Scripture or Literature? Rethinking Legrand’s Point on the Areopagus Speech

In his analysis of Paul’s Areopagus speech, L. Legrand comments on E. Schweizer’s comparison of Greek poets with “Scripture.” Schweizer had argued that “Greek quotations seem to play here the same part as the Old Testament in speeches to Jews or in a synagogue.”¹ Legrand, however, cautions that this is only an artificial parallelism. At most, such quotations may have served as a captatio benevolentiae—a rhetorical device to win goodwill—without implying that Paul or his hearers treated them as inspired Scripture.²

But here a problem arises. The very word “Scripture” is already a Christian category. It is not certain whether Schweizer himself used it in the precise Catholic sense in which Legrand interprets it, or whether he merely intended a functional comparison. Even if both employed the term, it cannot be assumed that Jews in Paul’s time or Greeks at Athens shared such an understanding. For Jews, “Scriptures” were plural, and the boundaries of the canon were still fluid. For Greeks, the very distinction between “sacred Scripture” and “secular literature” was unknown. To speak of “Scripture” here is therefore to risk an anachronism.

Greeks and the Absence of “Scripture”

Unlike Judaism and Christianity, Greek religion was not text-centered. Sacredness lay in ritual practice—sacrifice, festivals, oracles—rather than in written word. While Homer and Hesiod were revered as foundational poets, they were not canonized as divinely inspired “Scripture.” Philosophers and rhetoricians could quote them with authority, but without investing their words with the same revelatory weight as the Jewish Torah or the later Christian Bible.

The Jewish Canon: Fixed or Fluid?

The contrast with Judaism is striking. By the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (5th century BCE), the Torah had already achieved canonical status, publicly read and regarded as divine Law. Gradually, the Prophets were also recognized, and by the 2nd century BCE Jewish writings often referred to “the Law and the Prophets” as a settled pair.

Yet even here, the situation was not entirely fixed. The Writings (Psalms, Job, Daniel, etc.) remained fluid for centuries. Different Jewish groups valued different texts:

• Sadducees restricted authority to the Torah alone.
• Pharisees accepted a broader collection, including Prophets and Writings.
• Essenes (Qumran) revered additional works like 1 Enoch and Jubilees.

Only after 70 CE, when rabbinic Judaism began to consolidate its identity in contrast to Christianity, did the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) take the more stable form we know today.

The Christian Canon: One Bible, Many Canons

Christians inherited Jewish Scriptures, but in the process expanded and reshaped them. The Septuagint (Greek Bible), widely used in the early Church, included books later excluded by rabbinic Judaism. Thus:

• Catholics recognize 73 books (including the Deuterocanonical books such as Tobit, Judith, and Maccabees).
• Protestants accept 66 books, aligning more closely with the Hebrew canon.
• Eastern Orthodox traditions include even more (e.g., 3–4 Maccabees, Psalm 151, 1 Esdras).
• Ethiopian Orthodox preserve the broadest canon, incorporating works like Enoch and Jubilees.

The New Testament (27 books) is more uniform, but even here the boundaries were contested for centuries.

A Hindu Parallel

Seen against this background, the Hindu perspective offers a helpful analogy. In Hinduism, the boundary between literature and scripture is not absolute. The Ramayana may be read as epic poetry by some, while for others it is sacred scripture. Within the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita is revered as scripture, while other sections are treated as literature. Even within the Ramayana, devotional practice often privileges the Sundara Kanda over the Yuddha Kanda or Aranya Kanda.

This devotion is more related to ritual practice than to theology. It does not aim at understanding the “Ramahood” of Rama (like Christology in Christianity) or formulating a systematic “Ramayanic theology” (like Biblical theology). For instance, if a young girl’s marriage is delayed, it is often recommended to recite the Sundara Kanda with the hope that, before the reading is completed, her marriage will be settled. Interestingly, though Rama and Sita’s wedding occurs in the Bālakāṇḍa, in household practice the Sundara Kanda alone is ritually recited. [see Internet for more information for this] The belief is that obstacles to marriage will be removed through the blessings of Hanuman, who alone discovered Sita in Lanka and gave her hope.

