Freethought & Rationalism Archive

stephan huller · 10-07-2011, 10:11 AM

But how did Christianity get to Scythia by 50 CE? Do you really believe there were churches in Scythia or with Scythian barbarians within twenty years of Jesus's crucifixion? Come on, that's ridiculous.

Iskander · 10-07-2011, 10:59 AM

There is no need for churches anywhere; it may simply refer to slaves from the black Sea that Paul had met in Anatolia

Paul may have been using that word as meaning nothing more precise that ‘gypsies and the like of them’ for anyone different from the usual crowd.

stephan huller · 10-07-2011, 12:05 PM

There seems to be some suggestion in Herodotus and Clement of Alexandria's reading of Herodotus that the Scythians were known for some sort of ritual transvestism.

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their transvestite androgyny fits very well the cult of Levantine Aphrodite Ourania so it is only natural that Greek travelers, observing the strange Scythian custom, deemed it appropriate to connect it with the eunuchs in service of the goddess (Halliday 1910/11: 99). 27 According to Clement of Alexandria, Anacharsis, having become emasculated in Greece, communicated the "female disease" to all Scythians (Protrept. 2.20). Herodotus related the story of Anacharsis' assassination in response to his attempt to introduce the cult of Meter Theon from Cyzicus: he performed her a nocturnal ritual in a land called Hylaia (Woodland), playing tympans, his dress covered with images (Her. 4.76). Clement stated that Anacharsis perished because of his piety towards Cybele of Pessinus. Thus, according to all the versions, Enareis are affiliated with an orgiastic cult of a Near Eastern fertility goddess, Aphrodite Ourania- Astarte, often scarcely distinct from Cybele and Meter. (Yulia Ustinova, The supreme gods of the Bosporan Kingdom p 78)

Now let's go back to the 'Scythian' caricature of Marcion and his followers in Tertullian:

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The sea called Euxine, or hospitable, is belied by its nature and put to ridicule by its name. Even its situation would prevent you from reckoning Pontus hospitable: as though ashamed of its own barbarism it has set itself at a distance from our more civilized waters. Strange tribes inhabit it—if indeed living in a wagon can be called inhabiting. These have no certain dwelling-place: their life is uncouth: their sexual activity is promiscuous, and for the most part unhidden even when they hide it: they advertise it by hanging a quiver on the yoke of the wagon, so that none may inadvertently break in. So little respect have they for their weapons of war. They carve up their fathers' corpses along with mutton, to gulp down at banquets. If any die in a condition not good for eating, their death is a disgrace. Women also have lost the gentleness, along with the modesty, of their sex. They display their breasts, they do their house-work with battle-axes, they prefer fighting to matrimonial duty. There is sternness also in the climate—never broad daylight, the sun always niggardly, the only air they have is fog, the whole year is winter, every wind that blows is the north wind. Water becomes water only by heating: rivers are no rivers, only ice: mountains are piled high up with snow: all is torpid, everything stark. Savagery is there the only thing warm—such savagery as has provided the theatre with tales of Tauric sacrifices, Colchian love-affairs, and Caucasian crucifixions.

Even so, the most barbarous and melancholy thing about Pontus is that Marcion was born there, more uncouth than a Scythian, more unsettled than a Wagon-dweller, more uncivilized than a Massagete, with more effrontery than an Amazon, darker than fog, colder than winter, more brittle than ice, more treacherous than the Danube, more precipitous than Caucasus. Evidently so, when by him the true Prometheus, God Almighty, is torn to bits with blasphemies. More ill-conducted also is Marcion than the wild beasts of that barbarous land: for is any beaver (= castor) more self-castrating than this man who has abolished marriage? What Pontic mouse is more corrosive than the man who has gnawed away the Gospels? Truly the Euxine has given birth to a wild animal more acceptable to philosophers than to Christians: that dog-worshipper Diogenes carried a lamp about at midday, looking to find a man, whereas Marcion by putting out the light of his own faith has lost the God whom once he had found. His followers cannot deny that his faith at first agreed with ours, for his own letter proves it: so that without further ado that man can be marked down as a heretic, or 'chooser', who, forsaking what had once been, has chosen for himself that which previously was not. For that which is of later importation must needs be reckoned heresy, precisely because that has to be considered truth which was delivered of old and from the beginning.

