Chapter 23.—Porphyry’s Account
of the Responses Given by the Oracles of the gods Concerning
Christ.
For in his book called ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας, in which
he collects and comments upon the responses which he pretends were
uttered by the gods concerning divine things, he says—I give his
own words as they have been translated from the Greek: “To one
who inquired what god he should propitiate in order to recall his
wife from Christianity, Apollo replied in the following
verses.” Then the following words are given as those of
Apollo: “You will probably find it easier to write lasting
characters on the water, or lightly fly like a bird through the
air, than to restore right feeling in your impious wife once she
has polluted herself. Let her remain as she pleases in her
foolish deception, and sing false laments to her dead God, who was
condemned by right-minded judges, and perished ignominiously by a
violent death.” Then after these verses of Apollo (which we
have given in a Latin version that does not preserve the metrical
form), he goes on to say: “In these verses Apollo exposed the
incurable corruption of the Christians, saying that the Jews, rather than the Christians, recognized God.” See how he misrepresents
Christ, giving the Jews the
preference to the Christians in the recognition of God. This was
his explanation of Apollo’s verses, in which he says that Christ
was put to death by right-minded or just judges,—in other words, that He deserved to die. I leave the responsibility of this oracle regarding Christ on the lying interpreter of Apollo, or on this philosopher who believed it or possibly himself invented it; as to its agreement with Porphyry’s opinions or with other oracles, we shall in a little have something to say. In this passage, however, he says that the Jews, as the interpreters of God, judged justly in pronouncing Christ to be worthy of the most shameful death. He should have listened, then, to this God of the Jews to whom he bears this testimony, when that God says, “He that sacrificeth to any other god save to the Lord alone shall be utterly destroyed.” But let us come to still plainer expressions, and hear how great a God Porphyry thinks the God of the Jews is. Apollo, he says, when asked whether word, i.e., reason, or law is the better thing, replied in the following verses. Then he gives the verses of Apollo, from which I select the following as sufficient: “God, the Generator, and the King prior to all things, before whom heaven and earth, and the sea, and the hidden places of hell tremble, and the deities themselves are afraid, for their law is the Father whom the holy Hebrews honor.” In this oracle of his god Apollo, Porphyry avowed that the God of the Hebrews is so great that the deities themselves are afraid before Him. I am surprised, therefore, that when God said, He that sacrificeth to other gods shall be utterly destroyed, Porphyry himself was not afraid lest he should be destroyed for sacrificing to other gods.