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Bible Dictionaries
Market, Market-Place
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or MARKET, MARKET-PLACE (ἀγορά)
1. Locality and appearance.—The landscape of Palestine was characterized by the number of its villages and the absence of isolated dwelling-houses on the cultivated lands. This was due to the joint ownership and tillage of the village fields and to the importance of living together for common safety. The Oriental always lived in the midst of neighbours (Luke 15:6; Luke 15:9), and sought his home in ‘a city of habitation’ (Psalms 107:36). The Palestine village had a path of communication leading through it to other villages, and this thoroughfare, or the widest and most central part of it, became the market-place. A few small shops opened upon the roadway representing the simple village traffic in food and clothing, and the manual skill of the carpenter and the blacksmith. In the larger towns the single shop of a kind became a street, row, or enclosed square devoted to the manufacture and sale of particular articles, each being thus known as the fruit-market, the shoe-makers’ street, or the khan of the silver-smiths (Jeremiah 37:21, John 5:2).
2. Uses and associations.—Beside the fountain or large tree of the market-place to which the village often owed its name and choice of locality, muleteers and other travellers rested their baggage animals, and told of what had happened by the way. There the elders of the village could be met with (Acts 16:19-20), and the children naturally collected and played where there was most to be seen and heard (Luke 7:32). In the market-place, day-labourers gathered at dawn from different quarters and waited to be engaged (Matthew 20:3). There men met and greetings were exchanged, a scale of distinction being carefully observed, from the recognition accorded to equals and neighbours up to the salutation offered to those whom it was prudent or becoming to hold in honour on account of seniority, family connexion, worldly prosperity, or religious position (Matthew 23:7, Luke 11:43). On account of the coming and going of strangers and the importation of foreign wares, the Pharisee washed his hands on returning from the market, as he might have unavoidably or inadvertently touched something that was classified as defiling, or that had itself previously come into contact with what imparted such ceremonial defilement (Mark 7:4).
3. In Gentile towns.—Under the Graeco-Roman influences the market-place of an Oriental city became a broad paved way, with a colonnade on each side marking off two side-walks for foot-passengers. Such was the agora of Ephesus (Acts 16:19; Acts 17:17), leading in a direct line, with branching side streets of the ordinary kind, from the canal quay to the amphitheatre at the other end. The street called ‘Straight’ (Acts 9:11) in Damascus was thus laid out. In Rome, the Forum was a similar localizing of trade and municipal business.
G. M. Mackie.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Market, Market-Place'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/m/market-market-place.html. 1906-1918.
