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The Areopagus as seen from the Acropolis in Athens, Greece
The Areopagus or Mars Hill is a bare marble hill next to the Acropolis in Athens. Before the fifth century BC, the Areopagus was the council of elders of the city, much like the Roman Senate. Like its counterpart in Rome, its membership was derived from those in high public office.
It continued to function in Roman times, and it was then that Paul delivered his famous speech about "the Unknown God." Here is the account - Acts 17:18-34
A group of Epicurean and Stoic
philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, “What is this
babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign
gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and
the resurrection. Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the
Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that
you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we
want to know what they mean.” (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived
there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the
latest ideas.)
Paul then stood up in the meeting of
the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very
religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of
worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now
what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
“The God who made the world and
everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples
built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything,
because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one
man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and
he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should
live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and
find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and
move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his
offspring.’
“Therefore since we are God’s
offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or
stone—an image made by man’s design and skill. In the past God overlooked such
ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set
a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He
has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”
When they heard about the resurrection
of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again
on this subject.” At that, Paul left the Council. A few men became followers of
Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a
woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
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