Acts 19:37

γὰρ : “for,” i.e., they had done something rash. τοὺς ἄνδρ. τούτους : Gaius and Aristarchus, ἱεροσύλους, “robbers of temples,” R.V., in A.V. “of churches,” the word “church” being applied as often in the Elizabethan age to pagan temples. Ramsay however renders “guilty neither in act nor in language of disrespect to our goddess,” i.e., to the established religion of our city, ἱεροσυλία = Latin, sacrilegium, and here for emphasis the speaker uses the double term οὔτε ἱεροσ. οὔτε βλασφ., “Churches, Robbers of,” Hastings' B.D., Ramsay, and St. Paul, pp. 260, 282, 401, In 2Ma 4:42 we have the same word ἱερόσυλος, R.V., “Author of the sacrilege,” “Church-robber,” A.V., used of Lysimachus, brother of Menelaus the high priest, who perished in a riot which arose from the theft of the sacred vessels by his brother and himself (quoted by Ramsay, u. s.). Canon Gore, Ephesians, p. 41, note, however, points out that the word is used in the former sense of “robbers of temples,” in special connection with Ephesus by Strabo, xiv. 1, 22, and Pseudo-Heraclitus, Letter vii., p. 64 (Bernays); cf. Romans 2:22. The cognate noun is found in inscriptions at Ephesus, describing a crime involving the heaviest penalties, Wood, Ephesus, vi. 1, p. 14; Lightfoot, Cont. Rev., p. 294, 1878.