Acts 20:17: "From Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called to himself the elders of the assembly."
The arguments against the Bible’s historicity are not confined to the Old Testament or the prophets. The ignorance of those that wish to discredit the Scriptures is everywhere. If there is enough room to squeeze a word in, haters will try to defame...
Luke repeatedly describes Gentile "God-fearers" attached to the synagogues (Acts 10:2; 13:16, 26; 17:4, 17). In 1981 the scholar A. Thomas Kraabel argued that there was no inscriptional evidence for such a group and that Luke had created them for his story (lied or made it up). He stated this in 1981 in a published document named, ‘The Disappearance of the 'God-Fearers' in a journal called Numen. Numen (stylized NVMEN) is an international review for the history of religions. It is a ‘scholarly’ peer reviewed ‘academic’ journal covering the history of religions of any region and time. Apparently it isn’t peer reviewed or academic enough.
Two inscriptions have definitively prove him wrong since then. In the theater at Miletus where Paul met the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:17), a seat in the fifth row is inscribed TOPOS EIOUDEŌN TŌN KAI THEOSEBIŌN, "place of the Jews, who are also God-fearers."
The second being a large inscription from Aphrodisias in Caria, published in 1987, lists Jewish donors and then, under the heading theosebeis ("God-fearers"), more than fifty Gentile names. This inscription was on a 9 ft. tall marble block found during the construction of the Aphrodisias Museum. It is engraved on two sides. It is a list of over 120 donors to a synagogue and is composed of three categories of names—all males: Jews, recent converts to Judaism (proselytes), and unconverted members of the synagogue community ("godfearers;" theosebeis). It evidently dates to ca. AD 350–500) and probably served as a doorpost in a synagogue.
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