The Exordium of the Areopagus Speech, Acts 17.22, 23

Abstract

Martin Dibelius long ago described the oration on the Areopagus as ‘… a hellenistic speech about the true knowledge of God’. In this paper it will be argued that the exordium of the Areopagus speech clearly conforms to conventions of hellenistic rhetoric in regard to exordia; secondly, that this exordium functions as an introduction to a deliberation on the topic of religion; and finally, that both the exordium and the speech as a whole bear witness to what Frederick Danker has aptly described as the author's ‘broadly ranging rhetorical competence’.