Aplicación práctica de la propuesta y comprobación de los resultados

AND now we hasten to our close, believing that an answer to the question proposed to us at the outset has already been answered, in a general sense, in the mind of every thoughtful reader who has gone with us. But to gain a distincter view of the object of inquiry, let us now contemplate it in the light of contemporary criticism and defence. We have already referred to the general silence observed by the Greek and Roman writers on the Christiani. To Trajan and Hadrian’s time belongs possibly Plutarch’s old age: he is silent. So is Florus, the historian in Hadrian’s reign. So is Epictetus, the Stoic, with the exception of a passing allusion to the habitual recklessness of the interests of this world shown by the ‘Galilaei,’⁵⁰⁰ who cannot certainly be identified with Christians. But if the earlier home of the Superstitio or innovating cultus was Bithynia and Pontus and other parts of Asia Minor, if Tacitus himself betrays no knowledge of it until after the original letter of his friend Pliny from Asia Minor, the general ignorance or indifference of the educated world may be explained.

We pass to the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-18o),⁵⁰¹ [244] during which Pausanias wrote his most valuable Periegesis of Hellas. It is a book worthy of deep study. It yields the best insight into the contemporary and the ancient religious beliefs and rites of Hellos ; it is written by a man whose simple piety and patient habits of inquiry command respect.

499 B. Bauer, Christus, 384.

500 Arriani Comm. Epict., 4. 7. 2.

501 We need only refer in passing to the emperor’s Meditations. They have long been recognised as essentially Christian in the best sense. Cf. M. Arnold, Essays in Crit. It remains to consider whether they are not historically so--i.e., whether they were not used by writers of the New Testament Books. B. Bauer, Christus, 319 ff.

Pausanias knew Asia Minor as well as Hellas, and the silence of so curious a traveller upon the subject of our investigation is to us a convincing proof that the new religion had made no noise either in Corinth, or Athens, or in Asia during his time.

We come to Lucian. He was a native of Commagene in Syria ; he practised as an advocate at Antioch, where ‘the disciples were first called Christiani;’ he travelled in Greece, Italy, and Gaul. About 160-165, apparently, he was at Olympia in Elis, the scene of the self-immolation of his ‘ Peregrinus Proteus.’ What does this tract teach us as to the Christiani? They are described ironically as possessed of ‘ the marvellous Wisdom’ (VJPSCWOCUVJPUQHKCP) which Peregrinus learned ‘in the regions of Palestine’ by associating with their ‘priests and men of letters.’ Soon he addressed them as ‘children,’ being their sole ‘prophet ‘ and

thiasarch and synagogeus and everything.’ Now he interpreted and made plain, now he wrote many books himself. The Christiani esteemed him as a god, held him to be a lawgiver, and entitled him Prostates.⁵⁰²

As for the Christians, they still worship ‘that Great One,’ the man who was impaled in Palestine, because he introduced this new rite (VGNGVJP) into existence.

[245] After this, Peregrinus Proteus was apprehended and cast into prison. And this circumstance contributed greatly to his subsequent reputation, and to the miraculous and vainglorious notoriety which he was passionately fond of. So when he was bound, the Christians took the matter to heart, and did all in their power to rescue him. As this was impossible, they zealously rendered other services. At daybreak old women, certain widows and orphan children, were seen waiting by the prison. The officials of the Christians slept within along with him, corrupting the gaolers. Various meals were brought in; they held their sacred discourses, and the noble Pererinus—for so he was still called—was named a new Socrates by them.

Nay, even from the cities in Asia, some were sent by the community of the Christians, to help and encourage and comfort the gentleman (VCPFTC). When a thing of this kind becomes public, it is wonderful how in a short time they lavish their goods. So Peregrinus enjoyed a great revenue from their contributions: for the wretches have persuaded themselves they shall be entirely immortal and live for ever, and consequently despise death, and give themselves over in numbers. Moreover, the first lawgiver persuaded them that they were all brothers, whenever they once transgress and deny the Hellenic gods and do reverence to that impaled Sophist and live according to his laws. So they despise all alike, and have a common

property, receiving such [?] without any valid security. If, then, they are approached by any wizard (IQJL) and trickster who knows how to manage matters, forthwith he is enriched in a short time, and laughs at the simpletons.

