Thessalonica (vv. 1-9)
1 When they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. 2 As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,’” he said.
1 Thessalonica. The missionaries chose to stop in Philippi and minister there, because of a vision in the form of a “Macedonian man” calling for their assistance. Although Christ himself did not appear in the vision, it was clearly a vision sent by him. There is no mention of direct divine guidance regarding their next stop. Sometimes God gives us guidance in a way that goes beyond simple reasoning, but most of the time he expects us to plan wisely. Luke himself was no longer with them (notice “they [not ‘we’] came to Thessalonica”) and may not have known the factors that led them to bypass Amphipolis and Apollonia and not stop until they had reached Thessalonica, the present capital of Macedonia and its largest and most prosperous city. It may have had to do with which of the cities along their route enjoyed the status of Roman cities. Or it may have been because some of the converts in Philippi had friends or relatives in Thessalonica whom they thought would be equally receptive to the gospel. It may also have been which cities had significant Jewish population and synagogues where Paul and Silas could proclaim the “good news” of Jesus the Messiah “to the Jews first, and then to the Gentiles”.
“In Philippi, Paul had time to reflect. His ministry there was the result of a providential call. Where was he to go next? Should he wait for a divine sign, or should he use his common sense? Not surprisingly, he opted for the latter. Given the limited time available (Paul expected that Christ would return shortly in glory) and the vastness of the world, it was clear to Paul that he could not afford to fritter away his energies by stopping at any town or village just because it happened to lie on his path, or by accepting any invitation that happened to be offered. He needed places that, in addition to absorbing his message, had the capacity to radiate it out. His focus had to be on places that multiplied his efforts. In practice this meant cities with a mobile population, where returning visitors could bring the gospel to places that he himself could not reach. Thus Paul trudged a further three or four days from Amphipolis to the nearest city that met this criterion: namely, Thessalonica (modern Salonika), capital of the Roman province of Macedonia” (Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Life).
“Paul's sojourn in Thessalonica brought home to him how lucky he had been in Philippi. There, at the very beginning, he had found a wealthy patron, Lydia, who provided him with accommodation, and facilitated his ministry by furnishing him with access to the middle class. Freedom to draw on their resources relieved him of the need to earn his living. He could give himself entirely to preaching the gospel. And there were people with the leisure to listen. Things were very different in Thessalonica. Paul twice reminds his converts there how long and hard he had to work: 'we worked night and day that we might not burden any of you' (1 Thess. 2:9); 'we did not eat anyone's bread without paying, but with labour and toil we worked night and day that we might not burden any of you' (2 Thess. 3:8). The normal artisan laboured only from sunrise to sunset. If Paul had to work at night, it was because he had difficulty in making ends meet. He could not afford the warm clothing that would make the winter chill of northern Greece bearable (2 Cor. 11:27). The further implication is that his converts, all of whom were pagans (1 Thess. 1:9), were not able to help him financially. They too belonged to the working class, and had to slave twelve hours a day seven days a week to make a living (1Thess. 4:11; 2Thess. 3:12). There is not the slightest hint of any wealthy patron at Thessalonica. There was no one to host the community, with the result that all were expected to make a contribution to the common meal” (Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Life).There was a Jewish synagogue. On the strategic role that the “liberal” synagogues (i.e., those that were tolerant and open to the gospel) of the Diaspora played in Christian evangelism, see Henry Chadwick’s remark (The Church in Ancient Society):
“As the Christian mission in the Gentile world gathered momentum, the synagogues of the Jewish Dispersion often provided the springboard, partly because Greek synagogues possessed the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew scriptures, partly because Gentile ‘God-fearers’ gathered round the community for worship, though rarely becoming proselytes. In synagogues of the Dispersion the prophet Malachi's contrast between the rejected sacrifices of Jerusalem and those of the Dispersion being accepted (1.10–110) could be applied to the situation after AD 70 (Justin, Dialogue 117). Christians took the prophecy to justify the Gentile mission. Probably there were instances where a local church originated in the conversion en bloc of a synagogue with some liberal inclination. At Rome, where there were at least nine or ten synagogues, that is likely to have been the case. Converted Jews brought with them their Septuagint Bible but also traditions of exegesis.”2 As his custom was. By this time Paul had an established, tried-and-true routine in his evangelism. Here we see how he proceeded with fellow Jews. The synagogues offered him, as a visiting rabbi, the opportunity to actually teach the scripture lesson planned for that Sabbath. And usually it was not difficult for him to find a bridge in the Scripture lesson for that Sabbath to the subject of the messianic hope of Israel.
