Re: Hebrews 11:6b

From: Larry Swain (swainl@calcite.rocky.edu)
Date: Tue Jul 07 1998 - 15:58:53 EDT


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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