What is striking here is that, though Rama is revered as God, the focus of this devotional practice shifts toward Hanuman, the key figure in the Sundara Kanda. Many Hindus turn to Hanuman for direct help and favor, making him the mediator of Rama’s blessings. This resembles, in some ways, Catholic traditions where the faithful pray to saints or to Mary to intercede before Christ. Yet, the intensity of Hanuman devotion—where he is often chosen as the iṣṭadevatā (personal deity), with temples and shrines dedicated exclusively to him—has no real parallel in most forms of Christianity, especially among Protestants.

This flexible approach suggests that the distinction between literature and scripture is not universal; it is a product of specific religious traditions. Against this wider background, Legrand’s caution deserves a balanced restatement.

Conclusion

Legrand is right to resist Schweizer’s simple equation of Greek poets with Jewish writings, for the Greeks had no concept of a canonized “Word of God” comparable to the Torah or the Bible. At the same time, even Legrand’s own assumption that the Old Testament can straightforwardly be called “Scripture” reflects a later Christian category, not necessarily the way Jews of Paul’s time would have described their sacred texts.

In this light, the real reminder is not Legrand’s Catholic caution but the need to recognize that categories like “Scripture” and “literature” are tradition-specific. Jews developed their canon gradually; Christians inherited and diversified it; Hindus often blur the line between epic and scripture. To impose a strict Judeo-Christian lens on Greek texts risks misunderstanding both Paul’s rhetorical strategy and the Greeks’ own cultural world.

Thus, while Schweizer may have intended only a functional comparison, Legrand interprets it through a Catholic framework of “Sacred Scripture.” The result is that the debate reflects less about Paul’s Athenian audience and more about how later Christian interpreters project their categories into the past.

As a bhakta of Muktinath, I accept the Mukti Veda as the Word of God. Yet I do not claim it is the only Word of God [borrowing the words from Paul Sudhakaran³]. My concern here is not theological exclusivism but historical accuracy: neither Jews of Paul’s time nor Greeks had a concept of ‘Scripture’ comparable to later Christian use of the term.”

Ashram, August 18, 2025

¹ E. Schweizer, “Concerning the Speeches in Acts,” in Studies in Luke-Acts, edited by L. E. Keck and J. L. Martyn (Nashville, 1966), p. 202. {“E. Schweizer” is Eduard Schweizer (1913–2006), a well-known Swiss Protestant New Testament scholar. He taught in Zurich, wrote many commentaries (e.g., on Mark, Matthew, and theological themes in the New Testament), and was deeply respected in academic circles.—accessed by ChatGPT on August 19, 2025}

² L. Legrand, “The Missionary Significance of the Areopagus Speech,” in S. Gispert-Sauch (ed.), God’s Word Among Men: Papers in Honour of Fr. Joseph Putz, S.J. (Delhi: Vidyajoti, 1973), pp. 59–71, esp. p. 67.

3 To say that Bible is the Word of God is Biblical, but it is unbiblical to say that Bible only is the Word of God. The Biblical truth has to be seen separate from the cultural additions and even distortions of it. If God is the God revealed in the Bible, who is the Father, Creator, Redeemer and Saviour and who is also light and life, and whose name is love, then it is evident that the knowledge of Him cannot be confined to a people in one geographical area. Hindu scriptures contain deep insights on God and meaningful dialogues with Hindus will only enrich the churches’ understanding of God and Christ.—Wilhelmina Sudhakar, Chosen to Serve: The Life and Writings of Paul Sudhakar, 2007p. 269

Appendix: The Septuagint and Its Legacy

The Septuagint (often abbreviated LXX, “Seventy”) is the earliest Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, begun in Alexandria around the 3rd century BCE. Surrounded by both legend and scholarship, it played a central role not only in Judaism of the Diaspora but also in the formation of early Christianity. Its complex history reminds us that the idea of “canonical authority” in Scripture was not a simple or straightforward conclusion. Rather, it emerged through a long process shaped by translation, interpretation, and community reception.

