Acts 13:50

παρώτρυναν : “urged on,” R.V.; only here in N.T., not in LXX or Apocrypha; so in Pind., Lucian, and so too in Josephus, Ant., vii., 6, 1, and also in Hippocrates and Aretaeus. ἐπήγειραν, cf. Acts 14:2; nowhere else in N.T., several times in LXX, and also frequently in Hippocrates and Galen, Hobart, pp. 225, 226. On the addition in Codex [266] see critical notes, and Ramsay, St. Paul, pp. 105, 106. τὰς εὐσχ.: “of honourable estate,” R.V.; not of character, but of position, cf. Mark 15:43. This influence assigned to women at Antioch, and exerted by them, is quite in accordance with the manners of the country, and we find evidence of it in all periods and under most varying conditions. Thus women were appointed under the empire as magistrates, as presidents of the games, and even the Jews elected a woman as an Archisynagogos, at least in one instance, at Smyrna, Ramsay, St. Paul, p. 102; Church in the Roman Empire, p. 67; C. and H., p. 144; “Antioch,” Hastings' B.D.; Loening, Die Gemeindeverfassung des Urchristenthums, p. 15. τοὺς πρώτους : perhaps approaching them through their wives. On the addiction of women to the Jewish religion cf. Jos., B. J., ii., 20, 2; Strabo, vii., 2; Juvenal, vi., 542; see Blass, Felten, Plumptre, in loco, and instances in Wetstein. ἐξέβαλον αὐτοὺς, see Acts 14:21.

[266] Codex Claromontanus (sæc. vi.), a Græco-Latin MS. at Paris, edited by Tischendorf in 1852.