Chapter 17
Paul in Thessalonica. 1 When they took the road through
Amphipolis and Apollonia, they reached Thessalonica, where there was a
synagogue of the Jews. 2 Following his usual custom, Paul joined them, and for
three sabbaths he entered into discussions with them from the scriptures, 3
expounding and demonstrating that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the
dead, and that “This is the Messiah, Jesus, whom I proclaim to you.” 4 Some of
them were convinced and joined Paul and Silas; so, too, a great number of Greeks
who were worshipers, and not a few of the prominent women. 5 But the Jews
became jealous and recruited some worthless men loitering in the public square,
formed a mob, and set the city in turmoil. They marched on the house of Jason,
intending to bring them before the people’s assembly. 6 [a]When they could not
find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city
magistrates, shouting, “These people who have been creating a disturbance all
over the world have now come here, 7 and Jason has welcomed them. They all act
in opposition to the decrees of Caesar and claim instead that there is another
king, Jesus.”[b] 8 They stirred up the crowd and the city magistrates who, upon
hearing these charges, 9 took a surety payment from Jason and the others before
releasing them.
Paul in Beroea. 10 The brothers immediately sent Paul and
Silas to Beroea during the night. Upon arrival they went to the synagogue of
the Jews. 11 These Jews were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, for
they received the word with all willingness and examined the scriptures daily
to determine whether these things were so. 12 Many of them became believers, as
did not a few of the influential Greek women and men. 13 But when the Jews of
Thessalonica learned that the word of God had now been proclaimed by Paul in
Beroea, they also came there too to cause a commotion and stir up the crowds.
14 So the brothers at once sent Paul on his way to the seacoast, while Silas
and Timothy remained behind. 15 After Paul’s escorts had taken him to Athens,
they came away with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as
possible.
Paul in Athens.[c] 16 While Paul was waiting for them in
Athens, he grew exasperated at the sight of the city full of idols. 17 So he
debated in the synagogue with the Jews and with the worshipers, and daily in
the public square with whoever happened to be there. 18 Even some of the
Epicurean and Stoic philosophers[d] engaged him in the discussion. Some asked,
“What is this scavenger trying to say?” Others said, “He sounds like a promoter
of foreign deities,” because he was preaching about ‘Jesus’ and ‘Resurrection.’
19 They took him and led him to the Areopagus[e] and said, “May we learn what
this new teaching is that you speak of? 20 For you bring some strange notions
to our ears; we should like to know what these things mean.” 21 Now all the
Athenians as well as the foreigners residing there used their time for nothing
else but telling or hearing something new.
Paul’s Speech at the Areopagus. 22 Then Paul stood up at the
Areopagus and said:[f]
“You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very
religious. 23 For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even
discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’[g] What therefore you
unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and all
that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made
by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything.
Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything. 26 He
made from one[h] the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the
earth and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, 27
so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though
indeed he is not far from any one of us. 28 For ‘In him, we live and move and
have our being,’[i] as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we too are his
offspring.’ 29 Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to
think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone
by human art and imagination. 30 God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but
now he demands that all people everywhere repent 31 because he has established
a day on which he will ‘judge the world with justice through a man he has
appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the
dead.”
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some
began to scoff, but others said, “We should like to hear you on this some other
time.” 33 And so Paul left them. 34 But some did join him and became
believers. Among them were Dionysius, a member of the Court of the Areopagus, a
woman named Damaris, and others with them.
Footnotes
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. The 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.
Source Catholic Bible: New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE)
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