Acts 17:23

διερχόμενος γὰρ : “for as I passed along,” R.V., through the streets, or perhaps “was wandering through” Renan has passant dans vos rues, see also on Acts 17:16 above, and also on Acts 8:40. A.V., “as I passed by” does not give the force of the word, and apparently means “passed by the objects of your devotion”. ἀναθεωρῶν : accurate contemplari, “observed,” R.V., only in later Greek, and in N.T. only in Hebrews 13:7, “ considering with attentive survey again and again,” see Westcott, in loco : Weiss renders it here,, immer wieder betrachtend, cf. critical notes, cf. Diod. Sic., xiv. 109, and references in Grimm. τὰ σεβάσματα : “the objects of your worship,” R.V., Vulgate, simulacra, the thing worshipped, not the act or manner of worshipping. The A.V. margin gives “gods that ye worship,” cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:4, where A. and R.V. both render “that is worshipped,” σέβασμα in text, and R.V. in margin, “an object of worship”; Bel and the Dragon, Acts 17:27, Wis 14:20; Wis 15:17. καὶ βωμὸν : “I found also an altar,” R.V., i.e., in addition to those with definite dedications; only here in N.T., often in LXX, sometimes of heathen altars, Exodus 34:13; Numbers 23:1; Deuteronomy 7:5. ἐπεγέγραπτο, cf. Luke 16:20; on the pluperfect with augment, Blass, Gram., p. 37, see critical note: Farrar, St. Paul, i. 542, takes the word as implying permanence, and perhaps antiquity, so in Speaker's Commentary as of an ancient decayed altar, whose inscription had been forgotten; Mark 15:26; Revelation 21:12 (Hebrews 8:10; Hebrews 10:16). Ἀγνώστῳ Θεῷ : “to an unknown God,” R.V.: all previous versions like A.V., but there is no definite article, although in inscriptions it was often omitted. For the existence of altars of this kind the testimony of Pausanias and Philostratus may be fairly quoted; Pausan., i., 1, 4 (cf. Acts 5:14; Acts 5:6), βωμοὶ θεῶν τε ὀνομαζομένων ἀγνώστων καὶ ἡρώων, and Philost., Vit. Apollon., vi., 2, σωφρονέστερον περὶ πάντων θεῶν εὖ λέγειν, καὶ ταῦτα Ἀθήνησιν, οὗ καὶ ἀγνώστων θεῶν βωμοὶ ἵδρυνται, see references in Wetstein, and cf. F. C. Conybeare, u. s.; Renan, Saint Paul, p. 173; Neander, Geschichte der Pfianzung, ii., 32 ff.; Wendt, etc. Baur, Zeller, Overbeck have maintained that there could have been no such inscription in the singular number as the plural is so much more in harmony with polytheism, although the last named admits that the authorities cited above admit at least the possibility of an inscription as in the text. To say nothing of the improbability that Paul would refer before such an audience to an inscription which had no existence, we may reasonably infer that there were at Athens several altars with the inscription which the Apostle quotes. A passage in Diog. Laert., Epim., 3, informs us how Epimenides, in the time of a plague, brought to the Areopagus and let loose white and black sheep, and wherever the sheep lay down, he bade the Athenians to sacrifice τῷ προσήκοντι θεῷ, and so the plague ceased, with the result that we find in Athens many βωμοὺς ἀνωνύμους, see the passage quoted in full in Wetstein; from this it is not an unfair inference that in case of misfortune or disaster, when it was uncertain what god should be honoured or propitiated, an altar might be erected ἀγνώστῳ Θεῷ. (It is curious that Blass although he writes ἀγνώστῳ Θεῷ in [312] thinks that the true reading must have been the plural.) To draw such an inference is much more reasonable than to suppose with Jerome, Tit., Acts 1:12, that the inscription was not as Paul asserted, but that he used the singular number because it was more in accordance with his purpose, the inscription really being “Diis Asiæ et Europæ et Africæ, Diis ignotis et peregrinis,” cf. the inscription according to Oecumenius θεοῖς Ἀσίας καὶ Εὐρώπης καὶ Λιβύης Θεῷ ἀγνώστῳ καὶ ξένῳ. But at the very commencement of his speech the Apostle would scarcely have made a quotation so far removed from the actual words of the inscription, otherwise he would have strengthened the suspicion that he was a mere σπερμολόγος. St. Chrysostom, Hom., xxxviii., sees in the inscription an indication of the anxiety of the Athenians lest they should have neglected some deity honoured elsewhere, but if we connect it with the story mentioned above of Epimenides, it would be quite in accordance with the religious character of the Athenians, or perhaps one might rather say with the superstitious feeling which prompted the formula so often employed in the prayer of Greeks and Romans alike Si deo si deæ, or the words of Horace (Epod., Acts 17:1), “At deorum quidquid in coelo regit”. There is no reason for the view held amongst others by Mr. Lewin that the inscription refers to the God of the Jews. But in such an inscription St. Paul wisely recognised that there was in the heart of Athens a witness to the deep unsatisfied yearning of humanity for a clearer and closer knowledge of the unseen power which men worshipped dimly and imperfectly, a yearning expressed in the sacred Vedic hymns of an old world, or in the crude religions of a new, cf. Max Müller, Selected Essays, i., p. 23 ff.; Zöckler, in loco, “Altar,” B.D. 2; Plumptre, Movements of Religious Thought, p. 78 ff. ὂν οὖν ἀγνοοῦντες, see critical notes. If we read ὅ for ὅν, we may render with R.V., “what therefore ye worship in ignorance”: Vulgate, quod colitis. The mere fact of the erection of such an inscription showed that the Athenians did reverence to some divine existence, although they worshipped what they knew not, St.John 4:22; not “ignorantly worship,” as in A.V., this would have been alien to the refinement and tact of St. Paul. εὐσεβεῖτε : used here as elsewhere of genuine piety, which St. Paul recognised and claimed as existing in the existence of the altar the word throws light on the meaning which the Apostle attached to the δεισιδαιμονία of Acts 17:22; in N.T. only in Luke and Paul, cf. 1 Timothy 5:4, of filial piety (cf. pietas), cf. Susannah, ver 64 (LXX), and 4Ma 11:5; 4Ma 11:8; 4Ma 11:23; 4Ma 18:2. “That divine nature which you worship, not knowing what it is ” (Ramsay). τοῦτον ἐγὼ καταγγέλλω ὑμῖν : in these words lay the answer to the charge that he was a σπερμ. or a καταγγελεύς of strange gods. ἐγὼ, emphatic; I whom you regard as a mere babbler proclaim to you, or set forth, the object which you recognise however dimly, and worship however imperfectly. Since the days of St. Chrysostom the verse has been taken as a proof that the words of St. Paul were addressed not to a select group of philosophers, but to the corona of the people.

[312] R(omana), in Blass, a first rough copy of St. Luke.