The Faithful Church
The Destination
From the Hermus River valley, where Sardis and Smyrna were located, a smaller valley (that of the Cogamis River) branches off to the southeast. A road through this valley provided the best means of ascending the 2,500 feet from the Hermus valley to the vast central plateau. In this valley, about thirty miles from Sardis, was the city of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia was the youngest of the seven cities, founded sometime after 189 B.C. either by King Eumenes of Pergamum or his brother, Attalus II, who succeeded him as king. In either case, the city derived its name from Attalus II’s nickname Philadelphus (“brother lover”), which his loyalty to his brother Eumenes had earned him.
Though situated on an easily defensible site on an 800-foot-high hill overlooking an important road, Philadelphia was not founded primarily as a military outpost (as Thyatira had been). Its founders intended it to be a center of Greek culture and language, a missionary outpost for spreading Hellenism to the regions of Lydia and Phrygia. Philadelphia succeeded in its mission so well that by A.D. 19 the Lydian language had been completely replaced by Greek.
Philadelphia benefited from its location at the junction of several important trade routes (as well as from being a stop on the Imperial Post Road), earning it the title “gateway to the East” (Robert H. Mounce, The Book of Revelation, The New International Commentary on the New Testament [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977], 114–15). The city was located on the edge of the Katakekaumene (the “burned land”), a volcanic region whose fertile soil was ideally suited for vineyards. Being near such a seismically active region had its drawbacks, however. In A.D. 17 a powerful earthquake rocked Philadelphia, along with Sardis and ten other nearby cities. Though the initial destruction was greater at Sardis, Philadelphia, being nearer the epicenter, experienced frequent aftershocks during the coming years. That nerve-wracking experience left psychological scars on Philadelphia’s inhabitants, as Sir William Ramsay notes:
Many of the inhabitants remained outside the city living in huts and booths over the vale, and those who were foolhardy enough (as the sober-minded thought) to remain in the city, practiced various devices to support and strengthen the walls and houses against the recurring shocks. The memory of this disaster lived long … people lived amid ever threatening danger, in dread always of a new disaster; and the habit of going out to the open country had probably not disappeared when the Seven Letters were written. (The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia [Albany, Oreg.: AGES Software; reprint of the 1904 edition], 316–17)
In gratitude for Caesar Tiberius’s financial aid in rebuilding their city, the Philadelphians joined with several other cities in erecting a monument to him. Going beyond the other cities, Philadelphia actually changed its name to Neocaesarea for a number of years. Several decades later, the city again changed its name to Flavia, in honor of the ruling Roman Imperial family. It would be known by both names, Philadelphia and Flavia, throughout the second and third centuries.
