delivering the
Areopagus Sermon in
Athens, by
Raphael, 1515. According to the book of
Acts, contained in the Christian
New Testament, when the Apostle
Paul visited
Athens, he saw an
altar with an
inscription dedicated to that god (possibly connected to the
Cylonian affair), and, when invited to speak to the Athenian elite at the
Areopagus, gave the
following speech: Because Paul's
God 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". His listeners may also have understood the introduction of a new god by allusions to
Aeschylus'
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. His audience would also have recognized the quotes in verse 28 as coming from
Epimenides and
Aratus, respectively. From Aratus (poet educated in the
Stoic philosophy), Paul borrowed his poem
Phaenomena 5 and compared it with Acts 17:28, stating that indeed humans are the offspring of
Zeus (the
Creator according to the
Stoics and other philosophical schools) but in order for humans to know him in a personal relationship, they must first follow the teachings of his son, the
Logos incarnated,
Jesus Christ. == Archaeology ==