The Epicureans and the Stoics were groups representing different schools of philosophy in Athens. For a description of these see the glossary. It is quite probable that some should be taken as a group other then the Epicurean and Stoic teachers. In translating the phrase Epicurean and Stoic teachers, one may wish to use some such expression as “teachers who were known as Epicureans or as Stoics.” It will be important at this point to introduce some kind of marginal help to explain to the reader the major tenets of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophies.
Many languages do not have a term such as debate to express formalized arguing. Therefore one may simply employ “also argued with him.”
It may be necessary to translate some said, in the second sentence of verse 18, as “some others said.” This would mean that the following expression others said would need to be translated as “still others said.”
Ignorant show-off translates a term which is rendered differently in almost every translation: “fellow with his scraps of learning” (Moffatt; see Barclay “fellow with his ill-digested scraps of knowledge”), “rag-picker” (An American Translation*), “parrot” (Jerusalem Bible), “charlatan” (New English Bible), and “cock sparrow” (Phillips). The word was originally used of a small bird that went around picking up grain, and later was applied to persons who picked up food scraps and other odds and ends in the market place. Still later it came to be used figuratively of any person who picked up odd bits of information, and especially of one who was unable to put them together properly. In some languages the equivalent of this expression ignorant show-off may be “uneducated teacher,” “self declared wise man,” or “word beggar.”
Foreign gods may also be taken in the sense of “strange gods” (see Jerusalem Bible “outlandish gods,” Phillips “some more gods”), but most translators follow the former alternative, in the sense of “gods of foreign peoples.”
They said this because Paul was preaching about Jesus and the resurrection is a parenthetical statement given by Luke and is not the comment of the persons with whom Paul was disputing.
The phrase Jesus and the resurrection is understood in one of two ways: (1) Paul was preaching about Jesus and the resurrection (probably not only about the resurrection of Jesus, but the doctrine of the resurrection in general), or (2) Paul’s hearers thought he was speaking about two deities, Jesus (the male deity) and Resurrection (the female deity). In light of the fact that there were a number of religions in which the male deity was brought back to life by the female deity, it is possible that Paul’s hearers understood him to speaking of two gods, Jesus and Resurrection. However, inasmuch as Luke gives this as an explanation of what Paul was in fact preaching, it is extremely doubtful if the translation should be other than the Good News Translation and most other translations have rendered: Jesus and the resurrection. In many languages, however, it is necessary to translate the resurrection as a verb expression—for example, “and that people rise from the dead.” Note that the resurrection of the dead was a central issue. It is also introduced in verse 31 and was the element which provoked the protest described in verse 32.
Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Acts of the Apostles. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1972. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .