Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Acts 17:17
Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.
17. Therefore disputed ( reasoned) he in the synagogue ] Going first to the Jews, and naturally expecting sympathy from them in his excitement against idolatry.
the devout persons ] As before, the proselytes of the gate. Cp. Act 13:50, and above Act 17:4.
and in the market daily ] One cannot but be reminded of the way in which Socrates some centuries earlier had thus gone about in the same city seizing eagerly on every one who would listen, and trying, according to his light, to shew them higher things, to open their eyes that they might discern between real knowledge and conceit without knowledge.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Therefore disputed he – Or reasoned. He engaged in an argument with them.
With the devout persons – Those worshipping God after the manner of the Jews. They were Jewish proselytes, who had renounced idolatry, but who had not been fully admitted to the privileges of the Jews. See the notes on Act 10:2.
And in the market – In the forum. It was not only the place where provisions were sold, but was also a place of great public concourse. In this place the philosophers were not infrequently found engaged in public discussion.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Act 17:17-18
Therefore disputed he in the synagogue and in the market.
Pauls discussions in the synagogue and market place
I. The parties with whom Paul reasoned. These may be looked on in two aspects:–
1. Theologically.
(1) The Jews were monotheists. They believed in the one true and living God, and in Moses as His great minister.
(2) The Epicureans were atheists. They ascribed the creation of the world to chance; they had no faith in the one infinite Creator of heaven and earth.
(3) The Stoics were pantheists. They confounded the universe with God, or regarded it rather as God. Paul had to deal, therefore, with these three great intellectual systems. Each would require a very different line of argument.
2. Ethically. These three represented three great cardinal moral evils–
(1) Self-righteousness in the Jew.
(2) Carnality in the Epicurean.
(3) Indifferentism in the Stoics.
II. The subjects on which he discoursed–Jesus and the resurrection.
1. The greatest person in the history of the race.
2. The greatest fact in the history of this person.
III. The effects of the discussion.
1. Contempt. What will this babbler say? Paul was probably no orator in their sense, nor was he of commanding presence.
2. Misconception. They thoroughly misunderstood him. He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods.
3. Curiosity (Act 17:19). This was so far the most favourable result. The apostles teaching succeeded up to this point in generating in them the desire to know something more about the new doctrine. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
St. Paul in the market place
1. St. Paul seems to have had so little thought of his own dignity, and we find his most efficient work was accomplished when he turned his back upon the synagogue, and went down into the market place. Yes, hither, rather than to the court or the palace. He did not wait for the people to come to him–he went to them. In the history of the new religion it was always so. The Scribes and Pharisees of John the Baptists day sought him, but he never sought them. Herod sent for John, but John never hung about the court, and when he was summoned to the royal presence, uttered unpleasant truths with great plainness. Nay, Christ Himself discloses a singular indifference to the reformation of either the religious or secular rulers of the time. And, when we follow the history of St. Paul, we find Agrippa, Felix, and Festus send for the apostle. So that there was no want of opportunity to make an impression in high places–and yet, the new religion resolutely sought the low ones.
2. It has been supposed that this was because the new religion aimed to testify to its sympathy with the masses. It was not aristocratic, it was democratic. Its Founder was not one of the privileged classes, He was a mechanic. And so it turned away from courts, and went where sorrow and need were most surely to be found. All which is true enough, but by no means the whole truth. The new religion turned its footsteps to the marketplace, because it discerned that in the transformation of the passions, hopes, and interests of the market place was to be found the redemption of humanity. Plato had said that no relief would ever reach the ills of men until either statesmen became philosophers, or philosophers assumed the government of states. To him the only hope of the commonwealth was in a perfect system of government, perfectly administered. It is what many of us are thinking today. But the hope of a nation really lies in the elevation and redemption of individual character among its people; and according to the New Testament, without waiting to reconstruct governments, we must begin by striving for the new creation of individual character.
