Men of Athens

We took a nap after lunch and woke up just a little too late to tour the Acropolis. We did get to walk around a lot, though, and we ended up on the Areopagus. The Areopagus, or the Hill of Ares, is where the judicial bodies of Athens met to hold court. The picture above is of us standing on the Areopagus with the Acropolis in the background.

Athens sits in a plain between two mountains, but there are three elevated areas that rise above the flat land. One is the Acropolis, which was the site in neolithic times where a settlement was built because it could be easily defended from all sides and had water. The Pynx is the second and is where the Assembly began meeting when the reforms of Cleisthenes gave power to the citizens, and thus the Western world had democracy for the first time.

The Areopagus acted as a court of appeals and was where the council of elders met. This was an exclusive group limited to the Archons. After the beginning of democracy, the Areopagus lost much of its former power.

Here is a good story about the Areopagus. A courtesan named Phryne was on trial for profaning the sacred Elusian mysteries. She was defended by her lover Hypereides, the orator, who was losing the case. At the last minute he tore off her robe, displaying her breasts. The court was so moved by her beauty she was acquitted.

Perhaps the most most famous event at the Areopagus involves the apostle Paul. Paul visited Athens during his second mission trip, which lasted from 49-52 AD. Paul went to Phillipi where he was jailed, and then he went to Thessalonica, where riots were raised against him. He ended up in Athens, which at that time was really like a university town. He started by preaching in the Agora, or marketplace. The photo to the right is a picture of the agora from the top of of the Areopagus.

Paul attracted the attention of the Stoic and the Epicurean philosophers, who wanted him to meet them at the Areopagus so they could hear his new teaching. The multitude of gods that Paul saw all over the city led Paul to realize that the Athenians recognized something greater than themselves. Paul began his speech by telling them he had seen an altar to an unknown god.

It turns out that a plague had hit the Athenians, and they looked for away to appease the gods. Their solution was to release a flock of sheep, and they would sacrifice the sheep to whichever altar they went to. Some sheep did not go near an established altar, and so they were slaughtered and a new altar was built to an unknown god.

Paul told the men of Athens that he knew about this unknown God. This God is involved in the world and its affairs but does not need the service of man. He has raised His appointed one from the dead. It was at this point that they scoffed at Paul's message. To the left you will see me doing my impression of Paul on top of the Areopagus.

For the Greeks, death was not a pleasant state. When Odysseus traveled to Hades he found the great hero Achilles acting as a judge. Odysseus congratulated him, but Achilles would have none of it. Achilles said it is better to be the lowest servant in life than to rule in Hades.

Furthermore, Paul taught a physical resurrection of the dead. Despite many contemporary Christian ideas, resurrection as presented in the scriptures is always of a physical body and not some disembodied spirit floating in an ethereal heaven. God created the physical world, and therefore it has merit and is to be respected.

This was anathema to the Stoics. They believed the spirit of the divine dwelt in everyone and was imprisoned in the crude physical flesh. A Stoic could simply not accept a physical resurrection. The Epicureans, on the other hand, could not accept the resurrection because they believed in only the material world and did not accept the possibility of the afterlife. The best that could be hoped for is to enjoy life in the present. I think the opposition to the Christian belief in the afterlife still follows one of these two basic objections.