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== Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament <ref name="term_55113" /> == | == Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament <ref name="term_55113" /> == | ||
<p> (Ἀθῆναι) </p> <p> Athens, which St. Paul visited in the autumn of a.d. 48 (Harnack), or 50 (Turner), or 51 (Ramsay), was now in some respects very different from the city of [[Pericles]] and Plato. Her political and commercial supremacy was gone. [[Greece]] had for two centuries been the Roman province of Achaia, of which [[Athens]] was not the capital. The governor had his residence at Corinth, and the merchant-princes had forsaken the Piraeus for Lecheum and Cenchreae. Rut Athens was still the most beautiful and brilliant of cities, the home of philosophy, the shrine of art, the fountain-head of ideals. As the metropolis of [[Hellenism]] she had, indeed, a wider and more pervasive influence than over, which the Roman conquerors, like the [[Macedonians]] before them, did their best to extend. ‘From the Philhellenic standpoint, doubtless, Athens was the masterpiece of the world’ (T. Mommsen, <i> Provinces of the Roman [[Empire]] </i> 2, London, 1909, i. 258). To be among her citizens was to breathe the atmosphere of culture. Her [[Lyceum]] by the Ilissus, her [[Academy]] by the groves of Cephissus, her [[Porch]] in the Agora, and her [[Garden]] near at hand, were still frequented by Platonists, Peripatetics, Stoics, and Epicureans. Her University drew to itself a host of foreign students, especially from Rome, and became the model of the younger foundations of Alexandria, Antioch, and Tarsus. </p> <p> Neither the [[Republic]] nor the Empire ever fully applied the subject-relation to Greece, and the [[Athenians]] were always treated with special kindness. ‘The Romans, after their conquest, finding them governed by a democracy, maintained their independence and liberty’ (Strabo, ix. i. 20). Even in the Mithridatic war, when an ordinary town behaving as Athens did would have been razed to the ground, ‘the citizens were pardoned, and, to this time, the city enjoys liberty, and is respected by the Romans’ ( <i> ib. </i> ). </p> <p> The outward aspect of Athens was little altered in St. Paul’s time. Plutarch, who wrote half a century later, says in regard to Pericles’ public edifices: ‘In beauty each of them at once appeared venerable as soon as it was built; but even at the present day the work looks as fresh as ever, for they bloom with an eternal freshness which defies time, and seems to make the work instinct with an unfading spirit of youth’ ( <i> Pericles </i> , xiii.). Cicero conveys the impression which the city made upon every cultivated mind in his time: ‘Valde me Athenae delectarunt, urbe dumtaxat et urbis ornamento, … sed multum ea philosophia’ ( <i> Ep. ad Att </i> . v. 10). The Philhellenism of the Empire surpassed that of the Republic, and of all the Roman benefactors of Athens the greatest was Hadrian, who not only completed the temple of [[Zeus]] Olympius, which had remained unfinished for 700 years, but embellished the city with many other public buildings, and gave the name of Hadrianopolis to a new quarter. </p> <p> But, though Athens was outwardly as splendid as ever, she was inwardly decadent, being, in philosophy, letters, and art, a city living upon traditions. Her first-rate statesmen and orators, poets and thinkers, did not outlive the nation’s freedom. </p> <p> ‘The self-esteem of the Hellenes, well-warranted in itself and fostered by the attitude of the Roman government … called into life among them a <i> cultus </i> of the past, which was compounded of a faithful clinging to the memories of greater and happier times and a quaint reverting of matured civilisation to its in part very primitive beginnings.