Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Number of quotes: 78
Book ID: 201 Page: 6
Section: 2C,4B
The priesthoods, divided into four chief colleges, were public offices held by persons of high birth who had rendered distinguished service to the city. That there were only sixty offices for two to four hundred eligible men made the honor particularly desirable. Often one had to wait years before a position became vacant. Because the Romans thought that the official cults were an integral part of the public life of the city, they took it for granted that the priesthoods should be offered to the most prominent social and political figures. The practice had been defended by Cicero, who said that the “most distinguished citizens safeguard religion by the good administration of the state and safeguard the wise conduct of religion” (Dom. 1). In Rome the practice of religion was a public matter. Gov. of Bythnia
Quote ID: 4524
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 201 Page: 7
Section: 4B
Assuming that this would be his last official position, Governor of Bithynia before retirement, Pliny was determined that his career culminate in a distinguished tenure of office. He would be no “ugly Roman.” His rule would be wise, just, understanding, respectful of local traditions, honest. In a letter to a friend who governed Achaea in Greece, Pliny enunciated the principles he thought should guide the office. He urged Maximus to have regard for the local gods, to honor the legends of the people’s past, not to detract from their dignity or pride, not to be domineering.
Quote ID: 4525
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 201 Page: 9
Section: 4B
Pliny arrived in Bithynia at a time Edward Gibbon called the happiest in mankind’s history. “In the second century of the Christian Era,”....
Quote ID: 4526
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 201 Page: 10
Section: 4B
A contemporary of Pliny, Dio Chrysostom, was troubled by the growing number of political factions vying with each other and causing unnecessary divisions within the cities. Sedition is perhaps too strong a word, but Dio was concerned enough to make a number of public speeches in which he warned against conducting the affairs of the city “by means of political clubs” (Or. 45.8).Key word: Club
Quote ID: 4527
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 201 Page: 12
Section: 4B
Should there not be some public organization for fighting fires? Pliny thought that the most reasonable solution was to organize an “association of workers to fight fires (collegium fabrorum) to avoid any future calamities.”The request sounds innocent enough, but Pliny’s cautious phrasing of his letter indicates that he knew Trajan might object to the formation of any association, no matter how harmless it appeared. It was precisely associations such as these, originally organized for nonpolitical purposes, that had led to trouble in the province. Furthermore, since the days of the late republic, the activities of clubs and associations had been restricted. All were subject to a system of licensing to prevent clubs from becoming a political nuisance, but Trajan thought that greater restrictions were necessary.
“I have received your suggestion that it should be possible to form a company of firemen at Nicomedia on the model of those existing elsewhere, but we must remember that it is societies like these which have been responsible for political disturbances in your province, particularly in its cities. If people assemble for a common purpose, whatever name we give them and for whatever reason, they soon turn into a political club” (hetaeria).
PJ: Clubs
Quote ID: 4528
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 201 Page: 13
Section: 4B
The term used in this letter for “club”, hetaeria, is the same word Pliny was to use later when he wrote to Trajan about the Christians. It may seem surprising that the same term used to describe a firemen’s association would also be used to describe a group of Christians, but in the circumstances, and from Pliny’s perspective, the designation was appropriate, . . .. . . .
Clubs would support candidates for local office, sponsor campaigns, and post campaign slogans on the walls of local buildings. Ancient placards attest to the political activity of such associations: “The fruit dealers unanimously urge the election of Marcus Holconius Priscus as duovir with judicial power.” “The goldsmiths unanimously urge the election of Gaius Cuspius Pansa as aedile.” “The worshippers of Isis unanimously urge the election of Gnaeus Helvius Sabinus as aedile.”{1} Trajan thought the clubs had gotten out of hand in Bithynia and he wished to halt their growth.
[Footnote 1] H. Dessau, Inscriptiones latinae selectae (Berlin, 1906), nos. 6411a, 6419e, 6420b.
PJ note: Used paragraphs separately.
Quote ID: 4529
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 201 Page: 15/16/21/23
Section: 4B
We can only say that the letter was written from one of the coastal cities of northern Pontus in the fall of A.D. 112.{2}Shortly after Pliny’s arrival in the city, a group of local citizens approached him to complain about Christians living in the vicinity. What precisely the complaint was we do not know, but from several hints in the letter it is possible to infer that the charge was brought by local merchants, perhaps butchers and others engaged in the slaughter and sale of sacrificial meat. Business was poor because people were not making sacrifices. Toward the end of the letter, written after Pliny had dealt with the problem, he observed that the “flesh of sacrificial victims is on sale everywhere, though up till recently scarcely anyone could be found to buy it.”
