town or village

Thyatira

• Today Akhisar

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History

Thyatira, today's Akhisar, lay in a broad valley of northern Lydia on the road from Pergamum to Sardis. Strabo calls it a settlement of the Macedonians, which some reckoned the farthest city of the Mysians; it is usually held that Seleucus I planted a colony of Macedonian soldiers here early in the third century BC. In 190 BC Antiochus III camped near Thyatira before the battle of Magnesia, and after his defeat envoys came from the city to surrender it to the Romans. It then passed to the Attalid kings of Pergamum, and in 133 BC, with the rest of their kingdom, to Rome.

Under the emperors Thyatira was a prosperous market town. Inscriptions of the Roman period name many trade guilds there: wool-workers, linen-workers, leather-workers, potters, bronze-smiths and dyers. At Philippi, among those who heard Paul, was "a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God". The Lord opened her heart; she was baptized with her household and took Paul and his companions into her house.

The longest of the letters to the seven churches goes to Thyatira. It praises the church's charity, service, faith and patience, but rebukes it because it suffers "that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess", who taught the Lord's servants to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. Whether Jezebel was a real woman of the church, and whether her teaching had to do with the feasts of the trade guilds, is debated. To those "which have not known the depths of Satan" the Lord promises no other burden, and to him that overcomes, power over the nations and the morning star. Thyatira lived on as a town of the province of Asia and later of Lydia.

Scripture: Acts 16:14–15; Rev 1:11; Rev 2:18–29

Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.

Verses (4)

Acts 16:14

And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.

Rev 1:11

Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.

Rev 2:18

And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write; These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass;

Rev 2:24

But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will put upon you none other burden.

King James Version

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