Acts 17:23

For as I passed by( along)] The word refers to the whole of the Apostle's walk about the city.

and beheld your devotions Better, " and noticed the objects of your worship." (With R. V.) The verb is that which in the previous verse is translated "I perceive," only that here it is strengthened by a preposition which gives it the force of "fully observe." The Apostle had not only seen the statues but read the inscriptions. The noun can only mean "a thing that is worshipped" not "the act of worship" as is the sense of the A. V.

I found an altar The Greek has an emphatic conjunction, which might be represented by "I found also an altar," i.e. beside other things which I noticed.

TO THE UNKNOWN GOD The original has no article and would be correctly rendered "Toan unknown God." But it is not always correct to omit the article in English because it does not appear in the original: here however it does not influence the meaning. When the altar was erected, it was in consequence of some visitation of which the cause was not apparent, and which could be ascribed to none of the existing divinities. We may conceive the Athenians speaking of the power which caused the visitation either as "an unknown God" or as "the unknown God" whose wrath they would deprecate, and, in an inscription, representing all that was intended without the article. 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, and speak of "the unknown gods." 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 Apolloniussays "at Athens there are erected altars for unknowngods." There is a like allusion in (pseudo) Lucian's Philo-patris, 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 too far 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).

Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship The best MSS. give the relative in the neuter. The better rendering therefore is What therefore ye worship in ignorance. (As R. V.) The A. V. seems to convey the sense that the worship was of an ignorant character: whereas what the Apostle intends to say is not any reflection on the nature of their worship, but only that they offered it in ignorance, and this he was ready to dispel. He accepts their religious character, takes his stand on their own confession that they are in ignorance about God, and so offers his teaching.

him declare I unto you Of course in harmony with the previous clause the pronoun is here also neuter. " This set I forth unto you." (As R. V.) In the verb which he employs the Apostle takes up their own word (Acts 17:18) when they said "He seemeth to be a setter forthof strange gods." It is well that the similarity of word should be retained in the English.