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Bible Dictionaries
Stoics
People's Dictionary of the Bible
or Stoics (stô'ĭks). Acts 17:18. A sect of Grecian philosophers who derived their name from stoa, "a porch," because Zeno, their founder, in the fourth century before Christ, and succeeding leaders, used to teach in the painted porch or colonnade at Athens. In their physical doctrines they maintained two first principles, the active and the passive; the passive was matter; the active was God, who was one, though called by many names. Of him they pantheistically believed that all souls were emanations. They held the entire independence of man. The humbling doctrines of the cross, the preaching of Jesus, and the resurrection would, it is clear, be distasteful to such philosophers. Acts 17:18. Epictetus and the emperor Marcus Aurelius were stoics.
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Rice, Edwin Wilbur, DD. Entry for 'Stoics'. People's Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/rpd/s/stoics.html. 1893.
