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Acts 17:18
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The Philosophers at Athens

16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, ahis spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was1 given over to idols.  
17 Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there.
18 Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, “What does this2 babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods,” because he preached to them aJesus and the resurrection.  
19 And they took him and brought him to the1 Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak?  
20 For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we want to know what these things mean.”
21 For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

Addressing the Areopagus

22 Then Paul stood in the midst of the1 Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious;  
Commentaries:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
<< Acts 17:17   Acts 17:19 >>


Acts 17:18-21

certain . . . of the Epicureans—a well-known school of atheistic materialists, who taught that pleasure was the chief end of human existence; a principle which the more rational interpreted in a refined sense, while the sensual explained it in its coarser meaning.

and of the Stoics—a celebrated school of severe and lofty pantheists, whose principle was that the universe was under the law of an iron necessity, the spirit of which was what is called the Deity: and that a passionless conformity of the human will to this law, unmoved by all external circumstances and changes, is the perfection of virtue. While therefore the Stoical was in itself superior to the Epicurean system, both were alike hostile to the Gospel. "The two enemies it has ever had to contend with are the two ruling principles of the Epicureans and Stoics—Pleasure and Pride" [HOWSON].

What will this babbler say?—The word, which means "a picker-up of seeds," bird-like, is applied to a gatherer and retailer of scraps of knowledge, a prater; a general term of contempt for any pretended teacher.

a setter forth of strange gods—"demons," but in the Greek (not Jewish) sense of "objects of worship."

because he preached Jesus and the resurrection—Not as if they thought he made these to be two divinities: the strange gods were Jehovah and the Risen Saviour, ordained to judge the world.




Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing Acts 17:18:

1 Corinthians 1:22
1 Corinthians 4:10
1 Thessalonians 4:13
2 Timothy 1:10
2 Timothy 4:2

 

<< Acts 17:17   Acts 17:19 >>

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