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An alternative theory of | Origen and the Eusebian fiction postulate
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An alternative theory of | Origen and the Eusebian fiction postulate
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia
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Editorial Comments |
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An alternative theory of the history of antiquity is being explored in which the christian "Biblical History" was inserted into the political history of the Roman Empire no earlier than the rise of Constantine.
He may indeed have been foundational in the accumulation of texts at the library of Caesarea, which was eventually "inherited" by Eusebius. However, we would have to draw the line that he actually published any material whatsoever related to the new testament.
We are here exploring the very real possibility that all the new testament writings which are attributed to Origen by Eusebius, are in fact forgeries in the name of Origen by Eusebius.
The entire corpus of the Hebrew Bible in Greek, was descendant via the Caesarea library through Origen. Once the new testament texts were assembled by Constantine, for the very fist time the Hebrew texts (of Origen) and the new testament (doctrinally descendent via Origen, via the forgery of Eusebius) were BOUND TOGETHER in the Constantine Bible c.331 CE.
There are a number of issues which support this hypothesis, about the new testament related writings of Origen being forged by Eusebius, which are summarised, and then treated in detail below:
Concerning the Adulteration of the Works of Origen |
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I have just finished going through Rufinus's Epilogue to "Pamphilus the Martyr's Apology for Origen", otherwise known as "the Book Concerning the Adulteration of the Works of Origen.", and have broken this up into a series of smaller paragraphs, for easier review. We consider all references to "christians" from Josephus to Origen to be either interpolations or wholesale fabrications of literature enacted in the fourth century. Consequently, we must consider that Origen was not a christian whatsoever, but in fact a scholar of the Hebrew Bible only, and a philosopher, because christianity did not yet exist at the time Origen lived. Therefore we expect to see evidence of two forms of literature with respect to Origen. Firstly, the original writings of the author in the third century. Secondly, there will be massive interpolations and/or fabrications of the literature in the fourth (or subsequent!) centuries in order to insert the christians related material. There were problems with this approach. Unless all available original manuscripts could be recalled, it was obvious that manuscripts would continue to exist, in which some of these authors of antiquity (such as Origen, and Pamphilus) had not been "officially corrected" by the new and strange religion. We believe that this Rufinus's Epilogue to "Pamphilus the Martyr's Apology for Origen" exemplifies the modus operandi of "correction". We believe that it is more reasonable to consider that Pamphilus had earlier written a work in relation to the thoughts, philosophy, etc of Origen, which had in it, of course, absolutely no reference whatsoever at all to do with christianity (4th CE). This work (and works like it) naturally became a problem. Eusebius, we believe, admitted partial authorship for this work (with Pamphilus) in order to disallow any definite attribution back to Pamphilus alone, dissembling tactic. We believe that the work, written prior to the beginning of the holy Roman catholic church (at Nicaea), had in it no information whatsoever christian, and could not be allowed to remain in that state, seeing that the fiction had already inculcated Eusebius, and thus through him, Pamphilus, and Origen, as being "christian". Here is the admission from Rufinus ....
My object in the translation from Greek into Latin
of the holy martyr Pamphilus' Apology for Origen,
which I have given in the preceding volume
according to my ability and the requirements
of the matter, is this:
I wish you to know through full information
that the rule of faith which has been set forth
above in his writings is that
which we must embrace and hold;
for it is clearly shown
that the Catholic opinion
is contained in them all.
Nevertheless you have to allow that there are found in his books
certain things not only different from this
but in certain cases even repugnant to it;
things which our canons of truth do not sanction,
and which we can neither receive nor approve.
[ED: In other words there were books
extant in which Origen speaks as
a non-christian. Perhaps Hellenic]
As to the cause of this an opinion has reached me
which has been widely entertained,
and which I wish to be fully known by you
and by those who desire to know what is true,
since it is possible also that
some who have before been actuated
by the love of fault-finding
may acquiesce in the truth and reason of the matter
when they have it set before them;
for some seem determined to believe
anything in the world to be true
rather than that which withdraws from them
the occasions of fault-finding.
It must, I think, be felt to be wholly impossible
that a man so learned and so wise,
a man whom even his accusers may well admit
to have been neither foolish nor insane,
should have written what is contrary and repugnant
to himself and his own opinions.
