Athens
City · Athens → Athens, Greece
The famous home of Greek philosophy, still crowded with idols. Paul reasoned in the marketplace and stood before the council on the Areopagus to preach the God they did not know.
People
- Paul
- Silas
- Timothy
- Dionysius
- Damaris
At a glance
- Realm
- Roman province of Achaia
- Role
- Free city, seat of philosophy and learning
- Peoples
- Greeks, with Stoic and Epicurean schools
- First mention
- Acts 17 (Paul brought to Athens)
The story
Athens was the old home of Greek philosophy and art, and though its days of power were long past, Rome had made it a free city for the sake of its famous schools. It had become a kind of university town, where the Athenians and the strangers among them spent their time in nothing but hearing and telling some new thing. Paul, waiting there alone, was stirred in his spirit to see a city so admired and so full of idols.
He reasoned in the synagogue and day by day in the marketplace, until the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers led him up to the Areopagus, the ancient council on the hill of Ares, to explain his strange new teaching. There Paul pointed to an altar he had found inscribed To an Unknown God, and told them that the God who made the world does not live in temples built by hands, and that He now calls all men everywhere to repent, for He has raised Jesus from the dead. Some mocked at the resurrection, but others believed, among them Dionysius, a member of the council, and a woman named Damaris.