But a different work of mine will be found to maintain this thesis against heretics, that even without discussion of their doctrines they can be proved to be such by this standing rule concerning novelty. At present however, seeing that a contest cannot be refused—for there is sometimes a danger that frequent recourse to the short-cut of that standing rule may be put down to lack of confidence—I shall begin by sketching out my opponent's doctrine, so that no one may be unaware of this which is to be our principal matter of contention.

I have long noted that castration was one of the foremost features of both Alexandrian Church and Marcionitism. A short list of castration references associated with Marcion in the Church Fathers:

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1) More ill-conducted also is Marcion than the wild beasts of that barbarous land: for is any beaver (Lat. castror) more self-castrating than this man who has abolished
marriage? [Tert Against Marcion 1.1]

2) He [Marcion] contracts no marriages, nor recognizes them when contracted, refuses baptism except to the celibate or the eunuch, keeping it back until death or divorce. How then can you call his Christ a bridegroom? This title belongs to him who has joined together male and female, not to one who has put them asunder. [Tert Against Marcion 4. 11]

3) An outrageous thing, if that god is going to make us sons to himself, who by depriving us of matrimony has made it impossible for us to get sons for ourselves. How can he promote his own to that title which he has already abolished ? I cannot become the son of a eunuch, especially when I have for Father the same one whom all things have. For just as he who is the Creator of the universe is the Father of all things, so he who is the creator of no substance is but a eunuch. Even if the Creator had not conjoined the male and the female, even if he had not granted offspring to all living creatures whatsoever, I was in this relation to him before there was paradise, before there was sin, before the expulsion, before the two became one. [ibid 4.17]

4) Among that god's adherents no flesh is baptized except it be virgin or widowed or unmarried, or has purchased baptism by divorce: as though even eunuch's flesh was born of anything but marital intercourse. [Tert Against Marcion 1.29]

5) Can anyone indeed be called abstinent when deprived of that which he is to abstain from? Is there any temperance in eating and drinking during famine? Or any putting away of ambition in poverty? Or any bridling of passion in castration? [ibid]

6) Origen on "For there are eunuchs who were born so from their mother's womb... to: Let him who can grasp it, grasp it." Even Philo, in many of his writings on the Law of Moses, which are esteemed by reasonable men, says the following in the book that he titled: The Worse Loves to Attack the Better: "It is better to eunuchize oneself than to lust for unlawful cohabitation." But one must not believe them, because they have not understood the meaning of the holy scriptures in this case. For if self control is also included among the fruits "of the Spirit", along with love and joy and patience and the other virtues, then one must rather emphasize self control as a fruit and preserve the body made male by God, instead of risking something else, by which one would violate the instruction that, even taken literally, is very useful: "You must not destroy the appearance of your beard!" In order to deter people who are indeed warmed to the faith, but are still too new, and to whom one must concede that they have a love of abstinence, but one that is "not based on knowledge" , the following sentence is also suited: "When people fight with one another, one with his brother" etc., up to "then your eye should know no mercy for her". For if a hand that has grabbed the testicles of a man is cut off, why not also he who submitted himself to such a danger out of ignorance of the path that leads to abstinence? Thus whoever plans to take such a rash step, should consider what he will have to suffer from those who, while relying on the word: "No one crushed or cut off shall enter the congregation of the Lord!" and counting him among the ones who are cut off, will scorn him. And here I am not even talking about what a person may suffer temporarily from the fact that the seed is obstructed, which (as the students of the physicians say) drops from the head to the male organ and while dropping through the arteries brings forth on the cheeks due to its natural heat the hairs that grow around the chins of males.