But even suppose that this could
in some way have happened;
suppose, as some perhaps have said,
that in the decline of life he might have forgotten
what he had written in his early days,
and have made assertions at variance with his former opinions;
how are we to deal with the fact
that we sometimes find in the very same passages,
and, as I may say, almost in successive sentences,
clauses inserted expressive of contrary opinions ?
Can we believe that in the same work and in the same book,
and even sometimes, as I have said, in the following paragraph,.
a man could have forgotten his own views ?
For example that, when he had said just before
that no passage in all the Scripture could be found
in which the Holy Spirit was spoken of as made or created,
he could have immediately added that the Holy Spirit
had been made along with the rest of the creatures ?
or again, that the same man who clearly states
that the Father and the Son are of one substance,
or as it is called in Greek Homoousion,
could in the next sentence say that
He was of another substance,
and was a created being,
when he had but a little before described him
as born of the very nature of God the Father?
Or again in the matter of the resurrection of the flesh,
could he who so clearly declared that it was
the nature of the flesh which ascended
with the Word of God into heaven,
and there appeared to the celestial Powers,
presenting a new image of himself for them to worship,
could he, I ask you, possibly turn round
and say that this flesh was not to be saved ?
Such things could not happen even in the case of a man
who had taken leave of his senses and was not sound in the brain.
How, therefore, this came to pass,
I will point out with all possible brevity.
[ED: Wait for it, here's the punchline]
The heretics are capable of any violence,
they have no remorse and no scruples:
this we are forced to recognize by the audacities
of which they have been frequently convicted.
And, just as their father the devil
has from the heginning made it his object
to falsify the words of God and
twist them from their true meaning,
and subtilely to interpolate among them
his own poisonous ideas,
so he has left these successors of his
the same art as their inheritance.
Accordingly, when God had said to Adam,
"You shall eat of all the trees of the garden;" he,
when he wished to deceive Eve interpolated a single syllable,
by which he reduced within the narrowest bounds
God's liberality in permitting all the fruits to be eaten.
He said: "Yea, hath God said,
Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden?"
and thus by suggesting the complaint
that God's command was severe,
he more easily persuaded her
to transgress the precept.
The heretics have followed the example of their father
the craft of their teacher. Whenever they found in any
of the renowned writers of old days
a discussion of those things
which pertain to the glory of God
so full and faithful that every believer
could gain profit aud instruction from it,
they have not scrupled to infuse into their writings
the poisonous taint of their own false doctrines;
this they have done, either by inserting things
which the writers had not said
or by changing by interpolation what they had said,
so that their own poisonous heresy
might more easily be asserted and authorized
by passing under the name of all the church writers
of the greatest learning and renown;
they meant it to appear that well-known
and orthodox men had held as they did.
We hold the clearest proofs of this
in the case of the Greek writers
and this adulteration of books is to be found
in the case of many of the ancients;
but it will suffice to adduce the testimony of a few,
so that it may be more easily understood
what has befallen the writings of Origen.
Clement, the disciple of the Apostles,
who was bishop of the Roman church next to the Apostles,
was a martyr, wrote the work which is called
in the Greek 'Anagnwrismoj,
or in Latin, The Recognition.1
In these books he sets forth again and again
in the name of the Apostle Peter a doctrine
which appears to be truly apostolical:
yet in certain passages the heresy of Eunomius
is so brought in that you would imagine
that you were listening to an argument of Eunomius himself,
asserting that the Son of God
was created out of no existing elements.
[ED: Perhaps there were some original
non-christian writings of Clement?]
Then again that other method of falsification is introduced,
by which it is made to appear that the nature of the devil
and of other demons has not resulted
from the wickedness of their will and purpose,
but from an exceptional and separate quality of their creation,
although he in all other places
had taught that every reasonable creature
was endowed with the faculty of free will.
There are also some other things inserted into his books
which the church's creed does not admit.
I ask, then, what we are to think of these things?
Are we to believe that an apostolic man, nay,
almost an apostle (since he writes the things
which the apostles speak),
one to whom the apostle Paul
bore his testimony in the words,
"With Clement and others, my fellow labourers,
whose names are in the book of life"
was the writer of words which contradict the book of life ?
or are we to say, as we have said before,
that perverse men, in order to gain authority
for their own heresies by the use of the names of holy men,
and so procure their readier acceptance,
interpolated these things which it is impossible to believe
that the true authors either thought or wrote?
