Acts 17:18

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 willhere 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 δαιμόνια 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.