Historical

Another king!

17 Paul and Silas traveled through Amphipolis and Apollonia, and came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. ² Paul went there, as he usually did, and for three sabbaths he spoke to them, expounding the scriptures, ³ interpreting and explaining that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to rise from the dead, and that “This Jesus, that I am announcing to you, is the Messiah.” ⁴ Some of them were persuaded, and threw in their lot with Paul and Silas, including a large crowd of godfearing Greeks, together with quite a few of the leading women.

⁵ But the Jews were righteously indignant. They took some villainous men from the marketplace, drew a crowd, and threw the city into an uproar. They besieged Jason’s house and searched for Paul and Silas, to bring them out to the mob. ⁶ When they couldn’t find them, they dragged Jason and some of the Christians before the town authorities.

“These are the people who are turning the world upside down!” they yelled. “Now they’ve come here! ⁷ Jason has had them in his house! They are all acting against the decrees of Caesar—and they’re saying that there is another king, Jesus!”

⁸ When they heard these words, the crowd and the authorities were both greatly agitated. ⁹ They bound over Jason and the others, and then dismissed them.

Paul reaches Athens

¹⁰ The Christians in Thessalonica quickly sent Paul and Silas on, by night, to Beroea. When they got there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. ¹¹ The people there were more generous in spirit than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with considerable eagerness, searching the scriptures day by day to see if what they were hearing was indeed the case. 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.

A year in Corinth

18 After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. ² There he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently arrived from Italy with Priscilla his wife, due to Claudius’s edict banishing all Jews from Rome. Paul paid them a visit ³ and, because they were in the same business, he stayed with them and worked. They were, by trade, tentmakers.

⁴ Paul argued every sabbath in the synagogue, and persuaded both Jews and Greeks. ⁵ When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was putting great energy into the task of bearing forthright witness to the Jews that the Messiah really was Jesus. ⁶ When they opposed him, and blasphemed, he shook out his clothes.

“Your blood be on your own heads!” he said. “I am innocent. From now on I shall go to the Gentiles.”

⁷ He moved on from the synagogue, and went into the house of a man named Titius Justus, a godfearer who lived opposite the synagogue. ⁸ But Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, with all his household, and many of the Corinthians heard about it, came to faith, and were baptized.

⁹ The Lord spoke to Paul by night in a vision.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Speak on, and don’t be silent, ¹⁰ because I am with you, and nobody will be able to lay a finger on you to harm you. There are many of my people in this city.”

¹¹ He stayed there eighteen months, teaching the word of God among them.

Christianity declared legal in Achaea

¹² When Gallio was proconsul of Achaea, the Jews made a concerted attack on Paul, and led him to the official tribunal.

¹³ “This man,” they said, “is teaching people to worship God in illegal ways.”

¹⁴ Paul was getting ready to speak when Gallio intervened.

“Look here, you Jews,” he said to them. “If this was a matter of serious wrongdoing or some wicked villainy, I would receive your plea in the proper way. ¹⁵ But if this is a dispute about words, names and laws within your own customs, you can sort it out among yourselves. I don’t intend to be a judge in such matters.”

¹⁶ Then he dismissed them from the tribunal. ¹⁷ But the crowd seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him right there in front of the tribunal. Gallio, however, totally ignored this.

Apollos in Ephesus and Corinth

¹⁸ Paul stayed on for several more days with the Christians, and then said his farewells and sailed away to Syria, taking Priscilla and Aquila with him. In Cenchreae he had his hair cut off, since he was under a vow. ¹⁹ When they arrived at Ephesus he left them there, while he himself went into the synagogue and disputed with the Jews. ²⁰ When they asked him to stay with them for a longer time, he refused, ²¹ and took his leave.

“I will come back to you again,” he said, “if that’s God’s will.”

So he left Ephesus, ²² and went to Caesarea. Then he went up to Jerusalem, greeted the church, and went back to Antioch. ²³ When he had spent some time there, he went off again and traveled from one place to another throughout the region of Galatia and Phrygia, encouraging all the disciples.

²⁴ Now there arrived in Ephesus a Jew named Apollos, who came from Alexandria. He was an eloquent man, and powerful when it came to expounding scripture. ²⁵ He had received instruction in the Way of the Lord. He was an enthusiastic speaker, and taught the things about Jesus accurately, even though he only knew the baptism of John. ²⁶ He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him to one side and expounded the Way of God to him more accurately.

²⁷ He wanted to go across to Achaea. The Christians in Ephesus, by way of encouragement, wrote letters to the church there to welcome him. On his arrival, his work made a considerable impact, through God’s grace, on the believers, ²⁸ since he openly and powerfully refuted the Jews by demonstrating from the scriptures that the Messiah really was Jesus.

Paul in Ephesus

19 While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior regions and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples, ² and said to them, “Did you receive the holy spirit when you believed?”

“We had not heard,” they replied, “that there was a ‘holy spirit.’ ”

³ “Well then,” said Paul, “into what were you baptized?”