Again, the other Clement, the presbyter of Alexandria,
and the teacher of that church, in almost all his books
describes the three Persons
as having one and the same glory and eternity:
and yet we sometimes find in his books
passages in which he speaks of the Son
as a creature of God.
Is it credible that so great a man as he,
so orthodox in all points, and so learned,
either held opinions mutually contradictory,
or left in writing views concerning God
which it is an impiety, I will not say to believe,
but even to listen to?
Once more, Dionysius the Bishop of Alexandria,
was a most learned maintainer of the church's faith,
and in passages without end defended the unity
and eternity of the Trinity, so earnestly
that some persons of less insight imagine
that he held the views of Sabellius;
yet in the books which he wrote
against the heresy of Sabellius,
there are things inserted of such a character
that the Arians endeavour to shield
themselves under his authority,
and on this account the holy Bishop Athanasius
felt himself compelled to write an apology
for his work, because he was assured
that he could not have held strange opinions
or have written things
in which he contradicted himself,
but felt sure that these things
had been interpreted by ill disposed men.
This opinion we have been led to form
by the force of the facts themselves,
in the case of these very reverend men
and doctors of the church;
we have found it impossible, I say,
to believe that those reverend men
who again and again
have supported the church's belief
should in particular points have held opinions
contradictory to themselves.
As to Origen, however, in whom,
as I have said above,
are to be found, as in those others,
certain diversities of statement,
it will not be sufficient to think precisely
as we think or feel about those who enjoy
an established reputation for orthodoxy;
nor could a similar charge be met by a similar excuse,
were it not that its validity is shown by words
and writings of his own in which he makes this fact
the subject of earnest complaint.
What he had to suffer while still living in the flesh,
while still having feeling and sight,
from the corruption of his books and treatises,
or from counterfeit versions of them,
we may learn clearly from his own letter
which he wrote to certain intimate friends at Alexandria;
and by this you will see how it comes to pass
that some things which are self-contradictory
are found in his writings.
"Some of those persons who take a pleasure
in accusing their neighbours,
bring against us and our teaching
the charge of blasphemy,
though from us they have
never heard anything of the kind.
Let them take heed to themselves
how they refuse to mark that solemn injunction
which says that
`Revilers shall not inherit the kingdom of God,'
when they declare that I hold
that the father of wickedness and perdition,
and of those who are castforth from the kingdom of God,
that is the devil, is to be saved,
a thing which no man can say
even if he has taken leave of his senses
and is manifestly insane.
Yet it is no wonder, I think,
if my teaching is falsified by my adversaries,
and is corrupted and adulterated in the same manner
as the epistle of Paul the Apostle.
Certain men, as we know, compiled a false epistle
under the name of Paul, so that they
might trouble the Thessalonians
as if the day of the Lord were nigh at hand,
and thus beguile them.
It is on account of that false epistle
that he wrote these words
in the second epistle to the Thessalonians:4
`We beseech you, brethren,
by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ
and our gathering together unto him;
to the end that ye be
not quickly shaken from your mind,
nor yet be troubled, either by spirit
or by word or by letter as sent from us,
as that the day of the Lord is at hand.
Let no man beguile you in any wise.'
It is something of the same kind, I perceive,
which is happening to us also.
A certain promoter of heresy,
after a discussion which had been held between us
in the presence of many persons,
and notes of it had been taken,
procured the document from those
who had written out the notes,
and added or struck out whatever he chose,
and changed things as he thought right,
and published it abroad as if it were my work,
but pointing in triumphant scorn
at the expressions which he had himself inserted.
The brethren in Palestine, indignant at this,
sent a man to me at Athens to obtain from me
an authentic copy of the work.
Up to that time I had never even
read it over again or revised it:
it had been so completely neglected
and thrown aside that it could hardly be found.
Nevertheless, I sent it:
and,-God is witness that I am speaking the truth,-
when I met the man himself
who had adulterated the work, and took him to task for having done so,
be answered, as if he were giving me satisfaction:
"I did it because I wished to improve that treatise
and to purge away its faults."
[ED: Here Origen is interviewing his own
personally assigned heretic, and notes
the man's response.]
