Site Map

PORPHYRY'S AGAINST THE CHRISTIANS: THE LITERARY REMAINS
4: The Life and Work of Jesus
 
Apocrit. 111.1-111.6
 
When brought before the high priest and Roman governor, why didn't Jesus say anything to suggest he was wise or divine? [13] He could have taught his judge and his accusers how to become better men! But, no: he only manages to be whipped and spit on and crowned with briars -- unlike Apollonius who talked back to the emperor Domitian, vanished from the palace and soon was to be seen by many in the city of Dicearchia, now called Puteoli. [14]
 
And even if Christ's suffering was carried out according to God's plan, even if he was meant to suffer punishment -- at least he might have faced his suffering nobly and spoken words of power and wisdom to Pilate, his judge, instead of being made fun of like a peasant boy in the big city. [15]
 

“Now, if that’s a fact, tell me, am I lying? Cause you, you’re part eggplant.”
-- True Romance, directed by Tony Scott
 
[Matt. 26.36ff.]
 
There is, in addition, a saying [of Jesus] which is both stupid and unclear, that which he spoke to his disciples when he said, "Do not fear those who can kill the body."
 
When [Jesus] himself agonizes in expectation of his death, he prays that his suffering might be eliminated; and he says to his friends, "Wait, pray, so that temptation may not overcome you." Surely such sayings are not worthy of a son of God, nor even of a wise man who hates death. [16]
 
[John 5.46-7]
 
"If you believed Moses, then you would believe me. For he wrote about me." The saying is filled with stupidity! Even if [Moses] said it, nothing of what he wrote has been preserved; his writings are reported to have been destroyed along with the Temple. All the things attributed to Moses were really written eleven hundred years later by Ezra and his contemporaries.
 
And even if [the Law] could be considered as the work of Moses, it does not prove that Christ was a god, or the word of God, or of the creator. Further: who [among the Jews] has ever spoken of a crucified Christ? [17]
 
[Matt. 8.31; Mark 5.1]
 
If we turn our attention to [the Christian] account, it can be shown to be pure deceit and trickery. Matthew writes that Christ met up with two demon[iacs] who lived among the tombs and that, being afraid, they entered into swine, many of which were killed.
 
Mark exaggerates when he says there was a great number of swine; "Jesus said to him, Go out of him you unclean spirit, from this man. And he asked him, What is your name, and he answered, Many. And he begged him [Jesus] that he should not be expelled from the country. And a herd of swine was feeding. And the demons begged that they might be permitted to enter into the swine. And when they had entered into the swine, they rushed down the steep into the sea -- about two thousand -- and were choked; and they that fed them fled" [Mark 5.8ff.]
 
What a story! What nonsense! What an offense to reason! Two thousand swine splashing into the sea, choking and dying! [18]
 
It is rumored as well that the demons begged Jesus not to throw them over the cliffs edge and that he agreed to their request, sending them instead into the swine: and does not one react to this fable by saying, "What complete foolishness -- what deceit -- that Jesus should conspire to grant the wishes of evil spirits who were stalking the world to carry out their murderous designs!"
 
What the demons were asking was to dance through the land of the living and to make the world their toy. They would have stirred the sea till it overflowed its boundaries and filled the world with sorrow. They would have awakened the powers of the earth and unleashed their anger on the world until chaos was restored. Tell me: was it fair that Jesus softened his heart for these monsters who wished to do only evil -- that he should have sent them where they wanted to go instead of into the abyss -- where they deserved to go?
 
If the story is true and not a fable (as we hold it to be), what does it say about Christ, that he permitted the demons to continue to do harm by driving them out of one man and into some poor pigs? [Not only this], but he causes the swineherds to run for their lives and sends a whole city into a panic.
 
Odd that someone who alleges to have come into the world to patch up the harm [done by the evil one] to all mankind should limit himself to helping out just one. To free only one man from the spiritual bondage [of sin] and not two, or three, or thirteen, or everyone -- or to free certain people of their fears while making others afraid -- this seems to me the opposite of morality. It looks to me like treachery!
 
