b. Ministry in Beroea (17:10–14)

b. Ministry in Beroea (17:10–14)

Whether Paul had planned to travel southward through Beroea or obstacles diverted him onto that route, he found there a nobler response than in Thessalonica. Here, too, however, he soon faced opposition, as his nemeses from Thessalonica learned of his presence and aroused hostility (just as Jewish opponents traveled to warn other towns to oppose him in Acts 14:19; communities within regions were generally networked through travelers). Here, as in Thessalonica, Paul had to be hurried out of town, perhaps before the conflict reached the level attained in Thessalonica. Although Paul does not mention Beroea in his extant letters, it fits geographically; Luke is unlikely to have invented a city so far from the main road instead of a better-known city,[2616] and 20:4 is consistent with this report.

I. NIGHT FLIGHT FROM THESSALONICA (17:10)

That some “siblings” were arraigned along with Jason (17:6) and that others now helped Paul and his companions escape indicate that Paul’s mission in Thessalonica had been successful. Granted, the missionaries had faced opposition, but they had also planted a church where none had existed before.

Because Paul and Silas already learned that the leaders of a movement would suffer the harshest opposition (16:22–23), disciples from this point forward often try to spirit them out of town before they can suffer worse hardships (17:10, 14; 20:3; cf. 19:30–31; earlier, 9:25, 30), until the unexpected opposition in Jerusalem. If a leader remained safe, victory could be salvaged, but the death of a leader often spelled the end for his followers’ objectives as well.[2617]

Someone who fled trial might be presumed guilty (at least in the rhetoric of someone who agreed to stand trial or an opponent, Aeschines Embassy 6; Quint. Decl. 249.5). Some disciples in Thessalonica may not have understood this immediate departure (cf. 1 Thess 2:1–8),[2618] but because each city’s decrees applied only to the city itself, Paul would be safe in the next city. Concern for how others would view Paul’s flights may have also motivated Luke’s specificity here: sometimes Paul flees or fails to appear to defend his case openly, but only at others’ insistence (Acts 17:10, 14; 19:30–31; cf. 9:25, 30).[2619] Luke is emphatic that Paul exhibited the respected virtue of courage, ready to sacrifice his life for his mission (20:24; 21:13; cf. 9:16; Phil 1:20–23). Fleeing by night was sometimes considered cowardly,[2620] but it was always acknowledged as most effective if one wished to escape notice (see comment on Acts 9:25).[2621] Night travel was more dangerous because it increased the danger of robbers, a danger of which Paul was certainly well aware on his journeys (2 Cor 11:26).[2622]

Still, although night travel was normally not preferable, it was better than risking a treason charge, which was more certain to bring trouble (see comment on Acts 17:6–7). In the past Paul’s opponents usually did not follow him quickly when he left town, but it had happened before (Acts 14:19) and could happen again (17:13).

II. SHIFTING SOUTHWARD TO BEROEA (17:10)

Heretofore Paul had been journeying westward on the Via Egnatia; many scholars believe that he had been doing so with Rome as a goal until he was diverted at this point.[2623] The Via Egnatia led beyond Thessalonica through more rugged territory to Illyricum (Rom 15:19). From the Roman colony Dyrrhachium on the Adriatic coast he could sail to Brundisium in Italy and then travel the Via Appia to Rome. It is possible, though unlikely, that at this time Paul traveled farther on the Via Egnatia than Luke records, since at some point he probably [2624] ministered in Illyricum (Rom 15:19);[2625] but it is also possible that he made that journey from his secure base in Corinth (when visiting churches that were planted on the road) or, most likely, on his next journey to Corinth (Acts 20:1–3, before writing his letter to the Romans from Corinth).

A journey to Illyricum in the period of 20:1–3 is likelier than such a journey here for three reasons. First, there is the reported immediacy of 17:10, though Luke’s compressed style might allow for that in any case (cf. 9:23). Second, such a journey would also explain why it was fresh in Paul’s mind in Rom 15:19; again, this is at best a supporting argument. The third, and by far the most important, reason is that Luke records many details of Paul’s evangelistic mission in this section, but his mere summarizing of a large journey in Acts 20:1–3, otherwise detailed in Paul’s letters, explains the omission of details in Acts that would have covered the events of that period.[2626] If Rome was Paul’s immediate goal at this time (his letters suggest that it had long been a goal, Rom 1:13), he was unable to travel farther in that direction because of the expulsion of Jews from there (Acts 18:2).[2627]

Still, though Paul had long planned to go to Rome eventually (Rom 15:23), we cannot be sure that Paul had planned to go to Rome immediately, in any case. Claudius’s decree was probably a factor in Paul’s inability to go there (1:10, 13),[2628] but Paul also desired to fully establish self-propagating congregations in regions before Rome (15:22–23). Paul also may have wished to remain in the sphere of the Greek language for now; he had traveled through the three hellenized districts of Macedonia, but its fourth district, to the west, was not hellenized and would be less accessible to Paul than to Macedonian Christians from Philippi and Thessalonica traveling the Via Egnatia who might share their faith.[2629] Paul does have a practical reason, however, to go “off the beaten path” (see comment on Beroea below). Luke’s account leaves little room for an Illyrian trip here; if the brothers in Thessalonica sent Paul away in haste (17:10), Beroea (rather than Illyricum) would seem to be where he went. This means shifting from his previous westward journey along the Via Egnatia and turning instead toward Greece.[2630]

Beroea (modern Véroia) was not only not on the Via Egnatia westward; it was not even on the main highway south, near the coastline. Instead it was farther (ca. 25 mi.) inland, nearly fifty miles (more than 70 km.) southwest of Thessalonica. Its location in Mount Bermium’s foothills (Strabo 7 frg. 26) made it slightly less easily accessible.[2631] Most commentators cite Cicero’s verdict, speaking of an earlier fugitive from Thessalonica, that it was “off the road” or “out of the way,” at least for travelers west to Rome.[2632] Presumably, Paul’s journey took all that night as well as most of the next day, even if some Thessalonian Christians or sympathizers lent the missionaries animals for travel.[2633]

Traveling “out of the way,” however, may have been precisely the objective: opponents would be more likely to look for Paul on the main roads west (the Via Egnatia) and south (toward Achaia; cf. 1 Kgs 13:12). It also appears that Paul hoped to receive word that circumstances had changed in Thessalonica, since he seems to have attempted more than once to return (1 Thess 2:17–18); in this hope he was apparently disappointed, but Beroea allowed him greater access to Thessalonica than he had once he journeyed farther south.[2634]

Claiming that Paul went to Beroea to avoid the beaten path, however, does not imply that it was an insignificant town. Indeed, even in republican times, Roman merchants gathered there; Pompey used it as a base in 48 B.C.E. (Plut. Pomp. 64).[2635] It was now the center of the province’s imperial cult. Under Claudius’s successor, Nero, it was the city where Macedonia’s council (κοινόν) assembled (hence Macedonia’s second most important city) and held the title μητρόπολις (which could be rendered “capital city” of an area); two centuries earlier (167–148 B.C.E.) it had been the capital of one of Macedonia’s divisions for nearly two decades. Lucian considered it a large city with many people (Lucius 34).[2636] Though some distance from the coast, it had its own Roman trading colony.[2637] Beroea had surrendered to Rome shortly before Thessalonica and Pella (Livy 44.45.5, on 168 B.C.E.); such prudent openness to outside ideas might have also exerted some influence on the local synagogue culture here (although this is not by any means the only possible explanation for their open-mindedness).

The missionaries entered a synagogue after they had arrived (presumably not on the Sabbath; they probably had opportunity to rest from their journey, if not to heal completely from their wounds).[2638] Perhaps some Jewish believers in Thessalonica provided contacts in the synagogue, but the missionaries could have acted directly without these (cf. Acts 13:14–15). Although our evidence from Beroea is limited, we do have some later evidence (two epitaphs from perhaps the fourth or fifth century C.E.) confirming the Jewish presence in the town.[2639]

III. RECEIVED FAVORABLY IN THE SYNAGOGUE (17:11–12)

The members of the Beroean synagogue proved more honorable than the members of the synagogue in Thessalonica, open to whatever they would find in the Scriptures. How they searched the Scriptures upon listening to the missionaries is not easy to determine. Perhaps their dialogue with Paul was based on communal memory, but they may well have had a Torah scroll and perhaps other Scripture scrolls, presumably in Greek translation.[2640] Most Diaspora synagogues would seek to have them (cf. Jos. Ant. 16.164; see comment on Acts 13:15). As suggested above as a possibility, Beroea’s openness to change, suggested two centuries before in its being one of the earliest cities of Macedonia to surrender to Rome (Livy 44.45.5), may have been part of the culture that also informed the openness of these resident-alien Jews among the inhabitants. Given the distance between the periods in question, this is at best a guess, but our information about Beroea is limited beyond such statements. Those who heeded the wisdom of sages or philosophers were widely praised as virtuous.[2641] Here the Jewish hearers’ faith rests on the Scriptures; that many “therefore” (οὖν) believed (Acts 17:12) implies that those who searched the Scriptures with an open heart (17:11) would embrace Paul’s message.

Luke calls them “noble.” Their “nobility” may reflect an image drawn from the common notion that the high-born [2642] (cf. Luke 19:12) acted more rationally (in part because their class had more to lose).[2643] The term, however, applied not only to aristocratic birth but to acting graciously or exhibiting noble character,[2644] as here. Applied to Diaspora Jews, it undoubtedly functions as a behavioral rather than class designation. Luke’s Greek term for “examining” the Scriptures is appropriate, though he employs it elsewhere only for a legal examination of guilt (Luke 23:14; Acts 4:9; 12:19; 24:8; 28:18).[2645] “Noble” (and the socially honorable people of Acts 17:12) contrasts with the “rabble” at Thessalonica.[2646] Writers were happy to appeal to the special favor of “the better class of people.”[2647] But Luke’s audience could also know that in times of persecution, people of prominence also had much to lose in terms of status and wealth.[2648] Perseverance in commitment or even express interest could prove costly.

Paul’s success here is also suggested by the later mention of one of his converts from there who became one of his ministry associates (20:4). In view of 17:13, it is possible that some Beroean converts did not persevere (cf. Luke 8:13), but Luke seems clear that many, at the least, did (Acts 17:14–15; cf. Luke 8:15); he names one (from this period or afterward) in Acts 20:4.

IV. ENEMIES ARRIVE (17:13–14)

There would be no question of extradition from one city to another for local charges; that Thessalonica’s politarchs seem not to have taken the charges too seriously (17:9) would also prevent any official delegation from warning nearby towns of the Christian “agitators.” But individual opponents could again raise the charge of sedition (17:7) and highlight the negative precedent of 17:9. Ironically, it is again Thessalonian Jews who “stir up” (the same verb, ταράσσω, as in 17:8) the crowds.[2649]

It is thus safer for everyone if Paul, who is clearly the mission’s leader, leaves (17:14; cf. 17:10). Out of Macedonia, he will be not merely outside troublesome local jurisdictions but also removed from the sphere of Thessalonian Jewish influence, able to plead his case afresh with new groups for whom he may be no more foreign than his accusers would be. (Indeed, in local synagogues, his Judean connection might be hoped to provide him an “edge” over Thessalonian Jewish challengers.)

His departure leaves Silas and Timothy, who will be in less danger, to finish instructing the church,[2650] though even they could not continue there very long (17:15); Paul was later anxious for the church’s need for more instruction and encouragement (1 Thess 3:1–2). The Beroean Christians saw Paul off (Acts 17:14), but some people (apparently Beroeans) took him on to Athens (17:15). To accompany someone to a ship was a part of hospitality (see comment on Acts 20:38), but for members of the group to undertake the trip with Paul to ensure his safe arrival shows special concern.

The phrase “those who accompanied him” (17:15) might refer in this instance to travel by land, since a major road ran near the coast; sea travel would require fares for each traveler. Land travel, however, makes sense of the mention of the “sea” only if Luke expected his ideal audience to know Greek geography well (which they may have). But the statement that Paul went to the sea (17:14) probably implies that he sailed once he reached the sea; in this case, those who accompanied him (17:15) stayed with him on the ship until they had safely reached Athens’s harbor, Piraeus (or Phalerum, a proposed alternative harbor).[2651]

If, as many scholars think, there was a direct land route from Beroea thirty miles southeast to Dion (Latin Dium), Paul probably would have taken this, since he was seeking to travel quickly by night. (From Dion, he could then sail down the Baphyras River to the sea.) If such a route did not exist, he would have had to travel northeast and journeyed around Mount Pieria; after that he could have continued southeast to Dion, for a total of fifty miles (adding twenty to the direct route to Dion). Or he could have sailed from any of the three harbors north of Dion so long as a ship was heading south to Athens and could carry passengers.[2652] Why would Paul go all the way to Athens, skipping Thessaly? He might have needed greater distance from Philippi and Thessalonica than he had secured, to prevent his enemies’ following him; moreover, his Macedonian enemies probably would not have pursued him outside the province. In any case, Thessaly was politically insignificant by this period, and Dio Chrys. Or. 33.25 even speaks of it as desolate (ἐρήμου, likely an exaggeration).[2653]

Sea travel was the most convenient way to reach Athens; in summer the Etesian winds favored the voyage, and Athens would offer a “different jurisdiction remote from nearer land-routes where opponents might be expecting him.”[2654] A sea voyage to Athens might start from Pydna or Dion on the Macedonian coast [2655] and proceed to a port of Athens.

The church in Beroea (here, “the siblings,” as with the Thessalonian converts in Acts 17:10 and in other churches, e.g., 18:18; 21:17; see comment on Acts 9:17) proves significant enough to warrant representation for the collection in 20:4; that we have no extant Pauline letters to it might be by chance.[2656] That some believers act as Paul’s attendants and messengers (17:15) suggests a thorough commitment to his teaching, of the sort one might expect from (by analogy) disciples of a sage (cf. 2 Kgs 2:3; 3:11; 4:25, 43; 6:15).[2657]

5. Ministry in Athens (17:15–34)

In Athens, Paul preaches a successful message that communicates on some shared ground with Greek philosophy, though concluding with the same gospel that appears elsewhere in Acts. Paul contends that God is both transcendent beyond creation and immanent in humanity, and hence that idols reveal nothing relevant to him and offer no benefit to humans. God’s ultimate revelation is not in human artistic representation but in the gospel (Acts 17:29–31).

a. Introduction

This narrative, in which Paul fails to experience the violent persecution he encountered in Macedonia, represents a shift, possibly also allowing for a shift in strategy that climaxes with Paul as a Christian philosopher in 19:9.[2658] Contemporary readings often use Paul’s ministry in Athens as a model for contextualization—that is, cultural sensitivity without syncretism.[2659] Luke himself may have also intended his portrayal of Paul’s example as a model.[2660] Certainly, historically Paul’s background facilitated his communicating a Jewish message cross-culturally among Gentiles.[2661]

I. ATHENS [2662]

Perhaps Athens was too large [2663] and too proud and perhaps its people too thoughtful in this period to host the kind of hostile mob justice suggested in Thessalonica (17:5–9) and Beroea (17:13). But Thessalonica was also large (indeed, probably much larger than Athens in this period) and a governor’s seat, and so perhaps a more likely and important factor is that Athens was too far south (in Achaia) for pursuers from a different province (Macedonia) to trouble themselves with it.

