Acts 17:9-23

⁹Then they took a security bond from Jason and the rest and let them go.

¹⁰Immediately, during the night, the brothers sent both Paul and Silas away to Berea; on arriving they went into the synagogue of the Jews.

¹¹Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all goodwill, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things might be so.

¹²Therefore many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men.

¹³But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the Word of God was also being proclaimed by Paul in Berea, they came too, agitating the crowds.

¹⁴So then, without delay, the brothers sent Paul away, as if to go by sea, while both Silas and Timothy remained there.

¹⁵But those who were conducting Paul actually took him all the way to Athens; and receiving a command to Silas and Timothy that they should come to him as quickly as possible, they started back.

¹⁶Now while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, his spirit was increasingly aroused within him as he observed that the city was full of idols.

¹⁷So he reasoned both in the synagogue with the Jews and devout persons, and in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.

¹⁸Then certain philosophers, both Epicureans and Stoics, encountered him. Some said, “What might this idea-scavenger want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign deities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.

¹⁹So taking him in tow they led him to the Areopagus and said: “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?

²⁰Because you are bringing some strange things to our ears, and we would like to know what they might mean.”

²¹(Now all Athenians and resident foreigners spent their time in nothing else but to tell, or else to hear, some novelty.)

²²So standing in the middle of the Areopagus Paul said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious;

²³because as I went along and scrutinized the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO UNKNOWN GOD. Now then, the one you worship as ‘unknown’, this is the One I proclaim to you: