Greek word · G2417

ἱερόσυλος

hierosylos

temple robber

Built from ἱερόν ('sacred thing / temple') + συλάω ('to strip, plunder'). Basic sense: someone who robs a temple or steals sacred property. By extension, someone guilty of sacrilege, any violation of what belongs to a god.

Appears once in the Greek New Testament.

What it means

ἱερόσυλος, -ον

(ἱερόν, συλάω), [in LXX: 2Ma.4:42 (cf. -λημα, 2Ma.4:39; -λία, 2Ma.13:6)* ;]

robbing temples: Acts 19:37.†

(AS)

From G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Acts 19:37

Range of meaning

Built from ἱερόν ('sacred thing / temple') + συλάω ('to strip, plunder'). Basic sense: someone who robs a temple or steals sacred property. By extension, someone guilty of sacrilege, any violation of what belongs to a god. That includes misusing temple deposits or offerings, and it was also a general insult for a godless villain.

Against the English

BSB 'robbed our temple', WEB/NASB 'robbers of temples' and YLT 'temple-robbers' are accurate. ESV 'sacrilegious' catches the wider sense but loses the concrete picture of plunder. KJV 'robbers of churches' is the old English use of 'church' for any temple, and it misleads modern readers (see drift).

How it drifted

In 1611 English 'church' could still mean a pagan temple. Today it means only a Christian building or congregation, so the KJV line sounds like Christians being accused of robbing Christian churches.

Used elsewhere in the period

Classical: Xenophon (Memorabilia 1.2.62) and Plato (Laws 854) list temple-robbery among the gravest capital crimes. LXX: 2 Maccabees 4:42 calls the corrupt Lysimachus 'the temple-robber', and 2 Macc 13:6 mentions those 'guilty of sacrilege' (ἱεροσυλία) being thrown down from a height. NT: Romans 2:22, 'you who abhor idols, do you rob temples?' (ἱεροσυλεῖς). Josephus, Antiquities 4.207, gives Moses' law as forbidding Jews to rob foreign temples. In Against Apion 1.311, Josephus reports the anti-Jewish writer Lysimachus claiming Jerusalem was first called 'Hierosyla' (temple-plunder) because of Jewish sacrilege. So 'temple-robber' was a stock slander against Jews.

Similar words

Where it appears

Acts · 1

  1. Acts 19:37 ἱεροσύλους temple plunderers

    For you have brought these men here, though they have neither robbed our temple nor blasphemed our goddess.

    Here: Literally 'temple-plunderer'. In Greek law it covered stealing sacred property and, more broadly, any violation of what belonged to a god. It was a capital offence and the most serious charge one could bring in connection with the Artemis temple.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.