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An earthquake by night throws down twelve cities of Asia. Sardis suffers most, and Philadelphia is among them; Tiberius remits their taxes and pays to rebuild. A few years later Strabo finds Philadelphia still shaking, its walls cracked and most of its people living out in the countryside. For a time its coins carry a new name, Neocaesarea.
Set beside it, Revelation 3:12 (setting): “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.”
To the church in Philadelphia, c. AD 95: “He shall go no more out” and “my new name”, written to a city whose people had lived outside its walls for fear of the shocks, and which had taken a new name.
How it was checked
- EvidenceT7 PRIMARY DOCUMENT / MEASUREMENT; Status: ADDED 2026-09-30
- Letter eraTHE PAYMENT c. 30 AD
- SourcesTacitus, Annals 2.47; Strabo, Geography 12.8.18; the city's coins (C. J. Hemer, The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia in Their Local Setting, 1986).