“Apollonia, a city of Macedonia, lying between Amphipolis and Thessalonica. Geographers affirm that there were fourteen cities, and two islands of that name. Stephanus reckons twenty-five.” (Whitby.)
Thessalonica, a large and populous city and sea-port of Macedonia, the capital of the four districts into which the Romans divided that country, after its conquest by Paulus Æmilius. It was situated on the Thermian Bay, and was anciently called Thermae; but, being rebuilt by Philip, the father of Alexander, after his victory over the Thessalians, it then received the name of Thessalonica.
“At the time of writing the Epistle to the Thessalonians, Thessalonica was the residence of the Proconsul who governed the province of Macedonia, and of the Quaestor who had the charge of the imperial revenues. Besides being the seat of government, this port carried on an extensive commerce, which caused a great influx of strangers from all quarters; so that Thessalonica was remarkable for the number, wealth, and learning of its inhabitants. The Jews were extremely numerous here. The modern name of this place is Salonichi; it is the chief port of modern Greece, and has a population of sixty thousand persons, twelve thousand of whom are Jews. According to Dr. Clarke, this place is the same now as it was then; a set of turbulent Jews constituted a very considerable part of its population; and when St. Paul came here from Philippi to preach the gospel to the Thessalonians, the Jews were numerous enough to ‘set all the city in an uproar.’” (Williams.)
After this specimen of popular excitement, it was too manifest that nothing could be done just then at Thessalonica by the apostolic ministers of Christ, and that very night therefore the brethren sent off Paul and Silas in the darkness, to Beroea, a city also in Macedonia, about fifty miles from Thessalonica, exactly west, being on the same parallel of latitude, standing on the south bank of the river Astroeus. Arriving there, they went into the synagogue of the Jews, who were here for the most part of a much better character than the mean Jews of the great trading city of Thessalonica, and being more independent and spiritual in their religious notions, were also much better prepared to appreciate the spiritual doctrines preached by Paul and Silas. They listened respectfully to the new preachers, and when the usual references were made to the standard passages in the Old Testament, universally supposed to describe the Messiah, they diligently examined the passages for themselves, and studied out their correspondence with the events in the life of Jesus, which were mentioned by his preachers as perfectly parallel with these distinct prophecies. The natural result of this nobly candid and rational examination of this great question was, that many of these fair-minded and considerate Jews of Beroea professed their perfect conviction that Jesus was the Christ, and had by the actions of his life fully answered and completed the prophetic types of the Messiah. Here, too, as in Thessalonica, the Greek proselytes to Judaism readily and heartily accepted the doctrines of Jesus. But the gospel messengers were not long allowed the enjoyment of this fine field of apostolic enterprise; for their spiteful foes in Thessalonica, hearing how things were going on in Beroea, took the pains and trouble to journey all the way to that place, for the express purpose of hunting out the preachers of Jesus by a new mob: and in this they were so successful, that the brethren, according to the established rules of Christian expediency, immediately sent away Paul to the south, because he seemed to be the grand object of the persecution; but Silas and Timothy being less obnoxious, still remained in Beroea.
“Beroea was a city of Macedonia; a great and populous city. Lucian de Asino, p. 639. D.” (Whitby.) It was situated to the west of Thessalonica, and not “south,” as Wells absurdly says, “almost directly on the way to Athens.”
HIS VISIT TO ATHENS.
Paul, thus obeying the command given by Jesus in his first charge to the original twelve, went on under the guidance of his Beroean brethren, according to his own request, by sea, to Athens, where he parted from them, giving them charge to tell Silas and Timothy to come on after him, as soon as their commission in Macedonia would allow. He then went about Athens, occupying the interval while he waited for them, in observations upon that most glorious of all earthly seats of art and taste. As he wandered on, an unheeded stranger, among the still splendid and beautiful, though then half-decaying works, which the combined devotion, pride and patriotism of the ancient Athenians had raised to their gods, their country, and its heroes,——in the beautifully picturesque yet simple expression of the apostolic historian, “Paul saw the city wholly given to idolatry.” How many splendid associations does it call up before the mental eye of the classical scholar who reads it? As the apostle wandered along among these thousand works of art, still so hallowed in the fond regard of the scholar, the antiquarian, the man of taste, the poet, and the patriot, his spirit was moved within him, when he every where saw how the whole city was given to idolatry. Not a spot but had its altar; every grove was consecrated to its peculiar nymphs, its Dryads and its Fauns; every stream and fountain had the votive marble for its own bright Naiad;——along the plain rose the splendid colonnades of the yet mighty temples of Jupiter, and all the Olympian gods; and above all, on the high Acropolis, the noble Parthenon rose over the glorious city, proclaiming to the eye of the distant traveler, the honors of the virgin goddess of wisdom, of taste and philosophic virtue, whose name crowned the city, of which she, was throughout all the reign of Polytheism, the guardian deity.
