On the Witch of Endor 1 part 3/4

Therefore, if he said that the one who sprang from the human race had ascended into heaven alone of all, and again had come down hence from there, and that having come down here he yet sojourns in heaven, it is established that the man did these things in a surpassing way by the virtue of his soul.

For the holy soul of Christ, dwelling together with God and the Word, ranges over all things together, and has gone up into that very highest heaven into which no other of mankind has ascended.

But these things are bound up with that very human form which God the Word bore.

And that the Son of God is everywhere present all at once, John no less stands as a witness concerning this too, being himself an ear-witness of Christ himself; and he cries aloud, word for word: 'No one has ever seen God;'

'the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.'

But if anyone, sick with Jewish blindness, will not admit the evangelical sayings, the pronouncements of Solomon must be brought to bear upon him, and one must speak somewhat in this way:

'For while a quiet silence enveloped all things, and night in her own swift course was midway sped, your all-powerful Word from heaven, from the royal throne, bearing as a sharp sword your unfeigned command, stood and filled all things with death;'

'and it touched heaven, yet it stood upon the earth.'

If, then, the only-begotten Son is proclaimed to be the very Word of God and also God in unanimous accord—he through whom angels and heavens and earth and seas and depths and the heaven-coursing luminaries came to be, and, in a word, the whole structure of created things; and who, thus chastening all by righteous judgment, holds from heaven the throne of his eternal kingdom and punishes the unjust with swift retribution (yet being all-powerful in deed and act, inasmuch indeed as he is God and God the Word, he touched heaven yet stood upon the earth at the same time)—then plainly he fills all things in every way by the power of his Godhead.

Therefore, if he is possessed of such a nature, those are impious who suppose that the Divine is circumscribed, in folly, by place and by some defined portion of space; and it is out of ignorance rather than out of orderly understanding that Origen rashly declares that, having descended into the lowest parts of the earth, Christ was dwelling above by his disposition of will;

for he did not perceive that, being God, he was present above not so much in seeming by an eager intent of mind [by desire], as by the operation of his divinity he fills all things in every way to the utmost degree.

But such things are fitting for that man to hold concerning Christ—the man who lays it down that souls of prophets are brought up by a demon;

and the Pythian seeress, when she beheld the demons who shared the same womb with her, exalting as it were her brothers of the same belly, her kindred of the same mother, cries out:

'I have seen gods coming up out of the earth.'

But the boastful Origen was not afraid to say that the demon brought up not only the soul of the prophet, but—'might it be,' he said, 'that other holy souls of prophets came up together with him?'; and, not sated with such drunken excess, he even laid it down that the angels too came up together with their spirits;

for he said that they came up hither for the sake of the salvation of those in need.

So Origen, as it seems, holds out the greatest hopes to the angels and prophets, or rather to the whole assembled choir of the saints: first introducing them as being under the authority of a demon, and then declaring that they were brought up here through a frenzied woman, led forth like prisoners to heal those who suffer.

He seems to me to be uttering things no less crazed than she.

For in effect he thus pitiably debased the holy men, and was not ashamed to slander even the order of the heaven-soaring angels;

or let the man who supports such a definition show plainly whence he learned to say that the angels who feast in the heavens come up out of the earth;

for it was not these who descended into Hades bringing deliverances to the captives, but Christ, since he set up a victorious trophy against the enemy, and having snatched away the spoils of the captives, ascended into the heavens with his own body, borne aloft.

But the angels stand beside God at all times, hastening to perform the services they owe; they do not dwell in Hades.

But, as it seems, Origen pretends not to understand, in order that he may prop up an ill-fated divination;

then, having undertaken to allegorize all the Scriptures, he is not ashamed to take this one passage alone according to the letter, decreeing it by a feigned interpretation, although not even giving fair-minded attention to the body of the text itself.

But indeed, discoursing about the paradise which God planted in Eden, and then wishing to expound in what manner he caused the fruit-bearing trees to spring up, among other things he added:

'and let us inquire by interpretation what those trees are which, he says, God cultivates; we say that there are no perceptible trees in that place.'

