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The Stoic Reader
Stoic texts read beside the New Testament passages that share their words or their argument, and where the New Testament turns.
For we are also his offspring
In Athens, Paul quotes a Greek poet: "For we are also his offspring." The line is the opening of Aratus's Phaenomena, a poem that begins with Zeus.
Acts 17:28, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: when Paul quotes a poem about Zeus to the Athenians, is he agreeing with the poet or using him? A guest at a wedding toasts the couple with a line from a song the groom's family loves. Everyone in the room hears their own song. Does the guest mean what they mean by it?
"From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring; and he in his kindness unto men giveth favourable signs."
γένος (genos), Strong's G1085, offspring, kin. Aratus, line 5: τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος εἰμέν. Acts 17:28 in the SBL Greek New Testament: Τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμέν. The only difference is the verb: Aratus has the epic form εἰμέν, Acts the ordinary ἐσμέν, both meaning we are. The site's lexicon gives Acts 17:28-29 the sense offspring. Paul's next sentence uses the word again: being then God's offspring (17:29).
Both say humans are kin to the one God who fills the world and gives life. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible says that especially in verses 24-29 the speech has many points of contact with the dominant Stoic philosophy, and that the connections follow a long Jewish intellectual habit of selecting useful ideas from Greek philosophy. Wright calls Aratus a third-century BC Stoic whose Phaenomena was the most widely read poem in Paul's world after Homer.
Paul, in Luke's account, draws the opposite conclusion from the line. If we are God's offspring, we ought not to think the divine is like gold, silver or stone shaped by human skill (17:29). Wright notes that the Stoics had never suggested human-made idols were a bad idea. Then Paul goes where no Stoic went: God has set a day of judgment and has given proof by raising a man from the dead (17:31). Wright says quoting Aratus is as close as Paul comes to something that, out of context, might be mistaken for Stoicism, and that what follows shows this would be a serious error.
This is a quotation, not an echo, and the speech itself says some of your own poets have said it. The NIV study note says Aratus is the likeliest author of the line and that the Stoic Cleanthes wrote similarly; it adds that Paul, from Tarsus in Cilicia, undoubtedly knew of the Cilician poet. Wright and Bird call Aratus the Cilician Stoic philosopher. The words of Acts 17:28 are Luke's report of a speech, so what can be said is that Luke has Paul quote Aratus.
Not an endorsement of Zeus. The speech takes the poet's line and uses it to argue against temples made with hands, and the NIV study note says the meeting place of the Areopagus was surrounded by temples.
- Aratus, Phaenomena 1-18, Greek text ed. G. R. Mair (Heinemann and Putnam, 1921), Perseus Digital Library (canonical-greekLit)
- Aratus, Phaenomena, trans. G. R. Mair, Callimachus, Hymns and Epigrams; Lycophron; Aratus (Loeb Classical Library 129, Heinemann, 1921), Theoi Classical Texts Library, https://www.theoi.com/Text/AratusPhaenomena.html
- SBL Greek New Testament, Acts 17:28-29, via MorphGNT
- Site Greek lexicon (Abbott-Smith), word-study-lexicon.json, G1085
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (Zondervan, 2016), notes on Acts 17:22-31 and 17:28
- N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography (HarperOne), ch. 8, Athens
- Wright and Bird, The New Testament in Its World (2019), ch. 15, note 10
