Acts of the Apostles 17

¹ Passing through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they eventually reached Thessalonika, where there was a Jewish synagogue.

² Paul as usual introduced himself and for three consecutive sabbaths developed the arguments from scripture for them,

³ explaining and proving how it was ordained that the Christ should suffer and rise from the dead. ‘And the Christ’ he said ‘is this Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you.’

⁴ Some of them were convinced and joined Paul and Silas, and so did a great many God-fearing people and Greeks, as well as a number of rich women.

⁵ The Jews, full of resentment, enlisted the help of a gang from the market place, stirred up a crowd, and soon had the whole city in an uproar. They made for Jason’s house, hoping to find them there and drag them off to the People’s Assembly;

⁶ however, they only found Jason and some of the brothers, and these they dragged before the city council, shouting, ‘The people who have been turning the whole world upside down have come here now;

⁷ they have been staying at Jason’s. They have broken every one of Caesar’s edicts by claiming that there is another emperor, Jesus.’

⁸ This accusation alarmed the citizens and the city councillors

⁹ and they made Jason and the rest give security before setting them free.

¹⁰ When it was dark the brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away to Beroea, where they visited the Jewish synagogue as soon as they arrived.

¹¹ Here the Jews were more open-minded than those in Thessalonika, and they welcomed the word very readily; every day they studied the scriptures to check whether it was true.

¹² Many Jews became believers, and so did many Greek women from the upper classes and a number of the men.

¹³ When the Jews of Thessalonika heard that the word of God was being preached by Paul in Beroea as well, they went there to make trouble and stir up the people.

¹⁴ So the brothers arranged for Paul to go immediately as far as the coast, leaving Silas and Timothy behind.

¹⁵ Paul’s escort took him as far as Athens, and went back with instructions for Silas and Timothy to rejoin Paul as soon as they could.

¹⁶ Paul waited for them in Athens and there his whole soul was revolted at the sight of a city given over to idolatry.

¹⁷ In the synagogue he held debates with the Jews and the God-fearing, but in the market place he had debates every day with anyone who would face him.

¹⁸ Even a few Epicurean and Stoic philosophers argued with him. Some said, ‘Does this parrot know what he’s talking about?’ And, because he was preaching about Jesus and the resurrection, others said, ‘He sounds like a propagandist for some outlandish gods’.[*a]

¹⁹ They invited him to accompany them to the Council of the Areopagus, where they said to him, ‘How much of this new teaching you were speaking about are we allowed to know?

²⁰ Some of the things you said seemed startling to us and we would like to find out what they mean.’

²¹ The one amusement the Athenians and the foreigners living there seem to have, apart from discussing the latest ideas, is listening to lectures about them.

²² So Paul stood before the whole Council of the Areopagus and made this speech:

²³ because I noticed, as I strolled round admiring your sacred monuments, that you had an altar inscribed: To An Unknown God. Well, the God whom I proclaim is in fact the one whom you already worship without knowing it.

²⁴ ‘Since the God who made the world and everything in it is himself Lord of heaven and earth, he does not make his home in shrines made by human hands.

²⁵ Nor is he dependent on anything that human hands can do for him, since he can never be in need of anything; on the contrary, it is he who gives everything – including life and breath – to everyone.

²⁶ From one single stock he not only created the whole human race so that they could occupy the entire earth, but he decreed how long each nation should flourish and what the boundaries of its territory should be.

²⁷ And he did this so that all nations might seek the deity and, by feeling their way towards him, succeed in finding him. Yet in fact he is not far from any of us,

²⁸ since it is in him that we live, and move, and exist,[*b] as indeed some of your own writers have said: “We are all his children”.[*c]

²⁹ ‘Since we are the children of God, we have no excuse for thinking that the deity looks like anything in gold, silver or stone that has been carved and designed by a man.

³⁰ ‘God overlooked that sort of thing when men were ignorant, but now he is telling everyone everywhere that they must repent,

³¹ because he has fixed a day when the whole world will be judged, and judged in righteousness, and he has appointed a man to be the judge. And God has publicly proved this by raising this man from the dead.’

³² At this mention of rising from the dead, some of them burst out laughing; others said, ‘We would like to hear you talk about this again’.

³³ After that Paul left them,

³⁴ but there were some who attached themselves to him and became believers, among them Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman called Damaris, and others besides.