And, treating these things tropologically, he does not shudder to call 'myths' all that God is recorded to have created and that Moses, the most faithful servant of God, wrote;

but, on the contrary, whatever the myth fashioned in the belly obscurely whispers, these things he confirms with a dogmatic proclamation, showing them to be true.

Indeed, maintaining that the words of the belly-myth woman were spoken through the Holy Spirit, he holds that they should remain unshaken, attributing them in appearance to Scripture;

but the very messages of God delivered through Moses he calls 'myths,' altering their meaning, not deeming it right to abide by the literal sense of the text.

Does he not allegorize the wells dug by Abraham and those around him, and, having extended such a swarm of words, does he not abolish their entire factual reality together, transposing it into another sense—and that though the wells are even now still to be seen in the land before one's eyes? Did he not treat tropologically the affairs of Isaac and Rebecca, saying that the earrings and bracelets are 'golden words,' and, having forced that whole narrative, taking it in a spiritual sense, did he not misrepresent it? And, conversing about the much-enduring Job, instead of admiring his endurance, praising his labors, extolling his prowess, approving his faith, setting forth the examples of his steadfastness of soul, exhorting the newly enlisted thereby to virtue, arming the contestants with good courage and the strength of prudence to strive manfully for piety—abandoning all that, he soared off into the names of the daughters and wasted himself in old-wives' twaddle.

But what nonsense he babbled about the name of 'Day' and 'Cassia,' or indeed about 'the horn of Amalthea,' it is not even possible to tell;

for it is filled full of mockery of every kind.

And writing about Lazarus, instead of glorifying the mighty work of Christ and thereby demonstrating clearly that he is God who, by his authority, summoned the putrefied corpse from the tomb and, by the release of his word, animated bodies already swollen with decay—he says nothing on this account, but allegorizes Lazarus, the friend of the Lord whom he loved, not without reason, for his virtue, into the one who is sick and dead in his sins.

But no one ever said or wrote such things against a righteous man;

for the Lord would not have loved him so exceptionally, had he not been bound to a divine manner of life.

And no less, in examining the episode of the stoning (since he tries to allegorize this too), he gives the lie to the evangelical text, saying: 'we have nowhere quite found, having searched in the passages before this, that the Jews took up stones to stone him;'

'for if they took them up again, they had taken them up before.'

And both ways he wishes to establish that no prior occasion preceded, and likewise another interpretation as well, in order to make out that they took up 'words,' and not stones, against him without delay—although the evangelist had said earlier: 'they took up stones, then, to cast at him.'

And as he had written these things before, in the interval, passing over some one hundred and thirty-five lines, he brings in, adding:

'the Jews, then, took up stones again, that they might stone him.'

But these things are recorded in two distinct passages, and they appear to have been done on different occasions, from the fact that the words do not have the same connections or constructions;

but Origen, who supposes he knows all the Scriptures, did not read this, and that though he was writing on the whole Gospel together, word for word.

And if anyone supposes that we are fabricating these things, by consulting the evangelical statements themselves and the studies he labored over concerning this, he will find that we have said nothing false.

And [he held] that lives of unlike character are to be judged alike from one and the same name.

There is, for instance, Judas the betrayer and another Judas the apostle; or again, Zechariah the most unjust king and another Zechariah the prophet; moreover also Ananias who was cast into the fiery furnace, and besides this yet another Ananias who persecuted the church instead of being persecuted, and who ordered the apostle to be struck—to whom Paul, face to face, retorted in a word:

'God is about to strike you, you whitewashed wall!'

'And do you sit to judge me according to the law, and, transgressing the law, command me to be struck?' Therefore, if it is by name that things are judged, let those who lean upon such tropologies say by what method they think fit to interpret unlike branches of knowledge or the inferences about manners of life on the basis of mere homonymy.

