Acts 17:22 ¶ Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. 23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. 24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; 25 Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; 26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; 27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: 28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. 29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. 30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: 31 Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.
In many locations in
the ancient Roman world there were altars and monuments to an unknown god or
goddess. Christian writers like to say that Epimenides, a pagan poet and
philosopher that Paul will quote in his argument, told the Athenians that the
way to end a plague centuries before was to build an altar to a god they had
not offered sacrifices to although this is a legend which the writer Pausanias
said was a different person in a different city. What I can verify, though, is
that the Greeks worshipped a dozen main gods and many lesser gods. The Unknown
God was sometimes sworn to by the Greeks and even had a temple dedicated to
him. Just think of it, that there was a god and the Greeks didn’t know what his
name was. Paul tells them that this is the God who created all things who they
did not know.
Fundamentalist
Christians insist that Allah is a devil and that the Muslims offer worship to
this devil. However, Muslims and Arab Christians say Allah to mean the God who
created everything and none of them imagine they are worshipping a devil and we
shut off all conversation when we say something like that. Paul, if alive
today, would not only argue with them that Allah was the same God as the God of
the Bible but he would go on to explain who Jesus is, the visible image of that
invisible God. I daresay that Paul would probably be able be able to quote from
the Koran in his arguments if it happened today using their own words against
their argument like a good lawyer. We are going to see that Paul had no problem
using a nonbeliever’s system of belief against that nonbelievers own argument.
Paul declares that the
true God does not reside in a temple like the pagan gods. His glory filled the Hebrew
temple but God’s abode is in Heaven and yet He is omnipresent or everywhere. Paul
explains who the real God is. He explains that all men, and that would include
everyone from the pygmy in Central Africa to the Scottish Highlander are made
of one blood and that their dispersal around the world was by His will. The
American racist who strangely uses this verse about God setting the bounds
of their habitations in wanting to relocate American Blacks to Africa would
not even consider that first, most Black people’s ancestors were kidnapped and
brought here by immoral and violent means and secondly, that by that argument
he should return to the Europe his ancestors left.
The Greeks considered
Zeus, their highest god, to be the creator of heaven and earth. Apart from the
myths about him and other gods mating with human woman, an obviously contrived
cultural reference to actual history when the sons of God came to earth to mate
with human women in Genesis Zeus was considered an ideal. According to one
source; “Zeus is understood to be the absolute good; he is ungenerated,
everlasting, the father of himself, the father and pre-eminent creator of all other
things.”[1]
But Zeus has a problem
in that he is confined by his all too human passions. Still, Paul will use him
as representing the true God in type, and we all know that types fall apart at
some point.
Paul quotes two pagan
poets here. In verse 28 he quotes from a poem by the Greek philosopher Epimenides,
and his poem Cretica spoken to Zeus, which Paul also quotes in
Titus 1:12.
They fashioned a tomb
for you, holy and high one,
Cretans,
always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.
But you are
not dead: you live and abide forever,
For in you
we live and move and have our being.[2]
For we
are also his offspring is said to be a quote of a line from the
Greek poet, Aratus, in his poem, Phenomena. Remember that they thought
of Zeus as the greatest god.
From Zeus let us
begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed;
full of Zeus are all
the streets and all the market-places of men;
full is the sea and
the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus.
For we are also his
offspring; ...[3]
Please do not make the mistake of some liberal Christians who
say that because Paul quoted these pagan poets that they were inspired by God.
The text doesn’t say that and Paul is merely using their own words in his
argument, not imparting divine inspiration to a pagan. Even a broken clock is
right twice a day. The heathen world on a regular basis emerges accidentally
with the truth.
Paul makes His point, a very important point, that God has
been relatively patient with mankind and his fantasies until now but that it is
time for mankind to repent or change their minds, turn from their idolatry, and
turn to the true God through Christ the Messiah, that man whom
he hath ordained.
1Titus
2:5 For there is one God, and one
mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
Acts
17:32 ¶ And when they heard of the
resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again
of this matter. 33 So Paul
departed from among them. 34 Howbeit
certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius
the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
Resurrection from the
dead was not unheard of in Greek mythology. In fact, there are many instances
of heroes being resurrected from the dead and made immortal. There is no need
to go into a list here. But, of course, the Epicureans would find such a belief
to be pure fantasy but it would not be impossible for the Stoics to consider a
proposition such as this that was not unheard of in Greek mythology. The only
two converts here mentioned by name are a man and a woman as representative of
those Greeks who came to believe on Christ and were saved.
[1] Judith Herrin, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of
a Medieval Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) Kindle
Edition. P.295.
[2] Harris, J. Rendel, (Oct 1906). "The Cretans always liars", The
Expositor, Seventh series. 2: 305–17 as referenced by www.wikipedia.com at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimenides (accessed on 12 July 2020).
[3] Aratus, Callimachus, Hymns and Epigrams. Lycophron, Translated by
Mair, A. W. & G. R. Loeb Classical Library Volume 129 (London: William
Heinemann, 1921), https://www.theoi.com/Text/AratusPhaenomena.html. (accessed on 12 July 2020).
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