In the Great City of the Ephesians: Contestations over Apostolic Memory and Ecclesial Power in the Acts of Timothy

The fifth-century Acts of Timothy describes Timothy’s tenure as the first bishop of Ephesus, culminating with his martyrdom. The Acts Tim has posed a number of puzzles for scholars, from its presumption that the disciple John authored all four of the canonical gospels to the small amount of space devoted to Timothy himself. I argue that the peculiarities of the Acts Tim make sense when we pay attention to the broader imperial and ecclesiastical context in which the Acts Tim was produced. On the one hand, the Acts Tim fits within a longer history of contestation among cities over claims to apostolic traditions and even apostolic bodies. The Acts Tim makes possible the interweaving of apostolic traditions associated with Paul, John, and Timothy, while also narrating the foundation of Timothy’s (bodiless) martyrium (the body having been removed to Constantinople in 356). On the other, the Acts Tim also fits within broader ecclesiastical contestations of the late fourth and early fifth centuries, in which Ephesus ultimately lost much of its ecclesial authority to Constantinople. The Acts Tim represents an attempt to recast and solidify the apostolic origins of the Ephesian church as it resisted the encroachment of the imperial city’s ecclesial authority.