Journal of Early Christian Studies 13:3, 277–314 © 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press
Porphyry on Christians and
Others: “Barbarian Wisdom,”
Identity Politics, and
Anti-Christian Polemics on the
Eve of the Great Persecution*
JEREMY M. SCHOTT
This paper argues that we can better appreciate the motivations behind
Porphyry of Tyre’s anti-Christian polemics if they are placed in the context of
his larger philosophical project. Porphyry’s investigations of “foreign” religions
and philosophies were based on asymmetrical distinctions between Greeks and
barbarians that paralleled, and in many cases dovetailed with, the division of
the Roman Empire into metropolitan center and provincial periphery.
Christian intellectuals, however, imitated Porphyry’s project in ways that
disrupted these distinctions. Porphyry’s polemics were motivated by a need to
contain the threat that this disruption posed to the social and material
privilege he enjoyed as a Greek philosopher in the Roman Empire. By situating
Porphyry’s polemics in the contexts of imperial power and subjugation, this
paper challenges the divisions between “philosophical” and “political” fields
of knowledge and action that underlie many discussions of political and
religious change in late antiquity.
At the turn of the fourth century, the philosopher Porphyry was nearing
the end of his long career.1 Besides authoring numerous works on ethics,
* Earlier versions of portions of this article were presented at the Fourteenth
International Conference on Patristic Studies, 2003, and at the Society for Late
Antiquity’s Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity VI conference, 2005.
1. The date of Porphyry’s birth and the basic outline of his career can be
reconstructed from the few autobiographical comments he makes in the Vita Plotini
(text in Plotini Opera, ed. P. Henry and H. R. Schwyzer [Oxford: Clarendon, 1964];
trans. in Mark Edwards, Neoplatonic Saints: The Lives of Plotinus and Proclus by
278 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
physics, music, rhetoric, and religion,2 he was responsible for the standard
edition of Plotinus’ Enneads and would exert an influence on both
pagan and Christian philosophers for centuries to come. Despite his age
(he was in his late sixties at the opening of the new century), Porphyry
married Marcella, a widowed Roman matron with several children.3
After only a few months of marriage, however, Porphyry undertook a
major journey “because the needs of the Greeks called, and the gods
confirmed their appeal.”4 Porphyry’s itinerary is unknown, but some
scholars have proffered strong arguments that he traveled to Nicomedia,
where during the winter of 302–303 c.e. Diocletian and his advisors were
debating the “Christian problem.”5 They argue that Porphryry’s anti-
Christian polemics may have had a direct impact on the policies that
would result in the outbreak of the Great Persecution on February 23,
303.6 Although some scholars do not agree in associating Porphyry’s
polemics directly with Diocletian’s policies, there is a growing consensus
in placing his polemics in the more general context of growing anti-
Christian sentiment at the turn of the fourth century. A repressive streak
was certainly a component of Porphyry’s anti-Christian polemics: “To
what punishments,” he wrote, “may fugitives from ancestral customs,
who have become zealots for the foreign mythologies of the Jews which
Their Students [Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000]). On the chronology of
Porphyry’s life, see Edwards, “Appendix,” in Neoplatonic Saints, 117–19.
2. Joseph Bidez, Vie de Porphyrye. Le philosophe néoplatonicien (Ghent, 1913;
repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964), 65*–73*, lists at least seventy-seven works; A.
Smith, ed., Porphyrii Philosophi Fragmenta (Stutgart: Teubner, 1993), L–LIII, an
equally impressive sixty-nine.
3. Ad Marc. 1 (Porphyrii Philosophi Platonici Opuscula Selecta, ed. Augustus
Nauck [Leipzig: Teubner, 1886], 273–74).
4. Ad Marc. 4 (Nauck, 275).
5. See most recently Pier Franco Beatrice, “Antistes Philosophiae. Ein Christenfeindlicher
Propagandist am Hofe Diokletians nach dem Zeugnis des Laktanz,” Aug
33 (1993): 1–47; and Elizabeth Digeser, The Making of a Christian Empire:
Lactantius and Rome (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); and see the in-depth
discussion below.
6. De Mort. 12.1 (CSEL 27:186); the first edict was promulgated on the day of the
Terminalia, quae sunt a.d. septimum Kalendas Martias. The history of the Great
Persecution must be reconstructed from the highly biased accounts of Christian
writers, especially Lactantius and Eusebius. Modern literature on the subject is vast,
but see Stephen Williams, Diocletian and the Roman Recovery (London: Batsford
Ltd., 1985), esp. ch. 14 (“The Great Persecution”); T. D. Barnes, Constantine and
Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 18–24; and K. H.
Schwarte, “Diokletians Christengesetz,” in E fontibus haurire: Beiträge zur römischen
Geschichte und zu ihren Hilfswissenschaften, ed. R. Günther and S. Rebenich
(Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1994), 203–40.
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 279
are slandered by all, not be subjected?”7 Once the philological, textual,
and historical details of Porphyry’s relationship with the Great Persecution
have been worked out, however, a more substantive question remains:
why was Porphyry so antipathetic to Christianity, and why would
his distaste for Christians have driven him and the pro-persecution party
in Diocletian’s court to become odd allies against the Christians?
Porphyry understood himself as heir to the “pure” tradition of Plato
and Pythagoras, as bequeathed to him by his teacher Plotinus. Following
the example of Plotinus’ Middle Platonic predecessors such as Plutarch
and Numenius, however, Porphyry also researched and wrote about Egyptian,
Persian, Indian, Phoenician, and Jewish religious and philosophical
traditions.8 Although not stated explicitly in his extant writings, implicit
assumptions about the relationship between cultural universality and particularity
undergirded Porphyry’s methodology. Porphyry’s interest in “barbarian
wisdom” has led to his being labeled “eclectic” or even “orientalizing.”
9 For all of his interest in other cultures and traditions, though,
Porphyry staunchly identified himself as Greek. If he examined other
cultures and traditions, it was only in so far as he could mine them for
contributions to his own philosophical projects. Thanks to this encyclopedic
knowledge, Porphyry believed he was able to distill a truly ecumenical
philosophy that transcended cultural and ethnic particularity. His
philosophy was universal, and therefore authentic.
Such radical assertions of universality had a particular tenor in the
context of Roman imperialism. In the Roman world, difference was
polarized and hierarchical, with Greco-Roman cultural formations privileged
as universally authentic and other provincial (or “barbaric”) literatures,
religions, and philosophies considered ethnically specific, contextually
bound by geography and history in a way that Greco-Roman culture
was not. Porphyry’s writings on religion and philosophy deploy an asymmetrical
distinction between Greek and barbarian that parallels, and
7. Porphyry, Contra Christianos fr. 1 (text in Porphyrius, ‘Gegen Die Christen,’ 15
Bücher. Zeugnisse, Fragmente und Referate, ed. Adolph von Harnack, Abhandlungen
der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische
Klasse 1 [Berlin: Verlag der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1916], 45). This and all other unattributed translations are my own.
8. On Porphyry’s relationship with Middle Platonism, see Heinrich Dörrie, “Die
Schultradition im Mittelplatonismus und Porphyrios,” in Porphyre, Entretiens sur
l’antiquité classique 12 (Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1966), 1–32; J.-H. Waszink,
“Porphyrios und Numenios,” in ibid., 35–83; and Marco Zambon, Porphyre et le
moyen-platonisme (Paris: J. Vrin, 2002).
9. E.g., Mark Edwards, “Introduction,” in Neoplatonic Saints, xxx–xxxi.
280 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
dovetails with, the division of the Roman Empire into imperial center and
provincial periphery.
But the difference between center and periphery was not always as
secure as it appeared.10 One of the most potent threats to imperial hegemony
are “mimic men”—provincial subjects who successfully imitate the
habits, literature, religion, language, or other discourses of their imperial
masters.11 Straddling the supposedly fixed gulf between ruler and ruled,
mimic men are “almost totally the same, but not quite,” and “almost
totally different, but not quite,” nearly identical to those who occupy the
metropolitan center, yet threateningly foreign at the same time.12 Christians
disrupted the polarized Greek/barbarian distinction by mimicking
Greco-Roman philosophers like Porphyry. Throughout the centuries leading
up to Porphyry’s clash with Christianity, Christians echoed Paul’s
assertion that “there is no longer Jew nor Greek.”13 Eusebius of Caesarea
summarized Porphyry’s quandary at encountering such liminal figures:
“In the first place, one might well raise the aporia—who are we [i.e., the
Christians]? . . . [are] we Greeks or Barbarians, or what could there
possibly be in between these?”14 Christians originated in the provinces
(Palestine) and centered their religion on a set of admittedly barbarian
(Jewish) texts. Yet like Porphyry, Christians claimed that their religion
and philosophy was universal and transcended cultural particularity. Porphyry’s
conflict with the Christians, then, was one between remarkably
similar yet competing attempts to negotiate cultural and ethnic difference
within the context of Roman imperialism.15 Christians imitated Greco-
10. Homi Bhabha, “The Other Question: Stereotype, Discrimination and the
Discourse of Colonialism,” in idem, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge,
1994), 67, notes that the fixity and immutability of boundaries between rulers and
ruled in imperial regimes in fact “enables a transgression of these limits from the
space of that otherness.”
11. “The menace of mimicry is its double vision which in disclosing the
ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts its authority” (Homi Bhabha, “Of
Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” in idem, Location of
Culture, 88).
12. Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man,” 91.
13. Gal 3.28.
14. Porphyry, Contra Christianos fr. 1 (Harnack, 45) (= Eusebius PE 1.2.1).
15. I have opted for the terms “ethnicity” and “culture,” and their derivatives, to
translate the fluid and overlapping vocabularies Porphyry deploys to indicate group
identity. These terms have particular meanings in the twenty-first century and come to
us fraught with their associations with European imperialism and American identity
politics. Rather than introducing a less contentious, and necessarily more artificial,
terminology, I follow Patrick Geary’s suggestion that it is more important to consider
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 281
Roman philosophers so well, in fact, that they threatened to turn Porphyry’s
carefully polarized world upside down. When the tenuous boundaries
between center and periphery are threatened by this sort of mimicry,
stereotypical distinctions between civilized and savage, metropolis and
province, Greek and barbarian must be reasserted.16 While Porphyry
certainly had many philosophical, theological, and philological bones to
pick with the Christians, I will argue that his polemics were also motivated
by a need to reestablish the difference between Greek and barbarian
and thus contain the threat that Christians posed to the social and material
privilege he enjoyed as a Greek philosopher in the Roman Empire.
the specific historical uses of this terminology in specific historical contexts, ancient,
medieval, and modern (The Myth of Nations. The Medieval Origins of Europe
[Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002], 41–42). To describe “peoplehood”
based on shared geography, language, and “descent from a putative ancestor,”
Porphyry uses the terms ¶ynow and g°now, both of which have a long history in Greek
literature, going back at least to Herodotus (see esp. Jonathan Hall, Ethnic Identity in
Greek Antiquity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997]). At the same time,
Porphyry uses a set of terms including paide.a and polite.a to describe collectivities
based on shared cultural forms, such as a common constitution (i.e., the citizens of
Athens or Rome), religion, or literature. In general, “ethnic” identity differs from
“cultural” identity in that the former is held to be indelible, in contrast to the latter,
which is not held to be determined entirely by geography or biology and is to some
extent elective. Thus, one may become “acculturated”; e.g., Timothy Whitmarsh,
“‘Greece is the World’: Exile and Identity in the Second Sophistic,” in Being Greek
under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic, and the Development of
Empire, ed. Simon Goldhill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 299–
303, points to Favorinus’ ascription of Greekness to himself gained through paide.a.
The vocabulary of “ethnicity” and “culture,” however, is never rigidly separated, and
the connotation of various ancient terms is better determined based on context than
on fixed lexicographical rules. My approach here has benefited from the recent work
of Denise Kimber Buell, “Race and Universalism in Early Christianity,” JECS 10
(2002): 432–33, who argues that “far more important than the presence of specific
vocabulary are the maneuvers performed . . . by rhetoric about peoplehood.” As I will
demonstrate in the third section of this article, it is the complex interplay of these
categories, their simultaneous malleability and apparent solidity, that makes them
potent polemical tools for Porphyry.
16. When the secure, fixed identities posited by stereotype are threatened, these
stereotypes are asserted all the more vehemently: “. . . the same old stories of the
Negro’s animality, the Coolie’s inscrutability or the stupidity of the Irish must be told
(compulsively) again and afresh, and are differently gratifying and terrifying each
time” (Bhabha, “Other Question,” 77).