Indeed, even to this day many Jews who clothe themselves with the names of forefathers or prophets do unlawful things, and many among the Greeks too who are called Peters and Pauls do unspeakable deeds.

The hollow part of Origen's arguments, then, is caught out not least through such frivolous talk.

But all that he introduces, with heterodox error, concerning the resurrection, it is not possible to set forth at the present moment.

For Methodius, worthy of holy remembrance, wrote sufficiently on this subject, and indeed showed openly that he heedlessly gave the heretics an opening, by defining the resurrection as belonging to the form (eidos) and not to the body itself.

But that he overturned everything by tropologies and sowed everywhere the seeds of false doctrine is rather easy to see; and, repeating himself again and again, he filled the inhabited world with measureless drivel.

And, customarily allegorizing all things in every way by such a method, he was not able even to allegorize the words of the belly-myth woman alone, nor again to relate the plain sense from the sequence of the narrative itself.

But what did he introduce besides these things, fashioning evasions by way of an excuse? Since it seemed that the apparition had said to Saul:

'The Lord will tear the kingdom out of your hand'—against this, arguing plausibly, he objected that it ought not to be supposed that a demon prophesies concerning the kingdom of Israel.

But we have already said before, too, that the demon had earlier stolen these words spoken to Samuel, in order that, having deceived the frenzied Saul, he might seem to be speaking his own.

But this man does not affect to recognize such dramatic devices of the devil.

So, when it seemed to foretell that the kingdom of the deranged man would be torn away, it then added:

'and he will give it to your neighbor, to David.'

Now the very learned Origen, stirred up at this point, said:

'But a demon, when it speaks, cannot know the kingdom of David that was ordained by the Lord.'

But it occurs to me to wonder how this man carries off a reputation for good judgment among the many, as being at once sensible and of the best understanding.

If, then, the kingdom had been uncertain, perhaps it might have been possible for someone to feign ignorance, alleging some pretext;

but if it had been attested by God, and on top of this David had been anointed by Samuel, and, ever excelling in the wars, had been shown to be the king's son-in-law, so that the dancing women ascribed to him the ten thousands but rendered to Saul the thousands—if these and the like were established as plain, what was so strange or so paradoxical if the demon recognized the kingdom that already existed and had been ordained by the Lord through the prophet? For must one not consider (if indeed one must speak by way of extreme concession that it knows only bodily things) that the anointing with oil has a perceptible application by touch? But no one will dispute that these things stand plain to all;

but, that I may state the overwhelming point in addition, even if such things had not been established as plain:

which would be the greater, by comparison—to know the kingdom of David, or to bring up prophetic souls out of Hades? And yet this very thing has been demonstrated even in the case of the superior Person;

'[the demons] cried out to you, Son of God: have you come before the time to destroy us?' But to summon souls out of Hades and at the same time to call forth heaven-soaring choirs of angels—God alone, and his most divine Son, has the authority to accomplish, and no other whatsoever.

If, then, the demons knew the invisible kingdom of God, anointed by the Holy Spirit, could they not far more recognize the kingdom of David, made manifest by a perceptible anointing and a visible outpouring? But the wretch did not know the things done and laid up in the Scriptures concerning David—he who even came to the Lord, clothed with the body, and said boldly:

'If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down;'

'for it is written,' he says, 'He will give his angels charge concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.' Therefore, if he is represented as conversing out of the holy Scriptures, then he knows the written words—though in an ill-learned way;

and if he is in possession of knowledge of these things, then he did not in fact fail to know the kingdom of David, which is engraved in the sacred writings;

so that the demon, in speaking the things that are written, prophesied nothing at all.

But the much-talked-of Origen, finding nothing whatever to say, took refuge artfully in this, bringing forward elsewhere, besides these things, the following:

'But I,' he says, 'cannot grant to a demon so great a power that it should prophesy concerning Saul and the people of God, and prophesy concerning the kingdom of David, that he is destined to reign.'