“Into John’s baptism,” they replied.

⁴ “John baptized with a baptism of repentance for the people,” said Paul, “speaking about the one who was to come after him, and saying that that person would be the one that people should believe in—and that means Jesus.”

⁵ When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of Jesus. ⁶ Paul then laid his hands on them, and the holy spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. ⁷ There were about twelve men in all.

⁸ Paul went into the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing and persuading them about the kingdom of God. ⁹ But when some of them were hard-hearted, and wouldn’t believe, and made wicked allegations about the Way in front of everybody else, Paul left them. He took the disciples with him, and argued every day in the lecture-hall of Tyrannus. ¹⁰ He did this for two years, so that all the inhabitants of Asia, Jews and Greeks alike, heard the word of the Lord.

The power of God and the powers at Ephesus

¹¹ God performed unusual works of power through Paul’s hands. ¹² People used to take handkerchiefs or towels that had touched his skin and put them on the sick, and then their diseases would leave them and evil spirits would depart.

¹³ There were some traveling Jewish exorcists who tried to use the name of the Lord Jesus on people with evil spirits.

“I command you,” they used to say, “in the name of Jesus, the one Paul proclaims!”

¹⁴ There were seven of them who used to do this. They were the sons of Sceva, a Jewish high priest. ¹⁵ But on one occasion the evil spirit answered them back.

“I know Jesus,” it shouted, “and I am well acquainted with Paul; but who are you?”

¹⁶ The man who had the evil spirit pounced on them and, since he was much too strong for them, overpowered all of them, so that they fled out of the house naked and battered. ¹⁷ This became common knowledge among both Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus. Fear came on all of them, and the name of the Lord Jesus grew greatly in prestige.

¹⁸ Many people who became believers came forward to make public confession, revealing what they had been up to. ¹⁹ Some who had been practicing magic brought their books and burnt them in front of everyone; someone calculated how much they were all worth, and it came to fifty thousand silver pieces. ²⁰ So the word grew and was strong, in accordance with the Lord’s power.

²¹ Once all this had been finished, Paul decided in his spirit to go back through Macedonia and Achaea and, from there, on to Jerusalem.

“After I’ve been there,” he said, “I really must go and see Rome.”

²² He sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, on ahead to Macedonia, while he himself spent a little more time in Asia.

“Great is Ephesian Artemis!”

²³ Around that time there was a major disturbance because of the Way. ²⁴ There was a silversmith named Demetrius who made silver statues of Artemis, which brought the workmen a tidy income. ²⁵ He got them all together, along with other workers in the same business.

“Gentlemen,” he began. “You know that the reason we are doing rather well for ourselves is quite simply this business of ours. ²⁶ And now you see, and hear, that this fellow Paul is going around not only Ephesus but pretty well the whole of Asia, persuading the masses to change their way of life, telling them that gods made with hands are not gods after all! ²⁷ This not only threatens to bring our proper business into disrepute, but it might make people disregard the temple of the great goddess Artemis. Then she—and, after all, the whole of Asia, indeed the whole world, worships her!—she might lose her great majesty.”

²⁸ When they heard this, they were filled with rage.

“Great is Ephesian Artemis!” they shouted. “Great is Ephesian Artemis!”

²⁹ The whole city was filled with the uproar; everyone rushed together into the theater, dragging along with them the Macedonians Gaius and Aristarchus, two of Paul’s companions. ³⁰ Paul wanted to go in to speak to the people, but his followers wouldn’t let him. ³¹ Indeed, some of the local magistrates, who were friendly towards him, sent him a message urging him not to risk going into the theater. ³² Meanwhile, some people were shouting one thing, some another. In fact, the whole assembly was thoroughly confused, and most of them had no idea why they had come there in the first place. ³³ The Jews pushed Alexander forward, and some of the crowd informed him what was going on. He motioned with his hand, and was going to make a statement to the people to explain things. ³⁴ But when they realized he was a Jew, they all shouted together, for about two hours, “Great is Ephesian Artemis!”

³⁵ The town clerk quietened the crowd.

“Men of Ephesus,” he said, “is there anyone who doesn’t know that our city of Ephesus is the place which has the honor of being the home of Artemis the Great, and of the statue that fell from heaven? ³⁶ Nobody can deny it! So you should be quiet, and not do anything rash. ³⁷ You’ve brought these men here, but they haven’t stolen from the temple, or blasphemed our goddess. ³⁸ If Demetrius and his colleagues have a charge they want to bring against anyone, the courts are open and we have magistrates. People can present their cases against one another. ³⁹ But if you are wanting to know anything beyond that, it must be sorted out in the authorized assembly. ⁴⁰ Let me remind you that we ourselves are risking legal proceedings because of this riot today, since there is no reason we could give which would enable us to present a satisfactory explanation for this uproar.”

⁴¹ With these words, he dismissed the assembly.