The life and work of St. Paul

CLASSIC QUOTATIONS OF ST. PATTL. 607
poems which wore most in vogue at this period, the Phenomena of AratuB. 1 With the
writings of this poet St. Paul may have become acquainted, both because they are
entirely harmless which Is more than can be said of almost any other Pagan production
which was popular at that time and because Aratus was a Cilician, and very probably &
Tarsian. 2 The third was one of those common sententious pieces of morality which had
passed into a proverb, and which in all probability Menander, in his Thais, had
appropriated from some lost tragedy of Euripides. St. Paul is far more likely to have
heard it used in common parlance, or to have seen it inscribed on one of the Hermse at
Tarsus or Athens, than to have read it in Menander, or even as Socrates 3 and
Chrysostom seem to think in one of the Greek tragedians. It is further remarkable
about these quotations, first, that all three of them were so current, they are found in at
least two poets each ; and next, that two of them occur at the very beginning of Hymna
to Zeus. If any collection of Hymns to Zeus was to be found on any bookstall at Athens,
it is exactly the kind of book into which St. Paul's human sympathies may have induced
him to dip in support of his liberal and enlightened view that God had revealed Himself
even to the heathen, to a degree sufficient for their happiness and their salvation, had
they chosen to make use of the light they had. 4 A third very remarkable point is that
In the quotation from Menander or Euripides, whichever it may have been, the great
majority of the best MSS. read xpi