Mountains surround the Attic plain on most sides except the south (from which a seafarer would reach the city). These included, on the west, Mount Aegaleus (1,532 ft.; 467 m.); to the northwest, Mount Parnes (4,636 ft.; 1,413 m.); to the northeast, Mount Pentelicus (3,635 ft.; 1,108 m.); and on the east, Mount Hymettus (3,369 ft.; 1,027 m.).[2664] Closer than these, again to the northeast, was Mount Lycabettus (1,112 ft.; 339 m.).[2665] At least two of these, Hymettus and Pentelicus, were sources of marble.[2666] The sea route was a much simpler way to reach Athens.

Everyone acknowledged Athens’s glorious past;[2667] this glory was no longer, however, the glory of a military empire. Rome controlled the city completely, and new (Roman) Corinth surpassed it in power. Horace (Ep. 2.2.81) calls it vacuas, “empty.”[2668] The Athenian economy was much weaker than Corinth’s: its new buildings came only from imperial handouts; likewise, its population was declining, with few new immigrants and probably a significantly smaller population than Corinth.[2669] While Athenian academies recycled the glories of the city’s classical era, the Hellenistic megacities, such as Syrian Antioch and Alexandria, set the new urban fashions.[2670] Even as a university center, it was eventually surpassed by other centers; Alexandria certainly surpassed it even in prestige by the early second century and probably long before.[2671]

As an intellectual center, however, Athens continued to hold high reputation.[2672] Someone highly educated might be guessed, rightly or wrongly, to hail from Athens (Pliny Ep. 7.25.4); philosophy was naturally linked with Athens.[2673] Athens remained a popular subject of epideictic rhetoric.[2674] A later orator claimed that everyone knew that rhetoric started with Athens (Ael. Arist. Panath. 2, 150D);[2675] its emphasis on freedom of speech allowed it to develop many orators (Tac. Dial. 40). A biographer emphasizes Atticus’s wisdom by noting that though he was a Roman, he endeared himself to the people of Athens, “the city which surpassed all others in antiquity, culture and learning.”[2676] A letter attributed to Demosthenes, a classical Athenian orator, had claimed that Athenians were recognized as more skilled than anyone else in understanding and instruction.[2677]

Athens continued to remain a center for rhetorical study in Roman times. In the first century B.C.E., Cicero, for example, went to study there (Plut. Cic. 4.1–2). Menander Rhetor associates “eloquence and philosophy” especially with Athens (Men. Rhet. 1.3, 362.19). A sophist might mention his studies in Athens, implicitly bolstering his status.[2678]

Decades before Paul, Athens filled open space in its agora with an odeum (the Agrippeion, built by one Agrippa), a concert hall useful also for other public functions.[2679] This was one of the largest roofed odea in the empire.[2680] It was assumed that Athenians would be better trained rhetorically than Boeotians (Babr. 15.7, 11). This benefit was apparently more appreciated by foreigners who came to study there than by the native population, but even less educated Athenians were thought to speak better Greek (at least by the intellectual standards that defined traditional Attic Greek as “better”) than “Asiatics” and other Greek-speakers did (Cic. De or. 3.11.43).[2681] Athens also remained famous for philosophic training (e.g., Cic. Off. 1.1.1), and someone who stayed there could well have attended philosophic lectures (Cic. Tusc. 2.11.26).[2682] (On philosophy in Athens, see further comment on Acts 17:18 and 17:22–31.)

Athens’s very fame, however, invited the criticism of others, who often advanced their own people’s status by comparing themselves favorably with the Athenians. A Roman claimed that Athens and its education were not as great as the disciplines of behavior learned by the Romans of old (Val. Max. 2.1.10). Josephus noted that not only Jews but also others ridiculed what many famous cities, such as Athens, stood for (Ag. Ap. 1.220–22).

Some intellectuals also critiqued elements of the larger popular urban culture that had taken hold in Athens. When the Stoic philosopher Musonius protested Athens’s gladiatorial games in a religious place, his critique encountered such hostility that he wisely left Athens (Dio Chrys. Or. 31.122).[2683] The late first-century orator Dio Chrysostom complained that the Athenians had surpassed even the Corinthians in their love for watching slaughter (31.121; cf. also Philost. Vit. Apoll. 4.22).

II. THE NARRATIVE’S PLAUSIBILITY

That Paul visited Athens at about this time is not in doubt (1 Thess 3:1);[2684] that he indeed spoke before the Areopagus is not so easily settled by the data (outside Acts) available to us. (On the content of his speech, see the discussion below.) There arises the question of whether he might have offered a speech there. Because none of Paul’s extant letters describes what happened in Athens or addresses congregations that would have cared much about the events, and because he nowhere recounts any of his evangelistic speeches to particular audiences (except, by implication, to his hearers; 1 Thess 1:6; 2:13), Paul’s failure to mention preaching in Athens in his letters does not endorse an argument from silence against the speech.

Given the propaganda value of narratives showing protagonists trumping Athenian philosophers, the cultural standard of secular wisdom, Luke certainly had reason to report such an event.[2685] Whether Luke might have had such a tradition or chose to invent it if he did not is another question, one that must be settled mainly on the basis of our view of Luke as a historian in general. We would naturally suppose, and ancient sources leave no doubt, that many people spoke in Athens, and many were allotted even some time to be evaluated by influential hearers. More important, what we know of Paul suggests that he would have taken any available opportunities to preach his message in any city where he remained long enough to do so, and, as noted above, he did stay for a time in Athens.

That Luke does not portray an overwhelming triumph at the conclusion (Acts 17:33–34), as in some fictitious narratives, but merely takes the opportunity to provide a sample of Paul’s Hellenistic philosophic apologetic seems consistent with his usual pattern of adapting genuine tradition instead of fabricating events. Had Luke wished merely to insert philosophic apologetic, other scenes also provided this opportunity (19:9; further development, albeit at a less sophisticated level, would have been possible in 14:15–17), though Athens’s historic reputation would make it a tempting venue. (See the distinct treatment, below at Acts 17:22–31, of questions about the speech itself.)

Further, as noted below, a new speaker in town could well be brought before the Areopagus (or any local board for accrediting new teachers). This does not require us to suppose that it happened in Paul’s case, but neither should Luke’s claim be dismissed out of hand, as if Paul were not a prominent enough figure to address this court; he might be brought before them for reasons other than prominence. Luke of course writes with specific interests. The Socratic allusions are Luke’s, and the court’s agenda was more likely evaluating Paul than deliberately providing an opportunity for an example of missionary preaching.

Luke portrays Paul as moderately successful, at least given the low expectations most of his readers would have for Paul’s philosophic audience. Paul did not win over most of his hearers, but some were open minded and at least several were won over; a divided audience was characteristic of other preaching locations as well (e.g., 14:4; 23:7).[2686] That Paul won over at least a few hearers as Luke suggests, however, is rendered plausible by the naming of two of them, one of them explicitly associated with the Areopagus (17:34), though the way they are named does not imply that they were known to Luke’s audience. Luke apparently does present Paul as a sort of Christian philosopher,[2687] though I believe this strategy becomes clearer in 19:9 than it yet is at this point (and may have become a clearer strategy for Paul historically by that point in his ministry than here; see comment on Acts 19:9).

One argument that has been offered against authenticity (treated below on the speech itself), however, cannot be granted the credence it once held—namely, that Paul would not have spoken in philosophic language to a philosophic audience. Not only is Luke’s portrayal of Paul as a sage consonant with Paul’s own self-portrayal at times (see, e.g., his peristasis catalogues appropriate to a suffering sage); Paul’s letters employ far more Stoic language (or general moralist language compatible with Stoic thought) than many earlier critics have acknowledged (cf. esp. Rom 1:19; 1 Cor 6:12; 8:6; Phil 4:11–13).[2688] Paul could reject philosophic theology (cf. Col 2:8) without rejecting philosophic questions as a strategy for communicating his own message, which he based on revelation (Gal 1:12). It is unlikely that Paul had direct training in Stoic philosophy, but his dialogues with outsiders undoubtedly exposed him to elements of Stoic thought that circulated in mid-range intellectual discourse. We lack historical evidence to conclude whether the historical Paul offered the specific line of reasoning emphasized in Luke’s account, but the resonances with Stoicism are by no means contrary to Pauline practice.

III. THE NARRATIVE’S FUNCTION

Although scholars will reach different conclusions about the narrative’s historical authenticity on the basis of their overall approach to Luke’s historiography, there is less disagreement on the narrative’s function. Dibelius sees it as “a climax of the book,” thinking that it is “the only sermon . . . preached to the Gentiles by the apostle to the Gentiles.”[2689] If we do not discount Paul’s participation in Acts 14:15–17 because 14:14 includes Barnabas as one of the speakers, this is not in fact the only sermon to Gentiles; it is, however, the most complete, fleshing out some ideas from the earlier speech. Taken together, these speeches do provide a natural apologetic approach, probably even a model for Luke’s audience, whom he encourages in the church’s mission (cf. again 1:8).[2690]

Athens is “the representative City of Philosophy,”[2691] and so the gospel’s triumph there reinforces the convictions of Luke’s audience concerning its truth (fitting Luke’s stated purpose, Luke 1:3–4). Athens had prestige and symbolic value that Luke could enlist for his cause.[2692] Some ancients even allegedly believed that everyone from Athens was literate (Alciph. Paras. 29 [Pexanconus to Rhigomachus], 3.65, ¶3). Even Attic farmers were thought to be educated, at least compared with rural Lydians and Libyans (Aelian Farmers 20 [Phaedrias to Sthenon], end). One writer complains about fake philosophers swarming all over Athens, including the Areopagus and the temples.[2693]

Some connected themselves with Athens to advance their own status by association: we are no less great than Athens, claimed one city, because we send them our best students and receive them back “perfected” (Men. Rhet. 2.14, 426.27–32).[2694] Others used Athens as a symbolic foil by which to advance their own intellectual claims.[2695] Apollonius reportedly criticized its decadence (Philost. Ep. Apoll. 70; Vit. Apoll. 4.21–22) and claimed a wisdom greater than the kind traditionally embraced by Athenians (Vit. Apoll. 6.11). Romans could claim the superiority of their own virtues to those of Athens (Val. Max. 2.1.10); some Jews also resented Athens’s reputation (Jos. Ag. Ap. 1.220–22).[2696]

Some later rabbis claimed that Athenians could not understand Jerusalem’s wisdom even after much study (Lam. Rab. 1:1, §§12–13) or that a rabbi defeated the sixty Athenian sages in a debate (to their doom, b. Bek. 8b–9a). One philosopher, converted through a rabbi who had just been martyred, happily defends him and shares his martyrdom to achieve eternal life (Sipre Deut. 307.4.2). Rabbinic stories of rabbis defeating philosophers in debate were meant to underline the claim that whatever Gentile intellectuals could do, students of Torah could do better;[2697] such claims serve to authenticate a minority culture or intellectual tradition in light of the dominance of a larger culture. Sages became an increasingly important subject for biography in late antiquity,[2698] and Luke’s interest in Paul’s prowess as a teacher serves both the historical record and Luke’s apologetic interests. With Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, as well as the distinguished Areopagus, as his foil, Paul advances the intellectual respectability of the Christian message for members of Luke’s audience for whom this would prove a matter of serious interest.

b. Reasoning with Jews and Philosophers (17:15–21)

The bulk of Luke’s narrative about Athens consists of a speech (Acts 17:22–31), which was also perhaps Luke’s primary interest when he decided to include this narrative. Nevertheless, the setting that Luke provides for the speech is intriguing.

I. PAUL’S SETTING IN ATHENS (17:15–16)

Although the timing of Paul’s journey to Athens is involuntary (17:15) and his colleagues have not yet reached him (17:15–16), Paul is too stirred by the idolatrous affronts to God to remain silent (17:16; cf. 17:29).

(1) Flight to Athens (17:15)

Paul’s letters inform us that he went to Athens shortly after his time in Thessalonica (1 Thess 3:1). Differences in sequence, however, indicate that Luke is clearly independent of 1 Thessalonians here (as Luke is probably independent of Paul’s letters in general).[2699] This independence underlines the many points of correspondence, revealing the accuracy of Luke’s basic portrait. At the same time, the differences also suggest the sort of limits to which we ought to press our modern understanding of accuracy in an ancient historian.

The picture in 1–2 Thessalonians is roughly as follows:

After Paul left Thessalonica, he desired to return there, but Satan hindered him (2:17–18).

Thus he remained in Athens by himself (3:1) and sent Timothy to encourage the Thessalonian believers (3:2).

Timothy returned with good news that the Thessalonian Christians still loved Paul and desired to see him (3:6).

If we may admit 2 Thessalonians as Paul’s: The Thessalonian Christians continued to experience sufferings (2 Thess 1:4) from others (1:6).

The second point is where Luke covers the same ground yet notably diverges from the epistles: Paul is alone in Athens (Acts 17:15–16) until Timothy joins him (17:15). We could then suppose that after Silas and Timothy join him in Athens, Paul can send Timothy back to Thessalonica; the “we” left at Athens would thus be Paul and Silas (1 Thess 3:1).[2700] But while Luke leaves the impression that Paul expected his companions in Athens (Acts 17:15–16), they do not arrive until 18:5 (in Corinth), and then “from Macedonia.”

Did Paul send both Silas and Timothy from Athens? But why then would he mention only Timothy as having undertaken the trip (1 Thess 3:1)? Perhaps Paul sent Silas elsewhere in Macedonia, probably Philippi (whence perhaps the offering in 2 Cor 11:9),[2701] or perhaps only Timothy had come to Paul initially in the first place, leaving Silas to continue the work in Beroea.[2702] One could also argue that Paul’s “we” in 1 Thess 3:1 refers to himself alone (a rhetorical plural, as plainly in 2:18), and that he may have sent Timothy from Beroea (where he left Silas) before he himself reached Athens.[2703] These approaches are all plausible; we have enough information to see that some pieces of the puzzle are missing (reinforcing our conviction that Luke does not have Paul’s Thessalonian correspondence in front of him), but not enough to determine which reconstruction of missing information is correct.

Although the harmonizing approaches are plausible, not everyone is persuaded, and the possibility that Luke has abridged in such a manner as to obscure the precise details would not contradict what we see of his usual pattern of abbreviation in the Pauline section of Acts (cf., e.g., Acts 9:23).[2704] Thus it is also possible that Silas and Timothy rejoin Paul in Athens, as Paul’s letter states and as Acts implies was the objective, but that Luke, in condensing material (or reporting material already condensed when it reached him), omits Timothy’s journey and simply reports in Acts 18:5 the concluding time when both his companions have joined him in Corinth.[2705] Such condensing reflects the same freedom to which comparison of various Gospel accounts accustoms us,[2706] and would have troubled Luke no more than his own differences of reporting between Luke 24:47–49 and Acts 1:4–8. We find the same range of variation in other ancient biographies and histories.[2707]

Abridgment was a standard rhetorical technique and a regular narrative practice.[2708] Skipping information in a condensed narrative was hardly problematic; it was unavoidable. As Witherington points out, both Acts and 1 Thessalonians provide “partial and elliptical” accounts,[2709] the character of any finite narrative. Paul leaves out the time in Beroea, skipping from Paul’s expulsion in Thessalonica (perhaps 1 Thess 2:15) to his sending of Timothy (3:1), but if one argues from silence that nothing happened between the expulsion and the sending of Timothy, one might as well argue that he talked with no one on the journey, because he does not mention it. If Paul is allowed to skip events, we should show the same courtesy to Luke, whose agenda was hardly to record all of Paul’s movements.[2710] The problem is that Luke’s omissions leave an impression that Silas and Timothy reached Paul only in Corinth, an impression contradicted by Paul (1 Thess 3:1) and in tension with Luke himself (Acts 17:15–16), the latter passage revealing again how Luke’s narrative sometimes “deconstructs” on details for the uninformed reader because of its condensed nature. But Luke is probably not concerned so much with explaining all details as with telling the story. “Thus,” Conzelmann opines, “the Lukan picture is simplified.”[2711] Ancient historians did not share our insistence for precision on what they considered secondary details. Whereas a persistent defender or attacker of scriptural details, focused primarily on canonical materials, may fixate on the differences, a reader accustomed to ancient historiography in general will be far more impressed with the degree of independent, mutual confirmation on major points in the two accounts. See also comment on Acts 18:5.

