Roger Pearse

I see from this that some confusion has arisen in that article over who said what onmy page containing various citations on the subject.

Would someone let Mr. Doherty know that the page as a whole is by me, and so all non-indented material is mine? The authors quoted are all indented. So (for instance) Hardwick has no association with the material I quote from the Chronica Tertullianea et Cyprianea (CTC).

Do other people find that format confusing?

I ought to add a link to Petr Kitzler's article on Czech Scholarship on Tertullian in which he makes the same statement, based on the HLL (see note 21: Heck, E., M. Minucius Felix. In: HLL (Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike) 4, München 1997, § 485, p. 512.)

The philological discussion appears to be in C. Becker, "Der Octavius des Minucius Felix", SBBayer, hft. 2 (Munich, 1967). (My apologies for getting the footnotes in a twist).

I'm not a Minucius specialist so I don't pretend to know authoritatively. But Mr. Doherty's argument requires it to be closed, and closed in the direction of a second century date, and this, clearly, is not the case.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Vorkosigan

That's the reason I relied on the perceptions of others of what the text said, at least in part.

Steven Carr

Doherty writes '...why in his adaptation of Tertullian's Apology would the author of Minucius Felix cut out every reference to an historical Jesus....'

It is a good question , if you suppose that Tertullian came first and Felix adapted him.

Steven Carr

'For in that you attribute to our religion the worship of a criminal and his cross, you wander far from the neighbourhood of the truth, in thinking either that a criminal deserved, or that an earthly being was able, to be believed God.'

Seems pretty conclusive to me that Felix did not think that a being on earth was able to be God.


'The Egyptians certainly choose out a man for themselves whom they may worship; him alone they propitiate; him they consult about all things; to him they slaughter victims; and he who to others is a god, to himself is certainly a man whether he will or no, for he does not deceive his own consciousness, if he deceives that of others. Moreover, a false flattery disgracefully caresses princes and kings, not as great and chosen men, as is just, but as gods; whereas honour is more truly rendered to an illustrious man, and love is more pleasantly given to a very good man.'

And here Felix pointedly compares the worship the Egyptians give for a man, with what they should give for the man they had chosen - honour and love, but not worship.

But GDon takes 'honour' and 'love' and just ignores the obvious fact that Felix has very very pointedly not used 'worship'.

Egyptians worship men. They should not, as men can only be honoured and loved, not worshipped.

GDon writes ' M.Felix is defending the sign of the cross as a symbol of worship, noting that pagans also worship the sign of the cross: Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor wish for.'

I have no idea how GDon can parse the sentence 'Crosses , moreover, we neither worship nor wish for' as a defense of worshipping crosses. This does not compute.

'Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor wish for. You, indeed, who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods. For your very standards, as well as your banners; and flags of your camp, what else are they but crosses glided and adorned? Your victorious trophies not only imitate the appearance of a simple cross, but also that of a man affixed to it. We assuredly see the sign of a cross, naturally, in the ship when it is carried along with swelling sails, when it glides forward with expanded oars; and when the military yoke is lifted up, it is the sign of a cross; and when a man adores God with a pure mind, with handsoutstretched. Thus the sign of the cross either is sustained by a natural reason, or your own religion is formed with respect to it.'

Felix points out that when a man adores God , he forms a cross, but this is just natural , in the way that crosses appear everywhere in nature.

He doesn't think the sign of the cross is a special sign, denoting a crucified person, it just occurs naturally when you stretch out your arms to God.

What on earth would be the point of his defending the cross as being a symbol of a crucified man, by saying that the cross was used in other religions?

The pagans would laugh themselves silly at the idea of someone claiming that it was OK to worship somebody killed on a cross, because a cross sign was used in their religions. They would retort that they used the symbol to mean a rather different thing.

It would be like Felix defending Christianity against the then current charge of drinking blood by pointing out that quite a few pagan symbols had red in them.

What did Gasukei Don make of 'Thus the sign of the cross either is sustained by a natural reason, or your own religion is formed with respect to it.'

Felix is saying that the sign of the cross just occurs naturally (because when stretching your arms out to God you have no choice but to make a cross), or that the cross has no more reference to crucifixion than the many crosses in pagan religions.