[Footnote 2] Discussion of Pliny’s letter and Trajan’s reply is extensive. See especially A. N. Sherwin-White, The letter of Pliny: A Historical and Social Commentary (Oxford, 1966); Rudolf Freudenberger, Das Verhalten der romischen Behorden gegen die Christen im 2. Jahrlhundert (Munich, 1967). Among the older works E. G. Hardy, Christianity and the Roman Government (London, [1984] 1934), is particularly valuable.
. . . .
On the other hand, it must be noted - indeed emphasized - that the accusations of promiscuity and ritual murder appear only in Christian authors. They are not present in the writings of pagan critics of Christianity.{4}
[Footnote 4] In Celsus’s book against the Christians there is no mention of Christians engaging in promiscuous rites. In his response to Celsus, Origen mentions the “rumor” that Christians “turn out the light and each man has sexual intercourse with the first woman he meets,” but he does not attribute it to Celsus (c. Cels. 6.27). It may be that the omission is insignificant and due to the fragmentary transmission of the writings of pagan critics, but it may also be that serious critics had more important things to say against Christianity.
. . . .
When he had received a definite yes from some members of the group, Pliny sent them off to be executed. In his letter to Trajan, he had requested whether the “mere name of Christians....is punishable, even if innocent of crime, or rather the crimes (flagitia) associated with the name” is cause for punishment. But he proceeded on the assumption that Christians were culpable for the sake of the name alone.
. . . .
He solved his dilemma by a “test” designed to determine who was and was not a Christian. He had statues of the emperor Trajan and of the Capitoline gods - Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva - brought into the room. Those who had already admitted that they were Christians he sent off to be executed, as he had done with the first group. Those who denied the charge he asked to repeat after him a “formula of invocation to the gods” and “to make an offering of wine and incense” to Trajan’s statue. He also ordered them to “revile the name of Christ”.
Quote ID: 4530
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 201 Page: 33
Section: 2C
Had Pliny heard the term ecclesia, he would have been puzzled, for in common usage in Greek and Latin ecclesia referred to the political assembly of the people of a city, as contrasted with the smaller group of elected officials who comprised the council (boule).
Quote ID: 4535
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 201 Page: 34
Section: 2C,4B
The term hetaeria, a transliteration into Latin of a Greek word, is usually rendered as “political club” or “association”.
Quote ID: 4536
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 201 Page: 45
Section: 2C,4B
One of the chief points of Celsus’s book against Christianity is that Christians formed “associations contrary to the laws” (c. Cels. 1.1). Instead of joining in with the public religious rites of the cities, like other associations, they refused to have anything to do with others and carried on their affairs in the fashion of an “obscure and secret association” (c. Cels. 8.17).PJ Note: Club
Quote ID: 4537
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 201 Page: 46
Section: 2D3B,4B
Let me, says Tertullian, describe to you the “business of the Christian club (factio).”“We are an association (corpus) bound together by our religious profession, by the unity of our way of life and the bond of our common hope...We meet together as an assembly and as a society....We pray for the emperors....We gather together to read our sacred writing...With holy words we nourish our faith.....After the gathering is over the Christians go out as though they had come from a “school of virtue”.
PJ Note: Club
Quote ID: 4538
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 49
Section: 3B
On the basis of Tacitus’s account of the burning of Christians, later Christian tradition created a fantastic picture of persecution after the burning of Rome; but his account was written sixty years later, and the sparsity of detail in the text should caution one from making too much of the event.
Quote ID: 4539
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 201 Page: 49
Section: 2D3A,2D3B
Tacitus describes the execution of the Christians, but he makes it clear that it is not for their “incendiarism” that they are being killed, but because of their “antisocial tendencies” (literally, “hatred of mankind”) and the savagery of Nero.
Quote ID: 4540
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 201 Page: 50
Section: 4B
Thus the three Roman writers who mention Christianity at the beginning of the second century agree in calling the new movement a superstitio.. . . .
In its most common and familiar sense, the term superstition referred to beliefs and practices that were foreign and strange to the Romans.
