Praeparatio Evangelica 3 part 1/4

Such, then, were the views held by the best of the philosophers, and by the ancient and foremost leaders of the Roman empire, concerning Greek theology — views that admitted no physical philosophy whatsoever in the myths about the gods, nor indeed the ostentatiously solemn and sophistical trickeries.

We, then, since we have once set out also upon the refutation of these men, come, let us examine their interpretations and theories, to see what solemn and divine matter they after all bring forward, adding nothing of our own but using throughout their very words, so that from them again we may learn their own solemn and secret doctrines.

Now countless others of those who profess philosophy have expended much labor on these matters, framing their several ingenious arguments, and each stoutly maintaining that whatever occurred to him and seemed good to him was the truth. But for me it is enough to furnish my proofs from those who are most illustrious and known to all philosophers, and who have carried off no small renown for philosophy among the Greeks.

Take up first, then, and read the words of Plutarch of Chaeronea concerning the matters before us, in which, speaking with great solemnity, he turns aside the myths toward what he calls mysterious theologies. In unveiling these, he says that Dionysus is drunkenness — no longer the mortal man shown by history in the treatise before this one — and that Hera is the wedded partnership of man and wife. Then, as though he had forgotten his own interpretation, he attaches next in order another tale, in which he no longer names Hera as before, but calls her Earth, and calls Leto forgetfulness and night; and again he says Hera is the same as Leto. And after this Zeus is brought in by him, allegorized as the ethereal power.

But why should I anticipate these things, when it is possible to hear the man himself, in the work he entitled On the Daedala at Plataea, disclosing in this manner the things concerning the secret physiology of the gods which are hidden from the many?

That the ancient physical philosophy, both among Greeks and among barbarians, was a physical account concealed in myths — for the most part a theology hidden and mysterious through riddles and dark hints, having what is spoken clearer to the many than what is kept silent, and what is kept silent more suspect than what is spoken — is plain from the Orphic verses and from the Egyptian and Phrygian discourses. But most of all, the ecstatic rites connected with the mysteries, and the things symbolically enacted in the sacred ceremonies, display the thought of the ancients.

For example — not to wander far from the matters now before us — they do not think, nor do they hold, that there is any fellowship between Dionysus and Hera. They are careful not to mingle their rites; and they say that the priestesses at Athens, when they meet one another, do not address each other, and that ivy is not brought at all into the sacred precinct of Hera — not on account of the mythical and foolish jealousies, but because the goddess presides over marriage and leads the bride, and drunkenness is unseemly for bridegrooms and altogether unfitting for weddings, as Plato says; for, he says, immoderate drinking produces disturbance both in souls and in bodies, by which the seeds that are sown and conceived take root badly, misshapen and wandering from their course. Again, those who sacrifice to Hera do not burn the gall upon the altar, but bury it beside the altar, on the ground that the union of woman and man ought to be free of spirit and free of gall, and pure of all anger and bitterness.

Now this symbolic type is found still more in the discourses and myths. For example, they relate that Hera, while still being reared as a maiden in Euboea, was carried off by Zeus, and, having been conveyed hither, was hidden away — Cithaeron providing them a shaded recess and a natural bridal chamber. And when Macris came seeking her — she was Hera's nurse — and wished to search, Cithaeron would not allow her to meddle, nor to approach the place, on the ground that Zeus was there resting and passing time together with Leto. So when Macris had gone away, Hera thus for that time escaped notice; but afterward, remembering her gratitude to Leto, she established a shared altar and shared temple with her, so that offerings were even made beforehand to 'Leto of the Recess'; though some call her 'Leto of the Night.' In each of these names is signified the hidden and unnoticed quality. Some, however, say that it was Hera herself who was there secretly consorting with Zeus and escaping notice, and that she was thus called 'Leto of the Night.' But when the marriage became public, and the union was first disclosed there around Cithaeron and at Plataea, she was called 'Hera Teleia' and 'Hera the goddess of marriage.'

