Acts 17:26

Context

In Acts 17:16–34, Paul debated with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens. He then delivered a speech at the Areopagus (a hill in Athens and the council that met there). Taking as his starting point an altar inscribed "TO THE UNKNOWN GOD," Paul declares that the God who made the world does not dwell in temples made with hands. Verse 26 is the passage stating that this God made all nations and governs their history and their lands. The very next verse, 27, states the purpose: "that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him." The speech concludes with a call to repentance and a proclamation of judgment through the one whom God raised from the dead. Some in the audience mocked, while others believed.

Interpretation

• The human-origins reading: Many commentators identify the "one" source as Adam and read the verse as a summary of the creation account in Genesis for a Gentile audience.
• The providential reading: This view takes "the times" and "the bounds of their habitation" as referring to the rise and fall of nations and to their territories. On this reading, the verse serves as a basis for the doctrine of providence, which holds that God governs history. The Reformed tradition, including Presbyterians, places particular emphasis on this aspect.
• The natural-revelation reading: Some interpreters understand "the times" as the seasons and "the bounds" as the lands where human beings can live. Read this way, the verse speaks, as Acts 14:17 does, of God making himself known through the order of nature. The Reformed tradition tends to relate this to common grace, while the Wesleyan tradition, including Methodists and Holiness churches, tends to relate it to prevenient grace (the grace God gives beforehand so that people are able to respond to him).
• The human-equality reading: The statement that all nations come from one source is widely read as grounds for denying that any ethnic group or race is superior or inferior to another. Some commentators point to the prevailing attitude of the time, in which Greeks looked down on other peoples as "barbarians," as the backdrop to this statement.

Debates and Issues

• Manuscripts and translation: Byzantine manuscripts and the traditional text based on them read "of one blood," whereas the major earlier manuscripts read only "of one." The Korean Revised Version and the New Korean Revised Version render the phrase "of one bloodline," and some translations paraphrase it as "one man." The general assessment is that either reading conveys essentially the same meaning: the common origin of humanity.
• Use in arguments for racial segregation: In the twentieth century, some advocates of segregation in the United States and some church figures who supported apartheid (the policy of racial separation) in South Africa are known to have cited "the bounds of their habitation" as grounds for separating peoples. Critics across denominational lines responded that this was a quotation taken out of context, one that ignored the "one blood" earlier in the verse and the purpose stated in verse 27.
• The question of a historical Adam: Whether "one blood" must be read as referring to a single ancestor who actually existed is bound up with the creation and evolution debate. Proponents of literal creationism cite the verse as evidence for a historical Adam, while some theologians who accept evolution read it as a theological declaration of the unity of humankind.

Related Passages

• Deuteronomy 32:8
• Acts 14:17
• Romans 1:18–25
• 1 Corinthians 15:20–22
• Galatians 3:26–29