Acts 17:18 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

The Epicureans and—Stoics,— The Epicureans, whose sect was founded by Epicurus, are said to have ascribed neither creation nor providence to God; but held that the world was made by a conflux of atoms: that the gods, if there were any, were of human shape, wholived in voluptuous ease and indolence in heaven, entirely unconcerned about human affairs. They likewise held, that, in the present state, pleasure is the chief good; that man's existence was limited to the present being; and that consequently no resurrection from the dead, nor any future state of rewards and punishments, was to be expected. The founder of the Stoic sect was Zeno; but the name of it was derived from the place in which they assembled, the Στοα, Stoa, or famous portico at Athens, which was adorned with the designs of the greater masters in Greece. They held, that there were two general substances in nature, God and matter; and that both were eternal. Some of them indeed maintained, that God was a corporeal substance; that either God was the world, or the world itself God. They looked upon all things, even the Deity himself, as subject to an irresistible fatality; and as they held that the gods could neither be angry, nor hurt anyone, they took away one main prop of the rewards and punishments of a future state: and as a further weakening of this necessary superstructure, they held a conflagration and renovation, by which the present system would be periodically and alternately destroyed and renewed; so that the same persons would be brought on earth again, to do and suffer the same things as the former generations had done; or other persons like them, who would bear the same names, be placed in similar circumstances, and perform similar actions. But what heightened the malignity of their opinions was this, that they held the soul to be originally a discerped part of God; and that immediately after death it was reunited again to the Deity, by which it was exempted from all sense of misery, and lost its personal identity. As the souls of the bad, as well as the good, were held to undergo this reunion or refusion, and as all personal identity waslost, it is evident that a future state of rewards and punishments must be excluded from their creed. Their morality, though so highly cried up, was of a piece with their metaphysics, and led to the very same conclusion; for they held that all crimes were equal: and so far were they from any proper ideas of religion, that they denied that their wise man was any way inferior to the supreme Deity; that he was not at all indebted to him for his wisdom; that the supreme Deity could not bemore than a wise man; that virtue in this life was its own and sufficient reward: and to conclude these outlines of their character, they denied, in common with the other sects, the resurrection of the body. From this sketch of the opinions of these two sects, the reader may see how opposite the genius of each of them was to the pure and humble spirit of Christianity; and how happily the apostle points his discourse at some of the most distinguishing and important errors of each; while, without expressly attacking either, he seems only intent upongiving a plain summary of his own religious principles; in which he appears an excellent model of the true way of teaching and reforming mankind. It cannot be wondered, that such men as the Epicureans and Stoics should give St. Paul the contemptuous appellation of Σπερμολογος, babbler: the word literally signifies "a contemptible creature, which picks up scattered seeds in the market, or elsewhere." It might be rendered a retailer of scraps, "A trifling fellow, who has somewhere or other picked up some scattered notions, with which he is vain enoughto think he may make a figure here." The word strongly expresses the contempt they had for an unknown foreigner, who pretended to teach all the several professors of their learned and illustrious body of philosophers. Chrysostom, whom Dr. Hammond and several other learned interpreters follow, supposes that the Athenians understood St. Paul, as setting forth the Αναστασις, or resurrection, as a goddess. Stupid as this mistake seems, it is the less to be wondered at, since the resurrection might as well be counted a deity among the Athenians, as modesty, fame, desire; or as the fever, and some other things too scandalous here to name, were among the Romans. In deference, however, to such great names, I cannot help thinking that the Athenians must have understood the meaning of the word Αναστασις too well, to have taken it for a goddess: and indeed it appears to me evident from Acts 17:32 that they did understand the word as we commonly do, of men's rising from the dead.