(2) Paul’s Arrival in Athens (17:15–16)

Athens itself was at least three miles inland and so had smaller port towns on the coast.[2712] The original (single) Athenian port was Phalerum, but the naval genius Themistocles found a better location and had three harbors built at Piraeus, then attached Piraeus to Athens, helping to make Athens a maritime empire.[2713]

Both Piraeus and Phalerum were walled seaports, and a long, populated street enclosed in walls connected Athens with these coastal ports.[2714] Nevertheless, the Long Walls (as the walled street between the ports and Athens was called) had fallen into disrepair. Even after Conon had restored the walls, they had fallen again into ruins (Paus. 1.2.2), though first-century reports still speak of walls there (Pliny E. N.H. 4.7.24).[2715]

Local tradition claims that Paul landed at what is now Glyfada, south of the main ports,[2716] but his landing site is not the sort of matter that Paul likely would have emphasized or the first generation of Christians in Athens would have likely cared to preserve. Some scholars think that Paul landed at Phalerum, which was the port closest to Macedonia; Piraeus was in more common use but lay on the other (western) side of the peninsula.[2717] Certainly Phalerum had altars of unknown gods and of heroes (Paus. 1.1.4),[2718] but Paul’s port of entry need not be the only place that he visited, and such altars may have existed elsewhere. Piraeus had displaced the older Phalerum,[2719] and it is not clear that the latter was in much use in this period.

If Paul instead sailed to the better-known Piraeus, though this destination could be farther for a ship arriving from the north, Paul would have also seen sites rich in Athenian history. Piraeus could receive large ships, including Egyptian grain ships en route to Italy (Lucian Ship 1). Although Sulla destroyed it in 86 B.C.E., it was restored in the early empire and was in use by the time of Paul’s visit.[2720] One writer, denouncing Athens’s decadence, complains about parasites loitering around Piraeus and Phalerum (Philost. Ep. Apoll. 70). If one entered Athens from Piraeus (to the southwest), one would enter through the double gate on the northeast side of the city onto the Dromos, a wide street leading to the Agora.[2721] Although wheeled traffic would start only near sundown, streets would be full of people walking, probably some litters for the elite, and probably also willing tour guides.[2722]

Luke says that Paul was stirred about the idols in Athens (Acts 17:16), but he would have had his first taste of them even before entering the city. Whoever approached Athens from afar, a pagan orator opined, would be awed by the glorious sight (Ael. Arist. Panath. 12, 156D–157D). Had Paul approached, for example, Piraeus, he would have been able to view Athens’s temples, especially on its acropolis, long before entering the Piraeus harbor.[2723] As the ship passed Sounion, he could already view the spear tip and helmet crest of the huge statue of Athena constructed on the Acropolis (on which see discussion below) to celebrate the ancient victory at Marathon; this statue was more than fifteen meters high.[2724] It was Athena’s most sacred symbol in all of Attica, and some ancients claimed that it had fallen from heaven (noted in Paus. 1.26.6, who refuses comment on this claim).

In the harbor town of Piraeus, if this was where he entered, Paul would have seen the sanctuary of Athena and Zeus with their bronze images; an Aphrodite sanctuary was near the sea (1.1.3). From Piraeus to Athens proper was about seven kilometers (more than four miles).[2725] Even had he entered a different harbor, he could not have evaded the signs of idolatry; in one of the other harbors (Munychia) stood a temple of Artemis, and near Phalerum veneration of Demeter, Athena, and Zeus was obvious, in addition to altars of unknown gods (1.1.4). The rest of Attica also displayed evidences of its religious perspectives. Pausanias details the sanctuaries and graves of both heroes and mortals outside Athens, including along the roads (1.29.2). One could hardly enter Athens without noticing them.

Its port towns connected Athens with the sea, a notion also reflected in their mythology and worship. Athenians claimed that Poseidon competed with Athena (who won) to be the city’s patron deity (Apollod. Bib. 3.14.1; Paus. 1.24.5). Within Athens, in the Erectheum was a seawater cistern noted for its sound of waves, with a trident outline on the rock; according to Athenian legend, Poseidon had given these signs when desiring to be the land’s patron deity (Paus. 1.26.5).[2726]

(3) Disturbed by Idols (17:16)

Paul could be deeply disturbed even in a “tolerant” intellectual environment where, in contrast to his recent experiences in Macedonia, he was unlikely to face more than ridicule. One factor that could have additionally contributed to Paul’s disgust with idolatry in Athens is that it was famous for philosophy, which was probably how he knew of the city before he saw it in person. The supposed “best” in representatives of Gentile culture had failed to elevate their concept of deity in a way that would affect most Athenians’ practice of religion.

The strong term (παροξύνω) used here for Paul’s disturbance over idolatry appears only twice in the NT but is fairly common (about fifty times) in the LXX, often for God’s righteous anger, including several times for God’s anger toward Israel’s idolatry (Deut 9:18; Ps 105:28–29 [106:28–29 ET]; Hos 8:5).[2727] For a Judean who believed that all creation owed honor to its Creator, the sight of such lavish yet misdirected devotion must have been traumatic indeed, and Paul could never grow accustomed to it (cf. Acts 14:14; 19:26). That Paul will prove conciliatory (17:22) despite his internal reaction reveals his commitment to bring his gospel everywhere (gently; cf. 2 Tim 2:25). For one’s (human) “spirit,” see also Luke 1:47; 8:55; 23:46; Acts 7:59; more disputable proposed uses are in Acts 18:25; 19:21.

Paul’s response to idols was very different from the usual polytheistic visitor’s typical response. Travelers who had been to large cities such as Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, or Ephesus would not be impressed with Athens’s size or magnificence in the period of the empire; it was in this sense “a provincial backwater, a small university town of about twenty-five thousand people, more concerned with ideas than with commerce.”[2728] For those taken with Athens’s history and what it symbolized, however, Athens meant much more.

“I have already stated,” Pausanias notes, “that the Athenians are far more devoted to religion [τὰ θεῖα] than other” people are (Paus. 1.24.3, noting that they were the first to do many things).[2729] Because local statues of gods were among the tourist sites (Pausanias passim), those who came to a city normally expressed goodwill by praising its gymnasia, theaters, harbors, and temples (Men. Rhet. 2.3, 382.15–16), and the orator Aristides certainly did so. He praised Athens’s resources for caring for temples and images and hence for revealing gratitude to the gods (Panath. 21, 161D–162D).

The ancient Mediterranean world was full of deity statues; the ancient estimate of thirty thousand (Hesiod W.D. 252; Euseb. P.E. 5.36.2) was purely a guess, but there were many of these statues.[2730] As one reads Pausanias’s second-century description of Greece, it becomes quickly evident that all Greece—and not only Athens—was full of idols, many of them commemorating alleged events of the past. Yet tourists often specifically remarked on the Athenians’ manifold signs of religious devotion (as Paul puts it diplomatically in Acts 17:22), some even affirming that they were the most religious Greeks (Jos. Ag. Ap. 2.130).[2731]

(4) The First Idols Encountered

Paul would have seen symbols of pagan worship even when nearing Piraeus, as already noted (he would have also encountered them if entering by any other route). Luke does not tell us how far Paul explored Athens before reacting so strongly to the idolatry there. But assuming that Paul explored the city itself (since he claims to have passed through and observed closely the Athenians’ objects or sites of worship, Acts 17:23a), any impressions formed before reaching the harbor would have been confirmed in the city itself.

Pausanias is a reliable mid-second-century tour guide, and most of what he reports would have also been visible a century earlier, in Paul’s day. As soon as one entered Athens, one would see the building for processions;[2732] the temple of Demeter (containing images of Demeter and Persephone and a torchbearer, relevant to the Mysteries); and soon after a statue of Poseidon (Paus. 1.2.4). A nearby portico contained sanctuaries; a gymnasium devoted to Hermes; a house used for Dionysus worship; and images there of Athena the Healer, Zeus, Mnemosyne, the Muses, and Apollo. After the area sacred to Apollo came another building containing clay statues of various deities, including Dionysus (1.2.5).

Next to the statue of Demosthenes the orator was a shrine for Ares, containing not only the image of Ares but also one of Athena and two of Ares’s paramour, Aphrodite (with other images of Heracles and Apollo nearby; 1.8.4). Near a temple of Hephaistos (1.14.6) stood a sanctuary of “Heavenly Aphrodite” (1.14.7; Aphrodite technically married Hephaistos, though she had relations with many of the male deities). There was also a sanctuary for the Dioscuri (1.18.2), a temple of Serapis (1.18.4), and near it a temple of Eileithyia (1.18.5). Hadrian later dedicated a temple of Olympian Zeus, with a statue of Zeus larger than any other statues except those in Rome and Rhodes (1.18.6),[2733] but the original sanctuary beneath this temple was much older (according to local myth, harking back to Deucalion and the flood; 1.18.8).[2734] Near this temple of Zeus stood a sanctuary of Delphinian Apollo (1.19.1), followed by a temple to Aphrodite (1.19.2).

From the Prytaneum, the symbolic city center, supposedly founded by Theseus, led a road named Tripods for all the shrines containing tripods there (1.20.1). Near this was the temple of Dionysus (1.20.2), but Dionysus’s earliest sanctuary in the city was close to the theater and contained “two temples and two statues of Dionysus” (1.20.3).[2735] If one left for the Acropolis from the theater, one would come across the sanctuary of Asclepius (1.21.4) and, farther along, the temple of Themis (1.22.1) and the sanctuary of Earth and of Demeter (1.22.3).

(5) Acropolis Idolatry

Because the way up to the Acropolis was so steep, only one path led there (1.22.4). To the gateway’s right was “a temple of Wingless Victory” (1.22.4),[2736] and at the entrance stood a “Hermes of the Gateway” and statues of the graces (1.22.8).[2737] If Paul ascended the Acropolis [2738] during the time he was being repulsed by the idols, he would have walked up the marble stairs that the emperor Claudius contributed less than a decade earlier (in 42 C.E.).[2739]

After exiting the porch at the top of the staircase to the summit of the Acropolis, visitors would confront Phidias’s half-millennium-old giant bronze figure of Athena about forty paces in front of them.[2740] Phidias portrayed her as beautiful, tall, and with gray eyes (Max. Tyre 8.6).[2741] The most impressive temple on the Acropolis was the Parthenon.[2742] Its front pediment sculptures depicted Athena’s birth, and those on the back, her contest with Poseidon for Attica (Paus. 1.24.4–5). Long after Paul’s day, Athena continued to be associated with the city named for her.[2743] As Pausanias emphasizes, all of Attica was sacred to Athena, and even those devoted to the worship of other deities reverenced her (1.26.6).

Also on the Acropolis stood the sanctuary of Brauronian Artemis (1.23.7). More impressive (though not comparable to the Parthenon) was the Erechtheion, in front of which was an altar dedicated to “Zeus Most High”; three altars stood inside—one to Poseidon (for sacrifices both to him and to Erectheus), another to a hero (named Butes), and the last to Hephaistos (1.26.5). Just below the Acropolis gateway, one would find a cave sanctuary of Apollo (1.28.4);[2744] not far from this was a sanctuary of the Erinyes (Furies; 1.28.6).

(6) Agora Idolatry

We know that Paul went at least to the Agora (Acts 17:17; on agoras in general, see comment on Acts 16:19), and so he would have seen the idols there. Though he probably spent more time in the Western Roman marketplace (with its bustling activity) than in the Eastern Greek agora (with its many monuments and some philosophic conversation), he probably saw both. He would not necessarily recognize all of the idols; although the altar to the unknown deity had an inscription (17:23), many statues would not (cf. Dio Chrys. Or. 31.91–92). Athens had many hermai, pillars with Hermes heads and erect phalli, throughout the city but most notably at the Agora’s northwest corner, near the Stoa Basileios, where Paul presumably spoke.[2745]

The Agora also included a cult center for the Tyrannicides.[2746] Standing in the Stoa Poikile in the Agora, one would see temples of Ares [2747] and of Roma and Augustus; to the right would be the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios (perhaps housing the imperial cult).[2748] The temple of Ares, along with the odeum lecture hall, consumed much of the previous open space of the Agora.[2749] The Roman forum included “the Tower of the Winds,” an “octagonal marble tower containing sculptured images of the eight winds around the top of its eight sides.”[2750]

(7) Other Idols

As if all of these images were not enough, Pausanias goes on to mention various statues elsewhere in the city, so that we gain a fuller sense of the “city full of idols” Paul experienced in Acts 17:16. Although Paul would not have seen all of these, he would have seen some. Pausanias notes the statue of Hermes in the marketplace (Paus. 1.15.1), the entire precincts of Zeus’s temple full of statues (1.18.6; but this is from generations later), and Pythian Apollo’s statue nearby (1.19.1). After entering the gate to the Acropolis, a visitor would meet statues of numerous deities, including Hygeia (Health), daughter of Asclepius (1.23.4).[2751] On the Acropolis stood a statue of Athena striking a satyr (1.24.1), a statue of Heracles and another of Athena (1.24.2), statues of Zeus (1.24.4), a statue of Athena in the Parthenon (1.24.5–7), and a bronze Apollo across from the Parthenon (1.24.8).

The Acropolis also included a bronze statue of Artemis earlier dedicated by Themistocles’s sons, and a statue of Athena seated (1.26.4). One Athena temple contained a Hermes statue made of wood (1.27.1); next to this temple stood a temple of Pandrosus (1.27.2). Some other ancient Athena statues also remained, black and brittle from the burning of the Acropolis (1.27.6). Statues of underworld deities appeared in the Erinyes’ temple (Pluto, Hermes, Earth; 1.28.6).

Other statues included personified deities, mortals, and heroes; Paul himself probably could not distinguish all of them by sight. Figures of Peace and Hestia stood in the prytaneum (city hall; 1.18.3); in addition to the personification of peace, personified mercy also received an altar (1.17.1). Among mortals and heroes, there was the sanctuary of Theseus (1.17.2); altars to children of Theseus and Phalerus and to a son of Minos (1.1.4); altars to Heracles and Hebe, and one to Alcmene and Iolaus (1.19.3); and the “hero-shrine” (ἡρῷον) of Aegeus (1.22.5).[2752] As noted above, a hero named Butes received sacrifice in the Erechtheion (1.26.5).[2753] To one who had suffered violence after rejecting worship (Acts 14:13–19), the thin line that Greeks allowed between deity and mortals would have been appalling.

