Acts 17:6

ἔσυρον : the word indicates the violence of the mob. πολιτάρχας : the word is an excellent instance of the accuracy of St. Luke; it is not used by any classical author of the magistrates of any city (in classical Greek we have only the form πολίαρχος and πολίταρχος), but an inscription on an arch spanning a street of the modern city has been preserved containing the title (and also containing the names which occur among the names of St. Paul's converts, Sosipater, Gaius, Secundus), see Bœckh, C. I. Gr [306], 1967. The arch is assigned to the time of Vespasian, and the entablature preserved by the British consul at the instance of Dean Stanley in 1876 is in the British Museum, see Blass, in loco, Speaker's Commentary, C. and H. (small edition), p. 258, Knabenbauer in loco, and for other inscription evidence, Zahn, Einleitung, i., 151. But more recently Burton (Amer. Jour. of Theol., July, 1898, pp. 598 632) has collected no less than seventeen inscriptions on which the word πολιτάρχαι or πολιταρχοῦντες (πολειταρχ -), the latter more frequently, occurs: of these thirteen are referred to Macedonia, and of these again five to Thessalonica, extending from the beginning of the first to the middle of the second century, A.D. The number of the politarchs in Thessalonica varies from five to six (see Theol. Literaturzeitung, 1899, 2, for notice of Burton's article by Schürer), and on spelling, Winer-Schmiedel, p. 82 note. τὴν οἰκουμένην : no doubt in the political sense “the Roman Empire” since the charge was a political one, and was naturally exaggerated through jealousy and excitement. There is therefore no need for the hypercritical remarks of Baur, Zeller, Overbeck, against the truthfulness or accuracy of the expression. ἀναστατώσαντες : only in Luke and Paul, Acts 21:38; Galatians 5:12, see LXX, Daniel 7:23 (in a different sense), Deuteronomy 29:27, Græc. Venet. (Grimm-Thayer, sub v.), and several times in the O.T., fragments of Aquila, Symmachus, and in Eustathius, see also Hatch and Redpath, sub v.). οὗτοι, contemptuous.

[306] Greek, or Grotius' Annotationes in N.T.