Mars Hill in Athens, Greece, became important for Athenian society after the monarchy was abolished.
For the first time, the system called oligarchy was established, and power passed into the hands of the Royal Council. It was necessary for the Royal Council to go up Mars Hill to have its meetings after the king was no longer involved in the administration. The Royal Council used the summit of Mars Hill for their meetings, and since then, the Royal Council, or the Supreme Council of the city of Athens, was known as the Supreme Council of Mars Hill. Even today, the Supreme Court of Greece is called the Mars Hill Supreme Court.
Draco, an Athenian lawmaker in the 7th century BC, decided to change the Athenian custom regarding homicide. At that time, homicide was impersonal. In cases where someone was killed by another person. and had no family or friends to seek revenge, they were buried and forgotten. No questions, no trials, no punishments. In cases where the person had family or friends to seek revenge, a chain of murders would start.
Remember the Old Testament: “an eye for an eye?” Draco came and said that if revenge continued, crime would multiply. So, shouldn’t the responsible power and institution of the city, the one to decide about the life of someone, be the Supreme Council? Since then, the Supreme Council also has become the Supreme Court.
For the first time in history, the Supreme Court of Athens legally recognized excuses and spared the life of someone who had shed human blood.
Even soldiers coming victoriously from the battlefield, pouring human blood on the earth, were considered unclean. They had to be purified outside the city before entering and celebrating their victory.
In cases where the Supreme Court decided to spare someone’s life, they also pointed the way for their purification, which was also their punishment. This was a significant leap forward in human culture.
Because of its significance, Mars Hill underwent structural changes. A retaining wall was built around the rock, similar to the Acropolis retaining wall. Unfortunately, the special shape that Mars Hill once had is lost today.
A staircase was carved into the bedrock in the 7th century BC, and this staircase was the only access to the top until 2004. If you like, you can go up there, but be very careful. It is slippery and rough. We don’t have the retaining wall anymore, and there are pickpockets. Many people trying to catch pickpockets have had terrible accidents. They lost their bags, they lost their wallet, and they went to the hospital. Purse snatchers grab a purse and run down the hill, so hold on to your belongings. They are really acrobats, don’t try to compete with them.
We no longer have the retaining wall, the temple of the Furies, or the marble theatrical structure with the bemas for the accused and the accuser. The only thing we have is the bedrock and the staircase. This staircase was the only access to the top until 2004 when the archaeological services fixed a new staircase. For sure, this place has seen the footprints of many brilliant Athenian minds, philosophers, lawmakers, politicians, artists, and definitely the footprints of the significant personality, the Apostle Paul.
On the right side of the staircase, a small temple was built, with four columns, having the same dimensions and shape as the Temple of Nike, and it was dedicated to the goddesses called Furies. The Furies were the goddesses who made the human conscience feel guilty if someone was a criminal.
The rest of the summit was leveled, and a theatrical structure was built there.
Have you seen the general’s room in Philippi or the council area in Thessaloniki? In the theatrical structure Athenian citizens could sit to attend trials. In the place where the theater had the orchestra, two small Bemas were placed: one for the accused and the other for the accusers. The desks of the judges were placed on the theater stage. However, homicide cases in Athens was rare because Athenian society was very small. For a long time, the marble structure where people could sit was not used by the Supreme Court all the time. The place was open to the public and became very popular with philosophical groups who developed philosophical debates sitting on these marble seats.
This is why, when a stranger visited the city in the middle of the first century AD, bringing special ideas, he was brought here. This stranger was Apostle Paul. At that time, syncretism was at its peak, a phenomenon that started with Alexander the Great by marrying cultures and Alexander himself married a Percian princess, promoting the same syncretism to his soldiers. Preaching about a new god was not a weird or special thing. Everyone could preach about their own gods. At that time, there were temples in Athens for Egyptian gods, Persian gods, and in Rome, temples for Greek gods, and so on.
The strange thing for the philosophical ear was resurrection. Resurrection was common for a believer in Christ, but pagan believers participated in mystical rituals called mysteries. The philosophers stepped away from the religious system, myths, and all these things, and tried to find another way to approach the supernatural. Remember the concept of the unknown god in the Ephesian and Milesian philosophers in Athens?
At that time, there were two main philosophical groups: the Stoics and the Epicureans. The Stoics were the philosophical descendants of Socrates, who highly believed in the immortality of the soul. Now, Socrates had a disciple called Euclides from the city of Megara. When Socrates died, Euclides returned to his hometown and built a school, the Megarian School. The Megarian School combined the ideas about the Unknown God, the Great Mind, with Socrates’ concept of objective truth and good. Euclides taught that there is no good except God, that there is only one good, which is God.