3. And, in just so far as it has won any substantial victories, it is thus that the religion of Christ has worked from the beginning. Meantime we cannot overlook the fact that there have gone forward the triumphs of civilisation. When the Church points to what the faith of the Crucified has done for the individual life, the apostles of learning and science point to what these have done for society and the state, And who of us can see this without admiration.? But who of us can see it without seeing something more? With the growth of wealth there has come the growth of poverty; with the multiplication of the arts, the multiplication of evil uses to which those arts may be turned; with the birth of new sciences, there has confronted us the birth of new and hateful vices. Who of us is not awed as he sees the splendours of London or Paris or Vienna? And yet within a stones throw of some tall palace or some stately museum, what festering courts; what wretchedness and degradation! Is this the product of the highest civilisation, and if it is, how is it better than that barbarism on which, so complacently, it professes to look down? To such questions as these there can be but one answer. There is not a reform, a science, an art, a single step in the purification of our forms of government, that is not a step in the right direction. But the millennium will never come by that road. You may make government as just as was Aristides. You may make the streams of official patronage and power as pure and as wholesome as the sparkling waters of a mountain spring. But you cannot cure a cancer with spring water. You cannot restore the lost reason by means of a wholesome diet and a padded cell. There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. To that spirit, personally, something must speak as with a message from God.
4. And so we find the apostle as the messenger of that spirit, pleading and arguing in the market place. How hopeless it must have seemed at first! With what a light laugh they must have listened to this babbler. How useless, his fellow Israelites kept assuring him, doubtless, was any attempt to get a hearing there! It is the same cry now. What are you going to do about the ever-increasing mass of people who are growing up in as genuine heathenism as any that is to be found in Dahomey? How vain to attempt to gain an entrance or to make an impression there! Thank God that the apostle was wiser, and knew better than this. He knew that in the market place then, as in the tenement now, there beat the same human hearts and ached the same unanswered wants that were throbbing anywhere else. He knew that there was no one so degraded, so hardened but that somewhere in him there was the small crevice through which the truth could find its way. Above all, he knew that the more hopeless was the darkness the more urgent was the need and call for light. And so he begins at the bottom–in the market place–with the individual soul.
5. This message of the apostle, a personal message to the personal soul, is mine to you today. This religion of ours, is it a pastime for Sundays, or is it a message and a mandate for Sundays and week days alike? Will you hearken to it only here, or will you own its authority in the house and in the market place as well? If the world is to become better, it must become better because we have consented to become better. In urging such reform it is my business to hold up before you here a high ideal, and to bid you at whatever cost, to strive to realise it. Not unfrequently, I am told, What is the use of setting up an impossible mark of attainment only to daunt one by the dismal discrepancy of his own endeavours. And yet, who of us would be genuinely contented with any other? When, from those loftier levels, the Masters truth comes trembling down to our souls, there is something in us that answers to it. Even so, I think, at Athens, there were some who were carrying heavy and unshared burdens. With what unspeakable thankfulness, when at last they heard of Him who had come to lift off those burdens, must they have turned to Him and gladly laid them at His feet! (Bp. H. C. Potter, D. D.)
