Editing Unknown God (section)

== Paul at Athens ==
[[File:V&A - Raphael, St Paul Preaching in Athens (1515).jpg|thumb|280px|[[Saint Paul]] delivering the ''Areopagus Sermon'' in [[Athens]], by [[Raphael]], 1515.]]
According to the book of [[Acts of the Apostles|Acts]], contained in the Christian [[New Testament]], when the Apostle [[Paul of Tarsus|Paul]] visited Athens, he saw an [[altar]] with an [[inscription]] dedicated to that god (possibly connected to the [[Cylon of Athens|Cylonian affair]]),<ref>''[https://books.google.com/books?id=IKsNAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA211 Plutarch's Lives]''</ref> and, when invited to speak to the Athenian elite at the [[Areopagus]], gave the [[Areopagus sermon|following speech]]:

{{blockquote|{{sup|22}}Paul stood in the middle of the [[Areopagus]], and said, "You men of Athens, I perceive that you are very religious in all things. {{sup|23}}For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.' What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I announce to you. {{sup|24}}The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn't dwell in temples made with hands, {{sup|25}}neither is he served by men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath, and all things. {{sup|26}}He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth, having determined appointed seasons, and the boundaries of their dwellings, {{sup|27}}that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. {{sup|28}}'For in him we live, and move, and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring.' {{sup|29}}Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or stone, engraved by art and design of man. {{sup|30}}The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked. But now he commands that all people everywhere should repent, {{sup|31}}because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; of which he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead."|source=Acts 17:22-31 ([[World English Bible|WEB]])}}

Because Paul's [[Yahweh|God]] [[Tetragrammaton#Spoken prohibitions|could not be named]], according to the customs of his people, it is possible that Paul's Athenian listeners would have considered his God to be "the unknown god par excellence".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Tomson|first1=Peter J.|last2=Lambers-Petry|first2=Doris|title=The image of the Judaeo-Christians in ancient Jewish and Christian literature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9bbWbMGekWoC&pg=PA235|year=2003|publisher=Mohr Siebeck|isbn=3-16-148094-5|page=235}}</ref> His listeners may also have understood the introduction of a new god by allusions to [[Aeschylus]]' ''[[Oresteia#The Eumenides|The Eumenides]]''; the irony would have been that just as the Eumenides were not new gods at all but the [[Furies]] in a new form, so was the Christian God not a new god but rather the god the Greeks already worshipped as the Unknown God.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kauppi|first=Lynn Allan|title=Foreign but familiar gods: Greco-Romans read religion in Acts|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9dYTX9CQm04C&pg=PA83|year=2006|publisher=Continuum International Publishing Group|isbn=0-567-08097-8|pages=83–93|chapter=Acts 17.16-34 and Aeschylus' Eumenides}}</ref> His audience would also have recognized the quotes in verse 28 as coming from [[Epimenides]] and [[Aratus]], respectively.