The Agora
“That very Athens of ours does not delight me so much by the magnificent works and exquisite arts of the ancients, as by the remembrance of the chiefest man; where one was wont to dwell, where to sit, where to argue.” — Atticus’ Letter to Cicero.
“The beauty and softness of the climate, heightened by the colour of the atmosphere, and refreshed by the breezes of the neighbouring sea, naturally allured the inhabitants of Athens to pass much of their time in the open air.” — Athens and Attica, p. 51.
“Oh that Paul could have met Socrates in the market-place, and that Plato could have written the dialogue!” — Lewin’s St. Paul, vol. i. p. 268.
As was invariably the case with St. Paul, both on previous and subsequent occasions, he commenced his ministerial labours by addressing his own countrymen, in their synagogue, along with “the devout persons” (v. 17), the Gentile proselytes — proselytes of the gate. “To the Jew first,” was one of the ’ marching orders ’ to which he scrupulously adhered — proclaiming to his brethren according to the flesh the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, their promised Messiah.
But the present visit was not on a Hebrew mission. He had come to the great centre of polished paganism (though the citizens would have resented the name), to measure weapons with their wise men and philosophers, the lovers of culture and learned leisure, the votaries of a brilliant and fascinating superstition. He knew too well, as observed in last chapter, that the sensuous and the sensual was often veiled under the name of art, and degenerated into a deification of vice.
He will strive to expose — if he can, to exorcise — what is “earthly, sensual, devilish,” and substitute in their place spiritual realities. Above all, fairer than the fairest personifications of their Pentelican marble, to reveal the only true “theophany;” to exalt the only supreme Ideal of beauty and moral excellence in the Person of a Crucified Redeemer. Socrates had, some centuries before, strolled in that same Agora, and gathered listeners to his side as he descanted on knowledge, and tried to lift his hearers to a higher than heathen platform. The aspiration of his greater successor was to bring some of them around him, with the hope of receiving and welcoming the true ‘’Pleroma’’ — “in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”
Our glimpse, therefore, of St. Paul in the Jewish synagogue is only a passing one, giving occasion for no remark. The Agora, in all Greek cities, was the centre and focus of life. At the further end of the leading street, in a hollow of the district called Ceramicus, now in a state of nature, where flocks browse, was the ancient Athenian Agora.^
1 Stuart in one of the plates of the “Antiquities of Athens” gives an interesting reproduction of what is now generally accepted as the entrance or Gate of the Agora. He leaves it indeterminate, however, whether this may have belonged to what was called the new Agora; although, more probably, the one now before us.
It must not be confounded, as the name would naturally suggest, with an ordinary market, such as we are familiar with at the Eialto of Venice, or the more prosaic ones at Bologna or Paris; in other words, an open space, innocent of all architectural feature or attraction, surrounded with wooden stalls for vending purposes, and littered with garbage. It was so undoubtedly to a certain extent. In one portion, booths were to be seen occupied by salesmen purveying common articles of clothing and consumption, as well as bazaars for those of luxury. Other parts would be more suggestive of our own Covent Garden; shops for flowers and fruit; vegetables and oranges from the surrounding gardens; oil from the olive groves on the slopes of Lycabettus; honey from Hymettus; even fish from the shores of Salamis and Euboea. Mingling somewhat incongruously with these, we have the mention of stalls for books and parchments; a clothes booth; a depot for stolen goods; and the slave-market called “Cyclus.” It was, in this respect, a convenient trading centre for the surrounding city. But its main features and use were very different. Architecturally it
There is an inscription found on one of the remains preserving an edict of the Emperor Hadrian, “regulating the sale of oils and duties payable on these.” — Stuart, p. 19.