… The bane of Hellenic existence lay in the limitation of its sphere; high ambition lacked a corresponding aim, and therefore the low and degrading ambition flourished luxuriantly’ (Mommsen, <i> op. cit. </i> i. 280, 283). </p> <p> The decay of Athens was due less to the exhaustion of her creative energy, with the substitution of imitative for original work, than to the simple fact that the thought and art of her citizens were no longer wedded to noble action and brave endurance. Full of aesthetes and dilettantes, loving the reputation more than the reality of culture, letting a restless inquisitiveness and shallow scepticism take the place of high aspiration and moral enthusiasm, she became blind to the visions, and deaf to the voices, which redeem individual and collective life from vanity. </p> <p> The devouring appetite of the Athenians for news had long been one of their best-known traits. </p> <p> [[Demosthenes]] ( <i> Phil </i> . i. p. 43) pictures them bustling about the [[Agora]] inquiring if any newer thing is being told (πυνθανόμενοι κατὰ τὴν ἀγοράν εἴ τι λέγεται νεώτερον), the tragedy being that, while they were talking, philip was acting. [[Thucydides]] (iii. 38) makes [[Cleon]] say to them: ‘So you are the best men to be imposed on with novelty of argument, and to be unwilling to follow up what has been approved by you, being slaves of every new paradox, and despisers of what is ordinary. Each of you wishes above all to be able to speak himself.… In a word, you are overpowered by the pleasures of the ear, and are like men sitting to be amused by rhetoricians rather than deliberating upon State affairs.’ </p> <p> Among the philosophers of St. Paul’s time the <i> penchant </i> for news took the form of an eagerness to hear the latest novelty in speculation or religion which any σπερμολόγος (picker-up of scraps of information) might have to publish ( Acts 17:21), in order that they might exercise their nimble wits upon it, and most probably hold it up to ridicule. </p> <p> Though St. Paul spoke the language of Hellas, and acknowledged himself a debtor to the Hellenes ( Romans 1:14), yet Athens does not seem to have exercised any fascination over him. She did not beckon him like Rome; he did not see her in his dreams, or pray that he might be prospered to come to her; he never exclaimed, with a sense of destiny, ‘I must see Athens.’ That he ever visited her at all was apparently the result of an accident. He was hurried away from Berœa before he had time to mature his plans of future action, and he merely waited at Athens for the arrival of his friends, Silas and Timothy ( Acts 17:15 f.). To picture him wandering among temples and porticos, lost in admiration of works of genius, and ‘perhaps witnessing the performance of a play of Euripides,’ is to misunderstand him. He did not spend his leisure in Athens, any more than Luther in Rome, in appraising the masterpieces of plastic and dramatic articleThey were both ‘provoked’*[Note: παροξύνομαι often used in the LXX to express a burning [[Divine]] (and prophetic) indignation against idolatry ( Hosea 8:5, Zechariah 10:3).] by what they saw as they passed by. They were consumed with the prophetic zeal which seeks to replace a false or imperfect religion with a true and perfect one. St. Paul, indeed, knew the Hellenic world too well to imagine that, while the city was ‘full of idols’ (κατείδωλον), its men of culture were given to idolatry. In their case the worship of the gods survived only in that cultus of physical beauty to which innumerable sculptured forms bore silent witness, while such spiritual faith as they still retained found expression rather in altars Ἀγνώστῳ Θεῷ; to the existence of which [[Pausanias]] (i. i. 4) and Philostratus ( <i> Vit. Apollon </i> . vi. 2) testify (see [[Unknown]] God). </p> <p> St. Paul’s address before the court or council of [[Areopagus]] ( <i> q.v. [Note: quod vide, which see.] </i> ) is a noble attempt to find common ground with the [[Athenian]] philosophers, an appreciation of what was highest in their religion, an expression of sympathy with their sincere agnosticism, an appeal to that groping, innate sense of spiritual realities, that universal instinct of monotheism, which lead to the true God who is near to all men, and who, though unseen, is no longer unknown. Renan suggests that St. Paul was ‘embarrassed’ by all the wonders that met his eyes in Athens, as if Athene herself had perhaps cast her spell upon him and made him somewhat doubtful of the Galilaean; but there is no sort of foundation for such a fancy. It is certain, however, that the [[Apostle]] had a new experience of a different kind in Athens. Faced by an audience half-courteous and half-derisive, he was first ridiculed and then ignored, when he would have preferred to be contradicted and persecuted. Not driven from the city by hostile feeling, but quitting it of his own accord, too unimportant to be noticed, too harmless to be molested, he departed with a crushing sense of failure, and, apparently as a consequence, began his mission in [[Corinth]] ‘in weakness and fear