Acts 19:38

λόγον ἔχουσιν : no exact equivalent elsewhere in N.T., but Grimm (so Kypke) compares Matthew 5:32 (see also Colossians 3:13). ἀγοραῖοι ἄγονται : “the courts are open,” R.V., perhaps best to understand σύνοδοι, “court- meetings are now going on,” i.e., for holding trials (in the forum or agora); Vulgate, conventus forenses aguntur, the verb being in the present indicative. Or ἡμέραι may alone be supplied = court days are kept, i.e., at certain intervals, not implying at that particular time, but rather a general statement as in the words that follow: “there are proconsuls,” see Page, in loco. For ἄγειν, cf. Luke 24:21, Matthew 14:6, Malachi 2:16; Malachi 2:16, cf. Strabo, xiii., p. 932, Latin, conventus agere. Alford, so Wendt (1888), speaks of the distinction drawn by the old grammarians between ἀγοραῖος and ἀγόραιος as groundless, but see also Winer-Schmiedel, p. 69. ἀνθύπατοί εἰσιν : the plural is used: “de eo quod nunquam non esse, soleat,” Bengel (quoted by Blass and Wendt), although strictly there would be only one proconsul at a time. There is no need to understand any assistants of the proconsul, as if the description was meant for them, or, with Lewin, as if there were several persons with proconsular power. It is quite possible that in both clauses the secretary is speaking in a mere colloquial way, as we might say, “There are assizes and there are judges”. Lightfoot calls it “a rhetorical plural” Cont. Rev., p. 295, 1878, and quotes Eur., I. T., 1359, κλέπτοντες ἐκ γῆς ξόανα καὶ θυηπόλους, though there was only one image and one priestess. ἐγκαλείτωσαν ἀλλήλοις : “accuse,” R.V. The verb need not have a technical legal sense as is implied by “implead” in A.V. So in LXX it may be used quite generally, or of a criminal charge, and so in classical Greek, cf. Wis 12:12 and Sir 46:19. In the N.T. it is used six times in Acts with reference to judicial process, and only once elsewhere by St. Paul in Romans 8:33 in a general sense. The verb only occurs in the second part of Acts in accordance no doubt with the subject-matter; see Hawkins, Horæ Synopticæ, p. 147, note, and Weiss, Einleitung in das N. T., p. 570, note.