Noah Webster's Dictionary 1. (n.) A clergyman or ecclesiastic. 2. (n.) A man who could read; a scholar; a learned person; a man of letters. 3. (n.) A parish officer, being a layman who leads in reading the responses of the Episcopal church service, and otherwise assists in it. 4. (n.) One employed to keep records or accounts; a scribe; an accountant; as, the clerk of a court; a town clerk. 5. (n.) An assistant in a shop or store. Int. Standard Bible Encyclopedia TOWN CLERK klurk, klark (grammateus): The word "clerk," "writer," "town clerk," "scribe," is found in this meaning only in Acts 19:35, "when the townclerk had quieted the multitude." Cremer defines the word as signifying a "public servant among the Greeks and the reader of the legal and state-papers" (Lexicon of the New Testament). There was considerable difference between the authority of these "clerks" in the cities of Asia Minor and of Greece. Among the Greeks the grammateis were usually slaves, or at least persons belonging to the lower classes of society, and their office was a nominal, almost a mechanical, one. In Asia, on the contrary, they were officers of considerable consequence, as the passage quoted indicates (Thucidydes vii.19, "the scribe of the city") and the grammateus is not infrequently mentioned in the inscriptions and on the coins of Ephesus (e.g. British Museum Inscriptions, III, 2,482, 528). They had the supervision of the city archives, all official decrees were drawn up by them, and it was their prerogative to read such decrees to the assembled citizens. Their social position was thus one of eminence, and a Greek scribe would have been much amazed at the deference shown to his colleagues in Asia and at the power they wielded in the administration of affairs. See , further, Hermann, Staats Altertum, 127, 20; and EPHESUS. Henry E. Dosker CLERK See TOWN CLERK.

Multi-Version Concordance Clerk (1 Occurrence) Acts 19:35 When the town clerk had quieted the multitude, he said, "You men of Ephesus, what man is there who doesn't know that the city of the Ephesians is temple keeper of the great goddess Artemis, and of the image which fell down from Zeus? (WEB KJV ASV DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)