Quote ID: 4541
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 201 Page: 55
Section: 2B1
Then the praetor Helvidius Priscus, guided in the ritual by the pontifex Plautius Aelianus, purified the area by the sacrifice of pig, sheep and ox, and offered up the entrails upon a turf altar, praying to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, as the deities that ruled the empire,.....
Quote ID: 4543
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 201 Page: 55
Section: 4B
In this account the rebuilding of the Capitol is at once a religious and a civic occasion.
Quote ID: 4544
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 201 Page: 56
Section: 4B
Originally the word piety was used to designate the honor and respect one showed to members of one’s family, children to parents, children and parents to grandparents, and everyone to one’s ancestors. But the term came to be used in a wider sense, designating loyalty and obedience to the customs and traditions of Rome, to inherited laws, to those who lived in previous generations - in short to the “fatherland.”
Quote ID: 4545
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 201 Page: 58
Section: 4B
In the cities of the ancient world, religion was inextricably intertwined with social and political life. One did not speak of “believing in the gods” but of “having gods,” just as a city might “have laws or customs.”
Quote ID: 4548
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 201 Page: 59
Section: 4B
Even attention to the smallest details, the minutiae of religious ceremonies (for example, the feeding of chickens or heeding the cry of a bird), was a mark of piety that contributed to the well-being and success of the Roman Republic (Livy 6.41.8).{5}[Footnote 5] Karl Koch, Religion. Sutdien zur Kult und Glauben der Romer (Nurnberg, 1960), 178-79.
Quote ID: 4549
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 201 Page: 62
Section: 4B
The primary test of truth in religious matters was custom and tradition, the practices of the ancients. In Rome.....To be pious in any sense, to be respectable and decent, required the perpetuation of cult,” writes Ramsay MacMullen.{6} In philosophical matters, one might turn to intellectuals and philosophers, but in religious questions one looked to the past, to the accepted practices handed down by tradition, and to the guarantors of this tradition, the priest.
[Footnote 6] Ramsay MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven, 1981), 2.
Quote ID: 4550
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 201 Page: 63
Section: 4B
"Those who attempt to distort our religion with strange rites you should abhor and punish, not merely for the sake of the gods, but such men by bringing in new divinities in place of the old, persuade many to adopt foreign practices, from which spring up conspiracies, factions and political clubs which are far from profitable to a monarchy. Do not therefore permit anyone to be an atheist or a sorcerer.” Dio Cassius 52.36.2
Quote ID: 4551
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 63
Section: 4B
In his now-classical study, Conversion, A. D. Nock, historian of Roman religion, showed that in ancient times religion and society were always thought to complement each other. When a person moved from one city to another, he or she adopted the gods of the new city. The idea of “conversion” - that is, a conscious and individual decision to embrace a certain creed or way of life - was wholly foreign to the ancients.Key word - superstitio
Quote ID: 4552
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 201 Page: 66
Section: 4A
The apologists sought to present Christians as pious and god-fearing by the standards of Greco-Roman society.
Quote ID: 4553
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 201 Page: 67
Section: 4A
By the middle of the second century, however, a Christian apologist such as Justin Martyr, who was well aware that Christianity was being viewed as a superstition, had begun to make the counterclaim. “We cultivate piety, justice, philanthropy, faith, and hope.” This passage could have been written by the Roman moralist and philosopher Seneca.
Quote ID: 4554
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 201 Page: 69
Section: 5C
A spectacular shrine dedicated to the god of healing, Asclepius, was located there.... Asclepius’s power to heal attracted people from all over the world, and in the second century the Asclepieion at Pergamum had become a destination of pilgrimage.
Quote ID: 4555
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 201 Page: 77
Section: 4A
Nevertheless, precisely at the time that Galen and Celsus were writing against Christian fideism, exclusive reliance in religious matters upon faith, with consequent rejection of appeals to science or philosophy, a number of Christian thinkers had begun to revise and correct this view of Christianity.
Quote ID: 4557
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 201 Page: 83
Section: 4A
In the middle of the second century, Melito, Bishop of Sardis in western Asia Minor, spoke of Christianity as “our philosophy” (Frag. 7), and Justin Martyr, another early Christian apologist writing about the same time, presented his conversion to Christianity as a conversion to philosophy.... He found “this philosophy [Christianity] alone to be sure and profitable” (Dial. 8).PJ Q: Who is “he” in the second quote? A: Justin Martyr
Quote ID: 4558
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 201 Page: 94
Section: 4A
Until the last half of the second century all our information about Roman and Greek attitudes toward the Christians could be written in a few pages. But about the year 170 C.E. a Greek philosopher by the name of Celsus wrote a major book devoted solely to the Christians.
