Posted on 05/15/2016 1:12:48 PM PDT by Trumpinator
I looked it up - it was a Greek Prophet. Apparently, there was a miracle where a sheep laid down and an alter was erected to “an unknown God” that saved Athens from a plague when sacrifices to the established Pantheon did not produce any results. I provided a link above. Fascinating reading. This would have been clear to people of that era but to us modern folk it requires some historical insight.
Diogenes (1.110) mentions the plague and how the Athenians were told by the Pythian priestess to purify their city, so they sent Nicias son of Niceratus to Crete to ask the help of Epimenides. He came in the 46th Olympiad (595-592 B.C.) and stopped the plague in this way:
He took sheep, some black and some white and led them to the Areopagus. There he let them go wherever they wished, instructing those who followed them to mark the spot where each sheep lay down and offer a sacrifice to the local god, and thus the plague was stopped. For this reason even to this day it is possible to find in the villages of the Athenians anonymous altars, which are memorials of this expiation.
According to Diogenes Laertius, before this Epimenides had gone to sleep in a cave and woke up 57 years later, and that is why he had become famous.
Paul announced what had waited six centuries for utterance. Yahweh, the Judeo-Christian God, was anticipated by Epimenides altar to the unknown god. He was not a foreign god as his adversaries claimed (v.18) but a God who had already intervened to bring help in the affairs of Athens.
http://christiansincrete.org/news/to-an-unknown-god/
Diogenes Laertius' short biography of Epimenides doesn't. Aristotle in his Athenian Constitution doesn't. Aristotle also mentions Epimenides briefly in his Politics but that has nothing to do with religion. Plato in the Laws has Epimenides coming to Athens 10 years before the Persian Wars (almost a century later than Diogenes' date) but still nothing about an Unknown God. Plutarch mentions him in his Life of Solon and refers to religious reforms he made at Athens, but nothing about an Unknown God.
I am not afraid to admit this is a new one for me.
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