Acts 17:23

ὃ for ὅν, τοῦτο for τοῦτον with אABD. Vulg. ‘Quod … hoc.’

23. διερχόμενος γάρ, for as I passed along, through your streets and squares.

καὶ�, and noticed the objects of your worship, ἀναθεωρέω indicates a full observation. Paul had not only looked at the statues, but had read the inscriptions on them.

σέβασμα = an object of worship is found three times in the LXX. Wis 14:20, τὸν πρὸ ὀλίγου τιμηθέντα ἄνθρωπον νῦν σέβασμα ἐλογίσαντο, ‘They took him now for an object of worship (A.V. a god) which a little before was honoured as a man.’ So Wis 15:17 κρείττων γάρ ἐστι τῶν σεβασμάτων αὐτοῦ, ‘himself is better than the things which he worshippeth.’ Cf. also Bel 27.

εὖρον καὶ βωμόν, I found also an altar, i.e. in addition to the multitude of statues and altars to definite deities.

ἀγνώστῳ θεῷ, to an unknown god. This was an altar erected on the occasion of some visitation, the cause of which was not apparent, and which could not be ascribed to any of their existing divinities. We have abundant evidence of the existence in Athens of such altars as that to which St Paul alludes. But the words in which they are described generally run in the plural number, τοῖς�. Thus Pausanias (I. i. 4) describing one of the ports of Athens tells us that there were there ‘altars to gods styled unknown,’ and Philostratus in his Life of Apollonius says ‘at Athens there are erected altars for unknown gods.’ There is a like allusion in (pseudo) Lucian’s Philopatris, but it is doubtful whether that is not drawn from this passage of the Acts. And Jerome writing on Titus 1:12 says ‘The inscription on the altar was not, as Paul stated, “To the unknown God” but “To the unknown gods of Asia and Europe and Africa, to unknown and foreign gods.” But, because Paul required to speak of only one unknown God, he used the word in the singular.’ But it is better to suppose that St Paul saw what he says he saw; and as evidence that such an inscription was not improbable, we may quote the Latin inscription found on an altar at Ostia, now in the Vatican, representing a sacrificial group in connexion with the worship of Mithras, the Sun-god of the later Persian mythology (Orelli, Inscr. Gel. II. 5000), ‘Signum indeprehensibilis dei,’ which is a very near approach in Latin to what the Greek inscription to which the Apostle alludes would mean. The word ‘unknown’ must not be pressed into the sense of ‘unknowable’ because of what comes after. Paul says that ‘he is prepared to set forth to them that power which they were worshipping in ignorance.’ So though man by searching cannot find out God, yet he would desire to teach the Athenians, what he says elsewhere, that ‘the everlasting power and divinity of God may be clearly seen through the things that are made’ (Romans 1:20).

ὃ οὖν�, what therefore ye worship in ignorance. This brings out the Apostle’s meaning. He does not intend to reflect on the nature of their worship. But they were offering it in ignorance. This ignorance he proposes to dispel. He accepts their religious character, takes hold on their confession of want of knowledge, and so makes way for his proposal to teach them. They have, he presumes, accepted what he offers, but have not understood all that it means. On this Chrysostom says: ὅρα πῶς δείκνυσι προειληφότας αὐτόν. οὐδὲν ξένον, φησὶ, οὐδὲν καινὸν εἰσφέρω.

τοῦτο ἐγὼ καταγγέλλω ὑμῖν, this set I forth unto you. In his verb the Apostle takes up their own word καταγγελεὺς of Acts 17:18, where they call him ‘a setter-forth of strange gods.’