must have been impressive. It is described by a writer as a “natural amphitheatre.” It had become the fashionable lounge and resort of the learned, keen, quick-witted, scholars and rhetoricians. Such a place of public resort was by no means a peculiarity of European towns or capitals. The most sacred city of the world, Jerusalem, had its * Acropolis ’ (the Naos or shrine of its Temple) surrounded by what was known as the Court of the Gentiles. This has been appropriately called by an able authority on the topography of Palestine, “the public park to Jerusalem, where the people met, conversed, and even bought and sold those articles required for the proper observance of festivals.... The eastern cloister was called ‘Solomon’s Porch,’ and in it, as St. John tells us, our Lord was accustomed to walk, and doubtless to teach after the manner, outwardly at least, of the Stoic philosophers of Greece “(John x. 24; viii. 20). The same writer refers to the cloistered courts, almost as large as that of Jerusalem, surrounding the Temple of the Sun at Palmyra; the Temple of Eimmon at Damascus encompassed with similar colonnades; and recesses and chambers around the main gigantic Temple at Baalbek: in each case “suitable for purposes of teaching, for discussions on religious and political subjects, and for popular assemblies.” Conspicuous, as is well known, in the centre of the Forum of Rome was the Milliarium Aureum — the Golden Milestone — from which radiated the great highways of the kingdom. It was the same in the Athenian Agora. There, was the Altar of the Twelve Gods, from which emanated, in varied directions, the streets of the city and the roads of Attica. Here, in one place, was the “Stoa Basileios,” “the Royal Porch,” dedicated to Aurora; here, in another, is a Stoa dedicated to Zeus, with paintings of various deities by the artist Euphranor. These and similar ornamental buildings rose at all events on two sides, one of which was confronted with the Statues of the Ten Heroes. Xenophon tells us, that, at certain festivals, it was customary for the knights to make the circuit of the Agora on horseback, beginning at the statue of Hermes, and paying homage to the statues and temples around.^ We have just mentioned the Roman Forum. What it was to the capital of the Caesars (though of course in a humbler degree) the Agora was to Athens. Various other and perhaps more accurate parallels may occur to the reader. It must in some respects have resembled the Square
Professor Porter’s “Jerusalem and Bethlehem,” pp. 59, 60. 2 Art. “Athens,” Encyclopaedia Brit.
of St. Mark in the City of the Adriatic; in others, that in front of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Or, to adopt another simile, its “porticoes and cloisters, decorated with paintings and statuary, were like the Campo Santo at Pisa.” While, in the buzz of talk, whether of sedate consultation or clever repartee, it might more forcibly suggest, only under the open sky of heaven, embracing too a wider constituency and more varied themes, the Westminster Hall in bygone years, of our own southern, or the Parliament House of our northern kingdom. That garrulous throng of the ancient capital was composed of masters and pupils, artists, poets, historians, supplemented by a still livelier contingent of gossip-mongers and idlers of every kind which gathered under alcove and colonnade to converse on “burning questions.” Moreover, anterior to the art of printing, and
1 Howson and Conybeare, i. p. 379. Not only the central position, but the decorated character — in architecture and sculpture — seems to have been characteristic of all ancient cities east and west. Take one, as an example recently described — the transjordanic city of Geresa, one of the cities of the Decapolis, “the most perfect Roman city left above ground.” Here, in front of a great temple, a flight of steps conduct “down immediately into what was the market-place, an open oval, encircled by an Ionic colonnade, from the farther end of which leads oIF the centre street of columns.”
2 “There were at Athens places called Xeax^l; ‘’-^-j gossiping-houses (corresponding to our coffee-houses), devoted to the reception of persons who met together to hear and tell news.” — Bloomjield, Recens. Synop., quoted by Dr. Kitto.