282 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
I. AGAINST THE CHRISTIANS: TEXTUAL AND
HISTORICAL QUESTIONS
Like so many of Porphyry’s treatises, Against the Christians survives only
in fragments.17 In his edition, Harnack ascribed ninety-seven fragments to
Against the Christians; most are found in the writings of the late fourthcentury
apologist Macarius Magnes, Jerome, and Eusebius. A few years
before Harnack’s edition, Joseph Bidez dated Against the Christians to ca.
270 c.e., based on Eusebius’ testimony that “Porphyry, who settled in
Sicily in our time, issued treatises against us, attempting in them to
slander the sacred scriptures,” along with Porphyry’s own testimony that
he traveled to Sicily to recover from a bout of depression ca. 270 c.e.18
Noting Porphyry’s use of Callinicus Sutorius’ History of Alexandria (a
text known to have been written in the early 270’s), Alan Cameron has
argued for a terminus post quem of 271–275.19 T. D. Barnes, however,
pushes for a much later date, asserting that scholars have misread Eusebius’
remarks about the composition of Against the Christians. According to
Barnes, Eusebius’ phrase NO kayE ≤mcw §n sikel.& katastaw PorfEriow
does not refer to the time or place of composition, but rather is a descriptive
phrase intended to insult Porphyry for living in an “intellectual backwater.”
20 Barnes goes further, identifying Harnack’s Fragment 1, in which
Porphyry calls down “just punishments” on apostates from ancestral
traditions, as a summary of Porphyry’s argument. This intolerant tone, in
Barnes’s estimation, makes ca. 300 c.e., with anti-Christian sentiment
growing and the Great Persecution looming, a likely date of composition.21
17. That so little is left of Against the Christians may be due to the issuance of two
imperial edicts ordering Porphyry’s text destroyed. Constantine issued the first edict at
the Council of Nicea (Gelasius HE 2.36, Socrates HE 1.9.30). The second edict was
issued over a century later by the emperors Theodosius II and Valentinian III (Cod.
Just. 1.1.3).
18. Bidez, Porphyrye, 67. Eusebius HE 6.19.2 (GCS 6:558); Porphyry went to
Sicily on Plotinus’ advice, Vita Plotini 11 (Henry and Schwyzer, 15–16).
19. This history was dedicated to the Palmyrine queen Zenobia, who conquered
Egypt as part of her short-lived empire in the early 270’s c.e. Extrapolating from the
amount of time it would likely have taken Callinicus to research and compose a work
of history and Porphyry to acquire this text and subsequently write a fifteen-book
polemic, Cameron, “The Date of Porphyry’s kata Xristian≪n,” Classical Quarterly
17:2 (1967): 382–84, argues that Against the Christians dates, at the earliest, to late
271 and may have been composed as late as 275 c.e.
20. Barnes, “Scholarship or Propaganda? Porphyry Against the Christians and Its
Historical Setting,” Bulletin of the Institute for Classical Studies 37 (1994): 61, argues
that Eusebius uses the participle with the definite article descriptively, not temporally.
21. Barnes, “Scholarship or Propaganda,” 65.
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 283
Harnack argued that Against the Christians consisted of fifteen books,
but the exact structure of the text is impossible to discern from the extant
fragments.22 The title Against the Christians is itself a construct; Eusebius
introduces quotations from the work with descriptive phrases such as
suggrammata kayE ≤m≪n. . . (ktl.) and ı kayE ≤mcw tOn kayE ≤m≪n
pepoihm°now suskeuOn §n dA t∞w prUw ≤mcw Ipoy°sevw . . . (ktl.).23 The title
Against the Christians will be used in this article, however, for the sake of
convenience. Aside from the discovery of several “new” fragments,
Harnack’s edition remained largely unchallenged for over half a century.
In the early nineteen-seventies, however, T. D. Barnes called for a more
rigorous approach to the fragments, arguing for the rejection of the fifty
fragments taken from the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes.24 In his recent
critical edition of Macarius, however, Richard Goulet argues convincingly
for the authenticity of the fragments based on parallel vocabulary
and similarity of style and argument.25 Harnack’s division of the extant
fragments into five categories is still a fairly accurate outline of the treatise:
(1) criticism of the character and the reliability of the evangelists and
apostles, (2) criticism of the Old Testament (including a long fragment on
the historicity of the book of Daniel), (3) mockery of Jesus as a crucified
criminal, (4) dogmatic criticisms, and finally (5) denigration of the contemporary
church.26
In addition to the textual and historical criticism of Against the Christians,
Porphyry also attacked Christianity in his Philosophy from Oracles.27
22. Harnack’s assumption was based on the Suda, which lists the title and number
of books as Kata Xristian≪n lOgouw i° (Harnack testimonia III); however, the extant
fragments do not provide enough information to corroborate this assertion.
23. HE 6.19.2 (GCS n.f. 6:558); PE 1.9.20 (GCS 43:39).
24. T. D. Barnes, “Porphyry Against the Christians: Date and the Attribution of
Fragments,” JTS 24:2 (1973): 424–42; reiterated by Anthony Meredith, “Porphyry
and Julian Against the Christians,” ANRW II.23.2 (1980): 1127–28.
25. Richard Goulet, Macarios de Magnésie: Le Monogénès (Paris: J. Vrin, 2003).
26. Harnack, Porphyrius ‘Gegen die Christen’, 43.
27. First pointed out by Robert Wilken, “Pagan Criticism of Christianity: Greek
Religion and Christian Faith,” in Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual
Tradition, ed. W. Schoedel and R. Wilken, Théologie historique 53 (Paris:
Éditions Beauchesne, 1979); and reiterated in Wilken, The Christians as the Romans
Saw Them, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 148–56. Variations on
Wilken’s thesis have been argued more recently by Pier Franco Beatrice, “Le Traité de
Porphyre contre les chrétiens: L’État de la question,” Kernos 4 (1991): 119–38, and
idem “Towards a New Edition of Porphyry’s Fragments Against the Christians,” in
Sof.hw maiAtorew: Chercheurs de sagesse. Hommage a Jean Pépin, ed. M. Goulet-
Cazé, G. Madec, and D. O’Brien (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1992), 347–55; and
by Digeser, Christian Empire, 93–102.
284 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
This work was esoteric; Porphyry warns his readers “not to make these
things public, or cast them before the uninitiated.”28 The extant fragments
suggest a compilation of oracles glossed by Porphyry’s own exegeses
and commentary in which he presented an ecumenical philosophy, or
as Porphyry puts it: “Our present collection will contain a record of many
philosophical doctrines according as the gods through oracles declared
the truth to be.”29 The extant fragments come from three books, though
the total number of books remains disputed.30 Of the known books, the
first concerned the worship of the gods, the second dealt with daimones,
and the third with heroes and holy men.31 In addition to discussing the
nature of these various divine entities, Porphyry also commented on the
forms of cult each should receive.32 Porphyry’s anti-Christian polemics
come in the third book, as part of his discussion of heroes and holy men.
Augustine preserves three of these oracles, two from Apollo and one from
Hecate. Porphyry quotes and glosses these oracles to argue two points:
(1) the Jews, like all peoples of good repute, worship the highest god,
while Christians mistakenly worship a crucified man; and (2) Jesus is a
wise, but entirely human, sage. We will see shortly that this oblique attack
in Philosophy from Oracles was at least as damaging as the philological
and historical arguments of Against the Christians.
Because he could discern no clear Plotinian influence in the text and
thought that it expressed a “superstitious” concern for traditional religion,
Bidez surmised that Philosophy from Oracles must have been composed
before Porphyry joined Plotinus’ school.33 Bidez’s notion of developmental
periods continues to exert an influence on contemporary
scholarship, but this method of dating Porphyry’s works has been challenged.
Andrew Smith, in particular, points to the inappropriateness of
28. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 304F, lines 4–6 (in Smith, Porphyrii Philosophi Fragmenta,
353) (= PE 4.7.2).
29. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 303F, lines 30–34 (Smith, 353) (= PE 4.7.2).
30. Pier Franco Beatrice notes that two early studies publish a fragment from a
purported tenth book of the Philosophy from Oracles (Augustine Steuchus, De
perenni philosophia III, 14 [Lugdunum, 1540], 155–57; and Angelo Mai, Philonis
Iudaei, Porphyrii philosophi, Eusebii Pamphili opera inedita [Milan, 1816], 59–64;
both cited in Beatrice, “Towards a New Edition,” 351 nn. 28, 29). See also A. E.
Chaignet, “La Philosophie des Oracles,” RHR 41 (1900): 337; H. Kellner, “Der
Neuplatoniker Porphyrius und sein Verhältnis zum Christentum,” TQ 47 (1865): 86–
87; and the discussion in Beatrice, “Towards a New Edition,” 351–52.
31. Gustavus Wolff, Porphyrii De Philosophia ex Oraculis Haurienda (Berlin,
1856; repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1962), 42–43.
32. Wilken, Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 150–51.
33. Bidez, Porphyre, 25–26, 28.
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 285
importing contemporary distinctions between “superstition” and “authentic
philosophy” into ancient contexts.34 In general, more recent scholarship
focuses on two related issues: dating the text more securely and
understanding its relationship to other Porphyrian compositions. By pointing
out important similarities in theme and content, John O’Meara has
argued for identifying the fragments of Porphyry’s On the Return of the
Soul, preserved only by Augustine, with the Philosophy from Oracles.35
Other reshufflings of Porphyry’s works have also been proposed. For
example, Pier Franco Beatrice has proposed that all of the fragments of
Against the Christians and Philosophy from Oracles must come from the
same work.36 More recently, Elizabeth Digeser has given a weaker version
of Beatrice’s argument, asserting that certain fragments ascribed to Against
the Christians should be counted among the fragments of Philosophy
from Oracles.37 Nevertheless, it does not seem likely that Against the
Christians and On Philosophy from Oracles are one and the same. Although
Beatrice and Digeser are correct in arguing that the exact structure
of each work is unknown, it is important to note that Porphyry’s
anti-Christian fragments do fall into two distinct categories: those based
on polemical interpretations of oracles and those focused on critiques of
Christian texts and exegetical practices. The former belong to the Philosophy
from Oracles and the latter to the work known as Against the
Christians.
The 270’s c.e. may be a secure terminus post quem for Against the
Christians, but when, and more importantly why, did Porphyry compose
his polemics? While Barnes argues for a loose connection with rising anti-
Christian sentiment ca. 300, other scholars have sought for a more specific
context. Considerable debate has focused around a passage in Lactantius’
Divine Institutes in which the Christian apologist reports hearing two
anti-Christian polemicists speak at Diocletian’s court immediately before
the outbreak of the persecution.38 One of these polemicists was Sossianus
34. The methodologies of the late twentieth century, he notes, show that “theurgy
and critical philosophy could exist side by side” (Andrew Smith, “Porphyrian Studies
since 1913,” ANRW II.36.2 [1987]: 731).
35. John O’Meara, Porphyry’s On Philosophy from Oracles in Augustine (Paris:
Études Augustiniennes, 1959); and idem, “Porphyry’s Philosophy from Oracles in
Eusebius’ Preparation for the Gospel and Augustine’s Dialogues of Cassiciacum,”
RecAug 6 (1969): 103–39.
36. Beatrice, “Traité de Porphyre,” 119–38; and idem, “Towards a New Edition,”
355.
37. Digeser, Christian Empire, 101.
38. Lactantius Inst. Div. 5.2.2 (CSEL 19:403).
286 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
Hierocles, governor of Bithynia and author of The Lover of Truth, which
unfavorably compared Jesus with the pagan holy man Apollonius of
Tyana.39 Lactantius does not identify the other polemicist, but several
pieces of evidence suggest that he may have been Porphyry. First, Lactantius
reports that the speaker claimed to be a “priest of philosophy.”40 These
are precisely the terms Porphyry himself uses to describe a true philosopher
in his Letter to Marcella, a document that dates, perhaps not coincidentally,
to the turn of the fourth century.41 Second, the gist of the unnamed
speaker’s attack on Christianity, at least as reported by Lactantius,
is remarkably similar to the plan of Porphyry’s polemics.42 Finally, in the
Letter to Marcella Porphyry himself reports that the reason for his absence
from Rome and from his wife is because “the needs of the Greeks
called and the gods confirmed their appeal.”43 A trip to Diocletian’s conferences
in Nicomedia—an affair explicitly concerned with the preservation
of traditional religion and the worship of the gods—would explain
this otherwise enigmatic passage.44
Two pieces of evidence mitigate against identifying Porphyry as Lactantius’
unnamed philosopher. First, Lactantius states that this polemicist
“vomited forth three books against the Christian religion and name.”45
Against the Christians, however, is known to have been a fifteen-book
treatise. Second, some assert that the depraved and licentious lifestyle
Lactantius ascribes to the unnamed philosopher simply cannot square
with Porphyry, who was known for his abstemious lifestyle.46 The second
of these arguments is easier to discredit than the first. Lactantius’ description
is clearly polemical, in the same way that Porphyry’s own descriptions
of Christians are polemical. It would be more surprising if Lactantius
39. Lactantius describes Hierocles’ polemics in Inst. Div. 5.2.12–17 (CSEL
19:405–6) and mentions him by name in De Mort. 16.4 (CSEL 27:189).
