Talk:Unknown God

Comments
Is there any proof this? Can I see a quote? Sounds kind of silly to me, personally. I would think if they were going to create a mythology, they would probably name every part of it. Tolkien did it, why can't they?--ATrivedi 16:50, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Not necessarily. It might have been a symbol of acknowledgement that there might be other gods outside of the ones they already know. Ausir 18:22, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Diogenes Laertius. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.168.171.113 (talk) 17:37, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I have a very high interest in different mysteries that are through out the Bible. This is one of them. I really believe that it is quite possible that Greek mythology is connected to a Scripture in the book of Genesis in where it speaks about the Sons of God came in the daughters of men and the created giants in the land. If you really think about it, those giants would called in Greek mythology demi gods. The reasoning for this is because the Hebrew work that is used for Sons of God is both human and angelic. This is present when the three angels visit Abraham later on in Genesis. They were also in human form before Abraham. One of the things I have read at one time is that the altar was originally built because of some kind of plague of pestilence. The Greeks prayed to all their gods and nothing happened. A philosopher who I want to say may have been Aristotle (can't remember exactly) said that there must be another god out there that we don't know about. They built the altar and worshipped this Unknown God and the famine, pestilence, or plague was gone. This is very similar to what Moses did when they raised the serpent the Israelites were healed. I only put this on here for something to possibly investigate or possibly do some further research on, but I do find it quite interesting the possible connections.184.177.47.199 (talk) 01:14, 15 April 2013 (UTC)Joshua Allan184.177.47.199 (talk) 01:14, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Unknown soldiers
Which came first, temples to an unknown god or monuments akin to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? Is one inspired by the other? 70.15.116.59 21:00, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Paul at Athens
Why isn't this at Epimenides instead? DaAnHo (talk) 11:57, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Big problem ( I think )
( sorry for the english I'm french )

This whole article is actually just a rewrite of a page from the book of missionary Don_Richardson_(missionary) "Eternity in their Hearts" ( Chapter 1 on Athens ). I came upon this article doing research about that book. ( you can read that part of the book here : )

It is not word for word, but the whole reasoning is the same, as well as the sources that are exactly the same.

The problem here is that the part about Epimenides is actually an invention from Don_Richardson_(missionary) : the story from Diogenes_La%C3%ABrtius is not at all as stated in the book and in the article.

Also the two sources about "an unknown god" ( Philopatris and Pausanius ) are just single sentences, not sources talking about the article's subject, and actually both state "unknown gods" ( plural ).

Also, the whole idea of an unknown god in ancient greece is ( part of ) the thesis of Richardson's book, and he states that that unknown god is actually Yahveh.

I have not found any other trace of that idea, and would be very interrested in earing about one.

This whole article is a complete invention. If rewritten, it would need to be based only on the actual fact, which is that two greek authors talk about "unknown gods", not a single "unknown god" ( at least in the french translation, I need to check for the english one ). All the rest of this article is pure invention.

I unfortunately only have the references in French at the moment, but I will tomorrow search for the greek->english translation of the 3 greek sources.

The 3 texts cited in the article, that do not actually contain what the article say they do :


 * Here is for the text from Diogenes :  as you can see, it is not at all the same story as in the article.
 * Also, the more anecdotal part about "unknown gods" from Pliostratus :, it states "unknown Gods", not "unknown God".
 * And finally for Pausanias it's also a plural :

So the first part of the article is not factual at all. The second part is solely about the Bible ...

Please at least put a banner on this page saying it's controversial ( I don't know how, I'm new ), because it is much more than controversial, it's false. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arthurwolf (talk • contribs) 23:24, 24 April 2011


