ReverendThoughtful witness

Acts 17 — Thessalonica, Berea, and Athens — Greek text and reception

Saints Translation: Acts 1–28 [V2]

Each card preserves the Greek reading and its textual and reception notes. This source provides a Greek study edition; Hebrew counterparts and Hebrew–Greek classifications are not supplied.

Acts 17 — Thessalonica, Berea, and Athens

The message and opposition in Thessalonica

Verse 17:1

Greek–English Translation

After traveling through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue.

Textual and Reception Notes

Verse 17:2

Greek–English Translation

As was his custom, Paul went in to them, and for three Sabbaths he reasoned with them from the Scriptures,

Textual and Reception Notes

Verse 17:3

Greek–English Translation

explaining and setting before them that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the Christ.”

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: The necessity of both suffering and resurrection and the identification of Jesus with the Christ are separately retained.

Verse 17:4

Greek–English Translation

Some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great multitude of devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.

Textual and Reception Notes

Verse 17:5

Greek–English Translation

But the Jews became jealous and took some wicked men from the marketplace, gathered a mob, and threw the city into turmoil. They attacked Jason’s house and sought to bring Paul and Silas out to the populace.

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: Paul and Silas makes explicit the object of the search. The opponents are distinguished from those persuaded in the preceding verse; no universal ethnic judgment is added.

Verse 17:6

Greek–English Translation

When they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some brothers before the city officials, shouting, “These men who have upset the inhabited world have come here too,

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: Politarchs is the source’s particular municipal title, rendered city officials for readability. The claim of worldwide disruption belongs to the accusers.

Verse 17:7

Greek–English Translation

and Jason has welcomed them. They all act against Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, Jesus.”

Textual and Reception Notes

Verse 17:8

Greek–English Translation

They disturbed the crowd and the city officials who heard these things.

Textual and Reception Notes

Verse 17:9

Greek–English Translation

After taking security from Jason and the others, the officials released them.

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: Taking security renders receiving what was sufficient, a legal assurance or bond; no amount or precise conditions are stated.

The Scriptures examined in Berea

Verse 17:10

Greek–English Translation

The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue.

Textual and Reception Notes

Verse 17:11

Greek–English Translation

These people were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica: they welcomed the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: Eugenesteroi literally denotes greater nobility, here explained by the receptive and examining conduct. The translation does not turn it into a claim of superior ethnic descent.

Verse 17:12

Greek–English Translation

Many of them therefore believed, as did not a few Greek women of high standing and men.

Textual and Reception Notes

Verse 17:13

Greek–English Translation

But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God had also been proclaimed by Paul in Berea, they came there too, stirring up and disturbing the crowds.

Textual and Reception Notes

Verse 17:14

Greek–English Translation

Then the brothers immediately sent Paul away to go as far as the sea, while Silas and Timothy remained there.

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: As far as the sea follows the selected wording, without introducing a pretense of traveling by sea.

Verse 17:15

Greek–English Translation

Those conducting Paul brought him as far as Athens. After receiving an order for Silas and Timothy to come to him as quickly as possible, they departed.

Textual and Reception Notes

Paul encounters the Athenians

Verse 17:16

Greek–English Translation

While Paul waited for them in Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he observed that the city was full of idols.

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: His spirit is Paul’s inward response, not automatically the Holy Spirit. Provoked preserves the strong reaction.

Verse 17:17

Greek–English Translation

So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the worshipers, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.

Textual and Reception Notes

Verse 17:18

Greek–English Translation

Some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also engaged him. Some said, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities,” because he proclaimed the good news of Jesus and the resurrection.

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: Spermologos literally pictures a seed-picker and is an insult for a scavenger of scraps of learning; babbler gives its force. Foreign divinities renders daimonia in the philosophers’ accusation, not a narrator’s identification of Jesus as a demon.

Verse 17:19

Greek–English Translation

They took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are speaking?

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: Areopagus may denote the hill or its associated council; the proper name preserves the setting without making the scene a formally specified trial.

Verse 17:20

Greek–English Translation

For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. We therefore wish to know what these things mean.”

Textual and Reception Notes

Verse 17:21

Greek–English Translation

Now all the Athenians and the foreigners staying there spent their leisure on nothing else than telling or hearing something newer.

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: Newer retains the comparative in the narrator’s characterization of their appetite for novelty.

Paul’s Areopagus address

Verse 17:22

Greek–English Translation

Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I see that in every respect you are very religious.

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: Deisidaimonesterous can describe unusual religious devotion or superstition. Very religious preserves the opening’s tact and ambiguity without treating it as unqualified endorsement of the idols.

Verse 17:23

Greek–English Translation

For as I passed through and observed your objects of worship, I also found an altar inscribed, ‘To an unknown god.’ What you worship without knowing, this I proclaim to you.

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: The selected relative and demonstrative are neuter, what and this, not masculine whom and Him. The inscription is reported as Paul gives it, without adding an independently surveyed monument claim.

Verse 17:24

Greek–English Translation

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by hands.

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: Naoi, sanctuaries, is explicit here, unlike the broader handmade things at 7:48. Saints: Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.12.9, uses Paul’s preaching at Athens to affirm continuity with the one Creator. [IREN-3.12]

Verse 17:25

Greek–English Translation

Nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything.

Textual and Reception Notes

Verse 17:26

Greek–English Translation

From one He made every nation of humanity to live upon the whole face of the earth, determining their appointed times and the boundaries of their dwelling,

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: The selected source says from one, without the noun blood. One ancestor is a contextual understanding, but no noun is silently restored. Both temporal and geographical determinations are stated.

Verse 17:27

Greek–English Translation

so that they might seek God, if perhaps they might feel their way toward Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: The groping or feeling-about image and perhaps remain explicit; seek God is the selected object.

Verse 17:28

Greek–English Translation

For in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are His offspring.’

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: Paul explicitly appeals to the audience’s poets but names none in the verse. The quoted offspring language is retained; any identification with a specific poem requires separate evidence.

Verse 17:29

Greek–English Translation

Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by human art and thought.

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: To theion is the divine or divine nature. Its expression is kept distinct from an added technical account of essence.

Verse 17:30

Greek–English Translation

Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent,

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: Overlooked is retained; it is not made equivalent to declaring every former practice righteous. All and everywhere remain comprehensive.

Verse 17:31

Greek–English Translation

because He has fixed a day on which He will judge the inhabited world in righteousness through a Man whom He appointed, giving assurance to everyone by raising Him from the dead.”

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: Pistis here is assurance or a ground of confidence provided by the resurrection, rather than simply each person’s subjective faith. The Man is not named in this sentence; the resurrection and earlier Jesus proclamation make the referent clear without inserting the name.

Verse 17:32

Greek–English Translation

When they heard of a resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, “We will hear you again about this.”

Textual and Reception Notes

Verse 17:33

Greek–English Translation

So Paul went out from their midst.

Textual and Reception Notes

Verse 17:34

Greek–English Translation

But some people joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

Textual and Reception Notes

Text: The final group explicitly includes a named woman. Areopagite is Dionysius’s stated designation; no later writings or ecclesiastical office are attributed to him by the verse.