Acts 17:16-34 ▼

16 Now Paul in Athens waiting for them, his spirit was provoked in him, seeing the city to be utterly idolatrous.

17 So indeed he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and those worshiping, and in the marketplace on every day with those meeting.

18 And also some of the Epicureans and Stoics, philosophers, encountered him, and some were saying, “What may this babbler desire to say?” but others, “He seems to be a proclaimer of strange gods,” because he was proclaiming the gospel—Jesus and the resurrection.

19 And having taken hold of him, they brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “Are we able to know what this new teaching is that is spoken by you?

20 For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. We resolve, therefore, to know what these things wish to be.”

21 Now all the Athenians and the visiting foreigners spent their time on nothing other than to say something and to hear something new.

22 And Paul, having stood in the midst of the Areopagus, was saying, “Men, Athenians, in all things I perceive you? as very religious.

23 For passing through and examining your? objects of worship, I even found an altar on which had been inscribed: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore whom you? worship without knowing, this I proclaim to you?.

24 The God having made the world and all things that are in it, He, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in hand-made temples,

25 nor is He served by hands of men as needing anything—He who gives to all life and breath and all things.

26 And He made out of one man every nation of men to dwell upon all the face of the earth, having determined the appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation,

27 to seek God, if perhaps indeed they might feel after Him and might find Him. And indeed, He is not far from each one of us.

28 ‘For in Him we live and move and are.’ As also some of the poets among you? have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’

29 Therefore, being offspring of God, we ought not to consider the Divine Being to be like gold or silver or stone, a graven thing of man’s craft and imagination.

30 Indeed, therefore, God, having overlooked the times of ignorance, now commands all men everywhere to repent,

31 because He set a day in which He is about to judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He appointed, having provided a guarantee to all, having raised Him out from the dead.”

32 Now having heard of a resurrection of the dead, some indeed began mocking, but some said, “We will hear you concerning this again also.”

33 Thus Paul went out from their midst.

34 But some men, having joined themselves to him, believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.