Those, however, who understand the myth in a more physical and fitting manner thus bring Hera together with Leto into the same identity. Hera is Earth, as has been said, and Leto is Night, being a kind of forgetting of those who turn to sleep; and night is nothing other than the shadow of earth. For whenever the earth, drawing near to its setting, hides the sun, it spreads out and darkens the air; and this is the eclipse-like slipping of the full moon, whenever, as the moon revolves, the shadow of the earth touches it and dims its light.

That Leto is nothing other than Hera one may learn from the following. We already call Artemis the daughter of Leto, but we also name the same goddess Eileithyia; therefore Hera and Leto are two appellations of one goddess. Again, from Leto came Apollo, from Hera came Ares, yet the power of both is one; and Ares is so called as helping in cases of violence and battle, while Apollo is so called as delivering and releasing man from the diseased sufferings of the body. Hence, of the most fiery and blazing stars, the sun is called Apollo, and the fiery-looking one is named Ares. Nor is it strange that the same goddess should be called the goddess of marriage and also be reckoned mother both of Eileithyia and of the sun. For the end of marriage is generation, and generation is the passage into sun and light out of darkness. And well did the poet say: 'But when Eileithyia, goddess of the pangs of birth, had brought him forth to the light, and he had seen the rays of the sun.' Well did the poet, by his preposition, compress the compound word, showing the violence of the birth-pang, and he made the end of the generation to be the seeing of the sun. Therefore the same goddess brought about both the union of marriage, that she might bring generation to pass.

Perhaps it is also necessary to tell the more simple-minded myth. For it is said that Zeus, when Hera was at odds with him and no longer willing to come to the same bed, but hiding herself away, being at a loss and wandering, chanced upon Alalcomeneus, the native-born, and was instructed by him how Hera must be deceived — by pretending to marry another. With Alalcomeneus assisting, they secretly cut down a splendid and altogether beautiful oak, shaped it into a figure, and dressed it as a bride, calling it Daedale. Then thus the wedding-hymn was struck up, the Tritonid nymphs brought the bridal baths, and Boeotia furnished flutes and revels. When these things were being carried through, Hera could no longer restrain herself, but came down from Cithaeron, with the women of Plataea following her, and, running out of anger and jealousy, came to Zeus; and when the trick was revealed, she was reconciled with joy and laughter, and herself led the bridal procession. She then added honor to the wooden image and named the festival the Daedala; yet she nevertheless burned it, though it was lifeless, out of jealousy.

Such, then, is the myth; and its interpretation is as follows. The discord and strife of Hera and Zeus is nothing other than a bad mixture and disturbance of the elements, whenever they are no longer duly proportioned to one another according to order, but, contention and roughness having arisen, they fight it out badly, dissolve their fellowship, and bring about the destruction of the whole. If, then, Zeus — that is, the hot and fiery power — furnishes the cause of the disorder, drought seizes the earth; but if the disorder occurs around Hera — that is, the moist and windy nature — through some excess or outrage, a great flood comes and pours down rain and floods everything. Some such thing having happened also in those times, and Boeotia especially having been submerged, when the plain first emerged again and the flood abated, the return of the surrounding world to fair weather was spoken of as concord and reconciliation of the gods; and first among the plants of the earth the oak rose up, and men loved it, since it furnished a lasting supply of food, of life, and of safety — not only to the pious, as Hesiod says, but also to those who survived the destruction: 'The topmost branch bears acorns, and the middle bears bees.'

This is what Plutarch says. We, however, from the words he has set forth, may see that even the wonderful and secret physical philosophy of Greek theology brought forward nothing divine, nothing great and befitting God and worthy of the loftiness it claims.

For you have heard how Hera is at one time proclaimed as the goddess of marriage and signifying the union of man and wife, at another time named again as Earth, and at another as the moist substance; how Dionysus is transferred into drunkenness, Leto into night, the sun into Apollo, and Zeus himself into the hot and fiery power.