Quote ID: 4559
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 201 Page: 98
Section: 4A
Celsus is the first critic to call Jesus a magician and charge the Christians with practicing magic. It may be that this view was already adumbrated in Suetonius, who spoke of Christianity as a “new and criminal (maleficus) superstition.” The term maleficus can mean “magical”, and used as a noun it designated a magician. {8} If so, Suetonius foreshadows what later became a common charge. {9} Celsus is, however, explicit. “It was by magic that he Jesus was able to do the miracles which he appeared to have done” (c. Cels. 1.6).[Footnote 8] Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Cambridge, 1973), 234; also, Jesus the Magician (New York, 1978), 45-67.
[Footnote 9] See, for example, the writing of Hierocles, governor of Bithynia, comparing Jesus to Apollonius of Tyana. Hierocles’s treatise is lost, but a good idea of the work can be gained from Eusebius’s response. Text and English translation in F. C. Conybeare, Philostratus: The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1969), 2: 484-605.
Quote ID: 4560
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 201 Page: 99
Section: 4A
The practice of magic was a criminal offense in the Roman Empire and the word magician a term of opprobrium and abuse.
Quote ID: 4561
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 201 Page: xv
Section: 5D
In the section on Palestine in his Natural History - a book written approximately a generation after the death of Jesus - the elder Pliny does not even mention Jesus or the beginnings of Christianity.The first mention of the Christian movement in a Roman writer does not occur until eighty years after the beginning of Christianity.
Quote ID: 4523
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 201 Page: 106
Section: 2B1
When Origen read Celsus’s statement that Christians set up Jesus as equal to, or even greater than, the one high God, he said that Celsus had obviously got things wrong because we “do not hold that the son is mightier than the Father, but inferior” (c. Cels. 8.15)! For Origen, Jesus is clearly subordinate to God the Father.PJ: non-Trinitarian
Quote ID: 4562
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 201 Page: 106
Section: 2B
Celsus, however, has a point, and it is central to his case against Christianity. Christians threatened the hard-won view that there was only one God, a conviction shared by many pagan intellectuals in the early empire, and which was thought to be distinctly superior to the polytheism and anthropomorphism of popular religion.
Quote ID: 4563
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 201 Page: 106
Section: 2B
Another second-century pagan philosopher Aristotle, De mundo, 401a said:God being one yet has many names, being called after all the various........
Celsus expresses the same sentiment. “It makes no difference if one invokes the highest God or Zeus or Adonai or Sabaoth or Amoun, as the Egyptians do, or Papaios, as the Scythians do” (c. Cels. 5.41).
Quote ID: 4564
Time Periods: 02
Book ID: 201 Page: 107
Section: 2B,2B1
“In the midst of such contention, strife, and disagreement on other matters,” wrote Maximus of Tyre, a second-century pagan intellectual, “you would see in all the earth one harmonious law and principle that there is one God, king and father of all, and many gods, sons of God, fellow rulers with God. The Greek says this, and the barbarian says it, the mainlander and the seafarer, the wise and the unwise” (Or. 11.5; ed. Holbein). When a person worshipped these lesser gods, it was assumed that he or she was also worshipping the one high god. Such worship did not detract from the honor shown the highest god, nor did it, in the view of the ancients, threaten the belief that God was one.PJ: Three in one.
Quote ID: 4565
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 201 Page: 107
Section: 2B
Excessive adoration of Jesus robbed the one high God of his proper due and discouraged devotion to other divine beings.The singular emphasis on Jesus implied that there were two supreme objects of worship, thereby destroying the most fundamental principle of the philosophical view of God. If there are two high gods, there is no longer a single source of all things.
Quote ID: 4566
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 201 Page: 117
Section: 2D3B,3A3A
In the next fragment quoted by Origen, Celsus says that Christians ought to “accept public office in our country...for the sake of the preservation of the laws of piety” (x. Cels. 8.75). The point of Celsus’s comments is not that Christians are pacifists, but that they refuse to participate in any way in the public and civil life of the cities of the Roman Empire. As another critic put it, Christians “do not understand their civic duty” (Minucius, Octavius 12).
