Titus 1:12 - quote from pagan author?

[adf417]

We are presenting the lecture series “Apostle Pauls Letters”, by Father Raymond Collins, in our Adult Ed classes and today I heard something I have never heard. He says, about Titus 1:12, that “this is a quote from a pagan author”.

Has anyone heard this before? Do we have any historical evidence for this?

Peace!!!

 

[Neofight]

Yes. Its a quote from the poet Epimenides.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

According to my Jerusalem Bible the quotation is attributed to the 6th cen Epimenides of Knossos (the first half being also quoted by the 3rd cen Callimachus of Alexandria).

Presumably to Paul this is a mnemonic sort of way of taking a dig at some religious leaders in the Cretan church who twisted the truth.

I expect the concepts “Cretans” and “liars” went together proverbially, possibly since before Epimenides. It would have been a standing joke and absolutely standard figure of speech.

Jane Hood has some interesting things to say about the saying in “The Classic Magpie” pubd 2014, Icon Books.

It is a play on the difference between opposite and negation. Because some Cretans are liars (like some people anywhere), but they presumably held themselves up as invariably whiter than white (like groups we know) by saying something like “No Cretans are liars”, it satirises them by obliquely contradicting as a sly allusion to the true contradiction.

Maybe Epimenides was satirising himself as a Cretan and to pretend to be expressing the “liar paradox” by raising the unanswerable puzzle as to whether he as lying here or not (which he wasn’t if you unravel it as above). (Or Callimachus, a non-Cretan, was vicariously applying it to Epimenides thus.)

 

[RPRPsych]

We are presenting the lecture series “Apostle Pauls Letters”, by Father Raymond Collins, in our Adult Ed classes and today I heard something I have never heard. He says, about Titus 1:12, that “this is a quote from a pagan author”.

Has anyone heard this before? Do we have any historical evidence for this?

Peace!!!

It’s in the text itself: Saint Paul writes “One of Crete’s own prophets has said it…”

And as Neofight rightly pointed out, it’s a quote from a Cretan poet, Epimenides.

 

[claymcdermott]

This is not the only time he quotes pagan authors. He does so in Corinthians and Ephesians as well, and possibly makes more allusions that are not quotes.

Jesus also paraphrases a quote from one of the Gracchus Brothers.

peter uses the word for Hell used in Greek myth.

The Book of Revelations makes references to Roman and possibly Persian myth.

It is not unusual for the New Testament.

 

[kdbueno]

I understand. You could try reading tobit, rather.

 

[thistle]

We are presenting the lecture series “Apostle Pauls Letters”, by Father Raymond Collins, in our Adult Ed classes and today I heard something I have never heard. He says, about Titus 1:12, that “this is a quote from a pagan author”.

Has anyone heard this before? Do we have any historical evidence for this?

Peace!!!

D-R Bible, Haydock Commentary:

Ver. 12. One of them, a prophet of their own.[9] He does not mean a true prophet, but as the pretended prophets of Baal were called prophets. St. Paul understands Epimenides, a poet of Crete, who by some pagan authors was thought to know things to come; but Aristotle says, he knew only things past, not to come. The ill character he gave of the Cretians was, that they were always liars, evil beasts, slothful bellies, addicted to idleness and sensual pleasures. (Witham)