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| Chapter XXXIX
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Chapter
XXXIX.
But as Celsus makes a jest also of the serpent, as
counteracting the injunctions given by God to the man, taking the
narrative to be an old wife’s fable,3855
| 3855 “μῦθόν
τινα” παραπλήσιον
τοῖς
παραδιδομένοις
ταῖς
γραυσίν. |
and has purposely neither mentioned the paradise3856
of God, nor stated that God is said to have
planted it in Eden towards the east, and that there afterwards sprang
up from the earth every tree that was beautiful to the sight, and good
for food, and the tree of life in the midst of the paradise, and the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the other statements which
follow, which might of themselves lead a candid reader to see that all
these things had not inappropriately an allegorical meaning, let us
contrast with this the words of Socrates regarding Eros in the
Symposium of Plato, and which are put in the mouth of Socrates as being
more appropriate than what was said regarding him by all the others at
the Symposium. The words of Plato are as follow:
“When Aphrodite was born, the gods held a banquet, and there was
present, along with the others, Porus the son of Metis. And after
they had dined, Penia3857
came to beg for
something (seeing there was an entertainment), and she stood at the
gate. Porus meantime, having become intoxicated with the nectar
(for there was then no wine), went into the garden of Zeus, and, being
heavy with liquor, lay down to sleep. Penia accordingly formed a
secret plot, with a view of freeing herself from her condition of
poverty,3858
| 3858 διὰ τὴν
αὑτῆς
ἀπορίαν. | to get a child by
Porus, and accordingly lay down beside him, and became pregnant with
Eros. And on this account Eros has become the follower and
attendant of Aphrodite, having been begotten on her birthday
feast,3859
| 3859 ἐν
τοῖς ἐκείνης
γενεθλίοις. | and being at the
same time by nature a lover of the beautiful, because Aphrodite too is
beautiful. Seeing, then, that Eros is the son of Porus and Penia,
the following is his condition.3860
| 3860 ἐν
τοιαῦτῃ τύχῃ
καθέστηκε. | In the
first place, he is always poor, and far from being delicate and
beautiful, as most persons imagine; but is withered, and
sunburnt,3861
| 3861 σκληρὸς καὶ
αὐχμηρός. | and unshod, and
without a home, sleeping always upon the ground, and without a
covering; lying in the open air beside gates, and on public roads;
possessing the nature of his mother, and dwelling continually with
indigence.3862
But, on the
other hand, in conformity with the character of his father, he is given
to plotting against the beautiful and the good, being courageous, and
hasty, and vehement;3863
a keen3864
hunter, perpetually devising contrivances;
both much given to forethought, and also fertile in resources;3865
| 3865 καὶ
φρονήσεως
ἐπιθυμητὴς
καὶ
πόριμος. | acting like a philosopher throughout the
whole of his life; a terrible3866
sorcerer, and
dealer in drugs, and a sophist as well; neither immortal by nature nor
yet mortal, but on the same day, at one time he flourishes and lives
when he has plenty, and again at another time dies, and once more is
recalled to life through possessing the nature of his father. But
the supplies furnished to him are always gradually disappearing, so
that he is never at any time in want, nor yet rich; and, on the other
hand, he occupies an intermediate position between wisdom and
ignorance.”3867
| 3867 [Plato,
Symposion, xxiii. p. 203. S.] | Now, if those
who read these words were to imitate the malignity of
Celsus—which be it far from Christians to do!—they would
ridicule the myth, and would turn this great Plato into a subject of
jest; but if, on investigating in a philosophic spirit what is conveyed
in the dress of a myth, they should be able to discover the meaning of
Plato, (they will admire)3868
| 3868 Boherellus, quem
Ruæus sequitur, in notis; “Ante voces: τίνα
τρόπον, videtur deesse:
θαυμάσονται,
aut quid simile.”—Lommatzsch. | the manner in which
he was able to conceal, on account of the multitude, in the form of
this myth, the great ideas which presented themselves to him, and to
speak in a befitting manner to those who know how to ascertain from the
myths the true meaning of him who wove them together. Now I have
brought forward this myth occurring in the writings of Plato, because
of the mention in it of the garden of Zeus, which appears to bear some
resemblance to the paradise of God, and of the comparison between Penia
and the serpent, and the plot against Porus by Penia, which may be
compared with the plot of the serpent against the man. It is not
very clear, indeed, whether Plato fell in with these stories by chance,
or whether, as some think, meeting during his visit to Egypt with
certain individuals who philosophized on the Jewish mysteries, and
learning some things from them, he may have preserved a few of their
ideas, and thrown others aside, being careful not to offend the Greeks
by a complete adoption of all the points of the philosophy of the Jews,
who were in bad repute with the multitude, on account of the foreign
character of their laws and their peculiar polity. The present,
however, is not the proper time for explaining either the myth of
Plato, or the story of the serpent and the paradise of God, and all
that is related to have taken place in it, as in our exposition of the
book of Genesis we have especially occupied ourselves as we best could
with these matters.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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