Acts 17:18

συνέβαλλον αὐτῷ : a word peculiar to St. Luke; three times in his Gospel, four times in Acts; it need not have necessarily a hostile sense as in Luke 14:31, but simply means that amongst the chance comers in the Agora there were some who “engaged in discussions,” with him (so Blass like Latin, consilia conferre, sc. λόγους), a meaning perhaps suggested by the imperfect. Grotius and others take it as “translatio de prœliis sumpta, ut apparet, Luke 14:31. Utitur ita sæpe Polybius, quem sequi amat Lucas.” Ἐπικουρείων : so called from Epicurus, 342 270 B.C.; his disciples were known also as the School of the Garden, from the garden in Athens where the master instructed them, in distinction from the disciples of the Porch or the Academy. We must be careful to remember that as in numberless other cases, so the system of the founder suffered at the hands of his successors, and that the life of Epicurus himself was far removed from that of a mere sensualist, or “Epicure” in its later sense. But it was evident that a life which made pleasure and happiness the be-all and end-all of existence, however safeguarded by the conditions imposed at the outset by Epicurus, was liable to degenerate into a mere series of prudential calculations, or a mere indulgence of the senses and appetites. In his determination to rid men of the superstitious fears which were the chief cause of the miseries of humanity, Epicurus opposed the popular Polytheism, and regarded the gods as living a life of passionless calm far removed from mundane strifes and sorrows, “careless of mankind”. The Stoics branded Epicurus as an Atheist, but the materialistic creed of Epicurus and his followers had at all events this merit, that its bold criticism of existing beliefs was serviceable in undermining the prevailing acceptance of a gross and crude mythology, whilst it helped to assert in contradistinction to a paralysing fatalism the doctrine of the freedom of man's will (see F. C. Conybeare, “Epicureans,” Hastings' B.D.; Westcott, “Epicureans,” B.D. 2; Wallace, Epicureanism). Στωϊκῶν : The Stoics, so called from the Stoa Pæcile at Athens where Zeno of Citium, the founder of the school, 340 260 B.C., met his pupils, and where his successors debated (Capes, Stoics, p. 30), spoke in their theology of a providence ruling the world, of a first cause and a governing mind. But their creed was essentially Pantheistic, although the verses of Cleanthes' Hymn (“the most important document of the Stoic theology,” Ueberweg) seemed to breathe the accents of a higher and nobler belief. But no devotional phrases could disguise a Pantheism which regarded the world as the body of God, and God as the soul of the world, which held that apart from external nature the Supreme God had no existence which identified Him with fate and necessity, while the history of the universe was an unfolding of the providence of God, but a providence which was but another name for the chain of causation and consequences, inviolable, eternal. The leading maxims of the ethical system of the Stoics was the injunction to live according to nature, although the expression of the rule varied in the earlier and later schools. But as this life was best realised in conformity to the law of the universe, in conformity with reason as the highest element in man, the Stoic ideal, in spite of its recognition of virtue, became not merely stern and intellectual, but impassive and austere; in aiming at apathy the Stoic lost sympathy with the most ennobling and energetic emotions, and thus wrapped up in the cloak of his own virtue he justified, at least from an ethical point of view, the description which classed him as the Pharisee of Greek philosophy. In addressing an audience composed at all events in part of the representatives of these two great philosophic schools it may be said that St. Paul was not unmindful of his own former training in the early home of Stoicism (see on p. 235). And so in speaking of creation and providence, of the unity of nations in the recognition of all that was true even in Pantheism, St. Paul has been described as taking the Stoic side against the Epicureans, or at least we may say that he in his speech asserts against some of the cardinal errors of the Epicureans the creative and superintending power of God. But to the Stoic and Epicurean alike the Christian Creed would proclaim that All's Love, yet all's Law; to the Stoic and Epicurean alike, the Pharisee and Sadducee of the world of philosophy, the bidding came to repent and obey the Gospel, no less than to the crowd whom sages and philosophers despised: “Paulus summa arte orationem suam ita temperat, ut modo cum vulgo contra Philosophos, modo cum Philosophis contra plebem, modo contra utrosque pugnet,” Wetstein; see Capes, Stoicism; Lightfoot, Philippians, “St. Paul and Seneca”; Zahn, Der Stoiker Epiktet und sein Verhältniss zum Christenthum; Ueberweg, Hist, of Phil., i., p. 185 ff.; Rendall, Marcus Antoninus, Introd. (1898); Gore, Ephesians, p. 253 ff. καί τινες ἔλεγον : these are generally taken to include the philosophers, and the remarks following are referred to them; sometimes the first question to the Epicureans, and the second criticism to the Stoics. But it has recently been maintained that we need not refer to the two sects of philosophers this unfavourable criticism on St. Paul; “Epicureans,” Conybeare in Hastings' B.D. Certainly the οἱ δέ has no οἱ μέν as if two opposing schools were meant. The punctuation in R.V., which simply states the fact that amongst those in the Agora certain also τινὲς δὲ καὶ of the philosophers, etc., admits of this view that the criticisms were uttered not by the philosophers, but by the curious crowd which