Paul arrived in the great city of Athens, not as a sightseer, but as a soul-winner. The late Noel O. Lyons, for many years director of the Greater Europe Mission, used to say, “Europe is looked over by millions of visitors and is overlooked by millions of Christians.” Europe needs the gospel today just as it did in Paul’s day, and we dare not miss our opportunities. Like Paul, we must have open eyes and broken hearts. (Wiersbe, 376)
Although Athens had long since lost the political eminence which was hers in an earlier day, she continued to represent the highest level of culture attained in classical antiquity. The sculpture, literature, and oratory of Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. have, indeed, never been surpassed. In philosophy, too, she occupied the leading place, being the native city of Socrates and Plato, and the adopted home of Aristotle, Epicurus, and Zeno. In all these fields Athens retained unchallenged prestige, and her political glory as the cradle of democracy was not completely dimmed. In consideration of her splendid past, the Romans gave Athens the right to maintain her own institutions as a free and allied city within the Roman Empire. [See D. J. Geagan, “Roman Athens: Some Aspects of Life and Culture, I. 86 B.C.-A.D. 267,” ANRW 2.7.1 (Berlin, 1975), pp. 371-437.] (Bruce, 329)
The Greek myths spoke of gods and goddesses that, in their own rivalries and ambitions, acted more like humans than gods, and there were plenty of deities to choose from! One wit jested that in Athens it was easier to find a god than a man. … We today admire Greek sculpture and architecture as beautiful works of art, but in Paul’s day, much of this was directly associated with their religion. … Their leisure time was spent telling or hearing “some new thing.” Eric Hoffer wrote that “the fear of becoming a ‘has been’ keeps some people from becoming anything.” (Wiersbe, 377)
THE obstacles to the success of the gospel, when it was first published, were of too formidable a nature, to have been surmounted by human courage and prudence. It was encountered by the prejudices and bigotry of the Jews; by prejudices the more obstinate, as they were founded in reverence for the religion which their ancestors had received from God himself; by bigotry originating in the distinction which had long subsisted between them and the Gentiles, and anxious to secure the perpetual monopoly of the blessings of the covenant. But, it was not in the moral state of the Jews alone, that Christianity met with opposition, which no imposture, however dexterously managed, could have overcome. The age in which it appeared, was an age of learning and science. The boundaries of knowledge were extended; the human mind was highly cultivated; and the mythological tales of antiquity were despised, and openly derided. A new system of falsehood had no chance of eluding the test of severe examination, and could not have defended itself, against the arguments and the scorn of philosophical inquirers. We have already seen the gospel triumphing over the hostility of the Jews, many of whom embraced it as the completion of their law, and became the disciples of Him, whom their rulers had rejected and crucified. We are now to observe the issue of its conflicts with the philosophy of Greece. By some men, whose minds the pride of wisdom had elated, Paul was treated with great contempt; but even in Athens, the school of science and refinement, Christianity could boast of its success; and we know, that before three centuries had elapsed, it trampled in the dust the sophistry and eloquence of the heathen world. (Dick)
10 The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue.
“They went into the synagogue of the Jews” The text implies that soon after they arrived, even after an all-night journey, they immediately went to the synagogue. Maybe it just happened to be the Sabbath or maybe they knew they would be followed by the agitators. Time was of the essence. Modern western believers have lost the urgency and priority of evangelism! (Utley; emphasis mine)
11 Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
17:11 “these were more noble-minded” This term was used for wealthy, educated, upper class people (cf. LXX Job 1:3; Luke 19:12). This literal definition does not fit the Jews of Berea; therefore, it is metaphorical for someone more willing to hear new ideas and evaluate them. This open attitude may have been characteristic of the leading citizens of the city who worshiped at the synagogue (cf. v. 12). (Utley)
“examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so” This is the way to determine truth. Paul’s preaching method was to quote the OT and then show how it applied to Jesus. (Utley)
The phrase (“whether these things were so”) contains a fourth class conditional sentence (… the optative mood, … ), which denotes that which is farthest removed from reality (less likely). Some responded; some did not (the mystery of the gospel). (Utley)
ILL:
12 Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.
13 But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds.
14 Then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea, but Silas and Timothy remained there.
15 Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed.
16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.
There are several places in Paul’s writings where this grammatical construction is used to describe what the Holy Spirit produces in the individual believer
- “not a spirit of slavery,” "a spirit of adoptions, Rom. 8:15
- “a spirit of gentleness,” I Cor. 4:21
- "a spirit of faith (faithfulness), II Cor. 4:13
- “a spirit of wisdom and of revelation,” Eph. 1:17 (Utley)
This is an Imperfect passive indicative of paroxunō, which basically means “to sharpen,” but here is used figuratively to “stir up.” This is the term (in its noun form) that is used to describe Paul and Barnabas’ fight over John Mark in 15:39. It is used positively in Heb. 10:24. (Utley)
17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.
