Epimenides of Knossos

Epimenides of Knossos (Crete) (Greek: Επιμενίδης) was a semi-mythical 6th century BC Greek seer and philosopher-poet, who is said to have fallen asleep for fifty-seven years in a Cretian cave sacred to Zeus, after which he reportedly awoke with the gift of prophecy. Image File history File links Epimenides. ... Image File history File links Epimenides. ... Knossos Knossos (35°18′N 25°10′E; alternative spellings Knossus, Cnossus, Gnossus, Greek Κνωσσός; see also List of traditional Greek place names) is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete, probably the ceremonial and political center of the Minoan culture. ... Crete (Greek Κρήτη / Kriti; see Wiktionary: Crete for the name in other languages) is the largest of the Greek islands and the fifth largest in the Mediterranean Sea. ... Greek mythology consists of a large collection of narratives detailing the lives and adventures of a wide variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines, which were first envisioned and disseminated in an oral-poetic tradition. ... (2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium) // Overview The 5th and 6th centuries BC were a time of empires, but more importantly, a time of learning and philosophy. ... A prophet is a person who is believed to speak through divine inspiration. ... A philosopher is a person who thinks deeply regarding people, society, the world, and/or the universe. ... Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create) is traditionally a written art form (although there is also an ancient and modern poetry which relies mainly upon oral or pictorial representations) in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Statue of Zeus Phidias created the 12-m (40-ft) tall statue of Zeus at Olympia about 435 BC. The statue was perhaps the most famous sculpture in ancient Greece, imagined here in a 16th-century engraving. ...

Plutarch writes in his Life of Solon that Epimenides purified Athens after the pollution brought by the Alcmeonidae, and that the seer's expertise in sacrifices and reform of funeral practices were of great help to Solon is his reform of the Athenian state. Diogenes Laertius preserves a number of spurious letters between Epimenides and Solon in his Lives of the Philosophers. Epimenides was also said to have prophesied at Sparta on military matters. Plutarch Mestrius Plutarchus (c. ... Athens (Greek: Αθήνα Athína IPA ) is the capital of Greece and one of the most famous cities in the world. ... The Alcmaeonidae or Alcmaeonids were a powerful noble family of ancient Athens who claimed descent from the mythological Alcmaeon. ... Sacrifice (from a Middle English verb meaning to make sacred, from Old Marcus Aurelius and members of the Imperial family offer sacrifice in gratitude for success against Germanic tribes: contemporary bas-relief, Capitoline Museum, Rome French, from Latin sacrificium : sacer, sacred; sacred + facere, to make) is commonly known as the... Solon Solon (Greek: Σόλων, ca. ... Diogenes Laërtius, the biographer of the Greek philosophers, is supposed by some to have received his surname from the town of Laerte in Cilicia, and by others from the Roman family of the Laërtii. ...

Pausanias reports that when Epimenides died, his skin was found to be covered with tattooed writing. This was considered odd, because the Greeks reserved tatooing for slaves. Some modern scholars have seen this as evidence that Epimenides was heir to the shamanic religions of Central Asia, because tattooing is often associated with shamanic initiation. The skin of Epimenides was preserved at the courts of the ephores in Sparta, conceivably as a good-luck charm. Pausanias was Greek traveller and geographer of the 2nd century A.D., who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. ... A tattoo is a design or marking made by the insertion of a pigment into punctures or cuts in the skin. ... The Buxton Memorial Fountain, celebrating the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire in 1834, London. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Coming from the Latin, initiation implies a beginning. ... An ephor was an official of ancient Sparta. ... Sparta (Σπάρτη) was a city in ancient Greece, whose territory included, in Classical times, all Laconia and Messenia, and which was the most powerful state of the Peloponnesus. ...

Several prose and poetic works, now lost, were attributed to Epimenides by the Suda, including a theogony, oracles, a work on the laws of Crete, and a treatise on Minos and Rhadymanthus. Suda (Σουδα or alternatively Suidas) is a massive 10th century Byzantine Greek historical encyclopædia of the ancient Mediterranean world. ... Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins of the gods of Greek mythology. ... Crete (Greek Κρήτη / Kriti; see Wiktionary: Crete for the name in other languages) is the largest of the Greek islands and the fifth largest in the Mediterranean Sea. ... MINOS (or Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) is an experiment at Fermilab, designed to study the phenomena of neutrino oscillations, first discovered by Super-Kamiokande experiment in 1998. ... Rhadamanthus (also transliterated as Rhadamanthys or Rhadamanthos) in Greek mythology was a son of Zeus and Europa and brother of Minos, king of Crete and Sarpedon. ...

Epimenides' poem Cretica is quoted twice in the New Testament. In the poem, Minos addresses Zeus thus: See New Covenant for the concept translated as New Testament in the KJV. The New Testament, sometimes called the Greek Testament or Greek Scriptures, and, in recent times, also New Covenant, is the name given to the part of the Christian Bible that was written after the birth of Jesus. ... MINOS (or Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) is an experiment at Fermilab, designed to study the phenomena of neutrino oscillations, first discovered by Super-Kamiokande experiment in 1998. ... Statue of Zeus Phidias created the 12-m (40-ft) tall statue of Zeus at Olympia about 435 BC. The statue was perhaps the most famous sculpture in ancient Greece, imagined here in a 16th-century engraving. ...

They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one—

The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!

But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever,

For in thee we live and move and have our being.

The "lie" of the Cretians is that Zeus was mortal; Epimenides considered Zeus immortal. The second line is quoted, with a veiled attribution ("a prophet of their own"), in the Epistle to Titus, chapter 1, verse 12, to warn Titus about the Cretians. "Cretians, always liars", with the same theological intent as Epimenides, also appears in the Hymn to Zeus of Callimachus. The fourth line is quoted without attribution in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 17, verse 28. The Pastoral Epistles are often considered together, as each throws light upon the others. ... Callimachus (ca. ... The Acts of the Apostles (Greek Praxeis Apostolon) is a book of the Bible, which now stands fifth in the New Testament. ...

The "prophet" in Titus 1:12 is identified by Clement of Alexandria as Epimenides (Miscellanies, chapter 14). In this passage, Clement mentions that "some say" Epimenides should be counted among the seven wisest philosophers. Clement of Alexandria (Titus Flavius Clemens), was the first member of the Church of Alexandria to be more than a name, and one of its most distinguished teachers. ...

It is not clear when Epimenides became associated with the Epimenides paradox, a variation of the liar paradox. Epimenides himself does not appear to have intended any irony or paradox in his statement, "Cretans, always liars", nor did Callimachus, nor the author of Titus, nor Clement. In the Middle Ages, many forms of the liar paradox were studied under the heading of insolubilia, but these were not associated with Epimenides. The earliest unmistakable reference to the Epimenides paradox as it is known today is an article by Bertrand Russell on the theory of types dating to 1908. The Epimenides paradox is a problem in logic. ... In philosophy and logic, the liar paradox encompasses paradoxical statements such as: Analysing the statement I am lying now. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... In the Middle Ages, variations on the liar paradox were studied under the name of insolubilia (insolubles). ... Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was an influential British logician, philosopher, and mathematician, working mostly in the 20th century. ... At the broadest level, type theory is the branch of mathematics and logic that concerns itself with classifying entities into sets called types. ...