(8) Further Cults

Athens experienced temporary building booms under Augustus, Hadrian, and the current emperor Claudius.[2754] On the Acropolis, next to the famous Parthenon, Augustus built “a circular Ionic temple to Roma and Augustus”;[2755] he also built a massive temple for Jupiter Olympius (Suet. Aug. 60). Some older temples from surrounding Attica had been moved into the Agora,[2756] which was itself already full of idols.[2757] Yet Athens had statues of deities not only in temples but in the open.[2758] Literary attestation, abundant as it is, does not reveal the full picture. As David Gill notes, “Acts hints at the diversity of cult at Athens which archaeology is revealing only now.”[2759] Together, the archaeological and the literary evidence suggest a city devoted to artistic praise of traditional Greek deities, with a few newer deities added.

Athens also hosted emperor worship;[2760] archaeologists have discovered thirteen “altars dedicated to Augustus . . . in the lower city,” in the Agora, not including other statues for the imperial family.[2761] Because the current emperor, Claudius, restored what his predecessor, Gaius Caligula, looted, he proved especially popular; inscriptions hail him as a “savior” and link him with Apollo Patroos (IG 2.2.3269, 3271, 3274).[2762] Claudius’s successor, Nero, was hailed as a son of a god (2.2.3277) and as “the new Apollo” (2.2.3278).[2763]

The famous cult of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis was nearby.[2764] Athens was particularly crowded in autumn for the mystery celebrations.[2765] The Mysteries were popular and were held utterly sacred by the vast majority of Athenians.[2766] Even Augustus was initiated there (Suet. Aug. 93); although originally accessible only to Athenians, they were open to even non-Greeks by this period.[2767]

II. IN SYNAGOGUE AND AGORA (17:17)

Philo in the first century knew of a Jewish community in Attica (Embassy 281–82; it would almost certainly have settled in Athens). Epitaphs from the second century B.C.E. to the third century C.E. attest the presence of Jews in Athens (some of whom, like other residents, had moved there from the Diaspora).[2768] Some scholars think that the subject of Paul’s dialogue in the synagogue was the protesting of idolatry, since this is his concern in the context (Acts 17:16, 29–30).[2769] But Luke has simply compressed the account too much for us to infer this agenda; more than likely, Luke expects us to assume the same topic of discussion in which Paul typically engaged in synagogues (cf. 13:16–47). The “therefore” of 17:17 may imply that the prevalence of idols influenced Paul’s preference for the synagogue as a more welcoming venue, but Paul normally began in synagogues anyway (9:20; 13:5, 14; 14:1; 17:1, 10), and Paul also reasons with people in the agora.

An agora was the epitome of a public place (e.g., Polyb. 32.5.10; Dio Chrys. Or. 51.2).[2770] What is in question is whether Luke refers to the traditional Greek agora or to the city’s newer Roman forum, which would also be identified by the same Greek term, ἀγορά (marketplace). The Greek market lay directly north of the Areopagus; it included the temple of Hephaistos [2771] and the Stoa of Attalos;[2772] full of monuments, it was “a virtual museum by the first century,” though poets and philosophers strolled and discussed there.[2773] Orators still spoke from the bēma in front of the Stoa of Attalos, which remained useable;[2774] but after Augustus’s death, political activity in the Greek agora nearly vanished; it was not the best place to draw crowds.[2775] Too much of its space was consumed by the odeum and the temple of Ares, built in the early empire.[2776]

By contrast, the Roman agora in the east was the city’s current commercial center.[2777] About the same size as Julius Caesar’s forum in Rome, this eastern market would have hosted more people in Athens with whom Paul could dialogue.[2778] Paul may have spent more of the time depicted in Acts 17:17 in the eastern agora, but in 17:18 he may have been in the western agora as well. Both sections composed a single large agora until the Stoa of Attalos divided them in the second century B.C.E.[2779] They were connected by a walkway, though, like the rest of Athens, this walkway lacked colonnades until Hadrian’s era in the second century.[2780]

Dialoguing with whomever he found in the marketplace fits the “university” climate of Athens; public speakers in temples and public places were common in Greek cities, but they were especially noteworthy in Athens. If Paul began to draw the interest of other teachers (see comment on Acts 17:18) as a potentially rival public speaker, however, he would probably have needed to be accredited through the Areopagus (see comment on Acts 17:19); Athens had more eager prospective teachers passing through than it could accommodate. Some scholars suggest that Paul could have entered these discussions from his workshop in the market,[2781] but neither Luke nor Paul (1 Thess 3:1) offers the impression of a long stay in Athens.

Paul had given public lectures at other locations (Acts 14:8–9), probably following the method pioneered by Cynics and other traveling sages (see comment on Acts 14:8–10), though undoubtedly without Cynic eccentricities such as accosting passersby for funds. Philosophers who were not Cynics also often preached in streets and marketplaces, since many lacked their own lecture halls (see comment on Acts 19:9) or patrons to host them.[2782] This style of discourse would be even more familiar in Athens, and it seems that Paul was growing increasingly comfortable with it.[2783] (Although Paul’s own writings include notable correspondences with the ideals of the traveling preachers, second-century Christians grew still more comfortable with portraying Paul in these semirespectable, or at least culturally intelligible, terms.)[2784] Socrates also dialogued with individuals in the marketplace, an allusion that many scholars find paramount here in view of 17:19.[2785]

There were certain traditional limitations to such public dialogue. At least in an earlier period, those who were too young to speak wisdom in the marketplace itself might lecture instead in a shop nearby (Xen. Mem. 4.2.1). Securing approval might also be necessary if one began to draw significant hearers (see discussion below). Paul would so far lack a proper Attic accent, but Tarsus was a leading center of both rhetoric and philosophy (see comment on Acts 9:11), and so he might be heard as more honorable than some visiting teachers.

III. RESPONSES OF STOICS AND EPICUREANS (17:18)

Luke portrays the responses of Epicureans and Stoics, probably especially the former mocking, and the latter bemused by, their misunderstanding of Paul’s teaching.

(1) Dialoguing with Philosophers

Long stoas (colonnades) surrounded the Agora (Acts 17:17), and lecturers and others had long employed these porches for gatherings (the Stoics, in fact, derived their name from this practice on a porch). Paul’s dialogue with philosophers probably occurred in one or more stoas.[2786]

The rhetorical practice of prosopopoeia, writing speeches “in character,” meant that one would compose speeches appropriate to the speakers and the occasion. As Luke probably affects a Semitic style in his infancy narrative, so here he quotes the Athenian philosophers using the rare optative, striving “for a cultured style.”[2787] That the philosophers discuss Paul’s speech among themselves fits the ancient rhetorical situation (Polyb. 9.32.1); Paul might even wait for them to finish before speaking further (9.32.2).

The contrasting responses of Epicureans and Stoics fit the stereotype (in this case, a mostly accurate one) of these schools (see discussion below). They also fit the Lukan style of “divided reaction to Paul’s speech.”[2788] Paul divides and conquers his audience, as he does elsewhere (Acts 23:6–10); he establishes common ground with Stoics and (in 23:6–10) with Pharisees whereas far less such ground was possible with the Epicureans (and Sadducees).[2789] (There is some common ground with Epicureans, such as lack of need for temples, but much more with Stoics.)[2790] Luke’s first audience could probably imagine, without explicit instruction to this effect, which remarks came from Epicureans and which from Stoics; the former may have called Paul a cock sparrow and the latter a proclaimer of foreign deities (17:18);[2791] in general, the former mocked whereas the latter maintained an open mind because Paul had found common ground with them (17:32).[2792]

Like the Sadducees, Epicureans now represented a minority position more often maligned than respected; by linking the Christian movement instead with Stoics and Pharisees, Luke presents it favorably.[2793] Certainly by the second century, when pagans lumped Christians with Epicureans (both denying traditional deities),[2794] Christian apologists had become emphatic in polemically distinguishing themselves from Epicureans.[2795]

A bewildering array of philosophic options existed,[2796] many of them known and popular in Athens. In the second century, Stoics, Epicureans, Peripatetics (Aristotle’s school), and Platonists [2797] even received subsidized professorships in Athens.[2798] Yet of these schools, Stoics and Epicureans were most influential as contrasted poles of thought.[2799] (Apart from the dissimilarity of Stoics and Epicureans, the age favored a degree of eclecticism, borrowing popular elements from various systems.[2800] Platonic and Aristotelian views were adopted eclectically by others; Stoic and Epicurean views also were disseminated beyond their schools.)[2801] Stoics and Epicureans were the two most prominent schools of the period,[2802] representing in the popular mind two stereotypical approaches to ethics. Stoics noted that they and Epicureans differed on most issues (Sen. Y. Dial. 8.3.2); a satirist from this period classifies philosophy into Cynic, Stoic, and Epicurean forms but regards the first two as closely alike (Juv. Sat. 13.121–22). Another satirist portrays Stoics and a Cynic disputing an Epicurean and a Peripatetic, with a Platonist supervising.[2803]

(2) Conflict with Philosophers

Not everyone liked philosophers. Many rural farmers, for example, apparently thought that philosophers distracted people from hard and honest work (Alciph. Farm. 11 [Sitalces to Oenopion, his son], 3.14). Many others considered them insincere, lazy, and greedy (Quint. Decl. 268.5), contending that their best insights were not limited to philosophers (268.6–8). Aristocrats learned about philosophic views at the tertiary stage of education but rarely committed to particular philosophic schools; they approved of philosophic literacy but disapproved of philosophic commitment, which often entailed flouting social convention.[2804] Traditional Romans did not fully trust philosophy and demanded that all knowledge be practical.[2805] One ground for conflict with many philosophers was their opposition to traditional religion; this complaint, however, pertained especially to the Epicureans (see discussion below).

Philosophers also held a long-standing rivalry with sophists, whose artistic speech they judged devoid of content and as prizing eloquence above truth.[2806] Indeed, even nonphilosophers, and sometimes orators themselves, denounced sophists.[2807] Against those emphasizing truth, orators could plead either side of a matter,[2808] annoying most philosophers.[2809] (By this period, many philosophers, especially Stoics, did, however, find a place for rhetoric and used it;[2810] in one sense, they had little choice, since rhetoric had already won the public argument.)[2811] Rhetoricians often responded in kind to philosophers’ disdain;[2812] Lucian portrays as laughable a Stoic who does not communicate well and hence ends up shouting and losing his temper.[2813] Many intellectuals, however, did appreciate the distinctive contributions of both philosophy and rhetoric.[2814]

Some of the strongest voices against various philosophical schools, however, were their academic rivals. Naturally, philosophers often critiqued adherents of competing philosophic schools,[2815] and they also critiqued philosophers whom they thought to be phony or hypocritical.[2816] Stoics and Epicureans abused each other with stereotyped polemic,[2817] knowledge of some elements of which may be presupposed among Luke’s first audience. Such polemical definition of other groups may have been helpful in defining each group’s own boundaries, since the critiques of most groups had influenced the others.[2818] Further, a range of views existed even within schools; Seneca the Younger, for example, sometimes disagreed with his fellow Stoics (Ep. Lucil. 67.5).

Excursus: Epicureans

Epicurus (341–270 B.C.E.) had earlier schools, but he settled in Athens in 307/6 or 305/4 B.C.E.[2819] His disciples, known as “friends,”[2820] were aloof from city life, which led to gossip that they engaged in hedonism; in fact, they lived austerely.[2821] Because Epicurus’s school met at a house with a garden, his school became known as the “School of the Garden,” in contrast to the Stoic “School of the Stoa,” or “Porch.”[2822] His followers held monthly communal banquets, and annual banquets for his birthday (Diog. Laert. 10.1.18).[2823] Most philosophic schools died out, but Epicureanism persisted through the leadership of generations of scholarchs (10.1.9).[2824]

The school declined in Athens in the mid-first century B.C.E., but revived and spread during the empire.[2825] Epicureans’ initial attempts to establish a school in Rome (155 B.C.E. and about a century afterward) failed, but many Romans were converted in the first century B.C.E. By 121 C.E. Trajan’s widow made a request to Hadrian on behalf of the Epicurean school in Athens (IG² 1099), and Hadrian wrote to them in Athens (SEG 3.226; IG² 1097).[2826]

Even before Epicurus’s death, schisms occurred in his school. Although Epicureans were not allowed to introduce “new” ideas into Epicurean thought, social changes required that they make changes even while pretending not to do so.[2827] This school focused on remembering and imitating its founder more than other schools normally did.[2828] Epicureans could speak of obeying Epicurus, “according to whom we have chosen to live.”[2829] Some who favored this school boasted that Epicurus was divine and brought true freedom.[2830]

Although the Stoics viewed the Epicureans as their primary philosophic competitors, Epicureans apparently exercised little influence in this period except among the educated elite.[2831] In Rome, even among the elite, their influence, though strong in the first century B.C.E., declined in the imperial period.[2832] Scholars have noted some organizational similarities between Epicureans and early Christians,[2833] but most of these resemble more general social patterns.[2834] Epicureans, like Christians, sought converts,[2835] though this practice likewise was not unique to these groups.[2836] Pagans sometimes associated Christians with Epicureans because both “denied the gods”; for this reason, Christians (who had little genuine common ground with Epicureans anyway) became all the more polemical against them.[2837] Since Christians plainly denied most of the gods and the need for temples and sacrifices (Acts 17:24–25, 29), dissociating Christians from Epicureans and associating them more closely with the more popular Stoics would serve Luke and his successors as a useful apologetic.

1. Epicureans and Pleasure [2838]

Epicureanism was widely known for valuing pleasure.[2839] Epicurus articulated a more nuanced understanding of pleasure than outsiders usually credited to him.[2840] Skeptical and empirically fairly reductionist in his ethics, he claimed that nature taught an emphasis on pleasure and pain (Cic. Fin. 1.7.23), with pleasure as the chief good (summum bonum) and pain as the chief evil (1.9.29).[2841] By “pleasure” he meant not sensual desires (“as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or willful misrepresentation”) but “the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.”[2842] That is, he advocated not drinking parties, sex, and food but sober reasoning (Diog. Laert. 10.132).[2843] Indeed, Epicurus viewed sex as potentially harmful, and he generally discouraged marriage.[2844] Although defending the pleasurable use of resources,[2845] Epicurus’s followers could discourage wastefulness.[2846] Epicurus advocated pursuing virtues because they yielded such pleasure, not for their own sake (10.138), but he did aver that controlling the passions leads to happiness and that virtue is necessary for genuine happiness (Cic. Fin. 1.18.57–58).[2847]

Most Greek philosophic schools sought as their goal “happiness,”[2848] but Epicurus’s language exposed his school to misrepresentation. Epicureans protested that Stoics misunderstood what they meant by pleasure; Stoics replied that the Greek and Latin meanings of the terms (ἡδονή and voluptas) were clear and it was the Epicureans who failed to articulate clearly (2.4.11–2.6.18). Most philosophers disagreed with the Epicurean view of pleasure (Aul. Gel. 9.5),[2849] and the Stoics were known especially for mounting refutations of such views (Cic. Fin. 2).[2850] Some thinkers denied that Epicurus was a valid philosopher (Max. Tyre 33.2), though others (like the Stoic Seneca) simply blamed his followers for distorting his teaching. Seneca the Younger conceded to an Epicurean that Epicurus himself did not teach abuse of pleasure but that others abused his teachings (Dial. 7.12.4; 7.13.1, 2).

