Acts 19:27

This our trade (touto to mero). Part, share, task, job, trade. Come into disrepute (ei 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 (th megalh qea Artemido). She was generally known as the Great (h Megalh). An inscription found at Ephesus calls her "the greatest god" (h megisth qeo). The priests were eunuchs and there were virgin priestesses and a lower order of slaves known as temple-sweepers (newkoroi, verse Psalms 35 ). They had wild orgiastic exercises that were disgraceful with their Corybantic processions and revelries. Be made of no account (ei ouqen logisqhnai). Be reckoned as nothing, first aorist passive infinitive of logizomai and ei. Should even be deposed of her magnificence (mellein te kai kaqaireisqai th megaleiothto auth). Note the present infinitive after mellein, ablative case (so best MSS.) after kaqairew, to take down, to depose, to deprive of. The word megaleioth occurs also in Luke 9:43 (the majesty of God) and in 2 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 2 Peter 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!