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| Of the Rituals of False Gods Instituted by the Kings of Greece in the Period from Israel’s Exodus from Egypt Down to the Death of Joshua the Son of Nun. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter 12.—Of the Rituals of
False Gods Instituted by the Kings of Greece in the Period from
Israel’s Exodus from Egypt Down to the Death of Joshua the Son of
Nun.
During this period, that is, from
Israel’s exodus from Egypt down to the death of Joshua the son of
Nun, through whom that people received the land of promise, rituals
were instituted to the false gods by the kings of Greece, which, by
stated celebration, recalled the memory of the flood, and of
men’s deliverance from it, and of that troublous life they then
led in migrating to and fro between the heights and the plains.
For even the Luperci,1139
1139 The priests who officiated at the
Lupercalia. | when they ascend and descend the
sacred path, are said to represent the men who sought the mountain
summits because of the inundation of water, and returned to the
lowlands on its subsidence. In those times, Dionysus, who was
also called Father Liber, and was esteemed a god after death, is
said to have shown the vine to his host in Attica. Then the
musical games were instituted for the Delphic Apollo, to appease
his anger,
through which they thought the regions of Greece were
afflicted with barrenness, because they had not defended his temple
which Danaos burnt when he invaded those lands; for they were
warned by his oracle to institute these games. But king
Ericthonius first instituted games to him in Attica, and not to him
only, but also to Minerva, in which games the olive was given as
the prize to the victors, because they relate that Minerva was the
discoverer of that fruit, as Liber was of the grape. In those
years Europa is alleged to have been carried off by Xanthus king of
Crete (to whom we find some give another name), and to have borne
him Rhadamanthus, Sarpedon, and Minos, who are more commonly
reported to have been the sons of Jupiter by the same woman. Now
those who worship such gods regard what we have said about Xanthus
king of Crete as true history; but this about Jupiter, which the
poets sing, the theatres applaud, and the people celebrate, as
empty fable got up as a reason for games to appease the deities,
even with the false ascription of crimes to them. In those times
Hercules was held in honor in Tyre, but that was not the same one
as he whom we spoke of above. In the more secret history there
are said to have been several who were called Father Liber and
Hercules. This Hercules, whose great deeds are reckoned as twelve
(not including the slaughter of Antæus the African, because that
affair pertains to another Hercules), is declared in their books to
have burned himself on Mount Œta, because he was not able, by that
strength with which he had subdued monsters, to endure the disease
under which he languished. At that time the king, or rather
tyrant Busiris, who is alleged to have been the son of Neptune by
Libya the daughter of Epaphus, is said to have offered up his
guests in sacrifice to the gods. Now it must not be believed that
Neptune committed this adultery, lest the gods should be
criminated; yet such things must be ascribed to them by the poets
and in the theatres, that they may be pleased with them. Vulcan
and Minerva are said to have been the parents of Ericthonius king
of Athens, in whose last years Joshua the son of Nun is found to
have died. But since they will have it that Minerva is a virgin,
they say that Vulcan, being disturbed in the struggle between them,
poured out his seed into the earth, and on that account the man
born of it received that name; for in the Greek language
ἔρις is “strife,” and
χθὼν “earth,” of which
two words Ericthonius is a compound. Yet it must be admitted that
the more learned disprove and disown such things concerning their
gods, and declare that this fabulous belief originated in the fact
that in the temple at Athens, which Vulcan and Minerva had in
common, a boy who had been exposed was found wrapped up in the
coils of a dragon, which signified that he would become great, and,
as his parents were unknown, he was called the son of Vulcan and
Minerva, because they had the temple in common. Yet that fable
accounts for the origin of his name better than this history. But
what does it matter to us? Let the one in books that speak the
truth edify religious men, and the other in lying fables delight
impure demons. Yet these religious men worship them as gods.
Still, while they deny these things concerning them they cannot
clear them of all crime, because at their demand they exhibit plays
in which the very things they wisely deny are basely done, and the
gods are appeased by these false and base things. Now, even
although the play celebrates an unreal crime of the gods, yet to
delight in the ascription of an unreal crime is a real
one.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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