40. Inst. Div. 5.2.3 (CSEL 19:403–4): antistitem se philosophiae profitebatur.
41. Ad Marc. 16 (Nauck, 285): mOnow oOn flereAw ı sofOw. Pier Franco Beatrice
offers a detailed argument in “Antistes Philosophiae,” 31–47.
42. Compare Lactantius Inst. Div. 5.2.5–6 (CSEL 19:404) and Contra Christianos
fr. 1 (Harnack, 45) (= Eusebius PE 1.2.1–4): both Lactantius’ unnamed critic and
Porphyry accuse the Christians of “wandering” (errare/error; planh) from the truth
and encourage the use of coercion to encourage a return to ancestral traditions.
43. Ad Marc. 4 (Nauck, 275).
44. Henry Chadwick, Sentences of Sextus, Texts and Studies 5 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1959), 66; reiterated by Digeser, Christian Empire, 91–
102.
45. Inst. Div. 5.2.4 (CSEL 19:404).
46. First argued by Barnes, “Porphyry: Date and Attribution,” 438–39; and often
reiterated, most recently by Anthony Bowen and Peter Garnsey, “Introduction,” in
Lactantius: Divine Institutes (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), 2.
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 287
failed to cast aspersions on the moral fitness of his opponent. As for the
discrepancy between the three books presented by Lactantius’ unnamed
opponent and the fifteen books of Against the Christians, Digeser and
Beatrice argue that it was not Against the Christians that Porphyry presented
at Nicomedia, but the three books of Philosophy from Oracles.47
As a constructive treatise that offered a philosophical paganism to an
educated elite,48 they argue, Philosophy from Oracles better fits the conferences
at Nicomedia, at which the emperor and the court were concerned
as much with the renewal and protection of traditional religion as
dealing with the Christians.
The exact circumstances in which Porphyry composed his polemics
remain difficult to discern. Porphyry’s attendance at Diocletian’s conferences
remains hotly contested. Without more data, unfortunately, a conclusive
historical answer may be impossible. Left only with recourse to
educated conjecture, one could posit a number of possible scenarios.
Porphyry may have composed Philosophy from Oracles for the conferences
at Nicomedia, and written Against the Christians at almost the
same time. Or Porphyry may have presented an early three-book draft of
Against the Christians at Nicomedia, a draft which he later expanded into
a fifteen-book treatise. Or Porphyry may have brought an entirely different
text to Nicomedia, one that was neither Against the Christians nor
Philosophy from Oracles. He may have composed both treatises in the
middle of his career, yet traveled to Nicomedia later in life to avail himself
of an opportunity to influence imperial religious policy against his old
rivals.49 Or, finally, Porphyry may never have visited Nicomedia. Perhaps,
as Barnes suggests, Porphyry did compose his polemics amid the heightened
anti-Christian sentiment of the early fourth century, but had no
direct impact on imperial policy.50 One piece of evidence that is beyond
dispute, however, is the prominence of Porphyry and his polemics for
Christian apologists writing during and immediately after the Great Persecution.
These questions of date and circumstance aside, a more substantial
question remains: why did Porphyry so despise the Christians? If we
consider Against the Christians and Philosophy from Oracles in light of
47. Digeser, Christian Empire, 101–7.
48. Digeser, Christian Empire, 102, calls Phil. ex Orac. an “apologia for traditional
religion.”
49. Is this the scenario behind Eusebius’ description of Porphyry as “that friend of
the demons who, living in our time, distinguished himself by means of his lies against
us” (PE 4.6.2 [GCS 43:176])?
50. Barnes, “Scholarship or Propaganda,” 65.
288 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
Porphyry’s attitudes toward ethnic and cultural difference, a clearer picture
of the motivations behind his antipathy to Christianity emerges.
II. BARBARIAN WISDOM AND
PORPHYRY’S ECUMENICAL PHILOSOPHY
We can better appreciate Porphyry’s attitudes toward foreign philosophies
and religions by juxtaposing passages from two Porphyrian texts. In
the tenth book of the City of God, Augustine of Hippo offers a curious
summary of Porphyry’s On the Return of the Soul. According to Augustine:
“Porphyry states that there is no tradition in any one particular sect
[unam quondam secta] that contains a universal way for the liberation of
the soul—not in any philosophy [in the strictest sense], nor in the discipline
and practices of the Indians, nor in the learning of the Chaldeans,
nor in any other tradition [via].”51 Porphyry thought that a thorough
investigation of foreign religions and philosophies was an important part
of the philosopher’s task, but Augustine suggests that Porphyry ultimately
failed in his quest. “He confesses without doubt that some such way
exists,” Augustine jibes, “but that it had not yet come to his attention.”52
Eusebius of Caesarea, in contrast, preserves a fragment of Porphyry’s
Philosophy from Oracles suggesting that Porphyry’s cross-cultural approach
was fruitful. According to Eusebius, Porphyry’s Philosophy from
Oracles also had universal philosophy, or “‘theosophy,’ as he liked to call
it,” as its subject.53 Porphyry included an oracle that suggests an ecumenical
approach to philosophy:
The way of the blessed is difficult and rough.
The entrance is through brass gates.
The paths within are beyond number,
which the earliest of humans revealed for eternal use—
those who drink the fine water of the Nile.
Later, the Phoenicians learned the ways of the blessed,
as did the Assyrians, Lydians, and the Hebrew people.54
51. De Reg. An. fr. 302F (in Smith, Porphyrii Philosophi Fragmenta, 347–50)
(= Augustine De Civ. Dei 10.32.5–16).
52. Ibid.
53. Eusebius PE 4.6.3 (GCS 43:176).
54. Porphyry Phil. ex Orac. fr. 303F (Smith, 351–53) (= PE 9.10.2). It should be
noted that this is an oracle in Porphyry’s collection and not his “own” words.
Nevertheless, there are several reasons to take this and other oracles from Philosophy
from Oracles as expressions or indications of Porphyry’s own thought. The extant
passages of Philosophy from Oracles give the strong impression that Porphyry only
included oracles that served his “theosophy.” Philosophy from Oracles, like Porphyry’s
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 289
Indeed, this ecumenical “way of the blessed” was the principal subject of
Philosophy from Oracles. Here, in apparent contrast to the doubts expressed
in On the Return of the Soul, Porphyry tells his readers: “Secure
and steady is he who takes his hope of salvation from this as from the
only secure source.”55 In other words, Porphyry claims to have discovered
a via universalis. How is this claim to offer a universal philosophy reconcilable
with On the Return of the Soul?
The relationship of these two texts remains a problem for Porphyrian
studies. Did Porphyry, as Joseph Bidez argues, write Philosophy from
Oracles, which extols the wisdom of the barbarians and purports to offer
an ecumenical philosophy, during a period of youthful exuberance, only
to retract this assertion years later in On the Return of the Soul?56 Or is
On the Return of the Soul the earlier work and Philosophy from Oracles
a later attempt to craft a more inclusive philosophical theology?57 I would
like to suggest that there is no contradiction between these two works.
Rather, in both texts the goal of Porphyry’s intellectual peregrinations
was the discovery a universal, and therefore truly authentic, philosophy.
To explain the relationship between Porphyry’s apparently contradictory
remarks in Philosophy from Oracles and On the Return of the Soul
and to understand fully his quest for a via universalis, one must first grasp
the complexity of Porphyry’s negotiations of Greek and barbarian identity.
On the one hand, Plato held a central place in Porphyry’s conception of
philosophy. On the other hand, Porphyry did not think that truth was to
be found in Plato alone. As Porphyry admits in On the Return of the Soul,
other exegetical texts (such as On Statues and On the Cave of the Nymphs), does
consider various interpretations of texts, though Porphyry invariably prefers Platonic
allegories to the “physical” allegories and etymologies of the Stoics. Eusebius often
edits Porphyry’s work to make it appear that the philosopher advocated contradictory
exegeses, but nowhere does Eusebius include an oracle out of which Porphyry did not
extract some aspect of his “theosophy.” Moreover, Porphyry states (Phil. ex Orac. fr.
303F [Smith, 351–53]) that he has edited the oracles in his collection, which
strengthens the impression that he has edited the oracles to make them conducive to
his Platonic exegeses. Furthermore, Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (San
Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986), 196–97, has noted that Porphyry’s collection of
oracles was likely composed of oracles that were themselves “Platonic,” much as the
third-century collection of Chaldean Oracles was a product of later Platonism.
55. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 303F (Smith, 351–53).
56. Bidez, Porphyre, 18–19, 95–97.
57. As argued by Michael Bland Simmons, “Via universalis salutis animae
liberandae: The Pagan-Christian Debate on Universalism in the Later Roman Empire
(A.D. 260–325),” forthcoming in Studia Patristica. My sincerest thanks to Dr.
Simmons for permission to cite his manuscript and for his helpful criticisms of this
portion of this paper.
290 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
the via universalis was not to be found in any particular philosophical
school or among any single people (unam quondam sectam).58 Wisdom
and knowledge were not uniquely Greek. Although Augustine relishes
Porphyry’s apparent failure to discover the via universalis, he seems to
have missed the point of Porphyry’s remark, or twisted it for polemical
effect.59 Porphyry does not mean that such a via universalis does not exist,
nor does he mean that he has failed to discern it. Instead, his claim is that
the via universalis is not bounded by the limits of any single people or
tradition. As such, the via universalis is only discernible when one’s
pursuit of philosophy is sufficiently ecumenical. Philosophy from Oracles
confirms this ecumenical imperative. Porphyry alerts the reader to his
cross-cultural methods: “The way [ıdUw] of the blessed is difficult and
rough,” he notes, but “the paths [etrapito‹] . . . are beyond number.”60
Porphyry’s choice of vocabulary is not simply a function of meter. There is
one ıdUw, but it can be known only by investigating the diverse etrapitoi.
For Porphyry, even language, that quintessential marker of difference,
is no boundary to the ecumenical investigation of these diverse foreign
traditions. At the opening of the third book of On Abstinence, Porphyry
compares human and animal language to help prove that animals participate
in the logos. To prove his point, he mocks the classic, chauvinistic
Greek attitude to language. Those who assert that language is solely the
province of humans, Porphyry asserts, err in the same way as “the people
of Attica [who said] that Attic is the only language, and thought that
others who do not share the Attic way of speaking lack logos. Yet the
Attic speaker would understand a raven sooner than he would a Syrian or
Persian speaking Syrian or Persian.”61 Porphyry also places Greeks and
barbarians on the same plane in the fourth book of On Abstinence when
he draws upon examples from Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, Syrian, Persian,
and Indian sources to argue that all peoples impose dietary restrictions on
religious functionaries. Porphyry hopes to prove the general rule by collating
specific examples: “[Abstinence] applies whether you consider Greek
or barbarian custom, but different peoples have different restrictions; so
58. De Reg. An. fr. 302F (Smith, 347–50); and see quotation at opening of this
section.
59. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 302F (Smith, 347–50) (= De Civ. Dei 10.32).
60. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 323F (Smith, 371).
61. De Abst. 3.5.2–3 (Nauck, Porphyrii Philosophi Platonici Opuscula Selecta,
192; trans. Gillian Clark, Porphyry: On Abstinence from Killing Animals [Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2000], 83); see also Gillian Clark, “Translate into Greek:
Porphyry of Tyre on the New Barbarians,” in Constructing Identities in Late
Antiquity, ed. R. Miles (London: Routledge, 1999), 119–21.
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 291
that if you consider them all together, it will be apparent that those taken
from all regions abstain from all animals.”62 Porphyry can discern a genuinely
universal ethic only by looking beyond Greece.
On Abstinence is an example of Porphyry’s cross-cultural project at its
best. In Book 4, Porphyry draws from Egyptian, Phoenician, Mesopotamian,
and Jewish sources to construct a consensus concerning philosophical
asceticism. Porphyry appropriates Chaeremon the Stoic’s “account of
Egyptian priests” to recount the temperate lifestyle of Egyptian philosophy.
