Titus as Apologia: Grace for Liars, Beasts, and Bellies

Abstract

1999) 185-209 • www.rts.edu/kidd/TitusasApologia/titusasapologia.pdf • Manuscript Version, Page 1 uity, asserts the 1 century BCE Roman historian Diodorus Siculus, Greeks have ut the gods in two ways. Certain gods are eternal in genesis and imperishable in thers are “earthly gods (epigeioi theoi) who have attained undying honor and fame benefactions bestowed upon humankind” (Diodorus 6.2). Frances Young’s “theology is always earthed in a context,” takes on particular piquancy when a ’s approach to the divine is “earth-based” to begin with. In common perception, the or the latter way of imagining divinity was the island of Crete — for in Cretan the origins of the gods, even the father of the gods, Zeus himself, had been born as a sed, and indeed, killed and buried as well. I propose that it is in the interest of assumptions about the earthly origins of the “deity” long associated with Crete that y of the letter to Titus, written to a Pauline delegate ministering on Crete in the latter first century, is formulated. Moreover, I suggest that the lifestyle this letter as being congruent with this God’s nature is itself intended to be a bold apologetic for as a better, indeed the only, way to attain an ideal of humanity long resident in al thinking.