of this strange sect, and always bearing in mind your proverb that
‘incredulity is the philosopher’s security,’ the more I perceive the
difficulty of the task you have laid upon me. For I now find that
these very people who profess to worship Christus and who recognize in
him the fulfilment of ancient prophecies, nevertheless neglect, and I
might almost say, despise all modern writings and records, insomuch
that even at this present time no account of his words and deeds is
committed to paper. Of this strange neglect there are several strange
causes, and the first the strangest of all. You must know then that
these people commonly believe (even the wisest or least foolish of
them) that Christus will speedily return enthroned upon the clouds to
make himself governor over the whole world; so that it is needless to
write the words of one who himself will soon be speaking upon earth.
The second cause is, that there is a tradition among the Jews, current
now for many hundreds of years, not to write new sacred books, but
to hand down by word of mouth from teacher to pupil, through many
generations, such traditions as may be needful. A third cause is, that,
Christus having given unto them no clear and definite law nor even many
distinct precepts, his followers stand not upon his exact commandments;
and indeed some fear not to say openly that they care little for the
letter of his commandments, for that he himself promised to send them
a certain good demon or Spirit (even such a one as Socrates had) which
should prompt and warn them what to do and what to avoid, and teach
them how to defend themselves against their persecutors and before
their judges. I have omitted a fourth and last cause which is not the
least important; namely, that most of the followers of Christus have
been, from the first beginning of the sect, men of no education, but
illiterate and scarce able to write at all, so that they naturally
preferred speaking to writing.
“So much for the books or no books of the Christians. But there is yet
another obstacle in the way of my search. You have been wont to hold
up to me Thucydides the historian as a pattern of the truth-loving
disposition and as the model to all that desire to record that which
has happened. But in this nation there neither are, nor ever were, any
such historians; nor is it their nature to relate things according to
the exact truth. Not that they love falsehood better than truth; but
the minds of their writers seem ever on the poise between poetry and
prose, between figures of speech and plain sense, between hyperbole
and fact; and as in all their histories of their nation they discern
evermore (as Homer has it) the ‘accomplishment of the will of Zeus,’
even so their pens lead them ever to speak of their God rather than
men, and of things invisible rather than visible, and of the purpose
and object of each event, rather than the how, and when, and where
of it. Hence it has come to pass that all manner of poetic tales
and legends having been embodied and as it were interlaced in their
relations, it is impossible to tell where the poem ends and the history
begins; and the constant reading of these ancient poems or histories,
or history, poems (if you so please to call them) has made them
careless of truth, and I might almost say contemptuous of it, unless it
abound with marvel. Of which disposition, though I might set down many
proofs, take these two only, as patterns of the rest. To this day it
is commonly believed among them that, during a certain great victory
wherein they gained possession of Palestine, the sun and the moon stood
still at the bidding of one of their ancient generals; and that, about
the same time, the whole of the wall of a fortified city fell to the
ground at the sound of the trumpets of their army.
“Some of these relations of portents have come into their histories
from errors. For example, one of their poets speaking, in all
likelihood poetically, of a drought which dried up the waters of the
river Jordanus so that the ancient Jews passed over easily to the
conquest of Palestine, and addressing himself in apostrophe to their
God who guided their nation across, uses these words, ‘The waters saw
thee, O God, the waters saw thee and were afraid’; which words the
historians straightway take up and interpret literally, and behold,
a relation, incredible and portentous, how the waters of the river
rose up like a wall on this side and on that, so that the whole nation
might pass through dry-shod, as if through a defile. I deny not that,
in this and some other cases, error may excuse their exaggeration; but
my complaint is that all this nation (and the older Jews much more
than the Christians) are so given up to hyperbole that there is no
trusting anything that they say, that is at all marvellous, without a
careful testing of it. For example, among the older Jews, I have heard
a certain teacher say that the city of Jerusalem is situate on a river
of clear water many furlongs in length, though there be, in truth,
no river at all nearer to the city than Jordan, which is one hundred
and eighty furlongs distant; and the same man said that the smell of
the sacrifices and the sound of the music in Jerusalem goes down to
the men of Jericho, which city is distant a full day’s journey; and
another affirmed that the twanging of the bow-strings of the multitude
of enemies caused the walls of Apamea to fall; and also that a certain
Rabbi (for by that title they honor their teachers) was so pious that
he emitted from his body flames of fire, insomuch that the beholders
marvelled at the splendor, and whatsoever insect approached him, was
straightway consumed.