63 This way of life included periodic sexual continence and a rigorous
regimen of bathing and other purificatory rites along with abstinence
from animal food. He cites Neanthes of Cyzicus and Asklepiades of
Cyprus for material on Phoenician customs.64 According to Asklepiades,
“at first no animate creature was sacrificed to the gods.”65 Porphyry’s
sources for Persian and Mithraic traditions are more difficult to discern.66
In support of vegetarianism, Porphyry describes the importance of animal
symbolism in Mithraism: “They symbolize our community with animals
by giving us the names of animals: thus initiates who take part in their
rites are called lions, and women hyenas, and servants ravens.”67 For
information on Indian customs, Porphyry looks to the Book of the Laws
of Countries, a document from the school of Bardaisan. The vegetarianism
of Indian Brahmins supports the ascetic consensus.68 Porphyry also
compares Brahmin asceticism more broadly with the philosophical life
practiced by Greek philosophers such as the Pythagoreans. Finally, Porphyry
draws upon Josephus’ and Philo of Alexandria’s accounts of the
Essenes. He is impressed by Essene svfrosEnh: “They shun pleasure as
vice . . . they despise wealth, and the community of goods among them is
remarkable.”69 More to the main point of Porphyry’s argument, the Jews
avoid alimentary excess. In one of the few passages in pagan literature in
praise of kashrut, Porphyry praises Jewish abstinence from pork, fish
without scales, and the meat of animals without cloven hooves.70
62. De Abst. 4.5.5 (Nauck, 236; trans. Clark, 104).
63. De Abst. 4.6–10 (Nauck, 236–45).
64. De Abst. 4.15 (Nauck, 252–53).
65. De Abst. 4.15 (Nauck, 252; trans. Clark, 111).
66. He cites a “Eubulus” as a source on Mithraism in De Abst. 4.16 (Nauck, 253–
55). This may have been the Eubulus who ran a Platonist school in Athens (cf. Vita
Plotini 15 [Henry and Schwyzer, 18–19]); see Clark, Porphyry, 187 n. 634.
67. De Abst. 4.16 (Nauck, 253–54; trans. Clark, 112).
68. De Abst. 4.17 (Nauck, 256–58).
69. De Abst. 4.11.4–5 (Nauck, 246; trans. Clark, 108).
70. De Abst. 4.14.1–2 (Nauck, 251).
292 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
Porphyry takes a similarly comparative approach to religion and philosophy.
In Philosophy from Oracles, he blends various traditions to offer
“an account of many philosophical doctrines that the gods declared to be
true.”71 The oracular material Porphyry collects supports a “syncretistic”
theology combining Greek, Egyptian, Phoenician, and Hebrew sources.
For example, Porphyry quotes from an oracle in which Apollo identifies
himself with Osiris, Horus, and Helios.72 Laying out his demonology,
moreover, Porphyry equates Sarapis and Pluto; and in analyzing the symbolism
of his cult for information on how to drive away evil daimones, he
writes: “Among the Egyptians and Phoenicians, and among all peoples
who are wise concerning divine matters, whips are cracked in the temples,
and animals are dashed to the ground in the rites of the gods as the priests
drive away these demons by giving them the breath and blood of the
animals.”73 Some have argued that the Chaldean Oracles also figured in
Porphyry’s oracular compilation, but this remains contested.74 The Chaldean
Oracles had an important role, however, in On the Return of the
Soul.75 Summarizing the work, Augustine reports that Porphyry “could
not keep quiet about his borrowing of ‘divine oracles’ from the Chaldeans,
those oracles which he refers to so continuously.”76 Several Byzantine
sources also credit Porphyry with a commentary on the Chaldean Oracles.77
A cross-cultural impetus also lies at the heart of Porphyry’s religious
musings in his Letter to Anebo. In this text, Porphyry looks to the ancient
wisdom of Egypt to find answers to a series of theological questions
concerning the nature of the gods,78 the differences between the gods
assigned to various “spheres,”79 and how material objects (like the sun
and moon) can be called “gods” if divinity is incorporeal.80 Porphyry also
poses specifically “Egyptian” questions. He asks Anebo to explain the
71. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 303F (Smith, 353) (= PE 4.7.2).
72. PE 3.15.3 (GCS 43:155).
73. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 326F (Smith, 376) (= PE 4.23.1–2).
74. Hans Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy, ed. Michel Tardieu, new edition
(Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1978), 449–59; and Pierre Hadot, “Bilan et perspectives
sur les Oracles Chaldaïques,” in Lewy, Chaldean Oracles, 711–12.
75. Hadot, “Bilan et perspectives,” 712.
76. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 302aF (Smith, 350) (= De Civ. Dei 10.32; trans. Henry
Bettenson, St. Augustine: City of God [London: Penguin, 1984], 421).
77. Chaldean Oracles fr. 362T, 363T; 364aF–368F (in Smith, Porphyrii Philosophi
Fragmenta, 435–40).
78. Ep. ad An. 1.1b (Porfirio Lettera ad Anebo, ed. A. R. Sodano [Naples: L’Arte
Tipografica, 1958], 3).
79. Ep. ad An. 1.2b (Sodano, 4).
80. Ep. ad An. 1.3c (Sodano, 6).
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 293
myth of Isis and Osiris and wonders why Egyptian priests keep their
knowledge of philosophy and religion secret.81 Finally, he inquires after
“the way of happiness.”82 Porphyry’s interest in foreign theologies, philosophies,
and histories reveals a Greek intellectual who, like Herodotus,
might justly be termed a filobarbarow.83 But if Porphyry thought that the
intellectual traditions, myths, and religions of other peoples were valuable,
did he believe that all peoples were of equal value?
Although Porphyry compares Greeks and other peoples in ways that
appear, initially, to place them on the same level, he never allows his
comparative project to threaten the security of Greek identity. Consequently,
he never abandons the asymmetrical distinction between Greeks
and barbarians. Barbarow and its derivatives appear thirty-nine times in
Porphyry’s corpus, and in at least eighteen of these instances they are set
in explicit contrast to UEllhnew and its derivatives.84 While Porphyry
draws many favorable comparisons between Greeks and barbarians to
bolster his arguments in On Abstinence, elsewhere in the same treatise he
denigrates barbarians with stock stereotypes. For example, he mocks the
masses who take Egyptian animal worship too literally.85 Against someone
who might claim that abstinence would compromise the practice of
divination, Porphyry jibes: “This person should destroy people too, for
they say that the future is more apparent in human entrails; indeed many
barbarians use humans for divination by entrails.”86 By imputing human
sacrifice to his opponents Porphyry hoped to make them seem savage,
worse perhaps than the animals they were wont to consume. Finally, even
when he wishes to posit the most basic commonality among peoples—
their common humanity—Porphyry does so by asserting a distinction
between Greeks and barbarians: “Thus also we say that Greek is related
and kin to Greek, barbarian to barbarian, all human beings to each other.”87
Shared humanness cannot bridge the gulf between Greeks and others.
But where does Porphyry situate himself in respect to the Greek/barbarian
divide? He prefaces his cross-cultural examples in Book 4 by stating
81. Isis and Osiris: Ep. ad An. 2.8c (Sodano, 20); priestly secrecy: Ep. ad An. 2.12a
(Sodano, 23).
82. Ep. ad An. 2.19a (Sodano, 29).
83. Plutarch, De Herodoti malignitate 2.857a.
84. Quaest. Hom. ad Od. 1.42.9; 1.42.13; 2.362.4; 8.267.10; Quaest. Hom ad Il.
3.236.48; 20.67.56; Phil. ex Orac. fr. 317F (Smith, 365); Contra Christianos fr. 1 (3
times, in lines 2, 5, and 11), 39, 69 (Harnack, 45, 64–66, 88); De Abst. 1.13.25;
1.42.3; 2.51.6; 3.3.12; 3.25.13; 4.5.33 (Nauck, 96, 117, 177, 188, 221, 236).
85. De Abst. 4.9.10 (Nauck, 243).
86. De Abst. 2.51.1 (Nauck, 177; trans. Clark, 75).
87. De Abst. 3.25.2 (Nauck, 221; trans. Clark, 96).
294 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
that he will proceed “people by people: the Greeks, as the most closely
related to us among the witnesses, shall lead off.”88 Porphyry thus ranks
himself (and Castricius, his addressee) among the Greeks. The difference
between the locutions Porphyry uses to discuss his Greek and barbarian
examples of abstinence also indicates his self-identification with the Greeks.
In his account of Greek customs, Porphyry recounts the ethical ideas of
individual Greeks—Dicaearchus and Lycurgus. In contrast, when providing
Egyptian, Jewish, Syrian, Persian, or Indian examples of abstinence,
Porphyry employs the third person plural and its derivatives almost exclusively
to denote his subjects. Porphyry also employs a partitive genitive
to introduce his account of Jewish customs: t≪n d￠ ginvskom°nvn ≤min
EIouda›oi. . . .89 This construction draws attention to the differences between
the collectivity of ethnic otherness and “we” Greeks. These grammatical
choices help Porphyry to construct an ethnographic distance between
his own (Greek) perspective and the various barbarian objects of
his research.
The ethnographic material in Book 4 of On Abstinence, moreover, does
not come from his own firsthand observations. This is “armchair ethnography”;
Porphyry’s journeys to Egypt, Palestine, Persia, and India took
place in the library. Indeed, his source material is itself written in Greek:
his knowledge of the Jews comes entirely from the Greek of Josephus; and
Chaeremon, his source for Egyptian traditions, was an Alexandrian philosopher
of the first century c.e., while his comments on Persian and
Indian traditions are so common among Greek ethnography that it is
difficult to name a specific source.90 And although Porphyry asserts that
Philosophy from Oracles will consider barbarian oracles alongside those
of the Greeks, in actual practice his citation of foreign sources is rather
limited. Likewise, Porphyry’s knowledge of Egyptian tradition in his Letter
to Anebo comes almost exclusively from his reading of other Greek
philosophers—Plutarch, perhaps, or the Hermetic Corpus.91 Moreover,
Porphyry owes his account of Mithraic cosmology in his allegorical On
the Cave of the Nymphs to the Greek allegorical tradition, rather than to
any direct knowledge of Persian religion. Porphyry is immersed in foreign
wisdom, but nothing from Egypt, Phoenicia, Judaea, or any other province
is valuable unless it can be filtered through a Greek lens.
88. De Abst. 4.2.1 (Nauck, 228; trans. Clark, 100).
89. De Abst. 4.11 (Nauck, 245).
90. Smith, “Porphyrian Studies since 1913,” 764.
91. Clark, “Translate into Greek,” 124.
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 295
Considering Porphyry’s own origins, this Hellenocentric approach to
barbarian wisdom is somewhat ironic. His Greekness resounds throughout
his works, but in at least one important respect Porphyry was not
Greek: he was born in the Phoenician city of Tyre, in the Roman province
of Syria.92 In fact, “Porphyry” was not his given name. For the first
decades of his life, this scion of later Greek philosophy was known by his
original, Semitic name “Malchus.”93 As Malchus traveled, first to Longinus
in Athens and then to Plotinus in Rome, his name began to change.
Eunapius reports that it was Longinus who first called Malchus “Porphyry,”
after the color of royal garments.94 After learning philology with
Longinus, Porphyry traveled to Rome, where, Porphyry reports, his fellow
student Amelius translated his name more literally as “Basileus.”95
These translations of Porphyry’s name are indicative of a much deeper
transformation, that from Syrian provincial to Greco-Roman philosopher.
The journey from Tyre to Athens to Rome involved, in fact, an
erasure of Porphyry’s ethnicity. Porphyry, who famously refers to himself
in the third person throughout the Life of Plotinus, never calls himself
“Malchus.” The Semitic name of his birth is simply a palimpsest. Plotinus
too had translated himself from the East to Rome. In the Life of Plotinus,
Porphyry recounts how little he really knew about his teacher’s origins:
“[H]e could not endure to talk about his race, his parents, or his country
of birth.”96 Of Plotinus’ life before his teaching career in Rome, we are
told only that he was born in Egypt and that his first teacher was the
Alexandrian Ammonius.97 Yearning to explore barbarian wisdom, he
enlisted in the Roman army for Gordian’s eastern campaigns.98 That
Porphyry found Plotinus’ past impenetrable was due partly to his teacher’s
design. Plotinus’ goal of dissociation from all corporeal particularity
included eliminating ethnic specificity. For Porphyry and Plotinus, this
meant abandoning the culturally specific world of the provinces for the
more ecumenical perspective of Rome itself. In becoming Greek philosophers
in Rome, Plotinus and Porphyry established themselves in the intellectual
and political centers of the Greco-Roman world. No wonder, then,
92. Eunapius, Vitae Philosophorum 355 (text and trans. in W. C. Wright,
Philostratus and Eunapius: The Lives of the Sophists [Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1922], 352).
