Word Pictures in the New Testament - David Cox

Word Pictures in the NT [Acts: Chapter 17]
one's mind (Lu 2:19), to meet together (Ac 20:14), to bring
together aid (18:27), to confer or converse or dispute as here
and already 4:15 which see. These professional philosophers
were always ready for an argument and so they frequented the
agora for that purpose. Luke uses one article and so groups the
two sects together in their attitude toward Paul, but they were
very different in fact. Both sects were eager for argument and
both had disdain for Paul, but they were the two rival practical
philosophies of the day, succeeding the more abstruse theories of
Plato and Aristotle. Socrates had turned men's thought inward
(\Gn•thi Seauton\, Know Thyself) away from the mere study of
physics. Plato followed with a profound development of the inner
self (metaphysics). Aristotle with his cyclopaedic grasp sought
to unify and relate both physics and metaphysics. Both Zeno and
Epicurus (340-272 B.C.) took a more practical turn in all this
intellectual turmoil and raised the issues of everyday life. Zeno
(360-260 B.C.) taught in the \Stoa\ (Porch) and so his teaching
was called Stoicism. He advanced many noble ideas that found
their chief illustration in the Roman philosophers (Seneca,
Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius). He taught self-mastery and hardness
with an austerity that ministered to pride or suicide in case of
failure, a distinctly selfish and unloving view of life and with
a pantheistic philosophy. Epicurus considered practical atheism
the true view of the universe and denied a future life and
claimed pleasure as the chief thing to be gotten out of life. He
did not deny the existence of gods, but regarded them as
unconcerned with the life of men. The Stoics called Epicurus an
atheist. Lucretius and Horace give the Epicurean view of life in
their great poems. This low view of life led to sensualism and
does today, for both Stoicism and Epicureanism are widely
influential with people now. "Eat and drink for tomorrow we die,"
they preached. Paul had doubtless become acquainted with both of
these philosophies for they were widely prevalent over the world.
Here he confronts them in their very home. He is challenged by
past-masters in the art of appealing to the senses, men as
skilled in their dialectic as the Pharisaic rabbis with whom Paul
had been trained and whose subtleties he had learned how to
expose. But, so far as we know, this is a new experience for Paul
to have a public dispute with these philosophical experts who had
a natural contempt for all Jews and for rabbis in particular,
though they found Paul a new type at any rate and so with some
interest in him. "In Epicureanism, it was man's sensual nature
which arrayed itself against the claims of the gospel; in
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