Acts 19:10

Acts 19:10. And this continued by the space of two years. We must reckon this period from the time when Paul separated the disciples from the synagogue. The ‘two years' probably terminated before the events related in the 21st and following verses; the regular fixed work appears to have come to an end from the statement of Acts 19:22, when his stay in Asia after his disciples' departure seems mentioned as something supplementary to his long Ephesian work. Paul (chap. Acts 20:31) mentions his whole stay at Ephesus as a space of ‘three years.'

So that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. By Asia is signified ‘Proconsular Asia;' of this rich and fertile and populous province Ephesus was the capital. The term ‘Asia' is always a little vague. It sometimes includes all Mysia, Phrygia, Lydia, and Caria. But Paul probably wrote the term more in the old Homeric sense:

‘ In Asian meadow by Cayster's streams.' Ephesus was a great commercial city, and people resorted to it from all parts of the surrounding country. Here the apostle would have numberless opportunities to preach to strangers as well as to the regular inhabitants of the city. The great temple and shrine of Diana also attracted a vast concourse of pilgrims; in addition to which not only the apostle, but his companions and friends, such as Aquila, Luke, Timothy, Titus, Epaphras, and others would constantly be journeying to and fro between Ephesus and the neighbouring cities laying the foundations of fresh churches. As we shall see in the 23d and following verses, the rapid growth of the Christian brotherhood in Ephesus created no little alarm among the population who lived on the commerce connected with the great shrine of the Ephesian Artemis (Diana),for the popularity of the new teaching positively told upon the number of pilgrims to the idol shrine. It was only forty years from this time that Pliny, in his famous letter to the Emperor Trajan, speaks of the swarms of Christians in the province of Bithynia (no great distance from Ephesus), of which he was governor. Numbers, he says, of all ages, of all ranks, of both sexes, not only in the cities of his province, but in the very villages and remotest country districts, were infected with this superstition (Christianity).