(2) Observations about Athens (17:23)
(2) Observations about Athens (17:23)
Not surprisingly in view of his recent arrival in Athens, Paul continues to develop the complimentary approach of his exordium in his narratio (17:23), perhaps in view of anticipated hostility on the part of his audience.[3278] It was customary for one coming to a city to express goodwill in an epideictic speech, commenting on the beautiful sites one had seen there, including temples (Men. Rhet. 2.3, 382.15–16).[3279] A new orator in a city would typically provide an encomium on the city’s character before subtly commending himself to his audience and inviting its suggestion of topics for declamation.[3280] It was said that when Alexander the orator first came to Athens, his brief opening speech was an encomium on Athens and an apology for not having visited previously (Philost. Vit. soph. 2.5.572). Praising public buildings, including temples, was conventional in urban encomia in general,[3281] and praising a city’s zealous piety was an especially valuable compliment (Men. Rhet. 1.3, 362.30–32).
Likewise, when Dio Chrysostom offers advice to a city that is not his own, he carefully prepares his audience. I am not a citizen and you did not invite me, he concedes (Or. 31.1); but I think you will agree with what I am going to say, once you hear me out (31.2); you would accept a foreigner’s money, and a foreigner’s useful advice may prove even more beneficial (31.3). When Favorinus spoke in Corinth, his three most extensive digressions were all “appeals to local tradition.”[3282] By appealing to a local tradition, Paul seeks to overcome prejudice against the intrusiveness of foreign advice givers.
As noted earlier, given the charge that Paul is a “preacher” (καταγγελεύς) of foreign divinities (Acts 17:18), Paul must now establish that what he preaches (καταγγέλλω) to them (17:23) is nothing other than the true Creator who, far from being “foreign,” is not far from any of them (17:27). Paul claims to have “examined closely” or “carefully considered” (see ἀναθεωρέω in BDAG) their objects of devotion; the reader knows that this means a considered evaluation of these objects with a negative conclusion (see comment on Acts 17:16).[3283]
(3) Altars of Unknown Deities (17:23)
A speaker might take as a point of departure an obvious local monument, including an altar inscription.[3284] In stable cities, statues and the like typically endured for centuries.[3285] Numerous ancient sources refer to altars of unknown gods in Athens, always in the plural.[3286] That Paul should adapt the plural language of such inscriptions to tell Athenians about one unknown deity in particular[3287] is essential in view of his monotheism and might be appreciated by the philosophically minded, to whom a pure, highest God without need of temples or sacrifices might appeal. Already in antiquity Jerome suggests that Paul adapted the polytheistic title “to unknown gods.”[3288] This would fit the tendency of Hellenistic Judaism to substitute “god” for “gods” and “God” for “Zeus” when quoting pagan texts.[3289]
Paul may have seen the altars on the road from the harbor, Piraeus, into Athens (Paus. 1.1.4). Although literary sources attest such altars particularly in Athens, the idea would be intelligible to other Gentiles. An altar dedicated “to unknown gods” appears near Demeter’s temple in Pergamum, and a similar altar, from about 100 B.C.E., “to a god or goddess” appears in Rome on the Palatine.[3290] Romans regarded “unknown gods” as especially awesome.[3291] Paul’s link with the true God was hardly unprecedented; because his name was hidden, Greco-Roman magicians regarded Israel’s God as particularly powerful[3292] (see comment on Acts 19:13).
One perhaps legendary account of the origin of at least some of these altars would have suited Paul’s purposes well had any guides explained it to him. During one plague in Athens in the sixth century B.C.E.,[3293] offerings to propitiate all known deities proved ineffective. When the Cretan Epimenides was called to stay the plague, he ordered that black and white sheep be allowed to wander the Areopagus; where each sheep lay down, sacrifice was offered to the deity associated with that site. Thus Diogenes Laertius explained the numerous nameless altars in Attica.[3294] The tradition of divination by following animals was known elsewhere,[3295] and the account’s idea of propitiating offended deities, known or unknown, was a widespread practice.[3296] In myth, Athenians had consented even to human sacrifice to propitiate humans or gods;[3297] in historical times, Athenians appealed to all the gods in time of plague.[3298] Meanwhile, those who recognized the true God as the Lord over all plagues[3299] would hardly balk at thinking him the deity ultimately behind the ancient Athenian plague.[3300]
Even without knowledge of the Athenian tradition, readers who knew the story would catch the point. Ancients differed over which deity to placate in the event of an earthquake (Aul. Gel. 2.28). Portents drove Romans to consult the oracular Sibylline books to determine which deity to placate (Cic. Verr. 2.4.49.108), and on another occasion, they deified Fever and built an altar to placate it (Epict. Diatr. 1.19.6; 1.22.16).[3301] When in doubt concerning a deity’s preferred name or title, the petitioner could add, “By whatever name you prefer.”[3302] In the era of Hellenistic-Roman syncretism, deities could claim to subsume in themselves the names of many objects of worship from various nations (Apul. Metam. 11.4–5; see discussion on Acts 8:10).
To establish a new cult in Athens (cf. Acts 17:18) one would need to purchase property and then build a temple where sacrifices could be offered. Establishing a new cult in Athens thus required approval from the magistrates.[3303] Some scholars suggest plausibly that Paul argues that he (like Cynics or others) can bypass this normal requirement of obtaining property for sacred activity because his God does not dwell in human temples or require human offerings (17:24–25).[3304] His deity thus appears closer to the gods of philosophers than to those of popular piety, an ideal that would appeal to the Stoics (17:18) and at least be intelligible to the educated elite who constituted the court (17:19).
(4) Jewish Approaches to Pagan Deities
Readers would not wince at Paul’s application of the “unknown god” to the true God; because Israel’s God had a secret name and lacked an image, many Greeks would regard him as the true “unknown god.”[3305] Paul found a workable “bridge” to his message that did not entail the theological compromises some other attempted bridges would have.[3306] Paul says nothing of the city’s patron deity, Athena (he does not deliberately provoke pagans, as suggested in 19:26–27), and, when quoting a poet’s statement about the highest deity, omits his name (Zeus).[3307]
Not all Jewish apologists were so restrained; Philo tactically appeals to the God “whom all Greeks and barbarians unanimously acknowledge, the supreme Father of gods and men” (Spec. Laws 2.165 [LCL, 7:409]; see comment on Acts 17:28). One pre-Christian Alexandrian Jewish work claims that other nations worship the same God as Israel, except under the names Zeus and Jove (Let. Aris. 16).[3308] Popular syncretism in the magical papyri went further, though effected probably by pagans incorporating Jewish elements (e.g., PGM 5.460, identifying “Iao” and “Adonai” with “Zeus”).[3309] Some Gentiles also believed that Jews worshiped Sabazios (allegedly assimilated with Dionysus at least in 139 B.C.E.),[3310] though the reliability of the evidence is disputed.[3311]
Although never dominant, the approach called euhemerism is noteworthy.[3312] Euhemerus (who served Cassander from 311 to 298 B.C.E.) was known particularly for his naturalistic explanation of the origin of the gods as the veneration of deceased humans.[3313] Some followed Euhemerus’s thought and developed it in a rationalist direction; others opposed it.[3314] Some employed it selectively, as needed, in a way that also suited ancient philosophers allegorizing myths;[3315] thus, for example, Dio Chrysostom demythologizes the story of Heracles[3316] or turns Prometheus into a sophist.[3317] Diodorus Siculus popularized the approach in his history, and the Latin poet Ennius also followed this view.[3318]
Some Diaspora Jews found this approach useful,[3319] most notably in the Sibylline Oracles (esp. Sib. Or. 3.551–54).[3320] The Letter of Aristeas also regards deities as deified people (Let. Aris. 136). Similarly, Wisdom of Solomon hypothesizes that the making of images originated with the longing for dead loved ones (Wis 14:15–16). Despite the Jewish use of and pagan slander against Euhemerus’s approach, he was probably simply seeking to explain cults’ origin, not to reduce their practices.[3321] Indeed, some scholars think that euhemerism supplied an additional factor in the acceptance of ruler worship: if other gods were mortals deified, why not deify some more?[3322] Others contend that the spread of such cults rendered euhemerism more appealing.[3323]
Even the very pattern in Paul’s speech here appears compatible with earlier Jewish models. David Balch compares various Jewish sources (including the Prayer of Manasseh and the first two of the Eighteen Benedictions) and notes a chronological pattern, although it is perhaps not very surprising: God’s creation of people; times and boundaries; and salvation (suggesting that Acts 17:30–31 fits the conventional pattern instead of diverging from it).[3324]
(5) Ignorance of This God (17:23)
Some scholars doubt that the historical Paul would have looked for elements of truth already existing in paganism, given his denunciations of idolatry and polytheism (Rom 1:23; 1 Cor 8:5–6; 1 Thess 1:9). But he employs Greek arguments and theological vocabulary (often mediated first through Diaspora Judaism) so frequently (sometimes even in the same contexts where he denounces idolatry, e.g., Rom 1:20; 1 Cor 8:6 [though the latter also reflects the Shema]) that this objection is difficult to sustain.
Despite all the common ground, however, Paul’s words remain somewhat ambiguous (see comment on “religious” in Acts 17:22): he speaks of the Athenians’ “not knowing” this God. Because their altar admits that the god is unknown, Paul can pose as a benefactor;[3325] but speaking of Athenians’ ignorance was not usually how speakers currying favor would begin.[3326] That most of the speech is framed by the two declarations of ignorance (17:23, 30) reinforces the point.
Adherents of the Skeptic school would claim agnosticism,[3327] and Socrates’s famous starting point, admitting his lack of knowledge,[3328] might appeal to some.[3329] But Greeks valued knowledge highly.[3330] Greek tradition strongly emphasized knowledge of oneself, which probably originally meant to recognize one’s limitations as a human and thus submit to the will of the gods and one’s assigned place in life.[3331] It became one of the most frequently cited maxims of Greek antiquity,[3332] many writers regarding it as one of life’s most basic truths.[3333] Ancient interpreters applied it in a variety of ways,[3334] but some writers applied it in a manner consistent with its original sense.[3335] The general idea appears also in Stoic thinkers.[3336]
In particular, “knowledge” of deity was a major goal for many Greek thinkers,[3337] and ignorance (ἄγνοια) of deity was usually not a compliment.[3338] For Stoics, knowledge of how to serve the gods was central to true religion[3339] whereas “ignorance” (ἄγνοιαν) was impiety and a vice.[3340] Only knowing what God is like will deliver one from superstition (Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 95.48). Unwise people have ignorance about themselves and hence are not truly sane.[3341] The ideal wise person was never ignorant (ἀγνοεῖν) about any matter.[3342] Ignorance was dangerous, because one would not know what to avoid (Dio Chrys. Or. 14.2); pretense of knowledge was, however, worse (Heraclitus Ep. 6). Some philosophers did challenge hearers’ “ignorance,” as when Apollonius allegedly denounces the selling of deity statues as impious and unlearned (Philost. Vit. Apoll. 5.20) and the sacrificing of animals as unlearned about divine matters (5.26).
Paul probably uses his hearers’ ignorance here to reduce rather than increase their culpability (cf. Philost. Hrk. 8.18; comment on Acts 3:17). For the informed reader, however, their ignorance is not complimentary;[3343] instead, it recalls the ignorance of the true God typically attributed to idolaters.[3344] In Paul’s Jewish tradition, which affirmed covenant knowledge of God on the basis of the one God’s self-revelation,[3345] ignorance of God was very negative.
Toward the end of the message, Paul will revisit the topic of ignorance more directly: God may have overlooked such “ignorance” in the past but will do so no longer (Acts 17:30), and so, although ignorance may reduce their guilt, it does not excuse it. Paul saves this blow for nearly the end of the speech, where such an offensive point belongs rhetorically.[3346]
III. THE NATURE OF THE DEITY (17:24–29)
Paul’s argument focuses first on the nature of the deity (17:24–26), then moves to epistemology of the divine (17:27–29) in line with his thesis (17:23).[3347] He establishes God’s transcendence (17:24–25), laying the groundwork for his attack on idolatry, and God’s immanence (17:27–28), showing that God has already revealed himself in humanity, undercutting the supposed need for idols. Ancient Jewish writers often used Hellenistic language to argue for the rationality of serving the one true God.[3348]
Although many of Paul’s judges in the Areopagus would have rhetorical training, Paul’s subject remains philosophic, as in his discussions in 17:18. Orators would usually focus on a political thesis whereas theoretical theses about the world belonged to philosophers.[3349] An epideictic oration could praise a deity or a deity statue, but Paul’s oration will ultimately prove to be deliberative, calling for change (17:30), just as philosophers often did.[3350]
(1) The Creator Needs No Temples (17:24)
As soon as Paul leaves the narratio (17:23), his hearers will recognize that his “unknown God” is the supreme author of existence, whom Stoics and most Greek intellectuals identified with Zeus. To claim that they were “ignorant” (17:23) of something like Zeus would not have endeared Paul to them, but he is not willing to concede the adequacy of their knowledge.
