Commentaries:
Robertson's Word Pictures (NT)
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Acts 19:27

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

Come into disrepute (eiv apelegmon elqein). Not in the old writers, but in LXX and Koin‚. 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 (thv megalhv qeav Artemidov). She was generally known as the Great (h Megalh). An inscription found at Ephesus calls her "the greatest god" (h megisth qeov). The priests were eunuchs and there were virgin priestesses and a lower order of slaves known as temple-sweepers (newkoroi, verse Acts 19:35). They had wild orgiastic exercises that were disgraceful with their Corybantic processions and revelries.

Be made of no account (eiv ouqen logisqhnai). Be reckoned as nothing, first aorist passive infinitive of logizomai and eiv.

Should even be deposed of her magnificence (mellein te kai kaqaireisqai thv megaleiothtov authv). Note the present infinitive after mellein, ablative case (so best MSS.) after kaqairew, to take down, to depose, to deprive of. The word megaleiothv occurs also in Luke 9:43 (the majesty of God) and in II Peter 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 olh (h) Asia kai (h) oikoumenh. See Acts 11:28 for same use of oikoumenh. 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!




Other Robertson's Word Pictures (NT) entries containing Acts 19:27:

Luke 8:23
Luke 9:42
Acts 3:6
2 Peter 1:16

 

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