However, Peregrinus was released by the then ruler of Syria, a man who delighted in philosophy, who per[246] ceived the folly of the prisoner, and would not suffer him to acquire the glory of a voluntary death; who did not think him even worth punishing.

Then the knave dons the sordid mantle and takes the staff in full tragic style, and appears in the public assembly of the Parians; tells them he has given up to the public the goods of his

‘blessed father.’ Thereupon the mob of poor fellows whose pockets had been emptied in distributions, bawlingly salute him as ‘a philosopher, a philopatris, a zealot of Diogenes and Krates!’ Pursued by his enemies, who accuse him of the murder of his father, he escapes stoning, and wanders again, ungrudgingly furnished with supplies by the Christians, until he

502 Cyril gives the title to Peter and Paul. Cat. 6.

is deprived of their maintenance because of some sin against them: ‘he was seen, I fancy, eating something forbidden (VYPCXRQTTJVYPCWXVQKL) them.’

Then we find him in Egypt practising ‘the marvellous askésis’ of an obscene character.

Beaten and fleeing, he sails to Italy, and, so soon as he disembarks, begins a rude tirade against everybody, especially the emperor, knowing him to be a most mild and gentle spirit.

The emperor cared little for his blasphemies; and did not think well to punish a man under the semblance of a philosopher, for words, especially one who had made a trade of abuse. His consideration, however, grew in private life; and when he was driven out, his ‘boldness of speech and extreme freedom’ was on everybody’s tongue ; and he was associated with Musonius and Dion and Epictetus, and others o£ the like condition.

Finally, after making disturbances in Elis, he immolates himself in the flames, calling upon the demons of his maternal and paternal line to receive him with good will.

[247] The picture of ‘ Proteus’ is one thing, that of the Christians another. The latter are thought of by Lucian apparently as numerous in Palestine—a wide designation-and in Asia Minor. They are evidently, in his opinion, of the most ignorant and credulous character, having no real basis for their belief, and possessed by a passionate desire to exchange

mortality for immortality. This was not peculiar to them: we read not infrequently of religious suicide in the sacred myths of Hellas. There probably were epidemics of this brain sickness which the popular religion did nothing to restrain. If the allusion to the wondrous ‘ Sophia’

points, as it almost certainly does, to the Gnostic creed, and to ‘Pauline’ associations, then the Christians of whom Lucian knew held as a main article of that creed the redemption of the soul from the prison-house of the body and the evil of the world, whose material goods they were ready to squander upon any clever scoundrel who knew how to play upon their

imagination and touch the tender chords of their religious feeling. As we have seen,

respectable hagiographic documents like ‘ Hermas’ and the Didaché confirm in general the truth of Lucian’s delineation.⁵⁰³ The eating of meat offered to idols may well have been a part of Gnostic ‘ liberty:’ we know what resistance was offered to it by the opposite party, down to a time later than Lucian. It was the man ‘who had Gnosis’ who alone ventured to sit at meat in the idol’s temple.

It seems from Lucian’s account that a man might readily exchange the garb of the Christian leader for that of the Cynic preacher without exciting the jealousy of the new religionists.

Lucian dislikes these bawling [248] friars, the Cynics, their ostentatious poverty, and their declamation against wealth. Yet this popular ascetic appears to have formed a part of the early Gospel; and the poor Parians were here apparently at one in feeling in this matter with the Christians of Asia and Syria, who formed so important a brotherhood according to Lucian.

Moreover, the Cynics, according to Epictetus, had a lofty conception of their mission: he gives us the portrait, and admits that it is caricatured by many of the staff and wallet.

The true Cynic is a messenger from Zeus to men concerning good and evil.⁵⁰⁴ He must not attempt so great a business without God, otherwise he is an object of Divine wrath. It is not the wallet and the staff and the trick of abuse, and the rebuke of luxury, that make the Cynic.

It is the character of self-control, and the open and free bearing that needs no concealment, which befits the tutor and paedagogue of the public. The body is nothing to him ; death may come when it will; he may be exiled, but cannot be deprived of communication with God. He is a king and a shepherd, and weeps when any of his sheep are seized by the wolf.