THE CREATOR
Although these motifs were not all foreign to Gentiles, it is surely no coincidence that Paul’s narration of divine acts begins where the biblical story begins, with the creation of all (Gen 1:1–2:4), and soon turns to life and breath (Acts 17:25; cf. Gen 2:7); creation from one person (Acts 17:26; Gen 1:26–27; 2:7); the settlement of peoples (Gen 10:1–32); and so forth. “Lord of heaven and earth” is technically antonomasia or epitheton,[3351] but it is familiar enough from the LXX[3352] and a Q tradition known to Luke (Luke 10:21; Matt 11:25). The phrase would be perfectly intelligible to Paul’s audience; despite traditional deification of heaven and earth,[3353] pagan poets also could affirm that the supreme God ruled land, sea, and sky (Hor. Odes 1.12.13–18; 3.45–48).[3354] Even polytheistic Greeks had no problem describing the supreme deity as simply “God.”[3355] Luke’s ideally informed audience, however, would likely recognize the traditional Jewish character of the phrase.[3356]
That God “made the world[3357] and everything in it” was also intelligible to Greeks, while echoing biblical language. Both Greeks and Jews naturally often employed ποιέω with regard to creation.[3358] Many viewed the supreme deity as creator of the material world, even if he himself transcended it.[3359] As noted above, many also believed, as did the epistolary Paul (Rom 1:20), that much about God could be inferred from his creation.[3360] Thus, after arguing for the necessity of a cause,[3361] Epictetus argues from the structure of objects that they reflect a designer and not mere chance;[3362] anyone who observes the facts of nature yet denies the existence of a creator, he opines, is stupid.[3363] The existence of human intellect, most complex of all, particularly reveals the designer.[3364] Other intellectuals also argued that humans bore the divine stamp or that human reason reflected the divine.[3365] Hellenistic Jewish apologetic had borrowed these ideas long before Paul and Luke did so,[3366] making Paul’s missionary task much easier.[3367] But Luke understands the idea in its biblical sense (Acts 4:24) while using it as a point of connection and especially of anti-idol apologetic (14:15).
Naturally, some Greek ideas of creation are excluded.[3368] Some earlier Greek thinkers held to a sort of monism, although its early character is debated.[3369] By this time a number of thinkers accepted a sort of pantheism,[3370] which was affirmed in varying degrees by many Stoics[3371] and especially emphasized by the earlier Stoic thinkers.[3372] (It was also sometimes mocked by outsiders.)[3373] By contrast, Judaism’s affirmation of creation excluded any sort of pantheism.[3374] Greeks typically believed that the universe was eternal and essentially changeless, making a past creation less intelligible for them than would be a simple affirmation of a divine, logical arrangement in the universe.[3375]
Further, for a biblically informed audience, reference to the true God’s creative activity implied rejection of idols (Deut 32:16–18; Isa 40:12–26; Jer 10:11–15).[3376] Whether God created through the agency of a mediator (as in Col 1:16; John 1:3) is not, however, specified here; the passage mentions neither Stoic Logos[3377] nor Platonic pattern or demiurge.[3378] Luke’s audience would understand the claim here as a summary, and so it does not seem legitimate to argue from silence that it opposes particular philosophic ideas simply because it does not mention them.[3379]
GOD DOES NOT NEED TEMPLES
Paul reasons from God’s transcendent character to the inutility of physical temples for God.[3380] This ideal, contrasting starkly with Paul’s surroundings (Acts 17:16)[3381] and perhaps with the Areopagus’s role as defender of Athenian honor, was shared by some thinkers,[3382] notably including some earlier Stoics. Zeno, founder of the Stoic school, ruled out the use of temples (as well as lawcourts, gymnasia, and the state);[3383] nothing offered by human builders, he thought, was worthy of the gods.[3384] Succeeding generations of Stoics were, however, more domesticated by society’s values; Plutarch charges them with inconsistency (even hypocrisy) for applauding Zeno’s ideals against the Epicureans while nevertheless themselves sacrificing in temples.[3385]
Still, enough thinkers upheld the ideal to maintain some appreciation for its intellectual merit. God cannot be locked up in temples, shrouded in darkness, a Cynic writer protested; only the ignorant think that God is made from hands or assume that he has one sanctuary when all the universe, full of animals and stars, constitutes his sanctuary (Heraclitus Ep. 4). Lucian mocks the supposition that gods will be homeless without temples (Sacr. 11). An Epicurean would challenge the utility of altars (Lucian Z. Rants 44). Epicureans in fact saw no need for temples or sacrifices.[3386] A later Platonist claimed that the temple of deity is the wise mind (Porph. Marc. 11.192–93); thus only the wise man has prepared a shrine in his mind (11.196–98).[3387]
Such ideas reflected a larger theme, in some philosophic circles, of the transcendence of the divine.[3388] Thus the God of Middle Platonism (like the God of some early medieval theology partly dependent on it)[3389] was ineffable, if still compatible with deity images: God the creator was greater than all nature, so that tongue could not describe him or eyes behold him. Unable to grasp his essence, one could use only images, whether the art of Phidias or Egyptian animals, to visualize him (Max. Tyre 2.10).[3390] After the time of Pompey, educated Romans knew that the Jewish temple lacked images (Tac. Hist. 5.9); some philosophical pagans could appreciate Moses’s imageless monotheism even if they felt the Jewish cult to be superstitious (cf. Strabo 16.35–37). Though not eager to praise Judaism, Tacitus presents favorably the Germans’ alleged lack of shrines or images, by which they honored deities invisible to the eye (Germ. 9).
Hellenistic Judaism also emphasized God’s transcendence,[3391] and Jewish sources reapplied Greek emphasis on it for polemic against pagan temples while exempting their own (Jos. Ant. 8.227–29; Sib. Or. 4.8–11).[3392] Luke’s source for the idea is ultimately Jewish (see Isa 66:1–2 in Acts 7:48–49), but until Acts 17:30 the speech selects motifs intelligible and potentially praiseworthy in a Greek intellectual context.
For all the theme’s potential respectability, however, Paul goes against the grain of Athenian culture. He is respectful toward the Athenians’ practice (17:22–23) and employs culturally intelligible and (at this point) even respectable language, but as in contemporary missiology, ideal contextualization entails communicating in terms another culture understands while one endeavors not to distort one’s message in the process. If Paul stood in the Stoa Poikile, the temple of Hephaistos was to his right and the temples of the Acropolis (including the Parthenon and the Erechtheion) in front of him; most of the buildings dated either to the distant era of Pericles or to the more recent era of Augustus.[3393] Whether Paul stood there or elsewhere, he stood in a city full of temples and deity images (see comment on Acts 17:16), and his words directly challenged Athenian culture.
As noted above, his appeal to a deity so transcendent that he needed no temples (though he cared for people) made Paul more like a philosophic lecturer than like a priest introducing a new cult. This approach allowed Christianity to spread more rapidly in the Roman Empire without the sort of resources some cults required. Ironically, its achievement of toleration and even status by the fourth century encouraged its assimilation of the traditional paraphernalia of other Greco-Roman cults, such as temples and priesthoods.[3394] Although we may view such a change as necessary contextualization, it did reduce the simplicity and independence of the movement. Whatever the strategic missionary value of the approach exemplified in this passage, it also reflects the convictions of the epistolary Paul, who valued a spiritual temple more than a physical one (1 Cor 3:16–17; 6:19; cf. Eph 2:19–22), an idea shared with some contemporaries (1QS VIII, 5–8; 1 Pet 2:5; see comment on Acts 2:46).[3395]
Paul’s words about temples “made with hands” recalls Acts 7:48 and hence Isaiah’s teaching that God does not need human temples (Isa 66:1 in Acts 7:49);[3396] it also alludes back to (Acts 7:41) and foreshadows (19:26) the condemnation of idols made with hands (cf. 17:29).[3397] The idea of a heavenly temple or house not made with hands entered into early Christian vocabulary, perhaps influenced by the Jesus tradition (Mark 14:58; 2 Cor 5:1; Heb 9:11, 24).[3398] Unencumbered with loyalty to the Jerusalem temple,[3399] especially after 70 C.E., Luke’s circle of Pauline churches was free to polemicize against temples in general without being accused of double standards.
(2) God Needs Nothing (17:25)
Paul continues to relate to his audience, mostly but not exclusively the more popular Stoics; as one commentator notes, Epicureans “would have endorsed the first half of this verse, the Stoics the second half.”[3400] Even Stoics might have accepted the first half in principle, though they continued to allow popular religion.
GOD’S SELF-SUFFICIENCY
That God lacks nothing was a familiar concept among Greek-speaking Jewish intellectuals;[3401] God was completely self-sufficient.[3402] (To need nothing was a valued virtue.)[3403] This reflects a long-standing tradition in Hellenistic thought;[3404] God’s self-sufficiency was part of his perfection,[3405] and (in a satirist) gods who need offerings must be poor.[3406]
Most thinkers did not, however, draw from this premise the conclusion that deity or deities refused worship, a conclusion that Paul does not invite, yet they did recognize that the deity or deities did not depend on humanity’s worship. That God needed nothing did not necessarily make God impassible or beyond accepting worship. For Greek-speaking Jews, that God should dwell in Israel’s temple or receive worship was an act of kindness, because God was ἀπροσδεής, needing nothing.[3407] Though God was ἀπροσδεής, he was gentle and kind.[3408]
Greeks sometimes likewise pointed out that though the gods do not need anything, one should still honor them;[3409] other thinkers opined that since God needs nothing, this includes sacrifices.[3410] Plutarch considers Stoics inconsistent for sacrificing at temples and altars though in principle they should reject them.[3411] Others concluded that the pious should continue to venerate the deity in the customary manner, not as if he needs (προσδεομένου) it, but because he merits it.[3412] If someone foolishly thinks the deity “needs” it, however, he thinks himself superior to the deity.[3413]
DIVINE IMPASSIBILITY OR PROVIDENCE?
Some ancients pressed such concepts further, claiming that the highest deity was so transcendent that he was impassible, unmoved and unaffected by the world.[3414] For some, God was pure mind or soul;[3415] most Platonists adopted Aristotle’s idea of God “as a mind thinking itself,” though in a subsequent era they reverted to the early Platonic notion of a first principle higher than mind.[3416] Epicurus (cf. excursus on Epicureanism at Acts 17:18) thought that any deities that might exist were passionless and hence did not care about the world (Cic. Pis. 25.59), a view that Paul’s appeal to providence in the rest of the verse challenges.
Not all who argued for the supreme deity’s transcendence, often Middle or later Platonists,[3417] drew from this the exclusion of God’s involvement in the world.[3418] Many thinkers defended the value of prayer, opposing the idea of the deity’s impassivity to invocations.[3419] Although earlier Stoics spoke of a less personal cosmic personification of providence, Musonius Rufus, one of Paul’s most influential Stoic contemporaries, affirmed a personal and caring God.[3420] Epictetus, a Stoic in the late first century, insisted that the first principle of philosophers is the existence of God and his provision for the cosmos.[3421] Luke and Paul clearly believed in prayer and divine providence but, in the Jewish tradition, rejected the other extreme of anthropomorphic (or other) images of God.[3422]
Because of God’s spiritual character, God did not depend on human service or worship. Even ancient Israel wrongly assumed at times that God depended on it for offerings, like the gods of other nations, but the prophetic tradition decisively rejects such a view (Ps 50:8–13; cf. Isa 1:11–15; Hos 6:6; Amos 5:21–24).[3423] Early Jewish sources also comment on the notion of spiritual or moral sacrifices (which was not usually incompatible with physical sacrifices).[3424]
Paul’s claim that God is not “served by human hands” echoes the temples “built by hands” in Acts 17:24. Although Jewish people did use this Greek term for “serving” God (e.g., Jdt 11:17, θεραπεύουσα),[3425] the point is that God does not genuinely depend on such offerings.[3426] Socrates reportedly questioned the propriety of human service to deities;[3427] an early rhetorician claimed that justice pleased the gods more than did sacrifice;[3428] many doubted whether sacrifices truly pleased the gods;[3429] and some rejected all sacrifices involving animal blood.[3430]
Paul’s contemporary Seneca the Younger complained that the gods were not impressed with offerings, even of one’s own blood, in attempting to prevent hail (Nat. Q. 4.6.2–3; 4.7.1). For Seneca, this denial of God’s need for service is bound up with his Stoic idea of divine providence. God neither seeks nor needs human servants, because he always seeks to serve humanity; he does not need our superstitions or offerings; he already has everything and gives it freely (Ep. Lucil. 95.48). The gods are benevolent because this is their nature (95.48–49); hence they can neither give nor receive evil or harm (95.49–50). Although most ancient thinkers accepted cult and even found ways to accommodate myths,[3431] Paul’s approach need not have sounded uninformed or ethnic-specific in a philosophic context.