Therefore, in addition to the unseemliness of the myths, this seemingly more solemn narrative and physical philosophy did not lead up to any heavenly, intelligent, and divine powers, nor to rational and incorporeal substances; but it too, in turn, brought things back down to drunkenness and marriages and human passions, and reduced the parts of the world to fire and earth and sun and the remaining elements of matter, deifying nothing more than this.

This too Plato knew. At any rate, he expressly confesses in the Cratylus that the first men of the Hellenic peoples knew nothing more than the visible parts of the world, and held that the only gods were the luminaries in the heaven and the rest of the things that appear.

He speaks, then, word for word, as follows: 'It seems to me that the first men in Greece considered as gods only those very things which many of the barbarians now consider so — sun and moon and earth and stars and heaven.'

But such are the Greek matters. Let us also look at that which is oldest among these things: the Egyptian teachings. They say that Isis and Osiris are the sun and the moon; that Zeus is the spirit pervading all things, Hephaestus is fire, and that they named the earth Demeter; that the moist element is regarded among the Egyptians as Oceanus, together with their own river Nile, to which they also attribute the births of the gods; and they say that they call the air Athena.

These five gods, I mean Air and Water and Fire and Earth and Spirit, travel throughout the whole inhabited world, at different times taking on different forms and shapes of men and of every kind of animal; and there arose among the Egyptians themselves mortal men bearing the same names as these — Helios and Cronus and Rhea, and also Zeus and Hera and Hephaestus and Hestia, so named. Manetho writes about these matters at greater length, but Diodorus more concisely, in the work already mentioned, relating the history in this manner, word for word.

These gods, they say — the Sun and the Moon, being, according to the Egyptians, Osiris and Isis — govern the whole universe, nourishing and increasing all things by means of the seasons divided into three parts, which complete their cycle by an invisible motion — the spring, the summer, and the winter seasons; and these, though having a nature most opposite to one another, complete the year in the most excellent harmony.

The nature of these gods, they say, contributes very greatly to the generation of all living things — the one contributing that of fire and spirit, the other that of moisture and dryness, and both jointly that of air; and through these all things are generated and nourished. Hence, too, the whole body of the nature of the universe is completed out of sun and moon, and its parts are the five aforesaid — spirit, fire, and dryness, moisture also, and lastly the airy element; just as in the case of man we enumerate head and hands and feet and the other members, in the same manner the body of the world as a whole is composed of the aforesaid elements.

Each of these was regarded as a god, and each was given a name proper to itself according to its own nature, by the first men in Egypt who employed articulate speech. The spirit, then, they called Zeus — the word being translated — since they considered him, being the cause of the life-principle in living creatures, to be, as it were, a father of all things.

They say that the most illustrious of the poets among the Greeks agrees with this, saying of the god, 'father of men and of gods.' Fire, being translated, they named Hephaestus, considering him a great god who contributes much to all things for their generation and complete growth. And earth, conceiving of it as a kind of vessel of the things that grow, they called mother; and the Greeks likewise call it Demeter, the word having been slightly altered over time.

For of old, earth was named 'Mother' — as Orpheus also testifies, saying, 'Earth, mother of all, Demeter, giver of wealth.' And they say that the ancients named the moist element Oceanus, which, when translated, means 'mother of nourishment,' though among some of the Greeks it is understood to be Oceanus himself, concerning whom the poet also says: 'Oceanus, origin of the gods, and mother Tethys.'

For the Egyptians consider their own river, the Nile, to be Oceanus, and hold that beside it the births of the gods took place. For, of the whole inhabited world, in Egypt alone are there many cities founded by the ancient gods — such as those of Zeus, of Helios, of Hermes, of Apollo, of Pan, of Eileithyia, and many others.

They say that the air was called Athena — the word being translated — and that they considered her the daughter of Zeus, and represented her as a virgin, because the air is by nature incorruptible and occupies the topmost region of the whole universe; wherefore it was mythologized that she was born from the head of Zeus. She was also named Tritogeneia, from the fact that her nature changes three times in the year — in spring, summer, and winter.

