LEWD, LEWDNESS (Ac 17' 18").— The English word occurs twice in the NT, once as an adjec- tive (Gr. TrovT)pbs, Ac 17^) and once as a substantive {pq.diovpyr}iJ.a, Ac IS''*). In neither of these cases has it anything to do with sexual passion — the sense in which the word is now used ; it just means ' vulgar,' ' worthless.'
1. Ac 175.— The word Trovyjpds (AV 'lewd,' RV ' vile ') is used to characterize the dyopaioi or loafers in the market-place whom the unbelieving Jews in Thessalonica incited to an act of popular insurrec- tion against St. Paul. They were so far successful as to prevail on the politarchs to exact bail from Jason for peaceful behaviour, witii the consequence that St. Paul and Silas had to escape to Bercea by night.
' Owing to the dishonour in which manual pursuits were held in ancient days, everj' large city had a superfluous population of worthless idlers — clients who lived on the doles of the wealthy, flatterers who fawned at the feet of the influential, the lazzaroni of streets, mere loafers and loiterers, the hangers- on of forum, the claqueurs of law-courts, the scum that gathered about the shallowest outmost waves of civilisation ' (F. W. Farrar, St. Paul, lSS:i, p. 370).
This class is well described by the adjective Trovr]p6s. Aristotle distinguishes the Avicked man (■7rov7]p6s) from the aKparris, the weak man who sins though he does not mean to do so and who is un- righteous without premeditation {Eth. Nic. vii. 10). The wicked man sins with the full consent of his will. He is positively malignant and injurious to others. Nearly akin in meaning are ^aOXos and KaKos, but as Trench says (XT Synonyms'^, p. 304), in Trov7]p6s ' the positive activity of evil comes far more decidedly out than in KaKos. ' Perhaps Knox's phrase — 'the rascal multitude' — is as accurate a translation as we can get.
WhUe the xp'JO'tos is one who diligently follows his occupation and maintains himself by lawful work, the irov-qpos or KaKos indicates the man who is wicked in behaviour or in character. The words, however, in Greek are often used with the same latitude as we allow ourselves in English, when we use similar terms. The ordinary sjjeech of the NT is not logically exact.
W. M. Ramsay discusses the question whether the reference to Satan in 1 Th 21^* — 'and Satan hindered us (from coming)' — is to he taken as referring to the hostility of the multitude. He concludes, however, that the reference is to the attitude of
the politarchs, who, by exacting security for good behaviour from Jason, prevented the return of St. Paul to the city {St. Paul the Traveller, 1S95, p. 230 f.).
Wetstein supplies parallels which throw light on the class denoted by ayopaioi {in loco).
2. Ac 18^*. — Here the word ' lewdness ' translates the Greek pq.5iovp^7)iJ.a. The RV has 'villainy.' The word is associated with dSkry/ia. The usual dis- tinction between them is said to be that d8iKr]/xa refers to illegality — something done contrary to the laws — whereas pa5iovpyT]/j.a indicates moral delinquency. The distinction is probably to be maintained here, as Gallio is speaking judicially with reference to a definite charge. St. Paul is guilty neither of the one nor of the other, but according to Gallio the question is a mere dispute about words — a Jewish squabble,
padiovpyri/xa occui"s only here in the NT, nor is it found in the classics or in the LXX, but it occurs in Plutarch, Pyrrh. 6, and the allied term padiovpyLa occurs in Ac 13'" of Eljnnas. The latter word occurs in papyri in the sense of 'theft' (see J. H. INIoulton and George Milligan in Expositor, 8th ser. i. [1911] 477). It is not likely, however, that the term in Ac 18" is used in this restricted sense.
LiTERATTRE. — J. R. Lumby, The Acts of tlie Apostles (Cam- bridge Bible, 1886), p. 217; HDB, art. 'Lewdness'; R. J. Knowling, in EGT, 'The Acts of the Apostles,' 1900, in locc. (where literature is given); T. E. Page, The Acts of the Apostles, 1900, p. 201 ; Grimm-Thayer, Lexicon, s. v. paSiovp- yyjiixa ; E. Hatch, Essays in Biblical Greek, 18S9, pp. 77-82 ; T. K. Abbott, Essays, 1891, p. 97 ; R. C. Trench, Sunonyms of the NTi, 1876, p. 36 fif. DONALD MACKENZIE.
LIBERTINES.— Both the construction and the contents of Ac 6" are difficult. It consists, as Hort says, of 'a long compound phrase,' the Greek of which is ' not smooth and correct on any inter- pretation' (Judaistic Ckristirmity, p. 50). An expositor can, therefore, lay claim to no more than a reasonable probability for his exegesis of the verse. St. Luke's statement is generally believed to have been derived from a written source. Thus, Harnack, although he argues persuasivelj' in favour of St. Luke's having obtained a large part of the knowledge he committed to writing in Ac 1-12 from St. Philip at Csesarea (cf. Ac 21'*' ^), yet thinks that he had a written (Antiochean) source for his narrative of St. Stephen's trial, speech, and death [The Acts of the Apostles, pp. 175, 188, 245). And Ramsay, writing on the ' Forms of Classifica- tion in Acts' [Expositor, 5th ser. ii. 35), explains the exceptional form of the list in Ac 6^ as ' due to Luke's being here dependent on an authority whose expression he either transcribed verbatim or did not fully understand.' But it appears to the present writer possible that the form of the list is due to its having come to St. Luke in the way of oral communication. Its style may be termed colloquial : it looks as if the narrator were quoting from memory, or reporting the very words of a speaker with whom he had been conversing. May not the speaker have been St. Paul ? The mention made of Cilicia in the list is in favour of this conjecture. Was there a synagogue in Jeru- salem of which it is more likely that Saul of Tarsus had been a member or a leader than that which Cilician Jews frequented ? The Apostle had, in the days of his unbelief, been one of the bitterest opponents of the Christian movement, and the part he iiad taken in St. Stephen's death was a subject of life-long self-reproach (Ac 22-"). The depth of his feeling may have prevented him from referring to this often in preaching or otherwise, but would not have debarred him from doing so in conversa- tion with a trusted friend like St. Luke.