Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Acts 17:18

Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoics, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.

18. philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoicks ] In St Paul’s day these two systems of philosophy were most prominent throughout the Roman world, and were regarded as conflicting though in many points they bear a strong likeness to one another. Both were the result of a desire to find some better principle for the guidance of man’s moral nature than could be found in the so-called religious systems of Greece and Rome. But before the Christian era much that was best in both schools had sadly degenerated from its pristine character.

The founder of the Stoics was Zeno of Citium in Cyprus. His precise date is uncertain, but he flourished in the century between b.c. 350 250. The first lesson of his teaching was that the highest duty of the philosopher was to practise virtue. For the doing this knowledge was necessary, and the only knowledge that could be relied on was that which was based upon sensation. Reality belonged only to material things such as the senses could appreciate. In this manner the Stoic philosophy became materialist. For though owning the existence of God and of the soul in man, Zeno and his followers spake of these as, in some sense, material. But they termed God the soul of the universe, and taught that all things are produced from him, and will at last be absorbed into him again. And then a new world-cycle will begin and be in all respects like that which went before. So the Stoics were Pantheists. They taught moreover that the universe was governed by unchanging law, that the lot of individuals, and the occurrence of particular events were all uncertain. The care of Providence was for the fabric of the universe, and only indirectly extended to particulars or individuals whose lot was bound up with the unchanging course of fixed law. The Stoics therefore were fatalists. The way in which the individual could make the nearest approach to happiness was by bringing himself, through knowledge, into harmony with the course of the universe. But so unimportant did the individual appear to these philosophers, that suicide was held to be lawful, and at times praiseworthy. They were conscious of both physical and moral evil in the world, and from this men might escape by self-inflicted death. They taught however that, though the virtuous might have to suffer, no real evil happens to them, nor real good to the vicious. Fortified with this thought, the Stoic trained himself to be proudly independent of externals, and to bear evils, should they come, with indifference, and thus he strove to secure undisturbed peace of mind. Materialism, Pantheism, Fatalism and pride, were the features of one of the systems into contact with which St Paul was brought at Athens.

The Epicureans (named from Epicurus, born at Samos b.c. 342) agreed with the Stoics that philosophy should seek to promote the happiness of man, but maintained that this end could be best gained by the pursuit of pleasure. By this language they did not intend profligate pleasure, but a state wherein the body was free from pain and the mind from disturbance. They too made the senses their means of judging of what is pleasure, and so with them man became the measure of all good for himself. Thus the Epicureans were materialists. But differing from the Stoics they taught the world was formed by chance, and that the gods had no concern in its creation. Their gods were described as perfectly happy, dwelling apart and caring neither for the world nor its inhabitants. Thus the Epicureans were practical atheists. With them man might approach to a state of happiness by circumscribing his wants, so that life might be free from care. To restrain the senses was the Epicurean road to happiness, to crush them as much as possible into insensibility was the path of the Stoic. But having such thoughts of the gods, neither system had in any way run counter to the popular theology. By doing so the Stoic would fear lest he should be thought to deny God altogether, while the Epicurean, though thinking all such worship folly, yet felt it too great an interruption to the pleasure which he sought to become an advocate of the abolition of idol worship. So St Paul found Athens crowded with the images and altars of the gods.

What will this babbler say ] Better, What would, &c. The A.V. conceals the fact that will here signifies “meaneth” or “wisheth” to say, “What would he go on to say if we would listen?”

The word rendered “babbler” is not found elsewhere in N. T. In profane writers it is used of birds picking up scattered grain, and then figuratively of men who pick up a living as best they may, and hence are willing to flatter for the sake of what they can get, and so are men without principle or ground in what they say.

a setter forth of strange gods ] The word here rendered “gods” is the word from which the English “demon” is derived. It was used in classical Greek mostly to denote some inferior order of divine beings. It was one of the accusations brought against Socrates and the charge on which he was condemned that he introduced new daimonia (Xen. Mem. i. 1, 2; Plato, Apol. 40 a &c.). It has been thought by some that the Athenians, by using the plural word, understood that “Jesus” was one new divinity and “Anastasis” (the Resurrection) another. But it is not necessary to suppose this. They might very well speak of a preacher of Jesus as a setter forth of new divinities. For they evidently saw that he had more to say than they had yet heard.

Times seem changed at Athens since the prosecution of Socrates, for it is not anger, but scornful curiosity which prompts the language of the speakers. They do not mean to assail Paul for his teaching, and amid the abundance of idols, they perhaps now would have felt no difficulty in allowing Jesus a place, provided he did not seek to overthrow all the rest of their divinities.

The nature of St Paul’s teaching “in the market-place” has not been mentioned until we are told that it was of “Jesus and the resurrection.” We may take this as a specimen of the way in which the author of the Acts has dealt with his materials. He has not seen it needful here to do more than specify in half-a-dozen words what St Paul had spoken about; and so when we have a report of a speech we need not suppose that he has given, or intended to give, more than a summary of what the speaker said, and, adhering to the subtance, has cast his abbreviated record into such form as best fitted his narrative.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Then certain philosophers – Athens was distinguished, among all the cities of Greece and the world, for the cultivation of a subtle and refined philosophy. This was their boast, and the object of their constant search and study, 1Co 1:22.

Of the Epicureans – This sect of philosophers was so named from Epicurus, who lived about 300 years before the Christian era. They denied that the world was created by God, and that the gods exercised any care or providence over human affairs, and also the immortality of the soul. Against these positions of the sect Paul directed his main argument in proving that the world was created and governed by God. One of the distinguishing doctrines of Epicurus was that pleasure was the summum bonum, or chief good, and that virtue was to be practiced only as it contributed to pleasure. By pleasure, however, Epicurus did not mean sensual and groveling appetites and degraded vices, but rational pleasure, properly regulated and governed. See Goods Book of Nature. But whatever his views were, it is certain that his followers had embraced the doctrine that the pleasures of sense were to be practiced without restraint. Both in principle and practice, therefore, they devoted themselves to a life of gaiety and sensuality, and sought happiness only in indolence, effeminacy, and voluptuousness. Confident in the belief that the world was not under the administration of a God of justice, they gave themselves up to the indulgence of every passion the infidels of their time, and the exact example of the frivolous and fashionable multitudes of all times, that live without God, and that seek pleasure as their chief good.

And of the Stoics – This was a sect of philosophers, so named from the Greek stoa, a porch or portico, because Zeno, the founder of the sect, held his school and taught in a porch, in the city of Athens. Zeno was born in the island of Cyprus, but the greater part of his life was spent at Athens in teaching philosophy. After having taught publicly 48 years, he died at the age of 96, that is, 264 years before Christ. The doctrines of the sect were, that the universe was created by God; that all things were fixed by Fate; that even God was under the dominion of fatal necessity; that the Fates were to be submitted to; that the passions and affections were to be suppressed and restrained; that happiness consisted in the insensibility of the soul to pain; and that a man should gain an absolute mastery over all the passions and affections of his nature. They were stern in their views of virtue, and, like the Pharisees, prided themselves on their own righteousness. They supposed that matter was eternal, and that God was either the animating principle or soul of the world, or that all things were a part of God. They fluctuated much in their views of a future state; some of them holding that the soul would exist only until the destruction of the universe, and others that it would finally be absorbed into the divine essence and become a part of God. It will be readily seen, therefore, with what pertinency Paul discoursed to them. The leading doctrines of both sects were met by him.

Encountered him – Contended with him; opposed themselves to him.

And some said – This was said in scorn and contempt. He had excited attention; but they scorned such doctrines as they supposed would be delivered by an unknown foreigner from Judea.

What will this babbler say? – Margin, base fellow. Greek: spermologos. The word occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It properly means one who collects seeds, and was applied by the Greeks to the poor persons who collected the scattered grain in the fields after harvest, or to gleaners; and also to the poor who obtained a precarious subsistence around the markets and in the streets. It was also applied to birds that picked up the scattered seeds of grain in the field or in the markets. The word came hence to have a twofold signification:

(1) It denoted the poor, the needy, and the vile the refuse and offscouring of society; and,

(2) From the birds which were thus employed, and which were troublesome by their continual unmusical sounds, it came to denote those who were talkative, garrulous, and opinionated those who collected the opinions of others, or scraps of knowledge, and retailed them fluently, without order or method. It was a word, therefore, expressive of their contempt for an unknown foreigner who should pretend to instruct the learned men and philosophers of Greece. Doddridge renders it retailer of scraps. Syriac, collector of words.

Other some – Others.

He seemeth to be a setter forth – He announces or declares the existence of strange gods. The reason why they supposed this was, that he made the capital points of his preaching to be Jesus and the resurrection, which they mistook for the names of divinities.

Of strange gods – Of foreign gods, or demons. They worshipped many gods themselves, and as they believed that every country had its own special divinities, they supposed that Paul had come to announce the existence of some such foreign, and to them unknown gods. The word translated gods ( daimonion) denotes properly the genii, or spirits who were superior to human beings, but inferior to the gods. It is, however, often employed to denote the gods themselves, and is evidently so used here. The gods among the Greeks were such as were supposed to have that rank by nature. The demons were such as had been exalted to divinity from being heroes and distinguished men.

He preached unto them Jesus – He proclaimed him as the Messiah. The mistake which they made by supposing that Jesus was a foreign divinity was one which was perfectly natural for minds degraded like theirs by idolatry. They had no idea of a pure God; they knew nothing of the doctrine of the Messiah; and they naturally supposed, therefore, that he of whom Paul spoke so much must be a god of some other nation, of a rank similar to their own divinities.

And the resurrection – The resurrection of Jesus, and through him the resurrection of the dead. It is evident, I think, that by the resurrection ten anastasin they understood him to refer to the name of some goddess. Such was the interpretation of Chrysostom. The Greeks had erected altars to Shame, and Famine, and Desire (Paus., i. 17), and it is probable that they supposed the resurrection, or the Anastasis, to be the name also of some unknown goddess who presided over the resurrection. Thus, they regarded him as a setter forth of two foreign or strange gods, Jesus, and the Anastasis, or resurrection.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Verse 18. Certain philosophers of the Epicureans] These were the followers of Epicurus, who acknowledged no gods except in name, and absolutely denied that they exercised any government over the world or its inhabitants; and that the chief good consisted in the gratification of the appetites of sense. These points the Epicureans certainly held; but it is not clear that Epicurus himself maintained such doctrines.

And of the Stoics] These did not deny the existence of the gods; but they held that all human affairs were governed by fate. They did not believe that any good was received from the hands of their gods; and considered, as Seneca asserts, that any good and wise man was equal to Jupiter himself. Both these sects agreed in denying the resurrection of the body; and the former did not believe in the immortality of the soul.

EPICURUS, the founder of the Epicurean sect, was born at Athens, about A.M. 3663, before Christ 341.

ZENO, the founder of the Stoic sect, was born in the isle of Cyprus, about thirty years before Christ. His disciples were called Stoics from the , a famous portico at Athens, where they studied. Besides these two sects, there were two others which were famous at this time; viz. the Academics and the Peripatetics. The founder of the first was the celebrated PLATO; and the founder of the second, the no less famous ARISTOTLE. These sects professed a much purer doctrine than the Epicureans and Stoics; and it does not appear that they opposed the apostles, nor did they enter into public disputations with them. Against the doctrines taught by the Epicureans and Stoics, several parts of St. Paul’s discourse, in the following verses, are directly pointed.