The Agora
The Agora, in all Greek cities the centre and focus of life, must not be confounded with an ordinary market. It was one to a certain extent. In one portion there were booths containing common articles of consumption, as well as bazaars for those of luxury. Other parts would be more suggestive of our own Covent Garden; shops for flowers and fruit; vegetables and oranges from the surrounding gardens; oil from the olive groves on the slopes of Lycabettus; honey from Hymettus; even fish from the shores of Salamis and Euboea. Mingling somewhat incongruously with these, we have the mention of stalls for books and parchments; a clothes booth; a depot for stolen goods; and the slave market called Cyclus. It was in this respect, a convenient trading centre for the surrounding city. But its main features and use were very different. Architecturally it must have been impressive. It is described by a writer as a natural amphitheatre. There was the Altar of the Twelve Gods, from which emanated, in varied directions, the streets of the city and the roads of Attica. Here, in one place, was the Stoa Basileios, the Royal Porch dedicated to Aurora; here, in another, is a Stoa dedicated to Zeus, with paintings of various deities by the artist Euphranor. These and similar ornamental buildings rose at all events on two sides, one of which was confronted with the Statues of the Ten Heroes. Xenophon tells us that, at certain festivals, it was customary for the knights to make the circuit of the Agora on horseback, beginning at the statue of Hermes, and paying homage to the statues and temples around. That garrulous throng whom Paul met here was composed of philosophers, artists, poets, historians, supplemented by a still livelier contingent of gossip mongers and idlers of every kind which gathered under alcove and colonnade to converse on burning questions. Moreover, anterior to the art of printing, and when journalistic literature was a future revelation, it formed the only means and opportunity of discussing the politics of the hour. Even the varied colour, blending and contrasted in this babel of confusion, must have been striking and picturesque, if the dress of the modern Greek is a survival of classic ages. Then the Agora opened its gates, not to natives only, but to strangers (verse 21). We can think therefore of excursionists and merchants, either in pursuit of pleasure or of gain, or both combined, from other towns and capitals near and distant. Noisy traffickers from Corinth and Thessalonica, Ephesus and Smyrna, Antioch and Damascus; sailors and voyagers from the Alexandrian vessel or Roman galley at anchor in the Piraeus. Here and there a Jew with sandalled feet, his long robe girdled round the waist and fringed with blue ribbon. Here and there some soldiers from the barracks–now on foot, now mounted–the flash of their helmets mingling with the red and yellow mantles of the market women, or with the still rarer keffeih and fillets of the swarthy children of the Arabian or Syrian deserts. What a rare symposium; what a singular whirlpool of thought in this tumultuous Agora! (J. R. Macduff, D. D.)
Certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoics, encountered him.—
Epicureans and Stoics
It is a moment of perpetual and universal human interest, this moment of our text, when philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered Paul, the Christian, with his preaching of Jesus and of the Resurrection. For it was the moment when the gospel met the two sides of human life together, and spoke to them together, and contrasted its oneness with their dividedness, its wholeness with their partialness, and showed its mission of reconciliation. Who does not know what I mean when we talk of the two sides of life? Who is so young that he has not had life come up to him in the form of a question with something to be said on both sides? Who is so old as to have outgrown such questions? What day but presents one of them? Does not the great earth itself give you a perpetual parable of your single life, and each single life upon it? How it turns between day and night! I cannot think it is wrong to illustrate in this way Christs coming to the two sides of life, each true in itself, but partial; both truths, but half truths; each to the other inconceivable, except through the coming of Christ, the higher Light and the Reconciler. Epicureans and Stoics–these two classes of men represented the two opposite points of the sphere of life. Both represented facts, but separated ones. One was a class of men and minds who had started from the very high truth that good was sure to be the highest happiness, and had degenerated quickly into the mere pursuit of happiness and pleasure, as if they were good and would bring good of themselves. These were Epicureans. And their opposites were Stoics, a class of men and minds who had started from the noble truth that the highest good involves and is hardship and bravery, and had as quickly degenerated into mere proud endurance–pride in their own strength as the only good, and scorn of any gentleness or pleasure. One said, It is a bright world, let us just enjoy it; another, It is a hard world, let us just endure it. One would become selfish in luxury, the other selfish in strength and denial; the one was caught in sweetness, the other in bitterness; the one blinded by excess of light, the other by excess of darkness. They were the reverse sides of the globe of life. And yet could anything have been truer or nobler than the facts upon which they each rested? Is not virtue happiness? Is not virtue hardship and endurance? But half truths must degenerate into error. One side of human life by itself must deteriorate and become bad and selfish, and sink just as one side of a scale without a corresponding weight upon the other side must fall. So the happiness of virtue, and the hardness of virtue, had become on either side mere self-enjoyment and self-confidence. So human life must fall into error, however high it begins, unless it encounters some higher life and light. It never has anything except its own one human tendency to rely upon, which runs away with it if not corrected, and the half truth becomes a whole error. The best of lives at its best is one-sided, and alone, without Christ, will degenerate. Its noble tendencies