Christ 1, Artemis 0

Thoughts occasioned upon today's Daily Bread reading ...

Acts 19: 23-41 tells the sad tale of a riot stirred up in Ephesus against St Paul by the silversmiths who made souvenir idols of the goddess Artemis (or Diana). And presumably other gift shop tat -- you know, tea towels, Clarecraft models of the temple, erasers with a picture of the goddess, tasteful stuff like that. The concern of the rioters was that this new Christian message would lead to a decline in Artemisism, "the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited, and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty."

Fast forward 2000 years to Buckfast Abbey, Devon, where one of the sidechapels is paved with marble taken from the ruins of the great temple at Ephesus.

Altogether now: "o-one nil, o-one nil, one nil, one nil ..."