Acts 14:12

"They began calling Barnabas, Zeus, and Paul, Hermes" Luke gives the Greek names for these gods; Zeus was also known as Jupiter who was viewed as the most powerful of all the gods of the ancients. Hermes, called Mercury by the Romans, was the messenger of the gods, and of Zeus in particular. "The Roman poet Ovid (43 B.C. AD 17) (Metamorphoses VIII, 626ff) records the ancient myth concerning. visit of Zeus and Hermes to the neighboring region of Phrygia, disguised as mortals. All turned them away except one old couple, Philemon and Baucis, on the Lycanonian border. Later. flood came in judgment and drowned all except this couple" (Kent pp. 116-117). "Because he was the chief speaker" Paul apparently did most of the speaking. "Now you know, sometimes, Paul is pictured as. runt; he is said by some to have had sore eyes, perhaps was hunch-backed, had epilepsy, was bald, and had. hooked nose. But somehow or other, as this author tracks him around over the Roman empire in his imagination, and as he sees what Paul did and where he went, it seems hard to believe that he was. runty, scrawny, epileptic, sore-eyed, undernourished man. Furthermore, it is not easy to believe that Paul could have been thought of as being. Greek god…if he had been that sort of physical specimen" (Reese pp. 505-506).