and literature, as was the idea of “participating” or “sharing” in it, although most Greek speakers used metechein rather than koinōnoi as here. The first references to the “divine nature” go back to Plato, for example, Phaedrus 230A, and they can be documented right down to the period of the NT (e.g., Epictetus, Disc. 2.19.26–27).18 What is important to note is that sometimes this participation in the divine nature was viewed as innate, a divine spark within the human being that simply needed to