Quote ID: 4567
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 201 Page: 119
Section: 2B1,2D3B
If you taught them, the Christians, that Jesus is not God’s Son, but that God is Father of all, and that we really ought to worship him alone, they would no longer be willing to listen to you unless you included Jesus as well, who is the author of their sedition. Indeed, when they call him Son of God, it is not because they are paying very great reverence to God, but because they are exalting Jesus greatly.” c. Cels. 8.14PJ: Celsus was a 2nd century fellow. Dates unknown. Origen wrote his “refutation” in 248.
Quote ID: 4568
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 124
Section: 3A3A
Celsus sensed that Christians had severed the traditional bond between religion and a “nation” or people. The ancients took for granted that religion was indissolubly linked to a particular city or people.
Quote ID: 4569
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 125
Section: 3A3A,3A3B
Christians not only refused military service but they would not accept public office nor assume any responsibility for the governing of the cities. It was, however, not simply that Christians subverted the cities by refusing to participate in civic life, but that they undermined the foundations of the societies in which they lived.
Quote ID: 4570
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 127
Section: 3A3A,3A3B,4B
Porphyry had no such illusion; he sensed that Christianity was here to stay and he sought, within the framework of the religious traditions of the Roman Empire, to find a way of accommodating the new creed. This is why he was so threatening to the Christians of antiquity and is so fascinating to us.
Quote ID: 4571
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 129
Section: 4A
Porphyry, however, was not impressed by Origen. He was put off by the “absurdity” of Origen’s efforts to reconcile the Greek intellectual tradition with the new religion that had arisen in Palestine. Comparing Origen to another contemporary Greek philosopher, Ammonius, Porphyry said:"Ammonius was a Christian brought up in Christian ways by his parents, but when he began to think philosophically, he promptly changed to a law-abiding way of life. Origen on the other hand, a Greek schooled in Greek thought, plunged headlong into un-Greek recklessness; immersed in this, he peddled himself and his skill in argument. In his way of life he behaved like a Christian, defying the law; in his metaphysical and theological ideas he played the Greek, giving a Greek twist to foreign tales." [Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 6.19]
Quote ID: 4572
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 134
Section: 4A,4B
Porphyry and his Christian opponents shared many moral and religious values.
Quote ID: 4573
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 136
Section: 2B,4A
Porphyry presents an elaborate discussion of the theology of the various ancient peoples - Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Chaldeans, even the Hebrews - to show that these ancient beliefs were similar to the philosophical religion accepted by many educated people in the third century. He does this by showing that the “oracles” of the traditional religions could be used as a source for belief in the One Supreme Being. His strategy was to provide a way to incorporate Christianity, which also claimed to believe in the one high God, into the religious framework of the Roman world.
Quote ID: 4574
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 137
Section: 4A
Porphyry responded directly to this new development by arguing that Daniel could not be read as a prophecy of the future, as Christians were inclined to interpret it, but as a history of events in the author’s own time.
Quote ID: 4575
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 148
Section: 2B,2B1,4A
If all that was known of Porphyry’s attack on Christianity were what we have discussed thus far, it would be hard to imagine why his work was so feared by Christians. This is* precisely the conclusion to which a recent writer on Porphyry’s Against the Christians has come. “That its burning should have been thought necessary as late as 448 is sufficient evidence of its power to move men’s minds. Yet when we look at the undoubtedly genuine fragments it is difficult to see why such a fear existed if they are indeed characteristic of the whole.”{11}[Footnote 11] Meredith, 1136.
Porphyry was feared because he also wrote another book, the Philosophy from Oracles, and this work sets forth more fundamental criticism of Christianity. In it Porphyry provided a sympathetic account and a defense of the traditional religions of the Greco-Roman world, and he sought to make a place within this scheme for the new religion founded by Jesus of Nazereth.
....sophisticated thinkers such as Porphyry or Celsus believed that though there was one supreme God this did not prevent people from believing in other lesser gods. The term divine designated a category of being stretching from the one high God down through the Olympian gods, the visible gods (e.g., the stars), the daimones, and finally to heroes or deified men. The supreme God presided over a company of gods.
PJ: Three in one.