2. Epicureanism and Religion [2851]

Some ancients praised Epicurus’s piety (ὁσιότητος) toward the gods (Diog. Laert. 10.1.10), but among outsiders this attitude was plainly exceptional. Epicurus accepted the existence of gods, but only those known directly through sensation, not the gods that the masses accepted merely on the basis of tradition.[2852] Instead of fearing deities, people should recognize that the gods exist in eternal bliss, untouched by mortals.[2853] He counted the common beliefs about deities as impious (10.123–24); religion, rather than philosophy, hosts impiety—for example, its story that Agamemnon murdered Iphigeneia to procure divine favor for the Achaian fleet (Lucret. Nat. 1.80–101).[2854] Epicureans sought freedom from fear of the supernatural.[2855]

Epicureans came to be known for “attacking” myths (Proclus Poet. 6.1, K119.2–3); a later Epicurean declared that Epicurus was the first man with sufficient courage to deny the myths of the gods and believe only what his mind taught (Lucret. Nat. 1.62–79). Divinity, by its nature, was transcendent, unmoved by human pain; we may call such things gods but should not be so superstitious as to think them involved with human affairs (2.646–51).[2856] The gods have no visible abode, no dwelling in the universe here (5.146–55).[2857] Indeed, nature operates independently of the gods; surely gods would not hurl thunderbolts at their own temples (2.1090–1104)! While discussing various views of divine providence (an important element of Paul’s discourse here, Acts 17:24–27), philosophers assigned to Epicurus the view (which we might compare with later deism) that God does not care (προνοεῖν) for human affairs (Sext. Emp. Pyr. 3.218).[2858]

Philosophers sometimes clashed with traditional religion. Protagoras claimed to be agnostic as to the gods’ existence (Philost. Vit. soph. 1.10.494). Many philosophers were thought to be atheists (Cic. Inv. 1.29.46);[2859] some who were religious may also have viewed philosophers as more apt to be impious against the gods.[2860] This charge was leveled especially against the Epicureans, from whom early Christians had ample reason to strive to distinguish themselves (for both points, see comment on Acts 17:18). Many philosophers regarded religion as socially necessary for the masses but found no enlightenment or (apart from Pythagoreans) way of life there.[2861] Others embraced some critiques of traditional religion but presented themselves as defenders of true piety; later Platonists, for example, believed that the heavenly gods (both invisible ones and the visible celestial ones) were uninvolved with the world but that their will was mediated through daimones (see the excursus at Acts 16:16).[2862]

Although some atheists—always a small minority—existed in antiquity [2863] and the Hellenistic period saw a rise in criticisms of traditional Greek religion,[2864] religion was not in decline in this period as some have asserted;[2865] it was merely changing its character. For syncretism that led to the assimilation of various deities into fewer entities, see comment on Acts 8:10. Some scholars have regarded the increasing assimilation of deities as a trend toward a sort of monotheism [2866] (though a sort of “pantheon pantheism” might be a more nuanced description). Some limited monotheistic trends might appear in much earlier eras in Egypt [2867] and Syria,[2868] but it was Xenocrates the Eleatic philosopher (sixth century B.C.E.) who probably introduced the idea into Greek philosophy.[2869] Except in pantheistic forms such as traditional Stoicism (e.g., Sen. Y. Ben. 4.8.1–3),[2870] this “monotheism” usually did not, in fact, claim only one deity but spoke of “one God” as a supreme deity with many manifestations or powers.[2871] Middle Platonists, however, saw one ultimate deity behind the various manifestations of deity.[2872]

Hellenistic Jewish apologists such as Philo knew and were able to exploit these tendencies.[2873] It appears, however, that only intellectuals, in fact, embraced this trend toward something resembling monotheism; it was not shared by the masses.[2874] Moreover, apart from the God-fearers, most thinkers interested in a sort of monotheism did not derive it from Judaism, whose one God was often treated by polytheists as simply another god among many.[2875]

In contrast to Epicureans and some other doctrinaire philosophers, most educated people accepted the utility of religion, but many regarded superstitio (which usually meant foreign cults such as Judaism, Isis worship, and Christianity) as no less subversive than atheism.[2876] Romans viewed barbarians as superstitious for their credulous adherence to strange cults, among which many included Judaism.[2877] Many philosophers, but especially Epicureans, viewed traditional religion in general as superstition.[2878] Philosophers had various views about divinities: Aristotle and his followers claimed that God was “incorporeal . . . , the Stoics that he is a breath [πνεῦμα] which permeates even through things foul, Epicurus that he is anthropomorphic, Xenophanes that he is an impassive sphere.”[2879] But despite many philosophers’ disagreement with traditional religions, other philosophers, excepting especially the Epicureans, “refused to make it their business to purify popular beliefs and would even contend that it was right in its own place.”[2880] Members of the elite sometimes even became benefactors of new cults.[2881]

Most people saw practical value in retaining religion. Some saw its main value in providing sanctions for custom, and some who discarded belief in gods as superstitious for intellectuals allowed it for the masses.[2882] A few centuries before Paul, Polybius averred that the ancients were right to create religion and gods, not for thinkers but for the common people (Polyb. 6.56.9–12); the Romans remained more virtuous because of such beliefs (6.56.7–15), but Greeks had become more corrupt by denying them (6.56.12–15). Although Plato’s emphasis was more metaphysical and Cicero’s more on the primacy of ancestral tradition, both regarded religion as vital for preserving the state.[2883] Their interest, however, was in state religion; Plato would have eliminated private worship altogether from his ideal state because it lapses too easily into superstition and does not serve the good of the whole.[2884] Indeed, because much of public religion was a civic affair, some Epicureans were, apparently, able to become priests, at least in Syria.[2885]

The popular stereotype was that Epicureans denied the gods, denied providence, and rejected theodicy; this critique might be presupposed in Luke’s account.[2886] Many charged them with impiety,[2887] but Stoics took the lead in attacking Epicureans for “atheism, hedonism, and hatred of humanity,”[2888] for their unconventional views concerning the gods, pleasure, and political quietism.[2889] It was said that Epicureans reserved their religious devotion for their sect’s founder (cf. Plut. R. Col. 17, Mor. 1117BCE); this did at least make them useful for deflating religious charlatans (Lucian Alex. 25, 43–44).[2890] They sought to banish gods from the state and denied any intelligent design in nature (Dio Chrys. Or. 12.37).[2891] Many who sought to refute Epicurean belief targeted especially its allegedly anthropomorphic view of deity.[2892] Epicureans denied the traditional gods; in Lucian’s Zeus Rants, a Stoic defends these gods against the Epicurean (Z. Rants 4); Lucian’s own sympathies are clear (as the Epicurean is defeating the Stoic, e.g., in Z. Rants 41).[2893]

Some other intellectuals adopted Epicurean-type critiques of popular views. Thus Pliny the Elder argued that one could not know anything beyond the perceptible universe (N.H. 2.2.3–4). It was foolish to try to discern God’s nature; if there was a deity, he would consist completely of mind,[2894] and so believing in innumerable deities personifying vices, virtues, and so forth, is absurd (2.5.14). Mortals divide deities into sections so that they can worship what they most need; different peoples give different names for deities, even for deities associated with plagues (2.5.15)![2895] Instead, mortals helping mortals is divine (2.5.18), and such men should be honored by counting them divine (2.5.19). Deities would not care about human affairs (2.5.20; but cf. Pliny’s response that gods do care and punish wickedness eventually, 2.22.26).

3. Epicureanism and Afterlife

For the Epicureans, if one denied traditional religion, there was no reason to fear death.[2896] (Overcoming fear of death was a central question for philosophers and those influenced by them.)[2897] The mind and soul consisted of tiny particles of something like air, scattered through and affecting the body.[2898] Thus the soul, being material, perished at death; neither bliss nor sorrow awaited humans after death.[2899] This “realism” was somehow intended to dispel human fears of death, since one would not miss anything one had lost.[2900] For Epicureans, it is fear of death that obliterates tranquility (Cic. Fin. 1.18.60);[2901] Epicureanism’s goal was thus to banish fear of superstition and death.[2902] Many thinkers warned that lack of belief in divine retribution would lead to immorality.[2903] Some thus criticized Epicureans’ denial of afterlife for the pious;[2904] from a pragmatic standpoint, they contended that the Epicurean denial of the afterlife could lead to immorality.[2905]

4. Pagan and Jewish Critiques of Epicureanism

Anti-Epicurean sentiments are common in this period.[2906] Some disagreed with Epicurus but, in the spirit of toleration sanctioned by a movement’s antiquity, conceded that he was himself a good man.[2907] His movement had corrupted his teachings, some opined, and behaved in ways he would not have approved (Sen. Y. Dial. 7.12.4). A Stoic might thus emphasize Epicurus’s moral goodness and add, “In these discussions it is his intellect and not his character that is in question.”[2908] Yet even if he intended well, he would do better to emphasize as the highest good the soul and virtue rather than the body and pleasure (Cic. Tusc. 3.21.50). The eclectic first-century Stoic Seneca quoted Epicurus liberally to attempt to wean Lucilius away from Epicurean tendencies and win him to Stoicism.[2909] But Seneca the Younger admitted that many of his colleagues would protest his concessions (Dial. 7.13.1), and other Stoics, such as Epictetus, harshly criticized Epicureans (Diatr. 2.20; cf. 3.7).

Especially in more traditional times, many sober Romans viewed Epicureans as soft and selfish, not useful for the good of the Roman state (Cic. Fam. 7.12.1). Cicero notes that Epicurus taught that pleasure is desirable and that one assesses desirability by the pleasure it brings. Whether right or wrong, he warns, this doctrine is dangerous for a young man (adulescenti) of weaker intelligence (Cic. Pis. 28.68). Thus Piso, influenced by such teaching, began cultivating whatever lusts and pleasures were available (28.69). Epicureans could be linked with sexual immorality (e.g., the “bearded Epicurean” in 9.20).[2910] Although more people entertained Stoic than Epicurean sympathies, Epictetus lamented that in practice most philosophers were Epicureans rather than Stoics, not content with their circumstances (Diatr. 2.19.20–21).[2911] Dio Chrysostom denounced those who had rejected all deities except deified Pleasure (Or. 12.36).

One charlatan demagogue, Alexander, denounced Epicureanism to the masses, increasing his own popularity (Lucian Alex. 25, 38). He and his followers despised and conflated atheists, Epicureans, and Christians (Alex. 38, 46). He burned Epicurus’s book (Alex. 47) and incited a crowd to stone an Epicurean, warning that if they failed to act, they would be thought Epicureans themselves.[2912] A Platonist could likewise claim to have seen the underworld, then defy Epicureans for their denial of immortality (Lucian Lover of Lies 24).[2913]

Even Palestinian Judaism had traditions about Epicureans,[2914] although Luke’s Diaspora Christian audience may have had more direct familiarity with them than did most Judeans. In the late first century, Josephus claimed that God’s predictions to Daniel refute Epicurean claims that “exclude Providence from human life and refuse to believe that God governs its affairs” (Ant. 10.277–78, esp. 278 [LCL, 6:311]).

Tannaim included Epicureans among the groups that would eventually be tormented in Gehinnom,[2915] and insisted that those who learned Torah should be ready to reply to Epicureans (m. ʾAb. 2:14).[2916] Later rabbis also criticized their skepticism and arrogance (b. Sanh. 99ab); Korah was an Epicurean who denied the divine authority of Moses and the Torah (y. Sanh. 10:1, §7). Apart from Epicureanism’s critique of pagan religion, Jews and Christians found little of value in Epicureanism, adopting as their foil the standard and often distorted views of Epicureanism fostered by its enemies.[2917] If some compared Christians to atheists and Epicureans, Origen employed the title “Epicurean” to insult Celsus.[2918]

Excursus: Stoicism

Stoic thought was widespread and affected popular culture by the first century.[2919] The emperor Claudius employed the Stoic philosopher Seneca to educate members of the household; by the end of the first century, Rome’s leaders also favorably viewed the Stoic Musonius Rufus (Tac. Hist. 4.10, 40). Stoicism was the most popular sect in the period,[2920] especially among those involved in public affairs.[2921]

Stoicism also was well known in Athens. Zeno, founder of Stoicism, reached Athens from Cilicia about three and a quarter centuries before Paul was born in Cilicia. Zeno’s Eastern background may help account for some of his views.[2922] Three prominent Stoic philosophers, including the early Stoic Chrysippus, were from Athens.[2923]

By the Roman period, interest in cosmology had declined, but Stoic ethics “was now ready to conquer the world.”[2924] Philosophic schools were increasingly concerned with ethics and moral development in the Roman period.[2925] Among Greeks, ethics was more associated with philosophy than with religion, since the latter was associated especially with ritual performance.[2926] Romans had little interest in Stoic theoretical speculations but appreciated Stoic ethics, especially in its more nuanced contemporary form.[2927]

First-century intellectual currents were primarily eclectic, but the Stoic element of the mixture was dominant.[2928] Middle Platonism absorbed many Stoic elements, losing its own distinctiveness at many points.[2929] Despite the many differences, some similarities of Christian ethics to Stoic ethics probably helped pave the way for the spread of the former.[2930]

In contrast to Epicureans, Stoics associated pleasure with vice (Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 59.1), though joy of spirit was good (59.2).[2931] (Most other thinkers also rejected or minimized the value of pleasure,[2932] leaving Epicureans in a minority among philosophers on this point.)[2933] A Stoic could use the Epicurean criteria of pain and pleasure to support the Stoic emphasis on virtuous self-control (Mus. Ruf. frgs. 24–25, p. 130). Stoics emphasized enduring pain (Aul. Gel. 12.5) and valued the Cynic lifestyle (Diog. Laert. 7.1.121); a satirist remarked that Stoics merely “differ from the Cynics by a shirt” (Juv. Sat. 13.121–22).[2934]

Of the major Greek philosophic schools, only Stoicism cared to fit the gods into its schema;[2935] although its view of the gods was not conventional, popular piety would regard it as far more acceptable than its competitors. Like some other philosophers,[2936] Stoics managed to make Homer and other myths compatible with their ideals by allegorizing them.[2937] Stoics spoke of the Logos that designed and governed the cosmos (see comment on Acts 17:26). They also emphasized fate.[2938] Although they were originally monistic, and hence pantheistic (see comment on Acts 17:28), Stoics in the early empire spoke of “God” in a more personal way,[2939] having long used also the language of friendship with God.[2940] The pantheistic element was never, however, completely absent; thus the real Jupiter was not only the universe’s guardian but the soul and spirit of the world (Sen. Y. Nat. Q. 2.45.1–2).[2941] The world itself would be dissolved into primeval fire;[2942] this fire was the original matter, called πνεῦμα.[2943]

Stoic apologetic for the existence and nature of divinity resembles Paul’s argument in Acts 17.[2944] Stoics would argue that gods exist, then define their character, then demonstrate that they govern the world (against Epicureans) and, finally, that they care for humanity’s needs (Cic. Nat. d. 2.4). This basic outline of argument was well enough known that it may serve as a model for the outline of Paul’s Areopagus speech, naturally again commending the speech more to the Stoics than to the Epicureans.[2945]

Still, pure Stoicism had its detractors, from Cicero [2946] to Plutarch [2947] and Lucian.[2948] Many people felt that Stoics neglected ordinary human concerns, and some charged them with “inhumanity.”[2949] For all their use of Stoic categories and correspondences with Stoic ethics, Christians had to differ with Stoic theology and cosmology. Some Christians might agree with Stoics that the world would be dissolved into primeval fire (2 Pet 3:7; see comment on Acts 3:21), but God the Creator must be excepted (Justin 1 Apol. 20).[2950]

(3) The Cocksparrow

Paul’s hearers, perhaps especially the Epicureans, accuse him of being a σπερμολόγος (Acts 17:18); that they fail to understand what he “wishes” to say (employing the more cultured optative) might portray them as mocking Paul’s rhetoric in the story world but would reinforce the stereotype that Luke’s audience would already have of their dogmatic folly. Interrupting and ridiculing speakers was a common practice, and even the eventually famous orator Demosthenes had experienced such humiliation frequently in his early years.[2951] Ridiculing another position was often a way to demonstrate one’s own wit.[2952] It was also common for some speakers to give others insulting labels.[2953] This is not the only place in Acts where outsiders attribute Paul’s message to wrong reasoning.[2954] Luke’s narrative irony, however, reverses the ridicule.