will narrow upon self. It will surely end in meanness and error. Paul, then, meets these degenerate representatives of noble reverse rides of life, Epicureans and Stoics; and they are together as they encounter Paul. In their degenerate form they have a common union–not union in a higher life, but in a lower life, in a common selfishness. Is it a strange alliance? And yet your own single life may show the same thing–the armour under the silk. How much you may endure for pleasures sake; how you toil selfishly in order to enjoy selfishly; and yet the toil and enjoyment are perfectly out of sympathy with each other. There is nothing in common between them but the thought of self. That hollow union is the best the earthly life can make between the two sides, which say, I ought to be happy and I ought to endure. The two ideas of enjoyment and endurance go on seemingly as hopelessly separate as ever, whether in one life or two lives. Unless Christ meet them, and their union be in what Paul preached, Jesus and the Resurrection. What happens then? First, this, and it is the great thing which the gospel was meant to do, and I beg your closest attention to it. The gospel is bent on giving the two Divine motives, a Divine Person and a Divine future, Jesus and the Resurrection. It does not announce duties; it brings warm, stimulating motives. It preaches Jesus, who is the deep love of God for you, Him whose love and strength has come from the high heaven for you, come to the deep sin for you, come across the breadth of the world to you, come through the long years to you. Return His love, and you are in the happiness of virtue at once. The happiness of His companionship is the happiness of virtue. In His company you reach that fulness of joy. And now see, it is a happiness which also includes endurance. It does not depend on circumstances. It comes from the love of a Person, of Jesus the Lord. Am I bound to Him? Then I am happy; notwithstanding how self is put down, or how circumstances change. Happiness is not a mere luxury, not a quietness, not a favourable arrangement of circumstances. But it is my friendship with Jesus, which any man can have, and with which any man can endure, and be at once both as good an Epicurean as Epicurus, and as good a Stoic as Zeno. Now turn it over and begin with the other side; not how men think of happiness, but how they think of endurance. Suppose that a man says, It is hard for me to do my duty, to be dutiful and faithful. I suppose I must just nerve myself to it and go to it as a necessity. He and you are apt to think he is very brave, and is acting just in the right spirit. You let him go off in that way, and even give him your encouragement. But the gospel never left a man in that way. It never told a man to go and do a thing because he had to do it, and had better make the best of it and go with a good grace. But it preaches Jesus as Paul preached Him to the Stoics as well as Epicureans. Do it, bear it, with Jesus and for Jesus. Go to it out of no necessity, but for the love of the Lord, who sets and leads the toil or suffering, and has borne so much for you. Can you not deny self for Him and His commands? As the gospel gives no effeminate happiness, so now it gives no bitter bravery, no dreary courage, but a joyful endurance that is happier than any earthly delight in selfish pleasures; and the two sides of life are one in that preaching of Jesus which Paul brought to Stoics and Epicureans. But Paul gave them another teaching–the Resurrection; another motive, not only a Divine Person to love, but a Divine future to reach. Enjoyment and endurance had become simply different ways of getting through the present world, and they knew nothing else. The Epicurean said, This is all there is; let us try to enjoy it as we can. The Stoic said, This is all I know of; let us try to bear it as we must. But enjoyment and endurance are two very different things when the Resurrection is announced to them, and the Epicureans and the Stoics both encounter Paul. A present opening into a future changes both of them. See what it does for happiness. It makes it no longer the happiness of present possession, but of anticipation and preparation. It makes it active and brave. It is no longer the happiness of a man who sits in the midst of his gathered harvest and eats of his fruits luxuriantly. It is the happiness of one who is enduring the care and toil of preparation and exposure in view of a future harvest. And see on the other side how Pauls truth of a resurrection changed endurance. It is no longer a bit of stern, proud resolution not to give up, to laugh bitterly and bear it hopelessly, but it is a bravery that is happy also in the great hope of result, a crown laid up, a prize at the end of the race. That alone sends cheerful sunlight through the workshop of life, the knowledge that it is a preparation for a Divine future. Do you not believe that Peter went to his preaching, after he learnt that Christ had risen, much more happily than he went to his fishing when he thought Christ was dead, and that he had just to go back and win his daily bread in the old dreary way? One was endurance with a rich future of results, the other was endurance under a mere present load of necessity. The one was happiness, also, the other was bitterness. So the glad light of a resurrection makes the Christian Stoic as light-hearted as the happiest of Epicureans. So lifes two sides help each other, and it is both sweet and strong. (Frederick Brooks.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 17. Disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews] Proving that Jesus was the Messiah: and with the devout persons, probably heathens, proselyted to the Jewish religion. And in the market: I suppose the here means some such place as our exchange, where people of business usually met, and where the philosophers conversed and reasoned. The agora was probably like the Roman forum, and like places of public resort in all countries, where people of leisure assembled to converse, hear the news, &c.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews; as Act 17:2, still giving the Jews, if there were any, the priority; or, having by that means an opportnnily to speak unto the proselytes of the Gentiles, who are the devout persons here meant: see Act 13:43.
