Executive Summary

On at least three occasions, the apostle Paul quoted Greek poets, and his words, including those quotations, now stand in the inspired text. In Athens he cited two lines associated with Epimenides and Aratus (Acts 17:28). Writing to Titus, he quoted a Cretan poet, generally identified as Epimenides, and added, “This witness is true” (Titus 1:12–13). Writing to the Corinthians, he used a line found in the comic playwright Menander (1 Corinthians 15:33). In addition, the risen Jesus Christ, speaking to Paul on the Damascus road, used a proverb about kicking against the goads that also appears in Greek tragedy (Acts 26:14).

This paper, a companion to “Judging Righteous Judgment: A Biblicist Framework for Rock and Pop Criticism,” examines these passages from a biblicist perspective. It argues that they establish a scriptural pattern for recognizing truth spoken outside the covenant community, while also setting clear limits on how that truth is received. Paul’s method was selective, redirecting, and subordinate: he took true statements from pagan sources, detached them from false frameworks, pointed them toward the true God, and placed them in service of a call to repentance. The paper then draws out implications for how inspiration relates to quoted material, how general revelation functions, how popular as well as elite culture may carry truth, how insider testimony carries weight, and how believers may engage the art and thought of their surrounding culture, including popular music.

I. The Passages

Acts 17:28: The Areopagus

Paul’s address in Athens came after he had been disputing in the marketplace with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers (Acts 17:18). Standing before the Areopagus, he began from an altar inscribed “TO THE UNKNOWN GOD” (Acts 17:23) and proclaimed the God who made the world and all things in it. He then said: “For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring” (Acts 17:28).

The second clause is a near-exact quotation from the opening of the Phaenomena of Aratus, a poet from Soli in Cilicia, the same region as Paul’s hometown of Tarsus, writing in the third century before Christ. A similar line appears in the Hymn to Zeus by the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes. Paul’s plural, “certain also of your own poets,” fits the fact that the idea circulated in more than one source.

The first clause, “in him we live, and move, and have our being,” is commonly attributed to Epimenides of Crete, a semi-legendary poet and seer of the sixth century before Christ, though the attribution depends on a later Christian commentator and is less certain than the Aratus quotation. Ancient tradition also connected Epimenides with Athens: Diogenes Laertius records a story that he ended a plague there by having sacrifices offered at altars to an unnamed god. Whether or not that tradition lies behind the altar Paul saw, the setting shows Paul working deliberately with the religious and literary memory of his audience.

Titus 1:12–13: The Cretan Prophet

Instructing Titus about the churches on Crete, Paul wrote: “One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. This witness is true” (Titus 1:12–13). Clement of Alexandria and later writers attributed the line to Epimenides, a Cretan. The first phrase, calling Cretans perpetual liars, also appears in the Hymn to Zeus by Callimachus, where the poet accuses Cretans of lying because they claimed to possess the tomb of Zeus.

Two features stand out. Paul calls the poet “a prophet of their own,” using the Cretans’ own estimation of him, and he explicitly affirms the observation: “This witness is true.” This is the most direct scriptural endorsement of a pagan poet’s statement.

1 Corinthians 15:33: The Comic Stage

In his defense of the resurrection, Paul warned: “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33). The line appears in Menander, the leading playwright of Athenian New Comedy in the fourth and early third centuries before Christ, in a play titled Thais that survives only in fragments. By Paul’s time the line may have become a proverb, and some ancient writers linked it to Euripides as well. Paul gives no attribution here; he simply uses it.

The source is notable. Menander wrote popular comedies about romance, family misunderstanding, and social manners. This was not philosophy or sacred poetry but mainstream entertainment.

Acts 26:14: The Goads

Recounting his conversion before King Agrippa, Paul reported that a voice spoke to him “in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks” (Acts 26:14). The image of an ox kicking against the goad appears in Greek literature, including Aeschylus and Euripides, and was widely proverbial in the Greek world. Here the saying comes from the mouth of the risen Jesus Christ. The phrase was not a quotation from a specific author but a proverb shared across cultures, yet it shows that the Lord Himself used language whose currency extended into Greek literature.

II. Paul’s Method

These passages are not casual borrowings. Taken together, they show a consistent method with four features.

Selection

Paul quoted specific true statements, not entire works or systems. Aratus’s Phaenomena is an astronomical poem framed within a Stoic understanding of Zeus as the divine force pervading the cosmos. Paul did not endorse Stoic cosmology. He took one line that was true about the relationship between God and humanity and left the rest.