and much trembling’ ( 1 Corinthians 2:3). It is possible that he felt he had made a mistake. All that he said to the philosophers of Athens was true, but ineffective. It did little or nothing to storm the enemy’s citadel. In a modern phrase, it was magnificent, but it was not war. Another power was needed to humiliate the wise, as well as to end the long reign of the gods of Greece. It is significant that in Corinth the Apostle determined-not, indeed, for the first time, but certainly with a new emphasis-not to know anything save Jesus Christ and Him crucified ( 1 Corinthians 2:2), who was for both [[Jews]] and Hellenes the power of God and the wisdom of God (1:24). </p> <p> The Athenian synagogue ( Acts 17:17), in which St. Paul met some ‘devout persons’-σεβόμενοι, [[Gentiles]] more or less influenced by Judaism-was probably small, for the university city did not attract his compatriots like Corinth, the seat of commerce. His reasoning ‘in the Agora every day with those who met him’ naturally recalls those Socratic disputations in the same place, of which Grote gives a lively account in his <i> History of Greece </i> (London, 1869, viii. 211f.). That the address before the [[Council]] of the Areopagus was not entirely fruitless is proved by the conversion of a man holding so important an official position as [[Dionysius]] the [[Areopagite]] ( <i> q.v. [Note: quod vide, which see.] </i> ). </p> <p> Literature.-W. J. Conybeare and | <p> (Ἀθῆναι) </p> <p> Athens, which St. Paul visited in the autumn of a.d. 48 (Harnack), or 50 (Turner), or 51 (Ramsay), was now in some respects very different from the city of [[Pericles]] and Plato. Her political and commercial supremacy was gone. [[Greece]] had for two centuries been the Roman province of Achaia, of which [[Athens]] was not the capital. The governor had his residence at Corinth, and the merchant-princes had forsaken the Piraeus for Lecheum and Cenchreae. Rut Athens was still the most beautiful and brilliant of cities, the home of philosophy, the shrine of art, the fountain-head of ideals. As the metropolis of [[Hellenism]] she had, indeed, a wider and more pervasive influence than over, which the Roman conquerors, like the [[Macedonians]] before them, did their best to extend. ‘From the Philhellenic standpoint, doubtless, Athens was the masterpiece of the world’ (T. Mommsen, <i> Provinces of the Roman [[Empire]] </i> 2, London, 1909, i. 258). To be among her citizens was to breathe the atmosphere of culture. Her [[Lyceum]] by the Ilissus, her [[Academy]] by the groves of Cephissus, her [[Porch]] in the Agora, and her [[Garden]] near at hand, were still frequented by Platonists, Peripatetics, Stoics, and Epicureans. Her University drew to itself a host of foreign students, especially from Rome, and became the model of the younger foundations of Alexandria, Antioch, and Tarsus. </p> <p> Neither the [[Republic]] nor the Empire ever fully applied the subject-relation to Greece, and the [[Athenians]] were always treated with special kindness. ‘The Romans, after their conquest, finding them governed by a democracy, maintained their independence and liberty’ (Strabo, ix. i. 20). Even in the Mithridatic war, when an ordinary town behaving as Athens did would have been razed to the ground, ‘the citizens were pardoned, and, to this time, the city enjoys liberty, and is respected by the Romans’ ( <i> ib. </i> ). </p> <p> The outward aspect of Athens was little altered in St. Paul’s time. Plutarch, who wrote half a century later, says in regard to Pericles’ public edifices: ‘In beauty each of them at once appeared venerable as soon as it was built; but even at the present day the work looks as fresh as ever, for they bloom with an eternal freshness which defies time, and seems to make the work instinct with an unfading spirit of youth’ ( <i> Pericles </i> , xiii.). Cicero conveys the impression which the city made upon every cultivated mind in his time: ‘Valde me Athenae delectarunt, urbe dumtaxat et urbis ornamento, … sed multum ea philosophia’ ( <i> Ep. ad Att </i> . v. 10). The Philhellenism of the Empire surpassed that of the Republic, and of all the Roman benefactors of Athens the greatest was Hadrian, who not only completed the temple of [[Zeus]] Olympius, which had remained unfinished for 700 years, but embellished the city with many other public buildings, and gave the name of Hadrianopolis to a new quarter. </p> <p> But, though Athens was outwardly as splendid as ever, she was inwardly decadent, being, in philosophy, letters, and art, a city living upon traditions. Her first-rate statesmen and orators, poets and thinkers, did not outlive the nation’s freedom. </p> <p> ‘The self-esteem of the Hellenes, well-warranted in itself and fostered by the attitude of the Roman government … called into life among them a <i> cultus </i> of the past, which was compounded of a faithful clinging to the memories of greater and happier times and a quaint reverting of matured civilisation to its in part very primitive beginnings.