What will this babbler say?] The word , which we translate babbler, signifies, literally, a collector of seeds, and is the “name of a small bird the lives by picking up seeds on the road.” The epithet became applied to persons who collected the sayings of others, without order or method, and detailed them among their companions in the same way. The application of the term to prating, empty, impertinent persons, was natural and easy, and hence it was considered a term of reproach and contempt, and was sometimes used to signify the vilest sort of men.

A setter forth of strange gods] , Of strange or foreign demons. That this was strictly forbidden, both at Rome and Athens, See Clarke on Ac 16:21.

There was a difference, in the heathen theology, between , god, and , demon: the , were such as were gods by nature: the , were men who were deified. This distinction seems to be in the mind of these philosophers when they said that the apostles seemed to be setters forth of strange demons, because they preached unto them Jesus, whom they showed to be a man, suffering and dying, but afterwards raised to the throne of God. This would appear to them tantamount with the deification of heroes, &c., who had been thus honoured for their especial services to mankind. Horace expresses this in two lines, 2 Epist. i. 5:-

Romulus, et Liber pater, et cum Castore Pollux,

Post ingentia facta, deorum in templa recepti.

“Romulus, father Bacchus, with Castor and Pollux, for their eminent services, have been received into the temples of the gods.”

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Both these sects of philosophers were the most opposite to Christianity of all others:

1. The Epicureans (so called from one Epicurus) did generally deny, that the world was made, or that it is governed, by God; as also, that there were any rewards or punishments for men after death, holding nothing to be good but what was so to their senses: and if so, were indeed swine rather than men.

2. The Stoics were so called from the place where they met at first; and held as bad opinions as the other did; and denied that their wise men were inferior to their gods, and in some respect preferred them before their gods; which their Seneca was not free from, Epist. 73. And no wonder if such men oppose the gospel what they may.

What will this babbler say? They make Paul so contemptible, comparing him to such as live by the off falls of corn, which was used to be gathered up as they fell down in measuring, and left to be fed upon by the meanest and poorest of the people.

A setter forth of strange gods; they might amongst the Athenians bring in by public authority as many gods as they would, but none out of their private opinions; which was the fault charged upon Socrates.

And the resurrection; so ignorantly, or maliciously, did they pervert St. Pauls words, that they accuse him for making the resurrection a god too. Probably they heard him often naming the word, and magnifying of the resurrection, as without which we were without hope.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

18-21. certain . . . of theEpicureansa well-known school of atheistic materialists,who taught that pleasure was the chief end of human existence; aprinciple which the more rational interpreted in a refined sense,while the sensual explained it in its coarser meaning.

and of the Stoicsacelebrated school of severe and lofty pantheists, whoseprinciple was that the universe was under the law of an ironnecessity, the spirit of which was what is called the Deity: and thata passionless conformity of the human will to this law, unmoved byall external circumstances and changes, is the perfection of virtue.While therefore the Stoical was in itself superior to the Epicureansystem, both were alike hostile to the Gospel. “The two enemiesit has ever had to contend with are the two ruling principles of theEpicureans and StoicsPleasure and Pride” [HOWSON].

What will this babblersay?The word, which means “a picker-up of seeds,”bird-like, is applied to a gatherer and retailer of scraps ofknowledge, a prater; a general term of contempt for any pretendedteacher.

a setter forth of strangegods“demons,” but in the Greek (not Jewish) sense of”objects of worship.”

because he preached Jesus andthe resurrectionNot as if they thought he made these to be twodivinities: the strange gods were Jehovah and the RisenSaviour, ordained to judge the world.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans,…. These were so called from Epicurus, the son of Neocles, who was born 342 years before Christ, and taught philosophy at Athens, in his garden; the principal tenets of which were, that the world was not made by any deity, or with any design, but came into its being and form, through a fortuitous concourse of atoms, of various sizes and magnitude, which met, and jumbled, and cemented together, and so formed the world; and that the world is not governed by the providence of God; for though he did not deny the being of God, yet he thought it below his notice, and beneath his majesty to concern himself with its affairs; and also, that the chief happiness of men lies in pleasure. His followers were called “Epicureans”; of which there have been two sorts; the one were called the strict or rigid “Epicureans”, who placed all happiness in the pleasure of the mind, arising from the practice of moral virtue, and which is thought by some to be the true principle of “Epicureans”; the other were called the loose, or the remiss Epicureans, who understood their master in the gross sense, and placed all their happiness in the pleasure of the body, in brutal and sensual pleasure, in living a voluptuous life, in eating and drinking, c. and this is the common notion imbibed of an Epicurean.

And of the Stoics: the author of this sect was Zeno, whose followers were so called from the Greek word “Stoa”, which signifies a portico, or piazza, under which Zeno used to walk, and teach his philosophy, and where great numbers of disciples attended him, who from hence were called “Stoics”: their chief tenets were, that there is but one God, and that the world was made by him, and is governed by fate that happiness lies in virtue, and virtue has its own reward in itself; that all virtues are linked together, and all vices are equal; that a wise and good man is destitute of all passion, and uneasiness of mind, is always the same, and always joyful, and ever happy in the greatest torture, pain being no real evil; that the soul lives after the body, and that the world will be destroyed by fire. Now the philosophers of these two sects

encountered him; the Apostle Paul; they attacked him, and disputed with him upon some points, which were contrary to their philosophy:

and some said, what will this babbler say? this talking, prating fellow? though the word here used does not signify, as some have thought, a sower of words; as if they meant, that the apostle was a dealer is many words, a verbose man, and full of words, but not matter; but it properly signifies a gatherer of seeds; and the allusion is either to a set of idle people, that used to go to markets and fairs, and pick up seeds of corn, that were shook out of sacks, upon which they lived; and so the word came to be used for an idle good for nothing fellow, and for one that picked up tales and fables, and carried them about for a livelihood. So Demosthenes, in a way of reproach, called Aeschincs by this name; and such an one was the apostle reckoned: or the metaphor is taken from little birds, as the sparrow, c. that pick up seeds, and live upon them, and are of no value and use. Harpocratian says d, there is a certain little bird, of the jay or jackdaw kind, which is called “Spermologos” (the word here used), from its picking up of seeds, of which Aristophanes makes mention and that from this a base and contemptible man, and one that lives by others, is called by this name: from whence we may learn in what a contemptuous manner the apostle was used in this polite city, by these men of learning.

Other some, he seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods; other than those worshipped in the city of Athens: this was the charge which Melitus brought against Socrates;

“Socrates (says he e) has acted an unrighteous part; the gods, whom the city reckons such, he does not, introducing other and new gods.”

Aelianus f represents him as censured by Aristophanes, as one that introduced , “strange gods”, though he neither knew them, nor honoured them. The reason why they thought the apostle was for bringing in other gods, than which nothing was more foreign from him, was,

because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection: the Syriac version reads, “and his resurrection”; that is, the resurrection of Christ; the Arabic version renders it, “the resurrection from the dead”; the general resurrection; both doubtless were preached by him, see Ac 17:32 Jesus they took for one strange and new God, they had never heard of before, and “Anastasis”, or “the resurrection”, for another; which need not be wondered at, when they had altars erected for Mercy, Fame, Shame, and Desire, [See comments on Ac 17:16].

d Lexicon, p. 271, 272. e Laertius in Vita Socratis. f Var. Hist. l. 2. c. 13.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

And certain also of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him ( ). Imperfect active of , old verb, in the N.T. only by Luke, to bring or put together in one’s mind (Lu 2:19), to meet together (Ac 20:14), to bring together aid (18:27), to confer or converse or dispute as here and already 4:15 which see. These professional philosophers were always ready for an argument and so they frequented the agora for that purpose. Luke uses one article and so groups the two sects together in their attitude toward Paul, but they were very different in fact. Both sects were eager for argument and both had disdain for Paul, but they were the two rival practical philosophies of the day, succeeding the more abstruse theories of Plato and Aristotle. Socrates had turned men’s thought inward ( , Know Thyself) away from the mere study of physics. Plato followed with a profound development of the inner self (metaphysics). Aristotle with his cyclopaedic grasp sought to unify and relate both physics and metaphysics. Both Zeno and Epicurus (340-272 B.C.) took a more practical turn in all this intellectual turmoil and raised the issues of everyday life. Zeno (360-260 B.C.) taught in the (Porch) and so his teaching was called Stoicism. He advanced many noble ideas that found their chief illustration in the Roman philosophers (Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius). He taught self-mastery and hardness with an austerity that ministered to pride or suicide in case of failure, a distinctly selfish and unloving view of life and with a pantheistic philosophy. Epicurus considered practical atheism the true view of the universe and denied a future life and claimed pleasure as the chief thing to be gotten out of life. He did not deny the existence of gods, but regarded them as unconcerned with the life of men. The Stoics called Epicurus an atheist. Lucretius and Horace give the Epicurean view of life in their great poems. This low view of life led to sensualism and does today, for both Stoicism and Epicureanism are widely influential with people now. “Eat and drink for tomorrow we die,” they preached. Paul had doubtless become acquainted with both of these philosophies for they were widely prevalent over the world. Here he confronts them in their very home. He is challenged by past-masters in the art of appealing to the senses, men as skilled in their dialectic as the Pharisaic rabbis with whom Paul had been trained and whose subtleties he had learned how to expose. But, so far as we know, this is a new experience for Paul to have a public dispute with these philosophical experts who had a natural contempt for all Jews and for rabbis in particular, though they found Paul a new type at any rate and so with some interest in him. “In Epicureanism, it was man’s sensual nature which arrayed itself against the claims of the gospel; in Stoicism it was his self-righteousness and pride of intellect” (Hackett). Knowling calls the Stoic the Pharisee of philosophy and the Epicurean the Sadducee of philosophy. Socrates in this very agora used to try to interest the passers-by in some desire for better things. That was 450 years before Paul is challenged by these superficial sophistical Epicureans and Stoics. It is doubtful if Paul had ever met a more difficult situation.

What would this babbler say? ( ?). The word for “babbler” means “seed-picker” or picker up of seeds (, seed, , to collect) like a bird in the agora hopping about after chance seeds. Plutarch applies the word to crows that pick up grain in the fields. Demosthenes called Aeschines a . Eustathius uses it of a man hanging around in the markets picking up scraps of food that fell from the carts and so also of mere rhetoricians and plagiarists who picked up scraps of wisdom from others. Ramsay considers it here a piece of Athenian slang used to describe the picture of Paul seen by these philosophers who use it, for not all of them had it (“some,” ). Note the use of and the present active optative , conclusion of a fourth-class condition in a rhetorical question (Robertson, Grammar, p. 1021). It means, What would this picker up of seeds wish to say, if he should get off an idea? It is a contemptuous tone of supreme ridicule and doubtless Paul heard this comment. Probably the Epicureans made this sneer that Paul was a charlatan or quack.

Other some ( ). But others, in contrast with the “some” just before. Perhaps the Stoics take this more serious view of Paul.