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 * I have added a tag, per the above. Thanks. By the way, your English is excellent; no apology is required.   Chzz  ►  23:34, 24 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much ! I will wait for a while to see if anyone has additional sources for this. I have also contacted the author of the book ( Richardson ) to see if maybe he has more sources for his claim. I will come back here later and ask how to rewrite the article, in case nobody has additional sources. Arthurwolf (talk) 23:43, 24 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Sources appear to include Hellenism, Judaism, Christianity: essays on their interaction By Pieter Willem van der Horst, The Encyclopedia of religion, Volume 1 and A Companion to Greek Rhetoric By Ian Worthington all citing Agnostos Theos: Untersuchungen zur Formengeschichte religiöser Rede by Eduard Norden from 1923. Sergeant Cribb (talk) 21:19, 30 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The book Agnostos Theos: Untersuchungen zur Formengeschichte religiöser Rede is fairly old, for such a concept to be accurate ( a single Unknown God in ancient greece ), one would expect to find some other more recent source for it ... I can't read german, but a quick look in the book and on the internet shows it seems to be only based on the Bible passage from Acts ... I would be very much interrested in an english translation of the book showing it has other sources for the concept, or in any other more recent work showing other sources for the concept ... --Arthurwolf (talk) 10:46, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It's from 1913 actually. I used the van der Horst chapter to rewrite the beginning to make it clear the idea is by Norden. There's plenty more in that chapter and plenty of other sources out there. Even if this theory/idea all stems from that one 1913 book, we can still make an article out of discussing these concepts. I removed the hoax tag; if anything it's a fringe theory rather than a hoax. Fences  &amp;  Windows  21:18, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree fringe theory seems appropriate. However, the last part : « According to a story told by Diogenes Laërtius, ... However, at least one, if not several sheep led the Athenians to a location that had no god associated with it. Thus an altar was built there without a god's name inscribed upon it. ». Is not accurate. If you read the original text from DL : http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lives_of_the_Eminent_Philosophers/Book_I#Epimenides, no mention is made to altars to an unknown god. Actually this makes the whole passage about Epimenides irrelevant ... Should I remove it ? --Arthurwolf (talk) 21:22, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
 * After looking more at this, the whole part about Epimenides is not relevant to the matter. Removing it now. --Arthurwolf (talk) 21:38, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Original vs Christian meaning
Ancient Greeks had "unknown god" offerings.

Plato wrote that in Pireas or Piraeus people celebrated non Greek Gods. Ancient Greeks where open to other Gods. Plato's text is a fact.

Christians claimed with their imagination that "unknown god" means "a single unknown god that will cancel all other gods". All the data we have are against that. Ancient Greek texts do exist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2149:8427:1800:D453:BAB4:5347:4413 (talk) 12:24, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

The Unknown God was not a theory as the opening suggests
I have corrected the opening. Reaper7 (talk) 20:00, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It *is* a theory/hypothesis (and a fringe one at that), you clearly have not read the previous conversations on this page about this, please inform yourself about existing conversations before entirely and unilaterally reverting them. This idea comes from the 1913 book, and is not supported anywhere/anytime else. You should first participate/add to the existing discussion about this on this Talk page before single-handedly reverting previous work. Arthurwolf~enwiki (talk) 17:06, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Refocusing this page to line up better with it's titled topic
The English language version of this page seems quite focused on the biblical reference to the Unknown God and not general idea of the "Unknown God" in Greek culture. The Greek language version of this page does a much better job putting the this idea in broader historical and cultural terms.

I propose scaling back a lot of the current content on the English language page and moving it to a more appropriate page (perhaps the page for Paul the Apostle, the christianization of Greece, or a page discussing other religions mentioned in the bible?) then building out more general information about the Unknown God in a Greek cultural setting starting with the referenced material from the Greek language page. The scaled back current content could then be a section in the page. If these changes come to pass it might also make sense to change the primary title of this page to "Agnostos Theos". I assume the idea of the Unknown God is not unique to Greek culture, so if this page is going to focus on Greek culture it should probably use the Greek term for the idea.

Does anyone have problems with this plan?

Skoulikomirmigotripa (talk) 22:55, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Cleaned up some things
The introductory paragraph was confusing and/or misleading, so I've made a few section divisions and split the intro into two sections. (With regard to the "theory", it was actually a book.) Then I went and added a new introductory paragraph since it needed one. I've made some changes and moved a few things around, like I moved the stuff about the Roman altar into a different section since it's something else. I also added a section on the unknowable One from Neoplatonism. 2601:49:8400:26B:887A:5BD8:E2E:A46C (talk) 13:50, 29 June 2024 (UTC)