Porphyry Against the Christians (review)

Michael B. Simmons

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 16, Number 2, Summer 2008, pp.
263-265 (Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.0.0006

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/239946

Access provided by University of Glasgow Library (15 Feb 2019 02:14 GMT)
 BOOK REVIEWS    263

Robert M. Berchman
Porphyry Against the Christians
Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2005
Pp. x + 242.

Trolling in the deep and often murky waters of Porphyrian studies can be risky and
dangerous simply because many of the works of the disciple of Plotinus are either
lost or, as in the case of his anti-Christian literature, in deplorable, fragmentary
condition. To compound the latter problem one must keep in mind also that all
the fragments both of Porphyry’s Contra Christianos (C.C.) and Philosophia ex
oraculis (which contains some anti-Christian oracles) derive from the works of
his greatest enemies, the Christians. Scholars are still not in agreement as to how
many of Harnack’s fragments of the C.C., originally published in his Porphy-
rius Gegen die Christen, 15 Bücher, Zeugnisse, und Referate (Berlin, 1916), are
genuinely Porphyrian or whether they mainly come from the Apocriticus of the
fifth-century Macarius Magnes. And though A. D. Nock’s assessment of Porphyry’s
importance for an understanding of religion in the third century of the Roman
Empire still stands (“For the study of the paganism of the third century of our
era no writer is more important than Porphyry”; Classical Journal 56 [1960],
134), he is as controversial today as he ever has been.
Robert M. Berchman attempts to rectify this hermeneutical/text critical problem
by presenting us with a longer list of fragments than has ever been produced
(215 from 18 ancient writers) which are directly or indirectly related to the C.C.
Chapter 1 addresses the author, title, date, sources, and provenance of the C.C.
The biographical sketch is very weak, ignoring as it does Porphyry’s relationship
with Origen (Eus., h. e. 6.19) and the question whether Porphyry was a Christian
(Soc., h. e. 3.23 ), and including nothing about Eunapius’s testimony concern-
ing Porphyry (Vit. Phil. 455–57). Regrettably, it is only much later in the book,
namely Chapter 4 (113–17), which deals with Porphyry’s cultural background,
that the reader finds anything resembling a more substantial biographical sketch.
Biographical inaccuracies also appear, as, for example, when Berchman, referring
to a fragment of the Phil. or., asserts (50) that Porphyry “analyzed a vivication
of Hecate’s statue performed by Maximus in a subterranean temple at Ephesus.
This resulted in the immortal oracle from the goddess’s thighs.” Berchman con-
fuses this with the conversion of the emperor Julian at the temple of Hecate in
Ephesus when the neoplatonic Maximus conducted a theurgic initiation in the
year a.d. 351 (Eunap. VS 475 [LCL: Wright]). Also in Chapter 1 a number of
Porphyry’s works are generally grouped together without attempting to sort them
out chronologically vis-à-vis the development of the author’s thought or, more
importantly, critically re-evaluating the Wolff-Bidez hypothesis (though Berchman
seems to concur with its chronology by defining the Phil. or. as an early work
of Porphyry [see 44 and 47, and cf. 123 n. 2]).
The author claims that all of Porphyry’s superstitious and religious works were
written in the author’s pre-Plotinian period and that the ones which are more
philosophically mature were published after 260. There are errors here. Though
it has been established that Arnobius is responding to Porphyry (see my Arnobius
264    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

of Sicca, Oxford, 1996), Berchman’s numerous references to Arnobius’s Adv. nat.