He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods ( ). This view is put cautiously by (seems). does not occur in the old Greek, though in ecclesiastical writers, but Deissmann (Light from the Ancient East, p. 99) gives an example of the word “on a marble stele recording a decree of the Mitylenaens in honour of the Emperor Augustus,” where it is the herald of the games. Here alone in the N.T. is used in the old Greek sense of deity or divinity whether good or bad, not in the N.T. sense of demons. Both this word and are used from the Athenian standpoint. is an old word for a guest-friend (Latin hospes) and then host (Ro 16:23), then for foreigner or stranger (Matt 25:31; Acts 17:21), new and so strange as here and Heb 13:9; 1Pet 4:12, and then aliens (Eph 2:12). This view of Paul is the first count against Socrates: Socrates does wrong, introducing new deities ( , , Xen. Mem. I). On this charge the Athenians voted the hemlock for their greatest citizen. What will they do to Paul? This Athens was more sceptical and more tolerant than the old Athens. But Roman law did not allow the introduction of a new religion (religio illicita). Paul was walking on thin ice though he was the real master philosopher and these Epicureans and Stoics were quacks. Paul had the only true philosophy of the universe and life with Jesus Christ as the centre (Col 1:12-20), the greatest of all philosophers as Ramsay justly terms him. But these men are mocking him.

Because he preached Jesus and the resurrection ( ). Reason for the view just stated. Imperfect middle indicative of , to “gospelize.” Apparently these critics considered (Resurrection) another deity on a par with Jesus. The Athenians worshipped all sorts of abstract truths and virtues and they misunderstood Paul on this subject. They will leave him as soon as he mentions the resurrection (verse 32). It is objected that Luke would not use the word in this sense here for his readers would not under stand him. But Luke is describing the misapprehension of this group of philosophers and this interpretation fits in precisely.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Epicureans. Disciples of Epicurus, and atheists. They acknowledged God in words, but denied his providence and superintendence over the world. According to them, the soul was material and annihilated at death. Pleasure was their chief good; and whatever higher sense their founder might have attached to this doctrine, his followers, in the apostle ‘s day, were given to gross sensualism.

Stoics. Pantheists. God was the soul of the world, or the world was God. Everything was governed by fate, to which God himself was subject. They denied the universal and perpetual immortality of the soul; some supposing that it was swallowed up in deity; others, that it survived only till the final conflagration; others, that immortality was restricted to the wise and good. Virtue was its own reward, and vice its own punishment. Pleasure was no good, and pain no evil. The name Stoic was derived from stoa, a porch. Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, held his school in the Stoa Paecile, or painted portico, so called because adorned with pictures by the best masters.

Babbler [] . Lit., seed – picker : a bird which picks up seeds in the streets and markets; hence one who picks up and retails scraps of news. Trench (” Authorized Version of the New Testament “) cites a parallel from Shakespeare :

” This fellow picks up wit as pigeons peas, And utters it again when Jove doth please.

He is wit’s peddler, and retails his wares At wakes, and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs ” Love ‘s Labor ‘s Lost, 5, 2 Setter – forth [] . See on declare, verse 23. Compare 1Pe 4:4, 12.

Strange. Foreign.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans,” (tines de kai ton Epikoureion philosophon) “Then some also of the Epicurean philosophers,” a well-known school of atheistic materialists who held that the world is a product of chance, and that pleasure for each person is the chief end or objective of human existence. So that each person was to do what seemed best for him, to bring him the most happiness or pleasure in life, with little regards for others, a selfish, covetous, sensual degrading concept, Jdg 21:25.

2) “And of the Stoicks,” (kai Stoikon) “And of the Stoic philosophers,” fatalists, pessimists, carriers of “wet blankets,” to throw on any and every expression of joy, hope, or success in life. They were “party-poopers,” who too believed not in, but doubted the existence of life after death, Joh 5:28-29.

3) “Encountered him,” (suneballon auto) “Fell in (moved in) close with him, to encounter with, or sharply dispute with him,” confronted him (Paul), a thing that pleased him very much, for he was always “set for the defense of the gospel,” Php_1:17; Jud 1:3; 1Pe 3:15.

4) “And some said, what will this babbler say?” (kai tines elegon ti an thelot ho sperrmologos houtos legein) “And certain of them derided, repeatedly saying, what may this ignorant plagiarist wish to say?” this idle prater, this seed gatherer, this picker-up and dispenser of bits of knowledge, without sense, unity of thought, or coherence of purpose?

5) “Other some, he seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods:- (hoi de ksenon daimonion dokei katangeleus einai) “Then others of the masses said, he seems to be a declaimer (announcer) of foreign demons,” a representative of demons that are foreign to us. It was a form of contempt against God’s missionary, educator, and writer, Joh 15:20; 2Ti 3:12; Mat 5:11-12.

6) “Because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection.” (kai ten anastasin euengelizeto) “Simply because he preached Jesus and the resurrection, with fervor,” and they had not learned about Jesus before; That Jesus had risen from the dead, was coming again, was the gospel hope, 1Co 15:1-29.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

−

18. They reasoned with him. Luke addeth now that Paul had a combat with the philosophers; not that he set upon them of set purpose, forasmuch as he knew that they were even born only to brawl and cavil; but he was enforced to enter such a conflict contrary to his purpose, as Paul himself commandeth godly teachers to be furnished with spiritual weapons, wherewith they may valiantly defend the truth if any enemies set themselves against it, ( Tit 1:9.) For it is not always in our choice to make choice of those with whom we will deal; but the Lord doth often suffer stubborn and importunate men to arise to exercise us, that by their gainsaying the truth may more plainly appear. Neither is it to be doubted but that the Epicures, [Epicureans,] according to their wonted frowardness, did trouble the holy man; and that the Stoics, trusting to their subtile quips and cavils, did stubbornly deride him; − (275) yet the end shall show that he did not dispute sophistically, neither was he carried away unto any unprofitable and contentious disputation, but did observe that modesty which he himself commandeth elsewhere. And thus must we do, that by refuting meekly and modestly vain cavillings, we may utter that which is sound and true; and we must always avoid this danger, that ambition or desire to show our wit do not unwrap us in superfluous and vain contentions. −

Furthermore, Luke maketh mention of two sects, which, though they were the one contrary to the other, − (276) had, not withstanding, their contrary vices. The Epicures [Epicureans] did not only despise liberal arts, but were also open enemies to them. Their philosophy was to feign that the sun was two feet broad, that the world was made ex atomis, [of atoms,] (or of things which were so small that they could not be divided or made smaller,) and by deluding men thus, to blot out the wonderful workmanship which appeareth in the creation of the world. If they were a thousand times convict, they were as impudent as dogs. Though they did, in a word, confess that there be gods, yet they did imagine that they were idle in heaven, and that they were wholly set upon pleasure, and that they were blessed only because they were idle. As they did deny that the world was created by God, as I have said of late, so they thought that man’s affairs were tossed to and fro without any governing, and that they were not governed by the celestial providence. Pleasure was their felicity, − (277) not that unbridled and filthy pleasure; yet such as did more and more corrupt men by her enticements, being already, of their own accord, bent to pamper the flesh. They counted the immorality of their souls but a fable, whereby it came to pass that they gave themselves liberty to make much of their bodies. −

As for the Stoics, though they said that the world was subject to the providence of God, yet did they afterwards, through a most filthy surmise, or rather doting, corrupt that point of their doctrine. For they did not grant that God did govern the world by counsel, justice, and power, but they forged a labyrinth of the compass or agreement of the causes, that God himself being bound with the necessity of fate or destiny, might be carried violently with the frame of heaven, as the poets do tie and fetter their Jupiter with golden fetters, because the Fates or Destinies do govern when he is about something else. Though they placed felicity [the chief good] in virtue, they knew not what true virtue was, and they did puff up men with pride, − (278) so that they did deck themselves with that which they took from God. For though they did all abase the grace of the Holy Ghost, yet was there no sect more proud. They had no other fortitude, but a certain rash and immoderate fierceness. − (279) −

Therefore there was in Paul wonderful force of the Spirit, who standing amidst such beasts, which sought to pull him to and fro, stood firm in the sound sincerity of the gospel, and did valiantly withstand and endure, as well the dogged malapertness [petulance] of the former sect, as the pride and crafty cavillings of the other. And hereby we see more plainly what small agreement there is between the heavenly wisdom and the wisdom of the flesh. For though the whole multitude were offended with the gospel, yet the philosophers were captains and standard-bearers in assaulting the same. For that did principally appear in them which Paul himself speaketh of the wisdom of the flesh, that it is an enemy to the cross of Christ, ( 1Co 1:26,) so that no man can be fit to learn the principles of the gospel unless he first abandon the same. −

Other some said. Luke setteth before us two sects of men, which both were far from godliness; and yet the one sort is worse than the other. Those who are desirous to hear that again which they call new, first, they are moved not with any desire to learn, but with vain curiousity; secondly, they think unhonorably of the Word of God, is that the count it profane novelty; yet because they give ear, and that being in doubt until they may know farther of the matter, they are not quite past hope. But the rest who proudly refuse that which is offered, yea, condemn it reproachfully, do shut the gate of salvation against themselves. For this railing did proceed from monstrous pride; what meaneth this babbler? Because they neither vouchsafe to hear Paul, and also reproachfully refuse him, as if he were some common jester. − (280) Moreover, they do not loathe his doctrine through rash zeal, but do openly tread under foot that which is brought unto them concerning religion, though as yet they know it not; because these are ashamed to learn any thing of a base and obscure fellow, who had hitherto professed themselves to be teachers of all the whole world. −

A declarer of new devils. They do not take devils [deities] in evil part, as the Scripture useth to do; but for the lesser gods or angels, who they thought were in the midst between the highest God and men, whereof Plato maketh mention oftentimes. As touching the sum of the matter, we must note that those things which Paul spake concerning Christ and the resurrection seemed to them to be new devils. Whence we gather, that our faith is principally distinguished and discerned from the superstitions of the Gentiles by these marks; because it setteth forth Christ to be the sole Mediator; because it teacheth us to seek for salvation only at his hands; because it commandeth us to seek remission of our sins in his death, whereby we may be reconciled to God; because it teacheth that men are renewed and fashioned again by his Spirit, who were before profane, and slaves to sin, that they may begin to live righteously and holy. Again, because from such beginnings as do plainly declare that the kingdom of God is spiritual, it lifteth up our minds at length unto the hope of the resurrection to come. For as concerning other things, though the philosophers do not reason purely, yet they say somewhat. Yea, they speak much concerning eternal life and the immortality of the soul; but as touching faith, which showeth free reconciliation in Christ; and regeneration, whereby the Spirit of God doth restore in us the image of God; concerning calling upon God, and the last resurrection, not a word. −

(275) −

“

Contumaciter insultaverint,” did contumaciously insult him.

(276) −

“

Ex diametro inter se essent oppositae,” were diametrically opposed to each other.

(277) −

“

Summum bonum,” the supreme good.

(278) −

“

Superba confidentia,” with proud confidence.

(279) −

“

Ferrea immanitus,” iron-hearted cruelty.