Commentators often depict the term σπερμολόγος as a characteristically Athenian insult, though it was also in vogue elsewhere (e.g., Philo Embassy 203).[2955] Its pervasive popular sense derived from the image of a bird pecking up seeds, figuratively applied to worthless people gathering scraps in the market and hence, eventually, gossips collecting and disseminating tidbits of information (so Embassy 203). More to the point here, however, some ancients came to apply it to hearers who collected and disseminated scraps of others’ opinions, those who sought to appear like philosophers merely by appropriating their jargon and employing secondhand ideas.[2956] This term can therefore represent Paul as purveying bits and pieces of philosophic knowledge rather than being a profound, original thinker.[2957] As Ramsay puts it, they viewed him as “a mere vulgar plagiarist,” noticing “the obvious and intentional analogies between many of Paul’s statements and those of pagan philosophers.”[2958] At the very least, the word reflects its general application to marketplace chatter, so that Paul’s thought fails to rise above the general rabble—hardly intended as a compliment.[2959] For centuries one personality type lending itself to ridicule (in Athens as elsewhere) was the incessant talker (Theophr. Char. 7); one could never accomplish anything in his presence, since he babbled incessantly (7.5–9).

Paul’s situation reflects the orator’s dilemma: if one repeats what others have said, one is like a bird dependent on others’ random scraps; but it was difficult to find something “new” (cf. Acts 17:21) to say. When Paul did say something new, it apparently confused the Stoics, who apparently thought he referred to two gods.[2960]

(4) Preaching Foreign Deities?

Since Stoics were more open to the existence of gods than were Epicureans (see above), Luke’s first-century audience might attribute especially to Stoics the charge that he preaches “foreign gods.”

It would be difficult for Paul to escape the charge of being “foreign”; Athenians were quick to detect any divergence from the “pure” Attic accent in a speaker.[2961] They expected anyone who addressed them to be able to do so in “Athenian”—that is, Attic—speech.[2962] Later, during the Second Sophistic, those who, attempting to speak in Attic Greek, made noticeable mistakes would provoke laughter (Lucian Soph. 6).[2963] Eventually, ability to speak good Attic Greek could be viewed almost as a virtue.[2964] Foreigners had long been second class or worse in Athens, especially in its classical days of independence.[2965] This would not be Paul’s first recent encounter with xenophobia (Acts 16:20–21).

That Paul is from Asia (and from a part of it not first “civilized” by Greeks) would not help his case with Greek hearers (see comment on Acts 16:8–10). Indeed, anyone who mounted the Acropolis could be reminded, by full view of the island of Salamis in the Aegean Sea, of Athens’s defeat of Persia in 480 B.C.E., breaking the Persian advance.[2966] From the Iliad to Alexander of Macedon (and now “Greco-Roman” imperial power), Asia was more respectable than most barbarian lands, but it was also more a competitor; Athenians would still view themselves as the epitome of culture. In practice, cultural interchange had transformed both sides of the Aegean for centuries,[2967] but prejudices die hard. Greeks might make exceptions for Romans, but Paul the Asian Jew was still a “barbarian” (see comment on Acts 28:2).

Although the Athenians appreciated what was “new” (17:21), they were not equally disposed toward everything foreign. Josephus claims that Athenians had traditionally executed anyone condemned for initiating Athenians in the Mysteries of “foreign gods” (ξένους . . . θεούς, Ag. Ap. 2.267), closely akin to the charge against Paul here.[2968] An impiety charge in classical Athens was quite serious;[2969] for example, the accusation of sacrilege against the (Eleusinian) Mysteries could lead to trial (Xen. Hell. 1.4.14).[2970] Profaning the Mysteries was so serious that even detaining a criminal about to be initiated could warrant death (Demosth. Mid. 175). An atheist named Diagoras suffered for divulging elements of the Eleusinian Mysteries.[2971]

Such extreme sensitivity is probably not characteristic of Athens by this period, however; as the altars to unknown deities show (Acts 17:23), Athenians, like everyone else, had long been sensitive to the danger of neglecting a “new god” (νεωστὶ δαίμονα) even if otherwise yet unknown (even already in Socrates’s era, Eurip. Bacch. 219–20).[2972] Closer to Luke’s day, Athenians were noted for their hospitality to foreign culture (φιλοξενοῦντες) and foreign cultic activities (ξενικῶν ἱερῶν) to the extent that they were sometimes even ridiculed for it (Strabo 10.3.18; more positively, hospitality to suffering exiles, as in Quint. Decl. 292.3).

Most commentators recognize that introducing “foreign gods” recalls the charge on which Socrates was convicted centuries earlier,[2973] which contributes to Luke’s implicit comparison between his hero Paul and Socrates, the now-conventional model for Greek philosophers (see discussion at Acts 17:19).[2974] (Socrates is, naturally, said to deny the charge [Plato Apol. 35D].) The charge was widely known and undoubtedly familiar for Luke’s ideal audience. In the late first century, Dio Chrysostom compares himself with Socrates (Or. 43.8, 12), pointing out that Socrates was falsely charged with neglecting to honor Athens’s gods (θεούς) while introducing new divinities (καινὰ δαιμόνια, 43.9).[2975] Likewise in Philostratus, Socrates was persecuted on the charge of introducing new divinities (δαιμόνια καινά), but Domitian persecuted Apollonius simply for being wise (Vit. Apoll. 7.11).[2976] As Favorinus (or another author) and Apollonius compare mockery of themselves with that against Socrates,[2977] thereby turning the accusations to their favor, so Luke compares Paul’s situation to that of Socrates,[2978] thereby honoring Paul for Hellenistic readers.

Many scholars think that these respected philosophers misunderstand Paul as preaching “foreign deities” in the plural because he is preaching “Jesus” and “Anastasis,” “Resurrection.”[2979] (This view about the misunderstanding of Paul’s detractors has a long pedigree.)[2980] If so, the philosophers may understand the names as deified personifications of “healing” and “restoration.”[2981] Personification of virtues and ideals was common [2982] and often descended to the absurd—for example, the rhetorical deification of smoke and dust.[2983] The plural could be simply a generalizing plural [2984] (even if Paul preached only Jesus, polytheists might assume an accompanying pantheon), but the interpretation remains plausible. Since worshipers often linked male deities with female consorts in this period (see comment on Acts 8:10), it is reasonable that they supposed Anastasis to be Jesus’s divine consort (like the foreign deities Osiris and Isis, or Adonis and Atargatis); John Chrysostom so interpreted the philosophers’ comments in this passage (Hom. Acts 38.1).[2985] Because Anastasia was a common woman’s name, this interpretation remains a legitimately credible one.[2986]

Luke’s portrayal of Paul’s elite hearers as blundering in how they understand Paul likens them to the less sophisticated pagans who misinterpret Paul as a deity in Acts 14:11–12 and 28:6 (the latter comparison, with “barbarians,” would be particularly offensive to Athenian philosophers). Orators livened up their presentations with wit, typically at someone else’s expense,[2987] and we should not be surprised if Luke offers some comic relief at the expense of stereotypically arrogant Athenian philosophers. Given the frequent ridicule of idolatry in Jewish sources,[2988] such a critique of a polytheistically misinformed hearing of Paul would seem quite appropriate. Although such a portrayal would suit Luke’s literary purposes, it also accurately reflects the sort of difficulty early Christians (and others) must have had as they sought to communicate across significant cultural divides.[2989]

The narrative contains an ironic, almost comic turnabout: far from preaching foreign deities (17:18), Paul summons his hearers to abandon false gods, turning to the only true God, who is in fact not far from any of them (17:27). They have brought Paul before an official hearing of sorts; he warns them of the impending judgment against idolatry (17:30–31).[2990] Such boldness would hardly characterize the normal foreigner seeking hospitality [2991] nor one being evaluated at a hearing (see comment on Acts 7:51–53), but it was good rhetorical form in some settings (see comment on παρρησία in Acts 4:13).

IV. LED TO THE AREOPAGUS FOR QUESTIONING (17:19–20)

Although the discussion is an intellectual one, the suggestion that Paul preaches “foreign deities” (17:18) may require him to secure approval from the chief Athenian court if he wishes to engage in public teaching in Athens. The claim that he preaches such deities and his being led to the Areopagus evoke one version of the charge against Socrates, who was also tried before the Areopagus. Although even first-time hearers would not expect Paul to be martyred there like Socrates (Roman law would not permit this practice), the allusion offers suspense, given persistent public rebuffs of Paul in the preceding narratives about Macedonia (16:22–23; 17:5–8, 13).

(1) The Areopagus Council

Although the Areopagus council (17:19) originally met on the hill of that name,[2992] the vast majority of scholars recognize that Luke refers to the council, not the location. Luke’s two-word form in 17:19, 22 may suggest this;[2993] the allusions to Socrates’s trial, the apologetic nature of the speech, and the mention of an “Areopagite” (17:34) all confirm this impression.[2994] Despite some significant detractors,[2995] often on the basis of the wording,[2996] most scholars argue that by this period this council no longer met on the hill but most likely met in the Stoa Basileios (the Royal Porch or Colonnade), just off the Agora (or possibly at the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios).[2997] Thus his Stoic and Epicurean questioners would not have far to bring Paul.[2998] The Agora was to the west of both the Hill of Ares and the Acropolis.[2999]

Although a trial court,[3000] the Areopagus was traditionally Athens’s aristocratic court, distinct from the body of the people.[3001] Even though Athens rarely appears in early (Homeric) epic, later mythographers spoke of a period when the twelve Olympian deities constituted the Areopagus court (Apollod. Bib. 3.14.2).[3002] Historically, however, it was instituted by Solon in the fifth century B.C.E. (Plut. Solon 19.4). It exercised enormous influence;[3003] in classical Athens, it sometimes tried capital cases,[3004] including for murder;[3005] its death sentence could be carried out on the same day.[3006] Naturally, capital sentences belonged to Rome by this period, but the Areopagus remained an important court.

Despite the oft-recounted report of its involvement in Socrates’s martyrdom,[3007] the Areopagus eventually gained a reputation for its seriousness and noble conduct.[3008] In one example of its creative judgment in the Roman period, a woman who killed her husband, but justly, was ordered to appear for trial—in one hundred years.[3009] Tradition claimed that at one point the Areopagus was charged to investigate every Athenian’s profession and lifestyle for the purpose of disciplining the indolent and promoting public virtue.[3010] In a positive vein, the Areopagus could also honor a foreigner [3011] (unfortunately, not the response to Paul in Acts 17:32–34).

The Areopagus included about a hundred members [3012] (making Luke’s report of a small number of adherents among the hearers in 17:34 less implausible than some have supposed).[3013] Areopagites seem to have been people of wealth and status.[3014] The Areopagus could include some members with higher status and influence than others;[3015] in the first century B.C.E., some Romans became Athenians and joined this body,[3016] but by Paul’s day, probably a number of its members, as leaders of a favored municipal aristocracy, were Roman citizens.[3017] All former archons, or Athenian civic officials, seem to have been part of the body.[3018]

Despite some changes, the Areopagus continued to exercise authority in the Roman period.[3019] Because Athens was a free city, it maintained its own government.[3020] Rome treated the Areopagus as one of the city’s primary corporations, alongside another council and the civic assembly.[3021] The Areopagus remained the ruling council of Athens, making decisions for that city, in the first century B.C.E.;[3022] it continued late into the empire.[3023] Despite another, larger council of citizens, sources indicate that the Areopagus was functioning as the local governing senate within several decades before Paul’s ministry in Athens, perhaps as early as the time of Sulla.[3024] We know that the Areopagus council (one of Athens’s βουλαί) continued to function administratively along with the council of the “six hundred” in this period.[3025] Rome viewed it as the highest administrative body and court in the town.[3026]

Luke probably plays on the Areopagus’s reputation as a court for literary purposes: Paul is arraigned in Philippi, in Thessalonica (in absentia), and in Corinth (16:19; 17:6; 18:12), and Athens now fits the pattern. This also fits the model of Socrates, who like Paul was “brought” to the Areopagus (17:19)[3027] and on possibly the same “charge” (17:18). Such allusions evoke the sense that something very serious is at stake. But despite the allusions, Luke hardly portrays a formal, legal trial here:[3028] although the polite [3029] inquiry of 17:19–20 is hardly mere curiosity [3030] (the town’s highest body would not have scheduled time for entertainment), 17:20–21 makes it clear that Paul is not in any physical danger like Socrates.

(2) Licensed to Teach in Athens?

Although Paul’s examination is not a legal one concerning some offense, it probably does concern the propriety of his teaching in Athens.[3031] In addition to other responsibilities, this highest council evaluated cults and teachers arriving in town. The Areopagus had authority to approve religious votive offerings such as those at the altar of the unknown god.[3032] This council thus might wish to investigate claims about “new gods” (17:18). The Areopagus in this period apparently exercised jurisdiction over the entrance of foreign cults.[3033]

Of broader importance than the “new gods” claim, however, would be Paul’s teaching in general. Many scholars have argued that the Areopagus had authority to examine new doctrines.[3034] Granted, local courts rarely needed to concern themselves with evaluating new lecturers. A new sophist in a town would advertise a time when he would declaim, praise the city, and then allow his audience to select a topic, on which he could declaim either extemporaneously or after a day of preparation. The audience would then decide whether to accept or reject him as a local teacher of rhetoric. If accepted, he might become a local citizen and teach the sons of the town’s elite; but competition for such positions “could be stiff,” particularly in a university town such as Athens, and undoubtedly only a minority secured positions.[3035]

Sometimes, however, a judicial body might step in to evaluate the lecturer’s propriety. A lecturer could enter a Greek city as a wandering scholar, disputing and lecturing wherever he could attract an audience. If individuals called attention to the lecturer, the city could then stop him, provide permission to continue, or refuse to interfere.[3036] Mere discussion in the market would not constitute a problem, but official teaching positions and questionable or subversive teachings might invite examination. Given our current state of knowledge, this is the most historically plausible reason for Paul to be brought before the Areopagus, though Luke adds nuances of court language in 17:19 by his allusion to Socrates (below).[3037] Although Paul was not likely to be banished, the Areopagus in stricter times ordered the philosopher Stilpo to leave the city for reasoning that questioned traditional religious views.[3038]

(3) The New Socrates [3039]

That Paul was “led away” can connote a trial scene (Luke 22:54; 23:1; Acts 5:21, 26, 27; 6:12; 9:2, 21; 18:12; 19:37; 21:34; 22:5; 25:6, 17, 23) or condemnation (Luke 19:27; 23:32; Acts 8:32; cf. 12:19).[3040] In this case, however, the hearing would not be a judicial one with a potentially dangerous outcome, as in Acts 17:6–7, but would evaluate whether Paul should continue to teach openly, now with official sanction, in the city.[3041] In view of the charge’s similarity to the charge against Socrates (see below), it is reasonable to see the mention of him being “brought” to a court as an allusion to Socrates’s analogous situation.[3042]

Nearly all commentators recognize that the charge against Paul here alludes to the charge against Socrates.[3043] According to the later widely detested charge, Socrates allegedly corrupted youth and rejected the gods accepted by the polis and brought in strange new deities (καινὰ δαιμόνια; Xen. Mem. 1.1.1; cf. Luke’s foreign δαιμονίων in Acts 17:18; καινή in 17:19).[3044] Later ancient writers continued to note this charge and its absurdity; the Athenians condemned Socrates for introducing novam religionem, “new religion.”[3045] Many contemporary Athenians apparently supposed Socrates to be irreligious, if we may gauge by the ridicule in Aristophanes: he thinks there is no Zeus and denies the gods (Clouds 226–27, 366–67, 818–27, 1470–77), and thus he would ultimately be punished for his blasphemy (Clouds 1506–9).[3046] He was charged with “disturbing the state religion and corrupting the youth” (Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 104.28). Most thinkers of later eras noted that the charge was foolish (e.g., Eunapius Lives 464) and instead criticized the Athenians who condemned him (e.g., Dio Chrys. Or. 33.9).