What kind of a purging was this
that he applied to my dissertation?
such a purging as Marcion
or his successor Apelles after him
gave to the Gospels and
to the writings of the Apostle.
They subverted the true text of Scripture;
and this man similarly first took away
the true statements which I had made,
and then inserted what was false
to furnish grounds for accusation against me.
But, though those who have dared
to do this are impious and heretical men,
yet those who give credence to
such accusations against us
shall not escape the judgment of God.
There are others also, not a few,
who have done this through a wish
to throw confusion into the churches.
Lately, a certain heretic
who had seen me at Ephesus
and had refused to meet me,
and had not opened his mouth in my presence,
but for some reason or other had avoided doing so,
afterwards composed a dissertation
according to his own fancy,
partly mine, partly his own,
and sent it to his disciples in various places:
I know that it reached those who were in Rome,
and I doubt not that it reached others also.
He was behaving in the same reckless way
at Antioch also before I came there:
and the dissertation which he brought with him
came into the hands of many of our friends.
But when I arrived, I took him to task
in the presence of many persons, and,
when he persisted, with a complete absence of shame,
in the impudent defence of his forgery,
I demanded that the book
should be brought in amongst us,
so that my mode of speech
might be recognized by the brethren,
who of course knew the points
on which I am accustomed to insist
and the method of teaching which I employ.
He did not, however, venture to bring in the book,
and his assertions were refuted by them all
and he himself was convicted of forgery,
and thus the brethren were taught a lesson
not to give ear to such accusations.
If then any one is willing to trust me at all
- I speak as in the sight of God -
let him believe what I say about the things
which are falsely inserted in my letter.
[ED: Here Origen is summarising
the case for the defence, to
be followed by the typical or else.]
But if any man refuses to believe me,
and chooses to speak evil of me,
it is not to me that he does the injury:
he will himself be arraigned
as a false witness before God,
since he is either bearing
false witness against his neighbour,
or giving credit to those who bear it."
------- END of Origen's purported letter
Such are the complaints which he made while still living,
and while he was still able to detect the corruptions
and falsifications which had been made in his books.
There is another letter of his, in which I remember
to have read a complaint of the falsifying of his writings;
but I have not a copy of it at hand,
otherwise I could add to those which I have quoted
a second testimony in favour of his good faith
and veracity direct from himself.
[ED: There was a second letter from Origen
but alas its back at the scriptorum.]
But I think that I have said enough to satisfy
those who listen to what is said,
not in the interest of strife and detraction,
but in that of a love of truth.
[ED: Essentially a licence to
corrupt the writings of others
in order to "harmonise" them to
the "Ecclesiatical Standard".]
I have shown and proved
in the case of the saintly men
of whom I have made mention,
and of whose orthodoxy is no question,
that, where the tenor of a book
is presumably right,
anything which is found in it
contrary to the faith of the church
is more properly believed
to have been inserted by heretics
than to have been written by the author:
and I cannot think it an absurd demand
that the same thing should be believed
in the case of Origen,
not only because the argument is similar
but because of the witness given by himself
in the complaints which I have
brought out from his writings:
otherwise we must believe that,
like a silly or insane person,
he has written in contradiction to himself.
[ED: or that writings have been
forged under his name that do
not correspond in philosophical
integrity to his original writings
which were still extant in Alexandria,
at the library, until its destruction.]
As to the possibility that the heretics
may have acted in the violent manner supposed,
such wickedness may easily be believe of them.
They have given a specimen of it,
which makes it credible in the present case,
in the fact that they have been unable to keep off
their impious hands even from
the sacred words of the Gospel.
Any one who has a mind to see how
they have acted in the case of the Acts
of the Apostles or their Epistles,
how they have befouled them
and gnawed them away,
how they have defiled them
in every kind of way,
sometimes adding words which
expressed their impious doctrine,
sometimes taking out the opposing truths,
will understand it most fully
if he will read the books of Tertullian
written against Marcion.
It is no great thing that they
should have corrupted the writings of Origen
when they have dared to corrupt
the sayings of God our Saviour.
It is true that some persons may
withhold their assent from what I am saying
on the ground of the difference of the heresies;
since it was one kind of heresy the partisans
of which corrupted the Gospels,
but it is another which is aimed at
in these passages which, as we assert,
have been inserted in the works of Origen.