(280) −

“

Trivialis nugator,” silly or paltry trifler.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(18) Certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks.The two schools were at this time the great representatives of Greek thought. The former took its name from its founder, Epicurus, who lived a long and tranquil life at Athens, from B.C. 342 to 270. As holding their meetings in a garden, which he had left by his will in trust as a place of study for his disciples, they were sometimes known as the School of the Garden, and as such were distinguished from those of the Porch (Diog. Laert. Epic. c. 10). His speculations embraced at once a physical and an ethical solution of the problems of the universe. Rejecting, as all thinking men did, the popular Polytheism, which yet they did not dare openly to renounce, he taught that the gods, in their eternal tranquillity, were too far off from man to trouble themselves about his sorrows or his sins. They needed no sacrifices and answered no prayers. The superstition which enslaved the minds of most men was the great evil of the world, the source of its crimes and miseries. The last enemy to be destroyed was with him, as in our own time with Strauss, the belief in an immortality of retribution. A mans first step towards happiness and wisdom was to emancipate himself from its thraldom; the next was to recognise that happiness consisted in the greatest aggregate of pleasurable emotions. Experience taught that what are called pleasures are often more than counterbalanced by the pains that follow, and sensual excesses were therefore to be avoided. Epicuruss own life seems to have been distinguished by generosity, self-control, and general kindliness, and even by piety and patriotism (Diog. Laert. Epic. c. 5). But as no law was recognised as written in the heart, and human laws were looked on as mere conventional arrangements, each man was left to form his own estimate of what would give him most pleasure, and most men decided for a life of ease and self-indulgence; sometimes balanced by prudential calculations, sometimes sinking into mere voluptuousness. The poetry of Horace presents, perhaps, the most attractive phase of popular Epicureanism; the sense which has come to be attached to the modern word Epicure, as applied to one whose life is devoted to the indulgence of the sense of taste, shows to what a depth of degradation it might sink.

In the world of physics, Epicurus has been claimed as anticipating some of the results of modern science. The ideas of creation and control were alike excluded. Matter had existed from eternity, and the infinite atoms of which it was composed had, under the action of attractive and Tepelling forces as yet unknown, entered into manifold combinations, out of which had issued, as the last stage of the evolution, the world of nature as it now lies before us. The poem of Lucretius, De Rerum Natur, may be regarded as the grandest utterance of this negative and practically atheistic system, but its real nobleness lies chiefly in its indignant protest against the superstition which had cast its veil of thick darkness over all the nations.

It may be well to give one or two characteristic examples of each of these phases. On the one side we have the ever-recurring advice of the popular poet of society to remember that life is short, and to make the most of it:

Quid sit futurum cras, fuge qurere: et,
Quern Fors dierum cunque dabit, lucro
Appone.
[Strive not the morrows chance to know,
But count whateer the Fates bestow

As given thee for thy gain.]Hor. Od. i. 9.

Sapias, vina liques, et spatio brevi

Spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida

tas. Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

[Be wise, and let your wines flow clear,

And as you greet each short-lived year,

Curb hopes delusive play:

Een as we speak, our life glides by;
Enjoy the moments as they fly,

Nor trust the far-off day.]Od. i. 11.

The student of Scripture will recognise an Epicurean element of this kind in one of the two voices that alternate in the Book of Ecclesiastes, It is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life (Ecc. 5:18. Comp. also Ecc. 3:19; Ecc. 8:15; Ecc. 9:7). It appears as the avowed principle of the evil-doers in the Apocryphal Book of Wisdom which, as probably the work of a contemporary writer, represents the impression made by the dominant Horatian phase of Epicureanism on a devout and thoughtful Jew:

Our time is a very shadow that passeth away . . . Come on, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are present . . . Let us crown ourselves with rose-buds before they are withered . . . Let none of us go without his part of our voluptuousness.Wis. 2:5-9.

There is a nobler ring, it must be owned, in the bold language in which Lucretius sings the praises of Epicurus:

When this our life lay crushed before mens eyes
Beneath the yoke of Faith, who from on high
With horrid aspect frightened mortal hearts,
It was a Greek, himself a mortal too,
Who first had courage to lift up his eyes
And to her face withstand her. Tales of gods,
And thunderbolts from Heaven, with all their threats,
Were impotent to stay him. . . .

. . . . So at last

Faith in its turn lies trampled under foot,
And we through him have triumphed over Heaven.

De Rer. Nat. i. 67-80.

We can understand how St. Paul would assert, as against this school of thought, the personality of the living God, as Creator, Ruler, Father; the binding force of the law written in the heart; intuitive morality as against mere utilitarianism; the nobleness of a hero-soul raised above pleasure, and living, not for itself, but for others and for God. And in so teaching them he, in this respect differing from the mere professor of a higher philosophy, would point to the Resurrection and the Judgment as that which should confound the pleasure-seeker by giving him tribulation and anguish, and should assign glory and immortality to the patient worker of righteousness. (Comp. Rom. 2:7-9.)

The Stoicswho took their name, not from their founder (Zeno, of Citium in Cyprus), but from the Stoa pkil, the painted porch, at Athens, adorned with frescoes of the battle of Marathon, where Zeno used to teachpresented a higher phase of thought. Josephus (Vit. c. 2) compares them with the Pharisees, and their relation to the moral life of heathenism at this time presented many features analogous to those which we find in the influence of that sect in Palestine. They taught that true wisdom consisted in being the master, and not the slave, of circumstances. The things which are not in our power are not things to seek after, nor shrink from, but to be accepted with a calm equanimity. The seeker after wisdom learnt, therefore, to be indifferent alike to pleasure or pain, and aimed at an absolute apathy. The theology of the Stoics was also of a nobler kind than that of Epicurus. They spoke of a divine Mind pervading the universe, and ordering all things by its Providence. They recognised its government in the lives of nations and individual men, and probably reconciled, as the Pharisees did, their acceptance of its decrees with a practical belief in the freedom of the individual will. In the Manual of Ethics, by Epictetus, under Nero, and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, we see how the slave and the emperor stood on common ground. In Seneca, we see now often the Stoics spoke in the accents of Christian ethics. Many of the Stoics were sought after as tutors for the sons of noble families, and occupied a position of influence not unlike that of Jesuit confessors and directors in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The main drawbacks were (1) that in aiming at apathy for themselves they shut out sympathy with others as disturbing their tranquillity; (2) that in striving after an ethical perfection in the strength of their own will they anticipated the position of the Pelagians in the history of the Christian Church; and (3) that, as with the Pharisees, the high ideal was often but a mask for selfish and corrupt lives. They, also, were too often hypocrites, acting a part before the world to which their true character did not correspond. In the language of the satirist

Qui Curios simulant et Bacchanalia vivunt.
[They pose as heroes, and as drunkards live.]

Juvenal, Sat. ii. 3.

It is evident that there would be many points of sympathy between the better representatives of this school and St. Paul, but for them also the message that spoke of Jesus and the Resurrectionof God sending His Son into the world to be first crucified and then raised from the deadwould seem an idle dream, and they would shrink from the thought that they needed pardon and redemption, and could do nothing true and good in their own strength without the grace of God.

What will this babbler say?Better, What might this babbler mean? The Greek noun, literally seed-picker, was primarily applied to a small bird of the finch tribe. The idle gossips of the agora picking up news, and, eager to retail it, the chattering parasites of feasts, were likened by the quick wit of Athenian humourists to such a bird as it hopped and chirped. So Zeno himself called one of his disciples, who had more words than wisdom, by the same contemptuous name (Diog. Laert. Zeno, c. 19). The philosophers, in their scorn of the stranger who was so ready to discuss great questions with any whom he met, applied the derisive epithet to him.

He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods.This was, it will be remembered, the precise charge on which Socrates had been condemned (Xenoph. Memor. i. 1, 1). In his case it rested on his constant reference to the dmn, the divine monitor who checked and guided him, in whose voice he heard something like the voice of God; but the secret of his condemnation by his countrymen was to be found less in what he actually taught than in the questions with which he vexed their inmost soul, and made them conscious of ignorance or baseness. The questions of St. Paul, as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, were equally disturbing.

Because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.The verb implies continuous action. This was the ever-recurring theme of his discourses. It is possible that with the strong tendency of the Greek mind to personify all attributes and abstract thoughts, St. Pauls hearers saw in the word Anastasis (= Resurrection) the name of a new goddess, representing the idea of immortality, to be worshipped in conjunction with Jesus, and therefore they used the plural and spoke of his bringing in strange gods. So temples and altars had been dedicated to Concord, and the history of Athens told how Epimenides had bidden them erect two altars to Insolence and Outrage (Cicero, De Leg. ii. 11), as the two demons by whom their city was being brought to ruin. What startled them in the Apostle was that he taught not only the immortality of the soulthat had entered into the popular mythical belief, and had been enforced with philosophical arguments by Socrates and Platobut the resurrection of the body. In 1Co. 15:35 we see the character of the objections raised to this doctrine, and the manner in which St. Paul answered them.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

18. Philosophers Socrates was the first who turned the study of men from mere physics to mind and morals. His more legitimate followers were Plato and Aristotle, the former of whom endeavoured to place man’s immortality and the law of immutable right and truth upon a firm basis of positive reason. Of this class of philosophers none seem to have encountered the apostle.

Epicureans The essential principle of Epicurus was that man should aim at the greatest possible amount of happiness. This maxim is capable of the highest and best meaning. And it is said that Epicurus used it to show that the highest pleasure required the most perfect virtue. But as Epicurus admitted no future state, the maxim in most men’s minds took an individual application. Each one said, “ I have but one life to live, and I must, by whatever means, or at whosever expense, get the most enjoyment out of it for myself.” Hence, sensuality and selfishness, tending to utter beastliness, were the natural result. This philosophy is, in its essence, being revived at the present day by such men as Comte, of France, and John Stuart Mill, of England. Such philosophers may, like Epicurus, give a high version of this philosophy, and may sustain it by their own exemplary conduct; but its prevalence ever marks a sensual age. Sensual men will ever feel a tendency to adopt the doctrine; the doctrine will ever exert an influence to make men sensual.

Stoics The Stoics, reversing the Epicurean maxim, forbid all regard for pleasure, and require us to act solely for the absolute right. He who so acted, discarding all passion or selfishness, was a wise man, a king, a god. This was a noble philosophy, and some of the noblest men of antiquity belonged to this sect. But, knowing nothing but the energy of human nature to rely upon, it placed a greater strain on fallen humanity than it was able to bear. In endeavouring to make men morally perfect it made them perfectly miserable. While Stoicism would make men perfect by crucifying all man’s passions, Christianity would make them so, through a divine aid, by harmonizing the passions with the right, the true, and the good. Thus it attains for man a higher happiness than Epicurus knew, and a perfect righteousness, a holiness, and a blessedness unknown to Stoicism.

But it was in their doctrine of God and a future state that these philosophers came into collision with the preaching of Paul. The Stoics were pantheists, the Epicureans were atheists, and neither knew any future state. Pantheism teaches that the universe, the great whole, the cosmos, is God. Atheism admits, of course, the existence of the cosmos, but denies the existence of any God. In asserting the existence of a true, living, personal God, who exists in entire independence of the cosmos, and able to live without the cosmos, yet author and creator of the cosmos, Paul’s Christianity was at exterminating war with both. Yet pantheism and atheism are at bottom one. Both alike teach that the cosmos, passing through changes and evolutions by laws inherent within itself, is all the God there is. Pantheism avers that there is no God but cosmos, and atheism only denies that besides the cosmos there is any God. With regard to a future state both Epicureans and Stoics maintained that, whether pleasure or duty is our law, all our calculations are limited to this life. Hence, both these sects were at issue with every step of the apostle’s argument. And when Paul uttered the word resurrection, they were as prompt in their rejection of further discourse as were the Jerusalemite Jews when he uttered the word Gentiles, Act 22:22.

Some said We suppose that this first contemptuous question comes from the haughty Stoics.

Babbler In the Greek the term signifies, literally, a seed-picker, an epithet applied to birds. It may here mean figuratively a talker who picks up a smatter of petty subtleties to retail. The term was often applied also to loungers and vagrants, who lived about the agora, like birds, on what they could pick up, and so it may have been applied to Paul.