when journalistic literature, whether at the English fireside or city club, was a future revelation, it formed the only means and opportunity of thus obtaining and discussing the politics of the hour. Even the varied colour, blending and contrasted in this Babel of confusion, must have been striking and picturesque, if the dress of the modern Greek, as we have seen it (male and female) is a survival of classic ages. Then, it is specially noted in our narrative chapter, that the Agora opened its gates, not to natives only, but to ‘’strangers’’’ (v. 21). Athens would seem to have attracted to it travellers from other lands, just as the more accessible cities of Italy — Rome, Elorence, Venice, with their art-treasures and historic memories — are visited now. We can think therefore of * excursionists ’ and merchants, either in pursuit of pleasure or of gain or both combined, from other towns and capitals near and distant. Noisy traffickers from Corinth and Thessalonica, Ephesus and Smyrna, Antioch and Damascus; sailors and voyagers from the Alexandrian vessel or Roman galley at anchor in the Pirseus. Here and there a Jew with sandalled feet, his long robe girdled round the waist and fringed with blue ribbon. Here and there some soldiers from the barracks — now on foot, now mounted — the flash of their helmets mingling with the red and yellow mantles of the market-women, or with the still rarer keffeih and fillets of the swarthy children of the Arabian or Syrian deserts.^ What a rare “symposium;” what a singular friction and whirlpool of thought in this “tumultuous Agora! “We need not wonder that the one conspicuous failure in his art by the great painter Parrhasius was the attempt to personate, in one bold ideal figure, the character of the Athenians.” Nor,” says an interesting writer, ‘* was the failure wonderful. To paint chaos “— he might have rather said a malstrom — “is no easy achievement.” ’
The representative of some new philosophical system was sure of an interested hearing and welcome from that volatile race, who, in our chapter are said, along with “strangers” (possibly youth sent from other cities and countries to the university, — the Oxford or Cambridge of the day), “to spend their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing” (verse 21) — Lit.,
1 The late Lord Carnarvon’s picture of the modern Athens, in his “Athens and the Morea,” is in thorough harmony with the old. “Of such materials is Athenian society composed. The settler, the enterprising traveller, the missionary, the German, the Greek of the new democratic, and the Greek of the old feudal school, are simultaneously brought together on the narrow but varied stage.” P, 40.
Rev. J. Brown-Patterson’s Essay on “The National Character of the Athenians.”
‘’ some newer thing; “” the latest news.” Old topics and opinions, with these restless, spasmodic natures, gradually became stale and effete. Nothing rejoiced them more than to have some novel theory to combat. St. Luke’s expression seems to echo the almost identical words of Demosthenes himself, who in better days had denounced this same curiosity, when grave political perils were impending. Instead of rising with the occasion and preparing strenuously to encounter the foe, “they inquire,” says he, “in the place of public resort — If there he any neivsf If the bone of contention was a theological one, some new religious creed to dissect or analyse, so much the better. Sacred themes with such unscrupulous idlers and newsmongers were made subjects for banter and ridicule as much as for discussion. In nothing, however, as we may well suppose, was there a greater jealousy, than for any outsider to attempt interference with the accepted religious system — “a setter forth of strange gods.” Yet, with singular inconsistency, as just remarked, they never were indisposed to enter the lists with aggressors. They had, moreover, a liberality of
See New Testament Commentary for English Readers.” You excel in suflfering yourselves to be deceived with novelty of speech’ (Thucyd. 3. 38).
their own, there being no unwillingness to receive into the Attic Pantheon the reputed deities of other countries.
If an auditory could thus readily be extemporised, why need the Christian missionary wait the promised arrival of his coadjutors? Why not at once attempt to make a breach in the enemies’ citadel? He cannot restrain himself. It is the enthusiasm of consecrated humanity. Silas and Timothy, knowing as they do the temperament of their heroic leader, will not wonder, when they arrive, to hear that he has gone single-handed into the fight.