“Left at Athens alone” (1 Thess. 3:1), Paul viewed the idolatrous city and his spirit was “stirred” (same word as “contention” in Acts 15:39—“paroxysm”). Therefore, he used what opportunities were available to share the good news of the gospel. As was his custom, he “dialogued” in the synagogue with the Jews, but he also witnessed in the marketplace (agora) to the Greeks. Anyone who was willing to talk was welcomed by Paul to his daily “classes.” (Wiersbe, 377)
17:17 Paul was concerned with both Jews (“reasoning in the synagogue”) and Gentiles, both those attracted to Judaism (god-fearers) and those who were idolatrous pagans (“those who happened to be present in the market place”). Paul addressed these various groups in different ways: to the Jews and God-fearers he used the OT, but to the pagans he tried to find some common ground (cf. vv. 22-31). (Utley)
18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.
Athens afforded [Paul] ample confirmation of what he had already learned, that, “in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom” (1Cor. 1:21). (Bruce, 329)
The Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were rivals. (Bruce, 330)
17:18 “Epicurean” This group believed that pleasure or happiness was the highest good and goal of life. They believed in no personal, physical afterlife. “Enjoy life now” was their motto (a form of hedonism). They held that the gods were unconcerned with humans. They got their name from Epicurus, an Athenian philosopher, 341-270 b.c., but they overstated his basic conclusion. Epicurus saw pleasure in a wider sense than personal, physical pleasure (i.e., healthy body and tranquil mind). “Epicurus is reported to have said, ‘If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches, but take away from his desires’” (The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. IV, p. 153). (Utley)
The Epicurean school, founded by Epicurus (340-270 B.C.), … presented pleasure as being the chief end in life, the pleasure most worth enjoying being a life of tranquillity (ataraxia), free from pain, disturbing passions, and superstitious fears (including in particu lar the fear of death). It did not deny the existence of gods, but maintained that they took no interest in the life of men and women. (Bruce, 330, 331)
Stoicism and Epicureanism represented alternative attempts in pre-Christian paganism to come to terms with life, especially in times of uncertainty and hardship; post-Christian paganism has never been able to devise anything appreciably better. (Bruce, 331)
But Stoics and Epicureans alike, much as they might differ from each other, agreed at least on this: that the new-fangled message brought by this Jew of Tarsus was not one that could appeal to reasonable people. They looked on him as a retailer of secondhand scraps of philosophy, “a picker-up of learning’s crumbs” (like Browning’s Karshish), a type of itinerant peddler of religion not unknown in the Agora, and they used a term of disparaging Athenian slang to describe him. [see notes on Greek in Bruce, 331]. (Bruce, 331)
The Stoics rejected the idolatry of pagan worship and taught that there was one “World God.” They were pantheists, and their emphasis was on personal discipline and self-control. Pleasure was not good and pain was not evil. The most important thing in life was to follow one’s reason and be self-sufficient, unmoved by inner feelings or outward circumstances. Of course, such a philosophy only fanned the flames of pride and taught men that they did not need the help of God. It is interesting that the first two leaders of the Stoic school committed suicide. The Epicureans said “Enjoy life!” and the Stoics said “Endure life!” but it remained for Paul to explain how they could enter into life through faith in God’s risen Son. (Wiersbe, 377)
The Stoics, who claimed the Cypriot Zeno (c. 340-265 B.C.) as their founder, were so called because they met in the stoa poikiē, the “painted colonnade” in the Agora, where he habitually taught in Athens. Their system aimed at living consistently with nature, and in practice they laid great emphasis on the primacy of the rational faculty in humanity, and on individual self-sufficiency. In theology they were essentially pantheistic, God being regarded as the world-soul. … Stoicism as its best was marked by great moral earnestness and a high sense of duty. (Bruce, 330)
“Stoic” This group believed that god was (1) the world-soul or (2) immanent in all creation (pantheism). They asserted that humans must live in harmony with nature ( i.e., god). Reason was the highest good. Self-control, self-sufficiency, and emotional stability in every situation was their goal. They did not believe in a personal afterlife. Their founder was Zeno, a philosopher from Cyprus, who moved to Athens about 300 b.c. They got their name from the fact that he taught in the painted stoa in Athens. (Utley)
