Word Pictures in the New Testament - David Cox

Word Pictures in the NT [Acts: Chapter 17]
Stoicism it was his self-righteousness and pride of intellect"
(Hackett). Knowling calls the Stoic the Pharisee of philosophy
and the Epicurean the Sadducee of philosophy. Socrates in this
very agora used to try to interest the passers-by in some desire
for better things. That was 450 years before Paul is challenged
by these superficial sophistical Epicureans and Stoics. It is
doubtful if Paul had ever met a more difficult situation. {What
would this babbler say?} (\Ti an theloi ho spermologos houtos
legein?\). The word for "babbler" means "seed-picker" or picker
up of seeds (\sperma\, seed, \leg•\, to collect) like a bird in
the agora hopping about after chance seeds. Plutarch applies the
word to crows that pick up grain in the fields. Demosthenes
called Aeschines a \spermologos\. Eustathius uses it of a man
hanging around in the markets picking up scraps of food that fell
from the carts and so also of mere rhetoricians and plagiarists
who picked up scraps of wisdom from others. Ramsay considers it
here a piece of Athenian slang used to describe the picture of
Paul seen by these philosophers who use it, for not all of them
had it ("some," \tines\). Note the use of \an\ and the present
active optative \theloi\, conclusion of a fourth-class condition
in a rhetorical question (Robertson, _Grammar_, p. 1021). It
means, What would this picker up of seeds wish to say, if he
should get off an idea? It is a contemptuous tone of supreme
ridicule and doubtless Paul heard this comment. Probably the
Epicureans made this sneer that Paul was a charlatan or quack.
{Other some} (\hoi de\). But others, in contrast with the "some"
just before. Perhaps the Stoics take this more serious view of
Paul. {He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods} (\zen•n
daimoni•n dokei kataggeleus einai\). This view is put cautiously
by \dokei\ (seems). \Kataggeleus\ does not occur in the old
Greek, though in ecclesiastical writers, but Deissmann (_Light
from the Ancient East_, p. 99) gives an example of the word "on a
marble stele recording a decree of the Mitylenaens in honour of
the Emperor Augustus," where it is the herald of the games. Here
alone in the N.T. \Daimonion\ is used in the old Greek sense of
deity or divinity whether good or bad, not in the N.T. sense of
demons. Both this word and \kataggeleus\ are used from the
Athenian standpoint. \Xenos\ is an old word for a guest-friend
(Latin _hospes_) and then host (Ro 16:23), then for foreigner
or stranger (Mt 25:31; Ac 17:21), new and so strange as here
and Heb 13:9; 1Pe 4:12, and then aliens (Eph 2:12). This view
of Paul is the first count against Socrates: Socrates does wrong,
introducing new deities (\adikei S•krat•s, kaina daimonia
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