Epicureans & Stoics

[Acts 17:18] Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Y’Shua, and the resurrection.
Certain philosophers of the Epicureans is a well-known school of atheistic materialists, who taught that pleasure was the chief end of human existence; a principle which the more rational interpreted in a refined sense, while the sensual explained it in its coarser meaning. These were the followers of Epicurus, who acknowledged no gods except in name, and absolutely denied that they exercised any government over the world or its inhabitants; and that the chief good consisted in the gratification of the appetites of sense.
The Stoics did not deny the existence of the gods; but they held that all human affairs were governed by fate. They did not believe that any good was received from the hands of their idols; and considered, as Seneca asserts, that any good and wise man was equal to Jupiter himself. Both these sects agreed in denying the resurrection of the body; and the former did not believe in the immortality of the soul.
Epicurus, the founder of the Epicurean sect, was born at Athens, about A.M. 3663, before the Messiah 341. The Stoics was a celebrated school of severe and lofty pantheists, whose principle was that the universe was under the law of an iron necessity, the spirit of which was what is called the Deity: and that a passionless conformity of the human will to this law, unmoved by all external circumstances and changes, is the perfection of virtue. While therefore the Stoical was in itself superior to the Epicurean system, both were alike hostile to the Gospel.
Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, was born in the isle of Cyprus, about thirty years before Messiah. His disciples were called Stoics from the a famous portico at Athens, where they studied. Besides these two sects, there were two others which were famous at this time; viz. the Academics and the Peripatetics. The founder of the first was the celebrated Plato; and the founder of the second, the no less famous Aristotle. These sects professed a much purer doctrine than the Epicureans and Stoics; and it does not appear that they opposed the missionaries, nor did they enter into public disputations with them. Against the doctrines taught by the Epicureans and Stoics, several parts of Paul's discourse, in the following verses, are directly pointed.
"The two enemies it has ever had to contend with are the two ruling principles of the Epicureans and Stoics--Pleasure and Pride".
What will this babbler say? The word, which means "a picker-up of seeds," bird-like, is applied to a gatherer and retailer of scraps of knowledge, a prater; a general term of contempt for any pretended teacher.
The epithet became applied to persons who collected the sayings of others, without order or method, and detailed them among their companions in the same way. The application of the term to prating, empty, disrespectful persons, was natural and easy, and hence it was considered a term of reproach and contempt, and was sometimes used to signify the vilest sort of men.
A setter forth of strange gods are "demons," but in the Greek (not Jewish) sense of "objects of worship." There was a difference, in the heathen theology, between god, and demon: the first, were such as were gods by nature: the second were men who were deified.He seemed to be a setter forth of strange gods. This distinction seems to be in the mind of these philosophers when they said that the missionaries seemed to be setters forth of strange demons, because they preached unto them Y’Shua whom they showed to be a man, suffering and dying, but afterwards raised to the throne of G-d. This would appear to them equivalent with the deification of heroes, services to mankind. They made these to be two divinities: the strange gods were Jehovah and the Risen Savior, ordained to judge the world.
In the twenty-first century it sounds like it is even truer of our own time. "This is a striking feature of the USA in the present day. The itch for news, which generally argues a worldly, shallow, or unsettled mind, is wonderfully widespread: even ministers of the Gospel, negligent of their sacred function, are become in this sense Athenians; so that the book of G-d is neither read nor studied with half the avidity and spirit as a newspaper . . . It is no wonder if such become political preachers, and their sermons be no better than husks for swine. To such the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.”