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| The Gods of the Different Nations. Varro's Gentile Class. Their Inferiority. A Good Deal of This Perverse Theology Taken from Scripture. Serapis a Perversion of Joseph.
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Chapter VIII.—The Gods
of the Different Nations. Varro’s Gentile Class. Their
Inferiority. A Good Deal of This Perverse Theology Taken from
Scripture. Serapis a Perversion of Joseph.
There remains the gentile class of gods
amongst the several nations:906
| 906 See above, c. i. [p.
129.] | these were adopted
out of mere caprice, not from the knowledge of the truth; and our
information about them comes from the private notions of different
races. God, I imagine, is everywhere known, everywhere present,
powerful everywhere—an object whom all ought to worship, all
ought to serve. Since, then, it happens that even they, whom all the
world worships in common, fail in the evidence of their true divinity,
how much more must this befall those whom their very votaries907
| 907 Municipes. “Their
local worshippers or subjects.” | have not succeeded in discovering! For what
useful authority could possibly precede a theology of so defective a
character as to be wholly unknown to fame? How many have either
seen or heard of the Syrian Atargatis, the African Cœlestis, the
Moorish Varsutina, the Arabian Obodas and Dusaris, or the Norican
Belenus, or those whom Varro mentions—Deluentinus of Casinum,
Visidianus of Narnia, Numiternus of Atina, or Ancharia of
Asculum? And who have any clear notions908
of
Nortia of Vulsinii?909
| 909 Literally, “Have
men heard of any Nortia belonging to the Vulsinensians?” | There is no
difference in the worth of even their names, apart from the human
surnames which distinguish them. I laugh often enough at the little
coteries of gods910
| 910 Deos decuriones,
in allusion to the small provincial senates which in the later
times spread over the Roman colonies and municipia. | in each municipality,
which have their honours confined within their own city walls. To what
lengths this licence of adopting gods has been pushed, the
superstitious practices of the Egyptians show us; for they worship even
their native911
animals, such
as cats, crocodiles, and their snake. It is therefore a small
matter that they have also deified a man—him, I mean, whom not
Egypt only, or Greece, but the whole world worships, and the Africans
swear by; about whose state also all that helps our conjectures and
imparts to our knowledge the semblance of truth is stated in our own
(sacred) literature. For that Serapis of yours was originally one of
our own saints called Joseph.912
The youngest of his
brethren, but superior to them in intellect, he was from envy sold into
Egypt, and became a slave in the family of Pharaoh king of the
country.913
| 913 Tertullian is not the
only writer who has made mistakes in citing from memory Scripture
narratives. Comp. Arnobius. | Importuned by the
unchaste queen, when he refused to comply with her desire, she turned
upon him and reported him to the king, by whom he is put into
prison. There he displays the power of his divine inspiration, by
interpreting aright the dreams of some (fellow-prisoners).
Meanwhile the king, too, has some terrible dreams. Joseph being
brought before him,
according to his summons, was able to expound them. Having
narrated the proofs of true interpretation which he had given in the
prison, he opens out his dream to the king: those seven
fat-fleshed and well-favoured kine signified as many years of plenty;
in like manner, the seven lean-fleshed animals predicted the scarcity
of the seven following years. He accordingly recommends
precautions to be taken against the future famine from the previous
plenty. The king believed him. The issue of all that happened showed
how wise he was, how invariably holy, and now how necessary. So Pharaoh
set him over all Egypt, that he might secure the provision of corn for
it, and thenceforth administer its government. They called him Serapis,
from the turban914
which adorned his
head. The peck-like915
shape of this turban
marks the memory of his corn-provisioning; whilst evidence is given
that the care of the supplies was all on his head,916
| 916 Super caput esse, i.e.,
was entrusted to him. |
by the very ears of corn which embellish the border of the head-dress.
For the same reason, also, they made the sacred figure of a
dog,917
which they regard (as a sentry) in Hades, and
put it under his right hand, because the care of the Egyptians was
concentrated918
under his hand. And
they put at his side Pharia,919
| 919 Isis; comp. The
Apology, xvi. [See p. 31, supra.] | whose name shows her
to have been the king’s daughter. For in addition to all the rest
of his kind gifts and rewards, Pharaoh had given him his own daughter
in marriage. Since, however, they had begun to worship both wild
animals and human beings, they combined both figures under one form
Anubis, in which there may rather be seen clear proofs of its own
character and condition enshrined920
by a nation at
war with itself, refractory921
to its kings,
despised among foreigners, with even the appetite of a slave and the
filthy nature of a dog.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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