I've made a thread about Paul's sermon in Athens on pretty much every account I've had because it's one of the my favorite parts of the whole Bible, and because my accounts keep getting murked it's about time to do it again...

"Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, 'TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.' Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you."

Acts 17:22-23

The practice of making an altar to an "unknown god" has archeological documentation, such as this one which was found in Rome. However, the altar in Athens had a much more significant backstory...

Epimenides, a 6th century BC philosopher contemporary with Plato and Aristotle, was called to Athens in the midst of a great plague. The Athenians had sacrificed to every one of their hundreds of gods and goddesses to stop it, but nothing worked...

Wise Epimenides concluded that there must then be an unknown god which they were ignorant of who could be petitioned to stop the plague if they acknowledged their ignorance. The elders of the city agreed...

They then took a flock of sheep out to graze, and prayed to the unknown god to stay the plague and to separate whatever sheep they desired from the rest of the flock to be sacrificed. Certain sheep laid down, they were sacrificed, and an altar to this unknown god was erected...

Almost immediately the plague ended, and the city rejoiced. This story comes from the historical record of Diogenes Laertius in the third century AD. It's also worth noting that Paul was well aware of Epimenides, as he quoted him in Titus 1:12...

Paul's sermon was the finishing of a work which God had began in Athens hundreds of years before Christ's birth. Although most Athenians scoffed, some believed and were saved, showing how far God is willing to go just to save a few...how great He is!

"and [God] hath made of one blood all nations of men...that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being..."

Acts 17:26-28