Acts also emphasizes God’s providence, including in regard to creation (Acts 4:24; 14:15); like the emphasis on future judgment (17:31; cf. 10:42; 24:25), this claim challenged views widely attributed to the Epicureans (see 17:18).[3432] Luke was likely not the only monotheistic writer to position his views favorably vis-à-vis those of Epicureans.[3433]
In contrast to Paul’s climactic resurrection claim (17:31), the claim that God gives life to all was not offensive to Greek or Roman thought.[3434] Such a claim might challenge the myth that Athenians (or their first two kings) sprang literally “from Attic soil,”[3435] but it is not likely that Paul, Luke, or Luke’s audience would have this local tradition in mind. First of all, it was only one among a wide number of ancient traditions that such a claim could challenge;[3436] second, the claim was widely articulated by Greeks without being assumed threatening to local tradition; and finally, divine creation is not necessarily incompatible with agency even in biblical tradition (cf. Gen 2:7; 3:19).
The giving of breath is biblical (Gen 2:7),[3437] but it would also be intelligible among first-time Greek hearers. One first-century orator spoke of the first people being sustained by the moist air of the pneuma, the way babies suck food (Dio Chrys. Or. 12.30); it was God who provided life (12.74, 77).[3438] The proposed play here on “Zeus” and ζωήν, “life,”[3439] however, is dubious. In view of even some Diaspora Jewish apologetic, Paul had plenty of opportunity to entitle the highest deity “Zeus” in this passage had he wished, but he, like some other Diaspora Jewish redactors of Greek quotations, seems to have avoided the name. The threefold gift in 17:25 probably anticipates the threefold expression of dependence in the quotation in 17:28, which begins with the same opening element (“live”).
(3) God’s Sovereignty over Humanity (17:26)
In Acts 17:26, the speech develops further the notion of God’s providence, moving chronologically from the creation of the world to the creation of humanity (which, from the standpoint of Greeks and Jews alike, remained primeval). Rhetorically, the verse opens with five of seven words beginning with a vowel (four of them epsilon); the notable exception, beginning with pi, prepares for three words beginning with that sound (and several other recurrences of it, for a total of eight uses of the sound in the beginning and middle of the verse) as the verse continues.
CREATED FROM ONE
Some scholars suggest that ἑνός (one)[3440] is neuter, fitting Stoic tradition;[3441] but it could also be masculine. The “one” could refer to God himself, a view objectionable neither to Greeks nor to Jews (17:28),[3442] but it makes little grammatical sense, since it is God who not only “made” the world (17:24) but also “made” all humanity from the one (17:26). Excluded at least would be the Greek idea that gods and people both sprang from one mother, earth (Pindar Nem. 6.1–2).[3443] (Greeks could trace humanity’s origin in myth to Deucalion and Pyrrha, though they reproduced mainly by their mother’s “bones”—that is, rocks of earth.)[3444] Paul can offer a connection with the Stoic idea of humanity’s origin even if his view of its destiny differs (Acts 17:31).[3445]
A majority of commentators find here an allusion to Adam.[3446] Paul’s hearers in the narrative world would not catch an allusion to the creation of Adam, but Luke’s own audience probably would; early Christians (and especially Paul’s circle) frequently discussed their Bible’s comments on Adam and Eve (Rom 5:12–21, esp. 5:14; 1 Cor 11:8–9; 15:22, 45–47; 2 Cor 11:3; 1 Tim 2:13–14; Jude 14).[3447] In support of such a biblical allusion, we should recall Luke’s inclusion of the patriarchs in the scheme of his metanarrative (e.g., Acts 3:25; 7:2–9; Luke 1:55, 73; 3:8, 34; 13:16, 28; 16:23–30; 19:9; 20:37; Acts 7:32); how his reversal of Babel (scattering peoples descended from Adam) supports the Gentile mission (Acts 2:5–11); and how he, unlike Matthew, traces Jesus’s genealogy back to Adam, the first “son of God” (Luke 3:38).[3448] Further, that God created people to “dwell” all over the earth probably recalls God’s plan for people to “fill the earth” (Gen 1:28; 9:1; cf. 1:22; Exod 1:7).[3449]
Later Jewish sources on Adam elaborate at length;[3450] it is possible that some of the traditions were circulating in Jerusalem in Paul’s day. Many sources portrayed Adam hagiographically, as mostly godly.[3451] Nevertheless, Adam’s sin brought death on himself[3452] and introduced this experience to humanity.[3453] (Rabbis also understood some sort of corporate personality in Adam.)[3454] Some rabbis said that Adam was created, sinned, and was expelled all on the same day.[3455] Adam once held great authority,[3456] but his fall negated his previous authority over the world.[3457] Before the fall, God showed him the future.[3458]
Many later rabbis attributed to Adam enormous size before the fall; he filled the earth.[3459] Some rabbis believed that God collected dust for Adam’s creation from all parts of the world.[3460] When Adam fell, he lost his massive volume.[3461] Both the rabbis[3462] and the Qumran scrolls[3463] suggest Adam’s pristine “glory.” Adam’s sin caused him to lose his splendor[3464] and caused God’s Shekinah to lift from the earth.[3465] The Qumran scrolls may suggest that the elect receive this glory,[3466] and other sources may suggest that Adam’s glory would be restored.[3467] In some later Jewish tradition, the Messiah would restore what Adam lost.[3468] The eschatological time would reverse the curse and restore Eden’s blessings;[3469] the righteous would have Adam’s heritage.[3470] Some scholars find background here for Paul’s teaching of the second Adam.[3471]
Although most commentators find here an allusion to Adam, some have argued for an allusion to Noah.[3472] This helps explain the mention of “peoples” and the possible allusions to Gen 10 and 11 in the rest of Acts 17:26.[3473] Jewish tradition often associated Gentiles’ ancestry with Noah (see comment on Acts 15:20), as well as with Adam. Nevertheless, commentators have had good reason for emphasizing an allusion to Adam here. An Adam allusion seems consistent with the contrast in 17:29 between being God’s offspring and human-made images and so may have more support from the context.[3474] Whichever approach one takes, however, this passage underlines the common origin of humanity, since in Jewish thought all humanity descended from Noah as it did from Adam.
The common origin of humanity, like the reversal of Babel in Acts 2:5–11, fits the theme of the Gentile mission in Acts (1:8) and its grounding in salvation history (7:2–53).[3475] Rabbis claimed that God created only one person initially so that peoples could not compete as to the superiority of their respective ancestors (m. Sanh. 4:5).[3476]
Similarly, when a Stoic declared that Nature created all people from the same source and for the same purpose, he might emphasize humans’ relationship with one another (Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 95.52).[3477] Because, he claimed, all people spring from the same original source—namely, the gods (44.1)—no group should be thought superior to others (44.1–2).[3478] Humanity’s “universal brotherhood” demanded just treatment of others (Cic. Off. 3.6.28 [LCL, 21:295]).[3479]
The claim of humanity’s common origin from “one” person would also refute local Athenian beliefs that the Athenians sprang exclusively from Attic soil,[3480] though (as noted above) it is questionable how readily the idea would have occurred to Paul or even to Luke and his audience.[3481]
HUMAN HISTORY AND BOUNDARIES
The phrase “inhabit the earth,” applied to humans, could be supposed to reinforce for Jews the distinction between humans and angels,[3482] yet this distinction would be meaningless to Greeks (unless perhaps to rule out “gods”;[3483] but Greeks had terrestrial as well as Olympian deities[3484]) and would be redundant even for Jews (since the text already states that they are humans). The point is instead that God demonstrated his benevolence and power by filling all the inhabited earth with people (cf. Gen 1:28); if God caused them to inhabit such vast regions, how could anyone expect God to “inhabit” mere human houses (Acts 17:24)?
If the infinitive (ζητεῖν) that opens 17:27 parallels κατοικεῖν in 17:26, the intervening compound clause likely expands on the character of this dwelling (κατοικεῖν), a likelihood apparently confirmed by the cognate κατοικίας at the end of the clause (17:26). God does not “dwell” in human temples (17:24, with κατοικεῖ in the emphatic final position) but, by contrast, has established the places for humanity to dwell. Probably the first part of the clause addresses the times allotted for various peoples and empires, and the second, the lands they would rule during those periods. Although both of these items are disputed, this is the likeliest interpretation of these points in view of their context.
Two major lines of interpretation exist: that Luke refers to historical epochs and national boundaries or that he develops a philosophy of nature. The latter might be relevant if offered in 17:24, but it appears much less likely in a section focused on God’s providence toward humanity (17:25–27). This is not to suggest that the latter should be excluded altogether; both Greeks and Jews wove together both sorts of elements, and both ultimately were held to demonstrate God’s power and providence.[3485] God demonstrates his majesty by “separating” both time and space (Gen 1:4, 7), but he also “separated” peoples (Gen 10:5, 32; Deut 32:8).[3486] God arranged the cosmos (Ps 74:16–17; Wis 7:17–19) but also the nations.[3487] Psalm 74:17 declares God’s sovereignty over both seasons and boundaries. The focus is more likely primarily on the nations than on nature here. Yet Luke is already preparing for Paul’s peroratio here by his use of ὁρίσας (and a similar sounding noun, which facilitates a wordplay here): God determines both times and nations and therefore has the sovereign right to determine Jesus as judge of humanity (Acts 17:31, the only other use of ὁρίζω in this context and one of only six uses in Luke-Acts; cf. Rom 1:4; Heb 4:7).
Regarding the “times” (καιρούς), some scholars apply these to the seasons of creation. Certainly, Jewish people spoke of such seasons (Gen 1:14, employing the same term; 8:22), and Luke himself seems well aware of observable boundaries in nature (Luke 12:54–55). The strongest support for this interpretation is Luke’s employment of the same term in another passage expounding God’s creation to Gentiles (Acts 14:17), which suggests that we should allow at least for the inclusion of this nuance.[3488]
But Luke more often speaks of “seasons” in God’s dealings with humanity, culminating in the end time (1:7; 3:20; cf. 14:16; 17:31) and including his plan for the nations and their crossing national boundaries (Luke 21:24). Thus the idea may involve the appointed periods of various nations emphasized in Daniel (Dan 2:37–45; 8:19–26; 11:2–45).[3489] Given the apocalyptic notion of predestined eras,[3490] likely shared by Luke (Acts 1:7), this language probably applies to the appointed durations of nations, such as the rise and fall of Assyria, Babylon, the Hellenistic empire, and ultimately Rome.[3491] Josephus uses the accuracy of such prophecies to argue for God’s sovereignty (Ant. 10.280); their accuracy regarding empires reveals God’s authority over history.[3492]
Some scholars interpret also “the boundaries where they [the nations] live” as a reference to all habitable regions of the earth (those fit for cultivation), as opposed to the uninhabitable zones.[3493] Both Scripture and other sources could speak of a deity having established boundaries between land and sea.[3494] Some thus think that Acts refers to God setting the boundaries for the sea, perhaps still envisioned by some ancients as a chaos monster.[3495] Polytheists spoke of the earth portioned out to various deities (Pindar Ol. 7.55–56) and commonly of the deities’ division of the world, sea, and underworld.[3496] Both Jews and Gentiles, then, believed that God ordered the cosmos.[3497]
Genesis follows the creation of humanity with a dispersion of peoples to various locations (Gen 10:5, 10–12, 18–20, 30–32; 11:9, 31), however, and pre-Christian Jewish tradition also emphasizes God’s ordaining political boundaries among peoples.[3498] In some Jewish texts, this action apparently relates to the judgment at Babel (1QM X, 14), a theme with which Luke has, as we have noted, shown himself familiar.[3499] When Noah’s sons began dividing the earth wrongly (Jub. 8:8–9), Noah divided it God’s way—that is, by lot (8:10–11)—and made his sons promise not to transgress these boundaries (9:14).[3500] In another version (probably also pre-Christian), the three sons of Noah (given names from Greek mythology) divided the earth peacefully (Sib. Or. 3.114–16), but strife over these divisions arose after Noah’s death (3.117–20). Most important, Daniel (Dan 2:21) affirms that God both removes and establishes kings and is sovereign over the times and epochs (i.e., the periods allotted to various kingdoms).
