Why Asia Minor?

Why are the seven letters of Revelation addressed to churches in Asia Minor? Asia Minor isn’t a focus of interest at all in the Old Testament, though much of Paul’s ministry is carried out among diaspora communities and churches there. That only shifts the question: Why is Paul interested in Asia Minor?

For Paul, Asia Minor represents a transitional, liminal area between Judea/Jew and Rome/Gentile. The gospel goes to the Jew first, and then to the Greek, and that is also the geographic progress of his mission. Jesus addresses the messages to the churches of Asia for the same reason.

There is a cosmological dimension to this as well. In the original creation, the cosmos had three zones: Heaven, earth, and sea. On this scheme, Judea is heaven, Asia the earth, and Rome is the center of the Gentile sea. I think another scheme works better: Heaven, firmament, earth. Judea is the heavenly land, Asia Minor is the firmament between, and Rome is the capital of the oikoumene. Jesus does, after all, address the messages to angels, who are “stars” in the firmament (Revelation 1:20).

Earth was divided into three zones as well: Garden, land, and world. Judea is the Edenic garden, Asia Minor is the land of brother-brother relations, and Rome is the world where the people of God encounter strangers and are tempted to intermarry with them.

Within Revelation, the churches of Asia Minor are also caught in the middle. There is a beast from the sea (Rome) and a beast from the land (Judea), and in between are the endangered churches of Asia. When the harlot (Jerusalem) is devoured by the beast (Rome), the churches of Asia are left to begin anew. They become the site where the one new man constructed from Jew and Gentile takes form.