These hairs are also taken away from those who think they have to eunuchize themselves physically for the kingdom of heaven's sake. But what will they suffer except that occasionally their heads become heavy from such substance or dizziness harms their understanding and confuses their imagination so that they picture unnatural things? But before I come to the interpretation of this verse, it has yet to be said that Marcion, if he had acted with a little consistency, when he prohibited allegorical interpretations of the scripture, would have rejected these verses too as having not been said by the Savior; he would have had to consider that one would either have to accept (if one says that the Savior said this) that the one who has become a believer should dare to subject himself obediently to such things, or else, if it is not right to risk something like that, because it gives a bad reputation to the Word, one would not be able to believe that these words come from the Savior unless they could be interpreted allegorically. [Origen Commentary on Matthew chapter 15] http://www.well.com/~aquarius/origen-matthew.htm

The identification of the Marcionites as castrated semi-barbarians like the 'Scythians' must have been responsible for the entire 'Marcion of Pontus' epithet. Marcion was not from Pontus, nor was the movement literally 'Scythian.' My guess is that it has something to do with the marsh-dwellers of the Nile (= Boucolia) near Alexandria being castrated Christian followers of Marcion. What other explanation is there? That Marcion and the Marcionites were literally from Scythia and Pontus?

stephan huller · 10-07-2011, 12:14 PM

From The Medical Works of Hippocrates, Oxford, 1950. Translated by John Chadwick and W.N. Mann,

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Further, the rich Scythians become eunuchs and perform women's tasks on an equal footing with them and talk in the same way. Such men they call Andrieis. The Scythians themselves attribute this to a divine visitation and hold such men in awe and reverence, because they fear for themselves. Indeed, I myself hold that this and all other diseases are equally of divine origin and none more divine nor more earthly than another. Each disease has a natural cause and nothing happens without a natural cause. My own explanation of this disability of the Scythians is this: as a result of horse-riding they are afflicted with varicosity of the veins because their feet are always hanging down from their mounts. This is followed by lameness and, in severe cases, those affected drag their hips. They treat themselves by their own remedy which is to cut the vein which runs behind each ear. The haemorrhage which follows causes weakness and sleep and after this some, but not all, awake cured. My own opinion is that such treatment is destructive of the semen owing to the existence of the vessels behind the ears, which, if cut, cause impotence and, it seems to me that these are the vessels they divide. Consequently when they come into the presence of their wives and find themselves impotent, they do not perhaps worry about it at first, but when after the second and third and more attempts the same thing happens, they conclude that they have sinned against the divinity whom they hold responsible for these things. They then accept their unmanliness and dress as women, act as women and join women in their toil. That it is the rich Scythians, those of the noblest blood and the greatest wealth, and not their inferiors, who suffer from this disease, is due to horse-riding. The poor suffer less because they do not ride. Yet, surely, if this disease is more to be considered a divine visitation than any other, it ought to affect not only the rich but everyone equally. Rather the poor should be specially liable to it if the gods really do delight in honours and the admiration of men and bestow favours in return. It is the rich who make frequent sacrifice and dedication to the gods because they have the means. The poor, being less well provided with goods, sacrifice less and accompany their prayers with complaint. Surely it is the poor and not the rich who should be punished for such sins. Really, of course, this disease is no more of 'divine' origin than any other. All diseases have a natural origin and this particular malady of the Scythians is no exception. The same thing happens in other races. Those who ride the most suffer most from varicose veins, pain in the hips and gout and they are the less able to perform their sexual functions. This is the fate of the Scythians. They are the most eunuchoid race of all mankind for the reasons I have given; and because they always wear trousers and spend so much of their time on horseback so that they do not handle their private parts, and, through cold and exhaustion, never have even the desire for sexual intercourse. Thus they have no sexual impulses in the period before they lose their virility.

This is very important. Marcion of 'Scythian' Pontus and Scythian of Alexandria must be one and the same person and the epithet derives from an early interest in ritual castration among heretical Christians especially in Egypt. I have never managed to figure this out before.

stephan huller · 10-07-2011, 12:20 PM

And we can already see one obvious spin off of this association with Scythian androgyny - the oft repeated claim that women wrongly took the roles properly assigned to men. Scythian society was always viewed as having greater gender equality since Herodotus because the savage climate was made to make men seem more like women and women seem more like men. http://books.google.com/books?id=BzM...chs&f=falseThe Marcionites were similarly attacked as promoting such a social ethos. Another translation of the above referenced passage from Hippocrates:

