16While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to
see that the city was full of idols. 17So he argued in the synagogue with
the Jews and the devout persons, and also in the marketplace every day
with those who happened to be there. 18Also some Epicurean and Stoic
philosophers debated with him. Some said, “What does this babbler want
to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities.”
(This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the
resurrection.) 19So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus and
asked him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are
presenting? 20It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know
what it means.” 21Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there
would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.
22Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see
how extremely religious you are in every way. 23For as I went through
the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found
among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What
therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24The God
who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and
earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25nor is he served
by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to
all mortals life and breath and all things. 26From one ancestor he made all
nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their
existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27so
that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find
him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28For ‘In him we
live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have
said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ 29Since we are God’s offspring, we
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ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image
formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30While God has
overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people
everywhere to repent, 31because he has fixed a day on which he will have
the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and
of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”