Unlike the herd of Epicureans, they placed the happiness of man in the practice of virtue, and inculcated a comparatively pure and exalted morality; but the praise to which this part of their system entitled them, was forfeited by a spirit of pride, strained to the most audacious impiety. “Between God and the good man,” they said, “there is only this difference, that the one lives longer than the other.” They proceeded still farther, and dared to maintain, “that there was one respect in which the wise or good man excelled God; the latter was wise by nature, but the former, from choice.” (Dick)
The word [babbler] literally means “birds picking up seed,” and it refers to someone who collects various ideas and teaches as his own the secondhand thoughts he borrows from others. It was not a very flattering description of the church’s greatest missionary and theologian. (Wiersbe, 377)
“idle babbler” This word was used of sparrows eating seeds in a field. It came to be used metaphorically of itinerant teachers who picked up pieces of information here and there and tried to sell them. The R.S.V. Interlinear by Alfred Marshall translates it as “ignorant plagiarist.” The NJB has “parrot.” (Utley)
“The Stoics and Epicureans, therefore, encountered him: and some said, what will this babbler say?” It is unnecessary to detail the criticisms of learned men upon the word rendered “babbler.”[Wits. in vita Pauli. sect. vi.] The term employed in our translation, probably conveys with sufficient accuracy the idea which was entertained of Paul, by those haughty philosophers. They considered him as a contemptible prating fool; a man who would speak, and at the same time, had nothing to bring forward, but the extravagant and incoherent fancies of an ignorant mind. (Dick)
“because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection” The stumbling block of the gospel for the Jews was “a suffering Messiah” and for the Greeks it was “the resurrection” (cf. I Cor. 1:18-25). A personal, bodily afterlife did not fit into the Greek understanding of the gods or mankind. They asserted a divine spark in every person, trapped or imprisoned by a physical body. Salvation was deliverance from the physical and reabsorption into an impersonal or semi-personal deity. (Utley)
19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?
The Council of the Aeropagus was responsible to watch over both religion and education in the city, so it was natural for them to investigate the “new doctrine” Paul was teaching. (Wiersbe, 377)
20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.”
21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.
Then, commenting on the Athenians’ interest in the novelty of Paul’s teaching, Luke sums up their general attitude in a sentence which Eduard Norden described as “the most cultured thing to be found anywhere in the New Testament.” [Agnostos Theos (Leipzig, 1913), p. 333.] The Athenians themselves admitted that their passion for anything new could be carried to excess; the orator Demosthenes, for example, four centuries earlier, had reproached them for going about asking what was the latest news in a day when Philip of Macedon’s aggressive policy called for deeds, not words. [Demosthenes, Philippic 1.10; cf. Cleon’s reproach: “you are the best people at being deceived by something new that is said” (Thucydides, Hist. 2.38.5).] (Bruce, 332)
Their leisure time was spent telling or hearing “some new thing.” Eric Hoffer wrote that “the fear of becoming a ‘has been’ keeps some people from becoming anything.” (Wiersbe, 377)
17:19-20 These words are very socially polite. This was, in a sense, a university setting. (Utley)
17:21 This verse seems to be an authorial comment. It shows that the politeness of vv. 19-20 was not true intellectual inquiry, but a current cultural fad. They just enjoyed hearing and debating. They were trying to relive Athens’ past glory. The tragedy is they could not differentiate between human wisdom and divine revelation (and so it is today in our universities)! (Utley)
22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.
17:22 “you are very religious” This is literally “to fear the gods (daimōn).” This can mean (1) in a negative sense, “superstitious,” as in the King James Version, or (2) in a positive sense, “very precise in the practice of religious detail” (NKJV, NJB cf. 25:19). These men had an intellectual curiosity and respect for religious matters, but only within certain parameters (their traditions). (Utley)
23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
Truths presented in Paul’s Gospel presentation:
God is Divine (other than man)
God has a desires for man to know Him.
God has determined the solution to man’s sin (one way or the other)
He started where the people were by referring to their altar dedicated to an unknown god. Having aroused their interest, he then explained who that God is and what He is like. He concluded the message with a personal application that left each council member facing a moral decision, and some of them decided for Jesus Christ. (Wiersbe, 378)
… lest some beneficent deity be neglected. (Wiersbe, 378)
Wiersbe outline Paul’s gospel presentation as such:
In every controversy, it is necessary that there should be some common principle, in which both parties agree, because without such agreement, arguments may be multiplied, and the dispute may be prolonged, without end. (Dick)
We can see Paul as a stranger wandering through the city, and noting with keen eyes every token of the all-pervading idolatry. He does not tell his hearers that his spirit burned within him when he saw the city full of idols; but he smothers all that, and speaks only of the inscription which he had noticed on one, probably obscure and forgotten, altar: ‘To the Unknown God.’ Scholars have given themselves a great deal of trouble to show from other authors that there were such altars. But Paul is as good an ‘authority’ as these, and we may take his word that he did see such an inscription. Whether it had the full significance which he reads into it or not, it crystallised in an express avowal that sense of Something behind and above the ‘gods many’ of Greek religion, which found expression in the words of their noblest thinkers and poets, and lay like a nightmare on them. (MacLaren)
To charge an Athenian audience, proud of their knowledge, with ignorance, was a hazardous and audacious undertaking; to make them charge themselves was more than an oratorical device. It appealed to the deepest consciousness even of the popular mind. (MacLaren)
24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
All heathen worship reverses the parts of God and man, and loses sight of the fact that He is the giver continually and of everything. Life in its origination, the continuance thereof breath, and all which enriches it, are from Him. Then true worship will not be giving to, but thankfully accepting from and using for, Him, His manifold gifts. (MacLaren)
There he appealed to God’s gifts of ‘rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons,’ the things most close to his hearers’ experience; here, speaking to educated ‘philosophers,’ he quotes Greek poetry, and sets forth a reasoned declaration of the nature of the Godhead and the relations of a philosophy of history and an argument against idolatry. The glories of Greek art were around him; the statues of Pallas Athene and many more fair creations looked down on the little Jew who dared to proclaim their nullity as representations of the Godhead. (MacLaren)
26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,
The rest of this verse may also allude to the Genesis account. Mankind is commanded to be fruitful and fill the earth (cf. 1:28; 9:1,7). Humans were reluctant to separate and fill the earth. The Tower of Babel (cf. Gen. 10-11) shows God’s mechanism to accomplish this. (Utley)
27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,
So also is the Lord very near in providence. Albeit that this godless age seeks to banish God, yet is he present in the transactions of every day. (Spurgeon)
The nearness of God to man is a teaching of revelation. Look back to the record of the Garden of Eden, and see an early evidence there of God’s nearness to man. Adam, having transgressed, hid himself among the trees of the garden; but in his hiding-place God sought him, and the voice of the Lord God was heard, walking among the trees of the garden, and saying, “Adam, where art thou?” Man will not seek God, but God seeks man. Though man’s voice is not, “Where is my God?” yet God’s voice is, “Adam, where art thou?” All through history God has been familiar with man. He has spoken to him in divers ways, but principally through chosen men. One after another he has raised up prophets, and by their warning voices he has pleaded with men, and invited them to seek his face. (Spurgeon)
“if” This is a fourth class conditional which means the farthest removed from reality. Humans must recognize their need. Both verbs are aorist active optatives. (Utley)
The word means “to touch” or “to feel” (cf. Luke 24:39). This context implies a groping due to darkness or confusion. (Utley)
… attested by his hearers’ consciousness, and by many a saying of thinkers and poets, that the failure to find God does not arise from His hiding Himself in some remote obscurity. Men are plunged, as it were, in the ocean of God, encompassed by Him as an atmosphere, and-highest thought of all, and not strange to Greek thought of the nobler sort-kindred with Him as both drawing life from Him and being in His image. Whence, then, but from their own fault, could men have failed to find God? If He is ‘unknown,’ it is not because He has shrouded Himself in darkness, but because they do not love the light. (MacLaren)
28 for
“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
29 Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
We can but briefly note the course of thought. He comes back to his former word ‘ignorance,’ bitter pill as it was for the Athenian cultured class to swallow. He has shown them how their religion ignores or contradicts the true conceptions of God and man. (MacLaren)
Now the hint in the previous part is made more plain. The demand for repentance implies sin. Then the ‘ignorance’ was not inevitable or innocent. There was an element of guilt in men’s not feeling after God, and sin is universal, for ‘all men everywhere’ are summoned to repent. Philosophers and artists, and cultivated triflers, and sincere worshippers of Pallas and Zeus, and all ‘barbarian’ people, are alike here. That would grate on Athenian pride, as it grates now on ours. The reason for repentance would be as strange to the hearers as the command was-a universal judgment, of which the principle was to be rigid righteousness, and the Judge, not Minos or Rhadamanthus, but ‘a Man’ ordained for that function. (MacLaren)
