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Bible Dictionaries
Lydia (2)
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (Λυδία)
Lydia, the fairest and richest country of western Asia Minor, was bounded by Mysia in the N., Phrygia in the E., Caria in the S., and the aegean Sea in the W. Long mountain chains, extending westward from the central plateau, divided it into broad alluvial valleys. The regions between the ranges of Messogis, Tmolus, and Temnus, watered by the Cayster and the Hermus, were among the most fertile in the world. The trade and commerce of Lydia contributed more to its immense wealth than the mines of Tmolus or the golden sand of Pactolus. In the time of Alyattes and Crœsus, who reigned in splendour at Sardis, the kingdom of Lydia embraced almost the whole of Asia Minor west of the Halys, but Cyrus subdued it about 546 b.c., and a succession of satraps did their best to crush the spirit of the race. After the triumphal progress of Alexander the Great, Lydia was held for a time by Antigonus, and then by the Seleucids. After Magnesia (190 b.c.) the Romans presented it to their ally Eumenes, king of Pergamos (1 Maccabees 8:8). From 133 onwards it formed part of the Roman province of Asia. Before the time of Strabo (xiii. iv. 17) the Lydian language had been entirely displaced by the Greek.
The religion of the Lydians-the cult of Cybele-was a sensuous Nature-worship, perhaps originally Hittite; their music-‘soft Lydian airs’-was voluptuous; and the prostitution at their temples, whereby their daughters obtained dowries (Herod. i. 93), made ‘Lydian’ a term of contempt among the Greeks. Many Jewish families were settled in Lydia (Jos. Ant. XII. iii. 4), and it is probable that in the great centres of population not a few Gentiles turned to them in search of a higher faith and a purer morality. Among those was the purple-seller of Thyatira, who was St. Paul’s first convert in Europe (Acts 16:14; Acts 16:40). ‘Lydia’ was most probably not her real name, but a familiar ethnic appellation. She was ‘the Lydian’ to all her Philippian friends (E. Renan, St. Paul, 1869, p. 146; T. Zahn, Introd. to the NT, Eng. translation , 1909, i. 523, 533). See preceding article.
In Ezekiel 30:5 the Revised Version has changed Lydia into Lud, and the country Lydia is never mentioned in the NT. The Roman provincial system created a nomenclature which most of the writers of the Apostolic Age habitually employ. Like many other geographical and ethnological names, Lydia ceased to have any political significance. St. Paul, the Roman citizen, uses the provincial name Asia, and never Lydia. John writes to five Lydian churches, along with one in Mysian Pergamos and one in Phrygian Laodicea, but all the seven are ‘churches which are in Asia’ (Revelation 1:4; Revelation 1:11). It is contended, indeed, by Zahn (op. cit. i. 187) that the Grecian Luke, to whom the unofficial terminology would come naturally, uses Asia in the popular non-Roman sense as synonymous with Lydia, to which F. Blass (Acta Apostolorum, 1895, p. 176) would add Mysia and Caria. J. B. Lightfoot, however, states good reasons for maintaining that ‘Asia in the New Testament is always Proconsular Asia’ (Galatians5, 1876, p. 19 n. [Note: . note.] ), and W.M. Ramsay strongly supports this view, refusing now to admit an exception (as he formerly did [The Church in the Roman Empire, 1893, p. 150]) even in the case of Acts 2:9.
James Strahan.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Lydia (2)'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/l/lydia-2.html. 1906-1918.
