Acts 17: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul and Silas preach in the synagogue at Thessalonica, where some believe and a mob forms against them, forcing them to leave for Berea. The Bereans examine the Scriptures daily, and many believe, until agitators from Thessalonica arrive and Paul is sent on to Athens. In Athens Paul debates in the synagogue and marketplace and is brought before the Areopagus, where he speaks about the God who made the world, an altar to an unknown god, and a coming day of judgment by a man God raised from the dead. Some mock, some want to hear more, and a few believe.

Claim by Claim

1. 17:1
   • Those traveling passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia.
   • They came to Thessalonica.
   • There was a synagogue of the Jews in Thessalonica.
2. 17:2
   • Paul went in to the Jews there, as was his custom.
   • For three sabbaths Paul reasoned with them from the scriptures.
3. 17:3
   • Paul explained and set out that the Christ had to suffer.
   • Paul explained and set out that the Christ had to rise from the dead.
   • Paul said that this Jesus, whom he was proclaiming to them, is the Christ.
4. 17:4
   • Some of the Jews were persuaded.
   • Those persuaded joined themselves to Paul and Silas.
   • A large number of devout Greeks joined them.
   • Not a few of the leading women joined them.
5. 17:5
   • The Jews did not believe.
   • The Jews were moved with jealousy.
   • They took along certain wicked men from among the idlers of the marketplace.
   • They formed a mob.
   • They set the city in an uproar.
   • They attacked the house of Jason.
   • They sought to bring Paul and Silas out to the assembly of the people.
6. 17:6
   • They did not find Paul and Silas.
   • They dragged Jason and certain brothers before the rulers of the city.
   • They shouted that these men have turned the inhabited world upside down.
   • They shouted that these men have come here as well.
7. 17:7
   • They said Jason had received these men.
   • They said all of these men act contrary to the decrees of Caesar.
   • They said these men claim there is another king, Jesus.
8. 17:8
   • The crowd was disturbed when they heard these things.
   • The rulers of the city were disturbed when they heard these things.
9. 17:9
   • They took security from Jason and from the rest.
   • They released them.
10. 17:10
    • The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away to Berea by night.
    • On arriving, Paul and Silas went into the synagogue of the Jews.
11. 17:11
    • The Bereans were more noble than those in Thessalonica.
    • They received the word with all eagerness.
    • They examined the scriptures daily.
    • They examined to see whether these things were so.
12. 17:12
    • Many of them believed.
    • Not a few honorable Greek women believed.
    • Not a few men believed.
13. 17:13
    • The Jews of Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also.
    • They came to Berea as well.
    • They stirred up the crowds.
14. 17:14
    • The brothers immediately sent Paul away.
    • Paul was sent to go toward the sea, and it is unclear whether he actually went to the sea or only appeared to.
    • Silas remained there.
    • Timothy remained there.
15. 17:15
    • Those who escorted Paul brought him as far as Athens.
    • They received a command for Silas and Timothy to come to Paul as quickly as possible.
    • They departed.
16. 17:16
    • Paul waited for Silas and Timothy at Athens.
    • Paul's spirit was provoked within him.
    • Paul saw that the city was full of idols.
17. 17:17
    • Paul reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons.
    • Paul reasoned in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.
18. 17:18
    • Certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers engaged Paul in debate.
    • Some asked what this babbler was trying to say.
    • Others said he seemed to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities.
    • They said this because Paul was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.
19. 17:19
    • They took hold of Paul.
    • They brought him to the Areopagus.
    • They asked whether they might know what this new teaching spoken by him is.
20. 17:20
    • They said Paul was bringing strange things to their ears.
    • They said they wanted to know what these things mean.
21. 17:21
    • All the Athenians and the foreigners staying there spent their time in nothing else than telling or hearing something newer.
22. 17:22
    • Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus.
    • Paul addressed them as men of Athens.
    • Paul said that in every respect he observed them to be unusually given to religion, the term meaning either devout or superstitious.
23. 17:23
    • Paul said he passed through and observed their objects of worship.
    • Paul said he found an altar inscribed to an unknown god.
    • Paul said that what they worship in ignorance is what he proclaims to them.
24. 17:24
    • God made the world and everything in it.
    • God is Lord of heaven and earth.
    • God does not dwell in temples made with hands.
25. 17:25
    • God is not served by human hands.
    • God does not need anything.
    • God himself gives life and breath and all things to all.
26. 17:26
    • God made of one blood every nation of men.
    • God made them to dwell on all the face of the earth.
    • God determined appointed times beforehand.
    • God determined the boundaries of their dwelling.
27. 17:27
    • The purpose was that they should seek the Lord.
    • The purpose was that they might perhaps grope for him and find him.
    • God is not far from each one of us.
28. 17:28
    • In him we live and move and exist.
    • Certain of their own poets have said that we are also his offspring.
29. 17:29
    • We are the offspring of God.
    • We ought not to think that the Divine is like gold or silver or stone.
    • Such an object is an image shaped by human skill and imagination.
30. 17:30
    • God overlooked the times of ignorance.
    • God now commands all men everywhere to repent.
31. 17:31
    • God has appointed a day.
    • On that day God will judge the inhabited world in righteousness.
    • God will judge by a man whom he has appointed.
    • God has given assurance of this to all.
    • God raised that man from the dead.
32. 17:32
    • They heard of a resurrection of the dead.
    • Some mocked.
    • Others said they would hear him again about this.
33. 17:33
    • Paul went out from among them.
34. 17:34
    • Certain men joined Paul and believed.
    • Among them was Dionysius the Areopagite.
    • Among them was a woman named Damaris.
    • Others were with them.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

