ALTARS TO THE UNKNOWN GOD
The Book of Acts says Paul disputed with philosophers in the Areopagus in Athens, calling their attention to Greek altars to an unknown god.
We know from independent sources that Athens had a council of officials called Areopagites with judicial authority—including authority over issues concerning the gods.
We also know that while Athens in the 1st century A.D. was no longer as important as other Greek cities, such as Corinth or Ephesus, it was still the center of Greek philosophy.
Paul made his case by appealing to the fact that the Greeks themselves had altars to an unknown god.
Paul argued that this unknown God had now made Himself known.
Paul’s point was that it wasn’t such a stretch for the Greeks to consider that such a God—a supreme God—might exist.
No altars to unknown gods have been found in Greece. One has, however, been found in Rome. (See image.)
Historians, however, recognize on the basis of ancient texts that the Greeks did indeed have altars to unknown gods.
For instance the geographer Pausanias in the 2nd century A.D. writes of such altars at Olympia and in Athens.
Philostratus and Diogenes Laertius also confirm the existence of such altars elsewhere in Greece.
Evidently, as polytheists, the Greeks were afraid that their panoply of gods might leave out some gods and thereby offend them.
So the altars to unknown gods were erected out of caution to appease these gods.
The altars were not built to acknowledge a single supreme deity but rather for all gods previously unrecognized.
So the Greeks were in no way affirming the monotheistic God that Paul had in mind.
Even so, Paul ingeniously used the existence of altars to unknown gods to make his case for the one supreme God of the universe.
More here: https://a.co/d/0fKC8rY5
Before debating free will, you have to start with the Calvinist view of God.
In Calvinism, God doesn’t merely permit or allow events to happen—He decrees them.
That distinction changes the entire debate over predestination.
This video illustrates how biblical archaeology works by examining a clay seal dated to the 8th century BC and attributed to the prophet Isaiah. It was produced by the Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology (http://www.armstronginstitute.org) and narrated by Stephen Flurry.
Throughout the 19th century, skeptics of the Bible rejected the idea that King David and King Solomon ruled a unified and centralized nation.
Israel, they insisted, didn’t even have literacy at the time!
Then in 1908 the Irish archaeologist R.A.S. Macalister found a small limestone tablet in the ancient city of Gezer, 20 miles west of Jerusalem.
It had an early Canaanite inscription dating to around 1,000 B.C—the very period of David and Solomon’s rule.
The tablet, now known as the Gezer Calendar, lists the agricultural activities of the season: sowing, planting, harvesting and so on.
It may have been a memory device for children to familiarize themselves with the routine of the farming season.
Whatever its purpose, the Gezer Calendar establishes that there was literacy even for ordinary people in David and Solomon’s time.
More here: https://a.co/d/0cU7w5lb
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