Bible Lexicons

We can illustrate the derived verb from the curious letter quoted under ἀσθενέω , where the context points clearly to absence of food, and not abstinence therefrom—P Lond 144.3ff. (i/A.D. ?) (= II. p. 253) νωθρευσαμένου μου καὶ ἀσειτήσαντος ἡμέρας δύο ὥστε με μετὰ τῶν νομάρχων μηδὲ συνδιπνῆσαι . The editor conjectures that the writer may have been in the desert, and that the nomarchs with whom he ";did not even dine"; were the officials who superintended the transport of goods from one village to another. The vernacular evidence therefore does not go far to decide the much discussed significance of the subst. in Acts 27:21 And, on the whole, in view of the undoubted use of ἀσιτία in medical phraseology to denote ";loss of appetite"; from illness (as Hipp. Morb. 454 τήκεται ὁ ἀσθενῶν ὑπὸ ὀδυνέων ἰσχυρῶν καὶ ἀσιτίης καὶ βηχός : other exx. in Hobart, Medical Language of St. Luke, p. 276), it seems best to understand it so here, and to think of Paul’s companions as abstaining from food owing to their physical and mental state, and not because no food was forthcoming. See further Knowling in EGT ad l., and the note by J. R. Madan in JTS vi. p. 116 ff.