¹⁶Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols. ¹⁷So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present. ¹⁸And also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Some were saying, “What would this idle babbler wish to say?” Others, “He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. ¹⁹And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? ²⁰For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean.” ²¹(Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.)

Paul went on the offensive because he was offended by what he saw in Athens. How could people be so blind to reject the true God in favor of human-made idols? There is no timid friendship evangelism here; the saturation of idolatry provoked him to great irritation. His onslaught began with the Jews, possibly an indication of their complacency in such a worldly environment. But he found a ready audience everywhere he went. Mind you, Paul was not passive in his approach to teaching the truth; he could not hold himself back!

Word got out during one of his forays into the public square (“the marketplace”), and it caught the attention of some of the intellectual elite of the city. All philosophical teaching grows in conflict, and in this case, the prevailing thinking about life and existence formed into two primary, contrasting schools of thought: the Epicureans (who valued pleasure and gave little importance to religion) and the Stoics (who denigrated pleasure as vice and valued self-control). Both sides were interested in what Paul was proclaiming: Jesus and the resurrection. Of course, such teaching generated different reactions to these schools of thought, but both were curious. So they took the discussion to the Aeropagus, where the council of philosophers formally debated such things.

Luke’s dry wit comes through in his dismissive excursus in verse 21: while Athens may have held a high reputation in the ancient world, Luke saw it as a place for endless, useless discussion of ideas. Excitement came when a new idea was raised. Could Luke also have been suggesting the Jews were caught up in such academic philosophizing? What a contrast with the message of the gospel, which proclaims unequivocally Jesus and His resurrection. While some thought Paul an “idle babbler,” and others saw him as teaching strange things, they were about to discover he could hold his own on their philosophical turf.

Lord, Your Word cuts through the philosophical nonsense of academic elitism.