Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

marble temples to Jupiter, Minerva, Theseus, Hercules, Bacchus, Niobe and other divinities thrilled
me with curiosity, admiration and edification three years ago, after the roll of eighteen hundred years.
so many having perished, been spoliated and transported. What must have been the scene in Paul’s
day when the city was at the acme of her magnificence and the Grecian gods at the zenith of their
glory! Ever and anon he is confronted in the Forum by the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, the
latter absolute fatalists, teaching that even the gods as well as all people were subject to inexorable
fate, and the former downright materialists, denying all spirituality. Because Paul preached Jesus and
the resurrection, to them utter novelties, they pronounced him “an expositor of strange demons.”
This word tells the dark secret that heathen nations always have and this day worship demons, Satan
being the god of this world and the air thronged with demons, the idolatrous millions and even the
fallen churches drifting away into demoniacal worship.
19. They now lead Paul up to the summit of the Areopagus, that he may stand before that grave
assembly of philosophers, orators, poets, statesmen, warriors and sages, recognized by the people
as the legitimate custodians of all truth and proper arbiters of every new doctrine, or new religion
which might be introduced. When I was there I climbed Mars’ Hill, that I might stand in the
footprints of Paul when he addressed the most cultured congregation ever assembled beneath the
skies.
22. Paul standing in the midst of the Areopagus, aid: “Athenian men, I perceive that in all things
you are very religious,” not, as E.V. says, “too superstitious,” in which case they would have
skedaddled him in a hurry.
23. “For going through and seeing your devotions [i.e., temple, shrines, altars and statues], I also
found an altar on which was superscribed, ‘To the Unknown God.’ Therefore, whom you ignorantly
worship, him declare I unto you.” Wonderfully shrewdly did Paul, in this way, approach and touch
the sympathies of his highly-cultured audience. No other city on the globe, at that time, was so
adorned with the most beautiful and innumerable marble statues, altars, shrines and temples, erected
to all the gods with whom they had become acquainted in the universal conquest of the Greeks under
Alexander the Great, yet, after all, they were fearful that there might be a god somewhere with whom
they had no acquaintance. Hence, profoundly solicitous to secure His favor, they had even built a
temple and superscribed on it, “To the Unknown God,” and were thus worshipping him, though they
knew neither his name nor his attributes. At this point Paul very adroitly approaches them, certifying
boldly to them that he was acquainted with their “Unknown God,” whom they had honored with a
temple, and were ignorantly worshipping. Hence he commands their sympathies and appreciative
audience while he preaches to them their own “Unknown God.”
26. “And of one [i.e., one man, Adam; “blood,” as in E.V., not in the original] he made every
race of men to dwell upon the whole face of the earth.” Having first expounded to them the God of
Providence, filling the world with His benefactions, he astounds them by certifying that He can not
be represented by gold, silver or any artistic display, neither does He want a temple to dwell in, thus
casting a dark shadow of depreciation over all the wonderful works of art which filled their city with
idolatrous worship; proceeding on from an exposition of Providence, delineating the august majesty
of the divine administration culminating in the final judgment, for which He proposes to prepare all
nations by righteousness purchased for them by His Son, whom He has raised from the dead, thus