Since we do not know what week in the year this occurred in or the exact sequence of lessons, we can only guess that it might have been a passage allowing him to “explain and prove that the Messiah had to suffer [i.e., die] and rise from the dead." I should caution you, that the Greek verb translated by NRSV, RSV, ESV and NIV as “proving” does not have quite so strong a meaning. The old King James Version rendered it “alleging”, and the New American Bible (Roman Catholic) and the NET read “demonstrating”. The verb really means something like “proposing” or “claiming”.
Although many Jews in Paul’s day may have understood from the Old Testament that the Messiah had to die, most did not. For them the coming of the Messiah meant a great victory of God. And how could the death of God’s Messiah be a victory? Yet if they could not be made to see that this was God’s intention, they could not possibly believe the heart of Paul’s message, that “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah”.
Paul and Silas had to explain all of this very patiently. And because they were very thorough, it took them three Sabbaths. Of course, their missionary activity was not limited to the Sabbath days. We can easily imagine that from Sabbath to Sabbath they were also busy making contacts and leading individual Jews to faith.
4 Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and not a few prominent women.
The result of these long labors was converts—new believers in Jesus—persons who followed Paul’s close arguments from the Old Testament and were persuaded. This suggests that, while there was certainly an emotional component to the conversions and a sense of the need for forgiveness (one cannot imagine Paul not including sin and guilt in his messages!), it was the rational conviction of the Messiahship of Jesus that was prominent. Luke, not having been there himself, doesn’t give us a head-count. But his language suggests that there were more “God-fearing Greeks” than full-fledged Jews among the "persuaded".
Also significant among the converts were women of high standing in the city who were the wives of the principal citizens. Although Paul relied solely upon the power of God to make his audiences receptive to the gospel, he understood very well the strategic value of converts who had civic stature and political influence. This could be helpful to his incipient communities of believers, allowing them protection under the law and the ability to spread the Good News without hindrance. That these were women rather than men was due to the disinclination of Gentile men to undergo circumcision in order to be come Jews. Their wives, on the other hand, were attracted to the Jewish faith and were present to hear Paul’s message of Jesus.
5 But the Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd [actually, ‘the Assembly’, δῆμος]. 6 But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other brothers before the city officials [politarchs, πολιτάρχας], shouting: “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, 7 and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” 8 When they heard this, the crowd [i.e., the Assembly’, δῆμος] and the city officials [πολιτάρχας] were thrown into turmoil. 9 Then they made Jason and the others post bond and let them go.
Reason for the Jewish opponents suborning people to start a riot was their plan to bring charges against Paul and Silas:
“Their plan was to bring Paul and Silas before ‘the crowd’ and ‘the city officials’ on a charge of disturbing the Pax Romana by preaching a religio illicita [i.e., a religion not officially approved by the governing authorities] and by advocating another king in opposition to Caesar” (NIV Commentary).6-9 Since Paul was no coward, it is likely that the new believers insisted they be allowed to hide him and Silas from the mob (see v. 10). But the new believers then paid the price for their new faith by being themselves dragged into court, charged and forced to post bond before being released (v. 9).
“What is happening to Jason is clear enough: he is giving security for the good behaviour of his guests, and hence hastens to dispatch Paul and Silas out of the way to Beroea, where the jurisdiction of the magistrates of Thessalonica was not valid” (Sherwyn-White, Roman Society & Roman Law in the NT, 95-96).We have already mentioned how Paul's itinerary, other than the miraculous call to Macedonia, was dictated by careful planning, but also by unforeseen circumstances. Murphy-O'Connor suggests factors leading to the next leg of his trip:
"But the underlying idea of the retreat of Paul is more than a running away from trouble. Paul exploits the fact that there was no inter-city jurisdiction or authority except that of the Roman governor. If the proconsul or legate is not apprised of a political affair, a trouble-maker can continue his career indefinitely by moving from city to city. The cities kept control over their inhabitants in the last resort through their property. The property-lacking vagrant was very difficult to handle. Hence the significance of the action taken at Thessalonica against Paul's guarantor [Jason]" (Sherwyn-White, 97).
