Old Testament Judaism, and blend
it together with Greek philosophy.
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenized Jew, is a figure
that spans two cultures, the Greek and the Hebrew.
When Hebrew mythical thought met Greek
philosophical thought in the first century B.C.E. it
was only natural that someone would try to
develop speculative and philosophical
justification for Judaism in terms of Greek
philosophy. Thus Philo produced a synthesis of
both traditions developing concepts for future
Hellenistic interpretation of messianic Hebrew
thought, especially by Clement of Alexandria,
Christian Apologists like Athenagoras, Theophilus,
Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and by Origen. He may
have influenced Paul, his contemporary, and
perhaps the authors of the Gospel of John (C. H.
Dodd) and the Epistle to the Hebrews (R. Williamson and H. W.
Attridge). (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
 Newman writes
He was of the opinion that the Greeks had
derived from the Jewish Scriptures all that
was wise, true, and lofty in their thinking. It
was his task, as it had been the task of others
of his type, to show the complete harmony of
the Divine revelation of the Old Testament
with all that is best in Greek philosophy.. The
fact is that his modes of thought and views of
life were fundamentally those of the Greek
philosophy (a composite of Pythagoreanism,
Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism),…..
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
…and he undertook to show by applying the
allegorical system of interpretation to the
Scriptures that these were not as they
seemed to be, simply, unsophisticated
narratives of the dealings of God with His
people, but that underneath the
anthropomorphic and anthropopathic
representations of God and the uncouth
representations of the sins and follies of the
heroes and worthies of Hebrew history,
everything that was wise and exalted in
Greek philosophy lay concealed. Albert
Henry Newman, A Manual of Church History,
vol.1 (Judson Press, 1933)
E
p
h
e
s
u
s
Edersheim adds,
Everything became symbolical in his
hands, if it suited his purpose: numbers
(in a very arbitrary manner), beast,
birds, fowls, creeping things, plants,
stones, elements, susbstances,
conditions, even sex-and so a term or
an expression might even have several
and contradictory meanings, from
which the interpreter was at liberty to
choose. (Edersheim, The Life and Times of
Jesus the Messiah,43)
3. The
philosophical
life of
Alexander
Philosophy
Comes from to Greek
words:
 Phileo = Love
 Sophia = Wisdom

 Literally it means the
“Love of Wisdom”
(1Co 2:5-7) That your faith should
not stand in the wisdom of men,
but in the power of God. Howbeit
we speak wisdom among them
that are perfect: yet not the
wisdom of this world, nor of the
princes of this world, that come to
nought: But we speak the wisdom
of God in a mystery, even the
hidden wisdom, which God
ordained before the world unto our
glory:
Philosophy
Essentially, philosophy
is man’s search for some
unifying principle to
make sense out of the
universe. But without
God. (And if he is
mentioned, he is an idea
or concept.)
Warning!
What does God Say
about philosophy?
(Col 2:7-8) Rooted and built
up in him, and stablished in the
faith, as ye have been taught,
abounding therein with
thanksgiving. Beware lest any
man spoil you through
philosophy and vain deceit,
(delusion) after the tradition of
men, after the rudiments
(principles) of the world, and not
after Christ.