Greek Myth Archives - Rest and Trust

Why was Barnabas called Zeus in the Bible? Ever since I read in Acts 14:11-13 how the people of Lystra mistook Paul and Barnabas for Greek gods after seeing a miraculous healing performed by Paul, I have been intrigued. They called Barnabas Zeus and Paul Hermes — because Paul was the chief speaker.

I could see why Paul would be called Hermes with his ability to wield words and arguments. But why was Barnabas called Zeus? Zeus is the king of the Olympian gods who hurls bolts of lightning. This doesn’t align very well with what we know about Barnabas whose name means “the son of encouragement.”

Between the two of them, Paul qualified more for the role of Zeus with his thunder-and-lightning statements. Yet, the Lystrans must have seen something in Barnabas that reminded them of Zeus, the king of the gods.

Zeus is a complex mythological figure. His father Kronos was known to eat his own children. When Zeus was born, Hera hid the child from his ever-hungry father and gave him a stone instead of the boy. Kronos swallowed the stone without noticing anything. Kronos ate his children not without a reason — he was chronological time. We are all born in chronological time, and we are consumed by it.

Zeus is a moment in time that was saved from being consumed by time. In the Greek lore, Zeus is someone who is above time. He prevails over his father Kronos and becomes king. In doing so he becomes electrified — a Source of divine electricity. People who are above time, shine with heavenly light and joy.

That’s why the Romans associated Jupiter, the Roman equivalent of Zeus, with heavenly joy (gaudium caeleste). He was often depicted as a triumphant figure with a ruddy face. Have you ever met people who are above time? They rule, and they radiate heavenly electricity.

You can read it in their eyes. They tread on earth as kings and queens. They rule over circumstances. They rise above the temporal. They live as if they were eternal. When you touch them, they pass their electricity to you, and you lighten up. You meet them and exclaim, “By Jove, I feel so jovial!”

Maybe that’s what the Lystrans saw in the eyes of Barnabas, “the son of encouragement.” Like a lightning bolt, he must have struck them as someone timeless, someone electrified with divine light, someone contagiously jovial. He was a walking encouragement.

The Lystrans wanted to bring sacrifices to both Paul and Barnabas, but the two men redirected their gazes toward the true Source of light. The light was not their own; they shone with a borrowed light. They were images of the Divine, not gods. And yet, the light shone through them to such a degree that people mistook them for gods. Here’s what C.S. Lewis wrote about this phenomenon:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship… There are no ordinary people.” The Weight of Glory

How does Aletheia save us from the shadows of Lethe? The mythological river Lethe in the kingdom of Hades is the river of “oblivion.” Lethe means oblivion or forgetfulness. The river flows through hell, and whatever falls into Lethe is forgotten.

Surprisingly, Lethe is related to the Greek aletheia, truth. The prefix “a” means “the opposite of” and Lethe means oblivion. Truth is something that doesn’t fall into Lethe. In Greek, aletheia is something that doesn’t fall into oblivion.

But what doesn’t fall into oblivion? Eventually, everything falls into oblivion. Everything is forgotten, except the things (and the times) we have salvaged from being consumed by the flow of chronological time.

Salvaged time is the time snatched from oblivion. It is aletheia.

“Yes, says the Spirit, they are blessed indeed, for they will rest from their hard work; for their good deeds follow them!” Rev. 14:13

Whatever we have done in chronological time to transcend chronological time remains. It follows us. It has been saved from Lethe. It is aletheia. It cannot disappear. Michelangelo said,

“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”

In aletheia, we turn shadows into glimpses of divine perfection. They cannot disappear. We do something “into the law in which we were made” – to use Tolkien’s vernacular. We become sub-creators.

We have glimpsed divine perfection, and we reproduce it within the confines of our shadow world. The only way to salvage the world of shadows from falling into the shadow of oblivion is to transcend the shadows.

Whether we bake bread, write articles, talk to a friend over a cup of tea, build a cathedral, or fix cars – if we glimpse and reflect the divine spark in what we do, we engage in aletheia. We transcend the shadow land.

Everything in the shadow land is a shadow until we see through it and infuse it with divine perfection. We can do it by virtue of our divine birth. We have that spark in us. We are that spark. We are but shadows transcending ourselves by pursuing aletheia every moment of the day.

How does Aletheia save us from the shadows of Lethe? When we pursue aletheia, it follows us. We rise above Lethe. We are timeless.