Let those who have such doubts consider that,
as in all the saints dwells the one spirit of God (
for the Apostle says,5
"The spirits of the prophets
are subject to the prophets,"
and again,6
"We all have been made to drink
of that one spirit");
so also in all the heretics
dwells the one spirit of the devil,
who teaches them all and at all times
the same or similar wickedness.
There may, however, be some to whom
the instances we have given
have less persuasive force
because they have to do with Greek writers;
and therefore, although it is a Greek writer
for whom I am pleading, yet,
since it is the Latin tongue which is,
so to speak, entrusted with the argument,
and they are Latin people before whom
you have earnestly begged me to plead
the cause of these men,
and to show what wounds they suffer
by the calumnious renderings of their works,
it will be satisfactory to show that
things of the same kind have happened
to Latin as well as Greek writers,
and that men approved for their saintly character
have had a storm of calumny raised against them
by the falsification of their works.
I will recount things of still recent memory,
so that nothing may be lacking
to the manifest credibility of my contention,
and its truth may lie open for all to see.
[ED: What else?]
Hilary Bishop of Pictavium
was a believer in the Catholic doctrine,
and wrote a very complete work of instruction
with the view of bringing back from their error
those who had subscribed the faithless creed of Ariminum.
This book fell into the hands
of his adversaries and ill wishers,
whether, as some said,
by bribing his secretary,
or by no matter what other cause.
He knew nothing of this:
but the book was so falsified by them,
the saintly man being all the while
entirely unconscious of it, that,
when his enemies began to accuse him
of heresy in the episcopal assembly,
as holding what they knew
they had corruptly inserted in his manuscript,
he himself demanded the production of his book
as evidence of his faith.
It was brought from his house,
and was found to be full of matter
which he repudiated: but it caused him
to be excommunicated and to be excluded
from the meeting of the synod.
In this case, however, though the crime
was one of unexampled wickedness,
the man who was the victim of it was alive,
and present in the flesh;
and the hostile faction could be convicted
and brought to punishment,
when their tricks became known
and their machinations were exposed.
A remedy was applied through statements,
explanations, and similar things:
for living men can take action
on their own behalf,
the dead can refute no accusations
under which they labour.
Take another case.
The whole collection of the letters
of the martyr Cyprian
is usually found in a single manuscript.
Into this collection certain heretics
who held a blasphemous doctrine about the Holy Spirit
inserted a treatise of Tertullian on the Trinity,
which was faultily expressed
though he is himself
an upholder of our faith:
and from the copies thus made
they wrote out a number of others;
these they distributed through the whole
of the vast city of Constantinople
at a very low price:
men were attracted by this cheapness
and readily bought up the documents
full of hidden snares of which they knew nothing;
and thus the heretics found means
of gaining credit for their impious doctrines
through the authority of a great name.
It happened, however, that,
shortly after the publication,
there were found there some
of our catholic brothers
who were able to expose
this wicked fabrication,
and recalled as many
as they could reach
from the entanglements of error.
In this they partly succeeded.
But there were a great many in those parts
who remained convinced that the saintly
martyr Cyprian held the belief
which had been erroneously
expressed by Tertullian.
I will add one other instance
of the falsification of a document.
It is one of recent memory,
though it is an example
of the primeval subtlety,
and it surpasses all the stories of the ancients.
Bishop Damasus, at the time
when a consultation was held in the matter
of the reconciling of the followers
of Apollinarius to the church,
desired to have a document
setting forth the faith of the church,
which should be subscribed by those
who wished to be reconciled.
The compiling of this document
he entrusted to a certain friend of his,
a presbyter and a highly accomplished man,
who usually acted for him
in matters of this kind.
When he came to compose the document,
he found it necessary, in speaking
of the Incarnation of our Lord,
to apply to him the expression
"Homo Dominicus."
The Apollinarists took offence
at this expression, and began
to impugn it as a novelty.
The writer of the document thereupon
undertook to defend himself, and to confute the objectors
by the authority of ancient Catholic writers;
and he happened to show to one
of those who complained of the novelty
of the expression a book
of the bishop Athanasius
in which the word
which was under discussion occurred.
The man to whom this evidence was offered
appeared to be convinced, and asked
that the manuscript should be lent to him
so that he might convince the rest
who from their ignorance were
still maintaining their objections.
