Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Acts 17:22

ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ Ἀρείου πάγου, in the midst of the Areopagus. See above on Acts 17:19.

ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, men of Athens. The language of the Apostle’s address takes exactly the form which it would have assumed in the mouth of one of their own orators. This may be due either to St Paul’s knowledge of Greek literature, and to his desire, everywhere manifest, to find words acceptable to his audience; or it may be that St Luke, giving an abstract of the speech, has cast the initial words into a form which Demosthenes would have employed. In the latter case it is no mark of unfaithfulness in the author, who clearly in these ten verses can only mean to give a skeleton of what the Apostle really uttered. St Paul spake at length, we cannot doubt, when he stood in such a place and before such an audience. The historian in the Acts gives the barest outline of what was spoken, and cannot be thought to have meant his words to be otherwise accepted, seeing that what he has given us would hardly occupy five minutes in the utterance.

κατὰ πάντα ὡς δεισδαιμονεστέρους ὑμᾶς θεωρῶ, in all things I perceive that ye are somewhat superstitious. δεισιδαίμων has two senses: (1) superstitious, (2) religious. The Apostle intends the word in the former sense, but by the comparative he qualifies it in some degree. He implies a degree of blame which perhaps comes nearly to ‘more superstitious than you ought to be.’ His desire is not to offend at first by too stern an expression of blame, but by gently pointing out a fault to lead his hearers into a more excellent way. For a description of the δεισιδαίμων, which exactly answers to our ‘superstitious,’ see Theophrastus, Charact. c. XVII.

κατὰ πάντα means ‘in everything which he had noticed while wandering about their city.’

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Acts 17:22

Old Testament

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