There were four conspicuous sects of philosophers dominant in the city of Minerva. Two of these — the disciples of Plato and Aristotle, do not at present concern us. Paul does not appear to have come in contact with them; very probably because of their more secluded habits — keeping religiously, like mediaeval monks, within their cloistered gardens of the Academy and Lyceum.^
1 The site of the latter adjoins the now waterless channel of the Ilissus, and the still surviving fountain of Callirrhoe. It was a statue of the Lycian Apollo, which had given its name to this philosophic retreat of the peripatetics. Too true is the description of what it is now: — “Not a flower was to be seen on the banks of the river, that went lazily murmuring by, save the lavender spray of the fragrant agnus cast us — an humble substitute for the delicate heliotrope that once grew wild there — a plant consecrated to Plato, as the only flower mentioned by him.” — {Ladi, Stranr, ford’s Western Turkey, vol. ii. p. 358).
The view of the noble ruins of the Temple of Olympian Jupiter (colossal Corinthian), seen from this, is peculiarly impressive.
It was different with the other two — the disciples of Epicurus and Zeno. Conspicuous in the motley assemblage of the Agora, were the representatives of these: and they do not seem to have been slow or reluctant in “encountering” the propounder of new doctrines. A few sentences throwing light on the Apostle’s future discourse, may be needful to define their leading tenets. For a somewhat metaphysical digression, I must claim the reader’s indulgence.
The Epicureans constituted the atheists and materialists of their age. They denied the existence of God as Creator. The world according to them, following the theory of Democritus, was made of a fortuitous concurrence of atoms (in which the gods of Olympus had no concern), and abandoned to blind chance. Proceeding on the principle, or dictum, that “out of nothing nothing could be made,” they held the pre-existence of matter from all eternity. Of course “providential government,” or any supreme connection with the affairs of men, was altogether discarded. They entertained as misatisfactory ideas of the nature of man as of the constitution of the universe. In their psychological creed, the soul shared the materialism of the body and was consigned at death to annihilation; or rather, both were dispersed to mingle with the elements. They held that FEAR, and especially the fear of death, was the one haunt and terror of existence, and they got rid of it by the brief syllogism — “Where we are, death is not. Where death is, we are not. It is nothing then to the dead or the living.” A subsequent sentence of Paul, in one of his letters, too truthfully describes their position — a philosophy of despair — ‘’ without God and without hope.” Their ethics were not more inspiring. Self-love was made the spring of all actions. Their cardinal virtue is prudence; and pleasure, in its proteus shapes is the highest human pursuit. ^’ Happiness consisted in the greatest aggregate of pleasurable emotions.” The degrading sentiment which came to shape and regulate their lives was the familiar aphorism — ‘’Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die.” The self-denial and self-abnegation of the Gospel were altogether repudiated in this existence of self-gratification. Duty was a word unknown. Their motive and rule of action was not what is right, but what is expedient. They tolerated the popular mythology — no more. Any deities who from mere complaisance they acknowledged were little else than fantasies — devout imaginations. Or if some among them conceded the idea of anthropomorphism, these gods and goddesses were at best regarded as beings in human shape who took no cognisance either of sorrow or of sin: who had no interest in human affairs, but spent their time in dreamy untroubled indolence, thereby sanctioning their own luxurious ease. It is only fair, however, to add, that these are the later phases and developments of the Epicurean philosophy and its tenets, as they existed in the age of St. Paul. Epicurus himself — the Founder of the Sect 400 years previously, would appear, as has often proved the case in kindred societies, to have soared in a serener moral region than his degenerate successors. Gifted by nature, his life was one of truthfulness, generosity, and patriotism. The site of his gardens is now lost, so that we cannot identify his home as we can do that of Plato, Aristotle, or Zeno. He would seem to have had one among other pure and elevating tastes, in being a lover of nature and the beautiful in nature. He made a special bequest of these garden haunts, wherever they were, to his followers, who came to be known as “the Philosophers of the Garden:” and we cannot wonder that the father of the school, the leading tenet of whose system was, that pleasure is the summum honum should have revelled in the languid enjoyment of flowers and sunshine, amid the marble forms of beauty which studded them, and sought in such regions of serene tranquillity his chief Eden. The motto he placed on the gate indicated as rigid frugality and simplicity of life, as characterised the followers of St. Francis and St. Bruno in after ages. He was faithful in inculcating culture and contentment, in opposition to what was impure and gross, however low his
successors had sunk from his comparatively pure ideal. But although the founder held that virtue was the only road to true pleasure, and inseparable from it, alas — the name “Epicurean” came at last to be rather an equivalent for ’ the voluptuary ’ and voluptuousness — an incarnation of selfishness — one who surrendered himself without scruple to licence. Horace, himself a follower of the sect, expounds faithfully their creed, in the following translated lines: —
“Strive not, the morrow’s chance to know, But count whate’er the fates bestow, As given thee for thy gain.”
