The supreme god of the heathen Greeks and Romans. He was called the son of Saturn and Ops, and was said to have been born in Crete. The character attributed to him in pagan mythology was a compound of all that is wicked, obscene, and beastly in the catalogue of human crime. Still he was ever described as of noble and dignified appearance and bearing. Barnabas was supposed by the people of Lystra to represent him, Ac 14:12-13; 19:35.

(7.) the principal deity of the ancient Greeks and Romans. He was worshipped by them under various epithets. Barnabas was identified with this god by the Lycaonians (Ac 14:12), because he was of stately and commanding presence, as they supposed Jupiter to be. There was a temple dedicated to this god outside the gates of Lystra (Ac 14:13).

The Greek and Roman supreme god. After the cure of the impotent man the people of Lystra called Barnabas (the more commanding in appearance) Jupiter and Paul (the speaker) Mercury, the god of eloquence (Ac 14:12-13, "Jupiter before the city," i.e. his temple was in front of the city). Antiochus Epiphanes (Daniel 8, 11), the Old Testament antichrist, to subvert the Jewish religion, dedicated the temple of Jehovah at Jerusalem to the Greek Olympian Jupiter. (2 Maccabees 6)

This god is not really referred to in the Bible. The Roman god Iuppiter ('Father of Light' or 'of the sky') was recognized by the Romans as corresponding in attributes to the Greek god Zeus, and hence in modern times the term 'Zeus' in the Bible (2Ma 6:2) has been loosely translated 'Jupiter.' The name Zeus is itself cognate with the first part of the word Jupiter, and suggests the ruler of the firmament, who gives light and sends rain, thunder, and other natural phenomena from the sky. He was conceived as having usurped the authority of his father Kronos and become the chief and ruler of all the other gods. As such he was worshipped all over the Greek world in the widest sense of that term. The case of Ac 14:12-13 is further complicated, because there it is not even the Greek Zeus who is referred to, but the native supreme god of the Lycaonians, who was recognized by the author of Acts to correspond, as their chief god, to the Greek Zeus. All that we know of this god is that his temple at Lystra was without the city wall (Ac 14:13), and that Barnabas, as the big silent man, was taken for him. In Ac 19:35 the phrase 'from Jupiter' simply means 'from the sky' (cf. what is said above).

A. Souter.

Ju'piter

????. Supreme god of Greece and Rome, though the religious ideas of the two nations differed considerably. At Lystra the heathen inhabitants supposed Jupiter was impersonated by Barnabas, and at Ephesus they professed that the image of Diana had fallen from Jupiter, or heaven. Ac 14:12-13; 19:35.

Ju'piter

(a father that helps), the Greek Zeus. The Olympian Zeus was the national god of the Hellenic race, as well as the supreme ruler of the heathen world, and as such formed the true opposite to Jehovah. Jupiter or Zeus is mentioned in two passages of the New Testament, on the occasion of St. Paul's visit to Lystra,

Ac 14:12-13

where the expression "Jupiter, which was before their city," means that his temple was outside the city. Also in

Ac 19:35