Book of Common Prayer
12 Many of them became believers, including some of the well-born Greek women, and quite a few men.
13 But when the Jews from Thessalonica knew that the word of God had been proclaimed by Paul in Beroea, too, they came there as well, stirring up trouble and whipping up the crowd. 14 So the Christians quickly sent Paul away as far as the seacoast, while Silas and Timothy remained behind. 15 Those who were conducting Paul brought him all the way to Athens, where he told them to tell Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible. Then they left him there.
16 So Paul waited in Athens. While he was there, his spirit was stirred up as he saw the whole city absolutely full of idols. 17 He argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the godfearers, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were disputing with him.
“What can this word-scatterer be on about?” some were saying.
“He seems to be proclaiming foreign divinities,” declared others—since he was preaching “Jesus and Anastasis.” (“Anastasis” means “resurrection.”) 19 So they took him up to the Areopagus.
“Are we able to know,” they said, “what this new teaching really is that you are talking about? 20 You are putting very strange ideas into our minds. We’d like to find out what it all means.”
21 All the Athenians, and the foreigners who live there, spend their time simply and solely in telling and hearing the latest novelty.
Paul among the philosophers
22 So Paul stood up in the midst of the Areopagus.
“Men of Athens,” he said, “I see that you are in every way an extremely religious people. 23 For as I was going along and looking at your objects of worship, I saw an altar with the inscription, TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Well: I’m here to tell you about what it is that you are worshiping in ignorance. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, the one who is Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t live in temples made by human hands. 25 Nor does he need to be looked after by human hands, as though he lacked something, since he himself gives life and breath and all things to everyone. 26 He made from one stock every race of humans to live on the whole face of the earth, allotting them their properly ordained times and the boundaries for their dwellings. 27 The aim was that they would search for God, and perhaps reach out for him and find him. Indeed, he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for in him we live and move and exist; as also some of your own poets have put it, ‘For we are his offspring.’
29 “Well, then, if we really are God’s offspring, we ought not to suppose that the divinity is like gold or silver or stone, formed by human skill and ingenuity. 30 That was just ignorance; but the time for it has passed, and God has drawn a veil over it. Now, instead, he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has established a day on which he intends to call the world to account with full and proper justice by a man whom he has appointed. God has given all people his pledge of this by raising this man from the dead.”
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them ridiculed Paul. But others said, “We will give you another hearing about this.” 33 So Paul went out from their presence. 34 But some people joined him and believed, including Dionysius, a member of the court of the Areopagus, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
Jesus heals a crippled woman on the sabbath
10 One sabbath, Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues. 11 There was a woman there who had had a spirit of weakness for eighteen years. She was bent double, and couldn’t stand fully upright. 12 Jesus saw her and called to her.
13 “Woman,” he said, laying his hands on her, “you are freed from your affliction.” And at once she stood upright, and praised God.
14 The synagogue president was angry that Jesus had healed on the sabbath.
“Look here,” he said to the crowd, “there are six days for people to work! Come on one of those days and be healed, not on the sabbath day!”
15 “You bunch of hypocrites!” replied Jesus. “You would all be quite happy to untie an ox or a donkey from its stall on the sabbath day and lead it out for a drink! 16 And isn’t it right that this daughter of Abraham, tied up by the satan for these eighteen years, should be untied from her chains on the sabbath day?”
17 At that, all the people who had been opposing him were ashamed. The whole crowd was overjoyed at all the splendid things he was doing.
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.