Atos 19

Atos 19

Morris on Artemis - Diana (same as Artemis) was not only the goddess of hunting, but was considered--at least in Asia and in many other places around the Graeco/Roman world--to be the mother goddess of all nature, much like Gaia, the goddess currently being widely promoted as Mother Earth in the New-Age movement. Indeed many neopagans worship Gaia today, so the worship of "Artemis" (under a different name) is as they say "alive and well" in our modern paganized culture! Goddess (2299)(thea) is the feminine form of the masculine theos. It is widely used in classical Greek but not in the Septuagint. In the New Testament it appears only in Acts 19:27,37 in reference to the goddess Diana/Artemis of Ephesus. BDAG - "a (ED: SUPPOSED) transcendent being conceived of as female and ordinarily understood as tutelary or source of special benefits to her devotees and therefore worthy of highest admiration and respect." Regarded (3049)(logizomai from lógos = reason, word, account) means to reckon, compute, calculate, to take into account, and describes a process of careful study or reasoning which results in the arriving at a conclusion. Logizomai was a term frequently used in the business community of Paul's day and meant to impute (put to one's account) or credit to one's account. The accounts of these idol makers were soon to be reckoned as "in the red" And that she whom all of Asia and the world worship - The NET Note adds that "It is important to appreciate that money alone was not the issue, even for the pagan Ephesians. The issue was ultimately the dishonor of their goddess to whom they were devoted in worship. The battle was a "cosmic" one between deities." Robertson on all...the world - An exaggeration, to be sure, but Pausanias says that no deity was more widely worshipped. Temples of Artemis have been found in Spain and Gaul. Multitudo errantium non efficit veritatem (Bengel). Even today heathenism has more followers than Christianity. To think that all this splendour was being set at naught by one man and a despised Jew at that!