One Greco-Roman myth attributed the creation of boundary lines to the inferior bronze race, before which all things were held in common.[3501] The Stoic writer Seneca the Younger also regarded human boundaries as artificial and foolish in view of the universe’s vastness (Nat. Q. 1.pref. 9–10).[3502] But Gentiles were well aware of various nations and city-states with patron deities[3503] (e.g., Roma for Rome),[3504] and the Romans had a god, Terminus, who marked boundaries (for instance, of people’s fields; e.g., Ovid Fasti 2.639–84).
Some scholars counter the political interpretation by arguing that the political boundaries are not evidence of God’s existence,[3505] but this argument bears two significant flaws: first, most Jews familiar with Jewish apocalyptic, with Daniel, or even with oracles against the nations in the preexilic prophets would have disagreed; and second, the speech’s argument at this point (and probably throughout) is about God’s character, not about God’s existence. (Paul’s audience in the narrative world consists largely of polytheists [cf. 17:16, 22–23], not atheists.)
Those earlier, popular theological interpreters, especially in South Africa and North America, who exploited this text to justify ethnic separatism not only missed its point but succumbed to its negative verdict. All humanity shares a common origin, and the boundaries of peoples and empires are each assigned by God’s sovereignty for certain eras. Far from being prescriptive, these boundaries merely depict the geographic separations established—whether in judgment since Babel or otherwise showing humanity’s limitations—for various seasons, all to be overturned in divinely appointed times. In the same biblical perspective, the more ethnocentric, arrogant empires (e.g., Assyria) had always fallen the hardest.
(4) Groping for God (17:27)
God is not “far”; therefore it is no “foreign divinity” (Acts 17:18) that Paul proclaims.[3506] But to what degree does his nearness make him accessible? At this point Paul is describing “the times of ignorance,” before God offered a supreme revelation inviting all to repentance (17:30); God is near even through his image in humanity (17:28–29), but the Athenians’ very worship of other images reveals that they have not recognized him (17:29).
The infinitive ζητεῖν, which can be translated “to seek”—that is, “that they should seek”—may depend on the clause about humans’ boundaries being established, but it more likely depends on the verb “made”: God made humanity to dwell in the earth (17:26) and to seek him (17:27).[3507] Whereas Platonism traditionally stressed God’s transcendence so highly as to require mediation,[3508] others argued for God’s immanence, with Stoics even emphasizing that God pervades all creation.[3509] Some philosophic traditions emphasized that people could seek after God (as best as was possible)[3510] precisely because he is not far from us.[3511] Stoics believed that God’s order in nature (one interpretation of 17:26) revealed God’s character and allowed us to “seek” him intellectually;[3512] this might suggest an optimistic outcome for the seeking (as in Justin 2 Apol. 13; contrast Rom 1:18–21; 3:11); but see further discussion below.
Some ancient thinkers argued that nature placed a longing for truth in the human soul.[3513] Many argued that knowledge about the deity was innate in humans;[3514] an ability to recognize the divine stamp in nature distinguished rational beings from what was not rational.[3515] Deities’ works likewise indicate their benevolence.[3516] Divine providence was especially evident in humanity,[3517] the pinnacle of nature’s works.[3518] As Seneca the Younger observes, “We infer that the gods exist . . . [in part because] there is implanted in everyone an idea concerning deity, and there is no people so far beyond the reach of laws and customs that it does not believe at least in gods of some sort.”[3519] The belief that all peoples shared a concept of deity, no matter how “uncivilized” or “barbarous” such peoples might be, was a widespread ancient argument for the deity’s existence.[3520]
But Paul’s “groping after” is hardly a positive image, used in both classical texts and the LXX for a blind person or another stumbling forward in darkness.[3521] The Hebrew equivalent behind the LXX term in Isa 59:10 also appears in CD I, 9, where God’s people grope like blind men seeking for the way; in that instance, God restored them through the Teacher of Righteousness because they sought him with their whole heart (CD I, 10–11). Not all occasions of groping or seeking turned out so positively, however; the nations, seeking (ζητοῦντες) after God, wishing to find (θέλοντες εὑρεῖν) him (Wis 13:6–7), failed to find (εὗρον) him (13:9); though their responsibility is diminished (13:6), they are without excuse (13:8; Rom 1:20).[3522] In this instance, Epicureans[3523] and other thinkers, describing at least the masses,[3524] recognized that fumbling about in darkness was not necessarily promising.
Further, “if perhaps they might . . . find him” is hardly an encouraging way of putting the quest. Although it may not rule out success explicitly, it is pessimistic on the whole; Porter notes that “the protasis of a fourth-class conditional” statement, “with the optative,” is “the most condition-laden Greek mood form.”[3525] God is not far, but this proximity is because of his kindness, not because of human perceptivity. God’s kindness in making himself near includes his sustaining of human life (Acts 17:28).[3526] Paul is still describing the “times of ignorance,” the period before God invited repentance (17:30) by raising Jesus (17:31) and sending Paul to preach to them. Now, as Paul will shortly explain, God demands repentance (17:30).
(5) God’s Offspring (17:28)
God is not far from people, Paul says (17:27); indeed, he is immanent in them because they are his children (17:28), created in his image (unlike mere statues, 17:29).[3527] To bolster his case about humans being God’s children, Paul offers a common quotation from a Greek poem, since educated speakers were expected to offer classical quotations among their proofs.[3528]
THE AUTHORITY OF POETS
Greeks’ primary education included practice writing and memorizing quotations from poets, which, as part of the shared intellectual culture, grew proverbial.[3529] The early, literary component of secondary education (which preceded study of rhetoric) focused on reading poets, especially Homer, and later the tragic poets of classical Athens.[3530] Those who disputed the poets’ myths often had to do so explicitly; they were too central to the cultural fabric to be simply ignored.[3531]
Because Homer was the poet par excellence, it is useful to survey the authority attributed to him. Homer’s appeal extended far beyond anthologies for school use; the chief works attributed to him (i.e., the Iliad and the Odyssey) became the literary canon furnishing the standard for cultural literacy in the Greco-Roman world.[3532] Secondary education included reading from various poets but especially Homer.[3533] Professors of grammar and rhetoric even looked to Homer for models for any genres they sought to teach.[3534] Thus Cicero thought that reading orators and poets would improve one’s “choice of diction,” provided one used current rather than ancient vocabulary (De or. 3.10.39). More than seven hundred papyri and ostraca of Homer or quotations from Homer have been published, followed by roughly a hundred fragments each of Demosthenes, Euripides, and Hesiod.[3535] Bards traveled about reciting all of Homer from memory whereas others preferred more “academic” Homeric criticism.[3536]
Greeks also cited other poets and writers, venerable by age, as authorities on various issues.[3537] Appeal to cultural authorities hallowed by long usage was standard epistemology; thus, simply by appealing to Hippocrates, a writer defends Plato against a physician’s charge that he misunderstood the stomach (Aul. Gel. 17.11); a writer also feels compelled to defend Virgil even against charges of bad grammar (e.g., 5.8).
Homer was long quoted as an authority,[3538] often for maxims the way Jewish people quoted the Bible.[3539] Many quoted him as a “witness” supporting their positions;[3540] thus “as witness” one might offer Homer, “the most ancient and greatest of all poets.”[3541] (In his discussion of witnesses in rhetoric, Aristotle claims that ancient witnesses such as poets and sages are more dependable than recent witnesses[3542] because they are less subject to corruption.)[3543] One might act “on Homer’s authority”—that is, on the basis of a line from Homer.[3544] He was “the poet” par excellence[3545]—often called a particularly “divine” poet[3546]—or even “the great prophet of truth.”[3547]
Even those who affirmed his inspiration might nevertheless critique him,[3548] but he was always a primary foundation of the literary canon, a starting point that had to be addressed. Philosophers also cited Homer when this was to their argument’s advantage.[3549] But while philosophers could cite poets to appeal to the masses, they sought to do so critically;[3550] they were well able to disagree with even Homer when necessary.[3551] Plato accepted the value of the poets provided they submitted to the state’s wiser control and censorship of their views (Laws 12.941BC),[3552] but his attack on Homer generated philosophic defenses of the latter.[3553]
Later writers, enamored with both Plato and Homer, found ways to embrace and harmonize both,[3554] typically by allegorizing Homer (or at least mining him for ethical principles).[3555] The Neoplatonist Proclus insisted that the poets (including Homer) should not have depicted heroes and deities like mortals.[3556] But while Homer’s myths do not instill virtue in young hearers,[3557] Proclus observes, mature hearers can grasp the tales’ “mystical” meaning.[3558] For example, Hephaistos’s fall from heaven simply communicates the divine’s movement from high to low; Ouranos’s castration teaches degeneration from the original order; and so forth.[3559] Theomachy portrays the original united creation, on the one hand, as opposed to fragmentation and ultimately the formation of fallen matter, on the other.[3560] Both Ares and Hephaistos desiring Aphrodite in some manner signifies the presence of beauty in each of their spheres.[3561]
Some other philosophers rejected Homer more harshly,[3562] but most found the poets useful. Criticisms naturally provoked a backlash; a second-century C.E. critic of Homer was allegedly bound by the Furies and choked in Tartarus for this wickedness.[3563] Proclus claims to defend the true meaning of the myths against impious people who ignorantly criticize the gods’ immorality.[3564] His criticism may have applied to Epicureans;[3565] some scholars think it was directed at least in part against Christian critics.[3566]
Even some very hellenized Jewish writers cited Homer,[3567] though some Palestinian rabbis proved less friendly,[3568] and some of the very hellenized Sibylline Oracles[3569] condemned him as a purveyor of falsehood (Sib. Or. 3.419–32, esp. 419, 430).[3570] On the whole, Jewish people in the Diaspora were happy to appropriate Greek philosophy, poetry, and oracles where these could be used to support their Jewish teaching.[3571] Second-century Christian apologists likewise freely exploited Greek poets.[3572] To fail to appeal to this literary canon was to risk dismissal from Greek intellectuals who would suppose the apologist simply ignorant of it. Later church fathers who approved of Greek learning generally justified it from the same three NT examples, none of which cites Homer (Acts 17:28; 1 Cor 15:33; Titus 1:12), which probably represent the sum total of explicit classical quotations in the NT.[3573] (For a point of comparison, it may be remembered that the NT writers quote the OT hundreds of times, with additional quotations from early Jewish texts.)[3574] It was also deemed rhetorically effective to cite the testimony of the audience’s preferred canon rather than one’s own.[3575]
Because everyone studied the same texts in Greek elementary education, it is possible that most of Paul’s hearers in the narrative world (and at least some of Luke’s) would have recognized Paul’s citations, although perhaps neither he nor some of his hearers would know from which poets they came (see discussion below).[3576] Scholars point out that neither Luke nor Paul need have known Aratus either directly or through an anthology; the Diaspora Jewish apologist Aristobulus apparently exploited the same quotation long before their era (see discussion below).[3577] (This observation does not rule out the possibility that Paul recognized that Aratus was the author of the quotation, in view of the accumulation of possible supporting evidence; see discussion below.)
WHO AUTHORED “IN HIM WE LIVE”?
A more difficult question concerns who is quoted by Paul. Conflating quotes was common practice, probably sometimes inadvertently but sometimes deliberately.[3578] Does Paul quote from more than one author here? “Some” (τινες) could suggest this, but this interpretation is hardly necessary; this was proper Greek idiom even if one were citing only a single poet.[3579] The most common suggestion is that Paul’s first line (“in him we live and move and have our being”) probably derives from the sixth-century B.C.E. Cretan poet Epimenides;[3580] the second line is often compared to a similar line in Cleanthes but usually attributed to Aratus,[3581] who said much the same thing but in a version closer to the wording here (and more widely quoted, including by a Jewish apologist).
