When Luke describes Sha'ul in a synagogue, his working verb is dialegomai: to reason through, to converse, to dispute back and forth. It is the root under the English word dialogue, and the direction matters. Dia means through or across; the speech moves between parties. Acts 17:2 sets the pattern: as was his custom, he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, three Sabbaths running. Then Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, Troas, and even the governor's hall in Acts 24:25: the same verb, again and again.

English translations often render it preached, and the rendering quietly converts a two-way scene into a one-way one. A first-century synagogue was a room where the text was read and then argued: question, answer, challenge, appeal to the Scriptures. Sha'ul walked into that format on purpose, week after week, and Luke chose the verb that describes it honestly.

Acts 20 shows the reach of the word. At Troas Sha'ul dialegomai-ed until midnight, so long that a young man named Eutychus went out the window. Even the marathon farewell teaching was conversation, not lecture. The apostolic pattern of public teaching was interruptible, answerable, and two-directional, and Luke's vocabulary preserves that fact even where translation flattens it.