“Ee’n as we speak our life glides by;
Enjoy the moments as they fly,
Nor trust the far off day.”
The Stoics, who occupy a similar conspicuous
J Od i. 9, 11, quoted by Dean Plumptre in his New Testament Commentary. The best exposition of the ancient “Epicurean philosophy” is derived from the remarkable poem of Lucretius, De licrum Natura. place in our narrative chapter, were founded by Zeno, a Cyprian, also four centuries preceding the Christian era. They may be credited with a better, though still erroneous creed, which had many distinguished names among its upholders and exponents. They affirmed their belief in two general principles, God and matter, both of which they held to be eternal. They thus recognised one Supreme ’ entity,’ Creator, Governor, and Sustainer of the Universe. To use their own singular figure and comparison, “the deity pervades the matter of the world in the same way as honey fills the comb of a hive.” They also acknowledged a subordinate agency of spirits (demons), who came into contact with the human race. They farther asserted belief in the immortality of the soul, at all events its subsistence after the death of the body. But their notions regarding the character of a future state were dim and distorted. The soul would survive, but it would lose separate consciousness and be absorbed in the “Infinite Essence.” Their pride led to the rejection of the doctrine of future retribution, as well as of the need of present repentance. The souls of the wise and the good alone survived the death of the body. All souls were an emanation from this impersonal God, and were at last re-absorbed in the deity, losing sense of pain and personal identity. On this re-absorption, new cycles would begin, in every respect similar to those which preceded.^ We have said an “Impersonal God,” for His nature and essence they elsewhere likened to fire latent in the component parts of the world. These “Philosophers of the Porch” were therefore virtually Pantheists. The Creator was merely the Spirit of the universe He had formed. The world was deity, spontaneously evolving all things from itself and again assimilating and appropriating them. God, in other words, was the world, and the world was God. It need hardly be added that they were fatalists; that Destiny — Necessity — were the only regulators in the affairs of men, and that the distant inaccessible Being they so far recognised, was Himself subject to the same inexorable fate. Thus they denied alike the personality of God and the responsibility of man. It was a stern unlovable system, with a scornful, haughty superiority to pleasure or pain. The sect has coined the phrase a “stoical indifference.” It was their effort to attain possession of a perfect serenity and equanimity; to regard with unruffled contempt the troubles and vexations of life. Hence they refused and rejected
1 See Neander, p. 188.
the dogmas of any other creed, lest this calm might be disturbed. Their aspiration after mental tranquillity was a parody on the words of the Christ of Nazareth — “Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” They submitted even to tortures with inflexible endurance: asserting that to them pleasure was no pleasure and pain no pain. We need not wonder, under the sway of such dogmas, that their fathers and founders, Zeno and Cleanthes, committed suicide. Moreover, it is only natural that the Romans with their martial ways and affinities, the stern enduring qualities of the imperial nation, would have greater sympathy with these men of ‘’ blood and iron “than with the languid sentiment of the Epicureans. Hence we find among their adherents more than one illustrious name in the Empire of the Csesars. As a brilliant writer expresses it, there were, even in the decline of the Empire, loftier minds, adherents to this system, who “stood out protesting against the corruption.” With them ‘’ belief in the superiority of right to enjoyment, grand contempt for pleasure, sublime defiances of pain, tolled out the dying agonies of the iron kingdom; worthy of the heart of steel which beat beneath the Eoman’s robe. This was Stoicism: the Grecian philosophy which took deepest root, as might have been expected, in the soil of Roman thought.^ From all that has been said, it will be gathered that the Stoical system of Ethics was purer than those of the rival sect; but, independent of other errors, we. have seen it was disfigured by pride and vain-glory. If the Epicureans might be compared to the Sadducees of the Hebrew nation, the Stoics, in their haughty self-righteousness, might not be inappropriately designated philosophic Pharisees. How very antagonistic all their tenets to those of the Disciple of another faith now about to confront them, whose life-motto was, “By the grace of God I am what I am!”