“Judge therefore what kind of history the unwritten traditions of the
life of Christus are like to contain when I have sought them out for
you. However I will do my best to collect them, and to send you such
information as I can obtain about them, together with the answers to
your former questions. Having taken brief notes of the discourse of one
Lucius of Cyrene, the chief speaker in the synagogue, I purposed to
send it to you; but not having yet written it out fully, I will send
it at my first leisure; and when you read it, you will more easily
understand how much the traditions concerning Christus are in danger to
be conformed to the ancient prophecies of the Jews.[1]
[1] This discourse (which should have found place here) was missing
from the collection of the papers of Artemidorus, at the time when
I was transcribing them; but having chanced upon it some months
afterwards, I purpose to set it down at the end of the book.
“This letter I see deals with naught but ‘obstacles’ and ‘difficulties’
and ‘burdens’; yet I beg of you, my dear Artemidorus, not to suppose
that I murmur at the task you have imposed on me or that I count the
labor wasted. For indeed the more I muse on the matter, the more I
judge that this Christus must have been endowed with a truly divine
genius, or force of character (or whatever faculty else you may be
pleased to call it) to have produced so vast an influence on a nation
so perverse and morose as these Jews, not to speak of many thousands
of the viler sort of Greeks who after attaching themselves to his sect
have turned from vice to virtue. Philemon is well, but still unquiet
and hardly to be controlled. Farewell.”
§ 6. HOW ARTEMIDORUS QUESTIONED ME FURTHER, AND OF HIS RELATION
CONCERNING THE CASTING OUT OF THE SWINE.
“ARTEMIDORUS TO ONESIMUS, HEALTH.
“Although I could have wished, my dear Onesimus, that you had been
able to answer my first questions, point by point, yet your account of
the discourse spoken by the Christian priest Lucius was not without
interest for me; confirming, as it did, an opinion that I have ever
entertained, namely, that no portents how incredible soever, and
no absurdities however palpable, can ever deter the multitude from
embracing a new belief, if there be somewhat in it of a nature to
fascinate the soul and feed the imagination. But still my desire is
that you should do your utmost to discover what this superstition
contains, of a nature thus to fascinate the multitude; for it is not
apparent to me from anything that you have hitherto written, since
you describe a religion that has no sacred books, no feasts, no
processions, no code of laws that might unite and regulate a disorderly
mass of men.
“In addition to this I would gladly receive answers to these two
further questions, on the first of which you yourself touched in your
first letter but so as to suggest rather than explain: 1st, Does this
sect require that all, as many as join themselves to it, Greeks as well
as Jews, (for I understand that Greeks also are admitted by them),
shall observe the laws of the Jews? Or does it remit the laws for
those who are not Jews? Or are they remitted for all, Jews as well as
Greeks? 2nd, I cannot understand from the discourse of Lucius whether
he supposes Christus to be born of man and woman in a natural way, or
in a divine way born of woman only. This question I believe I asked
before; but now I repeat it, partly lest you should suppose it to have
been already answered by the priest’s discourse, partly because (in
conversation with certain Christians of Hierapolis) I have heard that
there is some diversity of opinion concerning this matter among the
Christians themselves.
“Here might I well make an end; but because I have especially charged
you to report to me concerning any portents related of the life of
Christus, I will briefly explain to you my meaning and purpose herein.