Paul's first instinct was simply to continue west along the Via Egnatia, just as he had done after similar trouble in Philippi. A little reflection, however, brought it home to Paul that such a course would make it very easy for the authorities to find him. Thus there may be a historical reminiscence behind Luke's assertion (Acts 17:10) that Paul got off the Via Egnatia just after it crossed the River Axios and went south-west to Beroea (modern Veroia). It soon became clear, however, that there was no real security as long as Paul stayed in Macedonia. He had come to the attention of the authorities in both Philippi and Thessalonica. Opposition was only going to spread and harden. This put paid to any plans that Paul might have had to carry his gospel west along the Via Egnatia. What mattered now was to get out of Macedonia as quickly as possible. A boat going south along the coast to the adjoining Roman province of Achaia was the best solution. An abrupt move to a different jurisdiction wiped the slate clean.
Beroea [Berea] (vv. 10-15)
As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now the Berean Jews were more receptive than the Thessalonian ones, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. 12 Many of the Jews believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.
The new believers in Thessalonica now secretly sent Paul and Silas off to their next stop on the way south to Athens, namely Berea.
The missionaries’ strategy in Berea was the same as in Thessalonica, commenting on Scripture in the weekly Sabbath services of the Jewish synagogue. But the Berean synagogue differed in two important respects from that of Thessalonica: (1) the full-fledged Jews there were more receptive and eagerly tested Paul’s claims against the Scripture passages that he referred to in the Old Testament, not just on the Sabbath, but “every day”. (2) The number of full-fledged Jews who believed was large, and among the politically well-placed individuals were not just the wives, but their husbands as well.
When the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, they went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up. 14 The brothers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. 15 The men who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.
Trouble came because Berea was not far enough from Thessalonica. Paul’s Jewish opponents there, frustrated that he had escaped the clutches of the authorities there, followed him to Berea.
Athens (vv. 16-34)
16-21 Paul observes the situation and attracts the attention of philosophical types by his popular preaching.
On the first few days of a visit to Athens the average ancient visitor would have marveled at the beauty of the architecture: including the Parthenon. Athens in Roman times was no longer the center of intellectual and cultural life in the Mediterranean world. It had long been surpassed by its chief rivals in the East Mediterranean: Ephesus in Asia Minor and Alexandria in Egypt with their huge and impressive libraries, and Tarsus with its university—and of course, by Rome itself. Still, the proud Athenians fancied themselves the elite of the philosophical world. Witherington summarizes the situation well:
[O]utsiders perceived Athens as trading on the glories of its past, and being a place full of intellectually arrogant people and those who liked to bandy about the popular ideas and topics of the day. Luke was not alone in this opinion (cf. Acts 17:21; Thucydides, History 3.38.5; Demosthenes, Philippic 1.10). In truth, both Alexandria and Tarsus, not to mention Rome, may have been more academically high-powered places than Athens in Paul's day.But Paul was no ordinary visitor to Athens, nor was what Paul admired in life human intellect or artistry — his chief interest was faith in and worship of the True God, the God of his ancestors. So he spent his Sabbaths in the local synagogue, presenting the credentials of Jesus as Messiah to his fellow Jews and the Gentile inquirers there (v. 17).
When he wasn’t in the synagogue, but in the streets and marketplaces during the weekdays, what caught his attention was not the graceful lines of the Parthenon’s pillars or its brilliant colors reflected in the bright Mediterranean sun, but the presence everywhere—on every street corner—of statues of the Greek gods and goddesses. And Paul knew that these were not there just to be admired for their craftsmanship, but in order to receive worship, worship that only One Being deserved, the One God who made heaven and earth. He was therefore deeply troubled by what he saw. And this led him to action: he began to speak to anyone who would listen to him and to tell of the true God and His Son, Jesus.
The Greek market (agora, v. 17) was not only a place for the exchange of goods, but also of ideas. It was therefore a hangout for philosophical types, of which Luke mentions two schools of thought, the Epicureans and the Stoics (v. 18). Typical of such marketplace intellectuals were curiosity about anything that seemed novel (especially if it came from other lands [v. 18], such as Egypt which was thought to be the home of recondite wisdom), and a certain degree of snobbery manifested here in the dismissive label they first give to Paul: “seed-picker” (σπερμολόγος, translated as “babbler”). In other words, in contrast to the Philippian and Thessalonican populations who were disinclined to any foreign (i.e., “non-Roman”) religious customs or ideas, the Athenian philosophers welcomed such things.
