In the days of the emperor Arcadius, long after the rest of the region had been thoroughly Christianized, the city of Gaza remained proudly, defiantly, faithful to the Old Ways, its eight temples daily thronged with worshipers.
At the heart and center of pagan Gaza stood the Marneion, the marble-clad temple of Zeus Marnas, famed for its size and beauty. Though latterly identified with the Greek Zeus, the god of this temple (Aramaic Mâr-nâ, “our Lord”) was none other than the old Canaanite Thunderer, Ba'al Hadad himself, god of that place for more than 3000 years.
So few Christians were there among the Gazans that, when the city's newly-appointed bishop, Porphyrius, arrived to take charge, he could find only a handful in a city of several hundred thousand inhabitants.
In those days, when a new bishop rode into his city for the first time, it was customary to give him a triumphal welcome, the road before him strewn with branches and palm fronds, the air perfumed with incense. On March 21, 395, however, the people of Gaza gave Porphyrius a satirical entry instead. They strewed the road before him with thorns, fouled the air with burning cowpies, and met him with jeers instead of the expected hymns.
Porphyrius burned hot with anger, but the emperor would brook no interference with the city or its ways. Gaza was a wealthy city, and paid its taxes faithfully, fattening the imperial treasury with its annual revenues.
Porphyrius soon ingratiated himself with the empress, predicting that she would soon bear a son. When she did so, after the child's baptism, he was finally given the permission he had long sought to destroy the temples of Gaza.
Imperial troops entered the city on May 12 in the year 400. The plunder and rapine continued unabated for twelve days and nights. When they were finished, pagan Gaza was no more.