In these latter days, the Lord has come nearer to us still, for he has spoken to us by his Son. The Son of God became the Friend of sinners: could he come nearer than that? The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among men, and men beheld his glory. Bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh is the Christ, and yet he is very God of very God. In him God is next-of-kin to man, and manhood is brought near to the eternal throne. Christ Jesus is God and man in one person, and thus the closest union is formed between God and man. Verily, verily, the Lord God is not far from each one of us in his own dear Son. (Spurgeon)
The belief in the Resurrection of Jesus converts the Greek peradventure into a fact. It gives that belief solidity and makes it easier to grasp firmly. Unless the thought of a future life is completed by the belief that it is a corporeal [material] life, it will never have definiteness and reality enough to sustain itself as a counterpoise to the weight of things seen. (MacLaren)
That seems a paradox. It is a commonplace that we are incompetent to judge another, for human eyes cannot read the secrets of a human heart, and we can only surmise, not know, each other’s motives, which are the all-important part of our deeds. But when we rightly understand Christ’s human nature, we understand how fitted He is to be our Judge, and how blessed it is to think of Him as such. Paul tells the Athenians with deep significance that He who is to be their and the world’s Judge is ‘the Man.’ He sums up human nature in Himself, He is the ideal and the real Man. (MacLaren)
And further, Paul tells his hearers that God judges ‘through’ Him, and does so ‘in righteousness.’ He is fitted to be our Judge, because He perfectly and completely bears our nature, knows by experience all its weaknesses and windings, as from the inside, so to speak, and is ‘wondrous kind’ with the kindness which ‘fellow-feeling’ enkindles. He knows us with the knowledge of a God; He knows us with the sympathy of a brother. (MacLaren)
‘I am become all things to all men,’ said Paul, and his address at Athens strikingly exemplifies that principle of his action. Contrast it with his speech in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch, which appeals entirely to the Old Testament, and is saturated with Jewish ideas, or with the remonstrance to the rude Lycaonian peasants Act_14:15 , etc., which, while handling some of the same thoughts as at Athens, does so in a remarkably different manner. (MacLaren)
Paul’s flexibility of mind and power of adapting himself to every circumstance were never more strikingly shown than in that great address to the quick-witted Athenians. It falls into three parts: the conciliatory prelude Act_17:22 - Act_17:23; the declaration of the Unknown God Act_17:24 - Act_17:29; and the proclamation of the God-ordained Man Act_17:30 - Act_17:31. (MacLaren)
32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.”
The spirit in which Paul approached his difficult audience teaches all Christian missionaries and controversialists a needed and neglected lesson. We should accentuate points of resemblance rather than of difference, to begin with. We should not run a tilt against even errors, and so provoke to their defence, but rather find in creeds and practices an ignorant groping after, and so a door of entrance for, the truth which we seek to recommend. (MacLaren)
["some mocked …] What raving nonsense that would appear to men who had largely lost the belief in a life beyond the grave! The universal Judge a man! No wonder that the quick Athenian sense of the ridiculous began to rise against this Jew fanatic, bringing his dreams among cultured people like them! And the proof which he alleged as evidence to all men that it is so, would sound even more ridiculous than the assertion meant to be proved. ‘A man has been raised from the dead; and this anonymous Man, whom nobody ever heard of before, and who is no doubt one of the speaker’s countrymen, is to judge us, Stoics, Epicureans, polished people, and we are to be herded to His bar in company with Boeotians and barbarians! The man is mad.’ (MacLaren)
33 So Paul went out from their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.
So the assembly broke up in inextinguishable laughter, and Paul silently ‘departed from among them,’ having never named the name of Jesus to them. He never more earnestly tried to adapt his teaching to his audience; he never was more unsuccessful in his attempt by all means to gain some. Was it a remembrance of that scene in Athens that made him write to the Corinthians that his message was ‘to the Greeks foolishness’? (MacLaren)
Bruce, F. F. The Book of Acts: The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Ed. Gordon D. Fee, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmanns Publishing Company, 1988.
Dick, John. Lectures on the Acts of the Apostles. Second ed., New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1857, https://www.bestbiblecommentaries.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Acts-.-John-Dick.pdf.
Hodges, Dave. Quote from a personal conversation with Monte Robinson at Fellowship of Huntsville Church, date unknown.
MacLaren, Alexander. “Commentary on Acts 17”. MacLaren’s Expositions of Holy Scripture. https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/mac/acts-17.html.
Robinson, Dayle. Quote from several phone conversations with Monte Robinson, dates unknown.
Spurgeon, Charles H. “God’s Nearness to Us.” Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Volume 33, July 17, 1887, from the Spurgeon Center, https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/gods-nearness-to-us/#flipbook/.
Utley, Bob. “Acts 17.” Bible.org, from the Series: “Luke the Historian: Acts,” Bible Lessons International, 2012, https://bible.org/seriespage/acts-17.
Wiersbe, Warren. The Wiersbe Bible Commentary: NT. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2007.