93. Vita Plotini 17, 21 (Henry and Schwyzer, 20–21, 27–28).
94. Eunapius, Vitae Philosophorum 456.
95. Vita Plotini 17 (Henry and Schwyzer, 20–21).
96. Vita Plotini 1 (Henry and Schwyzer, 1; trans. Edwards, Neoplatonic Saints, 1).
97. Vita Plotini 3 (Henry and Schwyzer, 3–5).
98. Ibid.
296 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
that Porphyry approached foreign wisdom with a chauvinism that mirrored
the hegemonic relationship between Rome and her provinces.
Porphyry’s attitudes toward religious texts and religious practices parallel
his disposition toward his own origins. The many texts that Porphyry
plumbed for universal truth made no claims of their own to transcend
their specific Greek, Egyptian, or Persian contexts. Articulating a
universal philosophy based on a cross-cultural synthesis of these diverse
traditions required the application of particular interpretive strategies.
Just as his journey from Syria to Rome marked a translation from the
specific to the ecumenical, so also Porphyry’s figurative reading of texts
and intellectualizations of traditional cult served to establish a hierarchical
distinction between that which is universally (and therefore truly)
authentic and that which is merely culturally specific.
Porphyry’s commentaries on Homer are some of the earliest and bestpreserved
examples of figurative readings of Greek poetry and myth.99
Figurative readings of Homer developed largely in response to critics who
called the morality of Homer’s poetry into question,100 or as a means of
recovering ancient philosophical concepts hidden in the mythical compositions.
101 Nonliteral reading practices, however, were more than academic
exercises in interpretation. The quest for meanings beyond the
literal could serve important social and political functions. Figurative
readings can never be dissociated from historical conflicts and negotiations
of identity, authority, and power.102 Most important for the present
study, moreover, figurative reading offered a means to differentiate between
the apparent, explicit meanings of texts and less evident, but more
authentic, readings.103 Under Middle Platonic and Plotinian influence the
99. I follow David Dawson in opting for the more general term “figurative” to
describe a wide range of nonliteral reading practices, including allegorical, typological,
and etymological readings. As Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural
Revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1992), 5, notes, concentrating on rigid distinctions between interpretive
strategies runs the risk of “minimizing the extent to which different non-literal
strategies inform one another.”
100. Robert Lamberton, Homer the Theologian (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1989), 19–20.
101. The Stoic exegete Cornutus, e.g., is not an apologist for Homer, but rather
seeks to uncover the hidden physical and philosophical allegories contained in the
epics (Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 38).
102. “The very tensions between literal and non-literal readings that characterized
ancient allegory stemmed from efforts by readers to secure for themselves and their
communities social and cultural identity, authority, and power” (Dawson, Allegorical
Readers, 2).
103. Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 8–9.
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 297
discovery of these more obscure meanings became equated with the discovery
of universal meanings; Homer “the poet” became Homer “the
theologian,” whose poetry conveyed truths about the human soul and the
cosmos.104 As Porphyry intimates in his treatise On the Cave of the
Nymphs, the Odyssey is more than a Greek epic from the eighth century
b.c.e. It is a text with universal implications. Odysseus’ adventure is a
representation of the soul’s travails in the material world and its ascent to
the noetic realm. Odysseus, for instance, “bears a symbol of the one who
passes through the stages of genesis and, in doing so, returns to those
beyond every wave who have no knowledge of the sea. . . . the deep, the
sea, and the sea-well are . . . material substance.”105
Just as Porphyry differentiates the authentic meaning of the Odyssey
from its Greek context, so too does he subject barbarian myths and texts
to figurative readings that serve to sift universal truths out of otherwise
culturally specific artifacts. In the course of discussing the significance of
caves, for example, Porphyry crafts a figurative reading of Mithraic traditions
to support his claim that “caves” signify “the cosmos.” “The Persians,”
he writes, “call the place a cave where they introduce an initiate
into the mysteries, revealing to him the path by which souls descend and
go back again.”106 The first of these caves was built by Zoroaster to
represent “the Cosmos which Mithras created and the things which the
cave contained, by their proportionate arrangement, provided him with
symbols of the elements and climates of the Cosmos.”107 Similarly, Porphyry
glosses many of the oracles he compiles in Philosophy from Oracles
with figurative readings in order to draw universalizing conclusions. Porphyry
explains the symbolic meanings of the different sacrifices described
in an oracle of Apollo: “Four-footed land animals,” he elaborates, are
sacrificed to terrestrial gods because “like rejoices in like.”108 The mode in
which one sacrifices is also symbolic. For example, sacrifices are carried
out in the spheres assigned to different classes of deity; terrestrial gods
receive sacrifices on altars set up on the ground, while sacrifices to subterranean
deities are performed in trenches.109
104. Lamberton, Homer the Theologian, 22–31.
105. De Antro Nympharum 34 (text and trans. in Porphyry: The Cave of the
Nymphs in the Odyssey, rev. text with translation by Seminar Classics 609, State
University of New York at Buffalo, Arethusa Monographs 1 [Buffalo: Dept. of
Classics, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1969]).
106. De Antro Nympharum 6.
107. De Antro Nympharum 6.
108. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 315F, line 30 (Smith, 363) (= PE 4.9.3–7).
109. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 315F, lines 21–45 (Smith, 363–64) (= PE 4.9.3–7).
298 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
Porphyry also extended the interpretive strategies he used to understand
Homer beyond texts to offer figurative readings of various cultic
practices. In his On Statues, for example, Porphyry proposes “to teach
how to read from statues, just as from books, the things written there
concerning the gods.”110 There was more to statuary than wood and
stone: “It is remarkable that the uneducated believe that the statues are
nothing but wood and stone, just as the unintelligent see steles as stones,
tablets as pieces of wood, and books as nothing other than woven papyrus.”
111 This special literacy to which Porphyry lays claim helps him to
find universal truths in otherwise embarrassing aspects of traditional
iconography. Anthropomorphic representations of Zeus, for instance, are
not the result of theological immaturity. Instead, “theologians . . . have
made the representation of Zeus anthropomorphic because mind was
that according to which he wrought, and by generative laws brought all
things to perfection; and he is seated, indicating the steadfastness of his
power; and he is naked on top, because he is evident in the intellectual
and heavenly parts of the cosmos; but his feet are clothed, because he is
not evident in the hidden things below.”112
Yet Porphyry does not limit his reading of iconography to Greek sources.
Eusebius preserves a lengthy passage from On Statues in which Porphyry
distills a late Platonic cosmogony out of Egyptian iconography. Porphyry
interprets the Egyptian god Cneph as “the demiurge” because “they say
that this god produces an egg from his mouth, from which a god is born
whom they call Phtha . . . and the egg they interpret as the cosmos.”113
Egyptian zoological iconography is also explicable: “They consecrate the
hawk to the sun and make it their symbol of light and breath, because of
its swift motion and its soaring up on high, where the light is. And the
hippopotamus represents the western sky, because of its swallowing up
into itself the stars that traverse it.”114 Porphyry also interprets this zoological
iconography symbolically in On Abstinence to buttress his argument
that humans should refrain from consuming animals. The Egyptian
sages recognized that animals, as well as humans, had souls; and “for this
reason they used every animal to represent the gods . . . for they have
images which are human in form up to the neck, but with the face of a
bird or a lion or of some other animal, or alternatively the head may be
110. Per‹ egalmatvn fr. 351F, lines 18–20 (in Smith, Porphyrii Philosophi
Fragmenta, 408) (= PE 3.6.7–7.1).
111. Per‹ egalmatvn fr. 351F, lines 20–24 (Smith, 408) (= PE 3.6.7–7.1).
112. Per‹ egalmatvn fr. 354F, lines 48–55 (Smith, 413–14) (= PE 3.8.2–9.9).
113. Per‹ egalmatvn fr. 360F, lines 11–13 (Smith, 429) (= PE 3.11.45).
114. Per‹ egalmatvn fr. 360F, lines 62–67 (Smith, 432) (= PE 3.12).
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 299
human and the rest of the body from other animals. In this way they show
that . . . these creatures are in community with each other. . . .”115
All of these interpretive strategies are intended to reveal universally
authentic truths about theology and philosophy. None of these strategies,
however, disavows more explicit, literal meanings. The precise relationship
between these two levels of meaning is hierarchical; the more authentic
meanings of statues, myths, or poems are primary, while the culturally
contextual meanings are secondary. Porphyry never denies that the Iliad
and Odyssey contain narratives that are potentially scandalous. Nor does
he deny that Greek iconography is anthropomorphic or that animals are
central to Egyptian cult. Although these texts, iconographies, and rituals
are culturally specific, they yield universal truths if properly excavated.
Having sifted his barbarian artifacts, Porphyry removes “universal” meanings
from their “native” contexts. Fitting these “universal” elements into
his ecumenical bricolage, he leaves behind everything specifically “Greek”
or “Egyptian.”
Recognizing that Porphyry posits this hierarchical relationship between
higher and lower meanings in texts and religious iconographies helps in
making sense of his attitudes toward traditional religion. On the one
hand, Porphyry never denies the validity of sacrificial religion; in fact, he
offers explicit praise of tradition: “For this is the greatest fruit of piety, to
honor the divine according to ancestral customs.”116 On the other hand,
an intelligent person, who is able to discern the different levels of signification
in ritual acts, recognizes that “the consecrated altars of god do not
harm and, if neglected, do not help.”117 Porphyry draws an important
distinction between the cult of the highest Platonic god and the cults of all
other, culturally specific, deities. An intelligent person should offer sacrifice,
but “to the god who rules over all . . . we shall offer nothing
perceived by the senses, either by burning [i.e., traditional animal sacrifice]
or in words [i.e., praying aloud].”118 The intellectual cult of the Platonic
One may be found in different instantiations in different cultures. Nonetheless,
the universal—and therefore singular—cult of the One is not to
be confused with the plurality of culturally specific cults.
The difference that Porphyry posits between levels of meaning and
forms of cult also correlates with a distinction among various peoples.
Porphyry does not mince words about those who do not comprehend the
115. De Abst. 4.9 (Nauck, 241; trans. Clark, 106).
116. Ad Marc. 18 (Nauck, 286).
117. Ibid.
118. De Abst. 2.34.2 (Nauck, 163; trans. Clark, 69).
300 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
deeper meanings within various cultural expressions: such people are
ignorant and live in error.119 Porphyry’s estimation of Egyptian animal
worship provides an excellent example of this differentiation between
those who truly comprehend Egyptian religion and those who do not:
An ignorant person would not even suspect that they [the wise people
among the Egyptians] have not been carried away by the general opinion
which knows nothing, and do not themselves walk in the ways of stupidity,
but that they have passed beyond ignorance of the multitude which
everyone encounters first, and have found worthy of veneration that which
to the multitude is worthless.120
While Porphyry indicates that the more authentic meanings behind zoological
iconography signify truths about the relationship between animals
and humans, he denigrates a more literal reading of this iconography
simultaneously. Here too one can see the power dynamic that Porphyry
establishes through his readings of cultural artifacts. A true philosopher
like Porphyry can see and understand things that the natives cannot. This
knowledge grants Porphyry a privileged relationship with Egypt: by so
thoroughly and accurately understanding the universal truths behind animal
iconography, Porphyry can stake a claim to Egyptian tradition that
the mass of ignorant Egyptian natives cannot properly claim as their own.
Porphyry’s readings of ethnic traditions help him to establish mastery
over the traditions of various peoples, and by extension to establish
power and control over the peoples themselves.
Porphyry and others looked abroad in their search for a universal
philosophy, but they did not consider philosophy to be a free-for-all. If
Porphyry’s knowledge brought great privilege and authority, it also brought
great responsibility; the authentic philosopher was also a guardian of the
truth. Wisdom could be found among many peoples, but “truth” was
singular. Polemics were part and parcel of a philosopher’s training: knowing
the truth was not enough; one must be able to defend it as well.
Dissention was an integral part of Porphyry’s philosophical career; he
wrote a polemical critique of Plotinus before he ever became his student.121
His most famous polemics, however, are those he composed against the
Christians. Setting Porphyry’s anti-Christian texts in the context of his
attitudes toward universalism and cultural difference will result in a more
nuanced understanding of his antipathy toward Christianity.