When he had got the manuscript into his hands
he devised a perfectly new method of falsification.
He first erased the passage
in which the expression occurred,
and then wrote in again
the same words which he had erased.
He returned the paper,
and it was accepted without question.
The controversy about this expression again arose;
the manuscript was brought forward:
the expression in question was found in it,
but in a position where there had been an erasure:
and the man who had brought forward
such a manuscript lost all authority,
since the erasure seemed to be
the proof of malpractice and falsification..
However, in this case as in one
which I mentioned before,
it was a living man who was
thus treated by a living man,
and he at once did all in his power
to lay bare the iniquitous fraud
which had been committed,
and to remove the stain of
this nefarious act from the man
who was innocent and had
done no evil of the kind,
and to attach it to the
real author of the deed,
so that it should completely
overwhelm him with infamy.
Since, then, Origen in his letter
complains with his own voice
that he has suffered such things
at the hands of the heretics
who wished him ill, and similar things
have happened in the case
of many other orthodox men
among both the dead and the living,
and since in the cases adduced,
men's writings are proved
to have been tampered with in a similar way:
what determined obstinacy is this,
which refuses to admit the same excuse
when the case is the same, and,
when the circumstances are parallel,
assigns to one party
the allowance due to respect,
but to another infamy
due to a criminal.
The truth must be told,
and must not lie hid at this point;
for it is impossible for any man
really to judge so unjustly
as to form different opinions
on cases which are similar.
The fact is that the prompters
of Origen's accusers
are men who make long
controversial discourses in the churches,
and even write books the whole matter
of which is borrowed from him,
and who wish to deter men
of simple mind from reading him,
for fear that their plagiarisms
should become widely known, though,
indeed, their appropriations would be
no reproach to them if they
were not ungrateful to their master.
For instance, one of these men,
who thinks that a necessity is laid upon him,
like that of preaching the Gospel,
to speak evil of Origen among all nations and tongues,
declared in a vast assembly of Christian hearers
that he had read six thousand of his works.
Surely, if his object in reading these were,
as he is in the habit of asserting,
only to acquaint himself with Origen's faults,
ten or twenty or at most thirty of these works
would have sufficed for the purpose.
But to read six thousand books is
no longer wishing to know the man,
but giving up almost one's whole life
to his teaching and researches.
On what ground then can his words
be worthy of credit when he blames men
who have only read quite a few of these books
while their rule of faith is kept sacred
and their piety unimpaired.
What has been said may suffice to show
what opinion we ought to form
of the books of Origen.
I think that every one who has at heart
the interests of truth,
not of controversy,
may easily assent to the
well-proved statements I have made.
But if any man perseveres in his contentiousness,
we have no such custom.
It is a settled custom among us,
when we read him, to hold fast
that which is good, according to
the apostolic in junction.
If we find in these books anything
discrepant to the Catholic faith,
we suspect that it has been
inserted by the heretics,
and consider it as alien
from his opinion
as it is from our faith.
[ED: Here is a summary of the admission.
The admission is a form of censorship,
guised as a harmonisation of the faith.
The works of Origen existed in which he
was not your usual "christian author".
These books showed Origen a "pagan", and
these books were dangerous to the integrity
of the recently invented christian church.
And thus Rufinus "harmonises" the books of
Origen, whilst also translating them from
the Greek to the Latin.]
If, however, this is a mistake of ours,
we run, as I think, no danger from such an error;
for we ourselves, through God's help, continue unharmed
by avoiding what we hold in suspicion and condemn:
and further we shall not be accounted accusers
of our brethren before God
(you will remember that the accusing of the brethren
is the special work of the devil,
and that he received the name of devil
from his being a slanderer).
Moreover, we thus escape the sentence
pronounced on evil speakers,
which separates those who are such
from the kingdom of God.
---END of RUFINUS' EPILOGUE
Thus, we regard the above as a type of confession and/or evidence related to the actions of properly authorised scribes in the post-Nicaean epoch, trying to harmonise the fraudulently presented patristic literature (eg: Josephus, ..., Origen, Pamphilus, etc) with the originally written words of the authors of antiquity. The literature was "corrected" in order to conform with the fact that Origen and Pamphilus had to be made conversant with the new and strange christian religion of the supreme imperial mafia thug Constantine. Support for this theory of (Julian's) fiction will continue to identify salient features and parameters of the literature record on both sides of the Nicaean boundary. Analysis of core samples of the literature on both sides of the boundary will result in interesting evidence related to the chaotic implementation of a new and strange religion with effect from Nicaea, and no earlier.
