Paul, Epimenides and Acts 17

There was a time when I thought that the Apostle Paul’s speech to the Athenian council at the Areopagus was a failed attempt at being “relevant” to a Gentile audience. He reached very few people and seemed to have to leave the city very quickly. 

Of course, that probably had more to do with my displeasure at modern attempts at “relevance” that seem to leave out important parts of the gospel.

It turns out that Paul’s reference to the altar “to an unknown god” was far more deeply relevant to the people of Athens than most modern Christians have realized. It is a story that goes back some roughly 600 years before Paul preached.

The people of Athens had promised amnesty to a band of rebels, then killed them when they turned themselves in. Later, a devastating plague hit the city, killing about one third of its inhabitants and looking like it would kill the remainder. 

The  inhabitants suspected that their perfidy with the rebels had angered the gods and offered sacrifices to their many gods to try to stem the plague – to no avail. None of their gods was either willing or able to stop it. The next step was to call on the Oracle at Delphi, who told them to send to Knossos in Crete for the Philosopher/Prophet Epimenides, who would show them how to stop the plague.

As Epimenides arrives, he notes how many idols the Athenians have, and finds out that they have all been invoked. He reasons that there must be some god they do not know who is both powerful enough and kind enough to do something about their suffering.

In a dream he is shown a flock of sheep and is told to follow them until they lie down, then sacrifice the ones who stopped grazing to lie down. The next morning, when the sheep are hungriest, he does as the dream told him, making an altar dedicated “to the unknown god” on each spot.

The plague ends within two days, and Epimenides is hailed a hero. (He is later highly spoken of by philosophical luminaries such as Aristotle and Plato for his other contributions to philosophy, Greek unity and public hygiene.)

When Paul comes across the altar he tells the council that he is there to announce that this “unknown” God is none other than Jesus Christ, who was God, became human, died and was resurrected to a place on the heavenly throne. He is the God who “winked at their ignorance” (in words similar to Epimenides’ own) 600 years before, but who now calls on them to repent and believe.

This was actually a very powerful testimony. So why did so many disbelieve?

They were philosophers, the elite intellectuals of the day. This was their religious council, analogous to the Jewish Sanhedrin, which also was full of unbelievers. Even now it is difficult to convince the highly intellectual about a God who became man and who died and now lives.

Perhaps we just have to dig deeper for relevance to properly witness about Jesus.

Some sources for this message can be found on the Christians in Crete website. or this YouTube presentation. Here also is the story as told by Diogenes Laertius in the 200’s AD.