Robertson Word Pictures - Acts 19:27 - 19:27

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Robertson Word Pictures - Acts 19:27 - 19:27


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

This our trade (touto to meros). Part, share, task, job, trade.

Come into disrepute (eis apelegmon elthein). Not in the old writers, but in lxx and Koiné. Literally, reputation, exposure, censure, rejection after examination, and so disrepute. Their business of making gods would lose caste as the liquor trade (still called the trade in England) has done in our day. They felt this keenly and so Demetrius names it first. They felt it in their pockets.

Of the great goddess Artemis (tēs megalēs theas Artemidos). She was generally known as the Great (hē Megalē). An inscription found at Ephesus calls her “the greatest god” (hē megistē theos). The priests were eunuchs and there were virgin priestesses and a lower order of slaves known as temple-sweepers (neōkoroi, Act 19:35). They had wild orgiastic exercises that were disgraceful with their Corybantic processions and revelries.

Be made of no account (eis outhen logisthēnai). Be reckoned as nothing, first aorist passive infinitive of logizomai and eis.

Should even be deposed of her magnificence (mellein te kai kathaireisthai tēs megaleiotētos autēs). Note the present infinitive after mellein, ablative case (so best MSS.) after kathaireō, to take down, to depose, to deprive of. The word megaleiotēs occurs also in Luk 9:43 (the majesty of God) and in 2Pe 1:16 of the transfiguration of Christ. It is already in the lxx and Deissmann (Light from the Ancient East, p. 363) thinks that the word runs parallel with terms used in the emperor-cult.

All Asia and the world holē ‛hē' Asia kai ‛hē' oikoumenā. See note on Act 11:28 for same use of oikoumenā. An exaggeration, to be sure, but Pausanias says that no deity was more widely worshipped. Temples of Artemis have been found in Spain and Gaul. Multitudo errantium non efficit veritatem (Bengel). Even today heathenism has more followers than Christianity. To think that all this splendour was being set at naught by one man and a despised Jew at that!