Quote ID: 4580
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 149
Section: 2B,2B1
Each type of god required a different form of worship. To the one supreme God only spiritual worship of the mind and heart was thought appropriate, whereas to other gods it was proper to bring sacrifices.“The first God is incorporeal, immovable, and invisible and is in need of nothing external to himself.” Hence, to this god “who is above all things, one sacrifices neither with incense, nor dedicates anything sensible to him....Neither is vocal language nor internal speech adapted to the highest god...but we should venerate him in profound silence with a pure soul, and with pure conceptions about him” (Abst. 2.37, 34.) To his “progeny,” however, “hymns, recited orally, are to be offered.” To other gods, like the stars, sacrifices of inanimate objects are fitting, whereas to lower gods, religious observances and other sacrifices should be offered. The daimones, for example, love the smell of burning flesh (Abst. 2.42).
...from Plutarch that illustrates this point, and it may be helpful to cite it again. He says that some heroes are borne upward, “from men into heroes and from heroes into daimones....But from the daimones a few souls still, in the long reach of time, because of supreme excellence, come, after being purified, to share completely in divine qualities” (De def. Or. 415c).
Quote ID: 4581
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 201 Page: 150
Section: 2B2
Book 3 dealt with heroes or divine men - for example, figures such as Heracles, the Dioscuri, Orpheus, Pythagoras, and so on. Porphyry placed Jesus in book 3 among the heroes, as a human being, a sage who had been elevated to divinity after his death.
Quote ID: 4582
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 151
Section: 4A
For over a century, since the time when the Apologists first began to offer a reasoned and philosophical presentation of Christianity to pagan intellectuals, Christian thinkers had claimed that they worshipped the same God honored by the Greeks and Romans, in other words, the deity adored by other reasonable men and women. Indeed, Christians adopted precisely the same language to describe God as did pagan intellectuals. The Christian apologist Theophilus of Antioch described God as “ineffable...inexpressible....uncontainable....incomprehensible....inconceivable...incomparable...unteachable....immutable...inexpressible...without beginning because he was uncreated, immutable because he is immortal” (Ad Autol. 1.3-4). This view, that God was an immaterial, timeless, and impassible divine being, who is known through the mind alone, became a keystone of Christian apologetics, for it served to establish a decisive link to the Greek spiritual and intellectual tradition. As late as the fifth century, in Augustine’s City of God and Theodoret of Cyrus’s apology, The Curing of Greek Maladies, apologists continued to argue that Christians and pagans worshipped the same supreme being. Porphyry’s strategy was to sever the link between Christianity and Hellenism by showing that Christians had abandoned worship of this God in favor of the worship of Christ.
Quote ID: 4583
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 152
Section: 2B2,4A
As an example of such an oracle, Augustine mentions one quoted by Porphyry from Apollo: “In God, the begetter and the king before all things, at whom heaven trembles, and earth and sea are hidden depths of the underworld and the very divinities shudder in dread; their law is the Father whom the holy Hebrews greatly honor.”
Quote ID: 4584
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 152
Section: 2B2,4A
“What I am going to say", says Porphyry, "may certainly appear startling to some. I mean the fact that the gods have pronounced Christ to have been extremely devout, and have said that he has become immortal, and that they mention him in terms of commendation;...."
Quote ID: 4585
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 152
Section: 4A
Porphyry cites one oracle from Hecate that described Jesus as a “very pious man” and another which said: “The wise men of the Hebrews (and this Jesus was also one of them, as you have heard from the oracles of Apollo, quoted above) warned religious men against these evil demons and lesser spirits, and forbade them to pay attention to them, telling their hearers rather to venerate the gods of heaven, but above all to worship God the Father. But this is what the gods also teach; and we have shown above how they advise us to turn our thoughts to God, and everywhere bid us worship him...” (Civ. Dei 19.23).
Quote ID: 4586
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 153
Section: 2B
To summarize Porphyry’s argument: There is one God whom all men worship, and Jesus, like other pious men, worshipped this God and taught others to venerate him. By his teaching Jesus directed men’s attention to the one God, but his disciples fell into error and taught men to worship Jesus. “Thus Hecate said that he (Jesus) was a most devout man, and that his soul, like the souls of the other devout men, was endowed after death with the immortality it deserved; and that Christians in their ignorance worship this soul” (Civ. Dei 19.23).