119. De Abst. 4.9.10 (Nauck, 243).
120. De Abst. 4.9.10 (Nauck, 243; trans. Clark, 107).
121. Vita Plotini 18 (Henry and Schwyzer, 21–22).
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 301
III. THE CHRISTIAN MENACE: PORPHYRY’S
ATTACK ON CHRISTIAN IDENTITY
In the Life of Plotinus, Porphyry offers an instructive portrait of the
important place of polemics in Plotinus’ school. Plotinus did not hesitate
to criticize and refute “Christians of many kinds” in his lectures.122 Plotinus
also offered a textual refutation of gnostics in Ennead 2.9, which Porphyry
would later title Against the Gnostics. Plotinus had focused his
polemics on the general doctrines of his opponents, but Porphyry, ever the
philologist and literary aesthete, attacks their texts. Porphyry recounts
that he and his fellow student Amelius each composed extensive refutations
of gnostic texts. Amelius wrote no less than forty books to refute the
book of Zostrianus, while Porphyry, for his part, wrote “numerous refutations
of the book of Zoroaster.”123 His polemics were aimed at “proving
the book to be entirely spurious and recent, a fabrication of those who
upheld this heresy to make it seem that the doctrines which they had
chosen to acclaim were those of the ancient Zoroaster.”124 Porphyry’s
assault on the historicity and literary value of his opponents’ text, along
with the aspersions he casts on the moral fiber of its authors, is remarkably
similar to the methods he uses in Against the Christians.
The extant fragments of Against the Christians reveal a critic who is
quite familiar with the texts of his enemies. Porphyry’s criticism of the
gospels concentrates on discrepancies in individual gospels and among
the gospel accounts. For example, he critiques both Mark and Matthew
for misquoting and conflating citations of the Hebrew Bible.125 He also
points out the inconsistencies between the birth narratives in Matthew
and Luke.126 Moreover, Porphyry levels an attack against Paul, arguing
that the disagreements Paul reports in Galatians are evidence for both
Paul’s error and the factiousness of Christianity.127 Porphyry also chastised
Christian readings of the Hebrew Bible. Porphyry’s critical acumen
rivals that of many modern biblical critics. Two of these fragments concern
the date of Moses.128 The context of these passages is difficult to
determine, but they likely countered the apologetic claims of Christians
122. Vita Plotini 16 (Henry and Schwyzer, 19–20).
123. Vita Plotini 16 (Henry and Schwyzer, 19–20; trans. Edwards, 29).
124. Ibid.
125. Contra Christianos fr. 9, 10 (Harnack, 48–49).
126. Contra Christianos fr. 12 (Harnack, 49–50).
127. Contra Christianos fr. 21 (Harnack, 53).
128. Contra Christianos fr. 40, 41 (Harnack, 66–67).
302 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
about the antiquity, and therefore primacy, of Moses.129 By far the most
incisive of Porphyry’s critiques, however, concern the book of Daniel.
Porphyry argues very astutely that this prophetic book cannot have been
written during the Babylonian captivity, as the Christians claim, but
rather is an example of prophecy ex eventu that dates to the time of
Antiochus IV Epiphanes.130 Porphyry based his attack on careful philological
and historical analyses. He realized, for example, that some of the
word play in the narrative of Susanna works only in Greek.131 Moreover,
while Christians interpreted the “four beasts” in Daniel’s vision as four
world empires (Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman), Porphyry
argues that they signify only three; for according to Jerome, Porphyry
“assigned the last two beasts to the single reign of the Macedonians,
wishing the leopard to be understood as Alexander himself, but the beast
different from all the other beasts as the four successors of Alexander.”132
Reading Against the Christians with an eye toward the imperial context
in which Porphyry penned his polemics, however, reveals a text
concerned as much with issues of power and identity as with matters of
history and literary taste. We have already seen Porphyry use figurative
reading strategies to take possession of Egyptian tradition while simultaneously
positing a hierarchical difference between himself and ignorant
Egyptian natives. The philosopher’s attack on Christian literature and
reading strategies is similar. First, Porphyry counters the Christian threat
129. On this motif in Christian apologetics, see Arthur Droge, Homer or Moses?
Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr,
1989); and Daniel Ridings, The Attic Moses: The Dependency Theme in Some Early
Christian Writers (Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1995).
130. Contra Christianos fr. 43A (Harnack, 67) (= Jerome Comm. in Daniel.
Prologue): Contra prophetam Danielem XII librum scripsit Porphyrius, nolens cum
ab ipso, cuius inscriptus est nomine, esse compositum, sed a quodam qui temporibus
Antiochi, qui appellatus est Epiphanes, fuerit in Judaea, et non tam Danielem ventura
dixisse, quam illum narasse praeterita. Denique quidquid usque ad Antiochum
dixerit, veram historiam continere; si quid autem ultra opinatus sit, quia futura
nescierit, esse mentitum.
131. Contra Christianos fr. 43B (Harnack, 68) (= Jerome Comm. in Daniel.
Prologue): Et hoc nosse debemus inter cetera Porphyrium de Danielis libro nobis
obicere, idcirco illum apparere confictum nec haberi apud Hebraeos, sed Graeci
sermonis esse commentum, quia in Susannae fibula contineatur dicente Daniele ad
presbyteros epU toE sx.nou sx.sai ka‹ epU toE pr.nou pr.sai quam etymologiam
magis Graeco sermoni convenire quam Hebraeo.
132. Contra Christianos fr. 43L (Harnack, 68) (= Jerome Comm. in Daniel.
Prologue): Porphyrius duas posteriores bestias Macedonum et Romanorum in uno
Macedonem regno ponit et dividit, Pardum volens intellegi ipsum Alexandrum,
bestiam autem dissimilem ceteris bestiis IV Alexandri successors . . . (etc.).
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 303
by eliminating any appeal to the writings of the New Testament. Egyptian,
Chaldean, Indian, or Phoenician texts are ancient, and therefore worthy
to be investigated as potential sources for a universal philosophy. The
writings of the evangelists and Paul, however, are new. The sages of Egypt
and the Persian Magi were ancient philosophers who carefully veiled the
truth so that it could be discovered by educated philosophers like Porphyry.
The apostles and evangelists, on the other hand, were “poor country
bumpkins [rusticani et pauperes] who performed second-rate magic
merely ‘for profit.’”133 Similarly, wise barbarians like Philo of Byblos
provide philosophers with reliable histories upon which to base their
research, while the apostles are guilty of simplemindedness and extreme
ignorance when it comes to history.134
Porphyry goes on to castigate his Christian contemporaries for their
misguided reading practices. First, Porphyry rejects any figurative interpretations
of the New Testament for the same reasons he rejected the
gnostic book of Zoroaster—texts that are recent fabrications do not merit
figurative readings. Because “the evangelists were such vulgar people, not
only in the way they lived, but also in their sacred writings,” their texts
simply cannot contain anything that is universally authentic.135 Christian
exegesis of the Hebrew Bible is a different sort of problem for Porphyry.
Porphyry had included the Hebrews among those peoples with a knowledge
of the via universalis in Philosophy from Oracles. Indeed, Christians
read the Hebrew Bible in much the same way that Porphyry read Egyptian,
Chaldean, and Phoenician texts, as sources of universal truth. How
could Porphyry criticize Christians for reading texts that he too believed
contained “barbarian wisdom”? This similarity lies at the heart of
Porphyry’s antipathy toward the Christians.
Since they first began to respond to the criticisms of philosophically
minded pagans, Christian apologists had been articulating a specifically
Christocentric ecumenical philosophy that stood in direct opposition to
the Hellenocentric projects of Porphyry and his Middle Platonic predecessors.
136 Christian intellectuals used the same cross-cultural methods to
133. Contra Christianos fr. 4 (Harnack, 46).
134. Contra Christianos fr. 6 (Harnack, 47): Arguit in hoc loco Porphyrius et
Julianus Augustus vel imperitiam historici mentientis vel stultitiam eorum qui statim
secuti sunt salvatorem.
135. Contra Christianos fr. 9 (Harnack, 48–49).
136. The limits of this article do not permit a detailed excursus on the relationship
between Porphyry and the Middle Platonists, but see Heinrich Dörrie, “Schultradition,”
1–32; and Waszink, “Porphyrios und Numenios,” 35–83. On the important relationship
between Porphyry’s uses of foreign traditions and the interest of Middle
304 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
arrive at conclusions similar to Porphyry’s: no single ¶ynow monopolizes
truth, and the authentic philosophy has no borders. But where Porphyry
and his Middle Platonic predecessors focused their readings of barbarian
wisdom through a Greek (i.e., Platonic) lens, Christians argued for the
privilege of decidedly barbarian texts (i.e., the Hebrew scriptures). Christian
intellectuals thus mimicked Greek philosophers like Porphyry by
using the same comparative studies of “barbarian wisdom” to construct
asymmetrical relationships between the traditions of different peoples.
Having subjected Greek and Christian wisdom to a critical comparison,
for instance, Justin argues for the superiority of the latter “not because
Plato’s teaching is something different from Christ’s, but because they are
not in every respect equal. . . . What has been said correctly among all
people is ours, the Christians’.”137 Justin’s student Tatian went even further
in challenging Greek philosophical chauvinism. In his estimation,
Greek paide.a was itself nothing more than an incoherent bricolage of
found objects: “If each city was to take away its own teaching from your
own, they would deprive your sophistries of all power.”138 Consequently,
Greek identity is merely a chimera: “What I ought to call ‘Greek’ perplexes
me,” Tatian mocks.139 In the early third century, Clement of Alexandria
would accuse the Greeks, saying: “You have learned geometry
from the Egyptians, astronomy from the Babylonians, . . . you are indebted
to the Hebrews.”140
Porphyry’s riposte was simple: Christians did not know how to read the
Hebrew Bible properly. Jerome and Augustine each preserve examples of
Porphyry’s attack on the Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. In
Porphyry’s estimation, Christians attempted figurative readings of passages
that had overtly objectionable meanings on a literal level. Jerome
reports that Porphyry refused to accept a figurative reading of Hosea 1.2,
in which God urges the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute. While
exegetes like Jerome could provide figurative exegeses for such objectionable
passages, Porphyry argues that some texts are not worthy of a true
philosopher’s attention. Augustine records another Porphyrian objection
Platonists such as Plutarch and Numenius in “barbarian wisdom,” see especially
Zambon, Porphyre et le moyen-platonisme.
137. Justin Martyr 2 Apol. 13.2; 13.4 (Iustini Martyris Apologiae Pro Christianis,
ed. Miroslav Marcovich [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994], 157).
138. Tatian Orat. ad Gr. 26.1 (Tatiani Oratio Ad Graecos, ed. Miroslav
Marcovich [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995], 50).
139. Tatian Orat. Ad Gr. 1.4 (Marcovich, 8).
140. Clement of Alexandria Protr. 70.2 (Clementis Alexandrini Protrepticus, ed.
Miroslav Marcovich [Leiden: Brill, 1995], 106).
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 305
to Christian exegesis. “What ought one to think of Jonah,” the critic asks,
“who is thought to have been in the belly of a whale for three days? It is
ridiculous and unbelievable for him to have been swallowed with all his
clothes and to have been inside the fish. But if this is to be taken figuratively,
then deign to explain it!”141 Porphyry’s opposition to Christian reading
practices is especially clear in a passage preserved by Eusebius:
Some, being zealous to find a way to exculpate the wickedness of the Jewish
writings rather than to simply abandon them, turned to interpretations that
are inconsistent and inharmonious with what has been written, and they
offer no defense of the foreign aspects of their work, but rather offer
approval and praise of their own work. Bragging that the things said plainly
by Moses are enigmas and conjuring them up as oracles full of hidden
mysteries and enchanting critical abilities with obscurities, they offer their
interpretations.142
Not all literature should be read figuratively. Some texts, like the more
“offensive” parts of the Hebrew Bible, have nothing to offer a philosopher,
no matter how hard one may try to conceal the inadequacies of his
or her critical abilities. In Porphyry’s judgment, a philosopher should use
barbarian texts only if exegesis will reveal ecumenical wisdom that can be
separated from its “foreign” context. In the hands of Christian exegetes,
the Hebrew Bible fails to yield any universal, authentic philosophical
knowledge. Among Christians, the Hebrew Bible—like Egyptian animal
worship—is simply barbaric.