… The bane of Hellenic existence lay in the limitation of its sphere; high ambition lacked a corresponding aim, and therefore the low and degrading ambition flourished luxuriantly’ (Mommsen, <i> op. cit. </i> i. 280, 283). </p> <p> The decay of Athens was due less to the exhaustion of her creative energy, with the substitution of imitative for original work, than to the simple fact that the thought and art of her citizens were no longer wedded to noble action and brave endurance. Full of aesthetes and dilettantes, loving the reputation more than the reality of culture, letting a restless inquisitiveness and shallow scepticism take the place of high aspiration and moral enthusiasm, she became blind to the visions, and deaf to the voices, which redeem individual and collective life from vanity. </p> <p> The devouring appetite of the Athenians for news had long been one of their best-known traits. </p> <p> [[Demosthenes]] ( <i> Phil </i> . i. p. 43) pictures them bustling about the [[Agora]] inquiring if any newer thing is being told (πυνθανόμενοι κατὰ τὴν ἀγοράν εἴ τι λέγεται νεώτερον), the tragedy being that, while they were talking, philip was acting. [[Thucydides]] (iii. 38) makes [[Cleon]] say to them: ‘So you are the best men to be imposed on with novelty of argument, and to be unwilling to follow up what has been approved by you, being slaves of every new paradox, and despisers of what is ordinary. Each of you wishes above all to be able to speak himself.… In a word, you are overpowered by the pleasures of the ear, and are like men sitting to be amused by rhetoricians rather than deliberating upon State affairs.’ </p> <p> Among the philosophers of St. Paul’s time the <i> penchant </i> for news took the form of an eagerness to hear the latest novelty in speculation or religion which any σπερμολόγος (picker-up of scraps of information) might have to publish ( Acts 17:21), in order that they might exercise their nimble wits upon it, and most probably hold it up to ridicule. </p> <p> Though St. Paul spoke the language of Hellas, and acknowledged himself a debtor to the Hellenes ( Romans 1:14), yet Athens does not seem to have exercised any fascination over him. She did not beckon him like Rome; he did not see her in his dreams, or pray that he might be prospered to come to her; he never exclaimed, with a sense of destiny, ‘I must see Athens.’ That he ever visited her at all was apparently the result of an accident. He was hurried away from Berœa before he had time to mature his plans of future action, and he merely waited at Athens for the arrival of his friends, Silas and Timothy ( Acts 17:15 f.). To picture him wandering among temples and porticos, lost in admiration of works of genius, and ‘perhaps witnessing the performance of a play of Euripides,’ is to misunderstand him. He did not spend his leisure in Athens, any more than Luther in Rome, in appraising the masterpieces of plastic and dramatic articleThey were both ‘provoked’*[Note: παροξύνομαι often used in the LXX to express a burning [[Divine]] (and prophetic) indignation against idolatry ( Hosea 8:5, Zechariah 10:3).] by what they saw as they passed by. They were consumed with the prophetic zeal which seeks to replace a false or imperfect religion with a true and perfect one. St. Paul, indeed, knew the Hellenic world too well to imagine that, while the city was ‘full of idols’ (κατείδωλον), its men of culture were given to idolatry. In their case the worship of the gods survived only in that cultus of physical beauty to which innumerable sculptured forms bore silent witness, while such spiritual faith as they still retained found expression rather in altars Ἀγνώστῳ Θεῷ; to the existence of which [[Pausanias]] (i. i. 4) and Philostratus ( <i> Vit. Apollon </i> . vi. 2) testify (see [[Unknown]] God). </p> <p> St. Paul’s address before the court or council of [[Areopagus]] ( <i> q.v. [Note: quod vide, which see.] </i> ) is a noble attempt to find common ground with the [[Athenian]] philosophers, an appreciation of what was highest in their religion, an expression of sympathy with their sincere agnosticism, an appeal to that groping, innate sense of spiritual realities, that universal instinct of monotheism, which lead to the true God who is near to all men, and who, though unseen, is no longer unknown. Renan suggests that St. Paul was ‘embarrassed’ by all the wonders that met his eyes in Athens, as if Athene herself had perhaps cast her spell upon him and made him somewhat doubtful of the Galilaean; but there is no sort of foundation for such a fancy. It is certain, however, that the [[Apostle]] had a new experience of a different kind in Athens. Faced by an audience half-courteous and half-derisive, he was first ridiculed and then ignored, when he would have preferred to be contradicted and persecuted. Not driven from the city by hostile feeling, but quitting it of his own accord, too unimportant to be noticed, too harmless to be molested, he departed with a crushing sense of failure, and, apparently as a consequence, began his mission in [[Corinth]] ‘in weakness and fear and much trembling’ ( 1 Corinthians 2:3). It is possible that he felt he had made a mistake. All that he said to the philosophers of Athens was true, but ineffective. It did little or nothing to storm the enemy’s citadel. In a modern phrase, it was magnificent, but it was not war. Another power was needed to humiliate the wise, as well as to end the long reign of the gods of Greece. It is significant that in Corinth the Apostle determined-not, indeed, for the first time, but certainly with a new emphasis-not to know anything save Jesus Christ and Him crucified ( 1 Corinthians 2:2), who was for both [[Jews]] and Hellenes the power of God and the wisdom of God (1:24). </p> <p> The Athenian synagogue ( Acts 17:17), in which St. Paul met some ‘devout persons’-σεβόμενοι, [[Gentiles]] more or less influenced by Judaism-was probably small, for the university city did not attract his compatriots like Corinth, the seat of commerce. His reasoning ‘in the Agora every day with those who met him’ naturally recalls those Socratic disputations in the same place, of which Grote gives a lively account in his <i> History of Greece </i> (London, 1869, viii. 211f.). That the address before the [[Council]] of the Areopagus was not entirely fruitless is proved by the conversion of a man holding so important an official position as [[Dionysius]] the [[Areopagite]] ( <i> q.v. [Note: quod vide, which see.] </i> ). </p> <p> Literature.-W. J. Conybeare and J. S. Howson, <i> Life and [[Epistles]] of St. Paul </i> , new ed., London, 1877, i. 405f.; W. M. Ramsay, <i> St. Paul the [[Traveller]] and the Roman [[Citizen]] </i> , London, 1895, p. 237f.; A. C. McGiffert, <i> [[Apostolic]] Age </i> , Edinburgh, 1897, p. 257f.; E. Curtius, <i> Gesammelte Abhandlungen </i> , Berlin, 1894, ii. 528f.; A. Mommsen, <i> Athenœ Christianœ </i> , Leipzig, 1868; J. P. Mahaffy, <i> Greek Life and [[Thought]] </i> , London, 1887, and <i> The Silver Age of the Greek World </i> , do. 1906; A. Holm, <i> History of Greece </i> , Eng. translation, London, 1894-98. </p> <p> James Strahan. </p> | ||
== Smith's Bible Dictionary <ref name="term_71425" /> == | == Smith's Bible Dictionary <ref name="term_71425" /> == | ||
| Line 6: | Line 6: | ||
== American Tract Society Bible Dictionary <ref name="term_15326" /> == | == American Tract Society Bible Dictionary <ref name="term_15326" /> == | ||
<p> The city of Minerva, the chief city of Attica in Greece, situated on the Saronic Gulf, forty-six miles east of Corinth, and about five miles from the coast. The city was in a plain extending to the sea on the southwest, where it had three ports, the passage to which was defended by long and broad walls. Several rocky hills rose in the plain, the largest of which was the citadel, or Acropolis. Around this the city was built, most of the buildings spreading towards the sea. The summit of the hill was nearly level, about eight hundred feet long and four hundred wide. The only way to the Acropolis was through the Propylea, a magnificent gateway on the western side, adorned with two temples decorated with the finest pieces of sculpture and painting. These splendid portals crowned an ascent by marble steps to the summit of the hill, on which were erected the temples of the