She is also called 'glaukopis' (grey-eyed) — not, as some of the Greeks supposed, because she has grey eyes (for this would be a foolish notion), but because the air has a bluish-grey appearance. They say that the five aforesaid gods travel throughout the whole inhabited world, appearing to men in the forms of sacred animals, and sometimes also changing into the shapes of men or of certain other things.

And this, they say, is not mythical, but possible, if indeed these are in truth the ones who generate all things. And they say that the poet, having journeyed to Egypt and having shared in such teachings from the priests, set down somewhere in his poetry the aforesaid as actually occurring: 'And the gods, in the likeness of strangers from foreign lands, taking on all manner of forms, go about through the cities, observing the violence and the good order of men.' Concerning, then, the gods who are in heaven and who possess eternal generation, so much do the Egyptians relate.

They say that others besides these became earthly gods, having originally been mortals, but having attained immortality on account of their wisdom and their common benefaction to mankind; some of these, they say, also became kings in Egypt. When their names are translated, some prove to bear the same names as the heavenly gods, while others had their own proper names — Helios and Cronus and Rhea, and also Zeus, called by some Ammon, and besides these Hera and Hephaestus, and also Hestia, and lastly Hermes. And Helios was the first to reign as king over Egypt, being identified with the star in heaven.

This, then, is what the aforementioned writer says. And Plutarch also, in his work On Isis, writes the following, word for word: 'Let us, from another starting point, first examine the simplest of those who seem to say something more philosophical. These are the ones who say that, just as the Greeks allegorize Cronus as time, Hera as air, and the birth of Hephaestus as the change of air into fire, so also among the Egyptians the Nile is Osiris, consorting with Isis, who is the earth, and Typhon is the sea, into which the Nile falls and vanishes.'

Having said these things and others like them, he in turn refers the myths concerning the aforesaid gods to daemons, and again explains them differently, and once more allegorizes them in yet another way.

It would be reasonable, then, to ask of which gods they will claim that the wooden images preserve the imprinted forms. Of daemons? Or of fire and air and earth and water? Or are they images of men and women, and the shapes of irrational animals and beasts?

For since it has even been conceded by these men themselves that certain mortal men came to bear the same names as the sun and the universal elements, and that these men were proclaimed gods, of which is it likely that the carvings on the lifeless wooden images are said to be the forms and images? Of the universal elements, or — as the plain evidence of sight itself shows — of the mortals who now lie among the dead?

But even if they themselves should not say so, true reasoning itself cries out and shouts, all but uttering an audible voice, bearing witness that the ones in question were mortal men. And Plutarch, moreover, out of his abundant knowledge, describes even the very character and form of their bodies, in his work On Isis and the Egyptian Gods, speaking somewhat as follows.

For the Egyptians relate that Hermes was, in body, bandy-armed, that Typhon was ruddy in complexion, that Ares was fair-skinned, and that Osiris was dark-skinned — as men who had by nature actually been born so.

This is what Plutarch says. Their entire deification, then, turns out to be a deification of dead men; and their so-called physical philosophy is a mere fabrication. For what need was there to fashion living images in the shapes of men and women, when it was possible, apart from these, simply to worship the sun and the moon and the remaining elements of the world?

And to which of these — and starting from which — did they attach such names? I mean, for instance, Hephaestus and Athena, Zeus and Poseidon and Hera. For was it that these names, being originally names of the universal elements, were secondarily applied to mortals, giving them the same names as the heavenly ones? Or, on the contrary, did they make the transfer to the substances from the appellation used among men?

And what need is there to name the universal natures by mortal appellations? The mysteries pertaining to each god, the hymns and the songs and the secret rites of the initiations — do the symbols employed in them pertain to the universal elements, or to the men of old, once mortal, who bore the same names as the gods?