17:1

Amphipolis and Apollonia were stops on the Via Egnatia, the Roman highway running across Macedonia; Thessalonica was the capital of the province and a busy port. A synagogue was the local Jewish assembly and its meeting house, where the Scriptures were read and discussed each Sabbath and where visiting teachers were often invited to speak.

17:2

"as his manner was" means as he regularly did. The Scriptures he argued from were the Hebrew Scriptures, what Christians later called the Old Testament; no Christian writings existed yet.

17:3

"Opening and alleging" uses two words that have shifted: in 1611 "opening" meant unfolding the sense of a text, and "alleging" meant laying out evidence for a claim, not making an unproven accusation as it does now. "Christ" is a title rather than a name; it translates the Hebrew "Messiah," meaning the anointed one.

17:4

"consorted with" meant simply joined or associated with. The "devout Greeks" were non-Jews who attended the synagogue and worshiped the God of Israel without becoming full converts; they are often called God-fearers. "the chief women" means women of rank and wealth, who in Macedonian cities held unusual public standing.

17:5

"lewd fellows of the baser sort" carried no sexual sense in 1611: "lewd" meant common or worthless and "the baser sort" meant men of low social standing. The marketplace was where idle men loitered and could be hired cheaply to start a riot.

17:6

"the rulers of the city" translates politarchs, the actual title Thessalonica used for its magistrates; inscriptions from the city confirm the term. "turned the world upside down" renders a phrase about stirring up unrest, and "the world" here means the inhabited world, in practice the Roman empire.

17:7

Saying there is another king was a charge of treason, not a religious complaint. Roman law treated predicting or promoting a change of ruler as a crime, so the accusation was framed in terms the officials were obliged to act on.

17:9

"taken security" means they required a sum of money as a bond, much like bail, which would be forfeited if the trouble started again. That gave Jason a strong reason to keep Paul from coming back.

17:10

Berea lay roughly fifty miles southwest of Thessalonica, off the main highway and out of the way, which made it a sensible place to send men who were being hunted.

17:11

"more noble" translates a word meaning well-born, used here of character rather than family: they were fair-minded, and willing to check the claims against the texts themselves instead of taking or rejecting them on the speaker's word.

17:12

Women of independent social standing appear repeatedly in the Macedonian episodes of Acts, and inscriptions from the region show women there holding property and public honors more often than in much of the Greek world. Luke's "not a few" is understatement used for emphasis, meaning a great many.

