Malachi151

I was doing research yesterday for an article I am writing and I came across an dinteresting 2nd century Christian document.

This early Christian document reveals that the early Christians ritually sacrificed infants and ate them. The same document, from 197 AD, also reveals that the "Christians" worshiped the cross without any relation to the Christ myth, lending support to the idea that even the crucifixion itself is a myth, that was made up to explain why the Christians worshiped the cross.

This document is a reply to the "pagan" accusations against the Christians. At the time the Greeks and Romans would allow infants to die once they were born if the infant was either unhealthy or they didn't want the child. The most common practice was to drown the infant immediately after birth. Tertullian, the Christian, compares this practice with their practice of ritual sacrifice and eating of babies. He claims that it is better to eat a baby than to just kill it because in this way the Christians are killing the infant for God (not because of sexual impropriety) and the "blood" of the infant is passed on to a living person where it can "continue to live".

Ad Nationes by Tertullian, 197 CE:

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/03061.htm

The charge of infanticide retorted on the heathen.

Since we are on a par in respect of the gods, it follows that there is no difference between us on the point of sacrifice, or even of worship, if I may be allowed to make good our comparison from another sort of evidence. We begin our religious service, or initiate our mysteries, with slaying an infant. As for you, since your own transactions in human blood and infanticide have faded from your memory, you shall be duly reminded of them in the proper place; we now postpone most of the instances, that we may not seem to be everywhere handling the selfsame topics. Meanwhile, as I have said, the comparison between us does not fail in another point of view. For if we are infanticides in one sense, you also can hardly be deemed such in any other sense; because, although you are forbidden by the laws to slay new-born infants, it so happens that no laws are evaded with more impunity or greater safety, with the deliberate knowledge of the public, and the suffrages of this entire age. Yet there is no great difference between us, only you do not kill your infants in the way of a sacred rite, nor (as a service) to God. But then you make away with them in a more cruel manner, because you expose them to the cold and hunger, and to wild beasts, or else you get rid of them by the slower death of drowning. If, however, there does occur any dissimilarity between us in this matter, you must not overlook the fact that it is your own dear children whose life you quench; and this will supplement, nay, abundantly aggravate, on your side of the question, whatever is defective in us on other grounds. Well, but we are said to sup off our impious sacrifice! Whilst we postpone to a more suitable place whatever resemblance even to this practice is discoverable amongst yourselves, we are not far removed from you in voracity. If in the one case there is unchastity, and in ours cruelty, we are still on the same footing (if I may so far admit our guilt) in nature, where cruelty is always found in concord with unchastity. But, after all, what do you less than we; or rather, what do you not do in excess of us? I wonder whether it be a small matter to you to pant for human entrails, because you devour full-grown men alive? Is it, forsooth, only a trifle to lick up human blood, when you draw out the blood which was destined to live? Is it a light thing in your view to feed on an infant, when you consume one wholly before it is come to the birth?

[Meaning, why is is bad to eat a baby since babies come from inside us anyway?]

The charge of worshipping a cross.

The heathens themselves made much of crosses in sacred things; nay, their very idols were formed on a crucial frame. As for him who affirms that we are "the priesthood of a cross," we shall claim him as our co-religionist. A cross is, in its material, a sign of wood; amongst yourselves also the object of worship is a wooden figure. Only, whilst with you the figure is a human one, with us the wood is its own figure. Never mind for the present what is the shape, provided the material is the same: the form, too, is of no importance, if so be it be the actual body of a god. If, however, there arises a question of difference on this point what, (let me ask,) is the difference between the Athenian Pallas, or the Pharian Ceres, and wood formed into a cross, when each is represented by a rough stock, without form, and by the merest rudiment of a statue of unformed wood? Every piece of timber which is fixed in the ground in an erect position is a part of a cross, and indeed the greater portion of its mass. But an entire cross is attributed to us, with its transverse beam, of course, and its projecting seat. Now you have the less to excuse you, for you dedicate to religion only a mutilated imperfect piece of wood, while others consecrate to the sacred purpose a complete structure. The truth, however, after all is, that your religion is all cross, as I shall show. You are indeed unaware that your gods in their origin have proceeded from this hated cross. Now, every image, whether carved out of wood or stone, or molten in metal, or produced out of any other richer material, must needs have had plastic hands engaged in its formation. Well, then, this modeller, before he did anything else, hit upon the form of a wooden cross, because even our own body assumes as its natural position the latent and concealed outline of a cross. Since the head rises upwards, and the back takes a straight direction, and the shoulders project laterally, if you simply place a man with his arms and hands outstretched, you will make the general outline of a cross. Starting, then, from this rudimental form and prop, as it were, he applies a covering of clay, and so gradually completes the limbs, and forms the body, and covers the cross within with the shape which he meant to impress upon the clay; then from this design, with the help of compasses and leaden moulds, he has got all ready for his image which is to be brought out into marble, or clay, or whatever the material be of which he has determined to make his god. (This, then, is the process after the cross-shaped frame, the clay; after the clay, the god. In a well-understood routine, the cross passes into a god through the clayey medium. The cross then you consecrate, and from it the consecrated (deity) begins to derive his origin. By way of example, let us take the case of a tree which grows up into a system of branches and foliage, and is a reproduction of its own kind, whether it springs from the kernel of an olive, or the stone of a peach, or a grain of pepper which has been duly tempered under ground. Now, if you transplant it, or take a cutting off its branches for another plant, to what will you attribute what is produced by the propagation? Will it not be to the grain, or the stone, or the kernel? Because, as the third stage is attributable to the second, and the second in like manner to the first, so the third will have to be referred to the first, through the second as the mean. We need not stay any longer in the discussion of this point, since by a natural law every kind of produce throughout nature refers back its growth to its original source; and just as the product is comprised in its primal cause, so does that cause agree in character with the thing produced. Since, then, in the production of your gods, you worship the cross which originates them, here will be the original kernel and grain, from which are propagated the wooden materials of your idolatrous images. Examples are not far to seek. Your victories you celebrate with religious ceremony as deities; and they are the more august in proportion to the joy they bring you. The frames on which you hang up your trophies must be crosses: these are, as it were, the very core of your pageants. Thus, in your victories, the religion of your camp makes even crosses objects of worship; your standards it adores, your standards are the sanction of its oaths; your standards it prefers before Jupiter himself, But all that parade of images, and that display of pure gold, are (as so many) necklaces of the crosses. in like manner also, in the banners and ensigns, which your soldiers guard with no less sacred care, you have the streamers (and) vestments of your crosses. You are ashamed, I suppose, to worship unadorned and simple crosses.