The quotation’s attribution to Epimenides is possible but uncertain.[3582] It would certainly fit the setting; although much of Luke’s ideal audience might not catch a connection, it would have made sense for the historical Paul to offer such a quote if he also mentioned the altars to the unknown gods. It was to Epimenides that one tradition assigned the role of the Athenians’ advisor regarding the altars (Diog. Laert. 1.110).[3583] It has also long been argued that the quote in Titus 1:12, also from the Pauline circle, reflects the same poem of Epimenides: the Cretans built a tomb for Zeus, “liars, evil beasts, slow bellies! But thou art not dead; thou art risen . . . for in thee we live and move and have our being.”[3584]
The problem is that the earliest extant source for the connection stems from the extended quote of this section of Epimenides in the Syriac father Isho‘dad of Merv about 850 C.E., though he is probably dependent on the earlier Theodore of Mopsuestia.[3585] Against this connection to a single poem is the fact that the quotation lacks the simplest indication of Greek meter necessary for a poem; after 400 C.E. Greek pronunciation of vowels had shifted too much for later writers to recognize the difference.[3586] The language is more philosophic than poetic;[3587] it is also, however, suited to the context’s polemic against idols (Acts 17:29), whether philosophic or not.[3588] Still, it is unlikely that Isho‘dad fabricated the line; he paraphrased in Syriac, and Greek versions of the line are modern translations back into Greek, which are notoriously fallible. The content could postdate Epimenides (a prephilosophic poet) yet have been attributed to him (as now-anonymous older fragments or works were often misattributed) in Hellenistic and Roman antiquity.[3589] The threefold structure here represents a tricolon, a conventional pattern found in but not limited to philosophers;[3590] the structure might (though need not) reflect Lukan editing.[3591]
Some of Epimenides’s reported wording sounds suspiciously Christian, but this may again reflect Isho‘dad’s Syriac paraphrase; it appears less likely that a Christian simply composed the lines, since they are expressly applied by Minos to Zeus. An earlier hymn to Zeus speaks of the Cretans as liars and also of tombs and immortal, eternal Zeus in such close connection as to probably echo the lines of Epimenides today extant only from a later source.[3592] Further, because Isho‘dad’s line from Aratus is accurate, it is reasonable to suppose that his line from Epimenides likely is as well.[3593] It may be of interest that Epimenides was said to have purified Athens, among other cities (Paus. 1.14.4).
The connection with Epimenides is not certain. If Isho‘dad’s (or his source’s) Syriac paraphrase somewhat christianizes Epimenides’s quote with language suggesting resurrection, it might also innocently conform the quotation to Paul’s words in Acts. It is also possible that Luke’s “in him we live . . .” simply develops the context in Aratus (the “second” quotation here): before declaring that we are his offspring (Phaen. 5), Aratus announces that the streets, marketplace, and sea are full of Zeus (Phaen. 2–4). The language is not close to Acts 17:28, but one could argue that the sense is close enough and that Paul or Luke simply developed it into a tricolon. But while the context in Aratus may have suggested the idea, Luke or Paul probably looked elsewhere for the wording. The reported link between Epimenides and the altars of unknown gods probably significantly strengthens the connection’s likelihood. On the whole, then, it seems likelier than not that Epimenides is the direct or indirect source of Paul’s quotation here, though complete certainty eludes us.
Whatever its original source, the quotation probably takes on a new meaning in its new context. The language is philosophic, similar to Stoic thought.[3594] The idea that God pervades everything[3595] was particularly appealing to Stoics,[3596] who especially emphasized that God lived in people[3597] and who could speak of being in God.[3598] Such language naturally supported pantheism among many Stoics (especially the earlier Stoics), as noted above.[3599] Whereas a pantheistic Stoic could speak easily of living and moving “in” God (see comment on Acts 17:27–28), traditional Jews, Luke, and Paul may have applied the phrase more in the sense of “living . . . by God.”[3600] Jewish people thought not of pantheism but of God’s omnipresence.[3601] Even Jewish texts that speak of God as “all,” when read in context, view God as creator,[3602] as Paul plainly does here (17:24); Paul also clearly differentiates God from creation, despite allowing a unique link with humans (17:29).[3603]
WHO AUTHORED “WE ARE HIS OFFSPRING”?
With the other line scholars often compare Cleanthes Hymn to Zeus 4: ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ γένος ἐσμέν.[3604] Known from an anthology and from Stoic quotations, it must be one of the most commonly quoted Stoic lines in antiquity and was well known in the first century.[3605] (Because Cleanthes was Zeno’s successor as head of the Stoic school, first-century Stoics continued to cite him frequently.)[3606] Although Stoic poets presented Zeus as the Stoic Mind or Logos, non-Stoics could adapt the language without some of its original ramifications.[3607] Thus, for example, the epistolary Paul probably even identified Christ with the Logos, following a wisdom trajectory already established in Hellenistic Judaism (1 Cor 8:6).[3608]
But close as the quotation is to Cleanthes, scholars generally hold that it is more likely specifically from Aratus,[3609] whose third-century B.C.E. astronomical poem Phaenomena, which contains the line (the first half of v. 5), remains extant.[3610] The similarity with Cleanthes is hardly surprising; both Cleanthes and Aratus “studied Stoicism in Athens” in the same period, possibly under Zeno; they may thus depend on “a common source,” or one may have borrowed from the other.[3611]
The exact wording here, however, is from Aratus rather than from Cleanthes. Aratus’s context also better suits the words’ context in Acts 17:28; whereas Cleanthes employs the line to emphasize that people should praise God, Aratus emphasizes that Zeus pervades all creation and is the ancestor of humanity and that both earth and seasons demonstrate his existence.[3612] Like Cleanthes, Aratus was widely quoted, though perhaps more often outside specifically Stoic circles.[3613]
Both the (possibly) Epimenides quotation and the line from Aratus in 17:28 reflect the thought “of a widely diffused Stoicism,” and Aratus’s astronomical poem was quite popular; it is thus possible, as remarked above, that Luke had access to the material from popular anthologies.[3614] More important in this case is that this speech was neither the first nor the last source to cite this section of Aratus’s Phaenomena for monotheistic apologetic purposes. The earlier Hellenistic Jewish apologist Aristobulus quoted all of verses 1–9 of its introduction (Aristob. frg. 4.6–7), which he applied to the biblical account of creation.[3615]
Theophilus of Antioch quoted the same material, and Clement of Alexandria used several verses; like Aristobulus, they emphasize both God’s power and providence.[3616] Luke may follow Aristobulus in substituting “God” for “Zeus” here (without which he may have considered the quotation unacceptable);[3617] though it is possible that both made the change independently (a change they may have felt necessary in order to use it),[3618] it seems more likely that Luke uses a text already “sanctified” by its appropriation in Jewish apologetic. He may follow a related tradition but probably does not originate the citation. The “classical” literature Luke (and other NT writers) cite is otherwise almost entirely restricted to the Jewish “classical” canon rather than the Greek one.
PAUL’S FAMILIARITY WITH SUCH SOURCES?
Whether Paul (or Luke) learned the quotation from the Phaenomena, from an anthology, or, more likely, from Hellenistic Jewish apologetic, would either of them have known that it stemmed from Aratus? If they knew Aristobulus well enough to appropriate his quote of Aratus, they probably also knew the attribution to Aratus, which Aristobulus freely supplies (frg. 4.6). It is likely that the well-educated historical Paul, at least, would have known this, and it is possible that Aratus’s authorship even supplied a reason for remembering or at least narrowing the range of possible choices to this quotation in particular: Aratus was from Soli in Cilicia, Paul’s province (a tradition that might not have occurred to Luke).
Although his training and literacy were obviously primarily in Scripture, the epistolary Paul certainly was capable of citing Greek literature on occasion (1 Cor 15:33),[3619] perhaps especially when necessary to silence objections from those who thought him poorly educated,[3620] to which the speech in Athens might present an analogous situation. If Paul learned anything at all from the pervasive influence of philosophy in Cilicia (see comment on Acts 9:11),[3621] he should have recognized one of the more popular quotes from one of Cilicia’s own philosophical poets.
This correspondence, like the probable use of tradition about Epimenides that can be linked with the unknown-god tradition, tends to favor the historical likelihood that, even in the quotations, Luke depends on a complete source, possibly Paul himself, who may have reported the substance of some of his teaching in Athens. Neither correspondence can be proved, and there are significant problems in both cases, such as the somewhat probable dependence on Aristobulus or on handbooks. But such dependence would still not explain the principle of selection, given the vast number of anthologized quotations available,[3622] and taken together, Pauline tradition in Epimenides and Aratus quotations appears very plausible.[3623]
THE SUPREME DEITY AS FATHER
Claiming that God or Zeus was father or begetter of humanity was a common Greek idea.[3624] Zeus or Jupiter appears as “the Father” in both Greek[3625] and Latin[3626] texts, is addressed as “Father” in invocations,[3627] and is “Father of all,”[3628] father of the gods,[3629] father of humanity,[3630] and often “father of humans and gods.”[3631] He could also be portrayed as father of kings[3632] or of the virtuous.[3633] Human feelings toward mortal parents can give people a way to approach their ultimate parent, the Zeus of their ancestors;[3634] human fathers were reflections of the universal father.[3635] Whereas Zeus’s kingship was linked with strength, his fatherhood could be linked with gentleness and kindness.[3636]
Because their pantheon was polytheistic, Greeks and Romans also assigned the respectful title “father” to other deities, such as Time,[3637] Janus,[3638] Neptune,[3639] Pluto,[3640] Oceanus,[3641] Uranus,[3642] Saturn,[3643] Apollo,[3644] Mars,[3645] Bacchus,[3646] Heracles,[3647] and, in some sense, the emperor.[3648] (The emperor was often “father of his country,” an honorary title.)[3649]
Stoic thinkers also spoke of God as a father[3650]—that is, “father of all,”[3651] father of human beings,[3652] and father of humans and deities[3653]—by virtue of creation. Platonists could view the highest, timeless deity as “father” of all other deities.[3654] As in this passage of Acts, Greeks sometimes claimed that the gods loved humanity on account of kinship with them.[3655] They could also argue that kinship to deity should free people from superstition (Pliny E. N.H. 2.5.26).
Jewish people called God “Father” (also an occasional OT title for God),[3656] though not all with equal sympathy for the Greek usage. Philo speaks of the “supreme father of deities and people” acknowledged by both Greeks and barbarians (Spec. Laws 2.165); Josephus, however, condemns the Greeks’ “father” who rules heaven as a tyrant, rejecting Zeus’s identification with the true God (Ag. Ap. 2.241).
Greek-speaking Jews were united, in any case, in regarding God as Father of all,[3657] from Philo[3658] to the Sibylline Oracles;[3659] Jewish magical texts could also invoke God as “father of all creation.”[3660] God was “begetter of gods and humans.”[3661] Greek-speaking church fathers agreed.[3662] A variety of other Jewish sources also called God “Father.”[3663] The liturgical title that came to dominate in later rabbinic Judaism was “Father in heaven.”[3664] Corporate Jewish and Christian prayers to God as Father are nearly identical.[3665] Because Jewish culture generally perceived fathers as wise, benevolent, but authoritative protectors, “father” offered a useful image for God.[3666]
For most Jewish sources, God is especially Israel’s Father;[3667] for most Christian sources, God is Christians’ Father. Luke usually employs the term in this traditional Jewish and Christian manner,[3668] but here he does portray Paul, like many Diaspora Jews, as able to relate to Greek hearers with the conventional Greek usage of God as father of humanity. After all, Adam is also “son of God” (Luke 3:38), as one might infer even from the sense of “image and likeness” in Gen 1:26–27 taken together with 5:1–3.