1. Origin and Context

According to a widely circulated tradition, recorded in the Letter of Aristeas and repeated by later Christian writers, King Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt (285–247 BCE) commissioned the translation of the Jewish Law into Greek for his famous library at Alexandria. Seventy (or seventy-two) translators were said to have produced the work in seventy-two days—hence the name Septuagint.¹

In reality, as Leonard Greenspoon has shown, the translation emerged because Hellenized Jews in Alexandria no longer understood Hebrew fluently and needed Scripture in their everyday language.² Rodney Stark notes that, “as early as the third century B.C.E. their Hebrew had decayed to the point that the Torah had to be translated into Greek.”³

2. The Nature of the Translation

The Septuagint was not a word-for-word rendering. Hellenistic perspectives shaped some of its choices. For example, Exodus 22:28, which in Hebrew reads “You shall not revile God,” was rendered in the LXX as “You shall not revile the gods.”⁴ Calvin Roetzel interprets this as an accommodation toward pagan sensibilities in the Greek world.

3. Reception in Judaism and Christianity

Initially, the Septuagint was revered in Jewish communities. But once Christians adopted it and used it as their “Old Testament,” rabbinic Judaism began to distance itself from it. More literal translations (such as those of Symmachus and Theodotion) came into use, and eventually some rabbis declared that the Torah could not truly be translated at all—a conviction later echoed in Islam’s view of the Qur’an.⁵

For Christians, however, the Septuagint was indispensable. Andrew Walls observes that the LXX was “the only alternative literature in the Greek world which could claim comparable antiquity with the Greek corpus.”⁶ Since Hellenistic culture valued antiquity, Christians used the Septuagint to argue that their faith was rooted in writings older than Plato or Socrates. Some apologists even claimed that Plato borrowed from Moses or Isaiah.⁷

4. Translation and the Word of God

Walls draws a crucial theological contrast between Christianity and Islam. For Muslims, the Qur’an is the eternal Word of God, and thus only Arabic is adequate for its expression. For Christians, however, Christ himself is the Eternal Word, while the Scriptures—even though described as “Word of God”—are contingent and translatable. “That fact is the sign,” writes Walls, “that the contingent Scriptures… may and should constantly be translated.”⁸

Notes

1. Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (New York: Orbis Books, 1996; 10th printing 2005), 30.
2. Leonard J. Greenspoon, “Mission to Alexandria: Truth and Legend about the Creation of the Septuagint, the First Bible Translation,” Bible Review 5 (August 1989): 34–41.
3. Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1977), 57.
4. Stark, The Rise of Christianity, 57–58; citing Calvin J. Roetzel, The World That Shaped the New Testament (Atlanta: John Knox, 1985).
5. Walls, The Missionary Movement, 32.
6. Ibid., 33.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 27.
9. This article examines Legrand’s caution against equating Greek poets with Jewish Scripture. While some modern scholars draw parallels, the Greeks had no canonized “Word of God” comparable to the Torah or the Bible. Literature and scripture are not universally defined categories but are shaped by specific religious traditions. In Hinduism, for example, the Ramayana may be viewed as either epic poetry or sacred scripture, showing how texts can occupy multiple roles. Against this wider background, Legrand’s warning is timely: categories like “sacred Scripture” and “secular literature” must not be imposed uncritically across different cultures.

Summary

This article examines Legrand’s caution against equating Greek poets with Jewish Scripture. While some modern scholars draw parallels, the Greeks had no canonized “Word of God” comparable to the Torah or the Bible. Literature and scripture are not universally defined categories but are shaped by specific religious traditions. In Hinduism, for example, the Ramayana may be viewed as either epic poetry or sacred scripture, showing how texts can occupy multiple roles. Against this wider background, Legrand’s warning is timely: categories like “sacred Scripture” and “secular literature” must not be imposed uncritically across different cultures.