Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 17:21

"(Now all the Athenians and the strangers sojourning there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.)" — Acts 17:21 (ASV)

For all the Athenians and strangers.—The restless inquisitiveness of the Athenian character had been proverbial all along. In words which Luke almost reproduces, Demosthenes (Philippics I, p. 43) had reproached them with idling their time away in the agora, asking what news there was of Philip’s movements, or the action of their own envoys, when they should have been preparing for strenuous action. The “strangers” who were present were probably a motley group—young Romans sent to finish their education, artists, sightseers, and philosophers, from every province in the empire.

Some new thing.—Literally, some newer thing; as we would say, the “very latest news.” Theophrastus (Chapter 8) uses the very same word in describing the questions of the loquacious prattlers of society: “Is there anything new? . . . Is there anything yet newer?”