As we have seen already, Porphyry’s readings of various traditions are
marked by a process of sifting the wheat of universal truth from the chaff
of cultural specificity. Gillian Clark has noted the ambivalent character of
Porphyry’s attitudes toward cultural diversity: “Porphyry saw in religion
both a common philosophical culture uniting all devotees of truth, and a
Herodotean display of cultural diversity.”143 Cultural particularity was
perfectly acceptable when interpreted correctly and packaged for the consumption
of Greco-Roman philosophers. Culturally specific traditions,
like Egyptian zoological iconography or even Greek sacrifice, were thus
perfectly acceptable—provided that the uneducated masses that practiced
such traditions made no universalizing claims of their own. The masses
should know their place. It was quite unacceptable, however, for the
barbarians to make universalizing claims of their own. Christians, who
by their own admission claimed to possess an ecumenical philosophy
141. Contra Christianos fr. 46 (Harnack, 74).
142. Eusebius HE 6.19.4 (GCS 6:558).
143. Clark, “Translate into Greek,” 126.
306 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
based on a set of barbarian texts from the very edges of the Greco-Roman
world, were disrupting Porphyry’s carefully constructed, hierarchical world.
Porphyry attacks Christians’ rival universalizing claims explicitly in
Against the Christians: “Why did a compassionate and merciful god
allow all peoples, from the time of Adam to Moses, and from Moses to
the advent of Christ, to perish through ignorance of the laws and regulations
of God?”144 Porphyry impugns Christianity on the grounds that it is
not a universal philosophy at all, but something novel. A tradition that is
newly revealed (or “invented”) cannot offer a via universalis: “If Christ
claims to be the way of salvation . . . what did the people of the world do
before Christ?”145 Christianity, moreover, bases its claims on a set of
Jewish texts with little or no currency outside of Judaea: “For Britain . . .
and the people of Scotland, and all barbarian peoples throughout the
entire circuit of the Ocean are ignorant of Moses and the prophets.”146
Christians cannot offer a truly universal philosophy because they originated
at a specific time in a specific cultural context:
Why did the one who is called “savior” hide himself for so many centuries?
But do not let them claim that the human race was saved by the ancient
Jewish law, for the law of the Jews appeared only after a long while, and
was in force over only a small region of Syria . . . later it spread across the
borders of Italy, after Caesar or during his reign. What then happened to
the souls of the Romans and Latins, which were deprived of the advent of
Christ until the time of the Caesars?147
Unlike Porphyry’s own philosophy, which he claims transcends cultural
particularity, Christianity belongs to a specific time and place: first century
Judaea, an insignificant region of Syria. Moreover, Porphyry’s temporal
location of Christianity in the time of the Caesars is an effective
retorsion of Christian arguments for the synchrony of Christ’s advent and
the beginning of the Principate. Porphyry slyly reminds Christians that
they are mere provincials subject to Roman hegemony.
Christian assertions of philosophical and soteriological universalism
were a direct affront to Porphyry’s own ecumenical endeavors. But the
Christian threat ran even deeper. Christians claimed that their faith rendered
all cultural and ethnic specificity irrelevant. Always the skilled
philologist, Porphyry responded by returning to primary sources. Por-
144. Contra Christianos fr. 82 (Harnack, 95).
145. Contra Christianos fr. 81 (Harnack, 94–95).
146. Contra Christianos fr. 82 (Harnack, 95).
147. Contra Christianos fr. 81 (Harnack, 94–95).
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 307
phyry attacks this radical challenge to traditional identity by going to its
source: Paul’s declaration that he had become everything to everyone in
order to save some.148 Porphyry castigates Paul: “How good, or rather
how stupid, such sayings are! . . . If he was without the Law to those
without the Law, as he himself says, and was a Jew to the Jews, and did
likewise for all peoples, then he was really a captive of many-faced wickedness
and a stranger and foreigner to the truth.”149 For historical proof of
Paul’s mendacity, Porphyry looks to Acts. How could Paul declare to the
tribune that he was “a Jew born in Tarsus” when later he would declare
his Roman citizenship to the same tribune?150 Porphyry’s criticism is far
from airtight. Paul’s declaration of Roman citizenship was in no legal
sense a denial of his Jewish identity. Porphyry would surely have known
this, if not from a basic knowledge of Roman citizenship before 212 c.e.
then from reading the conclusion of the narrative in Acts, where Paul’s
citizenship is acknowledged by the tribune and later by the governor
Festus as he grants Paul a trial in Rome before the emperor.151 But Porphyry’s
concern is not with the finer points of Roman enfranchisement; rather, he
intends to draw attention to Paul’s protean ability to pass as Roman, Jew,
or anything else depending on the circumstance. Paul’s slippage from Jew
to Roman, along with his geographic migration (albeit under armed
guard) from Caesarea to Rome, may have reminded Porphyry of his own
move from Tyre to Rome. Even the geography is similar; Caesarea lies
just south of Tyre on the Phoenician coast. But whereas Porphyry erased
his provincial origins to become a scion of Rome’s metropolitan culture,
Paul passed as a Roman only to infiltrate the imperial capital with his
barbaric doctrines. For Porphyry, Paul’s identity play does not signal a
transcendence of provincialism, but a dangerous form of miscegenation:
He who says “I am a Jew” and “I am a Roman” is neither, because he
inclines both ways. . . . Wearing a mask of deception, besieging the
thoughts of the soul with ambivalence, and enslaving the simpleminded with
magical arts, he beguiles plain reality and robs the truth. . . . If Paul,
playing his roles, is a Jew then a Roman, someone without the Law then a
Greek, and whenever he wishes is something foreign and hostile to
something else, then by assuming each identity he renders each impotent,
taking away the distinct identity of each with flattery.152
148. 1 Cor 9.19–23.
149. Apocr. 3.30.3 (= Harnack fr. 27) (text and French trans. in Goulet, Macarios).
150. Apocr. 3.31.1 (= Harnack fr. 28).
151. Acts 23.26; 25.10–12.
152. Apocr. 3.31.4 (= Harnack fr. 28).
308 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
Paul’s mimicry of Roman and Greek renders traditional categories of
identity sterile, reducing imperial geography to absurdity. Porphyry responds
by turning Paul into a joke: “Such acrobatics! These theatrics
adorn such laughable scenes!”153 Using theatrical metaphors, Porphyry
turns Paul into a fool whose subversion is really nothing more than a
comic fiction.
To his chagrin, Porphyry saw contemporary Christians engaged in the
same hucksterism as Paul. Eusebius quotes a fascinating fragment of
Against the Christians in which Porphyry denounces the Christian exegete
Origen.154 Porphyry claims that Origen was a student of Ammonius
Saccas, who had also been Plotinus’ teacher, and even claims to have met
153. Apocr. 3.30.2 (= Harnack fr. 27).
154. Scholars continue to disagree about the identities of the “Origens” in
Porphyry’s treatises. In Vita Plotini 3 and 20 (Henry and Schwyzer, 3–5, 23–27),
Porphyry identifies an “Origen” (Origen the Neoplatonist, author of a treatise On
Demons that has been lost) as Plotinus’ compatriot in the school of Ammonius
Saccas. Although some have attempted to identify this Origen with the Christian
exegete, the two Origens are distinct. In the passage of Against the Christians
preserved by Eusebius (HE 6.19.5–8 [GCS n.f. 6:556–60]), Porphyry clearly and
unambiguously refers to the Christian exegete. Confusion arises because Porphyry
also identifies the Christian exegete as a disciple of Ammonius (ekroatOw gar otow
EAmmvn.ou . . .). Some scholars have argued that Porphyry was confused about the
identities of the two Origens (R. Goulet, “Porphyre, Ammonius, les Deux Origénes et
les Autres,” Revue de l’Histoire de Philosophie et Religion 57 [1977]: 471–96), while
other scholars have argued that Porphyry conflated multiple Ammonii (Heinrich
Dörrie, “Ammonios, der Lehrer Plotins,” Hermes 83 [1955]: 439–77; and Mark
Edwards, “Ammonius, Teacher of Origen,” JEH 44 [1993]: 1–13). Wolfram Kinzig,
“War der Neuplatoniker Porphyrios ursprünglich Christ?” in Mousopolos Stephanos:
Festschrift für Herwig Görgemanns, ed. M. Baumbach, H. Köhler, and A. M. Ritter
(Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1998), 320–32, has also explored the
identity of the Origens in the context of later traditions that make Porphyry an
apostate Christian who had made the acquaintance of the Christian Origen. On the
other hand, Pier Franco Beatrice, “Porphyry’s Judgement on Origen,” in Origeniana
Quinta: Historica, text and method, biblica, philosophica, theologica, Origenism and
later developments. Papers of the 5th International Origen Congress, Boston College,
14–18 August 1989, ed. R. J. Daly (Leuven: Peeters, 1992), 351–67, maintains that
Porphyry has not confused two Origens, but in fact had direct knowledge of Origen
during a sojourn to Caesarea early in Porphyry’s career. Beatrice argues that the
aspersions Eusebius casts on the veracity of Porphyry’s account owe more to the
polemical character of Eusebius’ own citation of Porphyry than to an objective
critique of Porphyry’s remarks. Whatever the “historical” value of Porphyry’s
remarks, it is absolutely clear that Porphyry intends to refer to the Christian exegete.
Any “confusion” of Origens or Ammonius may well be the result of Porphyry’s own
deliberate polemical machinations, rather than “forgetfulness” or “confusion.” It is
quite clear that Porphyry is mentioning both Ammonius and the Christian Origen to
draw a polemical comparison between them, not to offer an objective historical
commentary.
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 309
Origen.155 Porphyry acknowledges that Origen was highly conversant in
the same philosophical traditions that influenced his own philosophy:
He [Origen] was always consorting with Plato, and he was conversant in
the writings of Numenius and Cronius, Apollophanes and Longinus, and
Moderatus, Nicomachus, and the distinguished men among the
Pythagoreans; he used the book of Chaeremon the Stoic and Cornutus,
from whom he learned figurative interpretation, as employed in the Greek
mysteries, but he applied it to the Jewish writings.156
It is not Origen’s interest in barbarian wisdom (in itself) that is objectionable.
What Porphyry found insufferable was Origen’s use of Porphyry’s
own “Greek” interpretive strategies to replace Greek philosophy with a
“foreign” tradition. Porphyry assures his readers (and himself) that Origen
was nothing more than a fool whose research into barbarian wisdom
lacked the necessary critical acumen. Porphyry confronts the problem of
Christian identity by drawing a contrast between Ammonius and Origen:
For Ammonius was a Christian, brought up in Christian doctrine by his
parents; yet when he began to think and study philosophy, he immediately
changed his way of life conformably to the laws; but Origen, a Greek
educated in Greek learning, drove headlong towards barbarian recklessness;
. . . and while his manner of life was Christian [kata m￠n tUn b.on
Xristian≪w z≪n] and contrary to the law, in his opinions about material
things and the Deity he played the Greek, and introduced Greek ideas into
foreign fables [•llhn.zvn te ka‹ ta NEllAnvn to›w Uyne.oiw IpoballOmenow
mEyoiw].157
In Porphyry’s account, both Ammonius and Origen straddle the supposedly
fixed gulf between Greek and barbarian. In Porphyry’s staunchly
polarized world, however, such hybridity threatened the carefully constructed,
hierarchical dichotomy between Greeks and others. Ammonius
resolved this identity crisis by opting for the better (Greek) option. It is
not accidental that Ammonius’ transformation from Christian to Greek
parallels Porphyry’s own abandonment of the provinces for Athens and
Rome. Origen, on the other hand, is merely playacting. Though Origen
and other Christians may hide their barbarism behind the mask of Greek
language and reading practices, Porphyry can see through this disguise.
155. HE 6.19.5 (GCS n.f. 6:558). Among those who argue for the authenticity of
Porphyry’s meeting with Origen, see Beatrice, “Porphyry’s Judgement,” 351–67.
156. HE 6.19.8 (GCS n.f. 6:560).
157. Contra Christianos fr. 39 (Harnack, 64–65) (= HE 6.19.5–9; trans. J. E. H.
Oulton, Eusebius: Ecclesiastical History, Books VI–X, LCL [Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1932], 59, emphasis added).
