Deisidaimonesteros means “religious,” and it appears in Paul’s opening address at the Areopagus in Athens. In that setting it functions as Paul’s evaluative description of his hearers’ posture toward matters of worship.
Root and Related Words
Deisidaimonesteros is presented in relation to two Greek words: daimōn (δαίμων), “demon,” and deilos (δειλός), “timid.” These relationships situate the adjective within a word-family that Strong’s connects by derivation.
Occurrences
“Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus, and said, “You men of Athens, I perceive that you are very religious in all things.”” (Acts 17:22)
Here Deisidaimonesteros appears as part of Paul’s direct address: “You men of Athens.” The term is embedded in his stated perception (“I perceive”), marking it as an observation drawn from what he has seen of the city’s patterns and concerns. In the quoted sentence, it works as a broad characterization—“very religious in all things”—so its force is not narrowly tied to a single act but to a comprehensive orientation. Paul’s wording treats religion as something recognizable in public life and pervasive (“in all things”), and the adjective is the linguistic hinge that turns his perception into a public, spoken assessment.
Because the statement functions as an opening to a formal speech (“Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus, and said”), the adjective also serves as a rhetorical bridge between speaker and audience. It names a trait of the hearers rather than immediately introducing Paul’s own claims. The superlative-like phrasing “very religious” intensifies the description, presenting their religiosity as conspicuous and emphatic. Within the narrative moment, this choice of description frames the Athenians as people for whom religious matters are not incidental, and it sets the stage for a discourse that engages them precisely on the level of worship and devotion.
Sense and Usage
The sense “religious” in Acts 17:22 is applied as a sweeping descriptor of a community: it is not merely that some are religious, but that Paul perceives the Athenians as marked by religiosity “in all things.” The adjective therefore operates as a category-term for public piety—religion as a visible, collective posture that can be noticed, evaluated, and spoken about in civic space. In the verse, religion is treated as an observable quality of life, not as a private sentiment hidden from view.
The immediate co-text (“I perceive”) also shows how the term functions pragmatically: it conveys Paul’s assessment without narrating the specific evidence inside the quotation. The word thus bears the weight of summarizing what he has taken in and turning it into a single, pointed characterization. The effect is to acknowledge the audience’s seriousness about religious matters while keeping the description general enough to apply “in all things.” That breadth is part of the term’s communicative value in the sentence: it gives Paul a way to address the whole assembly as religious people and to proceed from that shared topic.
Because Strong’s links Deisidaimonesteros by derivation to daimōn (δαίμων), “demon,” and to deilos (δειλός), “timid,” the adjective stands at an intersection where “religious” language can carry an edge of intensity. In Acts 17:22, the English rendering remains “religious,” but the derivational connections remind the reader that the term belongs to a lexical neighborhood that can speak about the unseen and about human disposition. Even so, the verse itself uses the adjective as an audience-facing description within public speech: it is a social label in a civic forum, not a technical term in a private debate.
Imagery
Acts 17:22 places the word against the backdrop of a public assembly: Paul “stood in the middle of the Areopagus.” In that setting, “very religious in all things” evokes a city where religion shows itself in the fabric of communal life—something a traveler can perceive and a speaker can name aloud before civic leaders. The imagery is of religiosity as something ambient and pervasive, filling the space in which public words are spoken.
Sources:
Lexical data from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and the Translators Brief Lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (STEPBible, CC BY). Occurrence data from the Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament (STEPBible, CC BY). Scripture quotations from the World English Bible (public domain).
