Acts 17:18

Epicureans. Disciples of Epicurus, and atheists. They acknowledged God in words, but denied his providence and superintendence over the world. According to them, the soul was material and annihilated at death. Pleasure was their chief good; and whatever higher sense their founder might have attached to this doctrine, his followers, in the apostle's day, were given to gross sensualism.

Stoics. Pantheists. God was the soul of the world, or the world was God. Everything was governed by fate, to which God himself was subject. They denied the universal and perpetual immortality of the soul; some supposing that it was swallowed up in deity; others, that it survived only till the final conflagration; others, that immortality was restricted to the wise and good. Virtue was its own reward, and vice its own punishment. Pleasure was no good, and pain no evil. The name Stoic was derived from stoa, a porch. Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, held his school in the Stoa Paecile, or painted portico, so called because adorned with pictures by the best masters.

Babbler [σ π ε ρ μ ο λ ο γ ο ς]. Lit., seed - picker : a bird which picks up seeds in the streets and markets; hence one who picks up and retails scraps of news. Trench (" Authorized Version of the New Testament ") cites a parallel from Shakespeare :

" This fellow picks up wit as pigeons peas, And utters it again when Jove doth please.

He is wit's peddler, and retails his wares At wakes, and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs " Love's Labor's Lost, 5, 2 Setter - forth [κ α τ α γ γ ε λ ε υ ς]. See on declare, verse 23. Compare 1 Peter 4:4; 1 Peter 4:12.

Strange. Foreign.