"Are you god? Or, is someone else?" This is the question that a theologically curious inqusitor asked the oracle of Apollo at Claros around 200 CE. One might have expected Apollo to affirm his divinity and perhaps elabprate on the awesome power of the Olympian gods. However, the oracle delivered a rather surprising response, recorded in a Greek inscription in the ancient city of Oenoanda, in a present-day Turkey. The oracle reported that the All-Seeing Aether was the true god, and that one should pray to him at dawn, facing the east. In addiction, the mouthpiece of Apollo replied that the Olympian deities were angeloi of this supreme deity. Two additional sources preserve similar versions of the oracle's statements concerning a supreme deity and its angeloi, the so-called Theosophy of Tubingen and Lactantius' Divine Institutes.
The oracular inscription at Oenoanda is craved across a bas-relier altar located on the interior of the city's Hellenistic-era defensive walls, approximately four meters from the ground. Most scholars date the Oenoanda inscription to the end of the second, or the beginning of the third century CE.
[A]ύτοφυής, ἀδίδακτος, ἀμήτωρ, ἀστυφέλικτος,
οὔνομα μὴ χωρῶν, πολυώνυμος, ἐν πυρί ναίων,
τοῦτο θεός· μεικρά δὲ θεοῦ μερίς ἄγγελοι ἡμεῖς.
τοῦτο πευθομένοισι θεοῦ πέρι ὄστις ὑπάρχει,
Αἰ[θ]έ[ρ]α πανδερκ[ῇ θε]ὸν ἔννεπεν, εἰς ὄν ὀρῶντας
εὐχεσθῷ ἡφους πρὸς ἀντολίην ἐσορῶ[ν]τα[ς]
Self-generated, untaught, without-mother, un-moveable,
not using a name, many-named, in-fire-dwelling,
this is god. We angeloi are a small part of god.
This [reply] to those who inquired about god, who he actually is:
All-seeing Aether is god, [the oracle] said, looking to him
at dawn, pray, gazing towards the east.
