stratēgos

In ordinary Greek this word means an army commander, but the Gospels and Acts use it for the man who commanded the temple guard in Jerusalem. He was a priest of very high rank, second only to the high priest, and he kept order in the temple courts and its worship. This is the single officer meant when Acts speaks of "the captain of the temple" (Acts 4:1; 5:24, 26).

The same word also names the lesser officers who served under him. When Luke lists the "captains" in the plural alongside the chief priests (Luke 22:4, 52), he means these subordinate guardsmen, not one man. So the word covers both the chief and his officers, much as "officer" in English can name a commander or the ranks beneath him.

The closest broad Greek word is ἄρχων, a general term for any ruler or official; this word is narrower, pointing to a specific guard command. In Hebrew the nearest terms are שַׂר, a commander or high official, and סָגָן, a deputy or prefect, the sort of rank the temple captain actually held.

Here the same word steps into a Roman setting. At Philippi, a Roman colony, the two men who governed the city carried the Latin title praetor, and its everyday Greek equivalent was this word. Luke uses it exactly as the colonists would have, as their proud, formal title for the city's chief magistrates (Acts 16:20, 22, 35, 36, 38).

These magistrates held real power: they could order a public beating and a night in prison, and they governed through attendants who carried the rods of office, the ῥαβδοῦχος whom Luke calls the officers sent to release Paul and Silas.

A nearby city could call the same kind of ruler by a different name. In Thessalonica Luke uses πολιτάρχης for the city officials, and for a Roman military commander he uses χιλίαρχος. This word, by contrast, is the civil governing title of a colony, not a military rank.