The question is a sneer. Some of the philosophers dismissed Paul as a "babbler," a man with nothing worth hearing. Matthew Henry says they "thought he spoke, without any design, whatever came uppermost." Gill renders the sense as "this talking, prating fellow." Others took him more seriously but misunderstood him, thinking he was "a setter forth of strange gods" because he preached "Jesus, and the resurrection." Barnes explains that they took Jesus and the Anastasis (the Greek word for resurrection) to be two foreign gods; he thinks it probable that they took "the resurrection" for the name of some goddess.

The text records no direct reply to the sneer. Instead the philosophers brought Paul to Areopagus and asked, "May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?" (Acts 17:19). There Paul preached "the unknown god" as the God "that made the world and all things therein" who now "commandeth all men every where to repent" (Acts 17:23-24, 30). When they heard of the resurrection, "some mocked," others said, "We will hear thee again," and some believed, including Dionysius and Damaris (Acts 17:32-34).

The Epicureans and Stoics were two schools of Greek philosophy. Barnes says the Epicureans "denied that the world was created by God, and that the gods exercised any care or providence over human affairs," as well as the immortality of the soul. The Stoics took their name from the Greek stoa, a porch or portico, where their founder Zeno taught.

The word "babbler" is spermologos. Barnes says it "properly means one who collects seeds," and figuratively it describes one who picks up scraps of knowledge. "Strange gods" is xenon daimonion, foreign deities, and "resurrection" is anastasis, a rising up. Athenians loved novelty: they "spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing" (Acts 17:21).

Paul's message at Athens centered on Jesus and the resurrection, and that is exactly what the philosophers stumbled over. Matthew Henry calls these two themes "the principal doctrines of Christianity." The Epicureans doubted that God cared about the world at all, but Paul declared a God who made the world, gives "life, and breath, and all things," and has appointed a day to judge the world by the Man He raised from the dead (Acts 17:24-25, 31).

The responses at Athens were mixed, as they still are, from mockery to faith (Acts 17:32-34). The scoffers' question did not stop the gospel; it led to Paul preaching "in the midst of Mars' hill" (Acts 17:22).