And Paul got to his feet on Mars' Hill and said, O men of Athens, I see that you are overmuch given to fear of the gods. For when I came by, I was looking at the things to which you give worship, and I saw an altar with this writing on it, TO THE GOD OF WHOM THERE IS NO KNOWLEDGE. Now, what you, without knowledge, give worship to, I make clear to you. — Acts 17:22–23
Paul is standing on the Areopagus — Strong's G697, the Hill of Ares, Athens' own supreme court, its name remembered from a trial where Ares himself stood judged by the Twelve. Athens is a plural word too: Strong's G116, Athenai, is the plural of Athene, the goddess the city is named for. A plural city, on a hill remembered for a plural verdict — the same grammar Elohim uses in Genesis 1:26, when the judges and rulers say let us make, speaking as many. The man addressing this court is named Paulos — small, little — a name that carries no weight of its own. Among the city's altars he has found one with no named occupant: a statute Athens already serves without an assumed I AM. This is not a story about religion. It is a demonstration of what Elohim does when a bench is filed and no identity has been assumed to answer for it — the court keeps ruling, unclaimed, until someone names who sits in the seat. The instrument for that naming is the Genesis vocabulary of maker, breath, nation, and image, run in sequence across one address.
The Maker Of Heaven And Earth — Genesis Day One
Paul turns from the altar to the statute standing behind it. The maker of the earth and everything in it does not live in buildings made with hands. This is ...
