In Thessalonica
17 When Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. 2 As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said. 4 Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.
5 But other Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd.[Or the assembly of the people] 6 But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other believers before the city officials, shouting: “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, 7 and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” 8 When they heard this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil. 9 Then they made Jason and the others post bond and let them go.
In Berea
10 As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. 12 As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.
13 But when the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, some of them went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up. 14 The believers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. 15 Those who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.
In Athens
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[From the Cretan philosopher Epimenides] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[From the Cilician Stoic philosopher Aratus]
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear from you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
NOTES:
17:6–7 The accusations against Paul and his companions echo
the charges brought against Jesus in Lk 23:2.
17:7 There is another king, Jesus: a distortion into a
political sense of the apostolic proclamation of Jesus and the kingdom of God
(see Acts 8:12).
17:16–21 Paul’s presence in Athens sets the stage for the
great discourse before a Gentile audience in Acts 17:22–31. Although Athens was
a politically insignificant city at this period, it still lived on the glories
of its past and represented the center of Greek culture. The setting describes
the conflict between Christian preaching and Hellenistic philosophy.
17:18 Epicurean and Stoic philosophers: for the followers of
Epicurus (342–271 B.C.), the goal of life was happiness attained through sober
reasoning and the searching out of motives for all choice and avoidance. The Stoics
were followers of Zeno, a younger contemporary of Alexander the Great. Zeno and
his followers believed in a type of pantheism that held that the spark of
divinity was present in all reality and that, in order to be free, each person
must live “according to nature.” This scavenger: literally, “seed-picker,” as
of a bird that picks up grain. The word is later used of scrap collectors and
of people who take other people’s ideas and propagate them as if they were
their own. Promoter of foreign deities: according to Xenophon, Socrates was
accused of promoting new deities. The accusation against Paul echoes the charge
against Socrates. ‘Jesus’ and ‘Resurrection’: the Athenians are presented as
misunderstanding Paul from the outset; they think he is preaching about Jesus
and a goddess named Anastasis, i.e., Resurrection.
17:19 To the Areopagus: the “Areopagus” refers either to the
Hill of Ares west of the Acropolis or to the Council of Athens, which at one
time met on the hill but which at this time assembled in the Royal Colonnade
(Stoa Basileios).
17:22–31 In Paul’s appearance at the Areopagus he preaches
his climactic speech to Gentiles in the cultural center of the ancient world.
The speech is more theological than christological. Paul’s discourse appeals to
the Greek world’s belief in divinity as responsible for the origin and
existence of the universe. It contests the common belief in a multiplicity of
gods supposedly exerting their powers through their images. It acknowledges
that the attempt to find God is a constant human endeavor. It declares,
further, that God is the judge of the human race, that the time of the judgment
has been determined, and that it will be executed through a man whom God raised
from the dead. The speech reflects sympathy with pagan religiosity, handles the
subject of idol worship gently, and appeals for a new examination of divinity,
not from the standpoint of creation but from the standpoint of judgment.
17:23 ‘To an Unknown God’: ancient authors such as
Pausanias, Philostratus, and Tertullian speak of Athenian altars with no
specific dedication as altars of “unknown gods” or “nameless altars.”
17:26 From one: many manuscripts read “from one blood.”
Fixed…seasons: or “fixed limits to the epochs.”
17:28 ‘In him we live and move and have our being’: some
scholars understand this saying to be based on an earlier saying of Epimenides
of Knossos (6th century B.C.). ‘For we too are his offspring’: here Paul is
quoting Aratus of Soli, a third-century B.C. poet from Cilicia.
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