Acts 17:18

Note

In Athens, waiting for Silas and Timothy, Paul was deeply disturbed to see a city full of idols. He reasoned in the synagogue and, every day, in the marketplace with whoever he met. This verse is what the philosophers there made of him.

The philosophers brought Paul to the Areopagus and asked, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?" (Acts 17:19). There he began from an altar inscribed to an unknown god and spoke of the God who made the world, of His command that all people everywhere repent, and of the day He has set to judge the world by the Man He raised from the dead (Acts 17:22–31). "When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to mock him" (Acts 17:32); a few believed.

The verb is euangelizomai (εὐαγγελίζομαι) in the imperfect, euēngelizeto: day after day in the marketplace. It has two objects, "Jesus" (ton Iēsoun) and "the resurrection" (tēn anastasin). Paul's good news was a person and an event: Jesus, and His rising from the dead. The philosophers' words are vivid in Greek. "Babbler" is spermologos, literally a seed-picker, a bird that pecks up grain, and so a man who picks up scraps of ideas and passes them off as his own. "Advocating" renders katangeleus, a proclaimer, and "foreign gods" is xenōn daimoniōn, strange divinities.

The KJV says, "He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection." The BSB brings out the verb as "proclaiming the good news of Jesus and the resurrection," and the LSV makes the point plainer still: "he proclaimed to them Jesus and the resurrection as good news." The LSV also renders spermologos literally, "this seed picker," which lets an English reader see the sneer.

Wesley guesses what the listeners thought they had heard: "A god and a goddess" Wesley, Jesus and Anastasis. The Greek word for resurrection is feminine and could sound like a goddess's name. He describes the Epicureans as men who "entirely denied a providence, and held the world to be the effect of mere chance" Wesley, and the Stoics as believers in an irresistible fate, and he thinks Paul's speech answers the chief errors of both without attacking either by name. Matthew Henry writes, "The apostle ever dwelt upon two points, which are indeed the principal doctrines of Christianity, Christ and a future state; Christ our way, and heaven our end" Matthew Henry.

In Athens, bringing in strange gods was a serious charge. According to Plato's Euthyphro (3b), one of the accusations against Socrates in 399 BC was that he made new gods and did not believe in the old ones Plato, Euthyphro. In the same city, under the same suspicion, Paul told the news of Jesus and the resurrection.

The resurrection is not an appendix to the gospel but its centre. It sounded strange to the philosophers of Athens, and it may sound strange today. Paul did not soften it; he told Jesus and the resurrection, plainly, as good news.