In the market, because of the concourse thither; throwing the net of the Gospel where there were most fish; and he himself preaching, as he exhorted others to do, in season and out of season, 2Ti 4:2.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
17. Therefore disputedor,discussed.
he in the synagogue with theJewsThe sense is not, “Therefore went he to the Jews,”because the Gentile Athenians were steeped in idolatry; but,”Therefore set he himself to lift up his voice to the idol city,but, as his manner was, he began with the Jews.”
and with the devoutpersonsGentile proselytes. After that,
in the markettheAgora, or place of public concourse.
daily with them that met withhimor “came in his way.”
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews,…. There being a synagogue of the Jews here, and there being many Jews settled in this place, hence we read in Jewish writings c of men going from Jerusalem to Athens, and from Athens to Jerusalem; and hence it may be accounted for, how many of the Athenian philosophers came to be acquainted with the books and sentiments of the Jews, from whom they borrowed may things; since there were so many that dwelt among them, and doubtless had for years past, as well as by their travels into Egypt: and a Jewish synagogue being here, the apostle went into it, according to his usual manner, and began with them, as he was wont to do, preaching the Gospel to the Jews first, and then unto the Gentiles: with them he disputed, not about idolatry, or the worship of many gods, to which they were not addicted; nor about the one true and living God, whom they knew and professed; but about the Son of God, about the Messiah, contending and proving that Jesus of Nazareth was he:
and with the devout persons; that is, with the Gentiles, who were proselytes to the Jewish religion, and worshipped the God of Israel with the Jews, in their synagogues, but knew nothing of Jesus Christ, and the way of salvation by him:
and in the market daily with them that met him; where there was a concourse of people; and where, after the apostle had been once or twice, the people came purposely to meet with him, and to hear his discourses, and reason with him about points in religion: the Syriac version renders it, “in the street”; and then the sense seems to be, that as he met persons in the street, day by day, as he walked along, he would stop and talk with them, about religious things, and about their idolatry, vanity, and superstition.
c Echa Rabbati, fol. 43. 3, 4. & 44. 1.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
So he reasoned ( ). Accordingly therefore, with his spirit stirred by the proof of idolatry. Imperfect middle of , same verb used in verse 2 which see. First he reasoned in the synagogue at the services to the Jews and the God-fearers, then daily in the agora or marketplace (southwest of the Acropolis, between it and the Areopagus and the Pnyx) to the chance-comers, “them that met him” ( ). Simultaneously with the synagogue preaching at other hours Paul took his stand like Socrates before him and engaged in conversation with () those who happened by. This old verb, , occurs here alone in the N.T. and accurately pictures the life in the agora. The listeners to Paul in the agora would be more casual than those who stop for street preaching, a Salvation Army meeting, a harangue from a box in Hyde Park. It was a slim chance either in synagogue or in agora, but Paul could not remain still with all the reeking idolatry around him. The boundaries of the agora varied, but there was always the (the Painted Porch), over against the Acropolis on the west. In this (Porch) Zeno and other philosophers and rhetoricians held forth from time to time. Paul may have stood near this spot.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
1) “Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews,” (dielegeto men oun en te sunagoge tois loudaiois) -Therefore he addressed (spoke to) the Jews in the Synagogue;” Without waiting for the arrival of Timothy and/or Silas he engaged in disputation, reasoning from the Scriptures, as his custom was, following his usual course, even as his Lord did, Luk 4:16-20; Act 13:14-16; Act 13:42-45; Act 14:1; Act 18:4-5.
