Oldal 85 [85]
FAITH AS A PREREQUISITE...
player, they expect only the harmony of sounds without being at all interested in
knowing whether he is Greek or barbarian. Thus, it is only the teaching of the truth
they refuse to receive in all simplicity, but they consider themselves dishonoured if
a Barbarian instructs them in this language; and this conceit can be found among
people who have not even reached the summit of Greek philosophy, but, so to
speak, have lightly tasted a few morsels with their lips and who have begged* from
here and there some petty ideas!’
Their refusal to receive the Christian teaching and the Gospel from the less
eloquent Barbarians is quite curious, especially because the Hellenes learned
not only arts and crafts from other people, but were initiated into religious rites
and mysteries by non-Greeks. This point is very much stressed by Theodoret,
who faithfully follows here the argument of famous earlier apologists:
The initiations [tac teAetac] of the Dionysia, the Panathenea, and surely
of the Thesmophoria® and Eleusis were introduced to Athens by Orpheus,
a man from Odryse, who, on arriving in Egypt, transformed the secret rites
[ueraredeıkev öpyıa] of Isis and Osiris into those of Demeter and Dionysus, as
Plutarch from Chaeronea in Boeotia as well as Diodore of Sicily teach,’ and as
the orator Demosthenes remembers and says that Orpheus showed them the most
sacred rites.* The mysteries of Rhea or Cybele or Brimo — name her as you wish, for
you have an abundance of names attached to non-existent beings! — in any case,
the Greeks imported her celebrations and the initiations in them from Phrygia into
Greece: the above-mentioned authors testify to this explicitly.”
After a longer argument concerning the pre-eminence of truth as opposed
to the origin of its teacher, in rebuttal of the counter-argument concerning
the prerequisite of faith in acquiring any knowledge, Theodoret turns to
demonstrate that even the philosophers demanded unconditional attention from
their pupils. He invokes the example of Pythagoras in the following manner:
Greek rpaviopévot — two decades later Theodoret uses the same term to depict the main
character representing the Monophysite heresy in his work entitled Eranistes (The Beggar)
composed in 447. See Theodoret of Cyrus, Eranistes, ed. Gérard H. Ettlinger, Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1975.
Theodoret, Graecarum affectionum curatio (henceforth: Curatio) I, 10-11.
For further information see Allaire Stallsmith, Interpreting the Athenian Thesmophoria,
Classical Bulletin 84/1 (2009), 1-23.
” See Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica, ed. F. Vogel, Leipzig, Teubner, 1888, I, 96, 4-5.
See Demosthenes, Orationes XXV, 11 (In Aristogitonem 1): 6 tac aywwtdtac hiv teheTac
katadei—ac Opgetcs. S. H. Butcher (ed.), Demosthenis orationes vol 2/1, Oxford, Clarendon
Press, 1907.
Theodoret suggests that there are plenty of names which refer to nothing real.
1° Theodoret, Curatio I, 21-22.
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