Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Slanders in Origen's "Contra Celsum".

In the first half of the third century the church father Origen wrote a refutation of this anti-Christian tract by a man named Celsus. I've been reading through his response for class (the tract by Celsus now only survives in the quotes Origen makes), and there's been some humdingers:

1) Origen claims that the Pythian oracle of Apollo prophesied because the deity's spirits came into the prophetess through her hoo-haw (though I think Tertullian said in the form of a snake? - I need to check this out).

2) Origen also says that Antinoos (Hadrian's gay lover who was deified after he drowned in the Nile) wasn't even enough to keep Hadrian from a morbid lust for women.

I love how these slanders are kind of like the sexual slanders that went around about Christians.

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