Paul: A Biography

by N.T. Wright

But all this is a misunderstanding. The Areopagus was a court. Paul was on trial. It was a dangerous moment. It could have gone badly wrong. He was all alone, or so it seems, still waiting for Silas and Timothy to join him. It appears that Timothy had come to him in Athens,1 but that Paul, anxious about the little church in Thessalonica, had sent Timothy back at once to see how they were getting on. He has important things on his mind; as he says on another occasion, there are battles outside and fears inside. He has no leisure, physical or mental, to play the detached philosopher. It is, however, utterly characteristic of the man that he would seize the opportunity not merely to defend himself—though that is what he is doing throughout the speech—but to do so in such a way as to challenge, with considerable rhetorical skill, the basic assumptions of the Greek worldview.