The philosophers had heard enough to be puzzled but not enough to understand. Some had called Paul a "babbler," and others thought he was "a setter forth of strange gods" (Acts 17:18). Now they wanted the whole message: "thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean" (Acts 17:20). Luke adds that the Athenians "spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing" (Acts 17:21). Barnes says it "seems to have been a respectful inquiry," and Gill says they were all the more curious because new things were what they were fond of. Matthew Henry is less generous: "They desired to know more of it, only because it was new and strange."

Paul answered with a full sermon. Standing "in the midst of Mars' hill," he told them he had found an altar "TO THE UNKNOWN GOD" and said, "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you" (Acts 17:22-23). He proclaimed the God who made the world, who calls "all men every where to repent," and who will judge the world by the man He raised from the dead (Acts 17:24-31). At the mention of the resurrection, "some mocked," others said, "We will hear thee again of this matter," and some "clave unto him, and believed," including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris (Acts 17:32-34).

The name Areopagus means "hill of Ares," and the KJV calls the same place "Mars' hill" (Acts 17:22). Barnes explains that it was the court where "the Areopagites, the celebrated supreme judges of Athens," met. Gill likewise calls it a court where causes were tried.

Yet this was not a trial. Barnes notes, "There are no accusations; no witnesses; none of the forms of trial." He concludes, "The design seems to have been, not to try him, but fairly to canvass the claims of his doctrines." The word for "new" is kaine, meaning fresh or new in kind, and "doctrine" is didache, a teaching.

Athens was full of temples and altars, yet the people admitted they did not know God, even writing "TO THE UNKNOWN GOD" on an altar (Acts 17:23). Their question, asked out of curiosity, opened the door for Paul to declare the God they had been missing. He is the Lord of heaven and earth who does not live in temples, who gives "to all life, and breath, and all things," and who is "not far from every one of us" (Acts 17:24-27).

The teaching they called new was really about the oldest truth of all: the Creator who made them. What was new was the news that God "hath appointed a day" and "hath raised him from the dead" (Acts 17:31). Even a curious question, asked for the wrong reasons, can become an occasion for God to make Himself known.