A thousand times, as you know well, I have wearied you with repeating
that no religion can ever commend itself to the multitude unless it
be first clothed, as it were, in a vesture, whereby the eyes of the
many may be drawn towards it. For it is not given to the multitude to
love the naked truth; but they must needs clothe her in their purple
and set on her brow diadems of their own giving. Well, my friend, even
such a clothing, adorning and crowning of religion, are you methinks
now witnessing. For it is beyond all question that in a few years,
if not already, the believers in this new faith will have clothed or
embellished the life of their Leader with all manner of wonders, which
in itself it had not. And already I discern this process of clothing,
in the beginning and first endeavor. For whereas your Lucius preaches
about ‘the Star of Judah’ shining, and the ‘preparing of the table
in the wilderness,’ and the stilling of the storm by him whose ‘path
is on the deep waters,’ and the testimony of Moses and Elias on the
right hand and on the left of Christus, and the giving of the ‘Bread
of Life’ and the ‘living Water,’ and the ‘Wine of the Lord’s Blood’—I
doubt not but both these and many other figures and metaphors either
are, or speedily will be, so interlaced with the tradition of the
life of Christus, that his followers will soon believe (even though
they believe not already) that he did really and actually walk upon
the waves and bestow upon them miraculous water, and miraculous wine
and bread, yes, and that a special Star shone forth at his birth, and
that saints rose from their graves along with him, and that Moses and
Elias did really appear on his right hand and on his left bearing
testimony to him, and a thousand other portents which it would be
easier for you to enumerate than for me, but equally tedious for both
of us. Wherefore, since you assure me that these people have as yet no
sacred books, but only an unwritten tradition, I would have you inquire
diligently concerning this tradition whether it contain any such
wonders as these; and if not, then whether their common talk (which
must needs in the end insinuate itself into their tradition, unless
there come some let or unforeseen hindrance) have not already begun to
imbue itself with miracles and marvels of this sort.
“As touching the transmutation—so let us call it—of things metaphorical
into things literal I myself have of late obtained one instance which
I will contribute to our common store. Upon receipt of your first
letter, discoursing with a certain acquaintance of mine—one Evander, a
physician and an educated man, not I think unknown to you—concerning
the causes and symptoms of ‘possession,’ he made this observation, that
it is the custom of the patient in such cases (his stomach, as well
as his mind, being altogether corrupted and diseased) to suppose that
he has within his belly all manner of filthy and foul creatures, such
as toads, serpents, dragons, scorpions, adders, dogs, swine and the
like, which creatures, when the possessed man is suddenly healed, he
often sees (or rather imagines and fancies himself to see) going forth
from his mouth into banishment or destruction. And he added that among
the Phrygians the possessed were wont to suppose that hooded snakes
or scorpions were within them, but among the Jews (who have a special
abhorrence of certain animals, considering them to be unclean) it was
more common to imagine the presence of swine; and not unnaturally, said
he, because these animals (having no real existence but being the mere
offspring of the imagination) necessarily vary with the imagination
that gives them birth. Then he went on relate how a Jew being (as all
Jews are) a great hater of the Romans, and also considering swine to be
unclean, had imagined himself to be possessed by a Legion, not however
of soldiers but of swine; which swine, when they were cast forth into
the deep or ‘abyss’ (for by this name they are wont to call the void
place wherein bodiless spirits or demons are supposed to roam) were
seen by the Jew, the possessed man, to go forth from his mouth and run
violently down to the said abyss. This tradition, he said, he had
heard some years ago from another physician who lived at Tiberias,
not far from the place where the man had been healed; and he that had
healed him was, according to the saying of the physician of Tiberias,
no other than this very same Christus, who is now worshipped by your
friends, the Christians, as a God.
