Acts 19:18-20 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And many that believed came, &c.— Exorcisms and incantations had been very much practised at Ephesus: the Gentiles there imagined that Diana, or the moon, presided over their incantations; but upon the disaster which befel these exorcists, many of them who had lately embraced the Christian religion came to the apostle, acknowledging that they also had formerly been guilty of sorcery and exorcisms, and confessed that they now looked upon such things as highly criminal. Nay, several of them even brought with them their books, which contained Εφεσια γραμματα, Ephesian letters, or the mysteries and institutions of that magic art; such as the methods of incantation, the words to be made use of, and the proper seasons and places for making use of them;—and they threw those books into the fire, and burned them publicly, in the face of the whole city. The value of them being computed, was found to be fifty thousand pieces of silver. By a piece of silver, αργυριον, is meant a Jewish shekel: See Matthew 26:15; Matthew 27:3-9. Dr. Arbuthnot says, that a shekel was equal to two shillings, three-pence, and three eighths of a penny, of our money. According to that valuation; fifty thousand shekels would amount to 5,703£. 2s. 6d. of our English money; and yet, though the books were valued at that large sum, they now cheerfully burned them. So, mighty was the divine evidence of the Christian religion, and so great its effects! as appeared particularly in the disinterested piety of these men; for they would not sell those books to others, because the art was in itself unlawful, and ought not to have been practised by any one: and being enlightened by the knowledge of the gospel, and animated with the prospect of a better and more enduring substance, they made no account of that large sum of money, in comparison of an honourable and faithful discharge of their