Wheless on Origen |
|---|
ORIGEN: born in Alexandria, Egypt, about, 165; a wild
fanatic, he made himself "a eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven's
sake"; died at Tyre or Caesarea about 254; was the first of the'
Fathers said to be born of Christian parents; he was a pupil and
protege of Clement of Alexandria. Origen was the greatest
theologian and biblical scholar of the Church up to his time; he
was the author of the famous Hexapla, or comparative edition of the
Bible in Hebrew, with Greek transliteration and the Greek texts of
the Septuagint and other versions. in six parallel columns. Origen
was badly tainted with the Arian heresy which denied the divinity
of Jesus Christ, and was deposed from the priesthood, but his
deposition was not generally recognized by all the Churches, --
which again proves that they were not then subject to Rome. For
sheer credulity and nonsense Father Origen was the peer of any of
the Pagan-born Patriarchs of "the new Paganism called,
Christianity," as is evidenced by the following extracts from his
chief works.
Accepting as living realities the heathen gods and their
miracles, he argues that the Hebrews must have had genuine miracles
because the heathens had many from their gods, which were, however,
only devils; that the Hebrews viewed. "with contempt all those who
were considered as gods by the heathen" as not being gods, but
demons, 'For all the gods of the nations are demons' (Ps, xcvi, 5).
... In the next place, miracles were performed in all countries, or
at least in many of them, as Celsus himself admits, instancing the
case, of AEsculapius, who conferred benefits on many, and who
foretold future events to entire cities," -- citing instances. If
there had been no miracles among the Hebrews "they would
immediately have gone over to the worship of those demons which
gave oracles and performed cures." (Contra Celsum, III, ch. ii-iii;
ANF. iv, 466.) The heathen oracles were indeed inspired and true,
but were due to a loathsome form of demoniac inspiration, which he
thus -- (with my own polite omissions) -- describes:
"Let it be granted that the responses delivered by the
Pythian and other oracles were not the utterances of false men
who pretended to a divine inspiration; but let us see if,
after all, that they may be traced to wicked demons, -- to
spirits which are at enmity with the human race. ... It is
said of the Pythian priestess, that when she sat down at the
mouth of the Castalian cave, the prophetic spirit of Apollo
entered her private parts; and when she was filled with it,
she gave utterance to responses which are regarded with awe as
divine truths. Judge by this whether that spirit does not show
its profane and impure nature." (Contra Cetsum, VII, iii; ANF.
iv, 611-612). ... "It is not, then, because Christians cast
insults upon demons that they incur their revenge, but because
they drive them away out of the images, and from the bodies
and souls of men." (Ib. c. xliii, p. 655.)
Father Origen clung to the pagan superstition that comets and
new stars portend and herald great world-events, and urges that
this undoubted fact gives credibility to the fabled Star of
Bethlehem: "It has been observed that, on the occurrence of great
events, and of mighty changes in terrestrial things, such stars are
wont to appear, indicating either the removal of dynasties or the
breaking out of wars, or the happening of such circumstances as may
cause commotions upon the earth" -- why not then the Star of
Bethlehem? (Contra Celsum, I, lix; ANP. iv, 422.) All the stars and
heavenly bodies are living, rational beings, having souls, as he
curiously proves by Job and Isaiah, as well as upon clerical
reason:
"Let us see what reason itself can discover respecting sun,
moon, and stars. ... To arrive at a clearer understanding on these
matters, we ought first to inquire whether it is allowable to
suppose that they are living and rational beings; then, whether
their souls came into existence at the same time with their bodies,
or seem to be anterior to them; and also whether, after the end of
the world, we are to understand that they are to be released from
their bodies; and whether, as we cease to live, so they also will
cease from illuminating the world. ... We think, then, that they
may be designated as living beings, for this reason, that they are
said to receive commandments from God, which is ordinarily the case
only with rational beings: 'I have given commandments to all the
stars' (Isa, xiv, 12), says the Lord." (De Principiis, I, vii; ANF.
iv, 263.)
-- extracted from Joseph Wheless,