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Moreover, in addition to this [sc. the general problems of Scythian propagation], very many among the Scythians become impotent [literally, "eunuch-like"] and both work and converse just as women do; such men are called "Anarieis." Now the [Scythian] locals attribute the blame for this to a god, and revere and do obeisance to these men, fearing for themselves. http://books.google.com/books?id=UZF...ed=0CC0Q6AEwAA

Clearly this is the reason why Marcion and Marcionites were likened to Scythians. David c Hindley has part of the equation - yes it has something to do with 'laws.' Yet it goes further than that. There must have been some idea that God established equality of the sexes and the blurring of sexual roles. It was for this reason that Marcion of Alexandria was identified as 'Scythian.'

stephan huller · 10-07-2011, 12:37 PM

Here is Sebastian Moll's take on the jarring role that women played in the Marcionite churches:

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Something similar may in fact be true for the role women played in Marcion's community. The fact that Marcion gave women permission to hold office in his church is considered by Blackman to be a real innovation, but based on what we have observed so far about the similarities between the Church and Marcion's community, would it not be more reasonable to assume that Marcion was in this matter rather copying the Church, too? Harnack already maintained that it was perfectly common for women to hold offices in the Church up until the second century, and that the Church in fact only banned women from office in a deliberate opposition to the Marcionites, Gnostic and Montanists. While this particular reason for the abolition of female office holders may certainly be questioned, recent research has further strengthened the position that "with the increasing development of the monarchical episcopate and a Christian priesthood since the third century, there has been a strong resistance to women, particularly in priestly functions", but that "the frequently expressed opinion We should, however, not imagine the Church in the first two centuries to be some sort of Utopian society. Female office holders were in all probability the exception rather than the rule, both within the orthodox communities and in that there have never been women priests and bishops is not historically tenable" We should, however, not imagine the Church in the first two centuries to be some sort of Utopian society. Female office holders were in all probability the exception rather than the rule, both within the orthodox communities and in Marcion's church. Still, it seems likely that concerning the question of female office holders Marcion was, just as with the other issues regarding church constitution, rather conservative than innovative. [p. 125]

Yet the evidence now suggests quite the opposite. The epithet 'Scythian' must have been applied to Marcion by outsiders who saw his community in precisely the manner Moll denies - i.e. utopian and idealist in nature, arguing for a divinely sanctioned law which made men into women and women into men exactly as Greeks and Romans had noted about the Scythians. I also wonder if the famous Christian who became a pagan Ammonius Saca was called 'Sakas' not in the sense of 'sack cloth' but in the sense of Scythian (= Saca)

stephan huller · 10-07-2011, 12:42 PM

Interestingly also Scythians were also said to be vegetarians like the Marcionites:

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Ephorus's portrayal of the vegetarian Scythians and their meat-eating neighbors (including the Greeks) does not represent succession in time but contiguity in space. By describing the Scythians as vegetarians, Ephorus is distinguishing them for their justice and their simplicity of life. Although the Scythians lived far away, Ephorus was said to have actually visited them in an attempt to be empirically accurate. Ephorus's explicitness, however, should not blind us to the same ideas Homer implied in the happy lands, far, far away, ie, the golden age surviving in odd corners of the world. The Ethiopians to the south, the Hyperboreans and Thulians to the north, and the Islands of the Blessed to the west are cases in point. In fact, it seems fair to say that the qualities attributed to the mythological Hyperboreans are transferred by Ephorus to the not wholly unknown Scythians. [Daniel A. Dombrowski, the Philosophy of Vegetarianism p. 29]

stephan huller · 10-07-2011, 01:07 PM

On the ancient romantic view that the Scythians somehow represented a noble primitive utopia:

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The reader is referred at this point to the Anacharsidis Scytae epistulae, a collection of third century BC letters, attributed to an ancient legendary traveller from far off Scythia. Anacharsis, the ancestor to all the 'noble savages' of European literature, criticises the Greek way of life, contrasting it from a Cynical perspective with the natural lifestyle of his own people. Scythia was even more primitive than Scheria, the first utopian city of Greek literature. In contrast to the Homeric Pheaces, the Scythians lacked both private property and slavery. In remoter times the land had been held in common; then men (or at least the Greeks) had divided it up, creating special areas devoted to the various gods, then individuals got a hold of it. A series of disasters ensued of which the worst was mining (a common target for Cynics and Stoics), and money:

