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
A gang of goons, acting on the authority of King Zedekiah of Judah, threw the prophet Jeremiah into a pit.
Two of them were Jehucal son of Shelemiah and Gedaliah son of Pashur.
Both men have been historically corroborated through the archaeological discovery of clay seal impressions dated to the sixth century B.C. bearing their names.
And that’s me, below, in the actual pit into which Jeremiah was tossed. Debbie my wife took his short video of me in Jerusalem earlier this year.
But how did Jeremiah survive?
“Now when Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, one of the eunuchs of the king’s house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the dungeon…” (Jeremiah 38:7)
So the king’s own men put Jeremiah in there, but a low-ranking Ethiopian decided to take matters into his own hands.
Ebed-melech approached the king—a daunting task that involved great personal risk—and remarkably got permission to get Jeremiah out.
It took 30 men to pull Jeremiah out since he was trapped in the caked mud at the ...
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In the late 19th century the German explorer Heinrich Schliemann set out to discover ancient Troy.
Until that time Troy was considered by most scholars to be a mythical place, and the Trojan War a legend entwined with Greek mythology.
Schliemann worked with Homer in one hand and his archaeological tools in the other, searching for clues in “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” for real geographical locations.
And he found Troy!
Today scholars accept that Troy was located at Hisarlik in northwestern Turkey.
Schliemann even found precious objects that he dubbed the “treasures of King Priam” although some of these date to before the time of the Trojan War.
Schliemann demonstrated that the Homeric narratives were grounded in real places and a Late Bronze Age world.
Biblical archaeology works in much the same way, with the Bible offering a roadmap to real places and real events.
And as at Troy, in the end the stones have the last word.
My new book “The Stones Cry Out” reveals the greatest...
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