[chrismorgan]

I don’t get the impression that the proposed church is connected in any way to the meteor or himself as a personality, but since you raise the point:

Some time around 54 AD, silversmiths started a riot in Ephesus because their trade in idols was being threatened by people listening to Paul’s teachings of Jesus as Christ; then Acts 19:35 says:

> And when the town clerk had quieted the crowd, he said, “Men of Ephesus, who is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple keeper of the great Artemis, and of the sacred stone that fell from the sky?

(The town clerk’s speech was largely, “c’mon, guys, you know better than to throw a tantrum/riot over this—use the legal system if you’ve got a complaint”.)

There’s some uncertainty as to exactly what that meant and referred to, but it would seem to suggest that a meteorite had come to be an important part of their worship.

[FooBarBizBazz]

That's interesting, thanks.

Your post motivated me to google... Wikipedia has a list of uses of meteoric iron dating to 2.5k BC and earlier:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoric_iron

The earliest dagger listed there seems to come from the Hattian people of Anatolia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattians

It sounds like they were a pre-Indo-European group later absorbed/conquered by the Hittites...