Hebrews 11:6b

Larry Swain swainl at calcite.rocky.edu
Tue Jul 7 15:58:53 EDT 1998


On Tue, 7 Jul 1998, Mary L B Pendergraft wrote:

> >One of the respondants here did say that a Greek audience would not 
> >necessarily have believed in God's existence-but that isn't quite true.  A 
> >Greek audience would have had no problem believing in the existence of God, 
> >what's one more?  They would have instead sought to make (and did by the 
> >way) the Hebrew YHWH in some way equivalent to what they knew-Zeus.  The 
> >discussion about whether God exists (or gods exist) is a modern one (with 
> >notable exceptions such as the Pre-Socratic philosopher Zeno who posited 
> >that the gods are made in the image of whatever race worships them).
> 
> Umm, Xenophanes?  Zeno and the Stoics in general did tend to reject
> anthropomorphic images of divinity and held, inter alia, that traditional
> myths and so on often just represented truths allegorically:  so the
> tradition of Philo and Origen is an old one.

Yes, Xenophanes-that's what I get for posting something when I should be
in bed.  Forgive the oversight.  Although as you point out Zeno and the
Stoics would have made the point equally well.  

Larry Swain





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