Hierapolis

He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.

I vowed for him that he is working hard for you and for those at Laodicea and Hierapolis.

Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas sends greetings.

Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house.

Very little is known of the life of Epictetus.

It is said that he was a native of Hierapolis in Phrygia, a town between the Meander and a branch of the Meander called the Lycus.

Hierapolis is mentioned in the Epistle of Paul to the people of Colossae, Colossians four, thirteen, from which it has been concluded that there was a Christian church in Hierapolis at the time of the Apostle.

The date of the birth of Epictetus is unknown.

The only recorded fact of his early life is that he was a slave in Rome and his master was Epaphroditus, a profligate freedman of the Emperor Nero.

It may be supposed that the young slave showed intelligence, for his master sent or permitted him to attend the lectures of C. Musonius Rufus, an eminent Stoic philosopher.

It may seem strange that such a master should have wished to have his slave made into a philosopher, but Garnier, the author of Mémoires sur les ouvrages d'Epictète, explains this matter very well in a communication to Schweighauser.

Garnier says, quote, Epictetus, born at Hierapolis of Phrygia, of poor parents, was indebted apparently for the advantages of a good education to the whim, which was common at the end of the Republic and under the first emperors among the great of Rome, to reckon among their numerous slaves grammarians, poets, rhetoricians, and philosophers, in the same way as rich financiers in these later ages have been led to form at a great cost rich and numerous libraries.

The time had now come for Etheria to return to her own country, but still full of energy and desire to see as much as she could, she determined to make a big detour from Antioch, which would lie in her direct course by land to Constantinople, and visit from there several important and interesting places in northwest Syria and Mesopotamia before turning her face westwards.

Accordingly, when she left Antioch, she went first to Hierapolis, and from there reached the great river Euphrates, which she can only compare with the Rhone for its width and strong current.

They crossed it in a ship and came to Bethne en Azurn, and from thence arrived at Edessa, the chief goal of her desires, where she stayed three days and had a busy and very interesting time.

Matters of interest are involved in this portion of the narrative which deserve attention.

The bishop of Jerusalem had had special privileges granted him at the Council of Nicaea, 325, but he was still under the jurisdiction of his provincial metropolitan, the bishop of Caesarea, Ducane, op.

cit., p. 27, and therefore probably the clergy west of the Jordan she had to do with outside the holy city were likewise dependent on the latter.

To the east and northeast of the Jordan, as far as Hierapolis, p. 31, the places she visited were probably all in the domain of the patriarch of Antioch, while those in Mesopotamia would be under the Catholicus of Armenia.

The monks and nuns of the narrative.

Cheerful bloke, Epictetus.

He was born in Hierapolis, in what is now Turkey, sometime around the middle of the first century, and spent most of his early life enslaved in Rome.

Even his name has a strange little echo of that word.

Epictetus means something like acquired or gained.

This is where I want to start, not with a stoic quote on a mug, with the man himself, because once Epictetus starts sorting out what's genuinely up to us, the pile gets very small, very quickly.

The question of what can actually be taken from you gets a little less theoretical when at one point in your life you are legally somebody else's property.

Epictetus was born in Hierapolis, in Phrygia, sometime around the middle of the first century.

We know almost nothing about his childhood, which is slightly inconvenient because I'm trying to tell a dramatic story about him, but here we are.

So while they're known for all this beautiful and big, rich stuff at Laodicea, they also were known for one thing that kind of was held against them.

You see, at Hierapolis in the north and Colossia in the south, these two surrounding cities, Hierapolis was next to and was planted on top of a hot mineral spring.

And so they had these beautiful bubbling hot springs that produced almost boiling water.

And that city could capture that water.

I need that.

So I love some heat when I'm not feeling well.

And so Hierapolis had this heat.

And they would use that as an export.

It was a much larger and more vibrant town much earlier on.

But two other towns that were neighbor villages or metropolises sort of took the prominence, and their names are Laodicea and Hierapolis.

But this town, Colossae, was a town that was on the main trade route from east to west.

And there in that town, a church started.

A church started in Colossae and another one in Hierapolis and another one in Laodicea.

None of them Paul had ever been to.

Paul didn't start them.

Four, I want you to know, chapter 2, verse 1, I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and for those in Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.

So Laodicea had no abundant natural water source of its own and relied on extensive system of aqueducts to bring water into the city, and archeology have, has proven this.

By the time the water reached Laodicea, it could be warm and material-laden, making it far less refreshing than the cold water available elsewhere, or the therapeutic hot waters of the nearby Hierapolis.

That was a constant topic of complaint.

Take yourself back a couple of thousand years.

That's the letter to the Colossians, and it opens with Paul greeting the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae.

Another church was at Hierapolis which is less well known but was also up and running at this time.

We know that because Paul refers to it in the letter to the Colossians where he's commending a man named Epaphras and he says, I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis.

We also have evidence of other churches that may well have existed in Asia Minor at this time.

So why does John speak of just the seven churches of Asia? Well, the number seven is enormously important in Revelation.

And in this map you see actually there's a few cities.

You've got Colossae to the south, you've got Heropolis to the north and then you've got Laodicea.

Now Heropolis was known for its hot springs.

It was a fault line area and hot springs, hot mineral springs would come up.

Heropolis was known as a place of healing, these healing pools.

Think of the Mornington Peninsula and going to the hot springs down there.

It's a place that people would go to, to relax and to be healed.