Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 17:23

"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 ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you." — Acts 17:23 (ASV)

I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.—Better, I observe you as being in all things more fearful of the gods than others. It is not easy to express the exact force of the Greek adjective. “Superstitious” is, perhaps, too strong on the side of blame; “devout,” on the side of praise.

The word which the Athenians loved to use of themselves (theosebês, a worshipper of God) exactly answers to the latter term. This St. Paul will not use of idolaters, and reserves it for those who worship the one living and true God, and he uses a word which, like our “devotee,” though not offensive, was neutral with a slight touch of disparagement.

The deisidaimôn is described at some length in the Characters of Theophrastus, the La Bruyère of classical literature (chapter 17), as one who consults soothsayers, and is a believer in omens, who will give up a journey if he sees a weasel on the road, and goes with his wife and children to be initiated into the Orphic mysteries. Nikias, the Athenian general, ever oppressed with the sense of the jealousy of the gods, and counter-ordering important strategic movements because there was an eclipse of the moon (Thucydides 7.50), is a conspicuous instance of the deisidaimôn in high places.

The Stoic Emperor, Marcus Aurelius (Meditations 1.16), congratulates himself on not being such a deisidaimôn, while he gives thanks that he has inherited his mother’s devotion (theosebes) (1.2). The opening words would gain, and were perhaps meant to gain, the ears of the philosophers. Here, they would say, is one who, at least, rises, as we do, above the religion of the multitude.

As I passed by, and beheld your devotions.—Better, as I passed by, and was contemplating the objects of your worship. The English word appears to have been used in its old sense, as meaning what the Greek word means—the object, and not the act, of devotion. So, Wiclif gives “your mawmetis”—that is, “your idols.” Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Geneva version give “the manner how ye worship your gods.” The Rhemish follows Wiclif and gives “your idols.”

I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.—The Greek of the inscription has no article, and might, therefore, be rendered TO AN UNKNOWN GOD, as though it had been consecrated as a votive offering for benefits which the receiver was unable to assign to the true donor among the “gods many and lords many” whom he worshipped.

So interpreted, it did not bear its witness directly to any deeper thoughts than those of popular polytheism, and stands on the same footing as the altars TO UNKNOWN GODS, which are mentioned by Pausanias (1.1-4) as set up in the harbour and streets of Athens, or to the description which Theophrastus gives (as above) of the deisidaimôn as asking the soothsayers, after he has had a disquieting dream, to what god or goddess he ought to pray.

Greek usage, however, did not require the use of the article in inscriptions of this nature, and the English translation is quite as legitimate as the other, and clearly gives the sense in which St. Paul understood it.

Taking this sense, the questions arise: What thought did the inscription express? To what period did it belong? A story connected with Epimenides of Crete, who, as a prophet of great fame, was invited to Athens at a time when the city was suffering from pestilence, is sometimes referred to as affording a probable explanation of its origin.

Diogenes Laertius (Epimenides, chapter 3) relates that he turned sheep loose into the city and then had them sacrificed where they stopped, to the god thus pointed out—that is, to the one whose image or altar was nearest to the spot—and that “altars without a name” were thus to be seen in many parts of Athens. It has been supposed that this may have been one of these altars, erected where there was no image near enough to warrant a sacrifice to any known deity; and as Epimenides is stated to have offered sacrifices on the Areopagus, such an altar may have been standing within view as St. Paul spoke.

Against this view, however, are these facts:

1. That the narrative of Laertius names no such inscription as that of which St. Paul speaks, and rather implies that every victim found the god to whom it by right belonged, or else that the altar was left without any inscription.
2. That St. Paul’s language implies that he had seen the inscription as he walked through the city, and not that he looked on it as he spoke.
3. That it is hardly conceivable that such an altar, standing in so conspicuous a place from the time of Epimenides, would have remained unnoticed by a thinker like Socrates.

Jerome cuts the knot of the difficulty by stating that the inscription actually ran, “To the Gods of Asia and Europe and Africa, to unknown and strange Gods.” It is possible that he may have seen an altar with such words upon it, and that he rushed to the conclusion that it was what St. Paul referred to; but it is not likely that the Apostle would have ventured on altering the inscription to suit his argument in the presence of those who could have confuted him on the spot, and his words must be received as indicating what he had actually seen.

