Talk:Epimenides

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This entry contains the sentence: "The fourth line is quoted without attribution in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 17, verse 28, which also quotes the Hymn to Zeus of the poet Cleanthes."

Compare with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aratus and cross-compare with http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=ACTS%2B17%3A28&showfn=on&showxref=on&language=english&version=HCSB&x=10&y=9.

According to these sources (respectively):

"He [Aratus] even earned a quotation in the New Testament, where, in Acts, 17.28, Saint Paul, speaking of God, quotes Aratus' line "For we are indeed his offspring."

"17:28 This citation is from Aratus, a third-century B.C. Gk poet."

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Confusion has been cleared away and noted in the entry. Cleanthes's fourth line is very much like Epimenides's which constitutes the reference in the first half of Acts 17:28; the second half beginning with "As some of your own poets have said," refers to the fifth line from Aratus's Phaenomena.

(1) This is interesting, but since "For we are indeed his offspring" isn't a quotation of Epimenides, I don't know that it has a place in this article. (2) The article Epistle to Titus quotes Easton's Bible Dictionary as saying the authorship of the epistle is uncertain, so I don't know that we want to attribute it to Paul here. Comments? Wile E. Heresiarch 22:23, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've reverted the recent changes. See edit comments in the page history. Wile E. Heresiarch 21:46, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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The sourcing of this article is particularly confusing because the source for the initial four-line quote is completely unclear. If it's just a composite of other quotes, it shouldn't be presented as one quote without a caveat specifying this. However, I have found evidence that there is a source for the four lines, as they are, together. As far as I can tell, the only source for this is a 9th century Syriac commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, discovered, edited and translated (into Greek) by Prof. Rendell Harris in a series of articles in the Expositor (Oct. 1906, 305-17; Apr. 1907, 332-37; Apr. 1912, 348-353). Obviously, I'm not an expert (I haven't even read said articles, but include them for completeness), but if this is, in fact, the source for those four lines, it ought to be cited, since referring the reader to the New Testament quotations of line two and four is, while appreciated, rather confusing, without specifying where line one and three come from. Indeed, as it is, there is really no explanation given at all for why these four lines are read together, at all.

Anyway, a copy of the Greek, by Harris, can be found in this JSTOR article: http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0009-840X(191603)1%3A30%3A2%3C33%3AEM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z&cookieSet=1. The paper copy is as follows: T. Nicklin, "Epimenides' Minos" The Classical Review, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Mar., 1916), pp. 33-37.

Pyzmark (talk) 21:34, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

There was a really frustrating lack of sources in this article, so I've added your info. Kramden (talk) 06:12, 26 April 2010 (UTC)