But indeed, how could anyone attribute to the universal elements wanderings and drunken bouts and love-affairs, the seductions of women and men, plots and countless other such things — things that are, in truth, mortal, shameful, and unseemly — seeing that these things straightway carry with them the mark of the mortal and of human passion?

So that from all these considerations this wonderful and noble physical philosophy stands convicted of having laid hold of the truth in no respect, and of bringing forward nothing truly divine, but of having an outward show of solemnity that is forced and false. Hear, then, also what Porphyry, in his letter to Anebo the Egyptian, relates concerning these same matters.

For Chaeremon and the others hold, when they set forth the beliefs of the Egyptians as fundamental doctrine, that there is nothing else prior to the visible worlds, nor any other gods besides the so-called planets, and those which fill out the zodiac, and those which rise alongside them; and the divisions into decans, and the horoscopes, and the so-called mighty rulers, whose very names are recorded in the almanacs — and the treatments of afflictions, and the risings and settings of stars, and the signs of things to come.

For he observed that those who call the sun the demiurge, and the stories concerning Osiris and Isis, and all the priestly myths, are found upon examination to revolve either around the stars and their appearances and disappearances and risings, or around the waxings and wanings of the moon, or around the course of the sun, or around the nocturnal hemisphere, or the diurnal one, or the river itself; and that, in general, they interpret everything with reference to physical, natural things, and nothing with reference to incorporeal and living substances. And most of these men, moreover, have fastened even what is 'up to us' upon the motion of the stars — I know not how — binding everything with indissoluble bonds under necessity, which they call fate, and attaching everything to these gods. And so in their temples and images and other cult-objects they worship these alone as the sole releasers from fate.

Let this, then, stand as quoted from the aforesaid letter, plainly declaring that even the secret theology of the Egyptians theologized about none other than the stars in heaven — both the so-called fixed stars and the so-called planets — and introduced as demiurge of the universe nothing incorporeal whatsoever, nor a creative reason, nor indeed a god, nor gods, nor any intelligent and invisible powers, but only the visible sun. Wherefore they also attributed the cause of the universe to the stars alone, hanging everything upon fate and upon the motion and course of the stars — just as, indeed, even to this day this opinion still prevails among them.

If, then, for the Egyptians everything was interpreted with reference only to the visible elements of the world, and nothing with reference to incorporeal and living substances, while the elements and all visible bodies, by their own definition, are inanimate and irrational, and by nature fluid and perishable, then behold into what depths their theology has once again fallen — deifying an inanimate substance and dead, irrational bodies — especially since nothing among them was referred to incorporeal and intelligent substances, nor to a creative mind and reason governing the universe.

Since, then, it has already been agreed in what preceded that matters of theology were carried over to the Greeks from the Egyptians, it is time for the Greeks, too, to be shown to correspond to these, and to practice the same physical philosophy as the Egyptians, and to be shown convicted of deifying nothing more than lifeless matter. For such were the solemn mysteries of the Egyptians, according to the writing of the aforementioned author, who again, in the work he entitled On Abstinence from Animate Beings, gives the following account concerning these same matters.

Setting out from this discipline and from their kinship with the divine, they came to know that the divine did not pass through man alone, nor did soul take up its dwelling on earth in man alone, but rather this same soul passed through practically all living creatures. For this reason they included every animal in their deification, and likewise, in a manner, mingled together beasts and men, and again the bodies of birds and of men.

For among them a certain figure is represented as human-shaped as far as the neck, but possessing the face of a bird or a lion or some other animal; and again, conversely, a human head together with the members of certain other animals, in one case placed below, in another placed above. By these means they show that, according to the will of the gods, these creatures too share fellowship with one another, and that the wild among the beasts become tame and live together with us, not without some divine purpose.

Whence also the lion is worshipped as a god, and a certain district of Egypt, which they call a nome, is named the Leontopolite, another the Busirite, another the Cynopolite. For they worshipped the power that extends over all things through the associated animals which each of the gods furnished.

