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| Chapter XVI.
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Chapter XVI.
For, like some others, you are under the delusion
that our god is an ass’s head.96
Cornelius Tacitus
first put this notion into people’s minds. In the fifth book of
his histories, beginning the (narrative of the) Jewish war with an
account of the origin of the nation; and theorizing at his pleasure
about the origin, as well as the name and the religion of the Jews, he
states that having been delivered, or rather, in his opinion, expelled
from Egypt, in crossing the vast plains of Arabia, where water is so
scanty, they were in extremity from thirst; but taking the guidance of
the wild asses, which it was thought might be seeking water after
feeding, they discovered a fountain, and thereupon in their gratitude
they consecrated a head of this species of animal. And as Christianity
is nearly allied to Judaism, from this, I suppose, it was taken for
granted that we too are devoted to the worship of the same image.
But the said Cornelius Tacitus (the very opposite of tacit in
telling lies) informs us in the work already mentioned, that when
Cneius Pompeius captured Jerusalem, he entered the temple to see the
arcana of the Jewish religion, but found no image there. Yet surely if
worship was rendered to any visible object, the very place for its
exhibition would be the shrine; and that all the more that the worship,
however unreasonable, had no need there to fear outside
beholders. For entrance to the holy place was permitted to the
priests alone, while all vision was forbidden to others by an outspread
curtain. You will not, however, deny that all beasts of burden, and not
parts of them, but the animals entire, are with their goddess Epona
objects of worship with you. It is this, perhaps, which
displeases you in us, that while your worship here is universal, we do
homage only to the ass. Then, if any of you think we render
superstitious adoration to the cross, in that adoration he is sharer
with us. If you offer homage to a piece of wood at all, it matters
little what it is like when the substance is the same: it is of no
consequence the form, if you have the very body of the god. And
yet how far does the Athenian Pallas differ from the stock of the
cross, or the Pharian Ceres as she is put up uncarved to sale, a mere
rough stake and piece of shapeless wood? Every stake fixed in an
upright position is a portion of the cross; we render our adoration, if
you will have it so, to a god entire and complete. We have shown before
that your deities are derived from shapes modelled from the
cross. But you also worship victories, for in your trophies the
cross is the heart of the trophy.97
| 97 [A premonition of the
Labarum.] | The camp religion
of the Romans is all through a worship of the standards, a setting the
standards above all gods. Well, as those images decking out the
standards are ornaments of crosses. All those hangings of your
standards and banners are robes of crosses. I praise your zeal: you
would not consecrate crosses unclothed and unadorned. Others, again,
certainly with more information and greater verisimilitude, believe
that the sun is our god. We shall be counted Persians perhaps, though
we do not worship the orb of day painted on a piece of linen cloth,
having himself everywhere in his own disk. The idea no doubt has
originated from our being known to turn to the east in prayer.98
| 98 [As noted by Clement of
Alexandria. See p. 535, Vol. II., and note.] | But you, many of you, also under pretence
sometimes of worshipping the heavenly bodies, move your lips in the
direction of the sunrise. In the same way, if we devote Sun-day to
rejoicing, from a far different reason than Sun-worship, we have some
resemblance to those of you who devote the day of Saturn to ease and
luxury, though they too go far away from Jewish ways, of which indeed
they are ignorant. But lately a new edition of our god has been given
to the world in that great city: it originated with a certain vile man
who was wont to hire himself out to cheat the wild beasts, and who
exhibited a picture with this inscription: The God of the Christians,
born of an ass.99
| 99 Onocoites. If with Oehler,
Onochoietes, the meaning is “asinarius sacerdos”
(Oehler). | He had the ears of an
ass, was hoofed in one foot, carried a book,100
| 100 Referring evidently to
the Scriptures; and showing what the Bible was to the early
Christians. | and
wore a toga. Both the name and the figure gave us amusement. But our
opponents ought straightway to have done homage to this biformed
divinity, for they have acknowledged gods dog-headed and lion-headed,
with horn of buck and ram, with goat-like loins, with serpent legs,
with wings sprouting from back or foot. These things we have discussed
ex abundanti, that we might not seem willingly to pass by any
rumor against us unrefuted. Having thoroughly cleared ourselves, we
turn now to an exhibition of what our religion really
is.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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