Acts 17


Acts 17 is the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the second missionary journey of Paul, together with Silas and Timothy. The book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.

Text

The original text was written in Koine Greek and is divided into 34 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are:
This chapter mentions the following places :
The second missionary journey of Paul took place in c. AD 49.

Distances

The apostles traveled from Philippi to Thessalonica, a distance of 161 km, and from Thessalonica to Berea, which is 72 km. Paul then traveled to 'the sea', which would have been at least 42 km at the nearest point, and then south to Athens, approximately 300 km. The journey 'by night' from Thessalonica to Berea presumably took more than one night.

The 'Babbler' (Verse 18)

Addressing the Areopagus

The speech, known as the Areopagus sermon, refers to a sermon or explanation delivered by Apostle Paul at the Areopagus in Athens, and described in. The Areopagus sermon is the most dramatic and fullest reported speech of the missionary career of Saint Paul and followed a shorter address in Lystra. Paul explained concepts such as the resurrection of the dead and salvation, in effect a prelude to the future discussions of Christology. According to the record, after the sermon, a number of people became followers of Paul. These included a woman named Damaris, and Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus. This latter has at times been suggested as Dionysius the Areopagite, but that may be a historical confusion.

Verse 28