thronged the Agora. Ramsay however takes the verse as marking the opinions of the philosophers, and the use of the word σπερμολόγος by Zeno of one of his followers may help to confirm this. τί ἂν θέλοι : “what would this babbler say?” R.V., not future as in A.V.; the ἄν with optative being used to express what would happen as the fulfilment of some supposed condition, Burton, p. 79, so Viteau, Le Grec du N. T., p. 33 (1893), the condition being if we would listen to him, or if his words have any meaning; optative with ἄν only in Luke, see Burton, u. s. σπερμολόγος : primarily an adjective, - ον; as a substantive ὁ σπερ. of a rook or crow, or some small bird, picking up seeds, cf. Arist., Av., 233, 580. σπέρμα - λέγω : so far as derivation is concerned it is not connected with σπείρω - λόγους, Latin, seminiverbius (so Augustine, Wycliffe, “sower of words”). The accent shows that this latter derivation is incorrect. Hence a man hanging about the shops and the markets, picking up scraps which fell from the loads and thus gaining a livelihood, so a parasite, one who lives at the expense of others, a hanger-on, Eustathius on Hom., Odys., v., 490; see in Grimm, sub v.; so Dem. speaks of Aeschines, 269, 19, as σπερ. περίτριμμα ἀγορᾶς. The word thus came to be used of a man who picked up scraps of information, and retailed them at second hand. So Eustathius speaks of rhetoricians who were mere collectors of words and consistent plagiarists διʼ ὅλου σπερμολογοῦντες; so again he remarks that the word is applied to those who make a show in unscientific style of knowledge which they have got from misunderstanding of lectures (see for these quotations Ramsay, Expositor, September, 1899, p. 222, and the whole article “St. Paul in Athens”). Ramsay maintains therefore that there is no instance of the classical use of the word as a babbler or mere talker, and he sees in the word a piece of Athenian slang, caught up as the Athenians had themselves used it (“sine dubio hoc ex ipso ore Atheniensium auctor excepit” Blass), and applied to one who was quite outside any literary circle, an ignorant, vulgar plagiarist. At the same time it is perhaps difficult to find any single word more to the point than “babbler,” A. and R.V. (Tyndall), for, as Alford urges, it both signifies one who talks fluently to no purpose, and hints also that his talk is not his own. We may, however, well owe this rendering to the fact that σπερμολόγος was wrongly derived, as if it meant seminator verborum, whereas its true derivation is given above. De Wette, Overbeck, Nösgen, Weiss, Holtzmann, Zöckler, Wendt, all so render it. An ingenious attempt has been made to connect the word with the Aretalogi (Juvenal, Sat., xv., 16; Suet, Aug [309], 74) or praters about virtue, who hired themselves as entertainers for the wealthy Roman nobles at their dinners: “mendax aretalogus,” Juv., u. s.; Zöckler, in loco. For instances of the use of the word see Wetstein, Ramsay, Nösgen, Bethge, Die Paulinischen Reden, p. 77; Rendall (who agrees with Ramsay), and “Babbler,” Hastings' B.D. ξένωνδαιμ. δοκεῖ καταγ.: The same kind of accusation had been already made against Socrates, Xen., Mem., i., 1, as also against Anaxagoras and Protagoras, see Josephus,. Apion., ii., 38, who also tells us how a certain priestess had been condemned in Athens ὅτι ξένους ἐμύει θεούς. In Athens the introduction of strange gods was a capital offence, if by such an introduction the home deities were rejected and the state religion disturbed, but there is nothing to show that the Athenians regarded Paul's teaching in this light, and there is no evidence that the Areopagus had cognisance of serious charges of impiety or of the introduction of foreign religion (Ramsay, St. Paul, p. 247). ξένων : “strange,” i.e., foreign. δαιμονίων used here like the Greek δαιμόνιον in a neutral sense which might refer to deities good or bad. In classical Greek we have καινὰ δαιμόνια, cf. the charge against Socrates, Xen., Mem., i., 1; Plato, Apol., 24 B. καταγγελεὺς : only here in N.T., not found in LXX or classical Greek, the verb καταγγέλλειν occurs twice in 2Ma 8:36; 2Ma 9:17, of declaring abroad the power of the God of the Jews. In Plutarch we have κατάγγελος. δοκεῖ, see Burton, p. 153; on the personal construction with δοκεῖ cf. Galatians 2:9; James 1:26, etc. τὸν Ἰ. καὶ τὴν ἀνάστασιν, see critical note. It is possible that the Athenians thought that Paul was preaching two strange, deities, Jesus and Resurrection (the latter as a female deity Ἀνάστασις), just as they had their own altars erected to Pity, Piety, Modesty, a view which gains support not only from the collocation of the words, but from the use of the article with both, and from the supposition that Paul was held to be a preacher of more than one strange God; so Chrys., Oecum., Selden, and list given by Wendt (1888), in loco. Wendt also (1899) inclines to this view, which is adopted by Renan, Overbeck, Holtzmann, Felten, McGiffert, Knabenbauer, cf. also the punctuation in R.V., which may imply this view (see Humphry on R.V., in loco). As against this view see Hackett's note, p. 213, who thinks it hardly conceivable that the Apostle could express himself so obscurely on the subject as to afford any occasion for this gross mistake (so also Farrar). The article before ἀνάσ. is taken by Nösgen as referring simply to the general resurrection, a view which he regards as agreeing with the prominence given to the doctrine in Acts 17:31. It is argued that if ἀνάσ. referred to the resurrection of Jesus we should have αὐτοῦ which has crept into some copies, but the address itself shows that the Apostle spoke of the resurrection of Jesus as affording a pledge of a general resurrection.

[309] Augustine.