Acts 17:6-23

⁶They discovered that Paul and Silas were not there, but they found Jason and grabbed him. They dragged him and some of the other believers to where the city officials/authorities and many other people were gathered. The men who had brought Jason shouted, “Those two men have caused trouble IDM everywhere HYP they have gone. Now they have come to our city,

⁷and this fellow Jason invited them to stay at his house. All the people of this sect oppose what our Emperor has decreed. They say that another person, whose name is Jesus, is the real king!”

⁸When the crowd of people that had gathered and the city authorities heard that, they became very angry and excited.

⁹They wanted to put the believers in jail. But instead, the officials made Jason and the other believers pay a fine and told them that they would give the money back to them if Paul and Silas did not cause any more trouble. Then the authorities let Jason and those other believers go.

¹⁰So that same night, the believers sent Paul and Silas out of Thessalonica to Berea town. When Paul and Silas arrived there, they went to the Jewish meeting place, on a day when people had gathered there.

¹¹The Jews in Thessalonica had not been very willing to listen to God's message, but the Jews who lived in Berea were very willing to listen, so they listened very eagerly to the message about Jesus. Every day they read the Scriptures for themselves to find out if what Paul said about the Messiah was true.

¹²As a result, many of the Jewish people believed in Jesus, and also some of the important non-Jewish women and many non-Jewish men believed in him.

¹³But then the Jews in Thessalonica heard people tell them that Paul was in Berea and that he was preaching the message from God about Jesus. So they went to Berea and told people there that what Paul was teaching was not true. Thus, they caused many of those people to get angry at Paul.

¹⁴So several of the believers in Berea took Paul to the coast to go to another province. But Silas and Timothy stayed in Berea.

¹⁵When Paul and the other men from Berea arrived at the coast, they got on a ship and went to Athens city. Then Paul said to the men who had come with him, “Tell Silas and Timothy to come to me here in Athens as soon as they can.” Then those men left Athens and returned to Berea.

¹⁶In Athens, Paul waited for Silas and Timothy to arrive. In the meantime, he walked around in the city. He became very distressed/disturbed because he saw that throughout HYP the city there were many idols.

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.