2) “And with the devout persons,” (kai tois sebomenois) “And to those worshipping, (devout people), those believing in God, but who had not come to know Jesus Christ as the Redeemer, even as Cornelius once was, Act 10:1-4. No doubt he chided the Jews for not resisting idolatry, that was so prevalent on every hand.
3) “And in the market daily,” (kai en te agora kata pasan hemeran) “And in the market place, (agora) every day,” even as he did daily at Ephesus in Asia Minor, after the pattern admonished of his Lord, Luk 9:23, Act 20:20-21. Even as Socrates disputed there in the agora, (open market place) some 500 years before, on philosophical matters.
4) “With them that met with him.” (pros tous paratugchanontas) “To those who came to (chanced to) be there,” or to those who took occasion to be there, wherever he had occasion to witness, in the synagogue, or in the public market place, whether Jew or Gentile, Rom 1:16; 1Co 9:19-23.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
−
17. With the Jews and religious men. It was an ordinary thing with Paul, wheresoever the Jews had synagogues, there to begin, and to offer Christ to his own nation. After that he went to the Gentiles, who, having tasted of the doctrine of the law, though they were not as yet thoroughly nousled up in [imbued with] true godliness, did, notwithstanding, worship the God of Israel, and being desirous to learn, did not refuse those things which they knew were taken out of Moses and the prophets; and because such aptness to be taught was an entrance unto faith, yea, was a certain beginning of faith, the Spirit vouchsafeth them an honorable title, who being only lightly sprinkled with the first rudiments, drew nearer unto the true God; for they be called religious. But let us remember that all the religion of the world may be brought to nought. Those are called worshippers of God spiritually who gave their name to the God of Israel. Religion is attributed to them alone; therefore there remaineth nothing else for the rest but the reproach of atheism, howsoever they toil and moil − (274) in superstition. And that for good considerations; for of whatsoever pomp the idolaters make boast, if their inward affection be examined, there shall be nothing found there but horrible contempt of God, and it shall appear that it is a mere feigned color wherewith they go about to excuse their idols. −
(274) −
“
Anxie se torqueant,” anxiously torment themselves.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(17) And in the market daily.To teach in the synagogue, and to gather the devout persons, i.e., the proselytes to whom the Law had been a schoolmaster, leading them to Christ, was after the usual pattern of St. Pauls work. The third mode of action, disputing in the market-place, the agora, which in every Greek city was the centre of its life, was a new experiment. He saw, we may believe, others so disputing; teachers of this or that school of philosophy, with listeners round them, debating glibly of the highest good, and the chief end of life, and mans relation to the One and the All. Why should not he take part in the discussion, and lead those who were apparently in earnest in their inquiries to the truth which they were vainly seeking?
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
17. Synagogue Paul was not the first Jew in Athens. And wherever there were ten Jews there was likely to be a synagogue. To the synagogue the apostle goes to offer Christ before he presents him to the agora; “to the Jew first,” even in Athens, “and also to the Gentile.”
Devout persons Athenians inclined to renounce idolatry and adore the true Jehovah.
Them that met with him To three classes then did Paul open his mission: to the Jews, to the monotheists, and to the accidental Athenians in the agora.
It was peculiarly to this last class and in the same agora that Socrates unfolded those doctrines for which he drank the fatal hemlock.
In the market In the part of the market or agora nearest the Acropolis was the famous stoa or porch, (called the . or Variegated Porch,) from which the Stoic sect of philosophers was named.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘So he reasoned in the synagogue with Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who met him.’
So each Sabbath he went into the Synagogue and reasoned with the Jews, proselytes and God-fearers, and on other days he went into the marketplace and spoke with those who met him there. It is interesting to note that in Athens he met no violent opposition, even from the Jews. Athens was an unusual place in that many were there for the very purpose of entering into discussions on religious and philosophical topics, and all recognised that others might have different views than themselves .
