Acts 17:16–34

The Philosophers at Athens

¹⁶Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, ^ohis spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was ⁵given over to idols. ¹⁷Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there. ¹⁸⁶Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, “What does this ⁷babbler want to say?”

Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods,” because he preached to them ^pJesus and the resurrection.

¹⁹And they took him and brought him to the ⁸Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? ²⁰For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we want to know what these things mean.” ²¹For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

Addressing the Areopagus

²²Then Paul stood in the midst of the ⁹Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; ²³for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:

TO THE UNKNOWN GOD

Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: ^24qGod, who made the world and everything in it, since He is ^rLord of heaven and earth, ^sdoes not dwell in temples made with hands. ²⁵Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He ^tgives to all life, breath, and all things. ²⁶And He has made from one ¹blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and ^uthe boundaries of their dwellings, ^27vso that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, ^wthough He is not far from each one of us; ²⁸for ^xin Him we live and move and have our being, ^yas also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ ²⁹Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, ^zwe ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. ³⁰Truly, ^athese times of ignorance God overlooked, but ^bnow commands all men everywhere to repent, ³¹because He has appointed a day on which ^cHe will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by ^draising Him from the dead.”

³²And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, “We will hear you again on this matter.” ³³So Paul departed from among them. ³⁴However, some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.