Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Zeus
The chief Greek god, whom a crowd mistakes Barnabas for.
Acts 14:12-13, in every translation this tool compares.
A crowd at Lystra decides Barnabas is Zeus, and the local priest arrives at the gates with oxen and garlands. It is one of the few places in the New Testament that shows pagan worship happening rather than describing it.
The priest of Zeus brings oxen and garlands to the gates because the crowd at Lystra has decided Barnabas is Zeus and Paul is Hermes. It is one of the few places where the New Testament shows pagan devotion happening instead of describing it. Ovid's story of Philemon and Baucis, Phrygian peasants visited by Zeus and Hermes disguised as men, is a direct parallel, and DDD says the myth was well known in this region of Asia Minor and likely shaped how the Lystrans read what they saw. The rededication of the Jerusalem temple to Zeus Olympios under Antiochus IV in 168 BC (2 Maccabees 6:2) is the same event 1 Maccabees 1:54 calls, without naming Zeus, the abomination of desolation set up on the altar.
G2203, 2 occ
Hellenized Diaspora Jews sometimes called their God Hypsistos, "Most High," a title that had been a cultic epithet of Zeus for centuries, and the magical papyri go further and equate "Iao" (Yahweh) with Zeus directly. DDD reads both the Lystra scene and the temple rededication against this easy interpretatio Graeca between Zeus and Semitic sky and storm gods, Baal Shamem among them, which is why the pagan identification of Paul and Barnabas and Antiochus's rededication both felt like natural moves to outsiders, even though each drew the reaction you'd expect from the people on the receiving end.
- Acts 14:12-13
- 2 Maccabees 6:2
- 1 Maccabees 1:54
- DDD s.v. "Zeus," 934-939