guardian divinities of Athens. On the left was the temple of [[Pallas]] Athene, (Minerva,) regarded as the protectress of the city. Under the same roof was the temple of Neptune. In the area, on a high pedestal, stood a bronze statue of [[Minerva]] seventy feet high. On the right arose the Parthenon, the glory of Athens, the noblest triumph of Grecian architecture. From whatever quarter the traveller arrived, the first thing he saw was the Parthenon rearing its lofty head above the city and the citadel. Its ruins, still sublime in decay, are the first object that attracts the eye of a stranger. It was of the Doric order of architecture, built of beautiful white marble, and was about one hundred feet wide, two hundred and twenty-six feet deep, and seventy feet high. There was a double portico of columns at the two fronts, and a single row along each side. There was an architrave, or frieze, along the exterior of the nave, beautifully sculptured, with the representation of a procession in honor of Minerva. Within the temple was a statue of Minerva, by Phidias, celebrated for its exquisite beauty. It was make of gold and ivory, and was nearly forty feet high. The goddess was represented erect, covered with her aegis, holding in one had a lance, and in the other a figure of victory. At the foot of the Acropolis, on one side was the Odeum, or music hall, and the theatre of Bacchus: on the other side was the Prytaneum, where the chief magistrates and most meritorious citizens were entertained at a table furnished at the public expense. A small valley lay between the Acropolis and the hill on which the Areopagus held its session; it also separated the Areopagus from the Pnyx, a small rocky hill on which the general assemblies of the people were held. Here the spot is yet pointed out from which the eminent orators addressed the people. It is cut in the natural rock. In this vicinity also was the agora, or marketplace, Acts 17:17 , an open square surrounded by beautiful structures; while on every side altars, shrines, and temples were seen, some of them exceedingly magnificent. This beautiful city was also celebrated for the military talents and the learning, eloquence, and politeness of its inhabitants. It was the very flower of ancient civilization; its schools of philosophy were the most illustrious in the world, and its painters, sculptors, and architects have never been surpassed. Yet no city was so "wholly given to idolatry." The apostle Paul visited it about the year | <p> The city of Minerva, the chief city of Attica in Greece, situated on the Saronic Gulf, forty-six miles east of Corinth, and about five miles from the coast. The city was in a plain extending to the sea on the southwest, where it had three ports, the passage to which was defended by long and broad walls. Several rocky hills rose in the plain, the largest of which was the citadel, or Acropolis. Around this the city was built, most of the buildings spreading towards the sea. The summit of the hill was nearly level, about eight hundred feet long and four hundred wide. The only way to the Acropolis was through the Propylea, a magnificent gateway on the western side, adorned with two temples decorated with the finest pieces of sculpture and painting. These splendid portals crowned an ascent by marble steps to the summit of the hill, on which were erected the temples of the guardian divinities of Athens. On the left was the temple of [[Pallas]] Athene, (Minerva,) regarded as the protectress of the city. Under the same roof was the temple of Neptune. In the area, on a high pedestal, stood a bronze statue of [[Minerva]] seventy feet high. On the right arose the Parthenon, the glory of Athens, the noblest triumph of Grecian architecture. From whatever quarter the traveller arrived, the first thing he saw was the Parthenon rearing its lofty head above the city and the citadel. Its ruins, still sublime in decay, are the first object that attracts the eye of a stranger. It was of the Doric order of architecture, built of beautiful white marble, and was about one hundred feet wide, two hundred and twenty-six feet deep, and seventy feet high. There was a double portico of columns at the two fronts, and a single row along each side. There was an architrave, or frieze, along the exterior of the nave, beautifully sculptured, with the representation of a procession in honor of Minerva. Within the temple was a statue of Minerva, by Phidias, celebrated