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Porphyry's Against the Christians. the Literary PORPHYRY'S .AGAlNST THE CHRISTIANS THE LITERARY REMAINS Edited and Translated with an Introduction and Epilogue by R. Joseph Hoffmann, Oxford University , 4§ Prometheus Books 59 John Glenn Drive Amher!it, NewYork 14228,2197 Published 1994 by Prometheus Books Porphyry's Against the Christians: The Literary Remains. Edited and translated with an introduction and epilogue by R. Joseph Hoffmann. Copyright© 1994 by R. Joseph Hoffmann. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Inquiries should be addressed to Prometheus Books, 59 John Glenn Drive, Amherst, NewYork 14228-2197, 716-691-0133. FAX: 716- 691-0137. 98 97 96 95 94 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Porphyry, ca. 234-ca. 305. [Against the Christians. English] Porphyry's Against the Christians : the literary remains I edited and translated with an introduction and epilogue by R. Joseph Hoffmann. p. em. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-87975-889-9 (alk. paper) 1. Christianity'-Controversialliterature-Early works to 1800. 2. Christianity-EarJy church, ca. 30-600-Sources. I. Hoffmann, R. Joseph. II. Title. III. Title: Against the Christians. BR160.3.P6713 1994 230-dc20 94-6779 CIP Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. Contents Introduction. Persecution as Context 7 A Note on ·the Text and the Controversy 21 List of Abbreviations 25 AGAINST THE CHRISTIANS: TJ-IE EXTRACTS OF MACARIUS MAGNES 1. Miscellaneous Objections 29 2. Critique of the Gospels and Their Authors 32 3. The Ruler and End of the World 37 4. The Life and Work of Jesus 39 5. The Sayings of Jesus 48 6. The Attack on Peter the Apostle 53 7. The Attack on Paul the Apostle 58 8. The Attack on Christian Apocalyptic Hopes 66 9. The Kingdom of Heaven and the Obscurity of Christian Teaching 77 6 Porphyry's Against the Christians 10. The Christian Doctrine of God 83 11. Critique of the Resurrection of the Flesh 90 Epilogue. From Babylon to Rome: The Contexts of Jewish-Christian-Pagan Interaction through Porphyry 95 References and Bibliography 175 Introduction Persecution as Context In the year 312 Christianity gained the right to permanent existence as a religion of the Roman empire. By this time it was nearly three centuries old. Christian mythography and the lives of the saints used to insist that the way to legality had been an uphill struggle, guided by providence, perhaps, but strewn with the bodies of the martyrs, the church's "seed," as Tertullian boasted in his Apology. "The more we are mown down by you pagans, the more we grow." Still, there was something ominously correct in Tertullian's boast. At the end of the second century, when both Tertullian and the pagan .philosopher Celsus were active in their campaigns for and against the church, the pagan philosopher could say with Grouchoesque humor, "If all men wanted to be Christians, the Christians would not want them." . :Only a decade or so later, Tertullian could argue with equal conviction that the church had grown by such bursts that, "If the emperor were to exterminate the Christians he would find himself without an empire to rule." The use of hyperbole to win converts did not begin with twentieth-century evangelism; it was a feature of the quarrel between pagan culture and Christian teaching from its beginning, and a trademark of· the Greek and Latin rhetoric in which the argument was conducted. Yet things changed quickly for the Christians. Martyrs 8 Porphyry's Against the Christians there were, and fickle emperors ranging from Philip the Arab to Aurelian to Diocletian, men who could not make up their minds, or changed them after they had. In 248, Celsus' literary opponent, Origen, wrote: "Though [we lack] workers to bring in the harvest of souls, there is a harvest nevertheless: men and women brought in upon God's threshing floor, the churches. which are everywhere" (Contra Celsum 3.9). The boast that a plethos (a multitude) of people had entered the church­ a boast for Tertullian, an outrage to Celsus and his intellectual compadres, and later also for Porphyry-set off an alarm heard throughout the Roman empire. The third century was not just an age of persecution;· it was the only century in which persecution affected Christians generally. The empire itself was in the throes of a power struggle and crisis of confidence, beginning with Decius in February of 250, and extending through the reigns of Valerian (257-260) and Diocletian (284-305). With periods of remission, the effort to control the growth of the Christian movement lasted from 250 until 284. Then, on 23 February 303, at the height of his power, Diocletian outlawed Christianity. Even after his abdication in 305, persecution continued