Acts 19:41

τὴν ἐκκλησίαν : the word may imply, as Ramsay thinks, that the secretary thus recognised the meeting as an ἐκκλησία to shield it, as far as he could, from Roman censure. The attitude of the secretary is that of a man altogether superior to, and almost contemptuous of, the vulgar mob (cf. οὗτος in, Acts 19:38), and there is no apparent desire on his part to deny Paul's right to preach, provided that the Apostle respected the laws and institutions of the city.

On the historical character of the incidents narrated at Ephesus, the graphic description and the intimate knowledge of the life of the city, see Ramsay, Church in the Roman Empire, p. 143, and the same writer “Ephesus,” Hastings' B. D. Every detail tends to confirm the faithfulness of the picture drawn of Ephesian society A.D. 57 (cf. Knabenbauer, p. 340). Wendt also is so impressed with the vividness of the scene as it is narrated, that he considers that we are justified in referring the narrative to a source which we owe to an actual companion of St. Paul, and in regarding it as an historical episode, and he refers in justification to Lightfoot, Cont. Rev., p. 292 ff., 1878; see Wendt's edition, 1888, pp. 429, 430, and also edition 1899, p. 316, note. Whilst Baur and Overbeck give an unfavourable verdict as to the historical truthfulness of the Ephesian tumult, a verdict which Wendt condemns, Zeller is constrained to acknowledge the very minute details which tell in favour of the narrative, and for the invention of which there is no apparent reason. Amongst more recent critics, Weizsäcker can only see in the story the historian's defence of Paul and the same tendency to make events issue in the success of his missionary propaganda: 1 Corinthians 15:32 he takes literally, and the tumult recorded in Acts gives us only a faint and shadowy outline of actual reminiscences: nothing is left of the wild beasts except a tumult in the theatre, and the Apostle against whom the violence is mainly directed is himself absent. But as Wendt rightly maintains, 1 Corinthians 15:32 is much rather to be taken as referring figuratively to a struggle with men raging against the Apostle's life; nor are we shut up of necessity to the conclusion that 1 Corinthians 15:32 and Acts 19:23 ff. refer to one and the same event (so Hilgenfeld, Zöckler), see note on p. 414. McGiffert, whilst taking 1 Corinthians 15:32 literally (although he inclines to identify Acts 19 with 2 Corinthians 1:8, so too Hilgenfeld), admits as against Weizsäcker the general trustworthiness of St. Luke's account, since it is too true to life, and is related too vividly to admit any doubt as to its historic reality (p. 282). Hilgenfeld too, Zw. Th., p. 363, 1896, agrees that the whole narrative is related in a way true to life, and refers it with the possible exception of ὡς ἐπὶ ὥρας δύο in Acts 19:34 to his good source : it could not possibly have been invented by the “author to Theophilus”. Even here Clemen and Jüngst can only see an interpolation, referred by the former to Redactor, i.e., Acts 19:15-41 with the possible exception of Acts 19:33 to Redactor Antijudaicus; and by the latter also to his Redactor, i.e., Acts 19:23-41.