Anach. Sc., Ep., 9: Anacharsis to Croesus. The Greek poets tell of the division of the cosmos among the sons of Chronos, of how one had the sky, another the sea, and a third the world after this. But this is simply a demonstration of Greek egocentricity. Since they have no notion of property held in common, they attribute their own evil to the Gods...The earth originally was the property of all, Gods and men...The Scythians have remained immune to all this: we hold our land collectively. What it yields to us spontaneously, we take. What it hides from us, we leave to it. By protecting our animals, in exchange we have milk and cheese. We have weapons not to attack others, but only to defend ourselves.

The Scythians, at least in literary fiction, were also subjects to a king of the 'Homeric' type, a primus inter pares who respected their interests and dignity.

Anach. Sc., Ep., 7: Anacharsis to Thereus, a cruel Thracian despot. No good ruler leads his subjects to ruin, just as a good shep‐herd does not mistreat his flock. But you have a wasteland of sub‐jects, badly run by your officials. Every home is poverty‐stricken, so that it can no longer be of any use to you. It would be better if you saved those you find yourself lord of. If your personal property does not increase for the fact that you are king, then it will be preserved.

The major difference between a true king and an Asi‐atic despot, is that as well as exercising his power with mod‐eration, the former distinguishes sharply between his own property and that of others, whether public or private. A Ho‐meric monarch, just and merciful, is also present in the Epicu‐rean tradition (see the treatise On the good king according to Homer by Philodemus of Gadara). Their king is a benefactor, a good shepherd, and the helmsman of the ship with all onboard. [Giuseppe Giliberti, Politics and law in the cynical-stoic tradition p. 64, 65]

From the Wikipedia article on Anacharsis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacharsis

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Anacharsis was the first foreigner (metic) who received the privileges of Athenian citizenship. He was reckoned by some ancient authors as one of the Seven Sages of Greece,[5] and it is said that he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries of the Great Goddess, a privilege denied to those who did not speak fluent Greek.

According to Herodotus,[6] when Anacharsis returned to the Scythians he was killed by his own brother for his Greek ways and especially for the impious attempt to sacrifice to the Mother Goddess Cybele, whose cult was unwelcome among the Scythians.

None of the works ascribed to him in ancient times, if indeed they were written by him, have survived. He was said to have written a book comparing the laws of the Scythians with the laws of the Greeks, as well as work on the art of war. All that remains of his thought is what later tradition ascribes to him. He became famous for the simplicity of his way of living and his acute observations on the institutions and customs of the Greeks. He exhorted moderation in everything, saying that the vine bears three clusters of grapes: the first wine, pleasure; the second, drunkenness; the third, disgust.[7] So he became a kind of emblem to the Athenians, who inscribed on his statues: 'Restrain your tongues, your appetites, your passions.'

stephan huller · 10-07-2011, 01:13 PM

Marcion as a modern Anarcharsis to the Jews (the Jews after all were considered a 'barbarous people' by the Romans especially after the revolts of the first and second centuries)? From Diogenes Laertius's chapter on the Scythian king:

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ANACHARSIS the Scythian was the son of Gnurus, and the brother of Caduides the king of the Scythians; but his mother was a Grecian woman; owing to which circumstance he understood both languages.

II. He wrote about the laws existing among the Scythians, and also about those in force among the Greeks, urging men to adopt a temperate course of life; and he wrote also about war, his works being in verse, and amounting to eight hundred lines: he gave occasion for a proverb, because he used great freedom of speech, so that people called such freedom the Scythian conversation.

III. But Sosicrates says that he came to Athens in the forty-seventh Olympiad, in the archonship of Eucrates. And Hermippus asserts that he came to Solon's house, and ordered one of the servants to go and tell his master that Anacharsis was come to visit him, and was desirous to see him, and, if possible, to enter into relations of hospitality with him. But when the servant had given the message, he was ordered by Solon to reply to him that, "Men generally limited such alliances to their own countrymen." In reply to this Anacharsis entered the house, and told the servant that now he was in Solon's country, and that it was quite consistent for them to become connected with one another in this way. On this, Solon admired the readiness of the man, and admitted him, and made him one of his greatest friends.