Paul was not reluctant to take the initiative in presenting his gospel, but he was particularly eager not to miss opportunities when others actually invited him to present his message. This is what happened, when these Epicureans and Stoics invited him to present his ideas to the Council of the Areopagus and to answer their questions. Since the role of that Council was to ensure public order by reviewing any new religious idea being propagated in the city, Paul was not, in truth, being honored by this invitation: rather it was more of an examination of the potentially dangerous "new divinities" he was preaching. As Luke tells us, his listeners confused "Jesus and the resurrection" with two new deities! Just how risky it was to face a charge of preaching new and unauthorized deities in Athens can be seen from the fact that the famous philosopher Socrates was condemned to death on such a charge. Yet, in spite of being "on trial" as he undoubtedly was, Paul eagerly seized the opportunity to present the gospel, just as he later did before Felix and Festus in Caesarea (Acts 24-25).
22-34 Paul’s Speech on the Areopagus (“Mars Hill”)
Paul did not believe in watering down his message in order to avoid offending his hearers, but he did believe it tailoring it so that the only potentially offensive parts were those that were the core of the gospel itself. What we see him presenting in these verses is a very sophisticated (in the best sense of that word!) introduction to the gospel. One gets the impression that at the end of what Luke gives us here Paul was just at the entrance to the gospel proper.
22-23 He began with a sincere compliment: the many idols showed that the Athenians were seeking to know and please the gods. To that end, statues and altars to every conceivable god or goddess were erected, so as not to overlook or offend any, whether Greek, Roman, Egyptian or Phoenician. In this practice the Athenians were not alone in the ancient world. Other civilizations, such as the ancient Hittites, imported into their national worship any foreign god or goddess that seemed to have power or influence, and whose goodwill might be of benefit to the State.
In order to cover any that the Athenians had unknowingly omitted, they even had an altar with the inscription “to an unknown god”. This provided Paul with an opening. For he will satisfy their curiosity by telling about such a God who is unknown to them, but who wishes to be known by them. And in so doing he will also rebut the charge that he was introducing new divinities, since He whom he was proclaiming had been worshiped by the Athenians all the time, although without knowing His name!
It may seem to us today somehow appropriate to seize upon this ancient Greek label for God, since to the intellectual non-Christian "God" (if He exists at all) is inherently unknowable. Paul would have challenged such an assumption, as he makes clear in the opening chapter of his letter to the Romans (1:18-32): the natural creation itself declares the glory of God's wisdom and power, as Psalm 19:1-6 so jubilantly celebrates, as the law of God equally shows His moral glory (Romans 2:12-16; Psalm 19:7-14). But he would agree—and he makes a point of it here—that unless this Creator had taken the initiative to reveal Himself ultimately in the person of His Son, Jesus the Messiah, He would forever have remained "the unknown God" to the world of paganism (whether ancient or modern!).
24-25 This “unknown God’ is not given a name by Paul. He does not call him Zeus or Jupiter or even the Hebrew Yahweh. It is enough that he is the Creator and “Lord of heaven and earth”.
And although the inscribed altar showed a readiness of the Athenians to offer such a deity a temple and sacrifices, Paul assures them that such a Creator needs no temple, since the world He created is His temple. And because He made everything and provides his human creatures with life and breath and all things needful, he does not need their sacrifices.
These two statements are routine for the Old Testament conception of God: Solomon acknowledged that God did not need the new temple he built for him on Mt. Zion (1 Kings 8:27), and the psalmist emphasized that God owned “the cattle on a thousand hills” and did not need Jewish offerings either (Psa 50:8-12). For the average pagan these two ideas were strange indeed: a god with no need for a temple or sacrifices? Still, these hearers were not just run-of-the-mill Greek peasants: they were rationalist philosophers. So some of this might have already made sense, which is why Paul felt free to speak about it. The first idea was also known to Zeno, the founder of the Stoics. And the second idea was also held by the Epicureans.
