Sitting on a white stone patio overlooking the Aegean coast of Santorini, I’m astounded by the Greek culture, cuisine, and epic history. While touring the caves of the ancient Minoans, the hilltop grounds of worship, and hearing the legends of Athens, I’m compelled to consider the reality into which the apostle Paul entered with his message of a resurrected Jesus. The Greeks did not doubt that the gods could and would interact with them. In somewhat humorous suspicion, the superstitions of the day seem to emerge from the roots of an ancient fear of the gods. Yet the timeless hope of humanity for immortality, happiness, hope, and the removal of pain marks this land as it does every ancient civilization. Amidst the prevailing culture of numerous deities, a historic moment clashed with the Greek culture as the apostle Paul ascended the famed hillside of the Acropolis outside of Athens. Paul’s message echoes down the annuls of history to every civilization today.

Paul stood on the sacred ground of the Athenians in an area identified as the Areopagus. Why is this land hallowed? On this hillside, the people of Athens encountered the God of life during a fatal epidemic. In 430 B.C., a severe plague broke out and threatened to obliterate the people of Athens. According to many historians, nearly one-third of the Athenian population fell to the plague, which would represent 80,000-100,000 deaths in five years. In response to the pandemic, Epimenides, a resident and philosopher from the nearby island of Crete, was beckoned to come to Athens by its leader, Nicias. “Arriving in Athens, Epimenides obtained a flock of black and white sheep and released them on Mars Hill, instructing men to follow the sheep and mark the places where any of them lay down. Epimenides’s apparent purpose was to give any god concerned in the matter of the plague an opportunity to reveal his willingness to help by causing sheep that pleased him to lie down to rest as a sign that he would accept those sheep if they were offered in sacrifice. Since there would have been nothing unusual about sheep lying down apart from one of their usual grazing periods, presumably Epimenides conducted his experiment early in the morning, when sheep would be at their hungriest.” As predicted, “a number of sheep rested, and the Athenians offered them in sacrifice upon unnamed altars built especially for the purpose.”

In the shadow of the towering Parthenon, which was being constructed (447-438 B.C.) in worship of Athena, Zeus, Asclepius, and many other gods, Athenians raised their desperation to an unknown god for salvation from the fatal plague.

The unknown God responded, and the plague ended. Athenians knew of a God who cared for them but was unknown by name, so they marked the alters with the inscription “to the unknown God.” The celebrations, I’m sure, were extensive. But the story of this salvation passed into legend, leaving only the marked altars as memorials.

Then, in 51 A.D., the apostle Paul arrives and is “provoked” by finding an entire city wholly given over to those same idols that could do little for Athens at the time of the plague. Looking up from Mars Hills, where remnants of the unknown god altars stood, Paul refers to the miraculous moment of Epimendene’s rescue. Paul declares,

“Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious, for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription- to the unknown god. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing Him, I proclaim to you: God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets (Epimenides) have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.'”(Acts 17:22–29)

Athenians listened with a curiosity that marked their culture, but only a few responded with faith in the unknown God- the God of Israel. In what seems to be a humorous note, Luke records the names of two believers- Dionysius, a member of the Athenian council (Areopagus), and Damaris, a high-ranking Greek woman.

The irony is that Dionysius, the son of Zeus, is depicted only a few yards away as the god of pleasure and revelry. It’s as if Luke jabs at the heralded sensuality of Athens by showing how even Dionysius can be freed from the chains of perversion by Jesus.