The Stoics had their headquarters, the modern “Club” or “Royal Institution,” also in the Agora. The Stoa (Eroa) was one of the most conspicuous
Rev. F. W. Robertson’s Sermons, i. 216.
I cannot resist appending the account of their doctrines thus eloquently summarised by an able friend.” They endeavoured to surmount matter by spiritualising it. They said this universe, which we have been accustomed to regard only as an assemblage of shadows, is in truth a great reality; the shadows are all on the surface, but there is a life beneath them, eternal, immortal and invisible. The material world is the embodiment of an infinite soul, and in the breath of that soul it lives and moves and has its being. Individual forms indeed are perishable and worthy to perish: they seek to preserve an isolated, self-contained existence, and therefore it is only fitting their existence should vanish with themselves. But beneath these forms there is a life which never dies, which outlasts all material changes, and abides through all outward transformations. Let the individual man yield himself up to this life; let him sacrifice his petty interest to enrich the wealth of universal being; let him forget his own pains and tears and misfortunes in the sense of his unity with the great buildings in the market-place. It gave its name to the sect, as here Zeno first opened his celebrated school. It was specially distinguished for its Poecile, or painted cloister: a spacious colonnade, underneath which (recalling the gallery of battles at Versailles) was depicted a series of the great fights which had won for Athens and Greece their place in the world’s history. Some of the Homeric scenes were thus translated for the eye. The battle of Marathon was conspicuous among heroic memories. In addition to these paintings, there were suspended on its walls the brazen shields of the Scionee of Thrace; also similar trophies taken from the Lacedemonians. We may only further remark, that with neither Epicureans nor Stoics was
Spirit of nature, which holds his frail existence only as a drop is held by the mighty ocean.” — Dr. Mathesons “Growth of the Spirit of Christianit//,” vol. i. pp. 49, 50. Perhaps the noblest and purest adherent of the sect in its waning existence, was one wearing the imperial pvirple, — Marcus Aurelius: “the head of all non-Christian moralists,” as he has been well described by a distinguished man of letters (see Contemporary Review, 1886, p. 247). He adopted the system at the early age of twelve years, and resolutely adhered to it alike as a pupil and a teacher, sitting at the feet of its worthiest exponents, after he had himself attained the highest honours of the state. He pursued his philosophic studies even when engaged in war, and absorbed in the distractions of rule. In his case, philosophy and philanthropy were identical, and his life was a protest against pride, selfishness, and impurity. He was a loyal follower of its older distinguished adherents, such as Seneca and Epictetus. A Biblical Commentator, from whom we have already quoted, mentions, that “many of the Stoics were sought after as tutors for the sons of noble families, and occupied a position of influence, not unlike that of Jesuit confessors and directors in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”
Paul unfamiliar. Disciples and followers of both sects were to be found in considerable numbers in the schools of Tarsus, which had attained now great celebrity. Perhaps, in this their haunt and headquarters, he was enabled more acutely to feel and accentuate their wide opposition to the creed it was his glory to expound and defend. What could be more antagonistic to the later developments of the Epicurean system, than the doctrines of that divine Saviour in their irreconcileable hostility alike to sensualism and selfishness, and in their definition of true happiness as consisting in the enjoyment and favour of a personal God? What could be more opposed, on the other hand, than the later phases of the Stoical creed, to the humble, lowly, doctrines of the Cross of Calvary? — doctrines in which the axe was laid at the root of all self-love and creature merit; whose foundation-truth was that of human depravity and human helplessness, dependence on divine superhuman aid; eternal life, not the reward of virtue or goodness, but “the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. vi. 23).’
