17:17,18
Paul’s response was to reason with them. First with the Jews and the Gentile worshippers (God-fearers) and in the marketplace with anyone who would listen. Athens was known for its philosophers, and had been so for many, many years. Stoics and Epicureans were two schools of thought. They accused Paul of being a babbler. This term was applied to those who recycled others ideas, ie they weren’t independent thinkers. They also misunderstood the gospel, for they refer to him speaking about “Jesus and the resurrection” and thought he was proclaiming “foreign gods”, ie gods plural. In some ways nothing much has changed. There were a variety of misunderstandings of the gospel, just as there are today. Likewise, Judaism and Islam both think that Christianity has multiple gods, not understanding the trinity.
17:19
The Areopagus was Athen’s city council. The members were familiar with philosophy and sometimes investigated foreign cults. If their reaction was favourable the proponent of the ideas may be allowed to give a public lecture. Things could go the other way! Socrates was found guilty of “advocating foreign gods” (hence the statement in v18) and they had him executed! This practice was not alive at this time, so Paul was not likely to be executed. However, he, or his ideas, were “on trial”. So Paul was invited to explain his “new doctrine”.
17:20,21
“Bringing strange ideas to our ears”. Paul’s teaching was new to them. Indeed, the gospel teaching is new to the whole world, even in the West. Despite our long Christian heritage, most of the West has no idea what the gospel is really about. They wanted to know what the ideas meant. Luke seems to have a somewhat jaundiced impression of the Athenians and Athens as a place, seeing it as somewhere where people spent all their time debating this that or the other.
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