ἱεροσυλέω

From the study of 2 Maccabees 9:2

Range of meaning

Built from hieron ('sanctuary, holy thing') and sylaō ('strip, plunder'). The word means to rob a temple: to take sacred deposits, dedicated offerings or temple treasure. Its noun forms are hierosylia ('temple robbery, sacrilege') and hierosylos ('temple robber'). In Greek law and speech it named one of the gravest crimes, punishable by death in classical Athens, and hierosylos was also used as a general insult meaning roughly 'sacrilegious villain.'

Against the English

KJV and Brenton: 'to rob the temple.' WEB: 'to rob a temple.' Neither is wrong. But English 'rob' sounds like ordinary theft, and the KJV's article 'the temple' can lead a reader to think of the Jerusalem temple. The Greek is a single technical verb with no object: 'to commit temple-robbery.' It names a recognised category of sacrilege.

How it drifted

There is no real drift in the word itself. The loss comes from splitting one technical term into the everyday phrase 'rob the temple' and supplying an article the Greek does not have.

Used elsewhere in the period

In Greek legal and historical writing it is a standard crime category. In the New Testament: Romans 2:22 ('you who abhor idols, do you rob temples?') and Acts 19:37, where the Ephesian town clerk insists Paul's companions are not hierosyloi. Josephus (Antiquities 4.207) records a Jewish rule against plundering foreign temples. Within 2 Maccabees the theme runs through the book: Lysimachus the 'temple robber' is killed by the crowd beside the treasury (4:39–42), and Menelaus dies a death fitting for someone guilty of hierosylia (13:6–8). Antiochus himself had already stripped the Jerusalem temple (5:15–21).