17
“They Came to the City of Thessalonica”
1 After traveling through the cities of Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to the city of Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue.
2 In keeping with his usual practice, Paul went into the synagogue, and he addressed the people from the Scriptures on three Sabbath days,
3 explaining and demonstrating that, in regard to the Messiah, it was God’s will for him to suffer and then rise from the dead. “ This man is the Messiah—Jesus, whom I am proclaiming to ᵖyou,” he said.
4 Some of the hearers were persuaded and threw in their lot with Paul and Silas, including a very large number of God-fearing Gentiles and a good many of the prominent women.
5 Yet the unbelieving Jews became jealous, and rounding up from among the idlers in the marketplace some wicked men and forming a mob, they set the city in an uproar. Attacking Jason’s house, they tried to find Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd.
6 When they didn’t find them, though, they dragged Jason and some other brothers before the city officials, shouting, “The men who have stirred up trouble all over the empire: These fellows are now here, too, in this city,
7 whom Jason has welcomed into his home. These people, all of them: It is the decrees of the Emperor himself against which they are acting in outright defiance, claiming that there is another king, whose name is Jesus.”
8 The crowd and the city officials were thrown into confusion when they heard these things.
9 On receiving bail from Jason and the others, however, the city officials released them.
“The Brothers and Sisters Sent Paul and Silas Away to the City of Berea”
10 The brothers and sisters sent Paul and Silas away to the city of Berea as soon as it was night; and when they arrived, it was to the Jewish synagogue that they went.
11 Now these people were more receptive than those in Thessalonica; they welcomed the message most eagerly, studying the Scriptures carefully day after day to see if the things they were hearing might really be true.
12 Although many from this synagogue, therefore, believed, including a good many of the Gentile women and men of high social standing,
13 when the unbelieving Jews in Thessalonica found out that Paul had proclaimed the word of God, too, in Berea, they came there as well, inciting and stirring up the crowds.
14 At once Paul was himself sent away by the brothers and sisters to the coast, while Silas and Timothy remained there.
15 Those who were escorting Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving instructions for Silas and Timothy, namely, that they were to come to Paul as soon as at all possible, they departed.
“In Athens”
16 Now, in Athens, while Paul was waiting for Silas and Timothy, he was deeply troubled when he saw how full of idols the city was.
17 While, therefore, on the one hand, he began conducting discussions in the synagogues with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the market area day by day with those who happened to be there,
18 some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, on the other hand, were themselves also engaging in debate with him. Some of them were saying, “What in the world is this fellow with his muddled scraps of learning trying to say?” Others said, “It is foreign gods of which he seems to be bringing word.” (They said this because it was news of Jesus and the resurrection that Paul was announcing.)
19 They took him and brought him before the council that met at the Hill of Ares, saying, “Would ˢyou explain to us this unusual teaching of ˢyours?
20 For it is some very strange ideas that ˢyou are bringing to our ears. We would like to know, therefore, what these things mean.”
21 (The Athenians, each and every one of them, as well as the foreigners who lived in Athens, liked to spend their every spare and waking moment talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
22 Standing up where everyone in the council could see him, Paul said, “Men of Athens, I can see how religious ᵖyou are in indeed all respects.
23 For as I was walking around and examining ᵖyour sacred monuments, I even happened upon an altar with this inscription: ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore, the one to whom, despite your lack of knowledge about him, ᵖyou desire to give due recognition: This is the one of whom I am bringing word to ᵖyou.
24 The God who made the world and everything in it: This God, Lord as he is over heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made by mere human hands,
25 nor does he need anything that mere men can render to him in homage, as if he lacked something, since he himself gives all mankind life and breath and everything else.
26 He brought about from one man every nation of the human race and caused them to dwell all over the earth, having already marked out the appointed times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live,
27 so that they would search for God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him, although he is not from any one of us, in fact, very far at all.
28 ‘By his power,’ you see, ‘we live and move and exist.’ As even some of ᵖyour own poets have said: ‘Of him we are, too, offspring.’
29 Since we are ‘offspring,’ therefore, of God, we must not think that it is gold or silver or stone, an image formed by human skill and design, to which the divine nature bears a likeness.
30 Although God mercifully chose to overlook, therefore, the times when people carried on in such ignorance, at the present time he commands all people everywhere to repent,
31 because he has set a Day in which he is going to judge the world in righteousness through the man he has appointed, having furnished proof of his fitness for this task by raising him from the dead.”
32 Now when they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them began to scoff, while others said, “We want to hear from ˢyou on this matter again.”
33 And so Paul left the meeting.
34 A number of people, however, joining Paul, believed, among whom were Dionysius, a member of the council, and a woman named Damaris and some others with them.