II.67 (3, n. 14; 4, nn. 19 and 22; 6, n. 33) to support the claim that Arnobius
is either describing the C.C. in this passage or that he agrees with Lactantius’s
(Div. inst. 5.2) contention that Porphyry is the “Priest of Philosophy” betray that
Berchman is trying to infer something from the text that is not there. On page 4
the Phil. or. is called Porphyry’s “philosophical critique of the faith” (cf. 14, where
a different view is given), but the extant fragments reveal more a work written
for pagans than a predominantly anti-Christian book. And though none of the
works of the Italian scholar Beatrice are listed in the bibliography, Berchman’s
suggestion that the C.C. contained the Phil. or., the Homeric Problems, and the
“writings against Zoroastrianism and Christianity” (3ff.) seems to be in agree-
ment with Beatrice’s well-known thesis that the C.C. is a combination of several
of Porphyry’s works. Such a bold (and very weak) thesis must be supported by
a critical analysis of Porphyry’s extant works, but we do not find that here.
Chapter 2 deals with structure, genre, and taxonomy. The central thesis, i.e.,
that the C.C. “comprised many works written in a variety of genres” (12), is not
supported by any critical analysis of Porphyry’s works. And if it is a fact that the
Phil. or. explained why ancient religions were similar to “Neoplatonic religion”
(14), the reader is left wondering exactly what is the meaning of the latter term
and why Berchman did not provide an analysis of the 58 extant fragments of
Phil. or. found in Smith’s Fragmenta Prophyrii.
Generally, Chapter 3, which gives the religious and philosophical background
to the C.C., could be useful in undergraduate classes, but Berchman’s assertion
that Decius (39) made deliberate attempts to eradicate Christianity does not
adequately address the growing consensus among scholars who have taken the
opposite view. Covering such writers as Plutarch, Lucian, Galen, and Julian,
chapter 4 provides a good overview to developments in pagan thought, and the
most valuable part of the entire book is found in Berchman’s analysis of Plotinus’s
religious and philosophical ideas (93–113).
In chapters 5–6, the author gives his rationale and methodology for the 215
fragments which follow, stating that he attempts “to establish as complete a col-
lection as possible of the fragments of Against the Christians . . .” and reiterating
his central thesis that the C.C. comprised several works with distinct themes”
(118 ff.). These works were the Phil. or., Vit. Pythag., De abst., and De antro
nymph., but Berchman does not analyze the contents of these to prove his point.
Also, the relationship between the Apocriticus of Marcarius Magnes and the C.C.
is given a short two paragraphs, and the fragments from the Apocr., following
Harnack closely (192–219 [Berchman’s, nos. 165–210]), are simply listed in
English translation with only one critical note.
Chapter 7, in which the author provides us with his 215 fragments, reveals
problems. First, under “Porphyry” Berchman lists two fragments from Phil. or.
(nos. 3 & 4, 124ff.), ignoring a vast majority of the fragments listed in Smith’s
Fragmenta. If, as he argues (3ff.), the C.C. contained the Phil. or., one would
expect a thorough analysis of the fragments from Smith to ascertain the verac-
ity of this hypothesis and how they were organically related or to prove that
they were not two separate works. Berchman does neither. A critical apparatus
 BOOK REVIEWS    265

for his fragments would have greatly assisted the reader to understand why a
certain passage was selected and the reason(s) for which it should be included
in the C.C.
Finally, the individual fragments listed from an author’s works are often either
so concise and/or ambiguous that it cannot be precluded that they do not derive
from other works either by Porphyry or another pagan writer, e.g., Arnobius,
Adv. nat. (nos. 38, 41); Lactantius, Div. inst. (nos. 51, 52, 55, 58); and the
controversial Div. inst. 5.2 (no. 61), which Wilken, Digeser, and other scholars
have argued describes Porphyry.
Berchman does provide in his early chapters some important background to
the great transformation that was taking place in the Late Roman Empire that
will be beneficial to undergraduates, and he has provided an English translation
of all hitherto accepted fragments of the C.C. Nonetheless, his listing of an even
greater number of Porphyry’s fragments than ever before, which he attempts to base
on ill-supported theories, will undoubtedly cause scholars to ask whether he has
tried to do too much in this book. The result is that the slippery fish represented
by this aspect of Porphyrian studies falls back into now murkier waters.
Michael B. Simmons, Auburn University, Montgomery

Aaron P. Johnson
Ethnicity and Argument in Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica
Oxford Early Christian Studies
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006
Pp. 261 + xvii. $95.

Eusebius of Caesarea’s Praeparatio Evangelica (PE) and its companion volume,

the Demonstratio Evangelica (DE), constitute a magisterial contribution to early
Christian apologetics. Nonetheless, neither has received a dedicated, monograph-
length study. The PE, in particular, has tended to be read as the La Brea tar pit
of otherwise lost works of antiquity rather than as a coherent work in its own
right. Aaron Johnson’s volume is an effort to fill this gap. Taking a cue from
recent work in the fields of classics and early Christian studies that points to
the productivity of discourses of ethnicity in the formation and contestation of
identities in antiquity, Johnson reads the PE as an extended ethnological argu-
ment. Eusebius’s apologetic skill consists in his strategic deployment of “ethnic
reasoning” to construct Christianity as a superior ethnos in contradistinction to
other ethne. Johnson identifies and traces two narratives of descent within the
PE: a polemical narrative of Greek descent on the one hand and an apologetic
narrative of Hebrew/Christian descent on the other.
After establishing the literary and historical backgrounds to the PE in an
introductory chapter, Johnson lays out the theoretical and methodological terms
of his reading of the PE in chapter 2. The recognition that ethnicity, like other
categories of group identity, is constituted discursively through its deployment