Athens was a "free" city, that is to say, free to live under its ancient constitution and to

make new laws, providing of course that the interests of Rome were not touched. From

the inscriptions, we gather that in the Apostle's time the constitution of Athens consisted

of three estates, the Areopagus, the Council of Six hundred, and the People,  the

Areopagus taking precedence. The words "Areopagus" (Acts 17: 19) and "Mars' Hill"

(Acts 17: 22) are really the same, one being Greek and the other Latin and English.

Before we go further, we shall be well advised to go back to the record in Acts 17:,

and discover its structure, so that we may have the backbone of the argument in our

minds, as we consider each of the individual items in turn.

A | 17: 15-17. Paul bears witness at Athens.

B | 17: 18. The philosophers encounter him.

C | 17: 18-21. Jesus and the resurrection.

"Some said . . . . . other some."

D | 17: 22-23. The Unknown God. Agnosto.

E | 17: 23-29. Philosophy and Idolatry. |

a | 23-25. The Creator. No need of temples.

b | 25-29. The creature. We are His offspring.

a | 29. The Creator. No graven image.

D | 17: 30. Times of ignorance. Agnoias.

C | 17: 30, 31. "That man" and the resurrection.

"Some mocked, others said."

B | 17: 33, 34. A philosophers cleaves to him.

A | 18: 1. Paul departs from Athens.

Paul's encounter with the philosophers, and the conversion of at least one of them,

Dionysius the Areopagite, is evidently the important feature of the passage. Paul's

preaching of Jesus and the resurrection was the doctrine that struck these philosophers as

something "new", and his double reference to "ignorance" (17: 23, 30), coming from

one whom they had esteemed a "Babbler", must have impressed them.

We read that the Apostle's spirit was "stirred within him" as he saw the city "wholly

given up to idolatry"--or, as the margin has it, "full of idols" (Acts 17: 16). A writer of

ancient times, Petronius, said of Athens that "it was easier there to meet a god than a

man", and Paul would have been horrified to see that they had even erected a statue of the

High Priest of Israel, Hyrcanus. Statues in every conceivable attitude, size and material

met the beholder's gaze at every turn.  There were more statues in Athens, said

Pausanias, than in the whole of Greece.

True to one part of his commission the Apostle "disputed in the synagogue with the

Jews", but he also remembered that he was the Apostle to the Gentiles, and so we find

him "in the market place daily", disputing with them that meet him (Acts 17: 17). Three

topographical features of Athens must be understood if we are to follow the Apostle's