Furthermore. in permitting enemies to do what they like by moving to another abode, [Jesus] acts like a king who ruins his own kingdom. After all, if a king is unable to drive the barbarians out of every country he will usually drive them from one place to another, pushing back the evil from one place to the next.
 
Does Christ in the same way -- being unable to drive the demons from his territory -- send them as far as he can send them, namely into the unclean beasts? If so, he does indeed do something marvelous and worth talking about. But it is also the sort of action that raises questions about his [divine] powers.
 
A reasonable person, upon hearing such a tale, instinctively makes up his mind as to the truthfulness of the story: he says something like, "If Christ does not do his good for the benefit of everything under the sun, but only relocates the evil by driving it from place to place, and if he takes care of some and neglects others -- well, then, what good is he as a savior?"
 
By this sort of action, he who is saved only makes life impossible for someone else who is not, so that the unsaved stand to accuse those who are saved. [19] In my judgment, it is best to regard such a story as fiction. If you regard the story as anything other than fiction then there is plenty even for a fool to laugh at. [20]
 
Can anyone tell me what business a large herd of swine had roaming about the hills of Judah, given that the Jews had always regarded them as the vilest and most detested form of animal life? And how is it that those swine choked as they are supposed to have done, when they were cast -- not into the ocean -- into a mere lake? I leave it to infants to decide the truthfulness of such a tale! [21]
 
[Matt. 19.24]
 
I turn now to test another saying, one even more confusing than the last, as when Jesus says, "It is easier for a camel to go through a needle [sic] than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."
 
If it is true that a rich man who has kept himself free from the sins of the flesh -- murder, thievery, adultery, cheating and lying, fornication, blasphemy -- is prohibited from getting any sort of heavenly reward, what use is it for rich men to be good? [And if the poor are the only ones destined for heaven] what's the harm in their committing any offense they like? For it seems it is not virtue that gets a man into heaven but poverty.
 
Just as wealth appears to keep a rich man out of heaven, being poor gets a pauper in! And so it's the rule that a poor man can ignore virtue; and what is more, he can trust that his poverty alone will save him no matter what kind of evil things he does. Meantime the rich are closed out of the heavenly sanctuary, since

"Poverty saves."

It seems unlikely to me that these words belong to Christ. They ring untrue to the ear. They seem to be rather the words of poor people who wish to deprive the rich of their property. Why, only yesterday [Christian teachers] succeeded -- through quoting the words, "Sell what you have and give it to the poor and you shall have treasure in heaven" -- in depriving noble women of their savings. [22]
 
They were persuaded to squander what they had on the beggars, giving away what was rightly theirs and making themselves beggars in return. They were turned from having to wanting, from rich to poor, from freedom to slavery and from being wealthy to being pitiful! In the end, [these same women] were reduced to going from door to door to the houses of the well-off to beg -- which is the nethermost point of disgrace and humiliation.
 
They lost what belonged to them in the name of "godliness" and they learned, as a result, what it is to crave the goods of other people. The words [here ascribed to Jesus] look rather to be the words of some woman in distress! [23]
 
[Matt. 14.25; Mark 6.48]
 
Another section in the gospel deserves comment, for it is likewise devoid of sense and full of implausibility; I mean that absurd story about Jesus sending his apostles across the sea ahead of him after a banquet, then walking across to them "at the fourth watch of the night." It is related that they had been working all night to keep the boat adrift and were frightened by the size of the storm [surging against the boat]. (The fourth watch would be the tenth hour of the night, with three hours being left.)
 
Those who know the region well tell us that, in fact, there is no "sea" in the locality but only a tiny lake which springs from a river that flows through the hills of Galilee near Tiberias. Small boats can get across it within two hours. [And the lake is too small] to have seen whitecaps caused by storm. Mark seems to be stretching a point to its extremities when he writes that Jesus -- after nine hours had passed -- decided in the tenth to walk across to his disciples who had been floating about on the pond for the duration!
 