1 In what has been said of these two philosophic sects, it is by no means to be supposed that their doctrines and tenets were the most dangerous among the Greek speculatists. Many others not only were avowed atheists and scoffers, but the votaries of shameless immorality. We would desire to give emphasis to a previous remark, that the aim and endeavour, ori-To resume the thread of our narrative. The members of these two sects would seem, on the occasion of St. Paul’s visit to the Agora, to have preponderated among the other notable frequenters of this great rendezvous of Grecian thought.
It would appear too from the text-narrative, that not on one isolated occasion only did our Apostle mingle with the promiscuous assemblage. For we read (ver. 17) that ‘he disputed in the market daily with them that met him.” His new theme — constantly on his lips — that which his preliminary statements led up to, was Jesus and the Resurrection.’’ Morning after morning, he may have gathered varied and varying groups around him in Stoa, Colonnade, or Porch. And while numbering more astute listeners — (as in the case of a Diviner than he) — “the common people” — the ordinary crowd of plebeian loungers may have “heard him gladly.” “He did not,” says Dr. Alexander, ‘’ ostentatiously throw down the gauntlet to the chiefs of the great philosophic schools, which then divided the allegiance of Greece, but was content to speak with any one who was
ginally at least, of the Epicureans and Stoics, was to settle the foundations of virtue and to satisfy the yearnings of the human spirit in its search for the “highest good.” Both schools professed to teach “the more excellent way,” according to their light and leading, and to find some loftier and more enduring principles for the guidance of man’s moral nature.
willing to hear what he had to say.” There was nothing, indeed, to prepossess in the stranger’s appearance. These children of Hellas, a nation of athletes — models of physical grace — who prided themselves as much on the perfect development of mere outward form as on intellectual distinction, would see before them one of mean stature; his face wan with recent suffering and bonds, and specially the stripes and stocks of Philippi; his garb ragged, his speech, if idiomatically correct, lacking in the rich mellow musical tones to which they were wont to listen. If he had to apologise to the less cultured Corinthians for his stammering and imperfect utterance (1 Cor. ii. 1-5), what must these shortcomings have been to more fastidious and delicate ears? Over and above must have been manifest traces of inner anxiety which could not be concealed. Yet the man was greater than his personality. There was, to use a modern coined word — a mesmeric power in his tones which dispensed with other accessories. Like the Tishbite of another age and country, the God he owned had “made his words, re.” Those Greeks who had for long reverenced Socrates, despite of his repelling physiognomy, would not overlook or undervalue mental qualities though enshrined in a mean casket. Above all, would they respect boldness combined with sincerity. There was an earnestness of conviction — a heroic bearing — which could not fail to enlist their sympathetic attention. He had taken to himself the whole spiritual armour of which in after times he wrote; and ‘* above all “(over all)” the shield of faith.” He got at once into living touch with the minds around him; going from one group to another of those who were standing under the porticos, or sauntering under the plane trees. “He exhibits to us,” says Monod, ‘’ notwithstanding an infirm body and a feeble speech, what a man can do, even one single man, when his will is in harmony with the will of God.” Possibly when the above leaders of thought had noted this sympathetic interest on the part of the auditory — they may, like the captain of the temple and the chief priests, on another occasion, at Jerusalem, have dreaded “whereunto this might grow” (Acts v. 24). What he was urging was no mere modification of their own polytheism, but an entirely new departure. The novel doctrines might prove infectious, and gain perilous mastery with fickle ears. They must come to the rescue. “What does this babbler say?” (ver. 18) — was their haughty comment and query, as they advanced within hearing. The word “babbler” — will be found commented on by most exegetical scholars. It means literally a “bird pecker; “a rook; or as others say, a bird of the finch tribe, with a shrill note, chirping and nibbling up scattered seeds on the public way, or following the plough, or as here in the Agora. From this, its root derivation, it comes figuratively to apply to an impecunious haunter of the market-place who earns his precarious living, first by pilfering floral and other gifts left on the altars of the gods, — one who thus tries, by dishonourable ways and means worthy of contempt, to secure what he fails to get by honest trade; then (a still farther emblematic meaning) — it may refer, as in the present instance, to one who is regarded as a prattler — a loquacious idler — whose mind is a prey to crude incoherent fancies; or, more contemptible still, one who picks up and circulates scraps of knowledge he does not understand. The rendering of the verse in Wycliffe’s Version is — ‘’ What will this sower of wordis say?” In the Eheims Version, “What is it that this word-sower would say?” Olshausen notes, that “in the very place in Athens where St. Paul spoke, Demosthenes, too, called his opponent ^schenes — a ‘Spermologos.’”
