Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| The Vile Calumny About Onocoetes Retorted on the Heathen by Tertullian.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XIV.679
| 679 Comp. The
Apology, c. xvi. | —The Vile Calumny About Onocoetes
Retorted on the Heathen by Tertullian.
Report has introduced a new calumny respecting our
God. Not so long ago, a most abandoned wretch in that city of
yours,680
| 680 In ista civitate,
Rome. | a man who had deserted indeed his own
religion—a Jew, in fact, who had only lost his skin, flayed of
course by wild beasts,681
| 681 This is explained
in the passage of The Apology (xvi.): “He had for money
exposed himself with criminals to fight with wild
beasts.” | against which he
enters the lists for hire day after day with a sound body, and so in a
condition to lose his skin682
| 682 Decutiendus, from a
jocular word, “decutire.” | —carried about
in public a caricature of us with this label:
Onocoetes.683
| 683 This curious word is
compounded of ὅνος, an ass, and
κοιᾶσθαι, which
Hesychius explains by ἰερᾶσθαι, to
act as a priest. The word therefore means, “asinarius
sacerdos,” “an ass of a priest.” Calumnious enough;
but suited to the vile occasion, and illustrative of the ribald
opposition which Christianity had to encounter. | This (figure) had
ass’s ears, and was dressed in a toga with a book, having
a hoof on one of his feet. And the crowd believed this infamous Jew.
For what other set of men is the seed-plot684
| 684 We take Rigaltius’
reading, “seminarium.” | of
all the calumny against us? Throughout the city,
therefore, Onocoetes is all the talk. As, however, it is
less then “a nine days’ wonder,”685
and so destitute of all authority from time, and weak enough from the
character of its author, I shall gratify myself by using it simply in
the way of a retort. Let us then see whether you are not here also
found in our company. Now it matters not what their form may be, when
our concern is about deformed images. You have amongst you gods with a
dog’s head, and a lion’s head, with the horns of a cow, and
a ram, and a goat, goat-shaped or serpent-shaped, and winged in foot,
head, and back. Why therefore brand our one God so conspicuously? Many
an Onocoetes is found amongst yourselves.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