310 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
The anti-Christian oracles in Philosophy from Oracles are of a piece
with this attack on Christian identity. The oracles fall into two general
categories: comparisons of Christianity with Judaism and oracles concerning
Christian worship of Jesus. The first of these anti-Christian oracles
is preserved in the nineteenth book of Augustine’s City of God. Porphyry
reports an oracle of Apollo in response to a pagan man who wishes to
know how he should deal with a Christian wife. It is futile to make an
apostate of a wife who has turned to Christianity, Apollo prophesizes:
“Let her go as she pleases, persisting in her vain delusions, singing in
lamentation for a god who died in delusions, who was condemned by
right-thinking judges, and killed in hideous fashion by the worst of
deaths.”158 This oracle repeats a stock anti-Christian polemic. Pagan critics
of Christianity often denigrated what they saw as the worship of a
crucified criminal. But according to Augustine, Porphyry followed this
oracle with a comparison of Christian and Jewish worship. First, Porphyry
asserts that the oracle indicated not only the “incurability” of the
Christians, but also “that the Jews uphold god more than the Christians.”
159 Porphyry, it will be remembered, ranked the “Hebrews” among
the peoples who had “learned the ways of the blessed.”160 Augustine
claims that Porphyry “denigrate[s] Christ in preferring the Jews to the
Christians.”161 Augustine then quotes again from Porphyry’s compilation,
this time citing an oracle that locates elements of universal philosophy
within Judaism: “Truly, at god, the begetter and king before all, the
heavens and earth and sea and the hidden places of the underworld
tremble and the daimones themselves shudder; their law is the father
whom the holy Hebrews honor.”162 It appears that Porphyry wished to
draw a distinction between the Jews, whose traditions contain elements
of universal validity, and the Christians, who in his estimation worship a
mere human. The Jews might be provincials, but the Christians were even
worse, for Jewish traditions, at least, evinced some aspects of universal
truth. Judaism was perfectly acceptable to Porphyry because it was the
158. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 343F, lines 8–16 (Smith, 392–93) (= De Civ. Dei 19.23;
trans. Bettenson, City of God, 884–85).
159. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 343F (Smith, 392–93) (= De Civ. Dei. 19.23; trans.
Bettenson, City of God, 885).
160. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 323F (Smith, 371) (= PE 9.10.1–2).
161. Augustine De Civ. Dei 19.23 (trans. Bettenson, City of God, 885).
162. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 344F (Smith, 393) (= De Civ. Dei 19.23, 30–37); note that
Lactantius, De ira Dei 23.12, preserves the same oracle in Greek: §w d￠ yeUn basil∞a
ka‹ §w genet∞ra prU pantvn, ˘n trom°ei ka‹ ga›a ka‹ oEranUw }d￠ yalassa tartareo.
te muxo‹ ka‹ da.monew §rr.gasin.
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 311
ancestral tradition of a distinct people. This sort of locatedness assured
that Porphyry could easily “map” Jews into his ecumenical philosophy.
Straddling the border between Greek and barbarian, however, Christians
disavowed any cultural or geographic rootedness.
In order to reposition Christianity within his ecumenical philosophy,
Porphyry took a somewhat radical approach. If some of Porphyry’s oracles
of Apollo reiterate standard criticisms of Christianity, Porphyry’s second
anti-Christian oracle is something quite different among anti-Christian
polemics. “That which we are about to say may appear to be paradoxical
to some,” Porphyry boasts, “for the gods declared Christ to be most
pious and to have become immortal, and they remember him with
praise.”163 While “Apollo” had uttered a standard denigration of Jesus,
“Hecate” appears to praise Christ as a wise man whose soul has become
immortal after death.164 Hecate’s opinion of Christ is quite different from
that of other anti-Christian polemicists. Most of these polemicists preferred
to disparage Christ in comparison with pagan holy men. Hierocles,
for example, focused his Lover of Truth around a negative comparison of
Jesus with Apollonius of Tyana. Some have argued that Porphyry uses the
Hecatean oracle to establish a kind of entente with the Christians, that is,
on condition that they recognize their error in deifying Jesus and recognize
that he in fact preached the one true religious philosophy shared by
all people of good common sense.165
Though the oracle is preserved by both Eusebius and Augustine, Eusebius
edits the oracle so as to obscure Porphyry’s polemical intentions.166 Eusebius
softens the oracle by excising lines that are much more critical of Christ
and Christianity. Augustine, however, preserves these important lines:
Now that soul of which we speak gave a fatal gift to other souls, . . . that
fatal gift is entanglement in error. That is why they [Christians] were hated
by the gods, because not being fated to know god or to receive gifts from
the gods, they were given by this man the fatal gift of entanglement in error.
For all that, he himself was devout and, like other devout men, passed into
heaven. And so you shall not slander him, but pity the insanity of men.
From him comes for them a ready peril of headlong disaster.167
163. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 345F (Smith, 395–98) (= Eusebius DE 3.7.1); and compare
fr. 345aF (Smith, 395–98) (= De Civ. Dei. 19.23).
164. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 345aF, line 34 (Smith, 397) (= De Civ. Dei 19.23).
165. Wilken, Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 152–53.
166. Michael Bland Simmons, Arnobius of Sicca. Religious Conflict and Competition
in the Age of Diocletian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 222–29.
167. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 345aF, lines 46–60 (Smith, 397) (= De Civ. Dei 19.23; trans.
Bettenson, City of God, 886).
312 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
In its reluctant acceptance of Jesus as a blessed soul at the same time that
it impugns Christians and Christianity, this was an insidiously effective
polemic. Instead of rejecting Jesus out of hand, Hecate usurps the very
object of Christian worship. By assimilating the founder of Christianity
within his universal philosophy, Porphyry makes Jesus innocuous. Christ
becomes one more entry in Porphyry’s encyclopedic collection of foreign
sages, another example of the liberation of the soul—a path open to all
who can understand the philosophy to be gained from oracles (or all
those who can understand Porphyry’s Philosophy from Oracles).
It was bad enough that Christians placed their hope of salvation in a
mere human being; it was worse that Christians claimed this man as the
sole and universal source of salvation. In reality, Porphyry argued, Jesus
was as mortal as any other human being, and like other souls, Jesus’ soul
was rewarded with immortality only because it had achieved wisdom.168
This misperception about Jesus’ true identity was symptomatic of a confusion
Porphyry thought endemic to Christianity, and Porphyry intended
to put Christians back in their place. The Hecatean oracle helped Porphyry
disabuse Christians of their misplaced universal claims about Jesus.
Similarly, if Christians denied that they were reducible to the hierarchical
differences on which Porphyry’s authority and privilege as a Greek philosopher
in the Roman Empire depended, if they claimed to be neither
Jew nor Greek, Porphyry took it upon himself to remind them that they
were really nothing other than a group of Greeks and barbarians confused
about their own identities.
CONCLUSION
Diocletian’s conservative religious policies were aimed at securing and
revitalizing the empire through the revival of tradition.169 Galerius’ edict
ending the persecution in 311 c.e confirms that concern for tradition was
one of the principal reasons for beginning the persecution eight years
earlier: Christians had “abandoned the way of life of their own fathers.”170
The notion that the safety and success of the empire depended on the
traditional worship of the gods was shared by emperors and intellectuals.
168. Phil. ex Orac. fr. 345aF, lines 22–39 (Smith, 396–97) (= De Civ. Dei 19.23);
and see Simmons, Arnobius, 226–27.
169. For a brief discussion of Diocletian’s conservative policies, see W. H. C. Frend,
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1965), 477–81. For an in-depth discussion, see Williams, Diocletian.
170. HE 8.17.6 (GCS n.f. 6:792; trans. N. Baynes, “The Great Persecution,” in
Cambridge Ancient History [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939; repr.,
1989], 12:672).
SCHOTT/PORPHYRY ON CHRISTIANS 313
An anonymous panegyrist captured this sentiment in an oration in praise
of Diocletian’s co-Augustus, Maximian: “You have earned, best of Emperors,
that felicity of yours by your piety.”171 Porphyry, however, was a
philosopher and man of letters whose polemics are focused on philological
and historical critiques of Christian texts. If Porphyry had anything in
common with the persecution hawks in Diocletian’s court, some argue, it
was only this shared distaste for the Christian neglect of tradition.172 In
his Letter to Marcella, Porphyry echoes Maximian’s panegyrist: “This is
the greatest fruit of piety—to honor the divine according to ancestral
custom.”173 According to Eusebius, moreover, Porphyry’s rationale for
the forced repression of Christianity stressed the relationship between the
social good and traditional piety: “How are those who reject the ancestral
gods, on account of whom every people and every city has endured, not in
all ways impious and atheists?”174 Porphyry, of course, had his own
rationale for supporting tradition. While the simpleminded might cultivate
piety merely to avoid the wrath of neglected gods, Porphyry thought
that traditional religion was of real benefit to the worshiper.175 By adhering
to tradition, the human soul progressed in virtue and became more
like God;176 this was the sort of cultivation that made cities and peoples
endure.
There was no point-for-point correlation between the “official” grounds
for persecution and any given individual’s reasons for supporting the
persecution. At the same time, we should be wary of the tendency to
distinguish between “pure” academic or religious discourses and the
overtly political discourse of imperial edicts. To do so ignores the political
reality in which an intellectual like Porphyry operated.177 Porphyry and
171. Panegyrici Latini 11.18.5 (text and trans. in C. E. V. Nixon and B. S. Rodgers,
In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini [Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1994], 102).
172. Bidez, Porphyre, 67–68; reiterated by Baynes, “Great Persecution,” 660; and
Beatrice, “Towards a New Edition,” 355.
173. Ad Marc. 18 (Nauck, 286).
174. PE 1.2.2 (GCS 43:8).
175. Ad Marc. 18 (Nauck, 286): “The altars of God, when consecrated, do no
harm, but when they are neglected, they do no good, either.”
176. Ad Marc. 19 (Nauck, 286–87): “Neither many sacrifices nor numerous
offerings honor God, but the finely established god-filled intellect is joined to God, for
it is necessary that like return to like.”
177. “. . . the general liberal consensus that ‘true’ knowledge is fundamentally nonpolitical
(and conversely, that overtly political knowledge is not ‘true’ knowledge)
obscures the highly if obscurely organized political circumstances obtaining when
knowledge is produced” (Edward Said, Orientalism [New York: Vintage, 1978; repr.,
1994], 10).
314 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
the emperors perceived the Christians as a threat to imperial order, an
order that depended on stark contrasts between ruler and ruled, metropolis
and province. Christians, so similar to Greek philosophers at the same
time that they seemed so entirely barbaric, transgressed these boundaries.
If Christians claimed to be neither Jew nor Greek, they would be put
back in their place. As Lactantius saw it, for instance, officials such as
Hierocles persecuted the Christians “as though he had subjugated a barbarian
people.”178 In Porphyry’s estimation, Christians had done more
than reject tradition; they had exchanged their ancestral gods in favor of
barbaric traditions:
To what punishments may fugitives from ancestral customs, who have
become zealots for the foreign mythologies of the Jews which are slandered
by all [Uyne.vn ka‹ para pcsi diabeblhm°nvn EIoudaik≪n muyologhmatvn
genOmenoi zhlvta.;], not be subjected? How is it not extremely depraved
and reckless to exchange native traditions [tU metay°syai . . . t≪n ofike.vn]
casually and take up, with unreasonable and unreflective faith, those of the
impious enemies of all peoples?179
Porphyry has chosen his words carefully. The antonyms Uyne.ow and
ofike.ow stress the differences between the traditions of one’s home city and
those of outsiders. Not a common word, Uyne.ow connotes an otherness
that is hostile and dangerous as well as “foreign.” Porphyry ascribed the
same sort of “foreignness” to Paul’s masquerade and Origen’s misguided
interpretive practices.180 He can tolerate a Jewish Paul or a Greek Origen,
but he cannot abide either’s attempts to pass as something else. Porphyry’s
vocabulary betrays his anxiety over Christian transgressions of identity at
the same time that it reasserts a difference between center and periphery.
As Christians “cut some sort of new directionless desert path, keeping
neither to the ways of the Greeks or the Jews,”181 Porphyry welcomed the
use of imperial force as a means to give teeth to his verbal efforts to
reestablish imperial geography in the face of its desertification at the
hands of the Christians.
Jeremy M. Schott is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
178. Inst. Div. 5.11.15 (CSEL 19:435).
179. PE 1.2.3 (GCS 43:9) (= Contra Christianos fr. 1).
180. Paul: ı polAw §n t“ l°gein Asper t≪n ofike.vn lOgvn §pilayOmenOw . . . ktl.
(Apocr. 3.31.1 [= Contra Christianos fr. 28]); Origen: ta NEllAnvn to›w Uyne.oiw
EpoballOmenow mEyoiw (HE 6.19.7 [= Contra Christianos fr. 39]).
181. PE 1.2.4 (GCS 43:9) (= Contra Christianos fr. 1).