Redirection

The lines Paul quoted were originally addressed to or about Zeus. Paul applied them to “God that made the world and all things therein” (Acts 17:24), the Creator who is “not far from every one of us” (Acts 17:27). He did not pretend the poets had known the true God. He took a true perception about divine nearness and human dependence and pointed it to its proper object. The Athenians had been worshipping ignorantly; Paul declared the one they had been groping toward (Acts 17:23, 27).

Subordination

The quotations always serve Paul’s argument; they never govern it. In Athens, the quotation leads directly to a conclusion the poets did not draw: “Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device” (Acts 17:29). Paul turned the pagans’ own poetry against their idols, and then proclaimed repentance, judgment, and the resurrection (Acts 17:30–31). The poets supplied a true premise; Scripture supplied the conclusion and the call.

Limitation

Paul’s use of Greek sources sits alongside strong warnings about Greek wisdom. “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8). “Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” (1 Corinthians 1:20). The Greeks sought after wisdom, yet Christ crucified was foolishness to them (1 Corinthians 1:22–23). The same apostle who quoted Aratus and Menander insisted that human wisdom could not reach God by its own power and could not save.

The method, then, is neither wholesale rejection nor wholesale acceptance. Pagan sources could perceive and state particular truths, but they could not supply the gospel, and their truths needed rescuing from the frameworks in which they were embedded.

III. Inspiration and Quoted Material

A biblicist reading must address what it means for a pagan line to appear in Scripture.

Inspiration attaches to the scriptural text as Paul wrote it, including the quotation in its new setting. When Paul writes “This witness is true,” the Holy Spirit affirms, through Paul, that the observation is true. When Paul uses Aratus in Athens, the inspired text affirms that humanity is the offspring of God in the sense Paul intends. This does not canonize Aratus, Epimenides, or Menander, nor does it endorse the rest of their works or the religious frameworks behind them. The quoted words become Scripture as Paul uses them, not as their authors used them.

This distinction guards against two errors. One error treats the quotations as an embarrassment to be explained away, as if Scripture could not contain words first spoken by pagans. The other treats them as an opening to elevate pagan philosophy to a status alongside revelation. Scripture itself sets the boundary: the truth of a statement can be affirmed without affirming its source’s authority.

A parallel exists within Scripture’s handling of other non-canonical material. Jude quotes a prophecy attributed to Enoch (Jude 14–15) without making the book that preserved it part of the canon. The pattern is consistent: the inspired writer can affirm a true statement from an outside source without endorsing the source as a whole.

IV. Implications

1. General revelation reaches the nations

Paul’s use of the poets confirms what he wrote in Romans. God’s eternal power and Godhead are “clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Romans 1:20), and Gentiles without the written law can show “the work of the law written in their hearts” (Romans 2:14–15). Pagan poets perceived real truths because creation and conscience testify to all people. Aratus perceived that humanity depends on and derives from the divine. Menander observed that corrupt company corrupts character. These are not accidental hits; they are what one would expect if God has not left Himself without witness (Acts 14:17).

The same passage in Romans warns that those who knew God did not glorify Him as God, and “became vain in their imaginations” (Romans 1:21). General revelation produces true perceptions and also suppression and distortion. The believer should expect to find both in any culture’s literature, and should not be surprised by either.

2. Truth can come from popular culture, not only from elite thought

Menander was a comic playwright. His plays were popular entertainment, closer in social function to modern film and popular music than to philosophy. Paul’s use of a line found in Menander shows that Scripture does not restrict the recognition of truth to high culture. A true observation about human behavior is true whether it appears in a treatise or on the comic stage.

This undercuts a snobbery found both in academic culture and in some religious circles: the assumption that serious truth comes only from serious-seeming sources. Popular art, including popular music, can carry true observations about human nature, and the believer may recognize them as Paul did.

3. Insider testimony carries weight

Paul emphasized that the critique of Cretan character came from “one of themselves, even a prophet of their own” (Titus 1:12). A culture’s self-criticism has a particular force. An outsider’s accusation can be dismissed as prejudice; an insider’s confession is harder to dismiss.

This has direct relevance for cultural criticism. When artists within a scene, genre, or community expose its failings, their testimony often carries more credibility than external condemnation. The believer may affirm such testimony where it is true, as Paul did, without thereby endorsing the rest of the artist’s views.

4. Common ground serves proclamation

Paul’s approach in Athens followed his stated principle: “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22). He began from what his audience already knew and valued, including their altars and their poets, and moved from there toward what they did not know. He did not flatter them; he told them plainly that they worshipped in ignorance and must repent. But he spoke in terms they recognized.