These splendid but mournful testimonies of the misplaced energies of that inborn spirit of devotion, which, all over the world in all times, moves the heart of man to the worship of that Eternal power of whose existence he is ever conscious, touched the spirit of Paul with other emotions than those of delight and admiration. The eye of the citizen of classical and splendid Tarsus, was not indeed blind to the beauties of these works of art, whose fame was spread throughout the civilized world, and with whose historic and poetic glories his eye and ear had long been made familiar; but over them all was cast a moral and spiritual gloom which darkened all these high and rich remembrances, otherwise so bright. Under the impulse of such feelings, he immediately sought occasion to make an attack on this dominant spirit of idolatry. He accordingly, in his usual theater of exertion,——the Jewish synagogue,——freely made known the new revelation of the truth in Jesus, both to the Jews, and to those Gentiles who reverenced the God of Israel, and listened to religious instruction in the Jewish house of worship. With such effect did he proclaim the truth, and with such fervid, striking oratory, that the Athenians, always admirers and cultivators of eloquence, soon had their attention very generally drawn to the foreign teacher, who was publishing these very extraordinary doctrines, in a style of eloquence so peculiar and irregular. The consequence was, that his audiences were soon extended beyond the regular attendants on the Jewish synagogue worship, and many of the philosophic sages of the Athenian schools sat listening to the apostle of Jesus. They soon undertook to encounter him in argument; and Paul now resorting to that most classic ground, the Athenian forum, or Agora, was not slow to meet them. On the spot where Socrates once led the minds of his admiring hearers to the noble conceptions of moral truth, Paul now stood uttering to unaccustomed ears, the far more noble conceptions of a divine truth, that as far outwent the moral philosophy of “Athena’s wisest son,” as did the life, and death, and triumphs of the crucified Son of Man, the course and fate of the hemlock-drinker. Greatly surprised were his philosophical hearers, at these very remarkable doctrines, before unheard of in Greece, and various were the opinions and comments of the puzzled sages. Some of those of the Epicurean and Stoic schools, more particularly, had their pride and scorn quite moved at the seeming presumption of this fluent speaker, who without diffidence or doubt uttered his strange doctrines, though characterized by a style full of irregularities, and a dialect remarkably distinguished by barbarous provincialisms, and scornfully asked, “What does this rattling fellow mean?” Others, observing that he claimed such divine honors for Jesus, the founder of his faith, remarked, that “he seemed to be a preacher of foreign deities.” At last, determined to have their difficulties resolved by the very highest authority, they took him before the very ancient and venerable court of the Areopagus, which was the supreme council in all matters that concerned religion. Here they invited him to make a full communication of the distinctive articles of his new faith, because they felt an honest desire to have the particulars of a subject never before introduced to their notice; and a vast concourse stood by to hear that grand object of life to the news-hunting Athenians,——“A NEW THING.”
“With regard to the application of babbler, Eustathius gives two senses of the word σπερμολόγος. 1. The Attics called those σπερμολόγοι who conversed in the market, and places of merchandise. (In Odys. B. ad finem.) And Paul was disputing with those he met in the market-place. 2. It is used of those who, from some false opinions, boasted unreasonably of their learning. (Idem.) Œcumenius says, a little bird that gathered up the seeds scattered in the market-place, was called σπερμολόγος; in this etymology, Suidas, Phavorinus, the scholiast upon Aristophanes de Avibus, p. 569, and almost all grammarians agree. (Cave’s Lives of the Apostles.) (Whitby’s Annotations.)
“18. σπερμολόγος. This word is properly used of those little insignificant birds which support a precarious existence by picking up seeds scattered by the sower, or left above ground after the soil has been harrowed. See Maximus of Tyre, Dissertations, 13, p. 133., Harpocrates, Aristophanes Av. 232., and the Scholiast, and Plutarch, T. 5, 50, edited by Reiske. It was metaphorically applied also to paupers who prowled about the market place, and lived by picking up any thing which might be dropped by buyers and sellers; and likewise to persons who gleaned in the corn fields. See Eustathius on Homer’s Odyssey ε 241. Hence it was at length applied to all persons of mean condition, who, as we say, “live on their wits.” Thus it is explained by Harpocrates εὐτελὴς, mean and contemptible. And so Philo 1021 c. χρησάμενος——δούλῳ σπερμολόγῳ περιτρίμματι.” (Bloomfield’s Annotations, Acts xvii. 18.)