Analysis Orationis Tatiani Assyrii adversus Graecos (editorum)

Analysis of the Oration of Tatian against the Greeks.

In this Oration against the Greeks Tatian demonstrates the excellence and antiquity of the Christian religion, not without wit and stings against his adversaries, whose errors and superstitions he compares with the light of Christian truth.

And at the beginning indeed (no. 1) he criticizes the Gentiles because they boast so greatly of noble arts and disciplines, when nevertheless they neither invented them nor use them as is fitting, but turn rhetoric to injustice and calumny, and poetry to the corruption of morals, and the princes of the philosophers themselves also (nos. 2 and 3) are each conspicuous for their own vices and errors. Undeservedly, therefore (no. 4), are Christians held in hatred as most wicked because they spurn institutions of that sort. For the rest, they are submissive to the king, but fear God alone: in this one thing they do not obey, if they are ordered to deny God.

Starting from these beginnings, he sets forth more openly the inner dogmas of religion in order to demonstrate its excellence, and explains at length what Christians hold concerning God and His Word, concerning the creation of the world and the resurrection of bodies, and concerning the fall of man and the ways of repairing the fall; and finally he compares these institutions with the institutions of the Gentiles.

He establishes that God is one and single (no. 5); that all things were created by Him through the Word, Who was in Him and with Him, and sustained all things before the world was made. The Word came forth from Him for the creation of the world, yet in such a way that He was not severed from Him, but only undertook a voluntary administration.

This doctrine concerning creation confirms faith in the resurrection (no. 6), which will one day take place for the sake of judgement. This doctrine is laughed at, but Christians count it of little moment, since, just as they were created when previously they did not exist, so although they die and cease to be seen, they trust that they will one day live again, when God gathers together the particles of their bodies out of the elements.

But in order to stir up zeal for attaining immortality, Tatian discourses at length on how man fell, and by what ways he can repair his ruin. Now his whole reasoning comes to this (no. 7): The heavenly Word created man as the image of His immortality, and before him the angels. Both were created free, so that they might be rewarded according to their merits. But after man, following the firstborn angel, departed from the divine law, he became mortal when the more powerful Spirit forsook him. Moreover, that firstborn angel became a demon, and his followers the host of demons. Men were the material of the sin of the demons (no. 8). For by the demons the table of the position of the stars was shown to men; by the demons fate was introduced, of which they themselves are spoken of as the rulers under the names of gods; by the same (no. 9) animals were placed in heaven, transformations of the gods and deifications of wicked men were introduced. Yet the morals of Christians do not depend on fate (no. 10), nor did men sin by fate, but freely (no. 11): evil was produced by themselves, not by God; yet those who produced it are able to flee and reject it. And how they may attain this he sets forth thus:

There are two kinds of spirits (no. 12): the one is called the soul, the other the Holy Spirit. The soul cannot become immortal unless it is united to the Holy Spirit (no. 13). For it is not immortal of itself, but of its own nature is nothing else than darkness. Wherefore if it lives solitary, it inclines downwards towards matter, dying together with the body. When united, however, with the divine Spirit, it does not lack help, but ascends thither whither it is led by the Spirit. It is much better (no. 14) to follow the Spirit as leader than the demons, who although they do not now die like men, will be punished all the more severely in immortality. We must therefore take pains (no. 15) to seek again what we have lost, and unite the soul with the Holy Spirit. By no means, like the demons, do we lack hope of pardon. Though vanquished, we can conquer again.

If we wish to conquer, we must beware lest the demons mock us while displaying their power, either by inflicting some evil (no. 16), which indeed we shall easily repel by the power of the heavenly Spirit; or by promising health through hidden dissensions (no. 17), or through the remains of the dead, or by joining other forbidden things to things not forbidden (no. 18): for they do not heal, but mock men. Depraved desires (no. 19), which hold sway even in the philosophers themselves, win credence for these supposed cures and predictions of the demons. Even if we are cured by the application of matter (no. 20), thanks should be given to God on that account, and pains must be taken that, spurning matter, we recover those wings of the Spirit, having lost which the angels were thrust down from heaven, and men from an earth far more excellent than this adornment of things and altogether unknown to geographers.

Tatian compares (no. 21) the trifles of the Gentiles with our institutions; and he declares that Christians, when they proclaim God born in the form of man, are by no means foolish, but rather the Greeks themselves, when they worship gods of such a sort as either are wicked and mortal, or, if they are referred to nature, sink to nothing. Then he most wittily criticizes (no. 22) mimes, athletes (no. 23), gladiators, and other spectacles (no. 24).

Nor do the philosophers escape his wit (no. 25), whose dress and bearing, boasting and dissensions he derides with keen satire; and he asks why, discordant among themselves, they declare war upon the concordant Christians who teach much more excellent things; why Thyestean banquets are falsely imputed to Christians, when crimes of that sort are approved by the examples of the gods. He laughs also (no. 26) at the vain labour of the Greeks in useless questions and their absurd studies of grammar and Attic pronunciation. The more tenacious the Greeks are of institutions of that sort, the more they are to be blamed (no. 27), while they turn much more excellent things into an accusation against Christians. In vain is death threatened against Christians to make them belie their religion or approve the trifles of the Greeks. Not even the laws of the Greeks themselves can be approved (no. 28), which are wonderfully varied, whereas they ought to be the same everywhere. Tatian adds (no. 29) that when he had perceived these things, and had lighted upon certain books of the barbarians, captivated and struck by all the marks of truth with which these books are stamped, he gave his name to the Christian religion, and no longer wished to leave any handle to the demon (no. 30), who is strengthened even by the smallest moments and lies in wait for us by the help of a hidden treasure.

In the second part he demonstrates that Christian philosophy is far more ancient than the institutions of the Greeks, adducing Moses and Homer as an example (no. 31). Concerning the age of Homer there is the greatest variety of opinions, some asserting that he lived eighty years after the Trojan war, others four hundred or even five hundred. This disagreement is a proof that the histories of the Greeks do not stand on a firm footing. Among Christians, however, just as there is no hunting after petty glory, so there is no disagreement: from their doctrine no age or condition is excluded. The Gentiles laugh at poor women and virgins devoted to Christian discipline, but altogether undeservedly, since they themselves are disciples of courtesans (no. 32), and have set up statues to courtesans and wicked men (no. 33), which Tatian testifies that he saw (no. 34) when he had both travelled through a great part of the world and sojourned at Rome, into which city they had been brought. He returns to Moses and Homer, and demonstrates that the former is far more ancient (no. 35) from Chaldaean and Phoenician writers (no. 36) who spoke of Moses, and from the Egyptians (no. 37), who place him under Inachus (no. 38), that is, 400 years before the Trojan war, as is clear from the series of the kings of Argos (no. 39). Credit must therefore be given to Moses rather than to the Greeks (no. 40). Nay more, Moses surpasses others more ancient than Homer (no. 41), and is far more ancient than those who were esteemed wise.

Finally, in concluding his speech (no. 42), he declares that he was born in the land of the Assyrians, and was first imbued with the institutions of the Greeks, and afterwards with Christian doctrine, to which he professes that he cleaves in such a way that he judges it a crime to deny it.