Acts 17:32

οἱ μὲν ἐχλ.… οἱ δὲ : verb only here in N.T., implies outward gesture as well as words of scorn (χλεύη, χεῖλος, cf. μυκτηρίζω, μυκτήρ). We usually think of the οἱ μέν as the Stoics, and the οἱ δέ as the Epicureans; e.g., Wetstein after describing the Epicureans adds οἱ δέ = Stoici: cf. Cicero, De Natura Deorum, ii., 17, and Plutarch, De Or. Def., 32. But if the Epicureans ridiculed a resurrection and judgment to come, the Stoics also were separated by a wide gulf from the teaching of St. Paul. Even if it may be said that in general they approximated towards the doctrine of personal existence after death, some of their most famous representatives departed from it; Capes, Stoicism, p. 173; Wallace, Epicureanism, p. 121; Ueberweg, Hist. of Phil., i., p. 196; E.T. Rendall, Marcus Antoninus, Introd., pp. 107, 108. “On one point alone were the professors of this school [Stoic] agreed; an external existence of the human soul was out of the question,” Lightfoot, Philippians, p. 323. The idea of retribution beyond the grave would have been equally alien to the Stoic as to the Epicurean, and both Stoic and Epicurean alike would have ridiculed the idea of a resurrection of the body. Zöckler, in loco, while referring the οἱ μέν without hesitation to the Epicureans, thinks that possibly Platonists rather than Stoics may be represented by the οἱ δέ. If St. Paul was addressing not only a philosophical but a popular audience, as we have seen reason to believe, it is quite possible that while the majority would laugh at his closing words, Juvenal, Sat., ii. 149, there may have been others who clung to the popular mythology and its crude conceptions, and the Apostle's prediction of a judgment to come may have sufficiently interested them to prompt a desire for further disclosures. ἀκουσόμεθά σου πάλιν (περὶ τούτου, R.V., neuter, we can hardly refer it to the αὐτόν of Acts 17:31). The words are often taken to imply a polite rejection of the Apostle's appeal, a courteous refusal to hear anything further; or at all events to express a very cold interest in his announcement. But if we adopt the reading καὶ πάλιν (see critical note) “yet again,” R.V., the words rather indicate that a real interest had been excited in some of the hearers (so Calvin, Grotius, Weiss, Alford) and that the marked and defined division of opinion was not merely a dramatic device of the author.