“When I heard this, considering with myself that in all likelihood,
if this were so, some story of it would even now be current among the
followers of Christus, I went on the morrow to Hierapolis, to that same
Tatias of whom I made mention in my previous letter, and questioning
him about them that are possessed, whether he knew of many that had
been healed by Christus, I recounted to him my story concerning the man
possessed with a Legion and asked him whether that was the true account
of the matter. To which he replied that in his youth he had heard that
account, or somewhat like unto it, but it was not exact; for how, said
he, could a legion of creatures of the size of swine, be shut in within
the compass of one human belly? But according to him, the true story
was, that the Legion of evil spirits having been cast out of the man,
assumed the shapes of swine, and were then cast into the abyss. Then
another of the same sect who happened to be present, said that neither
was that version of the story altogether exact; for why should demons,
having shapes already, perchance of gnats or flies or whatever else,
assume fresh shapes of swine? But the truth was, that the legion of
demons being two thousand in number—for the latest narrator of all,
mark you, is assured of the exact number, which was not known in the
earliest traditions—finding themselves on the point to be cast out of
the man’s body, and fearing to be without bodies and so to be cast
into the abyss, besought Christus that it might be permitted to them
to pass into the bodies of two thousand swine; which swine happened to
be at that instant pasturing—conveniently indeed for the demons but
contrary to the laws of the Jews—near to the demoniac. ‘Then,’ said
he (for it is worth while to recount his exact words) ‘when the Lord
suffered them, behold, the whole legion of demons rushed into the two
thousand swine; but they gained nothing thereby. For the swine rushed
violently down a steep place into the sea of Tiberias’ (no longer you
will observe into the abyss) ‘and were there drowned.’ To this account
another companion of Tatias assented, as being the latest and truest
tradition; but he added yet a new fact, namely, that those who were
feeding the swine being terrified (as how should they not be?) by so
great a destruction, fled away into the city, and that the citizens
coming together in much fear, besought Jesus that he would depart out
of their coasts.
“Meditate much, my dear Onesimus, upon this story; and may it be
profitable to you in your search after the truth. But why do I speak of
truth in such a case as this, where so few grains of truth are inclosed
in so great a mass of falsehood? Sometimes, indeed, I repent of having
imposed on you so barren a task; nevertheless persevere, for there must
be some powerful cause to produce so great an effect upon the lives
of these Christians, even though they be unlearned and superstitious.
Farewell.”
§ 7. OF THE TRADITIONS OF THE CHRISTIANS AND OF THE NATURE OF CHRISTUS.
“ONESIMUS TO ARTEMIDORUS, HEALTH.
“Having long delayed to answer your questions I will now do my
endeavor to explain more fully, 1st, What are the traditions of these
Christians; 2nd, What is their belief about Christus, whether born
according to nature or otherwise; 3rd, What portents are reported to
have been wrought by Christus.
“1st. The tradition about the words and deeds of Christus begins from
the time when he first took upon himself to profess teaching publicly
and ends with the record of a certain vision of angels, after his
death, wherein it was declared to some that had followed him to the
last, that he was not in the tomb but was risen from the dead. There is
also another tradition as I am informed, of the longer discourses and
prophecies of Christus; but this not having as yet been translated into
Greek, is not circulated in all the churches; but the shorter sayings
and the acts of Christus are already known in Rome and Ephesus and
Alexandria, as well as in Jerusalem and Antioch; and there are two or
three versions of this Tradition already, and like to be more, unless
these are shortly committed to writing, for in different churches
different forms of the tradition spring up. Also besides these versions
of the Tradition (which are for the most part the same among all their
churches) there are many additions or supplements concerning the birth
and childhood and death of Christus, and concerning his manifestations
to his disciples after his death; but these have not yet attained to be
considered parts of the Tradition itself.
“Some of these relations many of the Christians now desire to have set
down in books and to cause to be read in the synagogues. But the Jewish
part of the brethren are against it, saying that it is not the custom
thus to commit doctrine to writing; however the Greeks are mainly for
it, and within a few years I doubt not but that it will be done. But
for the present (as I told you before) the Christians use no sacred
books save the ancient books of the Jews.