Quote ID: 4587
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 153
Section: 4A
Why pagans should honor Christ can be seen from some of their philosophers - for example, Porphyry - who “consulted their gods to discover what they should respond about Christ and were compelled by their own oracles to praise him” (De cons. 1.15.23).
Quote ID: 4588
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 154
Section: 2B,2B2,4A
On the basis of Augustine’s writings, Porphyry’s discussion of Christianity in the Philosophy from Oracles included the following: (1) praise for Jesus as a good and pious man who ranks among the other sages or divine men, for example, Pythagoras or Hercules, venerated by the Greeks and Romans; (2) criticism of the disciples, and of those who follow their teaching, because they misrepresented Jesus and inaugurated a new form of worship; (3) defense of the worship of the one high God; (4) praise of the Jews for worshipping this one God.In his Adversus Nationes written in 311 C.E., Arnobius says that he is at a loss to explain why the pagans attack and the gods are hostile to the Christians. “We have,” he writes, “one common religion with you and join with you in worshipping the one true God. To which the pagans reply: ‘The gods are hostile to you because you maintain that a man, born of a human being.....was God and you believe that he still exists and you worship him in daily prayers’” (Adv. Nat. 1.36).
Quote ID: 4589
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 157
Section: 2D3B
Maximin Daia (310-13 C.E.) from page 156 He described Christians as those who “persist in that accursed folly” and encouraged the citizens to worship “Jupiter the best and greatest, the guardian of your most glorious city.” Those who persist in the folly of shunning the traditional worship are to be “driven from your city”...so that it may be purged of all contamination and impiety (asebeia)....
Quote ID: 4591
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 201 Page: 158
Section: 3A3A,3A3B
Yet Christians, in thought if not always in action, remained a people apart. They contributed little to the public life of society and by their fixation on Jesus undermined the religious foundations of the cities in which they lived.
Quote ID: 4592
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 158
Section: 4B
The issue between pagans and Christians centered on what Eusebius called “political theology” - that is, the religious and theological beliefs that are integral to the life of a people or a city.
Quote ID: 4593
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 201 Page: 159
Section: 2B
Porphyry, however, did not accuse Jesus of practicing magic. Instead he praised him as a “wise man” and disassociated himself from such criticism so that Jesus could be integrated into his portrait of the traditional religion.
Quote ID: 4594
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 160
Section: 2B,3C1
Christians feared Porphyry’s Philosophy from Oracles because it was the first work to give a positive appraisal of Jesus within the framework of pagan religion. Precisely at the time Porphyry was writing his book, Christian leaders were on the verge of a major dispute about the status of Christ. Shortly afterward, the Arian controversy exploded and Christian bishops became engaged in a far-reaching debate about whether Jesus was fully divine and equal to the one supreme God. It would be stretching the point to say that some of the Christian bishops would have agreed with Porphyry’s view of Christ. But many of them, among whom was Eusebius of Caesarea, were very reluctant to consider Jesus as divine in the same sense that God the creator was divine. Indeed, the controversy, which was to divide the Christian world for several generations, centered precisely on that issue: Was Jesus to be thought of as fully God, equal to one high God? Or was he a lesser deity, who, though sharing an intimate relation to God the Father, was nevertheless in the second rank?
Quote ID: 4595
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 161
Section: 4A
Like Galen and Celsus, Porphyry charged Christians with promulgating an “unreasoning faith” (Eusebius, Praep. Evang. 1.3.1).
Quote ID: 4596
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 201 Page: 166
Section: 3C2
It was customary for the sons of the wealthy to study both the Greek classics and the Christian Scriptures.
Quote ID: 4597
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 201 Page: 174
Section: 3C2
But now that the gods have granted us freedom it seems to me absurd for men to teach what they disapprove. If they are real interpreters of the ancient classics, let them first imitate the ancients’ piety towards the gods. If they think the classics wrong in this respect, then let them go and teach Matthew and Luke in the church. Ep.. 36
Quote ID: 4598
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 201 Page: 175
Section: 3C2
For two centuries Christian intellectuals had been forging a link between Christianity and the classical tradition, and with one swift stroke Julian sought to sever that link. Julian’s law, however, did not only concern intellectuals, for a rhetorical education was absolutely necessary for anyone who wished to advance in society. Christian parents, especially the wealthy, insisted that their sons receive the rhetorical education, and it now appeared as though Julian were limiting this to pagans.