Then, one might say, 'O most senseless of men! You do not grant it to prophesy, yet you allow it to bring up prophets out of Hades and suddenly to summon angelic choirs—which is greater, more eminent, and pertains to a more divine authority? Has anyone ever reasoned so feebly or so beggarly?' But I, for my part, would most of all rejoin that the demon prophesied nothing, as we have also shown before;

and even if it had happened to discourse on matters worthy of prophecy, not even so ought one to suppose that the demon brought up spirits and souls out of Hades;

for Caiaphas too prophesied in connection with the plot against Christ, saying that 'it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.'

These things he did not say of himself, as the most wise John declared, but, being high priest that year, he prophesied.

But if this man, who took up unjust counsels against the Lord, nevertheless does not prophesy of himself, but, being moved doubtless by another, makes the indictment against himself, then neither, if anyone else does any such thing, ought one to suppose that on this account he is endowed with a more divine power; nor should it be tolerated if someone should say that, by demonic divination, [the demon] seems to bring up souls out of Hades and armies of angels like God.

For one must hearken to what Moses declares concerning such prophets in Deuteronomy, prophesying thus: 'If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams,' he says, 'and he give you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, which he spoke to you, saying:'

'Let us go and serve other gods which you have not known—you shall not listen to the words of that prophet,' he says, 'or that dreamer of that dream;'

'for the Lord your God is testing you, to see whether you love the Lord your God.'

But here, presenting the dyad of the Father and the only-begotten Son, he named as one the Lord who tests, and as another, distinct from this one, the Lord and God who is loved—that out of the dyad he might demonstrate the one Godhead and the true divine generation.

...wishing to inscribe the deed to the promise of the demon and, by means of this pretext, to destroy certain people through deception;

for it is altogether necessary to guard against the pollution of divination, as the lawgiver decreed.

But does no one consider abominable the causes of augury and the oracles of the belly-myth woman and the tokens of omens? Let him hear how, a little earlier, passing over [other matters], the lawgiver decreed again:

'And if,' he says, 'you enter into the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to do according to the abominations of those nations.'

'There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or who uses divination, or an observer of omens, or one who augurs with drugs, or who chants an incantation, a belly-myth woman, or a portent-watcher, one who questions the dead.'

'For everyone who does these things is an abomination to the Lord.'

And after this, indicating that on account of these things he threatens to the foreign nations too a birth of death and destruction, he immediately added:

'for because of these abominations the Lord will utterly destroy them from before you.'

It appears, then, that the divination of the belly-myth woman is yoked together with all the causes of idolatry alike, just as if, with refuse lying within in a fever—things that stir up sickness and are wicked kindling—they were wont, by swelling and decay, to bring forth a pestilential disease.

And if indeed he also named 'portent-watching' as the joyless visions—as many as are related through the belly-myth women—he established that there is nothing true in them;

from this point, I think, again in Leviticus he brought forth a still more severe pronouncement against them, adding in these very words:

'And a man or a woman, whoever among you may become a belly-myth medium or an enchanter, let them be put to death;'

'stone them with stones; they are guilty.'

What, then, do those say who set down Origen's opinion-mongering as something to be welcomed? Does he command the belly-myth mediums to be destroyed as authors of the most hateful practices, or, on the contrary, as counselors of good works? If, then, they are perpetrators of impious dramas, the lawgiver justly drives away the accursed, since they announce nothing true;

but if they are discoverers of the noblest deeds, then the law decreed against them needlessly.

For if they do bring up souls out of Hades, and those that come hither proclaim the future and profitably equip those in need:

then the lawgiver decreed unjustly that benefactors be stoned.

So that of two things one must be necessary: either to render these sayings useless, or to discredit the words of the belly-myth woman as stale and false.

But what shall we say? Do the divine Scriptures hold contrary opinions to one another? Does the one vote do battle with the many? And if indeed there is some conflict, the many prevail.

And indeed, on the contrary, thus with one accord and harmonious agreement they condemn the belly-myth mediums as doing unholy things.