Thus for some good period of time his ministry continued towards Jews and God-fearers on the one hand, and out and out Gentiles on the other, and while they argued with him there was no physical opposition. No crowds would be aroused here against strange teaching. Strange teaching was of great interest in Athens. We are not told at what stage Silas and Timothy arrived, nor how soon they left again. Luke did not consider it important. It is dangerous therefore to draw conclusions from Luke’s silences.
Nor are we given any idea of what positive impression Paul made until Act 17:34. And there we are given an impression of satisfactory fruitfulness without it being exceptional (it was not a large city). It would be sufficient to establish a small church.
But Luke’s main concern here is to bring out Paul’s contact with the philosophers of Athens, and his message to them, a message which summarised his message to Gentiles. This detailed summary is intended to be contrasted with the detailed summary of his message to Jews in Act 13:16-41 with which it is in parallel in this section of the Acts (see summary in the introduction to chapter 13). That, Luke is saying, is what Paul preached to Jews and this is an example of what he preached to Gentiles.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Act 17:17. The market The forum. Heylin.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Act 17:17 . ] namely, impelled by that indignation to counteract this heathen confusion. He had intended only to wait for his companions at Athens, but “insigni et extraordinario zelo stimulatus rem gerit miles Christi,” Bengel. And this zeal caused him, in order to pave the way for Christianity in opposition to the heathenism here so particularly powerful, to enter into controversial discussions (see on Act 17:2 ) with Jews and Gentiles at the same time (not first with the Jews, and, on being rejected by them, afterwards with Gentiles).
] favours the view that, as usual in Greek cities, there was only one market at Athens (Forchhammer, Forbiger, and others). If there were two markets (so Otfried Mller and others), still the celebrated is to be understood [63] , not far from the Pnyx, the Acropolis, and the Areopagus, bounded by the on the west, by the Stoa Basileios and the Stoa Eleutherios on the south, rich in noble statues, the central seat of commercial, forensic, and philosophic intercourse, as well as of the busy idleness of the loungers.
[63] Not the Eretria ( , Strabo, x. 10, p. 447).
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
17 Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.
Ver. 17. With them that met with him ] If anybody would but lend him a little audience, he would preach to them, such was his zeal. The word must be preached in season, out of season, &c., volentibus, nolentibus.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
17. ] The (as De W. remarks against Meyer and Schneckenburger) does not necessarily give the consequence of what has been stated in Act 17:16 , but only continues the narration. See above on ch. Act 11:19 .
] Strabo (x. 1) speaking of the Eretrians in Euba says that some suppose them to have been named , (as distinguished from the Ceramicus, which was the old forum). It was the space before the , where the Stoics held their .
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Act 17:17 . , see Rendall, p. 162, Appendix on , for the antithesis; a simple instance of two parties acting in opposition. Page however finds the antithesis to in Act 17:19 . . (so W. H.), and regards as almost parenthetical, see below on Act 17:19 . : “he reasoned,” R.V. (so Ramsay), see above on Act 17:2 . .: on the synagogue see “Athens,” F. C. Conybeare, in Hastings’ B.D., but St. Paul did not confine himself to the synagogue, although undeterred by their hatred he went first to his own countrymen, and to the proselytes. But probably they were not numerous (see Farrar, St. Paul , i., 533), and the Apostle carried the same method of reasoning into the market-place as was natural in the city of Socrates, he entered into conversation with those whom he met, as the same philosopher had done four hundred years before. Thus he became an Athenian to the Athenians: see the striking parallel in the description of Socrates, “he was to be seen in the market-place at the hour when it was most crowded,” etc., and the words used by Socrates of himself, Plato, Apol. , 31 A, quoted by Grote, viii., 211, 212, small edit., p. 212. F. C. Conybeare, u. s. , compares the experiences in Athens of the Apostle’s contemporary Apollonius with those of St. Paul; he too reasoned with them on religious matters, Philostr., Vit. Apollonii Tyan , iv., 19. The words . are placed in brackets by Hilgenfeld, and referred by Clemen to his Redactor Antijudaicus, whilst Jngst retains the words