Strange gods The very same term, foreign gods, was used in the legal indictment against Socrates. Some have supposed that the plural gods was here used because in the phrase Jesus and the ( anastasis) resurrection they mistook anastasis for a goddess. Hackett, Lechler, and others, deny that the Athenians could have made such a mistake. And certainly they could not have made it after having heard the speech of Paul. They might, however, have caught such a notion previously, when, by their own account, they but half understood him.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘And certain also of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him.’

In the marketplace he met among others certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. The founder of Epicureanism (Epicurus) saw the world as being a result of the totally random movement and combination of ‘atoms’. This being so the Epicureans saw everything generally as totally random and not affected in any way by the gods. The aim of their system was therefore to achieve happiness by serene detachment from the world and its clamour and wants and desires, allowing random activity to determine how their lives went. They were not atheists. They believed that the gods enjoyed this serene detachment by enjoying their own world and having nothing to do with this world. In the same way the Epicurean also, by detachment from the world as a result of limiting desire, and by finding solace in friendship and companionship, could also find contentment. And finally on death our atoms are dispersed. Thus they believed that there was nothing beyond death.

While they taught the pursuit of ‘pleasure’, it was not hedonism but a pleasure that was to be found in a life of tranquillity, a life free from pain and disturbing passions, and above all from superstitious fears. It was only later that the pursuit of extravagant pleasure through the satisfaction of carnal desires began to characterise Epicurean philosophers, a final natural result of their refusal to believe in an afterlife, and we should not read that into those who listened to Paul. But we can understand from this why on the whole they rejected the teaching of the resurrection, and of a God Who intervened in the affairs of life, and while their teaching certainly did enable people to find a certain level of contentment, it was purely negative and in its own way selfish. In a way it was a denial of the fullness of life and of our responsibility for our fellowman.

The Stoics on the other hand sought deliverance from life by seeking to align themselves with the eternal reason which was inherent in the Universe, the Logos. They believed that the Universe was a kind of fire, and that in each man was a spark of the eternal reason which had to be encouraged. Man, they believed, will be happy when he does not want things to be other than they are, but accepts and responds to the cycle of nature and the cycle of history and cultivates a willing acceptance of them. He must respond to the outworking of the universal Reason by allowing himself to be carried along by it, and by himself living ‘reasonably’. He must therefore be satisfied with all that comes his way, accepting it stoically without complaint and without fighting against it. Life and death, pleasure and pain, were equally unimportant.

Furthermore he saw it as his inevitable responsibility to serve his fellow-man, not out of love but out of disinterested duty and reason, and stoic philosophers like Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius developed high levels of theoretical morality. But it should be noted that his theoretical morality was not such as prevented Marcus Aurelius, for example, from pursuing the persecution of Christians, and condemning them to suffer horrible deaths. He despised them because of their positive attitude towards life, and could not understand how they could have joy in suffering. To him suffering was something to be endured without emotion, as a result of the working out of Reason. Thus he considered that they brought their sufferings, for which he was largely responsible as emperor, on themselves. So in the end his morality was limited to those whom he felt deserved it and he had no compunction about causing suffering to those whom he saw as unworthy.

Their beliefs enabled Stoics to bear the vicissitudes of life without complaint, and to be dutiful in their lives, and they at least believed in a higher ‘force’ which was active among men. But their way was a way that was empty of joy, and deliberately so. Indeed they saw joy as a denial of what they believed in, which was the life of quiet reason and non-resistance. And it resulted in their seeking nothing beyond the grave. Their reason would simply be absorbed back into the eternal reason. Indeed they believed that periodically the world would be destroyed by a great conflagration, after which a new cycle would begin. Neither the Epicureans nor the Stoics had any hope beyond this life.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

‘And some said, “What would this babbler say?” Others, “He seems to be a setter forth of strange gods”, because he preached Jesus and the resurrection.’

We can see then why these philosophers had a sceptical attitude towards what Paul was teaching. The word rendered ‘babbler’ was applied to ‘seed-picking birds’, and then to people who picked up random and second hand ideas without any consistency of thought or real understanding. In their conceit the idea of these philosophers was that others like Paul, were like birds who went around picking up a seed here and there at random, without having a consistent system and logic. They were smug in their own understanding.

Others were amused because he seemed to set forth ‘strange gods’, because he spoke of ‘Jesus’ and ‘Anastasis’ (‘Resurrection’). There were in Athens many altars, not only dedicated to gods, but to ideas, to philosophy and beneficence, to rumour and shame. Thus the personalising of the term ‘Resurrection’ would tie in with these ideas, and some may have seen that idea as being presented here. But this appears rather to be an after-comment by Luke, which militates against this interpretation. Luke’s point is rather that they were reacting to Jesus Himself, as presented, and then especially to the idea of resurrection (compare Act 17:32). The charge of bringing ‘strange gods’ had also been made against Socrates. It may simply be a way of expressing disapproval of what they did not understand. As his ideas did not tie in with theirs, he must clearly be introducing ‘strange gods’. Neither Epicureans nor Stoics thought of any such gods as relevant to life.

In contrast this especially brings out what Paul’s emphases were. His first emphasis was Jesus. He ‘preached Jesus’ (compare Act 8:35). This would have included all the different emphases as described previously including his life and death. His second emphasis was on the resurrection. And he kept stressing both. Thus he proclaimed the full central message that he always preached. Indeed he could not have proclaimed the resurrection without the cross. Thus we do him wrong if we suggest that here he did not preach the cross.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Act 17:18. The Epicureans andStoics, The Epicureans, whose sect was founded by Epicurus, are said to have ascribed neither creation nor providence to God; but held that the world was made by a conflux of atoms: that the gods, if there were any, were of human shape, wholived in voluptuous ease and indolence in heaven, entirely unconcerned about human affairs. They likewise held, that, in the present state, pleasure is the chief good; that man’s existence was limited to the present being; and that consequently no resurrection from the dead, nor any future state of rewards and punishments, was to be expected. The founder of the Stoic sect was Zeno; but the name of it was derived from the place in which they assembled, the , Stoa, or famous portico at Athens, which was adorned with the designs of the greater masters in Greece. They held, that there were two general substances in nature, God and matter; and that both were eternal. Some of them indeed maintained, that God was a corporeal substance; that either God was the world, or the world itself God. They looked upon all things, even the Deity himself, as subject to an irresistible fatality; and as they held that the gods could neither be angry, nor hurt anyone, they took away one main prop of the rewards and punishments of a future state: and as a further weakening of this necessary superstructure, they held a conflagration and renovation, by which the present system would be periodically and alternately destroyed and renewed; so that the same persons would be brought on earth again, to do and suffer the same things as the former generations had done; or other persons like them, who would bear the same names, be placed in similar circumstances, and perform similar actions. But what heightened the malignity of their opinions was this, that they held the soul to be originally a discerped part of God; and that immediately after death it was reunited again to the Deity, by which it was exempted from all sense of misery, and lost its personal identity. As the souls of the bad, as well as the good, were held to undergo this reunion or refusion, and as all personal identity waslost, it is evident that a future state of rewards and punishments must be excluded from their creed. Their morality, though so highly cried up, was of a piece with their metaphysics, and led to the very same conclusion; for they held that all crimes were equal: and so far were they from any proper ideas of religion, that they denied that their wise man was any way inferior to the supreme Deity; that he was not at all indebted to him for his wisdom; that the supreme Deity could not bemore than a wise man; that virtue in this life was its own and sufficient reward: and to conclude these outlines of their character, they denied, in common with the other sects, the resurrection of the body. From this sketch of the opinions of these two sects, the reader may see how opposite the genius of each of them was to the pure and humble spirit of Christianity; and how happily the apostle points his discourse at some of the most distinguishing and important errors of each; while, without expressly attacking either, he seems only intent upongiving a plain summary of his own religious principles; in which he appears an excellent model of the true way of teaching and reforming mankind. It cannot be wondered, that such men as the Epicureans and Stoics should give St. Paul the contemptuous appellation of , babbler: the word literally signifies “a contemptible creature, which picks up scattered seeds in the market, or elsewhere.” It might be rendered a retailer of scraps, “A trifling fellow, who has somewhere or other picked up some scattered notions, with which he is vain enoughto think he may make a figure here.” The word strongly expresses the contempt they had for an unknown foreigner, who pretended to teach all the several professors of their learned and illustrious body of philosophers. Chrysostom, whom Dr. Hammond and several other learned interpreters follow, supposes that the Athenians understood St. Paul, as setting forth the , or resurrection, as a goddess. Stupid as this mistake seems, it is the less to be wondered at, since the resurrection might as well be counted a deity among the Athenians, as modesty, fame, desire; or as the fever, and some other things too scandalous here to name, were among the Romans. In deference, however, to such great names, I cannot help thinking that the Athenians must have understood the meaning of the word too well, to have taken it for a goddess: and indeed it appears to me evident from Act 17:32 that they did understand the word as we commonly do, of men’s rising from the dead.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Act 17:18 . That it was Epicureans and Stoics who fell into conflict with him ( , comp. Luk 14:31 ), and not Academics and Peripatetics, is to be explained apart from the greater popularity of the two former, and from the circumstance that they were in this later period the most numerous at Athens from the greater contrast of their philosophic tenets with the doctrines of Christianity. The one had their principle of pleasure, and the other their pride of virtue! and both repudiated faith in the Divine Providence. Comp. Hermann, Culturgesch. d. Gr. u. Rm . I. p. 237 f.

The opinion of these philosophers was twofold. Some, with vain scholastic conceit, pronounced Paul’s discourses, which lacked the matter and form of Hellenic philosophy, to be idle talk, undeserving of attention, and would have nothing further to do with him. Others were at least curious about this new matter, considered the singular stranger as an announcer of strange divinities, and took him with them, in order to hear more from him and to allow their fellow-citizens to hear him, to the Areopagus, etc.

] if, namely, his speaking is to have a meaning. See on Act 2:12 .

] originally the rook (Aristoph. Av . 232, 579). Then in a twofold figurative meaning: (1) from the manner in which that bird feeds, a parasite ; and (2) from its chattering voice, a babbler (Dem. 269. 19; Athen. viii. p. 344 C). So here, as the speaking of Paul gave occasion to this contemptuous designation. See also Dissen, ad Dem. de cor . p. 297.

] divinities , quite generally. The plural is indefinite , and denotes the category (see on Mat 2:20 ). According to de Wette, it is Jesus the Risen One and the living God that are meant in contrast to the Greek gods, an element, however, which, according to the subjoined remark of Luke, appears as imported . The judgment of the philosophers, very similar to the charge previously brought against Socrates (Xen. Mem . i. 1. 1), but not framed possibly in imitation of it (in opposition to Zeller), was founded on their belief that Jesus , whom Paul preached and even set forth as a raiser of the dead , must be assumed, doubtless, to be a foreign divinity , whose announcer ( , not elsewhere preserved) Paul desired to be. Hence Luke adds the explanatory statement: . . . . Chrysostom, Oecumenius, Alexander Moras, Selden, Hammond, Spencer, Heinrichs, Baur, [64] Lange, and Baumgarten, strangely imagine that the philosophers meant the as a goddess announced by Paul Comp. also Ewald, p. 494 f. But if Luke had aimed at this by his explanatory remark, he must have indicated it more precisely, especially as it is in itself improbable that the philosophers could, even in mere irony, derive from the words of the apostle a goddess , for Paul doubtless announced who would raise the dead. Olearius referred . . not to the general resurrection of the dead, but to the resurrection of Jesus ; so also Bengel. But Luke, in that case, in order not to be misunderstood, must have added , which (see the critical remarks) he has not done.