As if this isn't enough, he calls it a "sea" -- indeed, a stormy sea -- a very angry sea which tosses them about in its waves causing them to fear for their lives. He does this, apparently, so that he can next show Christ miraculously causing the storm to cease and the sea to calm down, hence saving the disciples from the dangers of the swell. It is from fables like this one that we judge the gospel to be a cleverly woven curtain, each thread of which requires careful scrutiny. [24]
_______________
 
Notes:
 
13. Crafer notes that the questions posed by Porphyry am simpler and more direct than Macarius' turgid and diffuse responses would indicate (p. 51, n. 2). While Macarius says that the philosopher sought to win the debate through the loftiness of his Attic oratory, it seems clear from the diction in III.1 that Macarius often undertakes to summarize his opponent's most salient objections with his own response in view. Some turns in the response are dictated by nuances that have not been preserved in Macarius' representation of the objections.
 
14. Apollonius of Tyana, a neo-Pythagorean philosopher who died ca. 98. was a favorite subject for anti-Christian writers from the second century. The biography of Apollonius written by Philostratus around 220 was composed deliberately to emphasize its similarities with the gospels. Hierocles, a pupil of Porphyry, used it in 303 (the year of Porphyry's death) to write his own life of Apollonius, designed to deny the uniqueness of Christian doctrine.
 
15. Porphyry voices what had become a stock objection to the divinity of Jesus, namely that divinity is susceptive of proof and that at the point where such proof might have been expected Jesus produces none. This in turn is contrasted with the legend of Apollonius of Tyana. Both Nero and Domitian condemned his teaching as seditious, but he escaped punishment by miraculous means in each case. Porphyry regards such escapes as heroic, as did Celsus (Hoffmann, Celsus, pp. 70-72). Jesus' failure to duplicate such feats is cited as evidence against Christian belief in his divinity. Celsus had made the additional point that if apotheosis is the hallmark of divinity, then only figures such as Asklepios, Herakles, and Dionysus are worthy of reverence, owing to the greater antiquity of their stories. Macarius argues that Jesus' conduct during his trial and passion was in strict conformity with prophecy.
 
16. The reply to this objection seems especially muddled. Macarius argues that Jesus only pretends to be afraid of death, as a ruse to bring about the passion more quickly -- in short, as a means of teasing Satan into thinking that he is vulnerable to temptation "as a man might stir up a wild beast by making a noise." Macarius continues: "So, he really wants the cup to come quickly, not to pass away. And observe that he calls it a cup, not suffering, for a cup represents good cheer." The logic here envisaged can be explored more fully in the the arguments of the church fathers who supposed that Christ bared his humanity as "bait" in order to catch Satan on the hook of his divinity. See, e.g, Justin Martyr, Dialogue with the Jew Trypho 72; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.33. However ingenious Macarius' defense, however, it seems to have little to do with Porphyry's objection.
 
The bifurcation of the humanity and divinity of Jesus was rejected at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Porphyry's more general point seems to be that Jesus did not accept death as a true philosopher would have done.
 
17. The philosopher shows a surprising awareness of the history of the biblical text in denying the traditional attribution of the the books of the law to Moses. Macarius acknowledges the implications of the biblical account (Neh. 13.1-3), but suggests that the Holy Spirit had dictated the law to Moses and to Ezra alike. A feature of the philosopher's argument, not here represented by Macarius but evident in his reply, is the notion that Ezra copied portions of the law incorrectly. In Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles it is stated that the followers of Jesus misunderstood and misrepresented his teaching in the gospels.
 
18. At least the initial part of the critique is an interesting example of pagan synoptic criticism. It is Matthew who is probably guilty of the greater exaggeration, turning Mark's single demoniac into two possessed men. Matthew specifies a "large number" of swine, where Mark gives "about two thousand" -- a little less than half the number required to accommodate a legion of demons.
 
