Five-minute study · Day 286 · Acts 17
Acts 17:28
A word worth stopping on: offspring γένος genos
'For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are his offspring.' The word translated 'offspring' is genos. Race. Stock. Lineage. Paul stood on the Areopagus in Athens and quoted two pagan poets to a pagan audience. 'In him we live and move and have our being' comes from the Cretan poet Epimenides (approximately sixth century BCE). 'For we are his offspring' comes from Aratus, a Stoic poet from Paul's own home province of Cilicia (Phaenomena, line 5). Paul reached into his listeners' own literary tradition, found the fragments of truth already embedded there, and used them as a bridge. He did not begin with Moses. He began with Aratus.
Word study: offspring
- Greek
- γένος
- Pronounced
- genos
- Strong's
- G1085
- Definition
- Race, stock, kind, offspring, family, lineage. From ginomai (to become, to come into being). Genos indicates shared origin, common descent from a source. Used for ethnic groups, family lines, and categories of living things.
Genos appears 21 times in the New Testament. BDAG defines it as 'relatives of various degrees, stock, descendants' and 'a relatively large people group, nation, people.' Paul's use of genos in Acts 17:28 comes from Aratus's poem Phaenomena, which opens with a hymn to Zeus: 'For we are indeed his genos' (line 5). The word in Aratus means 'offspring,' 'stock,' 'lineage.' Aratus was claiming that humans share a common origin with the divine.
Winter's study 'Acts in its Literary Setting' provides context for Paul's rhetorical strategy on the Areopagus. Athens in the mid-first century CE was no longer the political power it had been in the classical period, but it remained the intellectual center of the Roman world. The Areopagus (Areios Pagos, the hill of Ares/Mars) was both a physical location (a rocky outcrop northwest of the Acropolis) and a governing body that oversaw religious and educational matters. Paul was brought before this council after preaching in the agora (marketplace) about Jesus and the resurrection (Acts 17:18). Some Athenians mistook 'Jesus' (Iesous) and 'Resurrection' (Anastasis) for two new deities.
Paul's speech in Acts 17:22-31 is structurally adapted to its audience. He does not quote the Hebrew Scriptures. He does not mention Abraham, Moses, or the covenant. He begins with an observation (the altar 'TO THE UNKNOWN GOD,' 17:23), moves to a creation theology argument accessible to Greek philosophy (God made the world and everything in it, does not live in temples made with hands, gives life to all creatures), and then quotes their own poets. Winter notes that this was standard rhetorical practice: establishing common ground (homonoia) before introducing new claims. Paul's citation of Epimenides and Aratus demonstrated that he had read their literature and could engage it on its own terms.
The move from genos to the resurrection is the pivot of the speech. If humans are God's genos, then God cannot be represented by gold, silver, or stone shaped by human craft (17:29). If God is personal enough to have offspring, then God is personal enough to judge the world through a man he raised from the dead (17:31). Genos becomes the bridge between Greek philosophical theology and the announcement of Christ's resurrection. Winter observes that some listeners mocked (17:32), some deferred ('We will hear thee again'), and some believed (17:34, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris). The mixed response is itself significant: Paul's strategy worked on some of his audience precisely because he met them in their own intellectual territory.
Historical context · Paul's visit to Athens approximately AD 50-51 during his second missionary journey; the Areopagus council in first-century Athens; the philosophical schools (Stoic and Epicurean) active in the Athenian agora
Paul on the Areopagus: Pagan Poets and the Bridge to Resurrection
Athens in the mid-first century CE was a university city. The great philosophical schools founded by Plato (the Academy), Aristotle (the Lyceum), Zeno (the Stoa), and Epicurus (the Garden) still operated, though their glory days were centuries past. Stoic and Epicurean philosophers are specifically mentioned in Acts 17:18 as engaging Paul in the agora. The Stoics taught that a divine logos (reason) permeated all reality and that humans participated in this logos. The Epicureans taught that the gods existed but were uninvolved with human affairs, and that pleasure (understood as the absence of pain and anxiety) was the highest good. Paul's message about a personal God who created, judges, and raises the dead contradicted both schools at significant points while overlapping with others.
Epimenides of Crete (approximately sixth century BCE) composed a poem addressed to Zeus that included the line 'In him we live and move and have our being.' The attribution is debated among scholars, with some assigning the quotation to a later pseudepigraphical work, but the tradition linking it to Epimenides is ancient. Aratus of Soli (approximately 315-240 BCE) was from Cilicia, the same province as Paul's hometown of Tarsus. His poem Phaenomena was widely known in the educated Greek world and began with an invocation of Zeus as the source and sustainer of human life. Paul's quotation of a Cilician poet suggests familiarity with the literary tradition of his home region.
The altar 'TO THE UNKNOWN GOD' (Agnostoi Theoi, 17:23) has been discussed since Pausanias mentioned altars to unknown gods at Athens in his second-century CE Description of Greece (1.1.4). Diogenes Laertius attributes the practice to Epimenides himself, who reportedly advised the Athenians to release sheep and sacrifice them wherever they lay down, dedicating altars 'to the appropriate god' to avert a plague (Lives 1.10). Archaeological evidence for specific 'unknown god' altars is limited, but the literary attestation is sufficient to confirm the practice.
Winter notes that Paul's Areopagus speech represents a distinct missionary approach. In synagogues (Acts 13, Pisidian Antioch), Paul argued from Hebrew Scripture. On the Areopagus, he argued from creation theology and pagan literature. The content changed. The core message did not: God created, God judges, God raised Jesus from the dead. The bridge to that message was genos, a word their own poet had used, repurposed for a claim Aratus never imagined.
For reflection
Genos. Offspring. Stock. Lineage. Paul stood on the Areopagus and quoted a pagan Stoic poet from his own home province to a crowd of Greek philosophers. He did not open with Genesis. He opened with Aratus. He found the fragment of truth already sitting in their intellectual tradition and used it as a foundation. If we are God's genos, then God cannot be a gold statue in a temple. If God has offspring, God is personal enough to judge and personal enough to raise the dead. Where in your conversations are you trying to build a bridge from Moses when the person across the table has never read Moses? Paul started with what they already knew. What truth is already present in the world of the person you are trying to reach?
Genos: race, stock, offspring. From ginomai (to become). BDAG notes the range: family, ethnic group, lineage. Winter documents Paul's rhetorical strategy on the Areopagus: quoting Epimenides and Aratus to establish common ground before introducing the resurrection. Paul adapted his entry point to his audience.
Sources: BDAG; Winter, 'Acts in its Literary Setting'