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Chapter
XLII.
After these matters, Celsus brings the following
charges against us from another quarter: “Certain most
impious errors,” he says, “are committed by them, due to
their extreme ignorance, in which they have wandered away from the
meaning of the divine enigmas, creating an adversary to God, the devil,
and naming him in the Hebrew tongue, Satan. Now, of a truth, such
statements are altogether of mortal invention,4483
4483 θνητά. Instead of this
reading, Guietus conjectures πτηκτά, which is approved
of by Ruæus. |
and not even proper to be repeated, viz., that the mighty God, in His
desire to confer good upon men, has yet one counterworking Him, and is
helpless. The Son of God, it follows, is vanquished by the devil;
and being punished by him, teaches us also to despise the punishments
which he inflicts, telling us beforehand that Satan, after appearing to
men as He Himself had done, will exhibit great and marvellous works,
claiming for himself the glory of God, but that those who wish to keep
him at a distance ought to pay no attention to these works of Satan,
but to place their faith in Him alone. Such statements are
manifestly the words of a deluder, planning and manœuvring
against those who are opposed to his views, and who rank themselves
against them.” In the next place, desiring to point out the
“enigmas,” our mistakes regarding which lead to the
introduction of our views concerning Satan, he continues:
“The ancients allude obscurely to a certain war among the gods,
Heraclitus speaking thus of it: ‘If one must say that there
is a general war and discord, and that all things are done and
administered in strife.’ Pherecydes, again, who is much
older than Heraclitus, relates a myth of one army drawn up in hostile
array against another, and names Kronos as the leader of the one, and
Ophioneus of the other, and recounts their challenges and struggles,
and mentions that agreements were entered into between them, to the end
that whichever party should fall into the ocean4484
4484 ᾽Ωγηνόν, i.e., in Oceanum,
Hesych.; ᾽Ωγήν,
ὠκεανός, Suid. |
should be held as vanquished, while those who had expelled and
conquered them should have possession of heaven. The mysteries
relating to the Titans and Giants also had some such (symbolical)
meaning, as well as the Egyptian mysteries of Typhon, and Horus, and
Osiris.” After having made such statements, and not having
got over the difficulty4485
4485 καὶ μὴ
παραμυθησάμενος. | as to the way in
which these accounts contain a higher view of things, while our
accounts are erroneous copies of them, he continues his abuse of us,
remarking that “these are not like the stories which are related
of a devil, or demon, or, as he remarks with more truth, of a man who
is an impostor, who wishes to establish an opposite
doctrine.” And in the same way he understands Homer, as if
he referred obscurely to matters similar to those mentioned by
Heraclitus, and Pherecydes, and the originators of the mysteries about
the Titans and Giants, in those words which Hephæstus addresses to
Hera as follows:—
“Once in your cause I felt his matchless
might,
Hurled headlong downward from the ethereal
height.”4486
4486 Cf.
Iliad, i. 590 (Pope’s translation). |
And in those of Zeus to Hera:—
“Hast thou forgot, when, bound and fix’d on
high,
From the vast concave of the spangled sky,
I hung thee trembling in a golden chain,
And all the raging gods opposed in vain?
Headlong I hurled them from the Olympian hall,
Stunn’d in the whirl, and breathless with
the fall.”4487
4487 Cf.
Iliad, xv. 18–24 (Pope’s translation). |
Interpreting, moreover, the words of Homer, he adds:
“The words of Zeus addressed to Hera are the words of God
addressed to matter; and the words addressed to matter obscurely
signify that the matter which at the beginning was in a state of
discord (with God), was taken by Him, and bound together and arranged
under laws, which may be analogically compared to chains;4488
4488 ἀναλογίαις
τισὶ
συνέδησε καὶ
ἐκόσμησεν ὁ
Θεός. | and that by way of chastising the demons who
create disorder in it, he hurls them down headlong to this lower
world.” These words of Homer, he alleges, were so
understood by Pherecydes, when he said that beneath that region is the
region of Tartarus, which is guarded by the Harpies and Tempest,
daughters of Boreas, and to which Zeus banishes any one of the gods who
becomes disorderly. With the same ideas also are closely
connected the peplos of Athena, which is beheld by all in the
procession of the Panathenæa. For it is manifest from
this, he continues, that a motherless and unsullied demon4489
4489 ἀμήτωρ τις
καὶ ἄχραντος
δαίμων. | has the mastery over the daring of the
Giants. While accepting, moreover, the fictions of the Greeks, he
continues to heap against us such accusations as the following, viz.,
that “the Son of God is punished by the devil, and teaches us
that we also, when punished by him, ought to endure it. Now these
statements are altogether ridiculous. For it is the devil, I
think, who ought rather to be punished, and those human beings who are
calumniated by him ought not to be threatened with
chastisement.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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