Quote ID: 4599
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 201 Page: 175
Section: 3C2
So grave was the situation that Christians sought their own way of insuring that their children would be properly educated. Two men, a father and a son, both named Apollinarius, came up with the ingenious idea of rendering the Scriptures in the style and form of Greek literature.
Quote ID: 4600
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 201 Page: 176
Section: 3C2
Julian’s school law was a well-timed, calculated, and astute attack on the Christian communities within the Roman Empire. He realized that Christianity, which had not yet developed its own educational system, was wholly dependent on the pagan schools and the literary tradition handed down in these schools.
Quote ID: 4601
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 201 Page: 179
Section: 3C2
Like Porphyry, Julian argued that the notion that Jesus is divine was a fabrication of his followers, not the teaching of Jesus himself; unlike Porphyry, he is surer in his handling of the New Testament text and more discriminating in his use of the biblical data. Only one of the disciples, John, taught the new idea that Jesus was divine. The other Apostles did not.
Quote ID: 4602
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 201 Page: 181
Section: 3C2
The conflict between Julian and the Christians was not between the polytheism of the Greeks and the monotheism of Christians and Jews. What Julian opposed to Christianity and Judaism was a sophisticated idea of God that he learned from his Platonic teachers.
Quote ID: 4603
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 201 Page: 183
Section: 3C2,4A
For several decades Christian thinkers had been debating whether the son was “ungenerated” or “generated.” If the son was generated - that is, came into existence - then he could not be divine. Only God is ungenerated, for he exists eternally without change.
Quote ID: 4604
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 201 Page: 185
Section: 3C2
For Julian this was not simply a philosophical or literary argument; his attack on Christianity was supported by a conspicuous historical gesture, and one that could only have been made by an emperor: the plan to rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. More than anything else, this action set Julian apart from other critics and elicited the ire of later Christians. “May his very memory be a curse! Amen!.......
Quote ID: 4605
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 201 Page: 185
Section: 3C2
Christians interpreted the fall of the city of Jerusalem and the cessation of sacrificial worship to mean that the Jewish religion had come to an end.
Quote ID: 4606
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 201 Page: 189
Section: 3C2
Julian’s plan to rebuild the Temple also fitted in with his renewal of the traditional religion. He believed, as he had learned from his Neoplatonist teachers, that prayer was not complete without sacrifice.
Quote ID: 4607
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 201 Page: 189
Section: 3C2
Why not enlist the Jews as allies in the effort to restore traditional worship to the cities of the Roman Empire? Although the Jews could not embrace the traditional religion of Greece and Rome, they did believe in the efficacy of sacrifices.
Quote ID: 4608
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 201 Page: 194
Section: 3C2
In the winter of 362-63, while staying in Antioch and preparing for his campaign against the Persians, Julian appointed Alypius, a close friend and former provincial governor, to oversee the rebuilding of the Temple. “I will rebuild at my own expense the holy city of Jerusalem” (Ep. 51). Amply provided with imperial funds, Alypius set out for Jerusalem to begin the project. The construction, however, was abruptly cut short later in the spring by an earthquake or some other disaster.
Quote ID: 4609
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 201 Page: 195
Section: 3C2
Possibly Julian’s advisors urged him to set it aside because of the impending Persian campaign. In June of the same year, in the midst of a battle with the Persians, Julian was killed, and the project was never resumed.
Quote ID: 4610
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 201 Page: 195
Section: 3C2
Even though Julian’s program to rebuild the Temple was unsuccessful, it was the final, and most brilliant, stroke in the ancient conflict between paganism and Christianity.
Quote ID: 4611
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 201 Page: 201
Section: 4A
Julian......he impugned the Christians for deserting the gods. In the Roman world this charge was not simply a matter of “our gods” against “your God.” The gods were part of an entire social world into which Christianity could not be fitted.
Quote ID: 4614
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 201 Page: 205
Section: 4A
When one observes how much Christians shared with their critics, and how much they learned from them, it is tempting to say that Hellenism laid out the path for Christian thinkers. In fact, one might convincingly argue the reverse. Christianity set a new agenda for philosophers. {3} The distinctive traits of the new religion and the tenacity of Christian apologists in defending their faith opened up new horizons for Greco-Roman culture and breathed new life into the spiritual and intellectual traditions of the ancient world.
Quote ID: 4615
Time Periods: 2
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