“2nd. As to the nature of Christus, and what he is supposed to be by
his followers, I conversed with Simeon himself, and I found that there
was diversity of opinion. ‘There are,’ said he, ‘some of our sect who,
while they admit that he is the Christ’—for that is their manner of
speech, meaning by ‘Christ’ the ‘Anointed,’ that is, the future Ruler,
as I think I wrote to you before—‘yet hold him to be a man and born of
men. With whom I do not agree, nor would I, even though most of those
who believe as I believe, were to say so; since we are enjoined by our
Master to put no trust in human doctrines but only in such things as
are proclaimed by the blessed prophets and taught by himself.’ Further
he added that some, on the other hand, believing Christus to be a god,
would not admit that he was born of woman, but supposed him to be
begotten of the Supreme God without aid of humanity at all, and so to
have come into the world, a man in appearance, but in reality a spirit
or angel. ‘And seems it not to you,’ said I, ‘that such a belief does
more honor to your leader than to suppose him to be born of woman?’ But
he replied ‘No, for under appearance of doing him honor, this heresy
makes the life of our Master to be feigned and false; for we believe
that for our sakes he hungered and thirsted, and felt pain and sorrow,
and that for our sakes also he died; none of which sufferings could he
have veritably endured, if he had not been really a man born of woman,
but had only appeared to be a man, being in truth a spirit.’ Then I
said to him, ‘But what hinders that your leader should have been born
both of man and woman and yet be a god? Might not the superior god,
if he chose to send his son into the world as a man, send him thus
into the world; conforming him in all things, and in his birth no
less than in his death, to the nature of mankind?’ Hereat he mused,
and for some while made no answer; but afterwards he said that it was
not so believed in any of the churches, and that it did not seem to
him possible that the common people should believe any man to be god,
unless he were begotten of some god, as the story went even about the
inferior gods of the Greeks, such as Heracles, Asclepius, Amphiaraus,
Romulus, and the like.
“3rd. Your third question is concerning the wonders said to have been
wrought by Christus, whether they are portents, or such as may be
explained according to nature. To this I reply that, in the Tradition,
almost all the works are works of healing, and all to be explained
according to nature, saving some four or five; and these four or
five relations seem to me to have arisen from figures of speech, or
prophecies or hyperbole even as I wrote to you before. For example, the
Tradition contains already that story of the casting out of the swine
from the demoniac, whereof you wrote to me; but diversely reported,
some saying that the matter happened at a place called Gerasa, but
others at Gadara, and some affirming that one demoniac was thus healed,
but others two.
“The other portents in the Tradition may be briefly mentioned, and
some of them you yourself have already mentioned, by anticipation, in
your letter; 1st. A certain testimony of Moses and Elias to Christus
which is now said to have been delivered upon a ‘holy mountain,’ and it
is added also that Christus conversing with them was suffused with a
celestial splendor, and that there was a voice from heaven proclaiming
Christus to be the Son of God. But as for this, and another case of
a voice from above and a vision of the heavens opened and a dove
descending, I know not whether it is not fitter to set it down as a
vision or waking dream, rather than an error springing from a figure of
speech; 2nd. The second is some story of a storm stilled by Christus
wherein he walked upon the waves; as to which again I know not whether
it has sprung from metaphor misunderstood, or may not also in part have
sprung from some phantasm apparent to the first followers of Christus
(for they were fishermen) while fishing in the lake in Galilee either
before or after the death of Christus; 3rd. The third is, a relation
how Christus fed many thousands of his followers with bread in the
wilderness, and this on two occasions. Now this, as I judge, springs
altogether from error of metaphor. For as I wrote before, Christus
himself taught his followers to call him the Bread of Life, meaning
that his doctrine must be the sustenance of their souls, and this
manner of speech appears to be common with the Jewish Rabbis also, who
say that in a certain ancient book all ‘feasting’ is to be understood
of the feeding upon the Law, yea, and one even speaks of ‘eating’ the
Messiah; and to this day the disciples of Christus use such language
as this, which I myself heard but of late spoken by the priest of the
Christians; ‘O thou who didst come down from heaven to be the Eternal
Bread, and didst refresh the race of men, sojourning in the wilderness
of the world, with the Bread from heaven, even with thine own body.’