PHILADELPHIA fĭl’ ə dĕl’ fĭ ə (Φιλαδελφία, Φιλαδέλφεια). A Lydian city founded by Attalus II Philadelphus (159-138 b.c.), the king of Pergamum. The ruler was called Philadelphus because of his devotion to his brother Eumenes. The Gr. name of his foundation means “brotherly love.” Some say the city was founded by Eumenes, in honor of his brother. It lay in the valley of the Cogamus, near the pass that carries the main trade route from the Maeander to the Hermus valley, a wide vale beneath Mount Tmolus. It was an outpost of Gr. culture in Anatolia, and came violently into Rom. history with the shocking earthquake that devastated the southwestern end of Asia Minor in a.d. 17. The historian Tacitus listed Philadelphia third among the cities of the province that were the recipients of earthquake relief from the Rom. senate (Tac. Ann. II. 47). Philadelphia appears to have been on the main fault line, on the edge of a scarred volcanic area called the “Burntland” (Katakekaumene) from the masses of calcined scoria and lava that covered it and indicated recent activity. The chronic instability, which began with the major seismic disturbance of a.d. 17, continued for years. Strabo, the geographer, writing in a.d. 20, noted the troubled nature of the place, and the continuous visitation of earth tremors. To escape to the open country from the menace of falling walls must have been a common and horrifying experience for the people of Philadelphia. Note, according to Ramsay, the imagery of Revelation 3:12.

In gratitude for the relief given after a.d. 17 Philadelphia sought to change its name to Neocaesarea, a short-lived innovation, which also provided the apocalyptic letter with an allusion (Rev 3:12). The city on its low hill was strategically valuable. It lay on a frontier of culture, the gateway to central Asia Minor with its non-Gr., non-Rom. patterns of life; hence the “open door” of Revelation 3:7, 8. Other allusions in the cryptic letter are explained by the presence in Philadelphia of an active synagogue of Jews, which Ignatius also mentioned in a letter to the church. Bitterly nationalistic, the Jews of Philadelphia fought the Christian secessionists with every refinement of persecution. The author insisted in his apocalyptic letter that the true Jew was rather one who interpreted aright his international privilege and responsibility. Philadelphia had a long and valiant history. In the 14th cent., when the Eastern Rom. empire had been driven out of Asia Minor by the advancing Moslems, save for a small bridgehead opposite Constantinople, Philadelphia still resisted, an island of Christian civilization in the Turkish sea. Gibbon paid it eloquent tribute by his reference to the standing pillar (Rev 3:12; Decline and Fall, ch. lxiv).

Bibliography W. M. Ramsay, The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia (1904), 391-412; E. M. Blaiklock, The Cities of the New Testament, ch. 22.