In his letters to his converts Paul goes further to explain that the temple of God is the individual body of the believer (1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19), and the sacrifices we offer Him are those same bodies, yielded daily in obedience (Romans 12:1-2).
26-29 This unknown God created all the existing races and language groups from a single ancestor (Paul doesn’t name him as Adam, although that was who he had in mind). He stressed the unity of humanity in order to help his hearers to understand how One Creator God not only sustains all nations with food and shelter, but holds them all responsible to His ethical commands and His offer of salvation. In other words, this God doesn’t need them to build Him a temple or offer Him sacrifices, but He does require their faith and obedience to His will.
In vv. 27-29 Paul quotes some of their native philosophers and poets. But not because he regards their own pagan thinkers as the definitive source of knowledge of God: merely that those thinkers too had held some of these truths. Paul seeks common ground in order to communicate. As the NIV Commentary says:
“In support of this teaching about humankind, Paul quotes two maxims from Greek poets. The first (“For in him we live and move and have our being”) comes from the Cretan poet Epimenides (c. 600 B.C.); the second (“for we are his offspring”), from the Cilician poet Aratus (c. 315–240 B.C.). By such maxims, Paul is not suggesting that God is to be thought of in terms of the Zeus of Greek polytheism or Stoic pantheism. He is rather arguing that the poets his hearers recognized as authorities have to some extent corroborated his message. In his search for a measure of common ground with his hearers, he is, so to speak, disinfecting and rebaptizing the poets’ words for his own purposes. But despite its form, Paul’s address was thoroughly biblical and Christian in its content.”30-31 In these verses Paul comes to the point: this is where he begins his transition to the gospel of Jesus the world’s Savior and Judge:
“God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent 31 because he has established a day on which he will ‘judge the world with justice’ through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead.”
Three issues in particular now were unavoidable insults to Paul’s hearers: Firstly, to have their illustrious history with its poets and philosophers called “times of ignorance” (Muhammad referred to the entire history of the world prior to the revelation of the Quran as the jahaliya [period of ignorance]). Paul had cited with approval two of their thinkers on individual small points, but the whole fabric of pagan thinking: the frantic search for as many gods and goddesses as possible in order to appease the forces of nature and history by sacrifice — this was sheer “ignorance” of the truth that comes from the One God, who demands righteous living, and who forgives sins on the basis of His own Son’s loving sacrificial death and triumphant resurrection.
Secondly, to suggest that this God would hold the entire world accountable ("judgment") for their obedience to His laws and his message of salvation was also an affront to the perceived dignity of humanity in Greek philosophical thought.
Thirdly, the hearers would have been offended to be asked to believe that a dead person could come back to life in his body! For the Greeks, the afterlife was only in spirit: there would never be a time even in the remotest future in which a person’s dead body would come back to life. When you read Paul’s words to the believers in the Greek city of Corinth (1 Cor 15), you will see what a difficult time Christians had in such Greek cities, explaining to their friends that they believed in a bodily resurrection. Yet as Paul stated in 1 Cor 15:12-19, the final resurrection of believers is implied in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And if the final resurrection is denied, it is only logical to deny Jesus’ bodily resurrection. And if this is denied, there is nothing left as a historical basis for our belief that he is the Son of God and able to save us from our sins.
32-34 The reaction of Paul’s hearers was largely negative. This was predictable. As the IVP Acts Commentary observes:
“Epicureans, atomic materialists, viewed reality as an endless chance combining and dispersion of atoms. They would find the concept of bodily resurrection laughable (Epicurus Epistle to Menoeceus 123-32). The Stoics, materialist pantheists, identified the divine as the principle of reason pervading all and, in the form of fate, governing all. Because of either their cyclic eschatology (belief that there were periodic conflagrations of the universe after which history simply repeated itself) or their later adoption of the Platonic concept of the soul's immortality, they could not conceive of resurrection (Chrysippus Fragment 625; Bahnsen 1980:11).”I don’t think Paul really expected that there would be a large number of his hearers at the Areopagus who would be able to believe his message at first hearing. So the small number who did is not to be thought evidence that he made a mistake in saying what he did. The fact of the matter is that there were converts, even if but a few that are named. Paul reached out for common ground, but when that common ground ran out, he boldly proclaimed the simple truths of Scripture. And so should all of us!
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