for its exquisite beauty. It was make of gold and ivory, and was nearly forty feet high. The goddess was represented erect, covered with her aegis, holding in one had a lance, and in the other a figure of victory. At the foot of the Acropolis, on one side was the Odeum, or music hall, and the theatre of Bacchus: on the other side was the Prytaneum, where the chief magistrates and most meritorious citizens were entertained at a table furnished at the public expense. A small valley lay between the Acropolis and the hill on which the Areopagus held its session; it also separated the Areopagus from the Pnyx, a small rocky hill on which the general assemblies of the people were held. Here the spot is yet pointed out from which the eminent orators addressed the people. It is cut in the natural rock. In this vicinity also was the agora, or marketplace, Acts 17:17 , an open square surrounded by beautiful structures; while on every side altars, shrines, and temples were seen, some of them exceedingly magnificent. This beautiful city was also celebrated for the military talents and the learning, eloquence, and politeness of its inhabitants. It was the very flower of ancient civilization; its schools of philosophy were the most illustrious in the world, and its painters, sculptors, and architects have never been surpassed. Yet no city was so "wholly given to idolatry." The apostle Paul visited it about the year A. D. 52, and though alone among its proud philosophers, preached Jesus and the resurrection to them with fidelity and success, Acts 17:15 - 34 . See Areopagus . At present Athens is comparatively in ruins, and has a population of about 28,000 addicted to the superstitions of the Greek Church. </p> | ||
== Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary <ref name="term_80030" /> == | == Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary <ref name="term_80030" /> == | ||
<p> a celebrated city of Greece, too well known to be here described. St. Paul's celebrated sermon, Acts xvii, was preached on the Areopagus, or Hill of Mars, where a celebrated court was held which took cognizance of matters of religion, blasphemies against the gods, the building of temples, &c. ( See [[Areopagus]] . ) The inscription on the altar, "to the unknown God," which St. Paul so appropriately made the text of his discourse, was adopted on the occasion of the city having been relieved from a pestilence; and they erected altars to "the God unknown," either as not knowing to which of their divinities they were indebted for the favour, or, which is more probable, because there was something in the circumstances of this deliverance, which led them to refer it to a higher power than their own gods, even to the supreme God, who was not unfrequently styled, the "unknown," by the wiser Heathens. The existence of such altars is expressly mentioned by Lucian. On the place where the great Apostle bore his noble testimony against idols, and declared to them the God whom they ignorantly worshipped, Dr. | <p> a celebrated city of Greece, too well known to be here described. St. Paul's celebrated sermon, Acts xvii, was preached on the Areopagus, or Hill of Mars, where a celebrated court was held which took cognizance of matters of religion, blasphemies against the gods, the building of temples, &c. ( See [[Areopagus]] . ) The inscription on the altar, "to the unknown God," which St. Paul so appropriately made the text of his discourse, was adopted on the occasion of the city having been relieved from a pestilence; and they erected altars to "the God unknown," either as not knowing to which of their divinities they were indebted for the favour, or, which is more probable, because there was something in the circumstances of this deliverance, which led them to refer it to a higher power than their own gods, even to the supreme God, who was not unfrequently styled, the "unknown," by the wiser Heathens. The existence of such altars is expressly mentioned by Lucian. On the place where the great Apostle bore his noble testimony against idols, and declared to them the God whom they ignorantly worshipped, Dr. E. D. Clarke, the traveller, remarks, "It is not possible to conceive a situation of greater peril, or one more calculated to prove the sincerity of a preacher, than that in which the Apostle was here placed; and the truth of this, perhaps, will never be better felt than by a spectator, who from this eminence actually beholds the