28. ἐν αὐτῷ γὰρ ζῶμεν
μακρὰν ἀπὸ ἑνὸς ἑκάστου ἡμῶν ὑπάρχοντα.
καὶ κινούµεθα καί ἐσμεν' ὡς καί τινες τῶν καθ ὑμᾶς ποιητῶν xli., 1. ‘God is near thee; He is with
thee; He is within” (quoted by Light- foot, Philippians, p. 290). The relation of man to God is a personal relationship : God is not “' careless of the single life”: ἀπὸ ἑνὸς ἑκάστου ἡμῶν, ‘ from each one ofus,” R.V. The words may well have struck a responsive chord in the hearts, not only of some in the crowd, but of some of the Stoics who were listening, contradictory and incongruous as their system was, with its strange union of a gross material pantheism, and the ex- pression of belief in the fatherly love and goodness of God (see further Lightfoot, πμ. S., Ῥ. 298, and Curtius, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, ii., 530, 531).
Ver. 28. St. Chrysostom comments (Hom., xxxviii.); Τί λέγω μακράν; οὕτως ἐγγύς ἐστιν, ὡς χωρὶς αὐτοῦ μὴ ζῆν. ἐν αὐτῷ γὰρ ζῶμεν κ.τ.λ. « .. καὶ οὐκ εἶπε, δι αὐτοῦ, ἀλλ᾽ ὃ ἐγγύτερον ἦν, ἐν αὐτῷ. In the three verbs it has been sometimes maintained there is an ascending scale; in God we possess the gift of life, in Him we move, in Him we are (not ‘“‘have our being’? simply), i.e., we are what we are, personal beings. Bethge and Plumptre may be named as two chief supporters of some such view as this, whilst others regard the words (Bengel, Weiss) as merely expressing what had been already expressed in ver. 25, or as referring simply (so Overbeck, Wendt, Felten) to our physical life and being.—tév καθ’ ὑμᾶςπ.: “of your own poets,’ see Grimm., sub υ. κατά, with the accusative as a periphrasis for the possessive pronoun; see also Winer- Moulton, xxii., 7, xlix.d, Blass takes it as = ὑμέτεροι., on the reading see W. H. marg. καθ’ ἡμᾶς, though the limited range of attestation prevents them from reading this in the text: ‘‘ there would be a striking fitness in a claim by St. Paul to take his stand as a Greek among Greeks, as he elsewhere vindicates his position as a Roman (xvi. 37; xxii. 25, 28), and as a Pharisee (xxiii. 6)”: W. Η., ii, Ῥ. 3410.---τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμέν: half of an hexameter, the yap καί has nothing to do with the meaning of the quotation in the N.T., but see Winer- Moulton, liii. το. The words are found in Aratus, Β.ο. 270, Phenom., 5, and Cleanthes, B.c. 300, Hymn to Fove, 5; for other parallels see Blass, in loco, and Wetstein, so that Zockler may go too far in saying that St. Paul quoted from
the former as his fellow-countryman, Aratus being of Soli in Cilicia. Both poets named were Stoics, and the words may have been well known as a familiar quotation, see on Tarsus, chapter Ix. 11. In Cleanthes the actual words are rather different, ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ γένος ἐσμέν, where origin rather than kinship may be meant. No doubt it is possible to exaggerate, with Bentley, St. Paul’s knowledge of classical literature, but on the other hand it is not perhaps an unfair inference that a man who could quote so aptly from the poets as here in 1 Cor. xv. 35, and in Tit. i. 12, could have done so at other times if occasion had required, cf. Curtius, ubi supra, Blass, in loco, and Farrar, ‘* Classical Quotations of St. Paul,” St. Paul, ii., Exc., iii. As the words of the hymn were addressed to Zeus, a diffi- culty has been raised as to the Apostle’s application of them here, and it has been questioned whether he was ac- quainted with the context of the words, or whether he was aware of their appli- cation. But he must at least have known that they were not originally written of the God Whom he revealed. If so, however, there seems no more difficulty in supposing that he would apply such a hemistich to a higher pur- pose, than that he should make the inscription on a heathen altar a text for his discourse.