Acts 17:17-26

¹⁷So he went to the Jewish meeting place and talked about Jesus with the Jews, and also with the Greeks who had accepted what the Jews believe. He also went to the public square/center every day and talked to the people whom he met there.

¹⁸Paul met some teachers who liked to talk about what people should believe. People called some of them Epicureans and they called others Stoics. They told Paul what they believed, and they asked him what he believed. Then some of them said to one another, “This ignorant person is just talking nonsense RHQ!” Others said, “ We(exc) think that he is teaching people about ◄foreign gods/ new gods that we (exc) have not heard about►.” They said that because Paul was telling them that Jesus had died and had become alive again afterwards. They had not heard that message before.

¹⁹So they took Paul to the place where the city council met. When they arrived there, they said to Paul, “ Please tell us, what is this new message that you (sg) are teaching people?

²⁰You are teaching some things that startle us (exc), so we want to know what they mean.”

²¹They said that, because the people of Athens and also the people from other regions who lived there continually talked about what was new to them, or they listened to others tell what was new.

²²Then Paul stood up before the men of the city council and said, “Citizens of Athens, I see that you ◄are very religious/think that it is very important to worship many gods►.

²³I say that because, while I was walking along and observing the objects that represent different gods that you worship, I even saw an altar that had these words that someone had carved on it: THIS HONORS THE GOD THAT WE(exc) DO NOT KNOW. So now I will tell you about that God whom you worship but you do not know.

²⁴He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Because he rules over all beings in heaven and on earth, he does not dwell in shrines that people have made.

²⁵He does not need to have anything made for him by people MTY {to have people MTY make MTY anything for him}, because everything that exists belongs to him. He is the one who causes ◄us (inc)/all people► to live and breathe, and he gives us all the things that we(inc) need.

²⁶In the beginning, God created one couple, and from them God produced all ◄the ethnic groups/the nations► that now live everywhere on the earth. He also decided where each ethnic group of people should live and how long they should live there.