503 Mand. 11. 1 ; Didaché 11., and cf. especially Orig. c. Cels 7. 9 and 11.

504 Discourses, 3. 22. 3.

Good lies in the soul alone, in the part which is free. God has sent One to show how the poor and naked and outcast may be happy. The Cynic, without wife, children, without coat, with only earth and heaven and one sorry cloke, is the true king and lord in his freedom and his contentedness. A fine trait of his character is that he will endure to be beaten like an ass, yet love those who beat him, as the father and brother of all. He will not roar out, ‘ O Caesar, am I to suffer such things in breach of your peace? Let [249] us go before the proconsul.’ He invokes none other than Him who hath deputed him and whom he serves (Zeus). Whatever he suffers Zeus doth it to exercise him.

As to marriage, in the present state of things, like that of an army prepared for battle, the Cynic should be without distraction,⁵⁰⁵ entirely attentive to the service of God, at liberty to walk about among mankind, not tied down to vulgar duties, not entangled in relations, which, if he transgresses, he will no longer keep the character of a wise and good man, and which, if he observes, there is an end of him as the messenger and spy and herald of the gods. Those who oversee all mankind confer a greater benefit upon the world than those who leave two or three snivelling children. All men are the Cynic’s sons, all women his daughters. He rebukes those whom he meets as a father, a brother, a minister of the common parent, Zeus. His commonwealth is the world.

Epictetus is at the same time severe upon the greedy Dogs that Cynics are now; upon their great jaws, their abusive tongue and brawny arm. Unless his ruling faculty be purer than the Sun, the Cynic must necessarily be a common cheat and rascal.

This order of preachers was in course of debasement. But the reader will observe how strong is the spiritual likeness between the ideal Cynic and the ideal ‘apostle’ or ‘prophet’ of the Diaspora, and the counterfeits of each. It is but reasonable to suppose that where both were aiming at a common moral ideal with a common monotheistic belief, the influence of good men among the Cynics was considerable upon the freer spirits of the new communities. The Stoical [250] and Cynical street-preacher of morality, theCXTGVCNQIQK, their long beards at which mischievous boys were wont to pluck, the staff with which they chastised these impertinences, had been popular figures since the days of Horace.⁵⁰⁶ They were doing the work among the vulgar that Cornutus, Persius, Seneca and Epictetus were doing among the pens du monde; they were arousing and stimulating the general conscience, they were, labouring for the regeneration of the world.⁵⁰⁷ When we look at the line of the teachers and fathers and exemplars of this communion, and recall the energy and the simplicity of their unworldly life and precepts, when we contrast all this with the aims and spirit of such as Justin of Neapolis, of Irenaeus and Tertullian, their imperious ecclesiasticism, their anxiety about everything except the one thing needful, their ferocious polemic against freedom, we cannot doubt that the boastful Christiani reaped where they had not sown, and gathered where they had not strawed, that they were the inheritors of the fruits of a great reformation of which Cynics and Stoics were the pioneers.⁵⁰⁸

But to return to Lucian and his romance of ‘Proteus.’ The question arises whether the author has drawn any of the traits of his portrait from any actual Christian apostle of the time. The suggestion of Zahn (followed by Bishop Lightfoot), that Lucian borrowed from the Ignatian

505CXRGTKURCUVQP, the word in 1 Cor. 7. 35. Cf. 2 Tim. 2. 4.

506 Sat. 1. 3. 133; cf. 1. 120; 2. 3. 35. Pers. 1. 133.

507 Cf. Aubertin, Senéque et St. Paul; Martha, Les Moralistes dans l’Empire Romain; Boissier, La Relig.

Romaine; Havet, Le Christianisme, 4. 413.

508 Cf. further Seneca, De Vit. Beat. 18. Ep. 29.1; Gellius 9. 2; Dion. Disc. 72, p. 628 ; Suet. Vesp.13 ; Lucian, Cynic and Demonax, 3, Dial. Mort. 10. 9., 11. 3: Epictet. Ench. 66. 13, Diog. L. 6. 69, 71.

literature, we must decisively reject. If the reader examines the ‘testimoni veterum’

concerning [251] Polycarp and Ignatius, he will find little reason for believing that the drivelling letters connected with their names, as they lie before us, were known either to Irenaeus, Tertullian, or Origen ; rather, some slight data for the concoction of them are found in these fathers. And if, further, he examines the new vocabulary of these letters, the maudlin sentiment and mysticism, the ludicrously emphatic ecclesiastical spirit, he will be led to the conclusion that the fabrication of these letters belongs to a much later age. There is some ground for believing that Lucian’s tract was used in their composition. The admirable painter of manners says that the report was that Proteus sent epistles to nearly all the cities of repute (GXPFQZQKL)—certain covenants, and exhortations, and laws; and certain elders after this he appointed by vote (GXEGKTQVQPJUG)⁵⁰⁹ of the members of the society (VG VCKTYP), and called them necrangels and nerterodromoi⁵¹⁰ (messengers and couriers of the dead). Compare with these statements the following in ‘ Ignatius : ‘I write to all the Churches;’⁵¹¹ ‘I could not write to all the Churches.’⁵¹² ‘Appoint some one who shall be able to be called a God’s courier (SGQFTQOQL); ⁵¹³ dignify him that he may go into Syria and glorify your unslothful love unto the glory of God’(!)

