< Acts 17 >
1 Now when they had gone through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica. Here there was a Jewish synagogue,
2 and Paul, according to his usual custom, went in to them and, for three Sabbath Days, he reasoned with them out of the Scriptures,
3 explaining and quoting passages to prove that the Messiah had to suffer and to rise again from the dead and that "This Jesus whom I am proclaiming unto you is the Messiah."
4 Some were persuaded and attached themselves to Paul and Silas, including a number of devout Greeks, and a large number of the leading women.
5 But the Jews, moved with jealousy, called to their aid certain ill- favored and idle fellows, formed a mob, and began to set the town in an uproar. Assaulting the house of Jason, they sought to bring them out to the people.
6 And when they had failed to find Paul and Silas, they began to drag Jason and some of the brethren before the politarchs, shouting. "These fellows who have upset the habitable earth are come hither also.
7 "Jason has received them, and they all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus."
8 Both the crowd and the politarchs were disturbed when they heard this,
9 but when they had taken security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.
10 Now the brothers sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they got there they betook themselves to the Jewish synagogue.
11 The Jews of Berea were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they very readily received the message with all readiness of mind, and day after day searched the Scriptures to see whether these things were so.
12 So many of them became believers, and so did not a few Greeks, women of honorable estate, and men.
13 As soon as the Jews in Thessalonica learned that the word of God was preached by Paul in Berea also, they came there, and stirred up and troubled the crowds.
14 Then the brothers at once sent Paul down to the sea, but Silas and Timothy remained behind.
15 Those who were caring for Paul brought him as far as Athens, and there left him, with instructions to Silas and Timothy to come to him with all speed.
16 While Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred within him, when he noticed that the city was full of idols.
17 He argued in the synagogues with the Jews and the devout proselytes, and also daily in the market-place with those that met him there.
18 A few of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also encountered him again and again. Some were saying, "What has this beggarly fellow to say?" Others said, "He seems to be a setter forth of strange gods," because he preached Jesus and the resurrection.
19 Then they laid hold of him and brought him up to Mars Hill, saying. "May we be told what this new teaching of yours is?
20 "For you are bringing certain strange things to our ears. We want to know, therefore, what these things mean."
21 (Now all the Athenians and the strangers sojourning there spent their time in nothing else, but to tell or to hear some new thing.)
22 So Paul stood up in the center of Mars Hill, and said. "Men of Athens, I perceive that in all respects you are remarkably religious.
23 "For as I was passing along and observing your objects of worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ What you are worshiping in ignorance, this I am proclaiming to you.
24 "The God who made the universe and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands,
25 "neither is he served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all life and breath and all things.
26 "He has made of one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons and the bounds of their habitation,
27 "so that they might seek God, if perhaps they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from every on of us;
28 "for in him we live and move and have our being; as certain even of your own poets have said, "‘For we also are his offspring.’
29 "Since then we are God’s offspring, we ought not to imagine that the Godhead is like to gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and device of man.
30 "The times of ignorance God overlooked, but he now commands all men that they should all, everywhere, repent;
31 inasmuch as he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world justly, by the Man whom he has ordained, and he has given proof of all this by raising him from the dead."
32 But on hearing of the resurrection of the dead, some began to mock; but others said, "We will hear you again on that subject."
33 So Paul withdrew from them.
34 A few, however, attached themselves to him and believed, among whom was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and some others.
