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Acts 17:1-3
New Catholic Bible
Acts 17:1-3
New Catholic Bible
Chapter 17
Paul in Thessalonica.[a] 1 After they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they reached Thessalonica[b] where there was a Jewish synagogue. 2 Following his usual practice, Paul went in, and for three Sabbaths he argued with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and rise from the dead. “And the Christ,” he said, “is this Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you.”
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- Acts 17:1 Jewish groups resent the rise of Christian communities as a rival enterprise and a risk for their peaceful establishment in the cities of the Empire—something that is always precarious. Unless the Jews accept Jesus as the fulfillment of the Scriptures, they can do nothing but be opposed to such communities.
The community of the Thessalonians will later receive the first two Letters written by Paul, which enable us to glimpse the fervor and anxieties of a young Church. The substance of Paul’s preaching at Thessalonica is summed up in verse 3: there we find the general structure of the discourses of Acts. A woman once again appears in a new role (Acts 17:12; 18:2) and is even named for her own sake, with no reference to a man (Acts 17:34). Christian lay people suffer in the name of the apostles. The opposition they encounter is on the juridical level. The confrontation with the Roman world will take place on a political level, where Roman culture and civilization are better expressed. - Acts 17:1 Amphipolis . . . Thessalonica: cities on the so-called Egnatian Way, which ran east and west through Greece and also included Philippi. Thessalonica was the capital of Macedonia with a population of more than 200,000, and it lay about 100 miles from Philippi.