The reader who recognizes Luke’s allusion to Socrates’s boldness and integrity at Acts 5:29 will not be surprised to find a Socrates allusion here. If a Galilean fisherman can echo Socrates (perhaps unknowingly in the narrative world), how much more should it be expected of Paul, who is ministering in the Diaspora? And if the reader is unprepared for the comparison because Paul’s longest speeches so far have been in Jewish settings, the speech in 17:22–31 will dispel such doubts. Luke’s Paul (and, for that matter, the historical one) is certainly more conversant with Hellenistic thought than his apostolic predecessors in Acts have been.

On Luke’s narrative level, we may note other protests that the Christian message violated ancestral custom (Acts 6:14; 21:28). But Luke’s biblical subtext demonstrates that, contrary to the charges, this message is nothing new at all but the natural culmination of Israel’s indisputably ancient faith.[3047] For Jews, Paul is too favorable to Greeks (21:28); to Greeks, he introduces foreign gods (17:19) or turns people away from honored deities (19:26–27); to Romans, he is too Jewish (16:20–21). Yet the informed reader knows that Paul is a faithful Jew (18:18; 21:24, 26), conversant in Greek wisdom (17:22–31), and a Roman citizen (16:37).

The reader thus recognizes the falsehood and, indeed, absurdity of all charges against him. Paul does not preach “new” (17:19) or “foreign” gods (17:18, 20); he preaches not only a god to whom they have constructed altars (17:23) but the God who created everything (17:26) and is near to his creatures (17:27). As Luke inverts and reverses the charges against Stephen’s accusers in 7:56–60 (see comment there), so he does here, in the sort of rhetorical move later employed by a philosophically oriented orator, Maximus of Tyre, who cites Socrates’s indictment against the Athenians who convicted him: “The people of Athens have offended in refusing to acknowledge the same gods as Socrates, and introducing other new divinities instead” (Or. 3.8 [Trapp, 31]).

This characteristic behavior of the Athenians also extended to other unconventional thinkers, the portrayal of some of whom in later sources may have been shaped by the charges against Socrates.[3048] The Athenians banished Protagoras for questioning whether the gods existed (Philost. Vit. soph. 1.10.494). One writer notes that the Athenians banished Protagoras for his agnosticism, condemned Socrates for his “new religion,” and silenced Phidias for suggesting a cheaper substance for his statue of Athena (Val. Max. 1.1.ext. 7). Although the Athenians’ original law was probably directed only against impiety in general, later sources mention a law against new divinities,[3049] an idea perhaps known to Luke’s audience. (As mentioned above, however, philosophers had the greatest popular reputation for disbelief in deities; the Athenians were also reputed for their piety.)

(4) Luke’s Point Here

What is the literary function of Luke’s use of a Socrates image? Following the alleged claim of the Pythian oracle,[3050] many ancients called Socrates the wisest of all men.[3051] Some even compared him to an “oracle” (oraculum) of wisdom (Val. Max. 7.2.ext. 1a).[3052] His successors frequently cited his opinions as authoritative.[3053]

He was one of the most common models for philosophers to follow,[3054] especially prominent in Stoicism during the early empire.[3055] As Seneca the Younger urges, noting the ancient sage’s endurance in hardship, Socrates was the most effective “pattern” (exemplum; Ep. Lucil. 104.27). He was a model of virtue,[3056] the ideal wise man and prototypical philosopher.[3057] Radical philosophers could call readers to abandon reading poetry and drama and to follow the model of Socrates (Crates Ep. 35, to Aper). When a philosopher was rejected because of his wisdom, he could be compared to Socrates; thus Lucian made this comparison because the Athenians denounced Demonax for disrespecting their sacrifices and Mysteries (Dem. 5, 11).[3058]

Socrates’s martyrdom [3059] also became a useful pedagogic device (probably in line with Socrates’s intention), cited as a great example of facing death nobly.[3060] Various writers report a quip attributed to him preceding his execution; when someone complained that Socrates would die innocent, he retorted that this was far better than dying guilty.[3061] One writer opined that he was willing to die a death like Socrates’s if he might achieve his fame (Phaedrus 3.9.3–4). Socrates’s rejection was also said to have invited judgment and the decline of the Athenian state (Eunapius Lives 462). The Athenians gave Socrates hemlock, it was said, but it was they who truly drank it from his speech (Gr. Anth. 7.96).[3062] That is, before the bar of history, it was not Socrates but his apparent judges, the people of Athens, who were on trial.[3063]

Socrates provided “a uniquely significant propaganda image” for philosophers.[3064] Comparing a figure to Socrates attributed incalculable wisdom to that figure.[3065] Epictetus noted that he could not outdo Socrates but hoped not to do worse (Diatr. 1.2.36). That many of the sources cited here are of Stoic provenance shows the degree to which this image would resonate in circles attracted to Stoicism (see comment on Acts 17:18), and hence among some of the very people present in the narrative world when Paul was charged with the same offense as Socrates.

From Socrates’s martyrdom in 399 B.C.E. through the fourth century C.E., the composition of “defenses” for Socrates flourished as a popular literary activity.[3066] Luke sticks to his subject but makes use of Socrates in the background nonetheless, as a bit of local color for Athens and as a voice of protest once condemned but now sanctioned, analogous to the protested Paul and his mission.

(5) Early Judaism as Philosophy

Luke’s portrayal of Paul as a new Socrates and his appropriation of philosophic categories did not arise from nothing; it is consistent with both Paul’s use of philosophic language (see comment on Acts 17:22–31) and Hellenistic Jewish apologetic.[3067] Quite an impressive number of Hellenistic observers viewed the Jews as a nation of philosophers; this included Theophrastus, a prominent disciple of Aristotle (372–288/7 B.C.E.),[3068] Megasthenes (ca. 300 B.C.E.),[3069] Clearchus of Soli (ca. 300 B.C.E.),[3070] the ethnographer Hecataeus of Abdera (ca. 300 B.C.E.), Hermippus of Smyrna (ca. 200 B.C.E.), and Ocellus Lucanus (second century B.C.E.).[3071] Apparently, Greeks commenting on the subject uniformly viewed Jews as philosophers as late as Posidonius in the mid-first century B.C.E.[3072]

Jewish apologists were more than happy to build on this image.[3073] Josephus notes (with some exaggeration) that most peoples do not know their own laws (Ag. Ap. 2.176–77) but that Jews know every one of the laws better than their own names (2.178). If other nations were eager to keep their laws, Philo argues that this is even truer of Jewish people, who carry in their souls the laws instilled in them in infancy (Embassy 210).

Educated Jews often denied that they had borrowed Greek philosophy, contending instead that they simply reappropriated the ideas Greek philosophers had plagiarized from Moses much earlier. Early traditions portrayed Abraham as a philosopher.[3074] In the second century B.C.E., Aristobulus alleged Greek dependence on Jewish law.[3075] Josephus insists (rightly on this point) that Moses predates Greek lawgivers such as Lycurgus and Solon (Ag. Ap. 2.154–56);[3076] he further claims that Plato (2.257) and some other Greek philosophers (2.281) imitated Moses.[3077] If pagan philosophers depended on Moses’s law, why do they not quote it? One document explains that God struck them with temporary blindness or insanity when they tried to quote it, because it was too holy to be used in this manner (Let. Aris. 312–16). Philo also attributed some of the most profound Greek wisdom to Moses,[3078] saw Moses and Plato as similar in thought,[3079] and identified Greek virtues with Mosaic laws.[3080] Rabbis portrayed themselves besting philosophers in debate;[3081] those with a more irenic stance could portray philosophers acknowledging the wisdom of Jewish elders (Let. Aris. 200–201, 235, 296).

A repeated Jewish claim, probably especially popular in Alexandrian schools, was that Pythagoras, otherwise influential in early Greek philosophy,[3082] derived some of his ideas from ancient Judaism (see, e.g., Jos. Ag. Ap. 1.165).[3083] Apologetic Jewish writers such as Josephus and later Christian writers such as Origen quote the Hellenistic writer Hermippus of Smyrna (ca. 200 B.C.E.) to this effect.[3084] Later Christian writers cite a second-century Phrygian, the Pythagorean philosopher Numenius, as claiming that Plato is essentially “Moses speaking Attic Greek,”[3085] though the reliability of the attribution is disputed.[3086]

Such claims may sound extraordinary to modern readers, but they proved attractive to many ancient ones, including some Gentiles.[3087] Greek philosophers were happy to claim accepted ideas of other schools for their own, so that Plato perhaps obtained his teachings from the Pythagoreans (Iambl. V.P. 30.167). Further, reverence for antiquity led many to seek a more time-honored pedigree for their own views; thus Pythagoras supposedly learned from Egyptians and Phoenicians (3.14; 4.19; 29.158).[3088] It is possible that Pythagoras and Thales had some links to the Near East, even if later writers such as Iamblichus exaggerate them.[3089] But Jewish writers moved beyond claiming that Moses influenced Pythagoras and Pythagoras influenced Plato; in fact, they argued, Greek lawmakers copied the laws of Moses (Philo Spec. Laws 4.61).

Educated Diaspora Jews had also developed a considerable command of Greek philosophy by this era.[3090] Philo, whose work probably reveals more about other Diaspora Judaism than has sometimes been thought,[3091] was influenced particularly by Middle Platonism [3092] (including Stoic elements, like other eclectic Middle Platonists).[3093] (Philo does not hesitate to even cite Plato, usually as authoritative.)[3094] Wisdom of Solomon similarly betrays Platonic elements (see esp. Wis 9:15).[3095] Fourth Maccabees is permeated with Greek philosophy; it portrays Judaism as the true philosophy, and Eleazar upholding the law as a true “philosopher” (4 Macc 7:7, 9).[3096] This familiarity with Greek thought reflects centuries of enculturation expressed in various other literary genres as well. Pseudo-Phocylides may encourage Diaspora Jews that the best in Hellenistic ethics agrees with the law.[3097]

More generally, James Charlesworth, a leading scholar of early Judaism and the NT, points out that from fragments of lost Hellenistic Jewish works

we learn that Greek epic poetry was written by Jews, who like Philo the Epic Poet mastered the hexameters of the Greek poets and who like Ezekiel the Tragedian demonstrated proficiency in iambic trimeters. In them we are introduced to a Jewish philosopher, Aristobulus, who combined Greek traditions (particularly those of Pythagoras, Plato, and some Stoics) with Jewish traditions (particularly those represented by Proverbs, Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, Pseudo-Phocylides, and 4 Maccabees).[3098]

The Greek hexameter form followed by the Jewish and later Christian Sibylline Oracles reflects the same thorough interpenetration of cultures. Some works, such as the Orphica [3099] and Pseudo-Phocylides, are so hellenized that some scholars debate whether they are in fact Jewish works (especially in the former case).

(6) Christianity as a Philosophic School

Influenced by Jewish apologists, Christian apologists gradually learned how to communicate their faith in philosophic terms. Because the early Christian movement emphasized ethics and lacked sacrificial cultus, one category into which Gentile outsiders could place it was that of a philosophic school.[3100] (It is not fair to claim that all pre-Christian cultic associations lacked ethical concerns,[3101] but this characteristic was not a particularly religious distinctive. Nor did all deities have temples or public cults,[3102] but this was the norm.) “Philosophic sect” was far more positive and less threatening a category than some of the other ways the Christian movement was characterized. (This was also the easiest category for dealing with its monotheism,[3103] though sometimes identified with “atheism.”) This approach is also consonant with the earliest trajectory of the Jesus movement, which started as a school of disciples following their rabbi and was now spread by new groups gathered around the traveling sage Paul.[3104]

By the second century, many ancients viewed Christianity as a philosophic school.[3105] Justin presented Christianity as a philosophic school,[3106] though for him the only truth in pagan philosophy derived from the Logos later incarnated as Christ.[3107] Galen was the first pagan writer to treat Christians as a second- or third-rate philosophic school; this was an improvement over their previous situation, because he was the first to use a socially acceptable category to identify Christians.[3108] Overlap with philosophy is not completely missing even in Lucian’s ridicule.[3109] It appears that Luke’s literary strategy (probably developed from genuine Pauline apologetic and perhaps shared with other Christian contemporaries) eventually achieved its desired effect.[3110] (Some scholars have even argued that Luke portrays the Christian movement as a Jewish philosophic sect, in a manner comparable to Josephus’s portrayal of various distinctive Jewish movements.)[3111]

Early Christians eventually claimed Platonism for their own purposes.[3112] (Although Stoicism was more dominant in Paul’s day, Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism became dominant in the eras when the church fathers were focusing on them, especially in late antiquity.)[3113] Much of first- and second-century Christian literature is elementary in its appropriation of Greek learning, but by the late second century, Clement of Alexandria proved as culturally adept as the best of the pagan writers.[3114] (Clement also followed some Jewish apologists’ lead in regarding Moses as the source of Greek wisdom.)[3115] That such a philosophic model would have appealed to Luke is likely (see discussion at Acts 19:9).

Luke (briefly) portrays Paul as something of a new Socrates, annoying Athenians again with unconventional truth. In the following century, Justin, a Christian philosopher, developed this idea further: the Logos that prevailed through Socrates came as Jesus Christ (1 Apol. 5),[3116] and Socrates, who was accused of introducing new deities, was accused on the same charges on which Christians were now accused (2 Apol. 10). Even Col 2:8, which warns against worldly philosophy (cf. 1 Cor 1:18–2:8), appears in a letter full of philosophic language;[3117] such language is common in Paul’s letters, although not in a way that suggests advanced studies in any philosophic school (see extended comment on Acts 19:9).

The competitive approach, however, did not completely die out.[3118] Jerome believed that the Lord’s coming would expose Plato and his movement as fools (Ep. 14.11).[3119] He also believed that Paul despised Greek eloquence or else avoided it because of humility (Ruf. 1.17).[3120] Luke’s approach may lie between such statements of Justin and Jerome: the advanced philosophy of the schools could prove a distraction (cf. Acts 17:32), but communicating intelligently in an educated Greco-Roman milieu required some language from philosophy.

(7) Going Further for Evangelism

Few apologists, even Diaspora Jews with centuries of apologetic tradition, would have ventured into the public square to convince pagans in open debate or to be examined for teaching philosophy in Athens.[3121] They remained Jewish apologists, whose appeal to the broader culture therefore remained limited. Would a Jewish teacher such as Paul really have risked taking his message to the broader culture in such a dramatic manner? Other Jewish thinkers more sophisticated than Paul (e.g., Philo) probably did not do so, but Paul was not encumbered by demanding allegiance to Jerusalem’s temple or to the practice of circumcision.[3122] Nor, unlike Philo, did he have status to lose by public confrontation, at least in cities where he did not intend to stay.

