---
title: Titus 1:12
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/titus-1-12/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/titus-1-12.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Titus 1:12
testament: NT
section: Letters
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Titus 1:12

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> As one of their own prophets has said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.”

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "A certain one of them, their own prophet, said: "Cretans are always liars, injurious wild beasts, idle gluttons.""

## JW Usage

Rarely raised by JWs, and understandably so. The Watchtower's teaching is that Jehovah's people avoid material rooted in false religion, and this verse has an apostle quoting a pagan seer with approval and calling him a prophet. Where the verse comes up at all, the quotation is treated as a proverbial saying rather than as a citation of religious poetry.

## Protestant Usage

Paul quotes Epimenides, a Cretan religious poet, calls him "their own prophet," and endorses what he said as true. The same poet supplies half of Paul's line at Acts 17:28. An apostle is drawing on pagan religious literature twice, in two different letters, without apology. There are two uses for this. The first is the pagan-origins conversation: if a source's origin permanently contaminates what comes out of it, Paul has broken his own rule in writing. He evidently believed a true statement stays true regardless of who said it. The second is the canon question. Paul quotes Epimenides here and Aratus in Acts; Jude quotes 1 Enoch. None of those works is in anybody's Bible, and none ever was. That is the clean answer when a Witness — or anyone else — suggests that Jude's use of Enoch implies Enoch should be Scripture. Quotation is not canonisation, and the early church clearly knew the difference. Compare Acts 17:28, Jude 1:14.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Books That Didn't Make It](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/canon-books-excluded.md) — Why Jude can quote Enoch without Enoch being Scripture — and what that says about the canon [Authority]