18. Also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him, and some were asking, “What does this foolish babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods.” (They said this because he was proclaiming the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.)
19. So they took Paul and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are proclaiming?
20. For you are bringing some surprising things to our ears, so we want to know what they mean.”
21. (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there used to spend their time in nothing else than telling or listening to something new.)
22. So Paul stood before the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I see that you are very religious in all respects.
23. For as I went around and observed closely your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: ‘To an unknown god.’ Therefore what you worship without knowing it, this I proclaim to you.
24. The God who made the world and everything in it, who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by human hands,
25. nor is he served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives life and breath and everything to everyone.
26. From one man he made every nation of the human race to inhabit the entire earth, determining their set times and the fixed limits of the places where they would live,
27. so that they would search for God and perhaps grope around for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
28. For in him we live and move about and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’
29. So since we are God’s offspring, we should not think the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by human skill and imagination.
30. Therefore, although God has overlooked such times of ignorance, he now commands all people everywhere to repent,