No less, moreover, it is recorded in the Fourth of Kingdoms that Manasseh, in his excess of impiety, in addition to slaying the righteous and worshiping all manner of idolatrous materials, 'made for himself,' it says, 'belly-myth mediums and knowers (familiar spirits).'

But conversely again, Josiah the king, who excelled in the virtue of righteousness, pulled down all the hand-made shrines together, and, reducing them to ashes with fire, made them vanish;

and moreover, in addition to these, 'he removed,' it says, 'the belly-myth mediums and the knowers and the teraphim and the idols and the carsaein (offensive things);'

then, a little later, it says that he also burned them with fire, as being unlawful, of course.

Therefore, if the same author wrote each of the two passages, and here he gives the life-history of two persons, kings, and then introduces the one as unjust and the other as just—but blames the one supplied with unmingled injustice (for which reason, among other things, he also clung to the belly-myth mediums), while he praises the other, roused by divine zeal, in that he also removed the belly-myth mediums along with all his enemies—if these things are so, it is established that he did not give out sayings that contradict themselves.

[Origen] asserted that the Holy Spirit had brought up Samuel, whereas in fact he was rehearsing the words of the belly-myth woman, as she supposed and in seeming boasted, rousing the ruler with unseen phantom-mongerings;

for otherwise it would not have been at war with itself and with all the other Scriptures.

But it is not only these utterances that refute these things; rather, yet another witness worthy of credit casts his vote with them—the prophet Isaiah;

now forbidding such defilements, now exhorting most rightly, he sounds forth to those subject to him:

'And if they say to you:'

'Seek out the belly-myth mediums and those who utter sounds from the earth, the empty talkers who speak from the belly'—is not a nation [to seek] to its God? Then what does he add and bring in after this? 'Why,' he said, 'do they seek the dead concerning the living? For he has given a law for a help, that they may speak not according to this word, concerning which there are no gifts to give.'

By a manifest sacred utterance he proscribed the race of the belly-myth mediums;

and if he declared such an assembly to be a vain talker, he proved beyond dispute that of these things no one ever at all says anything true, but with hollow false-speaking they fabricate deception, and with stale empty talk they cheat the ignorant.

Whence, consistently, he derided those who inquire of the dead concerning the living;

for being themselves wholly dead and maimed, these empty talkers pretend to render the voices of the dead.

And the prophet bore witness, crying out that an unbreakable law is set down concerning these things, that men might not be led astray by stale frivolities after those who utter such pronouncements;

for the highest keeping of the law, I think, is to call upon help from heaven, and not to beg succor from earthly things, looking to the very regions beneath the earth.

But Origen, who supposed he had interpreted all the Scriptures, affects not to know these testimonies, nor does he set them down as he ought, but he drags in those that bear in no respect on the question at all, while he passes over those that pertain by their very nature [to it];

for he seems to do this either foolishly out of ignorance, or to act so audaciously out of malice.

But also, as if hedging his bets, having said: 'What, then, is a belly-myth medium doing here? What is a belly-myth medium doing concerning the bringing-up of the soul of the righteous man?'—out of lack of an argument he soared off in evasion, ascribing to another that which he himself did;

and having attributed the whole thing to Scripture itself, he insists that Samuel was brought up, but no longer dares to repeat 'who brought him up.' I think, too, that being afterwards refuted by those who ever think most rightly, defending himself again in a second exposition, he said that the place of the belly-myth woman had been observed;

then he says also that 'it is written that the belly-myth woman brought up someone,' and 'it is recorded that Saul spoke to Samuel;'

and, having repeated many such things over and over with much drivel, he brings in again:

'But it does not say,' he says, 'whether he came up willingly;'

'for you have no statement,' he says, 'that the belly-myth woman brought him up;'

'since let someone refute me by reading the Scripture.'