Lucian speaks of Proteus ‘bound in Syria;’ Ignatian letters, confused, talk of their hero as ‘ bound from Syria.’ ⁵¹⁴

Zahn says that the description of the lavish liberality of the Christians in Lucian depends not on this or that passage of the Ignatian epistles, but on the whole of [252] them: an

importunate begging of the question. Bishop Lightfoot finds ‘much to say’ for the ‘view ‘that Lucian copied from those letters: we, where there is no evidence, find nothing to say for it. ⁵¹⁵ To us it appears a monstrous waste of time and labour to pile up masses of learning in order to persuade us of the ‘genuineness’ of documents, so-called ‘outbuildings of the house of the Lord,’ from which any lover of simple piety and of vigorous thought and sentiment turns away in loathing and contempt.

On the whole, it would appear that Lucian has combined various traits from ideals of

apostles, prophets, and martyrs current at the time in the churches, in the composition of his story. It was an age of romance, in which, as the example of Simon Magus reminds us, ideas of a supernatural character readily became embodied in the lives and adventures of fantastic persons ; and through the thin veil of fiction we discern the figure of an apostle, who was held to possess means of communication with the world of the departed,⁵¹⁶ who appointed

‘messengers to the dead,’ who was sending letters to all the principal cities. Have we any contemporary Christian sources from which to correct this representation of Lucian’s? Justin Martyr’s Dialogue is supposed to have been written nearly at the same time, but we find no Polycarp, no Ignatius, no Paul, no great letter-writer here?

It is not until some fifty years or more that we find the Marcionite Apostle ‘Paul’ recognised by Tertullian, and his claims so jealously challenged, his supposed epistles so controversially examined. The [253] probable inference is, that in Lucian’s time the rumour of a great

509 Cf. Acts 14. 23.

510 Peregr. 41.

511 Rom. 4. 1.

512 Ad. Pol. 8. 1.

513 Ib. 7. 2. Cf. Sm. 11. 2; Phild. 10; Zahn, Ign. 527. 6 Eph 1. 2, 21. 2. Cf. Rom. 2. 2, 5. 1; Sm. 11. 1.

514 Eph. 1.2,21.2 Cf. Rom. 2.2,5.1; Sm 11.1

515 Cf. Keim, Celsus, 145; Hilgenfeld, Zeitschr f, w. Theol. 1874, p. 120, cited by Zahn, Patr. Ap. 327.

516 The descent to Hades is in ‘Hermas.’

apostle’s imprisonment and release and his wandering activity had reached the traveller’s ears. The Gnostic and Antinomian party, under the leadership of Marcion, were carrying on their polemic with the reactionary or Catholic party, represented by Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. To the former party belongs the representation of the apostle in ‘ Galatians,’ to, the latter the counter-representation in the ‘Acts;’ while in other ‘ Pauline’ epistles different currents of doctrine so meet and clash, that the discovery of a coherent and self-consistent

‘Paulinism’ has hitherto defied the efforts of modern interpreters.

If the mere name of ‘ Paul’ in superscriptions and salutations be, as Tertullian argues, no evidence of the existence of such an apostle, then it will be difficult to find satisfactory evidence of the fact elsewhere. The only fact we can ascertain is that the Marcionites produced ten epistles as apostolic in their sense; and if these were ascribed boldly to an apostle of the highest possible pretensions, it was only in accordance with the inventive necessities and habits of theologians. They did but meet the demand and craving confessed by Tertullian in reference to the Marcionite ‘ ospel,’ for ‘ ulness of title and due declaration of the author.’ ⁵¹⁷

One of the strongest pieces, of evidence to our mind, negatively, that the Paul who has so

One of the strongest pieces, of evidence to our mind, negatively, that the Paul who has so