AGORA (ag'o-ra), (Gr. 'kyopci, rig-oh-rah'), a word of frequent occurrence in the New Testa ment ; it denotes generally any place of public resort in towns and cities where the people came together, and hence more specially it signifies: (i) A public place. a broad street, etc., as in Matt. xi :16 ; xx :3 ; xxiii :7 ; Mark vi :56 ; xii :38 ; Luke vii :32; xi:43; xx :46. (2) A forum or market place, where goods were exposed for sale, and assemblies or public trials held, as in Acts xvi:i9; xvii:17. In Mark vii :4 it is doubtful whether ciyopa denotes the market itself or is put for that which is brought from the market; but the known customs of the Jews suggest a preference of the former signification.
os), a Greek word signifying the things belonging to or persons frequenting, the Agora. In Acts xix: 38, it is applied to the days on which public trials were held in the forum, and in ch. xvii :5, it de notes idlers, or persons lounging about in the markets and other places of public resort. There is a peculiar force in this application of the word, when we recollect that the market-places or ba zaars of the East were, and are at this day, the constant resort of unoccupied people, the idle and
the newsmongers.
rot, a Greek word meaning un learned, illiterate. In Acts iv :)3, the Jewish lit erati apply the term to Peter and John, in the same sense in which they asked, with regard to our Lord himself, 'I low knoweth this man letters, having never learned?' (John vii :15). In neither case did they mean to say that they had been altogether without the benefits of the com mon education, which consisted in reading and writing, and in an acquaintance with the sacred hooks; but that they were not learned men, had not sat at the feet of any of the great doctors of the law, and had not been instructed in the mys teries and refinements of their peculiar learning and literature.
AGRAPHA(Ag'raf-a).See UNWRITTEN SAYINGS.