Remember the story in the three synoptic Gospels, (Mark 10:17-18, Matthew 19:16-17, Luke 18:18-19) when the young man asked Jesus, “What can I do to be saved?” Jesus started his answer with a question, “Why do you call me good teacher? You don’t know that only one is good, and that is God.” This reflects the main philosophical saying of the Megarian School, established by Euclides, the disciple of Socrates.
This school was in Megara until the third century BC. Then, Demetrius the Besieger closed the school and conquered Megara. The last director, Stilpo, came to Athens and became the personal tutor of Zeno the Cypriot, who founded the Stoics. This is how we have a line from Socrates to the Stoics.
The Stoics believed that the most important part of a human is the soul. They strongly believed in the immortality of the soul and that the body was given to humans to become the precious residence of the soul, the most important gift to humans from the gods. However, when humans became sinners, this precious residence turned into an awful prison for them, introducing pain, struggle, perishability, and finally, death into human life. The Stoics suggested that we must endure our imprisonment with patience and stoicism until the day the gods mercifully set our soul free from its prison. They celebrated not birthdays, but death days, as the most joyful day. Although this group believed strongly in the immortality of the soul, there was no room in their approach for resurrection, as it would mean returning to their prison.
On the other side, we have the Epicureans, an opposing school founded by Epicurus in the fourth century BC in Athens. Epicurus based his teachings on pleasure, dismissing all notions of God, spirits, Hades, and souls as nonsense that bored the human brain and died with it. He advocated for eating, drinking, and having pleasure, as tomorrow we die and return to dust. If there are gods, they are far away from us. As you understand, their opinions opposed the opinion of the Stoics and they also had no thought of resurrection in their materialistic philosophy, which is the basis of hedonistic philosophy.
Apostle Paul, coming here, faced a significant challenge to speak about Christ to people who ignored the Old Testament and its prophecies. They were considered the supreme intelligence of the Mediterranean world but were not interested in learning about the Old Testament. Paul decided to speak to them in their own cultural language, starting his speech on Mars Hill with the concept of the unknown God, the Creator, a purely philosophical Greek concept, distinct from the religious Greek concept of many gods, or polytheism.
Let’s open our Bible here and read what happened in Athens. When our reader reads the speech, another person with a good timer should time the speech to find out how long it lasts. Let’s not take a chance. We are in chapter 17, verse 16 to the end. When we reach verse 22, I will start counting the time. Who is going to read? Trust, go on, sir.
Verse 16: His spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols. So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the marketplace, the agora, or the city square, every day with those who happened to be present. Some of the Epicureans and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Some were saying, “What would this idle babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,” because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. They took him and brought him to that rock, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears, and we want to know what these things mean.” All the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.
Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. While I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with the inscription ‘To an unknown God.’ What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you: The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things. He made from one every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, and perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His offspring.’ Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”
Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, “We shall hear you again concerning this.” So Paul went out of their midst. Some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius and others with them.
One minute 27 seconds. Have you heard a sermon lasting so short, including everything from creation to resurrection in the last day of judgment? In that short speech, Apostle Paul included two Athenian poets, Cleanthes and Aratus, but did not mention Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, or other great minds of Athens. What happened? Did Paul know the insignificant poets that even their mothers ignored, but not Socrates and Aristotle? Definitely not. Paul’s approach was quite strategic. He referenced poets like Aratus and Cleanthes, who were well known among the Athenians. By doing so, he connected with his audience using familiar cultural references. This doesn’t mean he was unaware of philosophers like Socrates and Aristotle; rather, he chose references that would resonate more effectively with his listeners in that specific context. Here we have the progressive argumentation of the Athenian logos of six minutes. Unfortunately, the Athenians were not polite enough to stay and hear all his speech. Apostle Paul lost his audience in one minute and a half. But in that short time, he said everything about creation up to the resurrection in the last day of judgment. It is an excellent artifact in the art of speech, unique and still used by many schools teaching the art of speech as an example. He was well-prepared to face the philosophers and give an answer. They were divided into three groups: one group mocked and laughed, another group considered the soul a reality and decided to think again about it, and a third group attached to him and accepted his message. Among them was a prominent Athenian member of the Supreme Court of Athens.
The discussion was not a court case. Some theologians believe he was brought to a court to decide about his religious ideas, but it was not a court. First of all, because we see the presence of women there. Damaris was there and she believed. There was no court result about whether he was allowed to continue his activity. It was just a philosophical debate.