Greek poetry quotes in the NT

[angellous_evangellous]

I submitted an article last night on the quotations of Greek poetry in the NT. I am still in the process of verifying them - due to car trouble I have not yet made it to the library - but I am intrigued with how ancient the quotes are.


The authors of the NT quote Greek poets three times, and all three times the quote appears in two poets -- and each time the quoted material appears at the begging of the poem referenced.


I noticed today that all of the poems quoted are dated at about the time of Socrates -- about 330BCE.

That just seems remarkable to me.


Here is a quote from an unrevised paper that I am working on... everything herein is due to be revised a few times, but the raw data is still useful.

Fortunately, we have many extant writings of Roman poets in Paul’s day; unfortunately, of course, all of their works are in Latin.

[1] More ancient poets are also useful to us because of their resilience to time and a low literacy rate. We should note that knowledge of ancient Greek poetry permeated several audiences of the New Testament.[2] There are three quotations of poetry in the NT by three different authors, and every source that they quote predates the NT by at least two hundred years.[3]

P. H. Ling notes three remarkable characteristics of these quotations. All three of these quotations appear in two poets and near the beginning of the poem, and all of these are from Paul (or, from our perspective, put into the mouth or pen of Paul by the authors of Acts and Titus). Acts 7.28 (with the quotation formula), “w`j kai, tinej tw/n kaqV u`ma/j poihtw/n eivrh,kasin\ tou/ ga.r kai. ge,noj evsme,n,” appears in Aratus of Soli (315-240BCE)[4], Phenomena, line 5 and in Cleanthes (301-252BCE), Hymn to Zeus, line 8. 1 Cor. 15.33, “fqei,rousin h;qh crhsta. o`mili,ai kakai,” are attributed by ancient writers to the lost Thaïs of Menander (342-291BCE) and to Euripides (480-406BCE); Ling concludes that it must have been at the beginning of a work based in its structure. Finally, Titus 1.12, “Krh/tej avei. yeu/stai( kaka. qhri,a( gaste,rej avrgai,” is in Callimachus (305-240BCE), Hymn to Zeus, line 8 and also attributed to a lost poem of Epimenides (ca 6th century BCE?).

[1] These being Publius Terentius Varro Atacinus (82 BCE - c.35 BCE); Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 84 BCE – ca. 54 BCE); Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BCE- 8 CE); Gaius Valerius Flaccus (late first century CE); Marcus Valerius Martialis (40CE-102CE). We know of many of their patrons; their relationships will be discussed below.

[2] We will make two assumptions here: first, that the writers of the NT quoted poets that s/he knew that the original reader would be able to understand and second, that the original reader is part of a larger audience: no document in the NT was written for one person, but an audience, that is, the church.

[3] The three instances are Acts 17.28; 1 Cor. 15.33; and Titus 1.12 (which we consider to be deutero-Pauline). For bibliography on the deutero-Pauline nature of the Pastorals, see Udo Schnelle, The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings, trans. Eugene Boring (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 328-32.

[4] Several editions of the Phenomena are available, D. A. Kidd, "Notes on Aratus, Phaenomena," The Classical Quarterly 31, no. 2 (1981), n. 1.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

For all 11 people that read this thread originally -- and all new viewers,

I have found something interesting about the poet Aratus:

John Speath notes the enduring popularity of Aratus, "Cicero the Poet," The Classical Journal (Apr 1931): 504. He was translated into Latin by Cicero, Caesar Germanicus the Younger, by the father of the poet Statius, and in the fourth century by Rufius Festus Avienus. Ovid wrote in Amores 1.15.6 that the fame of Aratus would last as long as the sun and moon, and traces of his influence are found in Virgil, Georgics, 1.351-465.