TITUS 1:12-13a

“One of their own people, their prophet, said, 'Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.' This testimony is true.” This is perhaps the basis for the famous “false speaker” paradox: You meet a man from another country. If he says that everyone where he comes from is a liar, then should you believe his statement? Whichever way you decide, you run into a logical contradiction. But Paul apparently believes that we should believe him.

There is great uncertainty to start with concerning the original source of the above quotation. Ancient writers seem to be divided between two options. The majority opinion is that it originated with Epimenides, a Cretan poet living around 650-500 BC, but we do not have any copies of the original play from which it was taken. Another possibility is that the quote came from Callimachus (300-240 BC), who however only has the first part of Paul's cited statement – “Cretans are always liars.” – and was himself probably quoting the much earlier Epimenides. Another variation on this theme is that Paul cited it from a collection of famous sayings to which he had access. For convenience sake, we will just consider that Epimenides was the source.

The first interesting point is that Paul treats the author as if he were a prophet even though he was not a Jew. The only other time in the Bible a non-Jew is called a prophet is the OT case of Balaam. God does talk to Balaam, but that “prophet” does not at all typify genuine prophets of God in his actions. Paul is probably only referring to the great esteem in which the ancient Greeks held Epimenides. One commentator even suggested that Paul points to his elevated reputation in order to claim him as one of the two witnesses needed in the OT law in order to convict a person. Paul with his own experiences of the Cretans was the other witness.

But the major sticking point with this passage remains the apparent paradox that it offers. Here are seven different approaches used in attempts to resolve it satisfactorily, and there may well be others also:

1. Orr and Walther take the easy way out by stating that Paul did not write the Epistle to Titus at all, or at least not this particular passage. Their stance is based on the fact that nowhere else in Paul's writings does Paul so harshly criticize a whole ethnic group. Knight replies to this line of reasoning by saying, “Paul is not making an ethnic slur, but is merely accurately observing.” As a matter of fact, the universally poor opinion the Greeks had of Cretans is typified by their coining the verb “to cretize” as a synonym for lying. Another possible answer to Orr and Walther's position is given by Lea and Griffin, who say, “Paul evidently applied this quotation to the Cretan false teachers, not to Cretans in general. Litkin agrees with this assessment when he states that “Paul's own experience was that the 'false teachers fit the Cretan stereotype.” And, finally, Quinn feels that Paul's criticism comes from the fact that “the Cretan churches that had dead-ended into Judaism were warning examples of what happened to Christians who rejected Paul.”

2. Thistleton makes the rather overly subtle (to my mind) proposal that Paul is not endorsing the statement when he says, “This testimony is true.” Instead he is saying that it is true that wasting time in endless philosophical discussions regarding this paradoxical statement “constitutes a valid example of the kind of profitless controversy described above, which makes truth a merely theoretical matter.” However, Ward says that “Paul would not have the patience to consider the fallacy involved, even if he had thought of it.”

3. Knight points out that since Callimachus was not a Cretan, if he was the source of the quote then the paradox disappears. However, in that case, one has to explain why Paul said that the “prophet” was one of their own.”

4. Since Paul was probably not quoting directly from Epimenides, he may have been unaware that it originally was part of a play written in verse, and those words were placed on the lips of one of the characters in the play and didn't actually reflect Epimenides' own feelings. (Quinn)

5. Towner takes yet another tack: “There was no evidence of any awareness of a logical paradox in this use of the material. The force is that of self-condemnation, reflecting a lack of bias and therefore (especially given the authoritative status of one to whom the saying is attributed) to be taken as weighty.” In other words, Epimachus is humbly considering himself in that negative description of his people.

6. Quinn notes that “Huxley...suggests that the line is in fact an oracle from Delphi that replied to Epimenides' criticism of the claims of that shrine.” But if that is so, then Paul was very mistaken in saying that it came from a Cretan.

7. But the most common opinion expressed by the sources I consulted (and the most likely answer, my own opinion) was that “by Paul's day the saying had become a proverb.” Similarly, Quinn calls it “a proverbial line” and Guthrie labels it “a proverbial saying.”