ℹ️ This corpus has no verse-level morphological tagging. Lemmas come mainly from word-level tagging of other books in the same language (not from this verse), falling back to dictionary form-matching for the rest. Rare homographs can still be misread; verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
And Asclepius again says of himself: 'I come, a god, from holy Tricca, whom my mother once, having lain with Phoebus, conceived as a king of wisdom, Asclepius skilled in the healing art. But why do you inquire?'
They even describe the very form of their own shape, just as Pan himself, in oracles concerning himself, says the following in teaching: 'I who was born mortal make my prayer to Pan, the god of kindred nature, two-horned, two-footed, goat-legged, luxuriant.'
These things the aforementioned man has set down in the secret writings of the Philosophy from Oracles. Pan, then, was no longer a symbol of the universe; rather, he who gave the oracle must have been some demon such as has been described above; for surely it was not the universe, the sum total of the world, that delivered the oracle in question. It is the image of this demon, therefore, and not of the universe, that men have carved, thus imitating the form described above.
And how could Hermes, too, be understood as the Logos productive and interpretive of all things, when he confesses that he had Maia, the daughter of Atlas, as his mother--thereby endorsing the myth told about him, and not a natural interpretation?
So too, how could Asclepius be transferred to the sun, since he claims Tricca as his fatherland and confesses that he was born of a mortal mother? And how could he, being the sun himself, in turn be declared the son of the sun? Since they have also explained by natural philosophy that his father Phoebus is none other than the sun.
And is it not the most ridiculous thing of all to say that he was born from the sun and a mortal woman? Since indeed, how is it reasonable that the father himself, the sun--whom they say is Apollo--should have been born on the island of Delos, in turn from a mortal mother, Leto?
Here take note, for comparison, of how many gods the Greeks have theologized as born of women--should they ever attempt to mock the birth of our Savior--and note that these are not the utterances of poets, but the very statements attributed to the gods themselves.
Now then, since, as they say, the poets fashion myths about the gods, while the philosophers give natural explanations, it would surely be reasonable to despise the former and to admire the latter as philosophers, and to receive the plausible arguments of the better sort rather than the poetic nonsense. But when, in turn, the gods themselves and the philosophers come into competition, and when the gods, in their oracles, teach precisely the truth about themselves--as being the ones who know best--while the philosophers turn the notions concerning things they do not know into discordant and unprovable sophistries, which of the two does reason bid us believe? Or is this not even worth asking?
If, then, the gods speak truly when they confirm the human passions attributed to them, those who reject these accounts would be liars; but if the philosophers' physical explanations are true, the gods' own testimonies would prove false.
But indeed, one might say, Apollo himself declared somewhere in his oracles, when asked concerning himself who he was: 'Helios, Horus, Osiris, lord, son of Zeus, Apollo, steward of the seasons and times, of winds and rains, guiding the reins of dawn and star-strewn night, king of the blazing stars and undying fire.'
So then these same gods agree both with the myths of the poets and with the allegorical interpretations of the philosophers, thereby standing together with things that contradict one another. For if they claim mortal mothers and acknowledge earthly fatherlands, how could they be such as the philosophers describe them in their physical theories?
For let it be granted that Apollo is the sun — for once again the argument, running up and down, will be caught circling back to the same points against them — how then could Delos, the island that even now still appears in the sea, be the fatherland of the sun, and Leto his mother? For it was precisely these things that his own oracles just now affirmed as true. And how could the sun be the father of Asclepius, a man mortal by nature, having begotten him from a mortal woman? But let these matters be set aside.
But the falsehood of the oracle can be refuted also in another way. For surely the sun did not come down to them from heaven and then, filling the vessel (the priestess), deliver the oracle in prophetic frenzy; since it is neither possible nor lawful for so great a luminary to be subjected to the constraints of men. But not even if they should say it was the divine and intelligent power within it, would this hold, for a human soul could never be receptive even of that.
The same argument would hold also concerning the moon. For if they say that she herself is Hecate, and that she is somehow drawn down by the compulsions of men, and gives oracles through the medium, and is enlisted for shameful and erotic services as ruler of the wicked demons, it would be plausible that Hecate does these things — a point which the same author himself admits, as we shall refute in due course.
And how could Pluto and Sarapis be explained physically as the sun, when the same author again declares that Sarapis, the ruler of the wicked demons, is the same as Pluto? And when recording the oracles of Sarapis, how could he possibly say that they belong to the sun?
From all these considerations, then, it remains for us to admit that the aforementioned physical explanations contain nothing true, but are rather the sophistries and ingenious inventions of sophist-minded men.
It is right, then, to say in true reasoning that the ministers of the oracles are wicked demons, playing games in both respects for the deception of men — at one time agreeing with the more mythical suppositions about themselves for the sake of leading the common people astray, at another time confirming the deceits of philosophical trickery in order to corrupt and puff up those men as well; so that from every side they are convicted of speaking nothing true.
Now that so much has been said by us, it is time to turn and take up the third kind of Greek theology, which they call the 'political' and 'lawful' kind. For this is considered especially capable of striking the multitude with astonishment, on account of the celebrated oracular shrines, the healings and cures of afflicted bodies effected through oracles, and the visitations of punishment against certain persons.
Claiming to have had experience of these things, they have thoroughly persuaded themselves that in showing piety toward the gods they are acting justly, while we, by not honoring with fitting worship such manifest and beneficent powers, are committing the gravest impiety. Against these claims, then, let us take up another starting point of argument and make our reply.