GakuseiDon

You'll find similar accusations by pagans against Christians in a number of sources in the Second Century. I compiled snippets of some of the accusations and where they can be found here:

Atheism - Justin, M. Felix, Athenagoras
Incestuous love feasts - Tertullian, Celsus, Athenagoras, Theophilus
Consuming human flesh, in particular that of an infant's - Tertullian, M. Felix, Theophilus
Secret rites - Celsus, M. Felix
Use of a dog in ceremonies - Tertullian, M. Felix
Worship of an asses head - Tertullian, M. Felix

Vorkosigan

Eating of babies seems to be an exotic something that the Despised Other does. Everyone gets it attributed to them by their enemies. Remember the flap about people in China eating babies a couple of years ago?

Michael

Malachi151

Yes, but this is a defense of the practice by a Christian, is it not?

GakuseiDon

Is it? In that case, it may be a good topic for a book for someone. Then, when it is ignored by scholars, the person can claim it is because the scholars are "afraid".

I think you'll find that Tertullian is pretending it is true in order to ridicule the idea. But then, I am a Christian, so it is possible I could be reading that into the text.

In "Ad nationes":

"Two hundred and fifty years, then, have not yet passed since our life began. During the interval there have been so many criminals; so many crosses have obtained immortality; so many infants have been slain; so many loaves steeped in blood; so many extinctions of candles; so many dissolute marriages. And up to the present time it is mere report which fights against the Christians. No doubt it has a strong support in the wickedness of the human mind, and utters its falsehoods with more success among cruel and savage men. For the more inclined you are to maliciousness, the more ready are you to believe evil; in short, men more easily believe the evil that is false, than the good which is true."

Malachi151

I still don't see how his writing can be read in any way other than as an admission of these practices. Please provide an explanation for his words that does not amount to an admission of these practices.

The only possibility is that the entire chapter on infanticide is written as a satire, but I don't find that credible.

As for the business of the cross. Here Tertullian has provided a lengthy explanation for why Christians worship a cross and he makes no mention at all of Christ. I find it impossible to believe that he would not have mentioned that Christians worship a cross because it was the implement of Christ's death if it was at that time believed that Christ died by crusifixion. This can only lead one to think that the myth of the crusifixion of Christ was not a part of Christian mythology at the time, and that it was later invented.

Roger Pearse

I don't think I need to comment on the suggestion that Tertullian is advocating cannibalism!

On the other hand, I was interested in the statement that the most common form of disposing of unwanted offspring was drowning. On what ancient sources is this based?

I don't understand why Tertullian could not write satirically, since he is notorious for doing just that. E.g.

Men of Carthage, ever princes of Africa, ennobled by ancient memories, blest with modern felicities -- I am glad to hear that life is so prosperous for you that you have time to amuse yourselves by regulating menswear. (De Pallio, 1:1, paraphrase).

This is a useful post, since it proves that people really can read Ad Nationes this way, as 'silence=proof Tertullian did not believe in Christianity'. Some of us pointed out long a go that the methodology used in Earl Doherty's thesis meant that if only Ad Nationes had survived then Mr. D. would be classing Tertullian, of all people, as a believer in a mythical Jesus. This was, if I recall correctly, hotly denied. So this post rather clearly shows why that methodology must produce hopelessly wrong results, whatever it is used on.

Ad Nationes is an early draft of the Apologeticum, and both were written in 197 AD.

All the best,

Roger Pearse
The Tertullian Project

Malachi151

Using satire is one thing, to write a complete refuatiation and never actually refute the claim is quite another.

If, for example, he had made all of the same statements, and then at the end said something like "Of course Christians never eat babies, are you insane", then yes I would say satire obviously, but in this case he states repeatedly that Christians do kill babies sacraficially, provides justification for it, and attempts to draw correlations with pagans to say "see, you do it too". He never, however, says that the claim is absurd or refutes it.

As for the cross, I never said that his comments were proof that he wasn't a Christian, I said that his account of Christain beliefs provides an explanation for the worship of the cross that has nothing to do with Christ.

It is also well documented, outside of this account, that religious groups were worshiping crosses in the Hellenistic world hundreds of years before Christianity, so that pretty well corresponds with his statement and with an evolutionary view of Christianity.

jgibson000

Could you please name these pre-Christian religious groups you say worshipped crosses? And, more importantly, could you provide us with some of the documentation you speak of?

Jeffrey

Amaleq13

How does he treat the other claims in the same text? If he treats them all the same, I would think your argument loses strength and the opposing view of satire gains.