Acts 17:16
Now whilst Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred within him, seeing the city wholly given to idolatry.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Paulus autem cum Athenis eos exspectaret, incitabatur spiritus ejus in ipso, videns idololatriæ deditam civitatem.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- Ἐν δὲ ταῖς Ἀθήναις ἐκδεχομένου αὐτοὺς τοῦ Παύλου, παρωξύνετο τὸ πνεῦμα αὐτοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ θεωροῦντος κατείδωλον οὖσαν τὴν πόλιν.
Haydock's commentary
Lactanius ridicules the folly of idolatry in a neat strain of irony, which he introduces by the following verses from Lucilius:
Ut pueri infantes credunt signa omnia ahena
Vivere et esse homines; sic isti omnia ficta
Vera putant, &c.
The poet compares these fools to children. I think them worse; for the latter only take the statues for men, they for gods. Age causes the error of the one, folly of the other. These soon cease to be deceived, but the folly of those lasts and increases always. (Lactanius, de fals. Relig. lib. i.)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily XXXVIII on Acts xvii. 16, 17
Acts XVII. 16, 17 “Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.”
St John Chrysostom A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily XXXVIII on Acts xvii. 16, 17
(Recapitulation.) ( b ) “And while Paul waited,” etc. ( v. 16 .) It is providentially ordered that against his will he stays there, while waiting for those others. ( a ) “His spirit,” it says, “within him” παρωξύνετο . It does not mean there anger or exasperation: just as elsewhere it says, “There was παροξυσμὸς between them.” ( ch. xv. 30 .) ( c ) Then what is παρωξύνετο ? Was roused: for the gift is far removed from anger and exasperation. He could not bear it, but pined away. “He reasoned therefore in the synagogue,” etc. ( v. 17 .) Observe him again reasoning with Jews. By “devout persons” he means the proselytes. For the Jews were dispersed everywhere before (mod. text “since”) Christ’s coming, the Law indeed being henceforth, so to say, in process of dissolution, but at the same time (the dispersed Jews) teaching men religion. …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).