Further, Paul had nothing to lose missiologically; he did not risk turning Gentiles away from his message if he failed, since they would not otherwise know his message anyway. Perhaps most important, missions history demonstrates that figures in revival movements or others who believe themselves empowered by the Spirit often prove more daring than those whose experience with the culture is longer and deeper. Sometimes these make a lasting impact by boldly articulating arguments to the larger culture that in-house apologists never thought to propagate; although this outcome is far from always the case, strong ideas, once unleashed in a culture, can persist, be adopted by an increasing number of individuals, or even become mainstream.

V. CRAVING NEW IDEAS (17:21)

Luke’s parenthetical remark in 17:21 is some of the most Attic Greek in the NT [3123]—Luke produces stylish Attic to criticize Athenian fashions (and perhaps to demonstrate that he is able to reproduce it when necessary). But Luke was hardly the only ancient writer to criticize Athenian misbehavior.[3124]

The emphasis on Athenians always [3125] wishing to hear “some idea newer than what they had already heard” (τι καινότερον,[3126] 17:21) pervades Luke’s characterization of them in this context.[3127] Paul’s philosophic interlocutors identify his “new teaching” (καινὴ . . . διδαχή,[3128] which they wish to know [γνῶναι] in 17:19) with Paul’s introducing “strange, or foreign, things” (ξενίζοντα, which they wish to know [γνῶναι] in 17:20). Even “foreigners” (ξένοι) visiting Athens (17:21) might thus wish to hear about Paul’s “foreign” or “strange” (ξένων, Luke’s only other use of the term) divinities (17:18; cf. also ξενίζοντα in 17:20). As noted above (in comment on Acts 17:18), the purpose of their inquiry is not merely idle curiosity. Yet 17:20–21 suggests that intellectual interest, whether for themselves or their citizens, plays a role in the inquiry. It is, however, the sort of intellectual exercise in which judges of a contest, rather than religiously humble seekers, indulge themselves (cf. further 17:32). Intellectuals might find dull any entertainment lacking new elements (Pliny Ep. 9.6.2–3).

Athens was, as noted above, a well-known place of learning. Centuries before Paul, one who wished to focus on learning donated his wealth to his country, then passed years in quiet study in Athens (Val. Max. 8.7.ext. 4); long after Paul, other cities boasted that they trained their own superior students there (Men. Rhet. 2.14, 426.27–32). Athenians were said to have become φιλόλογοι, lovers of words, superior to other Greeks through their own custom of discipline (Strabo 2.3.7).[3129] To some, however, a life spent in the agora was a life of indolence, even though it might be spent gaining a reputation by greeting others and abusing others in lawcourts (Polyb. 31.29.8, 10).[3130]

Athenian captivity to new ideas was a familiar ancient theme, as most commentators acknowledge.[3131] One historian presents an unwise speaker as condemning Athenians for pursuing novel ideas (καινότητος), being slaves “of each new paradox and scorners of what is familiar” (Thucyd. 3.38.5 [LCL, 2:63]), like those entertained by sophists’ deliveries (3.38.7).[3132] Athenians later mocked an orator who, when given a topic for declamation more than once, repeated the same phrases on subsequent occasions (Philost. Vit. soph. 2.8.579).[3133] A later novel builds on this reputation, allowing a pirate to warn of the Athenians’ “meddlesome curiosity” (πολυπραγμοσύνην), in this case including interest in their identity and how they came by their cargo (Char. Chaer. 1.11.6 [Blake, 13]). Sources from this period often associate curiosity (Acts 17:21) and “superstition” (a probable nuance of “religious” in 17:22).[3134] Ironically, it is not Paul, called a σπερμολόγος in 17:18, who is a dilettante but the Athenians.[3135]

Captivity to the newest fashion is not, of course, a purely Athenian trait, as anyone familiar with modern marketing, the political whims of the electorate, or the history of modern scholarship can attest. Ancient writers, like modern ones, could appeal to current trends in thought as a decisive argument (e.g., Dion. Hal. Anc. Or. 1.2, supporting Atticist rhetoric). One’s gifts might be forgotten if surpassed by others in intervening history (Plut. Cic. 2.4, on καινοντομίας, innovations). Jewish sages, like other academicians, thirsted for new information and ideas.[3136]

The image is not, however, intended to be flattering.[3137] In earlier Athens, Hippias chided Socrates for always saying the same things on the same subjects whereas Hippias himself always endeavored to say something new (καινόν, Xen. Mem. 4.4.6); Socrates replied by questioning whether Hippias always tried to spell “Socrates” differently or arrive at different figures when doing addition (4.4.7). Some ancients complained that Zeno, founder of the Stoics, offered no new ideas but merely new terminology (verborum novorum) for others’ thoughts (Cic. Fin. 3.2.5; 4.8.19; 4.20.56). In fact, Paul had brought to the Athenian philosophers and council some ideas so unfamiliar to them that many were unprepared to understand him (Acts 17:18, 32).[3138]

c. Paul’s Philosophic Discourse (17:22–31)

Paul preaches in different ways to synagogue audiences (13:16–47), rural pagans (14:15–17), and cultured urban philosophers (17:22–31). Adaptation to local color was an essential feature of rhetorical skill (Quint. Inst. 3.7.24).[3139] Origen viewed Paul’s adaptability to a pagan philosophic audience in Acts 17 as an expression of the strategy he articulated in 1 Cor 9:21 (Comm. 1 Cor. 3.43).[3140] Paul has already been preaching in Athens (Acts 17:17), but Luke has not provided the content; the Areopagus speech thus offers not only to the Areopagus (in the narrative world) but also to Luke’s own audience a summary of Paul’s message for Athens.[3141]

I. INTRODUCTION

Members of the Areopagus would not all be philosophers (presumably most would not be), though all, as members of the Athenian elite, would be presumed philosophically literate.[3142] Yet whoever else may have been included in Paul’s audience, we know that it at least included Stoics and Epicureans (17:18), who brought him there (17:19). With the Epicureans, as noted above (see comment on Acts 17:18), Paul could establish only minimal common ground; Stoicism, however, provided considerable common ground, especially in the area of ethics but also (as emphasized in this speech) in some elements of theology and cosmology. Parallels with Stoic sources have long been noted.[3143]

(1) Philosophic Elements in the Speech

The speech emphasizes points of common ground between Judaism and Greek, particularly Stoic, philosophy.[3144] Biblical allusions (see, e.g., comment on Acts 17:24, 26) reveal that Paul has simply contextualized a biblical message in Greek language, often even retaining biblical language intelligible to Luke’s biblically informed ideal audience. Such echoes emphasize Paul’s fidelity to earlier biblical revelation while relating it to philosophers.[3145] Using Stoic language establishes common ground for dialogue, but in light of its broader context in Luke-Acts (or even in Paul’s letters, which include more philosophic language than do most of Luke’s narratives), the language communicates a somewhat different content than in Stoicism.[3146]

Though most of the motifs appear together in Stoicism, they were topics of widespread discussion that would also interest other literate hearers. (Stoicism’s most representative arguments had become relatively familiar in popular culture. Attempts to limit the primary background of the passage to any one thinker are too narrow.)[3147] Luke eagerly portrays Paul as articulating the sort of providentialist ethical monotheism respected by many Greek and Roman intellectuals in this era,[3148] though of course he goes beyond this perspective. (The pagan forms were not pure monotheism; they focused on a supreme deity without ruling out subordinate deities.)[3149]

(2) Paul’s Exposure to Philosophy

How many of these elements of contact could Paul have known from his Jewish background? His birth and travels exposed him, like other Diaspora Jews, to Gentiles, and all these elements would have also been available to other Diaspora Jews,[3150] some of whom had long been developing traditional Hellenistic Jewish apologetics. As noted above, many Diaspora Jewish writers made use of Greek philosophy.[3151] It is unlikely that Paul or Luke would have sought to create an entirely new apologetic when centuries of ground had already been broken for them. Stoic motifs pervade 4 Maccabees and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs; mixed with clearer elements of Middle Platonism, they also pervade Wisdom of Solomon and Philo. Some preserved Diaspora synagogue homilies from this period also betray a Stoic “conceptual framework” emphasizing “God’s providence and philanthropy.”[3152] Such motifs would not have been hard to come by for any Jews who had spent years in Hellenistic environments (cf. Paul in 9:30), even if raised especially in Jerusalem (see comment on Acts 22:3).[3153] Hellenistic Jewish works also display knowledge of Greek mythology,[3154] allusions to which demonstrated cultural literacy in works from the larger culture.[3155]

Hellenistic elements pervade even Judean works,[3156] though Hellenism’s effects were felt less in rural Galilee than in urban Jerusalem.[3157] Even the phrase “by Zeus”[3158] or Homeric phrases [3159] can slip into Josephus’s work, but more telling is evidence for Greek learning even in rabbinic works.[3160] The rabbinic tradition prohibited Greek learning primarily in times of Gentile oppression, such as the Roman invasion of 66–73 C.E. (e.g., m. Soṭah 9:14).[3161] Even then, however, elite households continued to teach Greek as well as Jewish learning, an exception specifically applied to the house of Gamaliel (t. Soṭah 15:8).[3162] Liebermann even argues that some rabbis demonstrate familiarity with Homer, or at least traditions based on Homer.[3163]

Nevertheless, rabbinic literature, in contrast to Alexandrian Jewish sources, betrays little interest in Greek philosophy per se. One knowledgeable writer even denies the occurrence of any Greek philosophic terms or philosophers’ names (except Epicurus, used for heresy) in rabbinic literature.[3164] Paul’s knowledge of philosophy was probably limited indeed if learned only in Jerusalem, though he may have studied with some scholars more open to this than in what became the mainstream rabbinic opinion (see comment on Acts 22:3). Still, his letters include no fewer philosophic (especially Stoic) elements than does this speech.

The question of whether Paul’s knowledge of philosophy was mediated through Hellenistic Judaism in a sense takes the sample Luke provides more seriously than the space devoted to it warrants. Luke’s report of the speech covers all of ten verses, a quantity of apologetic Paul might have learned in a few hours from any other philosophically knowledgeable Hellenistic Jew, even if he had not thought through the issues on his own.

That Paul should succeed as a Christian philosopher in Ephesus (on my reading of Acts 19:9) does suggest that Paul did have more philosophic knowledge than this, but such knowledge was not difficult to come by unless Paul needed to be familiar with every matter of logic, ethical criteria, and cosmology often debated in the schools. Nor would anyone expect a sage of one school (in this case, Paul’s) to be conversant in the ideas of other schools. (Many philosophers were reportedly not familiar with all the teachings of their own schools, much less those of others.)[3165] Paul would need significant philosophic knowledge to engage other philosophers on their own grounds; his need of such knowledge would be far more limited if he simply articulated a rival Christian philosophy, with its own epistemology, among students who could more fully articulate his case in their own circles.

Paul probably did have a somewhat advanced Hellenistic education, even if he acquired it in Jerusalem, though it was probably not in philosophy (see full comment on Acts 22:3). (His quotations suggest that he surely had primary and secondary training.)[3166] Granted, his letters suggest that his main training was in Scripture, so the measure of his tertiary rhetorical training (if any) might be simply equivalent, in today’s terms, to a seminary homiletics course or two. Nevertheless, fundamental training gave him more to build on as he observed others’ rhetoric than lower levels of such training would. Further, beyond his advanced training in Jerusalem (see comment on Acts 22:3), by the time Paul began writing most of his extant letters, he had spent many years in dialogue with others in the Hellenistic world.[3167]

(3) Rhetoric of the Speech

Most of the Areopagus consisted of prominent persons in Athens, most of whom would be schooled to greater or lesser degrees in rhetoric. Even the few full-fledged professors of philosophy presumably among them would not eschew rhetoric. Although philosophers would concern themselves more with content than with form, by this period even the philosophers hearing Paul would expect a public speech to reflect appropriate rhetorical characteristics. Plato critiqued rhetoric (Gorg. 465C) but neither ruled it out entirely nor neglected it himself, even in writing the Gorgias.[3168] His later work is more positive toward the value of rhetoric (Phaedr. 260D).[3169] Because rhetoric was now pervasive in Greek culture, even Stoics taught it, though as a tool for propagating their views.[3170] For more discussion of philosophers’ use of rhetoric, see comment on Acts 17:18.

Athenian style set the standard by which Athenians evaluated rhetorical skills, and one might expect an emphasis on proper Attic rhetoric particularly in speeches about divine matters, the topic of Paul’s speech here. The mid-second-century rhetorician Cornelius Fronto, most of whose oratory was in Latin, apologizes if his Greek includes anything less than fully Attic quality (Ep. graec. 1.5).[3171] Even after the rise of the Second Sophistic, the mid- to late second-century C.E. orator Maximus of Tyre remained moderate in his atticizing (classical) usage, except when writing about the divine.[3172] Such passages, however, called for special, elevated style.[3173] The demands on Paul’s skills would thus be significant.

In his extant work, Luke does not focus on Atticist rhetoric, which he may have considered inappropriate to “scientific” history in the late first century,[3174] but he probably does steer closer to Atticist rhetoric in Paul’s one speech to the Athenians, especially in his use of optatives.[3175] Luke may not present Paul as a pure orator, but he is at least a “competent amateur.”[3176] Paul’s description of God in Acts 17:24–28 includes many balanced clauses, syntaxis, and so forth; if not a period in the purest sense, it nevertheless points to an author capable of constructing one (as in 15:24–26).[3177] Rhetorical devices here technically could include antonomasia or epitheton in 17:24,[3178] although the phrase there is common enough LXX language.The hard sounds k, p, and t are frequent in the speech (e.g., 17:26), also suggesting oral delivery “with ‘explosive’ force.”[3179] Rhetorical critics have further identified the following rhetorically aimed elements in the speech:[3180]

Words grouped in pairs or by threes

Unifying key terms (especially πᾶς, in 17:22, 24, 25, 26, 30, 31)

Alliteration

Hyperbaton (word interference)

Litotes

Several “sentences ending with recognized clausulae”

“A carefully-ordered periodic structure”

Some scholars argue that the speech is forensic, since Paul must defend his teachings at a hearing (though it is not a formal trial).[3181] On formal grounds, some find it closer to Paul’s “apologetic” than to his “missionary” speeches in Acts, perhaps reinforcing the setting of a hearing rather than a mere discussion.[3182] One could even argue that much of the speech is epideictic; showpiece speeches for public evaluation were often epideictic (or at least commenced by praising the city; cf. 17:22). After the expected complimentary exordium (17:22) and propositio (17:23), most of the speech praises the Creator and Sustainer (in ways some Greeks applied to Zeus, 17:24–29).[3183] Yet few assign the Areopagus speech as a whole to the epideictic category.

Ultimately, the speech’s closing peroratio points in a different direction. Since Paul’s objectives are deliberative (17:30–31, 34), the speech might be better classified in this manner.[3184] (The possible lack of narratio could also allow for a deliberative speech,[3185] but a narratio may appear in 17:23a, as suggested by some scholars noted below.) Yet in the final analysis, speeches often mixed elements from various genres, and so classification is less significant than analysis of the elements. Thus, for example, Paul’s speech in 26:2–23 (in contrast to 24:10–21) has a deliberative objective (26:28–29) despite its forensic setting (25:23–26:1).

Witherington, who emphasizes forensic elements, suggests the following outline:[3186]

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