Acts 17:16 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

His Spirit was stirred in him,— The word παρωξυνετο signifies that a sharp edge was as it were set upon his spirit, and that he was wrought up to a great eagerness of zeal. Yet it is observable, that it did not throw him into any sallies of rage, either in words or actions; but only engaged him courageously to attempt stopping the torrent of popular superstition, by the most serious and affectionate, yet at the same time manly and rational remonstrances. The character of being wholly enslaved to idolatry, [κατειδωλον, full of idols,] is supported by the whole current of antiquity. Athens was therefore called by AElian "the altar of Greece;" and Xenophon observes that it had twice as many sacred festivals as any other city. Pausanias tells us, it had more images than all the rest of Greece; and Petronius humorously says, "It is easier to find a god than a man there." The full inscription of the altar, Acts 17:23 was, "To the gods of Asia, Europe, and Lybia: to the unknown and stranger God." Whence Theophylact concludes, that they received all the strange idol gods of the world,—of Asia, Europe, and Africa; and moreover one, whom they knew not who or where he was. Mr. Biscoe mentions, that a fool had been capitally condemned at Athens for killing one of Esculapius's sparrows; and that a little child, accidentallytaking up a piece of gold which fell from Diana's crown, wasput to death for sacrilege. The prevalence of such a variety of senseless superstitions in this most learned and polite city, which all its neighbours beheld with so much veneration, gives us a most lively and affecting idea of the need we have, in the most improved state of human reason, to be taught by a divine revelation. If the admirers of Grecian wisdom would seriously consider this, they would find almost every one of their classics an advocate for the gospel.