THE USE OF SUCH QUOTATIONS
That the speech may give these quotations a sense foreign to their earliest usage may not have troubled Luke. Quotations were often given out of context;[3669] certainly they were reapplied for new purposes, as Jewish and Christian tradition regularly reappropriates Scripture for new settings. Cicero uses Homeric characters to demonstrate principles of law;[3670] Seneca notes that writers often recycle Virgil’s language in very different circumstances to depict something simply similar to what Virgil described.[3671] One could reapply a line from an earlier poet to a different contemporary person.[3672] Rhetoricians, indeed, debated the appropriate quotation of poets.[3673]
Educated people displayed their erudition by citing poets or other literate people and expected others to notice their borrowing (Seneca Suas. 3.7); hearers would prove less respectful toward one lacking such marks of education. In the early first century B.C.E., Varro already quotes Roman writers’ allusions to Homeric characters such as Agamemnon (L.L. 5.3.19). Homer was quoted in conversation (Apul. Metam. 2.13), and a wealthy freedperson’s inadequate knowledge of Greek legend invited aristocrats’ satire (Petron. Sat. 59).[3674] Showing knowledge of the quotation was usually a sufficient mark of education without requiring a hermeneutical digression to justify one’s reapplication of language. But while philosophers could cite poets because this appealed to the masses, they were not to do so uncritically.[3675] Not everything in the poets was useful.
Most important here, these quotations in Acts are eminently useful for the flow of the speech’s argument. Not only do they demonstrate that God is not “far” (Acts 17:27) and hence is not a “foreign god” (17:18) or a “new” teaching (17:19, 21); they also emphasize that it is people who “live” and “move” by God and are his children. This reflects conventional polemic against idols, which do not “live” or “move” (e.g., Isa 46:7), and the OT notion that people rather than idols reflect God’s image (Gen 1:26–27) and hence are (or were designed to be) his children (5:1–3).[3676]
(6) Idols Are Unlike God (17:29)
The flow of argument from Acts 17:28 is that if people are God’s offspring (and hence his workmanship), God cannot be people’s workmanship (and hence images are inappropriate).[3677] Probably[3678] this passage also implies that people are God’s image (see Gen 1:27–28; 5:1–3, noted above).[3679] This idea sometimes appears in some form in pagan texts[3680] and, given its biblical support, appears, not surprisingly, often in early Jewish sources.[3681] This would fit Paul’s implicit allusion to Adam in Acts 17:26; although Gentiles would not recognize it, Paul’s theological foundation is biblical (as in the biblical echo in 14:15 and, in Paul’s own writings, the biblical assumptions in philosophic language in Rom 1:20, 26).
CRITIQUES OF DEITY IMAGES
If anyone could have read part of Paul’s argument in Acts 17:28 as akin to pantheism,[3682] Paul’s opposition to the divinity of created things in 17:29 should have corrected this misunderstanding—though early Stoics (who tended toward some pantheistic notions) were also dissatisfied with idols, because the deity could not be localized or represented in images.
Various Hellenistic intellectuals had long criticized traditional Greek religion (see comment on Acts 14:15–17; 17:18). Various poets and philosophers also spoke of deities’ divine forms as superior to human depictions, though usually not ruling out the use of artificial images.[3683] Thus a poet praises deified Clemency (Statius Theb. 12.482): “No image is there, to no metal is the divine form entrusted, in hearts and minds does the goddess delight to dwell” (12.493–94 [LCL, 2:481]). Advanced peoples, Maximus of Tyre opines, need no images of gods (Max. Tyre 2.1), for such images are only symbols of deity as far below them as earth to the heavens (2.2);[3684] images are acceptable, but only as props for learning to envision God beyond them (2.10).[3685] True experience of the gods is superior to mere acquaintance with their statues (Philost. Hrk. 7.3; 9.7).
Even in the first century, some thinkers were debating the propriety of images to represent the gods.[3686] Although Stoics by Paul’s era had achieved greater rapprochement with popular religion, they would be well aware that early Stoics had opposed images of deity;[3687] even if they disagreed with Paul’s view, they would hardly dare ridicule it. (The ridicule in Acts 17:32 is probably not primarily from the Stoics but from Epicureans and perhaps others, though the Stoics, too, would have found 17:31 offensive or unintelligible.)[3688] Opposition to images was never dominant among Gentiles, but it was intelligible and was a position with an intellectually respectable pedigree.
A STRONGER REJECTION OF IDOLS
Such ideas, however, were generally merely “soft” monotheism; images could be retained as symbols.[3689] Paul rejects them far more decisively in 17:30, declaring God’s displeasure and inviting repentance. Paul’s thought is therefore distinctly Jewish,[3690] albeit presented in language more amenable to Greek philosophy.[3691] (His mention of “the deity”—the substantive τὸ θεῖον—is language perfectly at home among philosophically educated Greeks[3692] and Greek-speaking Jews seeking to relate to them.)[3693]
Gentiles knew that Jews rejected idols,[3694] although, apart from those most familiar with Judaism (especially its doctrine of resurrection, 17:31), it is not clear that everyone listening to the Areopagus’s deliberations would recognize that Paul and his message were Jewish at this point. (In view of the information of 17:17, perhaps some of his Stoic and Epicurean interlocutors in 17:18, who brought him to the Areopagus, would know. Luke does not give us enough detail for us to infer whether such information would have been known to Gentile Athenians in the narrative world.)
Despite the attractiveness of an imageless monotheism to many thinkers (an attraction that undoubtedly contributed to the swelling ranks of uncircumcised adherents to some Diaspora synagogues), most highly educated pagans held too much status in the larger society to identify themselves with Judaism, an “ethnic,” national religion from an apparently intransigent people in Syria. The Judean revolt certainly highlighted negative associations with Judaism, diminishing the attractiveness of the portrait that Diaspora Jewish apologists had labored to present.
PAUL’S APPROPRIATE WORDING
Paul’s mention of costly idols is appropriate; Phidias made from gold and ivory the Athena statue in Athens’s Parthenon,[3695] and Athenians may have exported gold deity statues.[3696] Other statues of gold[3697] and silver[3698] and other substances[3699] are well attested, though most have naturally not survived. Israelite polemic viewed the most expensive idols as made of silver and gold, as here (cf. also 19:24);[3700] even in general, these substances do not usually carry a positive connotation in Luke-Acts (Acts 3:6; 8:20; 20:33).
Paul employs τὸ θεῖον here to describe the nature of deity; this could be neutral language for the sake of the argument, but since Paul has elsewhere been speaking of “God,” it probably refers to the divine character (cf. Rom 1:20; 2 Pet 1:3–4).[3701] Even so, the setting is appropriate; this is the only instance of τὸ θεῖον in the NT or LXX. Placing this clause at the end of the sentence, rather than where we would more naturally anticipate it, is a sign of this speech’s sophisticated rhetorical level.[3702]
IV. REPENT BEFORE THE RISEN JUDGE (17:30–31)
Rhetoricians warned that when one’s judges were likely to disapprove of one’s argument, one should save the controversial argument for later in the speech, meanwhile building as much goodwill as possible. Paul has established common ground insofar as possible but now must expose the most controversial part of his message. Although repentance was a characteristic Jewish and Lukan notion, its closest equivalent notion in Athens might be conversion to philosophic thinking.
Paul, however, grounds this repentance in light of the coming day of judgment, another Jewish notion. God once tolerated idolaters’ ignorance (Acts 17:23), but now God will judge the world justly through a man he accredited by raising him from death. Paul saves Jesus’s resurrection for the closing words of his speech, aware that nothing in his message will prove as abhorrent to his critics as this.
(1) Repenting from Ignorance about God (17:30)
Ignorance about God was less culpable than deliberate distortions about him, but given God’s self-revelation of his character in humanity (17:27–28), idolatry remained culpable (17:29), and now, given the climactic and more complete revelation of his purpose in the historic act of raising Jesus, it became unexcusable (17:31).
It was customary in speeches where hearers might be closed to one’s message to delay the offensive features at the beginning, building rapport first.[3703] One early Hellenistic handbook’s advice is apropos in this case: a speech will not be unbelievable (ἀπίστως) if we provide arguments to support one’s claim (Rhet. Alex. 30, 1438b.2–4). But if (as in Paul’s teaching of the resurrection for the Areopagus) something seems too improbable, one should either omit it altogether (unconscionable for Luke and Paul) or establish first what is easily argued and reserve the controversial point for the end (1438b.4–9); by this means one can counter ἀπιστίας (1438b.9–10). Most of the speech identifies elements of the monotheistic biblical worldview, which also could gain a respectful hearing among educated pagans; only in the conclusion (Acts 17:30–31) does the speech become specifically Christian.[3704]
In contrast with artistic representations in 17:29, which are not God’s image, God’s true revelation appears in the gospel in 17:30–31 (cf. Rom 1:17–18, 23). This argument coheres with the NT use of figurative wisdom language for Jesus as God’s image (Col 1:15; Heb 1:3; cf. Rom 8:29)[3705] and the use of the philosophers’ Logos as a conceptual bridge, as in Philo and later Christian apologists.[3706] In Jewish tradition, Wisdom was God’s image (Wis 7:26);[3707] in Philo, the Logos fills this role.[3708] In Philo, the Logos, as God’s image, imprints his likeness on not only people but all creation.[3709]
Like Paul here, some philosophers used μετάνοια for transformation.[3710] Most used the term more weakly but nevertheless accepted the general concept of conversion and transformation. Philosophers employed a particular variety of rhetoric, the “protreptic” discourse, when seeking to convert people to philosophy.[3711] Although initiation into religious cults was rarely associated with moral transformation, philosophic conversion demanded it, and ethics formed a major component of philosophic instruction.[3712] (A disciple who turned out badly, like Alcibiades, thus became a matter of reproach to his teacher.)[3713] Sometimes notable profligates turned to the reasoned life of philosophy.[3714] For Stoics, the transition to virtue could be immediate, with much transformation occurring rapidly (though progress was also emphasized); Epicureans and Platonists emphasized more gradual progress through the enlightenment of their teaching.[3715] Christian conversion differed by adding the religious element of a divine being’s involvement, but the formal concept of conversion was intelligible to philosophers.[3716] What would strike philosophers as offensive was the same feature that would offend Jewish hearers called to repentance (see comment on Acts 2:38); they believed that they already were on the right way.[3717]
The message of “repentance” is familiar in Acts, proclaimed to Jew (Acts 2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 19:4; cf. 8:22; Luke 1:16–17; 3:3, 8; 5:32; 10:13; 11:32; 13:3, 5; 15:7, 10; 16:30) and Gentile (Acts 11:18; 13:24; 14:15; cf. Luke 24:47) alike and equally offensive to both (Acts 20:21; 26:17–18, 20). Jews turned from their own sins; among sins from which most Gentiles had to turn is idolatry, as in typical Jewish expectations (fitting the context here, in 17:29; and Paul’s preaching, 1 Thess 1:9). See further comment on Acts 2:38; 14:15.
That previous ignorance had somewhat excused a situation no longer excusable might appear more intelligible to someone who granted the truth of Paul’s claim. Philosophy often identified wrongdoing with ignorance, though it could remain culpable (e.g., Max. Tyre 25.5), but throughout antiquity ignorance was often offered as grounds for diminishing culpability (see comment on Acts 3:17, to a Jewish audience). Jews identified idolatry with ignorance (e.g., Jos. Asen. 13:11; see comment on Acts 3:17). Jewish wisdom advised overlooking others’ ignorance (Sir 28:7) and acknowledged that God overlooked sins on account of repentance (Wis 11:23). God might also patiently allow humanity to continue in sin rarely impeded, but with the promise of eventual judgment.[3718] (Some Gentiles would condemn as indulgent or suspiciously impotent a supposed deity who failed to avenge his honor.)[3719]
Referring to past times as “times of ignorance” for the Gentiles in contrast with the present situation now that Jesus has come provides another indication of Luke’s salvation-historical structure.[3720] (Paul has already addressed God establishing epochs; see comment on Acts 17:26.) God has raised the standard from past ignorance (cf. also Acts 14:16).[3721] The epistolary Paul attached culpability to Gentiles’ ignorance (Rom 1:18–30; cf. 1 Cor 1:21; Eph 4:18–19),[3722] but in a context that provided a basis for condemning also Jewish sins (Rom 2:1–3, 9–29); in the argument of Romans, rhetorical principles demand emphasizing that the issue is not past but present. In Romans, Paul also writes that God passed over earlier sins (3:25), though in context this probably at least includes Jewish sins forgiven in anticipation of the cross. The ideas are different, though, again, they would not be incompatible in the same author when rhetorical situations are taken into account; the compatibility is much greater if we allow, as we must, that Luke provides at best a summary, one that he has edited to fit the emphasis of his work. Here, as in Romans, the present situation is not excusable ignorance but repentance in light of the presently revealed gospel (Rom 1:17–18).[3723]
This speech to Athenians reflects the same tension one finds elsewhere in Luke’s apologetic approach to salvation history: the message is both old and new (cf. similarly 1 John 2:7–8). Elsewhere it is old because grounded in the history and prophecies of Israel, yet new because the climactic event has occurred; here it is old because it refers to the benevolent Creator, who is not far from humanity (Acts 17:24–28), yet is new (cf. 17:19, 21) because this new stage in salvation history calls Gentiles also to account.[3724]
(2) The Coming Judge (17:31)
Whereas a normal forensic speech appeals to the judges to rule in one’s favor, here Paul announces that his hearers are the ones who will face the true judgment[3725] (cf. the same tactic in 7:51–53, and comment there). Although I count this speech as more deliberative than forensic, the Areopagus’s role of evaluating new teachings here renders the stakes to some extent analogous. Luke approves of communicating the gospel in culturally intelligible terms and emphasizing common ground; he does not favor dishonestly watering down the message so far to gain acceptance that it can no longer convert—even when failure to gain acceptance means losing some access to the public forum.