19. Porphyry's point seems somewhat blunted by Macarius' response. The thrust of the objection to Matthew's account of the demoniac is that it contradicts Christian belief in Jesus as savior of the whole world: the limits and purpose of his actions are revealed in his inability or unwillingness to defeat the powers of evil in an unambiguous way. Instead, he "relocates" evil (thus the swine, the Jews, or the ones who reject the gospel) and creates a class of victims who do not participate in the salvation he is supposed to offer. That great numbers do not participate in these blessings proves to the philosopher that Jesus did not intend to save everyone -- in which case his goodness is questionable, or else he was unable to do so, which argues against his divinity.
 
20. Note Eusebius' description of the style of Porphyry's work against the Christians: "Porphyry, who settled in our day in Sicily, issued treatises against us, attempting in them to slander the sacred scriptures" (Ecclesiastical History 6.19.2f.).
 
21. Macarius replies mistakenly that Matthew mentions two demons "but does not say that two men were possessed by them" (cf. Matt. 8.28), thus duplicating Porphyry's misreading. Macarius here and elsewhere shows a tendency to view the story as support for incipient Christological views of the fourth century. Thus he imagines that the demons were scorched by the searching rays of Christ's divine nature and craved the soothing waters for relief of their torture, using the swine "as a kind of ladder, since they themselves were of an incorporeal nature." As to the criticism that the Jews would have had no business keeping animals forbidden to them under Mosaic law, Macarius responds correctly that the scene is not laid in a Jewish but a Roman sedeo or gentile settlement. Although Mark does not make the location clear, the Greek peran would normally mean the east side of the lake. Some versions read Gerasa (modern Jerash), a Syro-Greek city of the Decapolis league. Other versions have Gadara, which is evidently what Matthew accepted (Matt. 8.28). The Sinaitic Syriac, Bohairic, Armenian and Ethiopic versions of Mark 5.1 read "Gergesenes," Gergesa being hypothetically located on the immediate eastern boundary of the lake at el-Kursi. In any event. it was a part of the pre-Marcan tradition to see Jesus' crossing of the lake as a celebration of the taking of the gospel to non-Jews, and the demoniac himself was understood to be a gentile.
 
22. A useful point of reference for this accusation is Tertullian's Apology 39, where the common life of the Christian church as a charitable organization is described. The view that women are duped by Christian "beggars" is conventional in anti-Christian polemic. Celsus (Origen, Contra Celsum 1.9) had compared Christian teachers to the begging priests of Cybele.
 
23. Porphyry's criticism of the poverty ethic of the gospel is far-reaching and anticipates some of the form-critical evaluations of the sayings of Jesus advanced much later in the history of the synoptic gospels. With Celsus (cf. Contra Celsum 3.44), Porphyry regards certain sayings of Jesus to reflect attitudes arising out of the small and generally impoverished Christian communities of the empire. He finds it ludicrous that such attitudes should serve as criteria for heavenly rewards, or that Jesus should have made wealth an obstacle to salvation. However, the criticism is socially rather than philosophically framed. The Platonism of many Christian writers of the fourth century tended to support such an interpretation of the gospels, especially such passages as Matt. 19.24, Mark 10.17ff. and Luke 12.13ff., which emphasized the implicit anti-materialism of Jesus' condemnation of wealth. Macarius' response should be viewed against the tendency to interpret the socially conditioned poverty ethic of the gospels in an idealistic or Platonic fashion: "The burden of wealth shows itself as a disease in mankind ... and it is by far better to shed the burden and ascend unencumbered to the heavenly ranks above," Cf. Plotinus, 4 Ennead 8.1-8; Augustine, City of God 13.16.
 
24. Apart from quibbles over nomenclature (Macarius argues that any gathering of water can go by the generic name "sea," as Mark had located the boat en meso tes thalasses), the rebuttal centers on the spiritual meaning of the episode. Against Porphyry's commonsense approach to the text, Macarius argues that the story illustrates the two natures of Christ, who first terrifies his disciples through his godhead in creating the storm, then pities them in his manhood, and finally shows his dominion over nature by causing the storm to abate: "The sea denotes the brine and gall of human existence; the night is life; the boat is the world; those who sail at night are human beings; the hostile wind is the power of the devil; and the fourth watch is the coming of the savior."