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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Acts 19:19 - 19:19
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Curious arts (τὰ περίεργα)
The word means, literally, overwrought, elaborate, and hence recondite or curious, as magical practices. Only here and 1Ti 5:13, in its original sense of those who busy themselves excessively (περί): busybodies. The article indicates the practices referred to in the context.
Books
Containing magical formulas. Heathen writers often allude to the Ephesian letters. These were symbols, or magical sentences written on slips of parchment, and carried about as amulets. Sometimes they were engraved on seals.
Burned (κατέκαιον)
Burned them up (κατά). The imperfect is graphic, describing them as throwing book after book on the pile.
Counted (συνεψήφισαν)
Only here in New Testament. See on Luk 14:28. The preposition σύν, together, in the compound verb, indicates the reckoning up of the sum-total.
Fifty thousand pieces of silver
If reckoned in Jewish money, about thirty-five thousand dollars; if in Greek drachmae, as is more probable, about nine thousand three hundred dollars.