But the speech also offers a model beyond its immediate literary setting. That the message applies not only to Athenians but to “all people everywhere” (17:30) fits Luke’s ethnic universalism (Luke 24:27; Acts 1:8) as well as Paul’s (e.g., Rom 1:14, 16; 10:11–13).[3726] Luke would not expect his audience to memorize and reuse the speech in other settings, but he probably employs it as a model in the sense of provoking them to think creatively how to engage their intellectual milieu.[3727]
Would the historical Paul have risked offending his audience with such an abrupt turn to concepts foreign to them?[3728] It is hard to think otherwise; it seems inherent in the very message he preached in his next stop after Athens (1 Cor 1:17–25; 2:4–5);[3729] likewise, Paul had recently taught Jewish Christian eschatology to the believers in Thessalonica, including the coming judgment of those who venerated idols (1 Thess 1:9–10).
The message of divine judgment was widely intelligible (even in the story of Epimenides and the nameless altars, narrated above). Traditional Greeks expected judgment in the afterlife in addition to occasional conflicts with angry deities in life; those who denied deities who could enforce moral demands were also thought to feel less morally accountable.[3730] This differed, however, from mainstream Jewish eschatology (especially in Judea and to the east), which, in addition to judgment in the afterlife, emphasized that God had (as Acts 17:31 notes) “fixed a day”[3731] for future judgment. Among Jews still more than among Gentiles, failure to accept the doctrine of judgment was widely associated with lack of moral accountability. This is also the standard early Christian understanding (Col 3:4–6; 1 Thess 3:13; Titus 2:12–14; 2 Pet 3:3–4, 11–14; 1 John 3:3; cf. 1 Cor 15:29–34; 1 Thess 5:23).
That the deity was displeased with the Athenian hearers’ situation, the assumption of Paul calling for repentance, might offend some. The concept of a deity’s wrath was intelligible in Greek mythology[3732] but less so among philosophic notions of an abstract, emotionless deity.[3733] The idea of future judgment was sometimes accepted as morally useful, and its denial as dangerous to public morals.[3734] Celsus criticized the use of fear in rhetoric as manipulating emotions (pathos) rather than appealing to rational proofs (logos) or the speaker’s character (ēthos).[3735] Yet Celsus himself did not reject the idea of future punishments, since the teaching was morally useful; he merely rejected the Christian conception of such judgment[3736] (which the speech summary does not detail here). Although Plato and Aristotle viewed the cosmos as eternal,[3737] Epicureans[3738] and Stoics[3739] did envision the cosmos as coming to an end (though for Stoics it would be repeated cyclically).[3740]
Paul’s message, however, is a traditional Jewish one. That God would “judge the world in righteousness” reflects biblical language (Pss 9:8; 96:13; 98:9).[3741] The specific language of a “day of judgment” is Jewish,[3742] and early Judaism found already in its Bible the concept of a day set aside for God to judge the world.[3743] The term used for “establish” or “set” or “fix” here (ἵστημι) can mean “to specify contractually” (see BDAG); in this case, it applies to a judge setting the date for the trial. Jewish teachers debated whether the day was fixed or depended on human response (see comment on Acts 1:7); this text supposes a fixed day (as in Acts 1:7; cf. Mark 13:32).
Early Christians expected Jesus to be judge at his coming (e.g., 2 Thess 1:7; Matt 25:31–33; 1 John 2:28; Jude 14–15; cf. 1 Cor 4:5); although many ancient traditions do assign a subordinate judgment role to human agents (e.g., Enoch, Minos, and Rhadamanthus),[3744] Jewish tradition especially recognized God as final judge.[3745] (For God “judging the world,” see, e.g., Pss 9:8; 67:4; 96:10, 13; 98:9; Isa 51:5; Joel 3:12.) The epistolary Paul regards God as the world’s judge (Rom 3:6), but also Christ (2 Cor 5:10; cf. 2 Thess 1:7; 2 Tim 4:1, 8) and the saints (1 Cor 6:2); nor was the idea of God ruling through his agent or agents new (cf. Isa 9:7; Dan 7:13–14, 26–27).[3746] We should probably not infer too much about Luke’s Christology here as if to contradict other Lukan passages;[3747] early Christians accommodated christological variety much better than did some of their post-Nicene counterparts.[3748] The God who “appointed” peoples’ boundaries (17:26) had the right to “appoint” humanity’s judge (the same term, here).
Luke rarely emphasizes the future day of judgment in Acts[3749] (though it appears there and especially in the Gospel, where it was too dominant in the Jesus tradition to ignore).[3750] But the emphasis on the world’s judgment is abundant in Paul, whose form of preaching Luke here claims to report.[3751] Stoics at least may not have been completely put off by this idea.[3752] They were in fact among the rare Greek intellectuals who anticipated a future day of destruction, though for them it was a conflagration repeated cyclically as new worlds were periodically formed and destroyed.[3753]
(3) Preaching the Resurrection (17:31)
Stoics, like other Greeks, had no category for resurrection, which they probably would have viewed as some ludicrous, magical revivification of long-decomposed corpses.[3754] Some intellectuals insisted that even a supreme deity could not raise the dead.[3755] Many thinkers accepted the idea that a body was merely a tomb, holding the soul back from its immortal, heavenly home (expressed as σῶμα σῆμα, “the body a tomb”).[3756] Scholars often find that lines from the Athenian poet Aeschylus, uttered at a mythical hearing of the Areopagus, are appropriate to summarize how difficult the resurrection concept was to a Greek worldview: “Once a person has died . . . there is no return to life [ἀνάστασις].”[3757] Scholars sometimes note that this very line appears originally in a dramatic defense before the Areopagus.[3758] A later critic of Christians complained that resurrection contradicts the way that history has always happened and that a body, once dissolved into other bodies, could not be reconstituted (Mac. Magn. Apocrit. 4.24).[3759]
One resurrection remained, however, at the center of the gospel (Acts 24:21), and resurrection was intimately connected with early Christian eschatology and conceptions of future judgment.[3760] It is possible for a Jewish work far more hellenized than Paul’s Areopagus speech nevertheless to be identifiably Jewish precisely because it includes the resurrection.[3761] Although Paul’s narrative audience may expect the speech to focus on the “unknown god” (17:23), Luke has already signaled his own interest in the resurrection in a summary of Paul’s initial preaching in Athens (17:18), which prompted the occasion for the present speech (17:19). The reader of Luke’s other apostolic speeches (like the reader of Paul’s letters, for that matter) will not be surprised to find the resurrection as the narrated climax of this speech.[3762]
Paul boldly and controversially announces that the true and caring God has offered humanity proof of the judgment claim by raising Jesus from the dead. Although Luke generally employs the term πίστις for faith, a cognate could also apply to marks of good faith—that is, pledges.[3763] The point here is “proof,” although in Luke’s theology this proof is also the foundation for faith.[3764] Stoics could employ the term for a trust that rests on certain knowledge.[3765] Likewise, in a rhetorical context (e.g., a speech seeking to persuade), πίστις means a rhetorical proof,[3766] a sense probably not foreign to Paul (1 Cor 2:4).[3767]
Paul cites the ultimate “proof” that God has offered.[3768] Paul has previously offered some proofs (such as citations in Acts 17:28) but now appeals to an ultimate, narrative one. This was not the appropriate place for a proof in the speech; but it was appropriate to reserve a more controversial point for later (as noted above), and one might also save an irrefutable, clinching argument for the end.[3769]
Scholars have debated whether this is the appropriate conclusion for the speech. Certainly it was not a normal conclusion, and this verdict probably should apply even for mere speech summaries, of the sort we have in Acts. That Luke has completed all that he wished to say is clear, since this is where he ends the speech; further, the later speeches of Acts often climax in the resurrection (26:23; esp. 24:21).[3770] But would Luke’s audience think that Paul finished all that he intended to say or rather that Paul was interrupted, per a common narrative technique in Acts (cf. 2:37; 10:44; 22:22; 26:24)?[3771] The anatomy of the speech does not match typical models,[3772] suggesting that, within the narrative world, Paul intended to say more, but this is typical of many of Luke’s speech summaries, some of which never go past the narratio (e.g., 22:1–21). Luke has provided a sufficient sample, and in terms of historical plausibility, Paul was far more likely to have been interrupted after his speech took a tack contradicting respectable philosophy (cf. also 7:51–54).
d. Response to Paul’s Speech (17:32–34)
As in most locations where Paul preaches, his hearers divide in their response to his speech. Here some prove hostile, others open minded, while a small number (much smaller than in most synagogues where Paul has preached) accept his message.
I. MIXED REACTIONS (17:32–33)
Given the implausibility of bodily resurrection on Greek premises (cf. 26:8), the audience response is hardly surprising. Paul’s apologetic might convince those open to being convinced (especially those sympathetic with his presuppositions) and might lay the groundwork for further discussion, but no single speech would easily transform a lifetime of contrary presuppositions or culture-wide plausibility structures. That Paul has even a few converts from the Areopagus and its circle of hearers (17:34) appears remarkable. Even critics now understand resurrection (vs. 17:18).
Laughter and friendly banter were conventional at Greek banquets, with teasing one another taken in good humor, and teachers could sometimes employ this technique (see, e.g., Xen. Mem. 4.2.5). But ridicule also demonstrated wit in hostile rhetoric (e.g., Plut. Cic. 5.4), and the term used here represents scornful sneering (2 Macc 7:27; 4 Macc 5:22; Wis 11:14).[3773] Crowds often expressed their views, applauding one they thought more plausible (e.g., Lucian Z. Rants 41). Athenian crowds interrupted and laughed at the young Demosthenes (Plut. Demosth. 6.3; 7.1).[3774]
From the standpoint of Luke’s purpose, however, the virtuous often faced scorn (Luke 6:22–23);[3775] he expects disciples to be ready for worse (9:23–24; 14:26; 21:16). Judaism also recognized that the wicked would scorn and mock the truth and hence face judgment,[3776] and expected that the righteous might sometimes face ridicule.[3777] Moreover, the portrait of Athenian judges mocking the apostle would not commend them to even any unconverted Gentiles sympathetic to Luke’s portrait of Paul; even Athenians could scorn those who became too arrogant.[3778]
Writers could divide persons into groups, describing their differences;[3779] here Luke emphasizes the contrasting responses (see Luke 8:12–15; comment on Acts 14:4). Scholars divide over what to make of the second group, which offers to hear Paul again. Some think that the entire Areopagus politely rejects Paul’s message.[3780] This is possible; when Felix promises to hear Paul more fully later, he is putting him off, albeit not dismissively (Acts 24:25). Yet the οἱ μέν . . . οἱ δέ construction suggests that the second group responds significantly differently from the first.[3781]
This is not conversion, but it represents at least a passive interest that is tolerant rather than hostile or demeaning.[3782] Moreover, desiring to hear Paul further did not close off the possibility of conversion: later, others who desired to hear Paul’s views, even if because of hostile publicity about the faith (28:22), did come to listen (28:23), and some were persuaded (28:24). Such a division in the crowd fits a Lukan literary pattern (cf. the partly hostile, partly interested but unconverted crowd in 23:7–9).[3783]
Especially if it was the Stoics who wanted to hear more of Paul’s teaching in 17:18–19, Luke may expect his audience to gather that they constitute the most receptive (and Epicureans, the least receptive) members of Paul’s audience. Certainly Paul’s speech connected more with Stoic beliefs and offended against more Epicurean ones.[3784] Thus the Epicureans could “sneer” while the Stoics remained interested (17:32). A later writer with some Epicurean sympathies could mock Christians for their foolish belief in immortality, a belief that makes them willing to die and go to prison.[3785] We should keep in mind that the Stoics and the Epicureans of 17:18 merely introduced Paul to the Areopagus and did not themselves constitute it. But those wanting to hear Paul again are likely those who have an intellectual curiosity (wanting to hear something “new,” 17:21), not the gathered court, as if Paul’s case must be reviewed.