IV. But after some time, when he had returned to Scythia, and shown a purpose to abrogate the existing institutions of his country, being exceedingly earnest, in his fondness for Grecian customs, he was shot by his brother while he was out hunting, and so he died, saying, "That he was saved on account of the sense and eloquence which he had brought from Greece, but slain in consequence of envy in his own family." Some, however, relate that he was slain while performing some Grecian sacrificatory rites. And we have written this epigram on him:

When Anacharsis to his land returned,
His mind was turn'd, so that he wished to make
His countrymen all live in Grecian fashion—
So, ere his words had well escaped his lips,
A winged arrow bore him to the Gods.
V. He said that a vine bore three bunches of grapes. The first, the bunch of pleasure; the second, that of drunkenness; the third that of disgust. He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest. Being once asked how a person might be made not fond of drinking, he said, "If he always keeps in view the indecorous actions of drunken men." He used also to say, that he marvelled how the Greeks, who make laws against those who behave with insolence, honour Athletae because of their beating one another. When he had been informed that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, he said, "That those who sailed in one were removed by just that distance from death." He used to say that oil was a provocative of madness, "because Athletae, when anointed in the oil, attacked one another with mad fury."

"How is it," he used to say, "that those who forbid men to speak falsely, tell lies openly in their vintners' shops?" It was a saying of his, that he "marvelled why the Greeks, at the beginning of a banquet, drink out of small cups, but when they have drunk a good deal, then they turn to large goblets." And this inscription is on his statues—"Restrain your tongues, your appetites, and your passions." He was once asked if the flute was known among the Scythians; and he said, "No, nor the vine either." At another time, the question was put to him, which was the safest kind of vessel? and he said, "That which is brought into dock." He said, too, that the strangest things that he had seen among the Greeks was, that "They left the smoke1 in the mountains, and carried the wood down to their cities." Once, when he was asked, which were the more numerous, the living or the dead? he said, "Under which head do you class those who are at sea." Being reproached by an Athenian for being a Scythian, he said, "Well, my country is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to your country." When he was asked what there was among men which was both good and bad, he replied, "The tongue." He used to say "That it was better to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for nothing." Another saying of his was, that "The forum was an established place for men to cheat one another, and behave covetously." Being once insulted by a young man at a drinking party, he said, "O, young man, if now that you are young you cannot bear wine, when you are old you will have to bear water."

VI. Of things which are of use in life, he is said to have been the inventor of the anchor, and of the potter's wheel.

VII. The following letter of his is extant:

ANACHARSIS TO CROESUS.

O king of the Lydians, I am come to the country of the Greeks, in order to become acquainted with their customs and institutions; but I have no need of gold, and shall be quite contented if I return to Scythia a better man than I left it. However I will come to Sardis, as I think it very desirable to become a friend of yours.

stephan huller · 10-07-2011, 01:51 PM

The point then is that it makes perfect sense to describe the Marcionites (or indeed early Christians as 'Scythians') given their underlying connection with an ideal society:

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a) ruled by an ideal philosopher king (= gnostikos in the Platonic sense)
b) with sexual equality either manufactured through ritual castration or a more pronounced role for women
c) with all property shared in common (cf. Mark 10:17 - 31) and Celsus and Clement's critique of certain Christians who use it to argue for religious communism
d) with meat and wine abstention (the rabbinic sources also seem aware of these heretics)
e) which called their God 'Father'

and most significantly which seemed to have been extraordinarily successful among barbarous populations. It is for these reasons I believe that Marcion and his followers were identified as a 'Scythians'

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10-07-2011, 10:11 AM	#11
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	But how did Christianity get to Scythia by 50 CE? Do you really believe there were churches in Scythia or with Scythian barbarians within twenty years of Jesus's crucifixion? Come on, that's ridiculous.

10-07-2011, 10:59 AM	#12
Iskander Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: United Kingdom Posts: 3,619	There is no need for churches anywhere; it may simply refer to slaves from the black Sea that Paul had met in Anatolia Paul may have been using that word as meaning nothing more precise that ‘gypsies and the like of them’ for anyone different from the usual crowd.

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