[64] See his Paulus , I. p. 192, ed. 2 : the ironical popular wit had out of Jesus and the made a pair of divinities.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

18 Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.

Ver. 18. Certain philosophers, &c. ] The deep theorems of philosophy (said King James) make one learned, but seldom better, and oftentimes worse, mere atheists. There is an Arabic proverb, Cum errat eruditus, errat errore erudito. When a learned man goes astray, he goes astray by learned deception. And Indocti rapiunt caelum, The unlearned are snatched off to heaven, saith Aug. Melior est humilis rusticus qui Deo servit, quam superbus Philosophus, &c., Better is the lowly peasent obeys God than the proud philospher, said a devout Dominican. (Erpen. Cent. 2 Pro 28:6 )

What will this babbler say? ] Seminilega, , by a metaphor from little birds, that yield neither good meat nor good music, but only pick up grain, and live by other men’s labours. Master Rogers (our late proto-martyr) interpreteth it a prater, trifler, news-carrier, that tells whatsoever men will have him for gain; that will for a piece of bread say what you will have him.

A setter forth of strange gods ] Rogers renders it, a preacher of new devils.

Jesus and the resurrection ] Anastasis, or the resurrection, they took for some new goddess, saith cumenius.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

18. ] The Epicurean philosophy was antagonistic to the gospel, as holding the atomic theory in opposition to the creation of matter, the disconnexion of the Divinity from the world and its affairs, in opposition to the idea of a ruling Providence, and the indissoluble union, and annihilation together, of soul and body, as opposed to the hope of eternal life, and indeed to all spiritual religion whatever. The Epicureans were the materialists of the ancient world. The common idea attached to Epicureanism must be discarded in our estimate of the persons mentioned in our text. The summum bonum of the real Epicureans, far from being a degraded and sensual pleasure, was of mind, based upon , perhaps the best estimate of the highest good formed in the heathen world; and their ethics were exceedingly strict. But the abuse to which such a doctrine was evidently liable, gave rise to a pseudo-Epicureanism, which has generally passed current for the real, and which amply illustrated the truth, that ‘corruptio optimi est pessima.’ For their chimerical , Paul offered them , Phi 4:7 .

] So named from the (see above), founded by Zeno [84] of Cittium in the fourth century B.C., but perhaps more properly by Cleanthes and Chrysippus in the third century B.C. Their philosophy, while it approached the truth in holding one supreme Governor of all, compromised it, in allowing of any and all ways of conceiving and worshipping Him (see below, Act 17:24-25 ), and contravened it, in its pantheistic belief that all souls were emanations of Him. In spirit it was directly opposed to the gospel, holding the independence of man on any being but himself, together with the subjection of God and man alike to the stern laws of an inevitable fate. On the existence of the soul after death their ideas were various: some holding that all souls endure to the conflagration of all things, others confining this to the souls of good men, and others believing all souls to be reabsorbed into the Divinity. By these tenets they would obviously be placed in antagonism to the doctrines of a Saviour of the world and the resurrection, and to placing the summum bonum of man in abundance of that grace which , 2Co 12:9 .

[84] Zeno, Bp. of Verona , 362 380

. ] These are not to be taken as belonging the one to the Epicureans, the other to the Stoics, but rather as describing two classes, common perhaps to both schools, the one of which despised him and his sayings, and the other were disposed to take a more serious view of the matter, and charge him with bringing in new deities.

] , , . Eustath [85] ad Odyss. . 490, where Damm observes, , ‘verbum recentiorum; dicitur , si quis quid arripuit forte ex disciplinis, eoque se imperite jactat:’ babbler is the very best English word: as both signifying one who talks fluently to no purpose , and hinting also that his talk is not his own .

[85] Eustathius, Bp. of Antioch, 323

. ] . , was one of the charges on which Athens put to death her wisest son.

is not plural for singular, as Kuin.: nor merely, though this is somewhat more probable, marks the category, as Meyer: nor can it refer (Chrys., Theophyl., cum., Hammond, Heinrichs) to Jesus and the , mistaken for a goddess (a sufficient answer to which strange idea is, that is merely a statement in the mouths of others , of the doctrine taught by Paul, which he would hardly ever, if ever, specify by this word , compare Act 17:31-32 ): but alludes (as De Wette) to the true God , the God of the Jews, and Jesus Christ His Son: the Creator of the world ( Act 17:24 ), and the Man whom He hath appointed to judge it, Act 17:31 .

] Compare Act 17:23 , end; which is an express answer to this charge.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Act 17:18 . : a word peculiar to St. Luke; three times in his Gospel, four times in Acts; it need not have necessarily a hostile sense as in Luk 14:31 , but simply means that amongst the chance comers in the Agora there were some who “engaged in discussions,” with him (so Blass like Latin, consilia conferre, sc. ), a meaning perhaps suggested by the imperfect. Grotius and others take it as “translatio de prliis sumpta, ut apparet, Luk 14:31 . Utitur ita spe Polybius, quem sequi amat Lucas.” : so called from Epicurus, 342 270 B.C.; his disciples were known also as the School of the Garden, from the garden in Athens where the master instructed them, in distinction from the disciples of the Porch or the Academy. We must be careful to remember that as in numberless other cases, so the system of the founder suffered at the hands of his successors, and that the life of Epicurus himself was far removed from that of a mere sensualist, or “Epicure” in its later sense. But it was evident that a life which made pleasure and happiness the be-all and end-all of existence, however safeguarded by the conditions imposed at the outset by Epicurus, was liable to degenerate into a mere series of prudential calculations, or a mere indulgence of the senses and appetites. In his determination to rid men of the superstitious fears which were the chief cause of the miseries of humanity, Epicurus opposed the popular Polytheism, and regarded the gods as living a life of passionless calm far removed from mundane strifes and sorrows, “careless of mankind”. The Stoics branded Epicurus as an Atheist, but the materialistic creed of Epicurus and his followers had at all events this merit, that its bold criticism of existing beliefs was serviceable in undermining the prevailing acceptance of a gross and crude mythology, whilst it helped to assert in contradistinction to a paralysing fatalism the doctrine of the freedom of man’s will (see F. C. Conybeare, “Epicureans,” Hastings’ B.D.; Westcott, “Epicureans,” B.D. 2 ; Wallace, Epicureanism ). : The Stoics, so called from the Stoa Pcile at Athens where Zeno of Citium, the founder of the school, 340 260 B.C., met his pupils, and where his successors debated (Capes, Stoics , p. 30), spoke in their theology of a providence ruling the world, of a first cause and a governing mind. But their creed was essentially Pantheistic, although the verses of Cleanthes’ Hymn (“the most important document of the Stoic theology,” Ueberweg) seemed to breathe the accents of a higher and nobler belief. But no devotional phrases could disguise a Pantheism which regarded the world as the body of God, and God as the soul of the world, which held that apart from external nature the Supreme God had no existence which identified Him with fate and necessity, while the history of the universe was an unfolding of the providence of God, but a providence which was but another name for the chain of causation and consequences, inviolable, eternal. The leading maxims of the ethical system of the Stoics was the injunction to live according to nature, although the expression of the rule varied in the earlier and later schools. But as this life was best realised in conformity to the law of the universe, in conformity with reason as the highest element in man, the Stoic ideal, in spite of its recognition of virtue, became not merely stern and intellectual, but impassive and austere; in aiming at apathy the Stoic lost sympathy with the most ennobling and energetic emotions, and thus wrapped up in the cloak of his own virtue he justified, at least from an ethical point of view, the description which classed him as the Pharisee of Greek philosophy. In addressing an audience composed at all events in part of the representatives of these two great philosophic schools it may be said that St. Paul was not unmindful of his own former training in the early home of Stoicism (see on p. 235). And so in speaking of creation and providence, of the unity of nations in the recognition of all that was true even in Pantheism, St. Paul has been described as taking the Stoic side against the Epicureans, or at least we may say that he in his speech asserts against some of the cardinal errors of the Epicureans the creative and superintending power of God. But to the Stoic and Epicurean alike the Christian Creed would proclaim that All’s Love, yet all’s Law ; to the Stoic and Epicurean alike, the Pharisee and Sadducee of the world of philosophy, the bidding came to repent and obey the Gospel, no less than to the crowd whom sages and philosophers despised: “Paulus summa arte orationem suam ita temperat, ut modo cum vulgo contra Philosophos, modo cum Philosophis contra plebem, modo contra utrosque pugnet,” Wetstein; see Capes, Stoicism ; Lightfoot, Philippians , “St. Paul and Seneca”; Zahn, Der Stoiker Epiktet und sein Verhltniss zum Christenthum; Ueberweg, Hist, of Phil. , i., p. 185 ff.; Rendall, Marcus Antoninus , Introd. (1898); Gore, Ephesians , p. 253 ff. : these are generally taken to include the philosophers, and the remarks following are referred to them; sometimes the first question to the Epicureans, and the second criticism to the Stoics. But it has recently been maintained that we need not refer to the two sects of philosophers this unfavourable criticism on St. Paul; “Epicureans,” Conybeare in Hastings’ B.D. Certainly the has no as if two opposing schools were meant. The punctuation in R.V., which simply states the fact that amongst those in the Agora certain also of the philosophers, etc., admits of this view that the criticisms were uttered not by the philosophers, but by the curious crowd which thronged the Agora. Ramsay however takes the verse as marking the opinions of the philosophers, and the use of the word by Zeno of one of his followers may help to confirm this. : “what would this babbler say?” R.V., not future as in A.V.; the with optative being used to express what would happen as the fulfilment of some supposed condition, Burton, p. 79, so Viteau, Le Grec du N. T. , p. 33 (1893), the condition being if we would listen to him, or if his words have any meaning; optative with only in Luke, see Burton, u. s. : primarily an adjective, – ; as a substantive . of a rook or crow, or some small bird, picking up seeds, cf. Arist., Av. , 233, 580. – : so far as derivation is concerned it is not connected with – , Latin, seminiverbius (so Augustine, Wycliffe, “sower of words”). The accent shows that this latter derivation is incorrect. Hence a man hanging about the shops and the markets, picking up scraps which fell from the loads and thus gaining a livelihood, so a parasite, one who lives at the expense of others, a hanger-on, Eustathius on Hom., Odys. , v., 490; see in Grimm, sub v. ; so Dem. speaks of Aeschines, 269, 19, as . . The word thus came to be used of a man who picked up scraps of information, and retailed them at second hand. So Eustathius speaks of rhetoricians who were mere collectors of words and consistent plagiarists ; so again he remarks that the word is applied to those who make a show in unscientific style of knowledge which they have got from misunderstanding of lectures (see for these quotations Ramsay, Expositor , September, 1899, p. 222, and the whole article “St. Paul in Athens”). Ramsay maintains therefore that there is no instance of the classical use of the word as a babbler or mere talker, and he sees in the word a piece of Athenian slang, caught up as the Athenians had themselves used it (“sine dubio hoc ex ipso ore Atheniensium auctor excepit” Blass), and applied to one who was quite outside any literary circle, an ignorant, vulgar plagiarist. At the same time it is perhaps difficult to find any single word more to the point than “babbler,” A. and R.V. (Tyndall), for, as Alford urges, it both signifies one who talks fluently to no purpose, and hints also that his talk is not his own. We may, however, well owe this rendering to the fact that was wrongly derived, as if it meant seminator verborum , whereas its true derivation is given above. De Wette, Overbeck, Nsgen, Weiss, Holtzmann, Zckler, Wendt, all so render it. An ingenious attempt has been made to connect the word with the Aretalogi (Juvenal, Sat. , xv., 16; Suet, Aug [309] , 74) or praters about virtue, who hired themselves as entertainers for the wealthy Roman nobles at their dinners: “mendax aretalogus,” Juv., u. s. ; Zckler, in loco . For instances of the use of the word see Wetstein, Ramsay, Nsgen, Bethge, Die Paulinischen Reden , p. 77; Rendall (who agrees with Ramsay), and “Babbler,” Hastings’ B.D. . .: The same kind of accusation had been already made against Socrates, Xen., Mem. , i., 1, as also against Anaxagoras and Protagoras, see Josephus, . Apion. , ii., 38, who also tells us how a certain priestess had been condemned in Athens . In Athens the introduction of strange gods was a capital offence, if by such an introduction the home deities were rejected and the state religion disturbed, but there is nothing to show that the Athenians regarded Paul’s teaching in this light, and there is no evidence that the Areopagus had cognisance of serious charges of impiety or of the introduction of foreign religion (Ramsay, St. Paul , p. 247). : “strange,” i.e. , foreign. used here like the Greek in a neutral sense which might refer to deities good or bad. In classical Greek we have , cf. the charge against Socrates, Xen., Mem. , i., 1; Plato, Apol. , 24 B. : only here in N.T., not found in LXX or classical Greek, the verb occurs twice in 2Ma 8:36 ; 2Ma 9:17 , of declaring abroad the power of the God of the Jews. In Plutarch we have . , see Burton, p. 153; on the personal construction with cf. Gal 2:9 , Jas 1:26 , etc. . , see critical note. It is possible that the Athenians thought that Paul was preaching two strange, deities, Jesus and Resurrection (the latter as a female deity ), just as they had their own altars erected to Pity, Piety, Modesty, a view which gains support not only from the collocation of the words, but from the use of the article with both, and from the supposition that Paul was held to be a preacher of more than one strange God; so Chrys., Oecum., Selden, and list given by Wendt (1888), in loco . Wendt also (1899) inclines to this view, which is adopted by Renan, Overbeck, Holtzmann, Felten, McGiffert, Knabenbauer, cf. also the punctuation in R.V., which may imply this view (see Humphry on R.V., in loco ). As against this view see Hackett’s note, p. 213, who thinks it hardly conceivable that the Apostle could express himself so obscurely on the subject as to afford any occasion for this gross mistake (so also Farrar). The article before . is taken by Nsgen as referring simply to the general resurrection, a view which he regards as agreeing with the prominence given to the doctrine in Act 17:31 . It is argued that if . referred to the resurrection of Jesus we should have which has crept into some copies, but the address itself shows that the Apostle spoke of the resurrection of Jesus as affording a pledge of a general resurrection.

