egkaleō

BDAG glosses the verb "to bring charges against, accuse" and files every New Testament occurrence under this single forensic sense; LSJ, Louw-Nida (33.427, cross-referenced to the legal domain at 56.6), and Moulton-Milligan agree, the last noting that the compound of ἐν plus καλέω specialized early in malam partem, calling in a person in order to accuse him. The documentary papyri show it as standard petition and quitclaim vocabulary, including the recurring formula μηδὲν ἐγκαλεῖν, to make no further claim. Trench's Synonyms of the New Testament (section 104) places it within the accusation field: αἰτιάομαι stresses the ground of the charge, κατηγορέω is the public prosecutorial term, διαβάλλω is slanderous, while ἐγκαλέω denotes a public, typically formal-legal charge. On Acts, Sherwin-White's Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament treats Luke's usage (active with dative of the person, passive with genitive or with περί plus genitive of the charge, alongside the cognate noun ἔγκλημα, close to Latin crimen) as technically exact; Bruce, Barrett, Fitzmyer, Keener, and Witherington concur, while Conzelmann, Haenchen, and Pervo grant the terminology's accuracy but read the trial scenes as Lukan idealization rather than reportage. On Romans 8:33, Cranfield, Moo, Schreiner, Dunn, Kasemann, Jewett, and Wright read the future ἐγκαλέσει (with κατά plus genitive, paralleling Wisdom of Solomon 12:12 in the Septuagint) as a logical rhetorical challenge answered by θεὸς ὁ δικαιῶν, with a near-consensus that the scene echoes Isaiah 50:8-9 in the Septuagint. Persistent debates over the punctuation of verse 33b, the identity of the unnamed accuser (Cranfield alone presses Satan; most leave it deliberately indefinite), and the force of the present participle δικαιῶν concern the interpretation of the verse, not the settled forensic meaning of the word itself.