A passage in the dialogue of Philopatris, ascribed to Lucian, where one of the speakers swears “by the Unknown God of Athens,” is interesting: but, as written in the third century after Christ, may be only a reference, not without a sneer, to St. Paul’s speech, and cannot be adduced as evidence either as to the existence of such an altar or its meaning.

An independent inquiry based upon data until now not referred to will, perhaps, lead to more satisfactory conclusions.

1. The verbal adjective means something more than “Unknown.” It adds the fact that the Unknown is also the Unknowable. This is the ultimate confession—such as we have heard recently from the lips of some students of science—of human impotence to solve the problems of the universe. It does not affirm Atheism, but it does not know what the Power is, which it yet feels must be.
2. As such it presents a striking parallel to the inscription which Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride) records as found on the veil of Isis at Sais: “I am all that has been, and all that is, and all that shall be; and no mortal has lifted my veil.” Whether that inscription expressed the older thoughts of Egypt may, perhaps, be questioned. Plutarch gives it in Greek, and this probably indicates a date after the foundation of the monarchy of the Ptolemies (367 BC), possibly contemporary with Plutarch (AD 46–140).
3. Still more striking, if possible, is the parallelism presented by an altar found at Ostia, and now in the Vatican Museum. It represents what is known as a Mithraic sacrificial group, connected, that is, with the worship of Mithras, the Sun-god of later Persian mythology, a winged figure sacrificing a bull, with various symbolic emblems, such as a serpent and a scorpion. Underneath appears the inscription (Orelli, Inser. Gel. II, 5000)—SIGNUM INDEPREHENSIBILIS DEI. [THE SYMBOL OF THE UNDISCOVERABLE GOD.] It will be admitted that this expresses the same thought as the inscription which St. Paul quotes; that it is the nearest equivalent that Latin can supply for the “Unknown and Unknowable” God. The frequent recurrence of Mithraic groups in nearly all museums, generally without any note of time, but, in the judgment of experts, ranging from the time of Pompeius to that of Diocletian, shows the prevalence of this Sun worship throughout the Roman world during the early period of the empire.

We have found an interesting trace of it in Cyprus. (See Note on Acts 13:14.) We may see its surviving influence in the reverence shown by Constantine to the Dies Solis in the general observance of that day throughout the empire.

Other inscriptions, also in the Vatican Museum, such as SOLI DEO INVICTO (Orelli, I, 1904–14), show its prevalence. Our own Sunday (Dies Solis), little as we dream of it, is probably a survival of the Mithraic cultus, which at one time seemed not unlikely, as seen from a merely human standpoint, to present a formidable rivalry to the claims of the Church of Christ.

It is, at least, a remarkable coincidence that the Twenty-fifth of December was kept as the festival of Mithras long before it was chosen by the Western Church for the Feast of the Nativity.

It is true that De Rossi, the great Roman archaeologist, in a note to the present writer, gives the probable date of the inscription in question as belonging to the second or third century after Christ; but the Mithraic worship is known to have prevailed widely from a much earlier period, and the church of San Clemente, at Rome—where below the two basilicas have been found the remains of a Christian oratory turned into a Mithraic chapel—presents a memorable instance of the rivalry of the two systems.

On the whole, therefore, it seems probable that the altar which St. Paul saw was an earlier example of the feeling represented by the Ostian inscription, and may well have found its expression, with a like characteristic formula, among the many forms of the confluent polytheism of Athens. Plutarch (Pompeius) speaks of the worship of Mithras as having been brought into Europe by the Cilician pirates whom Pompeius defeated, and as continuing in his own time.

Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship.—Better, as expressing the connection with the inscription, What therefore ye worship not knowing, that declare I unto you. The better manuscripts give the relative pronoun in the neuter. It was, perhaps, deliberately used, as St. Paul uses the neuter form for “Godhead” in Acts 17:29, and a cognate abstract noun in Romans 1:20, to express the fact that the Athenians were as yet ignorant of the personality of the living God.

That any human teacher should have power and authority to proclaim that “Unknown God,” as making Himself known to men, was what neither Epicureans nor Stoics had dreamt of. The verb “declare” is closely connected with the term “setter forth” of Acts 17:18. He does not disclaim that element in the charge against him.