[309] Augustine.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

philosophers, &c. = of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. Only occurance of philosophos. The Epicureans were followers of Epicurus (342-279 B.C.) who held that pleasure was the highest good, while the Stoics were disciples of Zeno (about 270 B.C.) who taught that the supreme good was virtue, and man should be free from passion and moved by neither joy nor grief, pleasure nor pain. They were Fatalists and Pantheists. The name came from the porch (Greek. stoa) where they met.

encountered. Greek. sumballo. See note on Act 4:15.

will, &c. = would this babbler wish (Greek. thelo. App-102.) to say.

babbler. Greek. spermologos = seed-picker. Only here. Used of birds, and so applied to men who gathered scraps of information from others.

other some = and some.

a setter forth = a proclaimer. Greek. katangeleus. Compare App-121. Only here. Compare the verb in verses: Act 17:3, Act 17:13, Act 17:23.

strange = foreign. Greek. xenos. An adjective, but generally translated stranger, (“man” understood), as in Act 17:21.

gods = demons. Greek. daimonion. Occurs sixty times, fifty-two times in the Gospels. Only here in Acts. Translated “devils” in Authorized Version and Revised Version (margin demons) except here.

preached. Greek. euangelizo. App-121.

resurrection. Greek. anastatis. App-178. They were accustomed to personify abstract ideas, as victory, pity, &c, and they may have thought that Jesus and the resurrection were two new divinities. One charge against Socrates was that of introducing new divinities.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

18. ] The Epicurean philosophy was antagonistic to the gospel, as holding the atomic theory in opposition to the creation of matter,-the disconnexion of the Divinity from the world and its affairs, in opposition to the idea of a ruling Providence,-and the indissoluble union, and annihilation together, of soul and body, as opposed to the hope of eternal life, and indeed to all spiritual religion whatever. The Epicureans were the materialists of the ancient world. The common idea attached to Epicureanism must be discarded in our estimate of the persons mentioned in our text. The summum bonum of the real Epicureans, far from being a degraded and sensual pleasure, was of mind, based upon ,-perhaps the best estimate of the highest good formed in the heathen world;-and their ethics were exceedingly strict. But the abuse to which such a doctrine was evidently liable, gave rise to a pseudo-Epicureanism, which has generally passed current for the real, and which amply illustrated the truth, that corruptio optimi est pessima. For their chimerical , Paul offered them , Php 4:7.

] So named from the (see above), founded by Zeno[84] of Cittium in the fourth century B.C., but perhaps more properly by Cleanthes and Chrysippus in the third century B.C. Their philosophy, while it approached the truth in holding one supreme Governor of all, compromised it, in allowing of any and all ways of conceiving and worshipping Him (see below, Act 17:24-25),-and contravened it, in its pantheistic belief that all souls were emanations of Him. In spirit it was directly opposed to the gospel,-holding the independence of man on any being but himself, together with the subjection of God and man alike to the stern laws of an inevitable fate. On the existence of the soul after death their ideas were various: some holding that all souls endure to the conflagration of all things,-others confining this to the souls of good men,-and others believing all souls to be reabsorbed into the Divinity. By these tenets they would obviously be placed in antagonism to the doctrines of a Saviour of the world and the resurrection,-and to placing the summum bonum of man in abundance of that grace which , 2Co 12:9.

[84] Zeno, Bp. of Verona, 362-380

. ] These are not to be taken as belonging the one to the Epicureans, the other to the Stoics,-but rather as describing two classes, common perhaps to both schools,-the one of which despised him and his sayings, and the other were disposed to take a more serious view of the matter, and charge him with bringing in new deities.

] , , . Eustath[85] ad Odyss. . 490, where Damm observes, , verbum recentiorum; dicitur , si quis quid arripuit forte ex disciplinis, eoque se imperite jactat: babbler is the very best English word: as both signifying one who talks fluently to no purpose, and hinting also that his talk is not his own.

[85] Eustathius, Bp. of Antioch, 323

.] . , was one of the charges on which Athens put to death her wisest son.

is not plural for singular, as Kuin.: nor merely, though this is somewhat more probable, marks the category, as Meyer: nor can it refer (Chrys., Theophyl., cum., Hammond, Heinrichs) to Jesus and the , mistaken for a goddess (a sufficient answer to which strange idea is, that is merely a statement in the mouths of others, of the doctrine taught by Paul, which he would hardly ever, if ever, specify by this word,-compare Act 17:31-32): but alludes (as De Wette) to the true God, the God of the Jews, and Jesus Christ His Son: the Creator of the world (Act 17:24), and the Man whom He hath appointed to judge it, Act 17:31.

] Compare Act 17:23, end; which is an express answer to this charge.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Act 17:18. [, some) It is not without danger to despise any one, before that you have informed yourself what kind of a person he is.-V. g.]-) encountered him.-, what) The pride of overloaded (satisfied with its own fulness) and fastidious (contemptuous) reason hereby gives itself vent.-) Hesychius explains as , , , a seed-picker, trifling and jackdaw like. Compare Eustathius. The seed of Paul was not without its fruit: whereas the philosophers of Athens were void of all fruit. Henry Bullinger says, Nowhere did Paul teach with less fruit resulting than at Athens: nor is it strange, seeing that there was in that same city a kind of den and covert of philosophers who always stood forth, a most immediate and deadly bane to true piety.-, of foreign, strange) which the Athenians heretofore had not had.-, an announcer, setter forth) This word Paul gives back to them in his turn, Act 17:23 : I do announce to you.-) This because is to be referred to the words, But others said.-, the resurrection) They fancied that Paul spoke of Jesus in such a way, as if He had been made a they did not fancy that the , or resurrection itself, was being set before them as a goddess.-, he was preaching) in the brief conversation with them, whereby he was sounding their state of mind. See foll. verse.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Epicureans Disciples of Epicurus, B.C. 342-271, who abandoned as hopeless the search by reason for pure truth, cf. Joh 18:38 seeking instead true pleasure through experience.

Stoicks Disciples of Zeno, B.C. 280, and Chrysippus, B.C. 240. This philosophy was founded on human self-sufficiency, inculcated stern self-repression, the solidarily of the race, and the unity of Deity. Epicureans and Stocis divided the apostolic world.

Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes

philosophers: Rom 1:22, 1Co 1:20, 1Co 1:21, Col 2:8

encountered: Act 6:9, Mar 9:14, Luk 11:53

babbler: or, base fellow, Pro 23:9, Pro 26:12, 1Co 3:18

Jesus: Act 17:31, Act 26:23, Rom 14:9, Rom 14:10, 1Co 15:3, 1Co 15:4

Reciprocal: Gen 41:8 – the magicians of Egypt 2Ki 9:11 – this mad fellow Job 11:2 – the multitude Jer 20:7 – I am Eze 20:49 – Doth Mat 5:22 – Whosoever Mat 26:61 – This Mar 4:15 – these Mar 9:10 – what Act 4:2 – preached Act 8:35 – preached Act 11:20 – preaching Act 17:32 – some 1Co 1:18 – foolishness 1Co 1:22 – the Greeks 1Co 1:27 – General 1Co 2:14 – they 1Co 4:10 – are fools 2Co 6:9 – unknown Col 1:28 – Whom 1Th 2:13 – because 1Ti 4:1 – and doctrines 1Ti 6:20 – oppositions Heb 6:2 – resurrection

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

HISTORICAL CERTAINTY OF THE RESURRECTION

Jesus and the Resurrection.

Act 17:18

It is of vital importance, and especially at a time such as the present, to realise that the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ can be shown to be an historical fact as certain and indisputable as any event that holds a place in the annals of the past. When, then, plainly asked why we believe that the Lord rose from the tomb in which human hands had laid Him, we reply thus:

I. Because this Resurrection was proclaimed from the very first by men who had not only seen the Lord with their own eyes, but on one occasion (unless we are prepared to reject every attempt to reconcile the narrative of St. Paul with the narrative of Matthew) had seen very many others see Him, and testify by their outward act of adoration that they did see Him, and did realise His veritable presence, even though there were some then present who doubted it.

II. Because though confessedly an incredible story, and though confronted on the part of the Jews by a counter-story, it was nevertheless believed in from the very first.

