Acts 17:18

Acts 17:18. Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoics. This would be more accurately rendered, ‘of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers.' Epicurus, founder of the philosophic sect which bears his name, was born in Samos, B.C. 342. The Epicurean, while admitting the existence of gods, regarded them as paying no attention to men and the affairs of this world. They believed in no Providence, in no accountability, in neither reward nor retribution in the life to come. They were virtually Atheists. The real teaching of the masters of the sect was, that a wise man should enjoy to the uttermost the things of this life, for the soul being material was annihilated after death. Epicurus is believed himself to have taught a higher ideal of happiness, but very soon his followers reduced his system to what was in fact a teaching of the grossest sensualism. The world, according to the great Epicurean poem of Lucretius, was only formed by an accidental concourse of atoms, and was not in any sense created or reduced to order by any deity.

Zeno, a native of Cyprus, the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy, lived and taught in the latter part of the fourth century and in the earlier years of the third century before Christ. The Stoics condemned the worship of images and the use of temples, but they in some degree accepted popular mythology by considering the various gods as developments of the universal world-God. These were then Pantheists. they denied any overruling Providence, or, in fact, any interference on the part of Deity in the affairs of the world. Everything was governed by an iron destiny, to which ‘God' Himself was subject. They believed only in the immortality of the soul by imagining it was ultimately absorbed in Deity; but even this absorption they seem to teach was only to be the lot of the wise and the good. The ideal life, however, proposed to the disciples of Zeno was a far higher one than the Epicurean ideal, a proud self-denial, an austere apathy (άταραξία), untouched by human passion, unmoved alike by joy or sorrow, was aimed at by the true Stoic V. Cousin admirably sums up the spirit of the strange philosophy which was far removed from the comprehension of the poor and illiterate, and, in fact, was only admired and followed by a limited number of cultured minds: ‘Le Stoicisme est essentiellement solitaire, c'est le soin exclusif de son ame, sans regard a celle des autres, et comme la seule chose importante est la pureté de l'âme, quand cette purete est trop en peril, quand on désespere d'être victorieux dans la lutte, on peut la terminer comme l'a terminée Caton. Ainsi la philosophie n'est plus qu'un apprentissage de la Mort et non de la vie, elle tend a la Mort par son image, l'apathie et l'ataraxie, et se resont definitivement en un égoisme sublime'(V. Cousin).

What would this babbler say? This word properly denotes a seed-gatherer, such as a sparrow or rook, or bird which frequents streets and market-places picking up seeds. Aristophanes thus uses the word in his Birds, 232: ‘A babbler, one mho picks up bits of news and information and retails them to others.'

He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection. The name of ‘Jesus,' whom Paul preached, was to them a new name and strange. Many, perhaps the majority, of the hearers mistook the Resurrection' (ἀνάστασις) for the name of a goddess, a word that Paul seems to have used frequently, as he evidently, in that speech of his on ‘Mars' Hill,' laid deep stress on this great Christian doctrine. It must be remembered that his audience on this occasion was mainly composed of philosophers belonging to the Stoic and Epicurean schools, in both of which all individual life after death was denied. The Stoic theory of the absorption of certain souls in the essence of the Deity does not contradict this.