Medieval Sourcebook:
Porphyry: Against the Christians
As Christianity spread, there was an increasingly intellectual reaction
to it among the classically oriented intellectuals who sought to defend
"reason". Here is Porphyry, a leading "Neoplatonist"
attacking Christian unreason as reported by Eusebius.
"Some persons, desiring to find a solution to the baseness of the
Jewish Scriptures rather than abandon them, have had recourse to explanations
inconsistent and incongruous with the words written, which explanations,
instead of supplying a defense of the foreigners, contain rather approval
and praise of themselves. For they boast that the plain words of Moses
are "enigmas", and regard them as oracles full of hidden mysteries;
and having bewildered the mental judgment by folly, they make their explanations."
"As an example of this absurdity take a man whom I met when I was
young, and who was then greatly celebrated and still is, on account of
the writings which he has left. I refer to Origen, who is highly honored
by the teachers of these doctrines. For this man, having been a student
of Ammonius, who had attained the greatest proficiency in philosophy of
any in our day, derived much benefit from his teacher in the knowledge
of the sciences; but as to the correct choice of life, he pursued a course
opposite to his. For Ammonius, being a Christian, and brought up by Christian
parents, when he gave himself to study and to philosophy straightway conformed
to the life required by the laws. But Origen, having been educated as a
Greek in Greek literature, went over to the barbarian recklessness. And
carrying over the learning which he had obtained, he hawked it about, in
his life conducting himself as a Christian and contrary to the laws, but
in his opinions of material things and of the Deity being like a Greek,
and mingling Grecian teachings with foreign fables. For he was continually
studying Plato, and he busied himself with the writings of Numenius and
Cronius, Apollophanes, Longinus, Moderatus, and Nicomachus, and those famous
among the Pythagoreans. And he used the books of Chaeremon the Stoic, and
of Cornutus. Becoming acquainted through them with the figurative interpretation
of the Grecian mysteries, he applied it to the Jewish Scriptures."
These things are said by Porphyry in the third book of his work against
the Christians.
from Eusebius: Church History , in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers,
2nd Series, ed. P. Schaff and H. Wace, (repr. Grand Rapids MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans,
1955), Vo1 I, pp. 265-266
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(c)Paul Halsall Feb 1996
halsall@murray.fordham.edu
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