As GDon writes 'So, the sign of the cross is formed when ‘a man adores God with a pure mind, with handsoutstretched’.

So Felix thinks the sign of the cross is used by Christians, not to remember how their Lord and Saviour died, but instead to approach God with a pure mind.

GakuseiDon

Doherty's rebuttal appears to be mostly a restating of his position, with some new points thrown in. I'll be working on a reply to his rebuttal over the next few months.

Doherty still seems to imply that the second century apologists wrote in an information vacuum, as though we should assume that they were writing as if the pagans were unacquainted with Christians beliefs. Given that most (if not all) of his "MJ apologists" wrote after 160 CE, this is very unlikely. Tatian wrote:

We do not act as fools, O Greeks, nor utter idle tales, when we announce that God was born in the form of a man. I call on you who reproach us to compare your mythical accounts with our narrations.

Does anyone seriously doubt that Tatian is referring to the Gospels when he talks about "our narrations"? And that he appears to assume that the pagans were familiar with, or at least had access to, these "narrations"?

FYI to Steven Carr: I actually have you on my ignore list, so I'm afraid I won't be responding to your posts. Anyone else is welcomed to present any points you bring up, if they are willing to own them.

Johnny Skeptic

Why did you put Steven on your ignore list, Gakusei Don?

GakuseiDon

I stress that this is my own opinion: Too many polemic statements, not enough debate. IMHO he is obsessed with JP Holding. He tends to post by deliberately (IMO) making a series of vaguely related statements, rather than presenting an argument (IMHO, of course). I just feel that he generally doesn't add to the debate. I also have Chili on ignore for the same reason. Anyway, I've mentioned this to Steve previously. If you don't mind, I'll leave it at that.

Steven Carr

Guess we will never know why Felix said that the Egyptians worship a man, yet the most that can be given to an illustrious man is love and honour, and that an earthly being could never be god.

What did Tertullian mean in Ad Nationes when he wrote 'But in your case, by being necessarily ignorant of the sect, through your ignorance of its founder, or else by not taking a fair survey of the founder, because you make no inquiry into his sect, you fasten merely on the name, just as if you vilified in it both sect and founder, whom you know nothing of whatever....'

Was he really writing in the way a MJer would,when he invited people to find out more about the founder , after whom Christianity was named?


And I really puzzled over GDons approving quote of Karen Armstrong ' As Karen Armstrong points out in her book "The History of God", the Roman ethos was strictly conservative, and Christians were regarded with contempt as a sect of fanatics who had committed the cardinal sin of breaking with the parent faith.'

Which pagan ever thought Christians had committed a sin by breaking with the parent faith?

Steven Carr

What Gasukei Don writes about Tatian on the resurrection is interesting 'Tatian response is orthodox: “Even though fire destroy all traces of my flesh, the world receives the vaporized matter; and though dispersed through rivers and seas, or torn in pieces by wild beasts, I am laid up in the storehouses of a wealthy Lord�.'

The *world* received the vaporized matter, *something else* is laid up in the storehouses of a weathly Lord. All traces of flesh are destroyed.

How can this be reconciled with a claim that Christians taught that a resurrected body had the material it had before, but transformed?

How can God transform something of which all traces had been destroyed? Surely the Lord would have to create something that had been destroyed?

Whatever Christians believed about resurrection, they did not believe that God would resurrect flesh , something received by the world and destroyed.

andrewcriddle

Even if Minucius Felix is prior to Tertullian he is almost certainly later than 160 and probably later than 170.

At this date the absence of statements about the Historical Jesus is almost certainly a matter of deliberate choice and not a result of ignorance of the existence of any such accounts.

Hence we can say reasonably confidently that Minucius Felix (whatever his date) was for whatever reason deliberately avoiding making statements about the Historical Jesus.

Hence if he was to make use of Tertullian's Apology he would quite likely edit it in this way.

On the general issue: Minucius Felix is a heavily derivative writer making heavy use of Seneca and Cicero. Tertullian is a very original writer. It is prima facie more probable that Minucius Felix would copy Tertullian than vice versa.

Andrew Criddle