but omits 16b, and with Van Manen and Clemen regards the whole of Paul’s subsequent speech to the philosophers as the interpolation of a Redactor, p. 161 ff. : not the market-place like that which fills a bare space in a modern town, but rather to be compared with its varied beauty and its busy crowd to the square of some Italian city, e.g. , the Piazza di Marco of Venice. There the Apostle’s eye would fall on portico after portico, adorned by famous artists, rich in noble statues, see F. C. Conybeare, u. s. , and Renan, Saint Paul , p. 180. On the west lay the Stoa Pcile , whence the Stoics received their name, and where Zeno met his pupils, whilst the quiet gardens of Epicurus were probably not far distant (see on the site of the Agora to which St. Luke refers, “Athens,” B.D. 2 , i., 292, 293, and also C. and H., smaller edition, p. 273, Hackett, in loco , for different views as to its site). : every day, for he could take advantage by this method not only of the Sabbaths and days of meeting in the synagogues, but of every day, cf. the words of Socrates, Plato, u. s. , in describing his own daily work of conversation with every one . The phrase seems to denote some time spent at Athens. : “chance comers” (like another Socrates), used only here in N.T., but cf. Thuc., i. 22, not in LXX or Apocrypha. Athens was full not only of philosophers, but we can imagine from the one phrase applied to it, Tac., Ann. , ii., 55, what a motley group might surround the Apostle, ilia colluvies nationum .
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
disputed = was reasoning. Greek. dialegomai, as in Act 17:2.
with. Greek. pros. App-104.
met with. Greek. . paratunchano. Only here.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
17.] The (as De W. remarks against Meyer and Schneckenburger) does not necessarily give the consequence of what has been stated in Act 17:16, but only continues the narration. See above on ch. Act 11:19.
] Strabo (x. 1) speaking of the Eretrians in Euba says that some suppose them to have been named , (as distinguished from the Ceramicus, which was the old forum). It was the space before the , where the Stoics held their .
Fuente: The Greek Testament
disputed: Act 17:2-4, Act 14:1-4
devout: Act 8:2, Act 10:2, Act 13:16
daily: Pro 1:20-22, Pro 8:1-4, Pro 8:34, Jer 6:11, Mat 5:1, Mat 5:2, Mar 16:15, Luk 12:3, 2Ti 3:2, 2Ti 3:5
Reciprocal: Mat 10:27 – that preach Mat 20:3 – standing Luk 4:31 – taught Act 4:20 – we cannot Act 6:9 – there Act 9:29 – disputed Act 13:5 – in the Act 17:4 – the devout Act 18:4 – he Act 19:8 – disputing 1Th 2:2 – much
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
7
Act 17:17. Therefore is not a conclusion from the preceding verse because the synagogue was a meeting place of the Jews who were not idolaters. But the people in the market were a mixed group and contained idolaters. The verse means that Paul followed his usual practice of preaching the Gospel, first in the synagogue where he could meet the Jews, then in any other place where he could find some hearers.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Act 17:17. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him. Here Paul, no doubt, on account of the intense feeling stirred up by the sight of all this idolatry, slightly deviated from his usual practice of first exclusively addressing himself to Jews and proselytes. At Athens he seems on the Sabbath days to have laboured in the synagogue among his own people; his week days he spent in the famous Agora, and in the painted porch or cloister of Zeno the Stoic (the painted porch, Stoa Poecile, was, be it remembered, in the Agora), the spot where in Athens the philosophers, rhetoricians, and others were in the habit of meeting for conversation and discussion.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
See notes on verse 15
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
Verse 17
Disputed; argued.–Market; the forum; a place of great public resort, in which assemblies of various kinds were often held.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
17:17 Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with {h} them that met with him.
(h) Whoever Paul met with that would allow him to talk with him, he reasoned with him, so thoroughly did he burn with the zeal of God’s glory.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Paul continued his ministry to Jews and God-fearing Greeks in the synagogue but also discussed the gospel with any who wanted to do so in the market place (Gr. agora; cf. Jer 20:9). These people were probably not God-fearing Gentiles but simply pagan Gentiles. The Agora was the center of civic life in Athens. There the philosophers gathered to discuss and debate their views. It lay to the west of the Acropolis, on which the Parthenon still stands, and Mars Hill.