Acts 17:21

This verse is a parenthesis explanatory of what has gone before. The audience had been struck with the strange teaching, and that it was strange was enough. Novelty was their life's pursuit. So without having any regard for the importance of the teaching, they were ready to listen because it was new.

strangers which were there The words will bear a fuller rendering, "strangers sojourning there." (So R. V.) The place was famous, and all seekers after novelty came there from every quarter.

spent their time More literally "had leisure for." But the one sense is the complement of the other. If all the time be spent in one way, there is no leisure left for any thing else. But the word has the further sense of "finding a favourable opportunity." The Athenians could find time for the pursuit of novelty, but for nothing beside. The imperfect tense of the verb also implies that this was their constantstate of mind.

either to tell, or to hear some new thing This character of the Athenian populace is confirmed by many statements of classical authors. In Thuc. iii. 38 Cleon is represented as complaining of his countrymen that they were in the habit of playing the part of "spectators in displays of oratory, and listeners to the stories of what others had done;" and a like charge is made more than once by Demosthenes in his speeches on the vigorous policy of Philip of Macedon, which he contrasts with the Athenian love of talk and news.