The implication is that knowledge of a culture’s art and literature is not a distraction from faithful witness but can serve it. A believer who knows what a culture’s songs and stories say, and can recognize the truths and errors within them, is better equipped to speak to that culture than one who knows nothing of it.

5. Redirection, not mere agreement

Paul never simply agreed with the poets and stopped. He took their true statements and followed them to conclusions they had not reached. “We are his offspring” became an argument against idols. “Evil communications corrupt good manners” became a warning to believers tempted by those who denied the resurrection.

For the believer engaging a culture’s art, this suggests that recognizing truth is the beginning, not the end. The question is not only “Is this true?” but “Where does this truth lead, when followed honestly in the light of Scripture?” A song that truthfully expresses despair points toward the need for hope it may not itself supply. A story that truthfully depicts the self-deception of a fool points toward the need for a vantage point outside the self.

6. Discernment remains necessary

Paul’s warnings against philosophy and vain deceit apply alongside his quotations. Not everything in a culture’s art is true, and even true observations may be embedded in false frameworks that distort them. The Stoics’ truth about divine nearness sat within a pantheism that confused God with the world. The believer must separate the true statement from the false system, just as Paul did.

This requires knowing Scripture well enough to recognize truth when it appears in unfamiliar places, and to recognize falsehood when it appears in attractive forms. Without that grounding, engagement with a culture’s art tends to drift into either uncritical adoption or reflexive rejection.

7. Truth owes its authority to God, not to its source

The deepest implication is that truth does not belong to the one who first spoke it. If Aratus spoke truly that humanity is God’s offspring, the truth was God’s before Aratus perceived it. The poet did not create it; he noticed it. This frees the believer to receive true observations from any source without fear of contamination, because the believer is receiving something that belongs to God, not borrowing the authority of the one who said it.

It also means that a source’s flaws do not cancel its true statements. Epimenides was, by the Cretans’ own estimation, a prophet of their religion; Menander wrote comedies whose moral world was far from Scripture’s. Yet their true words remained true. This matches the pattern noted in the companion paper, where truth comes through David, Solomon, and Balaam despite their failures.

V. Application to Popular Music and Criticism

The companion paper argued that a biblicist criticism of rock and pop should judge by truthfulness rather than appearance. Paul’s use of the Greek poets supplies scriptural precedent for several of its principles.

First, it establishes that truthful observation can come from outside the covenant community, including from popular entertainment. A songwriter who truthfully depicts the self-deception of a fool, as in “What a Fool Believes,” or who honestly confronts the grim circumstances of his own life, as in “Alive,” may be stating something true, whatever his broader beliefs.

Second, it models how such truth should be received. The believer may affirm what is true, as Paul affirmed the Cretan prophet’s witness, without endorsing the artist’s life, worldview, or entire body of work.

Third, it demonstrates redirection. A believer writing about popular music need not stop at recognizing a song’s truth but may follow that truth to where it leads in the light of Scripture: from honest lament toward hope, from recognition of folly toward wisdom, from depicted despair toward the need for deliverance.

Fourth, it shows that engagement with popular culture is compatible with, and can serve, faithful witness. Paul knew his audience’s poets. Believers who know their culture’s songs are positioned to speak to that culture in terms it recognizes.

Finally, it preserves the necessary limits. Paul quoted the poets but did not preach them. The quotations served an argument whose premises and conclusions came from God’s revelation. Popular art can testify to truth, but it cannot replace Scripture as the standard by which that truth is recognized and completed.

VI. Conclusion

Paul’s quotations of Aratus, Epimenides, and Menander, and the risen Jesus Christ’s use of a proverb found across Greek literature, place pagan words inside the inspired text. Read carefully, these passages neither embarrass a biblicist view of Scripture nor open the door to treating pagan thought as revelation. They show a disciplined practice: selecting true statements, detaching them from false frameworks, redirecting them toward the true God, and subordinating them to the proclamation of repentance and resurrection.

The implications extend well beyond the first century. Truth belongs to God wherever it is found. General revelation reaches every culture, producing both real perception and real distortion. Popular art can carry truth as well as elite thought can. A culture’s self-criticism carries particular weight. And the believer who knows both Scripture and the surrounding culture can recognize, affirm, redirect, and, where necessary, correct what that culture says, as Paul did before the Areopagus when he told the Athenians that their own poets had glimpsed what they had not yet understood.