Unknown God
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The Unknown God or Agnostos Theos (
Paul at Athens
According to the book of
22Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus, and said, "You men of Athens, I perceive that you are very religious in all things. 23For 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. 24The 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, 25neither is he served by men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath, and all things. 26He 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, 27that 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. 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.' 29Being 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. 30The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked. But now he commands that all people everywhere should repent, 31because 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."
— Acts 17:22-31 (WEB)
Because Paul's
Archaeology
There is an altar dedicated to the Unknown God found in 1820 on the Palatine Hill of Rome. It contains an inscription in Latin that says:
SEI·DEO·SEI·DEIVAE·SAC
G·SEXTIVS·C·F·CALVINVSPR
DE·SENATI·SENTENTIA
RESTITVIT
This could be translated into English as: "Whether sacred to god or to goddess, Gaius Sextius Calvinus, son of Gaius, praetor, restored this on a vote of the senate."[8]
The altar is currently exhibited in the Palatine Museum.[9]
In Ancient Egypt
The idea of an unknown god, however, seems to predate the Greek. For in Ancient Egypt, Amun was an unknowable god, not only in the sense of his name being unknown, but also his identity or essence.
See also
References
- ISBN 9789042905788.
- ^ Pseudo-Lucian, Philopatris, 9.14
- ^ Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 6.3
- ^ Pausanias' Description of Greece in 6 vols, Loeb Classic Library, Vol I, Book I.1.4
- ^ Plutarch's Lives
- ISBN 3-16-148094-5.
- ISBN 0-567-08097-8.
- ^ Dillon, Matthew; Garland, Lynda (2013). Ancient Rome: A Sourcebook. Routledge. p. 132.
- ^ Lanciani, Rodolfo (1892). Pagan and Christian Rome. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
External links
- "Vedic Hymn To the Unknown God". Translated by Max Mueller