1 Quoted by Dr. Kitto. See also Howson in note, p. 400.
2 Olshausen on the Acts, vol. iv. p. 551, note.
The suspicions of the Sophists seem gradually confirmed. They whisper to one another or protest aloud — “He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods” (v. 18). He is claiming our homage for unrecognised deities {SaL/iovLoj, and is therefore a violator of our laws. They proceed to specify the two new divinities he sought not only to include in their Pantheon, but to supersede those they had sworn to reverence; — (Irjo-ov. yivdarao-L^). “Jesus,” a Jewish divinity: — also a female deity Anastasis, “The Resurrection,” embodying the idea of immortality. This had been the pith and kernel of all these daily and repeated colloquies — the one supreme subject of thought and appeal — things in heaven and earth that were never dreamt of in their philosophy. ‘’ Jesus and the Resurrection” / — the two themes permeated and dominated the teaching of the Great Apostle.
We are quite aware as to how this construction of the meaning of St. Paul’s words on the part of the Epicureans and Stoics — a meaning first suggested by Chrysostom and followed latterly by several German writers, has been doubted and combated. It is by no means to be pressed. But the opinion of the Great Father of the Eastern Church seems to have much to recommend it. All around were statues of gods and goddesses, who were the embodiment and personification of abstract notions and qualities, — such as Honour, Energy, Modesty, Fame, Persuasion, Concord, &c.^ Why should not Anastasis have suggested itself in the same light?
In that hurricane of noise and clamour — a chronic surging of talk — it occurs to these members of the two sects that they would enjoy greater quiet and freedom for the discussion of the new creed, and the claims of these alien divinities for a place among the immortals, if they “were to adjourn with the Hebrew Stranger to the neighbouring eminence.^
This we shall leave for description in next chapter.
We may add the observation from Pausanias: — “In the market-place of the Athenians, there are other works which are not so obvious to every one, and among the rest an altar of Pity (or Mercy, “EXeos), which Divinity, as she is above all others beneficial to human life, ... is reverenced by the Athenians” (vol. i. chap. xvii.).
2 Among these German authorities are Lange, Baumgarten, and Baur. Dr. Gloag in his “Commentary on the Acts “well remarks, that if it had not been the writer’s intention to designate these two as strange gods proclaimed by St. Paul, there would have been no reason for the addition of TTjv avdaTaaiv. If it had only been Jesus whom the Apostle preached as “the Risen One” the historian would have added the pronoun avrov. But he does not write “Jesus and His Resurrection,” but “Jesus and the Resurrection” (vol. ii. p. 150).
3 V. 19. “They took him “(took hold of him by the hand). There is nothing implied in the words to suggest violence or” arrest.” “The same verb is used often of taking by the hand to aid or protect (Mark viii. 23; Acts xxiii. 19, ix. 27). It was prompted by curiosity — not displeasure. {Professor Lumby of Cambridge on the Acts in loc.)