Acts 17:22

in the midst of Mars" hill Better, in the midst of the Areopagus. See on Acts 17:19. There is no need for translating the name in one way there, and in another here.

Ye men of Athens The language of the Apostle's address takes exactly the form which it would have assumed in the mouth of one of their own orators. This may be due either to St Paul's knowledge of Greek literature, and to his desire, everywhere manifest, to find words acceptable to his audience; or it may be that St Luke giving an abstract of the speech has cast the initial words into a form which Demosthenes would have employed. In the latter case it is no mark of unfaithfulness in the author, who clearly in these ten verses can only mean to give a skeleton of what the Apostle really uttered. St Paul spake at length, we cannot doubt, when he stood in such a place and before such an audience. The historian in the Acts gives the barest outline of what was spoken, and cannot be thought to have meant his words to be otherwise accepted, seeing that what he has given us would hardly occupy five minutes in the utterance.

ye are too superstitious The Greek adjective which the Apostle here employs has two shades of meaning," superstitious," as in the A. V., and "religious" in a better sense. At the outset St Paul would not wish to give offence, and so the more complementary sense is to be preferred. As the word is of the comparative degree, this sense may be expressed either by "somewhat superstitious" (as R. V.) or "very religious." The first would imply only a small shade of the less acceptable meaning, the latter would be an expression of praise of the Athenians above other people. The former is to be chosen, for St Paul did not wish to give praise, but after some slight blame to point out a more excellent way. For a description of the δεισιδαίμων, which exactly answers to what we call "superstitious," see Theophrastus Charact. c. xvii.