in the east for seven more years under Galerius and Maximinus Daia. But persecution is a slippery term in the annals of the early church. An older generation of church historians, using the. martyrologies and writings of the church fathers as their sources, believed that the era from Nero to Constantine was one of almost unremitting- slaughter of professing Christians. Their opinion was enfeebled somewhat by the certainty that the Romans could have tried a "final solution" to the Christian problem much earlier, if they had wanted, and the fact that along with boasting of their many martyrs, church writers like Origen also bragged that rich folk, high officials, elegant ladies and illuminati were entering the church in great numbers. The pagan writers tried to counter this trend in their insistence that Christianity was really a religion for the lazy, the ignorant and superstitious, and the lowborn-"women, yokels and chil­ dren," Celsus had sneered. But the ploy was ineffective. Dio­ cletian's persecutions revealed that Christianity had crept into the emperor's bedroom: his wife, his daughter, their servants, Introduction: Persecution as Context 9 the treasury official Audactus, the eunuch Dorotheus, even the director of the purple dye factory in Tyre, were Christians or Christian sympathizers. Insulting the new converts did not stop the process of conversion. The political solution of the third century, therefore, was an attempt to scare people off­ to make being a Christian an expensive proposition. Persecution was the strong-arm alternative to failed polemical tactics by the likes of Celsus, Porphyry and Hierocles. It was a last­ gasp attempt to save the old religious order from the muddled legalism of Christian moral teaching, which had been carelessly satirized as bacchic frenzy. Perhaps even by Celsus' day (since he barely alludes to Christian immorality) nobody believed· the gossip. Christian and pagan neighbors in fourth-century Damascus winked at each other and giggled behind their hands when a zealous magistrate rounded-up a gaggle of prostitutes from the city market and forced them into signing an admission that they were "Christian whores." How were Christian persecuted? Almost on the eve of persecution, the Christian writer Origen said with pride that "we [Christians] have enjoyed peace for a long time now." But Origen also saw clouds on the horizon. Political instability and military disaster threatened; economic times were hard. Duty (pietas) required that loyal Romans should stand behind the traditions and honor the cults that had so far ensured their greatness. From the standpoint of staunch pagans and the Roman intellectual class, the past two generations had been characterized by slippage and erosion, a watering down of tradition. The ranks had to be closed. In 250 Decius decreed simply that Christians would be required to sacrifice to the gods of Rome by offering wine and eating sacrificial meat. Those who refused would be sentenced to death. To avoid this punishment, well-to-do Christians seem to have given up the new religion in substantial numbers, be­ coming in the eyes of the faithful "apostates," a new designation derived from the Greek work for revolt. The apostates also ,numbered many bishops, including the bishop of the important region of Smyrna, as well as Jewish Christians who rejoined the synagogue, as Judaism was not encompassed in the Decian order. Subseq,uently the church was racked with confusion 10 Porphyry's Against the Christians about what to do with those Christians who had lapsed from the faith in time of trouble but who wished to reenter the church once the troubles had passed-the so-called lapsi. Augustine would find himself still dealing with the problem in fifth-century Africa. The Christian sacraments of baptism and (to a degree) the eucharist were reconceived against the political background of apostate priests and bishops: When was a sacrament not a sacrament? When it had been "per­ formed" by a traitor to the cause, argued some. The effects· of persecution thus worked themselves out in specific ways, even in the doctrine of the church. In the reign of Valerian (253-260) the focus shifted from the practice of the Christian faith to the church's ownership of property-a cause of concern to pagan conservatives who had come to associate the rise of Christianity with the death of the old order. There is plenty to suggest that Christians in the middle of the third century had become self-confident and even ostentatious about the practice of their faith. In Nico­ media, the eastern capital of the empire, "the Christian church stood tall, visible from the palace" (Lactantius, On the Death of the Persecutors 12; Cyprian, Epistle 80.2).
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