#also this is a very epicurean poem and i can argue this for days

[scirenefas]

Horace, Odes 1.11

Tu ne quaesieris (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi

finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios

temptaris numeros. Ut melius quicquid erit pati

seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,

quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare

Tyrrhenum, sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi

spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida

aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

_

Do not ask (to know is a sin) what end

the gods have given to me, or to you, Leuconoe,

nor try Babylonian numbers. How much better it is to suffer whatever will be

whether Jupiter has bestowed many more winters or the last,

which now weakens the Tyrrhenian Sea with opposing pumice stones;

be wise, strain wines, prune your long hope within a short length.

While we are speaking, envious age will have fled:

harvest the day, trusting as little as possible to the future.

– Horace, Odes 1.11

[frederickwiddowson]

The Acts of the Apostles, the history of the early church, by Luke the physician - Acts 17:22-34 comments: Paul quotes pagan poets to make a point

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).