monuments of [[Pagan]] pomp and superstition by which he, whom the Athenians considered as the <em> setter forth of strange gods, </em> was then surrounded: representing to the imagination the disciples of [[Socrates]] and of Plato, the dogmatist of the porch, and the skeptic of the academy, addressed by a poor and lowly man, who, ‘rude in speech,' without the ‘enticing words of man's wisdom,' enjoined precepts contrary to their taste, and very hostile to their prejudices. One of the peculiar privileges of the Areopagitae seems to have been set at defiance by the zeal of St. Paul on this occasion; namely, that of inflicting extreme and exemplary punishment upon any person who should slight the celebration of the holy mysteries, or blaspheme the gods of Greece. We ascended to the summit by means of steps cut in the natural stone. The sublime scene here exhibited is so striking, that a brief description of it may prove how truly it offers to us a commentary upon the Apostle's words, as they were delivered upon the spot. He stood upon the top of the rock, and beneath the canopy of heaven. Before him there was spread a glorious prospect of mountains, islands, seas, and skies; behind him towered the lofty Acropolis, crowned with all its marble temples. Thus every object, whether in the face of nature, or among the works of art, conspired to elevate the mind, and to fill it with reverence toward that Being who made and governs the world, Acts 17:24; Acts 17:28; who sitteth in that light which no mortal eye can approach, and yet is nigh unto the meanest of his creatures; in whom we live, and move and have our being." </p> | ||
== People's Dictionary of the Bible <ref name="term_69608" /> == | == People's Dictionary of the Bible <ref name="term_69608" /> == | ||
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== Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature <ref name="term_21685" /> == | == Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature <ref name="term_21685" /> == | ||
<p> ( '''''Ἀθῆναι''''' '','' plural of '''''Ἀθήνη''''' , Minerva, the tutelary goddess of the place), mentioned in several passages of [[Scripture]] ( 2 [[Maccabees]] 9:15; Acts 17:15 sq.; Acts 18:1; 1 Thessalonians 3:1), a celebrated city, the capital of Attica and of the leading Grecian republic, and the seat of the Greek literature in the golden period of the nation | <p> ( '''''Ἀθῆναι''''' '','' plural of '''''Ἀθήνη''''' , Minerva, the tutelary goddess of the place), mentioned in several passages of [[Scripture]] ( 2 [[Maccabees]] 9:15; Acts 17:15 sq.; Acts 18:1; 1 Thessalonians 3:1), a celebrated city, the capital of Attica and of the leading Grecian republic, and the seat of the Greek literature in the golden period of the nation (M '''''Ü''''' ller, ''Topog. Of Athens,'' trans. by Lockhart, Lond. 1842; Kruse, ''Hellas,'' Lpz. 1826, II, 1:10 sq.; Leake, ''Topography Of Athens,'' Lond. 1841, 2d ed.; Forchhammer, ''Topographie Von Athen,'' Kiel, 1841; Wachsmuth, ''Hellen. Alterth.'' 1, 1783 sq.; Grote, ''Hist. Of Greece,'' 6, 20 sq.; Wordsworth, ''Athens And Attica,'' Lond. 1836; Stuart and Revelt, ''Antiquities Of Athens,'' Lond. 1762-1816, 4 vols., and later; Dodwell, ''Tour Through Greece,'' Lond. 1819; Pittakis, '''''Αἱ''''' '''''Παλαιαὶ''''' '''''Αθῆναι''''' Athens, 1835; Prokesch, ''Denkwiurdigkeiten,'' Sttuttg. 1836, 2; Mure, Journal of a Tour in Greece. Edinb. 1842, 2; Conybeare and Howson, Life and Epistles of St. Paul, 1, 344 sq.), belonged in the apostle's time to the Roman province of Achsea (q.v.). The inhabitants had the reputation of being fond of novelty ( Acts 17:21; comp. ''A'' Elian, ''Var. Hist.'' 5, 13; Demosth. Philippians 1:4; Schol. ''Ad Thuc.'' 2, 38; [[Ad]] A ristopb. ''Plut.'' 338: see Wetstein, 2:567), and as being remarkably zealous in the worship of the gods ( Acts 17:16; comp. Pausan. 1:24, 3; Stralbo, 10:471; Philostr. Apol. 6:3; 4:19; AElian, Var. Hist. 5. 17; Himer, in Phot. cod. 243; see Eckhard, Athenae superstitiosc, Viteb. 1618); hence the city was full of temples, altars, and other sacred places (Liv. 45:27). Paul visited Athens on his second missionary journey from Bercea ( Acts 17:14 sq.; comp. 1 Thessalonians 3:1), and delivered in (but not before) the Areopagus (q.v.) his famous speech ( Acts 17:22-31). </p> | ||
== International Standard Bible Encyclopedia <ref name="term_1243" /> == | == International Standard Bible Encyclopedia <ref name="term_1243" /> == | ||
