Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Acts 16:20

οὗτοι, contemptuously Ἰουδ. ὄντες : If the decree of Claudius expelling the Jews from Rome had been enacted, it would have easily inflamed the minds of the people and the magistrates at Philippi against the Jews (cf. Acts 18:2, so Holtzmann). Of the bad odour in which the Jews were held we have also other evidences, cf. Cicero, Pro Flacco, xxviii.; Juvenal, xiv., 96 106. On the attitude of the Romans towards the Jews see Sanday and Headlam, Romans, p. xix. ff. It was of this intense feeling of hatred and contempt felt by Romans and Greeks alike that the masters of the maiden availed themselves: “causa autem alia atque prætextus caussæ,” Blass; the real cause was not a religious but a social and mercenary one, see above on Acts 16:19, and Ramsay, Church in the Roman Empire, p. 131; where the accusation was brought on purely religious grounds, as, e.g., at Corinth, Acts 18:13, the Roman governor declined to be judge of such matters. ἐκταράσσουσιν : “exceedingly trouble” (ἐκ), cf. LXX, Psalms 17:4, Psalms 87:16, Wis 17:3-3, see Hatch and Redpath, xviii., 7; Plut., Cor [295], 19., more often in classical Greek, συνταράσσω.

[295] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Acts 16:20

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