III. Because the proclamation of the Lords Resurrection was made the basis of the whole evangelical message.

IV. So persuasively and so widely was the Gospel preached, that we may be shown by four Epistles of St. Paul about the genuineness of which no reasonable doubt can be entertained, the belief in the Lords Resurrection as a fact, and as that to which after the death of the Founder the Church owed its continued existence, had spread, within thirty years, to all the great centres of learning and civilisation in the ancient world. And of this universality of belief two abiding witnesses have come to us from those earliest ages down to the present time.

(a) The one, the fact that the day of the week on which the Lord rose is the pre-eminently holy day of the Christian week.

(b) The other, the fact that the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, and the showing forth of the Lords death until He come, has stood in close and uninterrupted connection with the first day of the week from the very first Easter Day down to the present time.

Bishop Ellicott.

Illustration

The two scenes before the Sanhedrim have ever seemed to me to indicate with unmistakable clearness that many of those seventy-two men, though they might not have definitely believed that the blessed fact was a fact, were, so to say, standing at gaze. The miracle performed on the lame man at the Beautiful Gate, which they plainly said they could not deny, had shaken them, and left in the background of the mind the feeling of the possibility of the mightier miracle being true after all. Their action on this occasion, and still more so on the second occasion of the Apostles being brought before them, when they ultimately accepted the counsel of Gamaliel, though at first they had all but come to the resolution of stopping the story of the Apostles by killing them, has never seemed to me in harmony with any clear conviction on the part of the whole of the Council that the declaration of St. Peter and the Apostles was utterly and absolutely unworthy of belief.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

8

Act 17:18. Athens was the chief city of Greece and the seat of learning and civilization for that province. Hence Paul would encounter various classes of citizens whose ears were alert for any literary or philosophical subject that might be introduced. The Epicureans were a class founded by Epicurus, who taught that fleshly pleasure should be the chief purpose of man on earth. The theory of the Stoicks was almost opposite of the Epicureans, but it was based chiefly on the supposed importance of philosophy. It is easy to see why both these groups would criticize the Gospel which seeks to find true pleasure in humble devotion to the risen Lord.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Act 17:18. Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoics. This would be more accurately rendered, of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. Epicurus, founder of the philosophic sect which bears his name, was born in Samos, B.C. 342. The Epicurean, while admitting the existence of gods, regarded them as paying no attention to men and the affairs of this world. They believed in no Providence, in no accountability, in neither reward nor retribution in the life to come. They were virtually Atheists. The real teaching of the masters of the sect was, that a wise man should enjoy to the uttermost the things of this life, for the soul being material was annihilated after death. Epicurus is believed himself to have taught a higher ideal of happiness, but very soon his followers reduced his system to what was in fact a teaching of the grossest sensualism. The world, according to the great Epicurean poem of Lucretius, was only formed by an accidental concourse of atoms, and was not in any sense created or reduced to order by any deity.

Zeno, a native of Cyprus, the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy, lived and taught in the latter part of the fourth century and in the earlier years of the third century before Christ. The Stoics condemned the worship of images and the use of temples, but they in some degree accepted popular mythology by considering the various gods as developments of the universal world-God. These were then Pantheists . they denied any overruling Providence, or, in fact, any interference on the part of Deity in the affairs of the world. Everything was governed by an iron destiny, to which God Himself was subject. They believed only in the immortality of the soul by imagining it was ultimately absorbed in Deity; but even this absorption they seem to teach was only to be the lot of the wise and the good. The ideal life, however, proposed to the disciples of Zeno was a far higher one than the Epicurean ideal, a proud self-denial, an austere apathy (), untouched by human passion, unmoved alike by joy or sorrow, was aimed at by the true Stoic V. Cousin admirably sums up the spirit of the strange philosophy which was far removed from the comprehension of the poor and illiterate, and, in fact, was only admired and followed by a limited number of cultured minds: Le Stoicisme est essentiellement solitaire, cest le soin exclusif de son ame, sans regard a celle des autres, et comme la seule chose importante est la puret de lme, quand cette purete est trop en peril, quand on dsespere dtre victorieux dans la lutte, on peut la terminer comme la termine Caton. Ainsi la philosophie nest plus quun apprentissage de la Mort et non de la vie, elle tend a la Mort par son image, lapathie et lataraxie, et se resont definitivement en un goisme sublime(V. Cousin).

What would this babbler say? This word properly denotes a seed-gatherer, such as a sparrow or rook, or bird which frequents streets and market-places picking up seeds. Aristophanes thus uses the word in his Birds, 232: A babbler, one mho picks up bits of news and information and retails them to others.

He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection. The name of Jesus, whom Paul preached, was to them a new name and strange. Many, perhaps the majority, of the hearers mistook the Resurrection () for the name of a goddess, a word that Paul seems to have used frequently, as he evidently, in that speech of his on Mars Hill, laid deep stress on this great Christian doctrine. It must be remembered that his audience on this occasion was mainly composed of philosophers belonging to the Stoic and Epicurean schools, in both of which all individual life after death was denied. The Stoic theory of the absorption of certain souls in the essence of the Deity does not contradict this.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Act 17:18. Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him Greek, , opposed themselves to him. The Epicureans entirely denied a providence, and held the world to be the effect of mere chance; asserting sensual pleasure to be mans chief good, and that the soul and body died together. The Stoics held that matter was eternal; that all things were governed by irresistible fate; that virtue was its own sufficient reward, and vice its own sufficient punishment. It is easy to see how happily the apostle levels his discourse at some of the most important errors of each sect, while, without expressly attacking either, he gives a plain summary of his own religious principles. Some said, What will this babbler say? Such is the language of natural reason, full of, and satisfied with, itself. The expression, rendered babbler, , (which properly signifies a contemptible person, that picks up scattered seed in the market, or elsewhere, and which Dr. Doddridge translates, retailer of scraps; and Mr. Fleming, holder forth;) admirably expresses the contempt which these philosophers had of this unknown foreigner, who pretended to teach all the several professors of their learned and illustrious body. Yet even here Paul had some fruit, though nowhere less than at Athens. And no wonder, since this city was a seminary of philosophers, who have ever been the pest of true religion. Others said, He seemeth to be a setter forth , a proclaimer (this expression he returns to them at Act 17:23) of strange gods Such as are not known even at Athens. The original expression, , signifies strange, or foreign demons. By demons, however, they did not understand devils, or evil beings, as we do; but rather men, who had lived on earth, and were afterward deified; distinguishing them from the , or gods, who, they thought, were such by nature. Because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection The former of which, through their negligence in attending they ridiculously took for a deified man, and the other for a goddess. And, as stupid as this mistake was, it is the less to be wondered at, since the Athenians might as well count the resurrection a deity, as shame, famine, and desire; or as the fever, and some other things too scandalous to be here named, were accounted deities among the Romans.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

18. By efforts so persistent he succeeded in attracting some attention from the idle throng, but it was of a character, at first, not very flattering. (18) “The certain of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him, and some said, What will this babbler say? And others, He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign demons; because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection.” The persistency with which he sought the attention of every one he met suggested the epithet “babbler,” and the prominence in his arguments of the name of Jesus and the resurrection suggested to the inattentive hearers that these were two foreign demons whom he was trying to make known to them.

The two classes of philosophers whom he encountered were the antipodes of each other, and the practical philosophy of each was antipodal to the doctrine of Paul. The Stoics taught that the true philosophy of life was a total indifference to both the sorrows and pleasures of the world; while the Epicureans sought relief from life’s sorrows in the studied pursuit of its pleasures. In opposition to the former, Paul taught that we should weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice; and in opposition to the latter, that we should deny ourselves in reference to all ungodliness and worldly lusts.

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

Verse 18

Epicureans and–Stoics; two prominent sects of philosophers. The doctrine of the Epicureans was, that the true end and aim of life was enjoyment, and that the test and the essence of philosophy was to carry human happiness to the highest point, and to give it the most permanent and uninterrupted character; the rules of virtue were inculcated as the best means to this end. The philosophers of this class saw no evidence of any future state, or of the existence of any divine being to whom they were accountable. Their theory, therefore, was, that every man should aim to secure for himself and for others the highest degree of rational and substantial pleasure in the present state, and all possible exemption from pain. The Stoics, on the other hand, believed in the existence of God, and in a future state, and in the moral accountability of man; and they held up an ideal of virtue, which they maintained was the highest good, and should be the end and aim of human efforts, without regard to the pain or the pleasure which might attend the pursuit. While, therefore, the Epicureans taught men to value enjoyment, and to seek for it through all the safe avenues by which it might be attained, the Stoics inculcated indifference and insensibility to sensations of pain and pleasure, and supreme devotedness to the principles of a stern and inflexible virtue. The terms Epicurean and Stoic have gradually acquired, in modern times, opprobrious significations; and the ordinary representations of the two systems, made to set off, by contrast, the superiority of Christianity, are caricatures, which convey no just idea of the intent and meaning of their originals. They were both right, and both wrong; for Christianity shows us that virtue and happiness, one and indivisible, constitute the highest and only good, and the proper end and aim of being.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

17:18 {10} Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this {i} babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.

(10) Two special sects of the philosophers set themselves against Christ: the Epicures, who mock and scoff at religion: and the Stoics, who decide religious matters according to their own thinking.

(i) Literally, “seed gatherer”: a borrowed kind of speech taken from birds which spoil corn, and is applied to those who without any skill blurt out the knowledge which they have gotten by hearing this man and that man.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

Epicureans were disciples of Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) who believed that pleasure was the greatest good and the most worthy pursuit of man. They meant pleasure in the sense of tranquility and freedom from pain, disquieting passions, and fears, especially the fear of death. Epicurus taught that the gods took no interest in human affairs. Thus organized religion was bad, and the gods would not punish evildoers in the afterlife. Epicurus’ followers also believed that everything happened by chance and that death was the end of all. They were similar to "agnostic secularists." [Note: Bock, Acts, p. 561.] This philosophy is still popular today. One of its fairly modern poets was A. C. Swinburne.

"A motto, written by Diogenes, an Epicurean, in about A.D. 200, sums up this belief system: ’Nothing to fear in God; Nothing to feel in death; Good [pleasure] can be attained; Evil [pain] can be endured.’" [Note: Witherington, p. 514.]

". . . Epicureanism is most fairly described as the ancient representative of modern utilitarianism." [Note: Rackham, p. 304.]

Stoics followed the teachings of Zeno the Cypriot (340-265 B.C.). The name "stoic" comes from "stoa," a particular portico (Gr. stoa) where he taught when he lived in Athens. His followers placed great importance on living in harmony with nature. They stressed individual self-sufficiency and rationalism, and they had a reputation for being quite arrogant. Stoics were pantheists who believed that God is in everything, and everything is God. They were also fatalistic. Their teaching is also common today. A modern poet who set forth this philosophy of life, W. E. Henley, wrote, "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul," in his poem Invictus. Stoics were also idealists. [Note: See David A. deSilva, "Paul and the Stoa: A Comparison," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 38:4 (December 1995):549-64, for a comparison of Paul’s teaching and the Stoics’.]

The Greek word spermologos, translated "babbler," refers to someone who picked up the words of others as a bird picks up seeds. Paul’s hearers implied that he had put together a philosophy of life simply by picking up this and that scrap of an idea from various sources. Others accused him of proclaiming new gods, though his critics may have misunderstood his references to the resurrection (Gr. anastasis) as being references to a person, perhaps a female counterpart of Jesus. This is less likely than that they simply did not believe in resurrection. [Note: Bock, Acts, p. 562.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)