17:13

"preached of Paul" means preached by Paul; "of" regularly meant "by" in 1611 English.

17:14

"as it were to the sea" is deliberately vague in the Greek and has been read two ways: either the believers took Paul in the direction of the coast, or they made it look as though he were heading for the coast in order to throw off pursuers.

17:15

"receiving a commandment" means carrying instructions back, not a military order.

17:16

The idols were the statues of gods that stood throughout Athens in temples, streets and public squares. Ancient writers remark on how densely the city was packed with them.

17:17

"disputed" meant discussed or debated, not quarreled. The "market" is the agora, the open public square at the civic center of Athens and the normal place for public argument and teaching.

17:18

Epicureans held that the gods exist but take no interest in human affairs, and that death is simply the end of a person. Stoics held that a divine reason runs through all things and that living well means living in accord with it. "Babbler" renders a slang word meaning seed-picker, used of a bird pecking up scraps and so of a person who collects stray bits of other people's ideas and repeats them. Some hearers may have taken "Jesus and the resurrection" for a pair of new deities, since the Greek word for resurrection, anastasis, could be heard as a goddess's name.

17:19

Areopagus means the hill of Ares, the Greek god of war, which Latin speakers called Mars' hill, the name the King James uses in verse 22. The word named both the hill and the ancient council that met there, a body that by this period supervised religion, public morals and education in the city. The text leaves it open whether Paul was taken up the hill or brought before the council.

17:21

By this date Athens had long lost political power but remained the intellectual capital of the Greek world. The jab about chasing the latest thing was a stock complaint about Athenians, made by Greek and Roman writers as well.

17:22

"too superstitious" is harsher in modern English than the Greek. The word sits between "religious" and "superstitious" and could be heard either as a compliment or as a criticism; opening an address with a remark about the audience's piety was conventional.

17:23

"your devotions" means the objects you worship, not your prayers. Altars dedicated to unnamed or unknown gods are attested in the ancient world; they were a way of covering the risk of offending a deity whose name the worshiper did not know. "Ignorantly" here means without knowing who it is, not stupidly.

17:24

"temples made with hands" was a standing Jewish expression for shrines and images built by people. In Athens the phrase pointed straight at the city's most admired buildings, visible from where Paul was standing.

17:25

Greek and Roman worship consisted largely of feeding and tending the gods: animal sacrifices, offerings of food and drink, and the washing, clothing and care of their statues. The claim that God needs nothing from human hands cut against that whole practice.

17:26

"of one blood" follows manuscripts that include the word "blood"; others read simply "from one," meaning one man or one ancestor. Either way, the statement ran against a proud Athenian claim that their people had sprung from the soil of Attica itself and were not descended from incomers like everyone else.

17:27

"if haply they might feel after him" pictures groping in the dark, the way someone gropes along a wall for a door. "Haply" means perhaps.

17:28

Both quotations come from Greek poetry rather than the Hebrew Scriptures. The first line is usually traced to Epimenides of Crete; the second, "we are also his offspring," comes from the Phaenomena of Aratus, a poet from Paul's own region of Cilicia, where the line refers to Zeus.

17:29

"the Godhead" means the divine nature, deity itself, and is not the name of a person. "Graven by art and man's device" means carved by human skill and human imagination.

17:30

"winked at" meant in 1611 to deliberately shut the eyes to something, that is to overlook or pass over it. It did not carry today's sense of a knowing nudge of approval. "Repent" translates a word meaning to change one's mind and turn around.

17:31

"hath given assurance" uses "assurance" in its older legal sense of furnishing proof or a guarantee, not a feeling of confidence. "Judge the world in righteousness" means judge it justly.

17:32

Greek thought commonly treated the survival of the soul as desirable and the body as something to be shed at death. A claim that a dead body had been raised therefore struck many hearers not as startling good news but as absurd.

17:34

"Areopagite" means a member of the Areopagus council, a position of real social standing. Naming Dionysius and Damaris suggests both were known to the book's first readers, and a woman named on her own in such a setting is unusual enough to be worth noticing.