Therefore, being refuted to his face, he plainly denied the very things which he had earlier maintained in thoughtlessness;

for there he determined that it was rather the Scripture that had spoken, and not the woman—the words 'whom shall I bring up to you?';

but here, being plainly caught out, he was eager to escape the charge by forgetfulness.

Thus everywhere he sets forth nakedly opinions that war with himself, just as indeed here too he was caught contradicting his own knowledge, in his haste to flee the penalty of the accusation.

Since, then, being dragged unwilling, he confessed that the woman did not bring up the soul of the prophet, let him say who it was that brought it up (for he persisted unmoved in defining merely that it was brought up).

Now the Pythian seeress herself happened to be the only one present, and Saul, who was begging her to bring up the prophet.

But this man surely would not be the perpetrator of the deed;

for he would not have had need of the belly-myth woman, coming to her by night.

And if the act took place, it is to be ascribed to no other;

[the alternatives are] that this never happened in any way at all, or that the upright man was brought up through the belly-myth woman and the demon.

Does he, then, seeming to deny his own statements by way of excuse, by another method introduce the same opinion-mongering deceitfully? For through the very things by which he seems to defend himself, by these he introduces falsehood as though it were truth.

He is put to no shame by so many and such legislative verdicts, nor by the concordant prophetic testimonies, nor by the rest of the unanimous accords of the historical writings;

but, having sophistically perverted the all-holy pronouncements, he confirms by his own choosing the words of the belly-myth woman, decreeing them to be newer instruments of idolatry, and dragging in the impious divination of demons.

Nor does even the compound name itself persuade him as to what sort of character it carries;

for 'belly-myth medium' (engastrimythos) is interpreted as referring to one who displays a myth fashioned in the belly; and the composition of the myth has been formed, plausibly staged within the belly, to proclaim outright not truth but falsehood.

Those, at any rate, who have engaged with the manifold turns of literary discourse know far better what sort of class it belongs to.

And even if, burning above all with superstition, he covertly introduces Greek divination, nevertheless I think it must not be passed over, but that here too one ought, as is fitting, to refute his lack of understanding in a few words.

For the rhetorical handbooks clearly show that a myth is a fiction composed with persuasive charm, bearing on something useful for the conduct of life;

and 'fiction' (plasma), they say, is so called from its being 'molded' (peplasthai), as is generally agreed;

for it would no longer be reckoned a myth, if it had come to pass according to truth.

And if it is the composition of an impromptu fiction, or a myth-making, then it has been proven far removed from truth in deed, while in word it depicts the substance of matters, falling short in actual fact;

for it seems to argue plausibly that things which are not exist as though they were, and by narration it introduces a fashioned imitation;

so it gives shape to unreal matters, with no underlying foundation that is, as far as possible, secure.

And the fabrication of a myth seems to me to differ in no way from a lifeless sketch (shadow-painting);

for after the likeness, I think, of a painted panel, it is traced out by the very line;

indeed, with closely similar resemblance, it personifies a subject, looking to some particular aspect, and it fashions the matters themselves by imitation with taut lines.

It keeps a fitting correspondence in each of its rhythms to the utmost: it depicts the heights of war and its end, like a base; and lips that speak, and the peculiarities of voices, and laughter and weeping; or rulers' public harangues, or banquets and revels, or bacchic frenzies, or rites, or unbridled drunken bouts, or amorous excesses, or robbers' plunderings, or irremediable ruins, or unjudged slaughters, or the feigning of poverty, or the influxes of riches.

By plausible reasoning, then, it characterizes everything, and by closely resembling personification it sets forth feeble deeds;

for the myth-makers, picking out florid words, themselves work up varied kinds of colors and weave them together with personification;

then, having tinted them with pleasing words, they gather together the whole narration of the myth, and, like animal-painters depicting the bloom of the visage, they paint in wax with red and flowery colors;

and, striving to set to music material characters with words and figures, they fall short of the truth itself in actual fact.

But these men, then, embellish the images of myths in such a fashion;

and from this there arises a kind of musical harmony and the invention of poetic conceit.