Probably the more positive reading here is closer to Luke’s intention. This court’s time would be precious, and if Paul’s hearing was evaluating him for being permitted to teach, he had at least passed the test of offering something novel (17:21). Some members probably wished to hear him explain his points more fully, though in the marketplace rather than on the schedule of the Areopagus.[3786] This response would assume that Paul was permitted to keep preaching in Athens, despite the scorn of other members; he would not be offered a place to teach, but neither would he be restricted from freelancing in the marketplace.[3787] This, at least, would be the favorable outcome Luke might project by implication here: not saving faith, granted, but certainly a less incendiary reception than Paul had encountered in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Beroea. Achaia and its environs proved less hostile than had Macedonia.
II. PAUL’S SUCCESS (17:33–34)
Those who came to listen to Paul further and believed did so after Paul had left the midst of the Areopagus (17:33);[3788] but they had heard his teaching there, and he remained to talk. He had not been run out of town (see discussion on Acts 17:32). Like the converts in 17:4 (although the term is different; cf. 5:13; 9:26), those who believed “joined” Paul, becoming adherents of the movement.[3789] (Luke employs one of his favored terms here, as in 8:29; Luke 10:11; 15:15; and with significance similar to here, Acts 5:13; 9:26; probably 10:28; see comment on 5:13).[3790]
Contrary to what some scholars have inferred, there is no reason to view Paul’s mission in Athens as a failure.[3791] Indeed, far from intending to present this occasion as a failure, Luke provides it as a model for apologetic.[3792] Those who argue the contrary have often inferred Paul’s disappointment from 1 Cor 2:1, but that text in no way specifies that Paul’s message depended on a failure in Athens;[3793] further, even if one did infer Paul’s disappointment historically, it would not tell us that the disappointing aspect of Paul’s ministry in Athens was what Luke’s account would emphasize. Praising Apollonius’s success in Ethiopia, Philostratus reports that one of the great sages there left their group and became an adherent of Apollonius instead (see Vit. Apoll. 6.14–17, 22). Sages and people of status had more to turn their backs on and more influence to wield once they did so; a small number of converts in Athens might be significant.
Some scholars think that although Paul preached in Athens (1 Thess 3:1) and perhaps gathered a few converts, he started no church there.[3794] Some point out that in Paul’s letters, Achaia’s “first convert” appears to be from Corinth (1 Cor 16:15),[3795] but Paul speaks explicitly only of the first household conversion there,[3796] allowing for some scattered conversions earlier.[3797] We have no extant letters to a church in Athens, but it would seem odd for Luke to preserve names if there were in fact no individual converts at least;[3798] he lacks traditions of many other cities or space for converts’ names there (e.g., Acts 13:48–49; 14:1, 20, 23; 19:9–10; 20:17). Whether these converts formed a church we cannot say for certain (though clearly one eventually formed there),[3799] but it did not become a center of the Pauline mission as some other cities did. More important, from the standpoint of Roman administration, is that Athens was one of a handful of “free cities” excluded from the province of Achaia until the time of Constantine I.[3800] Athenian converts would not then need to be counted technically among Paul’s first converts in the province of Achaia, certainly not in a letter to Corinthians. We therefore lack grounds to doubt Luke’s report of converts there.[3801]
Luke likes to report converts of status when possible (8:27, 38; 13:12; 17:12; 18:8; cf. 26:28), for the same reason that he dedicates his work to Theophilus (1:1): the empire’s powerbrokers, who could decide how the movement should be treated, trusted the decisions of other persons of status.[3802] As a member of the town’s highest aristocratic court, Dionysius “the Areopagite”[3803] was undoubtedly a municipal decurion,[3804] one of the highest-status converts so far mentioned (excepting Sergius Paulus, 13:12).[3805] Later writers falsely ascribed some non-Chalcedonian, Neoplatonic Christian treatises to him, dating to the early sixth century C.E.[3806]
III. THE CONVERSION OF DAMARIS (17:34)
Luke follows his usual practice of mentioning women converts explicitly along with men where he has this information available (16:15; 17:4, 12).[3807] The name “Damaris” is not symbolic; it is uncommon, though attested,[3808] and may be a variant form of the more common “Damalis” (Δάμαλις, “Heifer”).[3809]
What was Damaris’s role? It is improbable that she was a member of the Areopagus; otherwise, Luke would have repeated the title attached to Dionysius.[3810] Some scholars doubt that members of the public could have been near the Areopagus’s deliberations even in the Stoa Basileios,[3811] but this view of the situation is unlikely from what we know of the Areopagus (not to mention most outside ancient courts; see comment on Acts 18:16–17). The Areopagus court lay in a fairly public area of the Agora, and some people of status with leisure may have listened in, except in closed sessions.[3812] Damaris is likely a person of status, whether as part of the delegation of philosophers from the marketplace (17:18–19) or (some suggest) even as a courtesan respected by some male colleagues.
Classical Athens is known for its seclusion of wives,[3813] whether or not this seclusion was as severe as some documents report. Centuries had passed, however, and women’s social gains in some other places (notably Rome) in the empire[3814] cannot have left Athenian women completely untouched. Nevertheless, with Athens valuing its local customs and the persistence of traditional attitudes even in many other locations, we might not expect as many local wives to have been in such a public area.[3815]
Some suggest that Damaris may have been a foreign woman or one of the hetaerae (the educated courtesans, the most respected women in classical Athens),[3816] or perhaps a God-fearer who had followed from the synagogue.[3817] Earlier women could be present in public legal assemblies in Rome,[3818] but Greek custom restricted them from accompanying husbands to banquets, considered appropriate only for courtesans.[3819] Athens was not isolated, and so in this period, when Greek women played a more public role than before, there is no reason to believe that Damaris’s elite academic or public interests linked her with courtesans.[3820] Roman citizen wives did attend banquets where men were present.[3821] But her appearance in public does seem noteworthy.
Others suggest that she may have been a philosopher and hence part of the group that accompanied Paul to the Areopagus from the marketplace (17:18–19).[3822] We know of women philosophers, accepted by some philosophic schools despite opposition from dominant Athenian tradition.[3823] Epicureans, for example, allowed women disciples[3824]—but although some Epicureans are present (17:18), they do not seem to be the primary objects of Paul’s attempted persuasion. Pythagoreans also had women disciples,[3825] as did some other ancient philosophers.[3826] These were always a minority, but so is Luke’s curious mention of Damaris. Stoics in principle welcomed women students, but they might have avoided providing them technical philosophic knowledge (Mus. Ruf. 4),[3827] since women had few opportunities to use it (4, p. 48.21–23).[3828]
This option seems much more likely than the courtesan proposal. Nevertheless, if she was a philosopher, one would expect Luke to mention this point as he mentions Dionysius’s mark of status.[3829] Still, at least philosophic or other educated interest remains a plausible explanation for her presence; she could well have been trained in a philosophic school, or be a current disciple, without having her own school or bearing the title “philosopher.”[3830] In any case, she is very likely a member of the elite.
The “others” mentioned in Acts 17:34 could be the households of Dionysius and Damaris,[3831] but on the whole it seems more likely that Luke simply lacked specific reports of the other names (cf. 1 Cor 16:15) or at least other names of either women or people of high status; or perhaps he had provided enough samples of names for the majority of his audience, who were not likely to know these people anyway.
Luke does not mention baptisms here, but as in other cities, local topography would allow for various possible sites for converts’ baptisms. There were a number of springs in Attica (Pliny E. N.H. 4.7.24); the Ilissus River and the Eridanus, its tributary, also flowed through Attica (Paus. 1.19.5).[3832] Even in the Agora, there were the southeast fountain house[3833] and the southwest fountain house[3834] (though some might dispute whether he would have found these sites appropriate).
6. Ministry in Corinth (18:1–17)
In contrast to the persecutions and local leaders’ opposition in Macedonia, Paul is welcome in Achaia and able to settle here (Acts 18:11).[3835] Corinth is the first new city to welcome him at any length since his departure from Antioch; we should not be surprised, however, if, after his past traumas, he needs assurance that it is safe to settle here. The heart of Paul’s stay in Corinth is Jesus’s promise of protection (18:9–10), which the second part of the account (18:12–17) fulfills.
Conflicts with elements within the synagogue remain (18:4–8), but this time the Roman proconsul (representing Rome in a way the Macedonian officials whom Paul encountered did not) refuses to act against him. The governor’s statement becomes a crucial piece of Luke’s overall apologetic: this is an internal religious debate within Judaism, over which Roman courts properly exercise no jurisdiction (18:12–17).
a. Historical Accuracy?
Luke may have stitched together various reports into a literary unity, although perhaps less cohesively than usual; but Luke undoubtedly had sources.[3836] A minority of scholars are extremely skeptical of Luke’s account of Paul’s stay in Corinth, arguing, for example, that Luke wished to make Paul founder of the Corinthian and the Ephesian churches to establish his version of Christianity against the false teachers of 20:29.[3837] Such an interpretation is highly unlikely. It is not impossible that Prisca and Aquila started the nucleus of a church before Paul’s arrival (Luke, at least, appears to allow them only a brief time before his arrival), but Luke has no reason to treat them as hostile competition; they appear in Paul’s letters as theological allies (Rom 16:3–5; 1 Cor 16:19; cf. 2 Tim 4:19), as does, for the most part, Apollos (1 Cor 1:12; 3:4–6, 22; 4:6; esp. 16:12). Paul writes as if he expects the Corinthians to concur that he founded their church (3:6; 4:15) and had a part in the conversion of their first household (1:16; 16:15; perhaps he was also active in the first conversion from Asia, Rom 16:5).[3838]
More commonly, scholars concede that Luke’s picture corresponds mostly to Paul’s letters but, where necessary, diverges to fit the pattern of what Luke expects Paul would have done.[3839] On this view, many of Luke’s individual accounts here contain accurate information, but he inferred from what he knew (or thought he knew) of Paul’s practice elsewhere that Paul must have begun in the synagogue.
Even this approach, however, probably underestimates the accuracy and extent of the information available to Luke. Granted, Luke emphasizes elements that fit his interests revealed elsewhere in his work.[3840] Moreover, Luke lacked considerable information; this is not a “we” narrative, and he does not claim to have been present. The eighteen months in Corinth receive less attention (in terms of number of words) than the probably brief stay in Philippi and are in the same range of words as the undoubtedly quite brief (but, for Luke’s purposes, symbolically strategic) stay in Athens, probably because the Corinth stay is not part of Luke’s “we” narrative. But if Luke accompanied Paul and other companions of Paul on later journeys (Acts 20:6–21:18; 27:1–28:16), he surely had access to such reports as his summary contains. Indeed, Paul kept in touch with other churches, which would have been interested in his activities. The mere availability of such information would not guarantee that he edited it all correctly, but too much concrete detail in the story involves the synagogue for Luke’s mention of the synagogue to be entirely mere guesswork on his part (18:2, 4, 6–8, 12–17).
It is unlikely that Luke used Paul’s letters here; if he had, he would have probably mentioned Stephanus (1 Cor 1:16; 16:15), Phoebe (Rom 16:1–2), and others. The church included many high-status members (esp. Rom 16:23) whom Luke neglects to mention (though he, admittedly, according to our premises, should have known of them).[3841] Silas, whom Luke mentions briefly (Acts 18:5) and who had been traveling with Paul already in Luke’s account (17:15), does not figure in 1 Corinthians (though his role must have been significant in Corinth; see 2 Cor 1:19). Most surprising of all, Luke does not report miracles in Corinth, though Paul assumes that the Corinthians witnessed them (2 Cor 12:12), and Luke undoubtedly could have inferred that they occurred and would have found their occurrence useful for his pattern, as in other locations.[3842] The agreements between Luke and Paul, then, are due to common sources of information, likely oral, rather than to a posthumous dependence only on Paul’s letters.[3843]
As some commentators point out, the agreements are substantial, including the following details:[3844]