Paul doesn't say anything about Athens in his letters except that he was there (I Thess. 3:1), but Luke, the author of Acts, tells an interesting story of Paul's activities there (Acts 17:16-34). According to Luke, while waiting for Timothy and Silas, Paul explored the city. He no doubt visited the Acropolis, a religious shrine, for "he saw that the city was full of idols." He visited the synagogue and discussed his message with "the devout."

According to Acts, he spoke "daily" in the Agora, the civic and cultural center of Athens. There, he attracted the attention of some Epicurean and Stoic philosophy teachers, the leading philosophies of the day, who invited him to speak to them at Mars Hill. Acts 17:22-31 records his sermon there:

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead."

The results of this sermon were mixed. Some said they would hear Paul again, but others scoffed at the notion of the resurrection of the dead, since in Greek philosophy, the body was regarded as a hindrance to the spiritual nature of the sould and therefore not something to be carried into an afterlife. Several persons, however did become believers, including Dionysius the Arepoagite, who later became the patron saint of Athens. Nothing further is said concerning any events in Athens, except that Paul next left there and went to Corinth (Acts 18:1).