"For 'in him we live and move and have our being' as even some of your own poets have said 'For we are indeed his offspring'. Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold or silver or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man." (RSV). Who were these Greek poets to whom Paul referred and what was the purpose of his appealing to pagan writers to declare the fact of man being the offspring of God? Paul was an educated man and it was quite natural that he should draw upon his classical knowledge, when talking to educated men of this world, such as philosophers, to support the truth he was proclaiming to them. In this speech before the Athenians on Mars Hill he gave voice to the most profound of dispensational truths, explaining the whole of God's purpose for this age and the next and the reason for God's apparent silence in the past. At the centre of that truth lay the fact that men live, and move, and have their being in God, and cannot live eternally without Him, for they are in the last analysis the offspring of God and owe their life to Him. In making that statement he drew upon the considered conclusions of the Greek philosophers themselves, and quoted them to support his point. He was not so petty-minded as to ignore the insight of those philosophers because they were pagans and knew not the God of Israel. Even although the very words he quoted "For we are indeed his offspring" had been addressed to Zeus, the principal god of the Greeks and not to Paul's god at all, he gave those men credit for their perception.

There are two poet, either of whom Paul may have had in mind when he made this remark, perhaps he had both. He says "certain also of your own poets"; one of these was Aratus, a Greek poet and astronomer who was born in Paul's own province of Cilicia about three hundred years before. Aratus became Court physician to one of the Macedonian king and his works were esteemed so highly by the Romans in Paul's day that at least three men of letters produced Latin translations of them. The passage in which Paul's quotation occurs is from a kind of technical poem dealing with astronomical matters, called the 'Phenomena'. It runs:

'With him, with Zeus, are filled

The paths we tread and all the haunts of men.

He fills the sea, and every creek and bay;

And all in all things we need the help of Zeus,

For we too are his offspring."

The other was Cleanthes, who lived at about the same time as Aratus, and who was leading member of the Stoics at Athens. In his Hymns to Zeus occur these lines: Most glorious of immortals, and many named:

Almighty and eternal, thou, O Zeus.

The God of Nature, guiding with Thy hand

All things that are; we greet with praise.

Tis meet that mortal call on thee

For we thine offspring are; and we alone

Of all who live and move upon this earth,

Have had from thee the gift of god - like speech.

The fact that we can thus identify the poets whom Paul is reported as quoting on that historical occasion, and read for ourselves the very line he had in mind, is an undesigned confirmation of the accuracy of the "Acts of the Apostles". This apparently quite casual allusion, coming to us down the ages, bears with it this testimony that it was no idle embellishment of a writer of fiction; it was a verbal transcription of words that were actually spoken before that distinguished audience in Athens two thousand years ago.