They also venerate water and fire, the most excellent of the elements, as being the most responsible causes of our preservation, and they display these in their temples, just as, even now, in the opening ceremony of the holy Sarapis, the ritual service is performed by means of fire and water — the hymnodist pouring out the water and displaying the fire, when, standing on the threshold, he awakens the god in the ancestral tongue of the Egyptians.

These, then, are the things they venerate as partaking in this power, and above all, those creatures were held in even greater veneration which partook more fully of the sacred rites. And all such animals are of this kind — since they also venerate a man at the village of Anabis, where sacrifice is offered to him too, and sacrificial offerings are burned upon the altars.

But shortly afterward this same man might eat the food that had been specially prepared for him as for a man. Therefore, just as one must abstain from eating a man, so likewise from the others.

Furthermore, through their extraordinary wisdom and their intimate familiarity with the divine, they perceived that certain of the animals were dearer to some of the gods than men are — as, for example, the hawk to the sun, an animal whose whole nature consists of blood and spirit, yet one that also pities man, and wails over the man lying dead, and casts earth upon him. And shortly afterward he says:

The scarab beetle, indeed, an ignorant man, being unappreciative of things divine, might well abhor; but the Egyptians venerated it as a living image of the sun. For every scarab is male, and, depositing its seed in mire and forming it into a ball, it rolls the ball back with its hind feet, just as the sun receives the heaven and the lunar cycle of days.

In the same way they philosophize also about the ram, and something else about the crocodile, and about the vulture and the ibis, and in general concerning each of the animals — holding that it was out of prudence and excessive divine wisdom that they arrived at the veneration even of the animals.

Such, then, are the things concerning the noble physical philosophy of the wise Egyptians that have been set forth by the aforementioned writer, who has made clear to us the secrets of the Egyptians — namely, that they venerate water and fire, and that, in their judgment, there is one and the same substance, not only of bodies, but even of soul, common to both rational and irrational beings — so that it seemed reasonable to him that the beasts should be proclaimed gods.

And yet, how is it not utterly irrational to admit the irrational and bestial nature into the ranks of deity, on the ground that, as they say, it shares an equal soul with men? For, if that were really so, one ought rather to regard these creatures too as men, and to grant them a share of human honor and human esteem.

But those men, not having done this, did not see fit to receive as equal to men those creatures which by their very nature had become irrational beasts, and had received that very appellation, and had not even been deemed worthy of the name 'man.' Yet they took the very highest title — that of the universal King, of God the maker of all things — and cast it down upon the nature of beasts, and proclaimed as gods creatures that had not even, by the will of God himself, been deemed worthy of the appellation 'man.'

In addition to these things, you have also heard of the mystical divine wisdom on account of which these marvelous Egyptians venerated wolves and dogs and lions; you have also come to know the wonder of the scarab and the virtue of the hawk. Do not, then, laugh any longer at the gods; rather, pity the thrice-wretched race of men for their great foolishness and blindness.

And now, consider, surveying all things together, what great blessings the Christ of God is present to give us, seeing that through his evangelical teaching he has redeemed the souls of the Egyptians from so great, so lasting, and so long-standing an affliction and blindness, so that already the majority of the people of Egypt have been delivered even from this disease.

Such, then, are the matters among the Egyptians also, which are recorded as older than all the Greek accounts. You have, therefore, in addition to the mythical theology, also the more physical theology of both Greeks and Egyptians together — of those who of old established polytheistic superstition — among whom you have learned that nothing whatsoever of the truly divine, incorporeal, and intelligent substances was known.

Nevertheless, let it be granted and conceded to these babblers about celestial matters that they speak the truth, and that they succeed in their physical philosophy of allegorization; let the sun be for them at one time Apollo, and again Horus, and again the very same Osiris, and countless other things besides, whatever they should wish; and likewise the moon, whether Isis or Artemis, and whatever else one might wish to enumerate.