Areopagus meaning

Meaning

Ares' Dome, The Containment Of Competition

Etymology

From (1) the name Ares, and (2) παγος (pagos), a thing fixed or liquid contained, from the verb πηγνυμι (pegnumi), to secure of fasten.

Related names

• Via αρετη (arete): Aretas, Ari, Aristarchus, Aristobulus

• Via ארה ('ara): Areli, Aridatha, Arieh, Ariel, Arioch, Artemas, Artemis, Beerah

The name Areopagus is the Latinized version of the original two-word term Αρειος Παγος (Areios Pagos), which occurs twice in the New Testament as the name of the rock where the high court of Athens convened (Acts 17:19, 17:22), and a third time as the unified term Αρεοπαγιτης (Areopagites) or Areopagite, an epithet of Dionysius (Acts 17:34), a member of Athens' highest council, in every way comparable to the Sanhedrin in Judea.

Where the goddess Athena personified the social wisdom that included both city building (and governing) and military strategy, her paternal half-brother Ares embodied the dumb and ugly side of war. Unlike the later Roman peace-keeping war god Mars, Ares was the proverbially surviving fittest among beastly bullies: void of sophistication and endowed with few friends and little respect. Still, mythology wisely ascribed him a place among the Olympians, since his nature had formed much of the ancient world. By the time of the Trojan War, however, Ares was despised by everybody including his own father Zeus, or so Homer informs us (Iliad.5.888-892).

Homer's Iliad, like Moses' Exodus, is set against the backdrop of what we moderns call the Bronze Age Collapse (1177 BC), and meditates on what was essentially a battle of languages, legacies and information technologies (see our article on Troas). There are vast reservoirs of evolutionary data preserved within languages — not merely in their stories but also in the very fabric of the language itself, in the natural and etymological relations between words, metaphors and expressions. There were no dictionaries and encyclopedias back then, and a foundational text demonstrates the language: it shows what words and expressions and grammatical and narrative formations mean by simply using them. The evolutionary identity of any people is stored entirely in the ever transforming blockchain of their language, and whoever can teach their language to the world, also certifies that their own identity lives forever. But whoever stores their stories only in a medium that becomes obsolete (clay, Linear A, runes, 8-track, Betamax, Fortran), will likewise be forgotten, and their identity dies.

There was once a time when primitive humans believed that their way was somehow better than any other way, and made it their goal in life to conquer and eradicate all those barbarians, not by destroying their productive bodies but by overwriting their linguistic legacies with the superior one. Nowadays we know better, and preserve and cherish whatever linguistic lifeforms may exist in the wider world, and even resurrect some that had gone extinct.

Ares the Über-facist was never truly forgotten, of course, but lives on wherever anyone shoves someone else out of the way or bullies them, calls them names or even mocks or belittles them. The story goes that Ares' daughter Alcippe was raped by Poseidon's son Halirrhothius on an Athenian beach (see Genesis 22:17, and note the similarities with the rapes of Dinah and Tamar). Ares killed Halirrhothius, was impeached by Poseidon but acquitted by the rest of the Twelve who believed the testimony of Alcippe, making Ares "the first to be put on trial for the shedding of blood" (Pausania.Attica.1.21.4; see Genesis 4:10 and 9:6). The place this happened became known as Areopagus, and it's there that Athens' human court assumed the authority of the divine Twelve in matters of violence and violations.

According to Aristotle (Const.Ath.57.3), involuntary homicide, plots to murder, the murder of a resident slave or foreigner were tried elsewhere and only "trails for deliberate murder and wounding are held in the Areopagus." In the fourth century BC, Demosthenes granted the Areopagus additionally the right to investigate cases of political treason. Shortly after, Demetrius of Phaleron expanded the scope of the Areopagus to also include supervision of religious affairs.

It's in this complex context that Paul's address of the "men of Athens" is to be considered. The fact that Paul was brought before the council of the Areopagus not only implied that the Athenians might or should have considered Jesus as a legal native of Athens, but also that the shedding of his blood was tantamount to treason against the order of Olympus, while his resurrection proved the legitimacy of the replacement of the council of the Areopagus with God's presence on earth (Acts 17:31).

The name Areopagus consists of two elements. The first part comes from the name Αρης (Ares), the god of mindless (or pre-rational) competition. This name is very old and its actual pedigree is unknown but its most obvious association is with the word αρη (are), meaning ruin, which is itself of uncertain pedigree. Some creative few, especially after having been introduced to the story of Jesus, might have even considered the noun αρην (aren), meaning lamb. Jesus, after all, was born in Bethlehem, which not only means House of Bread but also House of War (as YHWH was once a "Man of War": Exodus 15:3). And speaking of bread, the Greek word for bread is αρτος (artos), which obviously associates with the adverb αρτι (arti), meaning exactly right. The common prefix αρι- (ari-) means "very" or "very much" and yields words like αρετη (arete), excellence and virtue, αριστευω (aristeuo), to be best or bravest and αριστος (aristos), best or brave one; all attributes ascribed to Ares before his bellicose antics dropped out of vogue.

Our name may even be old enough to have had a pre-Greek or extra-Greek origin (compare the names Athens, Colossae and Corinth). That puts our name in proximity of the verb ארה ('ara), meaning to gather or hoard, and the noun ארי ('ari), lion, which again connects Ares to Jesus.

The second part of our name comes from the noun παγος (pagos), crust or hardened surface on a liquid:

Our noun παγος (pagos) is commonly translated with "rock" or "hill" but Greek had plenty of words that described rocks and hills with great etymological precision. Instead, our noun παγος (pagos) much rather describes the arrest of a normally uncontrollable liquid into some sort of conduit or beneath some sort of cover, lid or dome (also see our article on the name Tigris).

The Latin equivalent of our noun παγος (pagos), namely pagus described the lands surrounding a city, implying that the civilized city was the hardened crust that contained the unruly outer realms. From that word pagus comes the word paganus, which is a land-worker: an unschooled, unmannered peasant, in contrast to the urbanus, the schooled, mannered, civilized and polite city-dweller. From this word paganus comes our English word "pagan," which is a word like "heathen," meaning heath-dweller. These words have nothing to do with a consistent belief system but rather typically the lack thereof.

The name Areopagus does not simply mean Ares Rock but rather [The Liquid] Lust For Competition Contained: the cover of common regulations and codes of conduct that restrain and control those emotions that may set someone against someone else in anger.

Ares was essentially the god of competition, not only in a military sense but also personally and financially. Unlike the preachings of some old school economists, competition makes everybody a starving predator. It stifles innovation and drives prices down to the level where nobody is making any profit or is having any fun. Instead, cooperations, federations and monopolies allow for enough research and development to keep the marker at large interested, and to funnel off resources onto unrelated endeavors such as environmental and social responsibility programs.

Only when Ares is bound, a government by the people can govern the people. Only then, people can live their lives in freedom (Galatians 5:1, James 1:25).