What Does Acts 17:20 Mean in the King James?
For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
What sounds strange reaches your ears as a stranger: its foreignness names its relation to you, not its meaning.
THE MEANING
Something unfamiliar arrives at your ears before you can place it. The gap between hearing and understanding becomes a question: what is present in these words?
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Strange to me means meaningless or must be dismissed.
THE ROOT
ξενίζοντα
xenizonta
GROWS FROM
ξεν-
Stranger, foreigner, guest; someone outside the familiar.
The word translated “strange” comes from a family that names the stranger or foreign guest, so the unfamiliarity belongs to the meeting between the teaching and its hearers. That same family appears in the word for hospitality, holding both foreignness and welcome within its reach.
ALSO GROWS
xenos: Stranger, foreigner, or guest.
ξένος
The teaching sounds foreign to the hearers, but “stranger” describes its relation to them, not what it means.
philoxenia: Hospitality; love of strangers.
φιλοξενία
The same word family can name receiving what comes from outside, opening a path from unfamiliarity toward understanding.
ἀκοάς
akoas
GROWS FROM
ἀκο-
Hearing, listening.
The Greek word translated “ears” can also name hearing or a report: the words enter the hearers’ reception before their meaning is settled. The verse places unfamiliarity at the threshold of perception, not beyond it.
ALSO GROWS
akouō: Hear or listen.
ἀκούω
It names the act by which the unfamiliar teaching first reaches the hearers.
akoē: Hearing, report, or message.
ἀκοή
It can name both hearing and what is heard, joining the arrival of the words to the question they awaken.
γνῶναι
gnōnai
GROWS FROM
γνω-
Know, recognize, perceive.
The hearers do not confuse hearing with knowing; they ask to perceive what the words are. English can make “know” sound like possession of a fact, while the verse shows it as the next movement after something has been heard.
ALSO GROWS
gnōsis: Knowledge or knowing.
γνῶσις
It names the understanding the hearers are seeking.
epiginōskō: Recognize or know.
ἐπιγινώσκω
It carries the same knowing root, emphasizing recognition of what has come before the hearer.
THE PATTERN
What arrives as unfamiliar can open into understanding when hearing becomes inquiry.
And when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the LORD our God hath commanded you?Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.THE THREAD
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you:Acts calls the teaching strange as it reaches the hearers; 1 Peter uses the same Greek family behind “strange” for an event that seems foreign to the person meeting it. In both verses, strangeness describes the encounter, leaving its meaning open to be perceived.
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