596
. From Craig S. Keener, “Note on Athens: Do
1
Corinthians
16
:
15
and Acts
17
:
34
Conflict?” Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism
7
(
2010
):
137–39
. Reprinted by permission from Sheffield Phoenix.
. For examples from the first century BCE to later in the Empire, see e.g., Cicero Fam.
13
.
1
.
5
; Att.
5
.
11
; IG
2
.
2
.
3277
(in Nero’s reign); Dio Chrysostom Or.
50
.
2
; Menander Rhetor
2
.
3
,
385
.
12–13
; Horsley, Documents,
1
, §
31
, p.
82
. See further Gill, “Achaia,”
447
.
. A title for one of the judges in the Areopagus; see e.g., Lucian Anach.
19
; sources in BDAG. Such Areopagites were apparently well-to-do and of high status (e.g., Lucian Dial. Court.
7
[Musarium and her Mother ¶
2
],
296–97
).
. Horsley, Documents
1
, §
31
, p.
82
. For its earlier, smaller putative origins, see Androtion Atthis
2
, frg.
4
a (in PG
4
.
16
).
. We need not suppose that all members were always present; but members of a municipal elite frequently devoted their time to public life.
. See Reimer, Women,
247
(for probable opposition to her, she cites Livy
34
.
2
.
8–12
). On women philosophers and public speech, see e.g., Keener, “Education,”
752–58
.
. Dunn, Acts,
238
; Witherington, Acts,
533
.
. Later another Dionysus, bishop of Corinth in
170
CE, encourages the Athenian church and preserves an earlier tradition that Dionysius the Areopagite was the first bishop (Eusebius Hist. eccl.
3
.
4
.
10–11
;
4
.
23
.
3
; Grant, Paul,
57
; cf. Bede Comm. Acts
17
.
34
); but this is the sort of tradition that could also have developed from Acts
17
:
34
. A church was named for him in Athens (Finegan, Apostles, 138
); Aristides was a Christian apologist in Athens as early as
125
CE (Finegan, Apostles,
140
), and Athenagoras followed there later in the second century (
142
).
. From the names Koester, Introduction,
2
:
109
, infers the founding of a church there (while regarding the speech as Luke’s composition).
. Dunn, Acts,
238
; Pervo, Acts,
442
.
. Thrall,
2
Corinthians,
87
; Witherington, Acts,
533
.
. Paul’s “firstfruits of Achaia” may refer to the specific area around Corinth, to whom he is writing (Garland,
1
Corinthians,
767
).
. Spawforth, “Achaia”; Olshausen, “Achaia,”
80
; on Athens as a “free” city, see also Pliny Nat.
4
.
7
.
24
. Sparta was another (Cartledge, Hodkinson, and Spawforth, “Sparta,”
1432
; Olshausen, “Achaia,”
80
). Athens also lay outside the Peloponnesus (Philostratus Vit. Apoll.
8
.
15
), but the Roman province of Achaia was broader than this location.
. Cf. Pliny Ep.
8
.
24
.
2–4
.