Chapter XIII. [672] --The Charge of Worshipping the Sun Met by a Retort.
Others, with greater regard to good manners, it must be confessed, suppose that the sun is the god of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact that we pray towards the east, or because we make Sunday a day of festivity. What then? Do you do less than this? Do not many among you, with an affectation of sometimes worshipping the heavenly bodies likewise, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise? It is you, at all events, who have even admitted the sun into the calendar of the week; and you have selected its day, [673] in preference to the preceding day [674] as the most suitable in the week [675] for either an entire abstinence from the bath, or for its postponement until the evening, or for taking rest and for banqueting. By resorting to these customs, you deliberately deviate from your own religious rites to those of strangers. For the Jewish feasts on the Sabbath and "the Purification," [676] and Jewish also are the ceremonies of the lamps, [677] and the fasts of unleavened bread, and the "littoral prayers," [678] all which institutions and practices are of course foreign from your gods. Wherefore, that I may return from this digression, you who reproach us with the sun and Sunday should consider your proximity to us. We are not far off from your Saturn and your days of rest.
[672] Comp. The Apology, c. xvi.
[673] Sunday.
[674] Saturday.
[675] Ex diebus.
[676] On the "Coena pura," see our Anti-Marcion, p. 386, note 4.
[677] See Lev. xxiv. 2; also 2 Chron. xiii. 11. Witsius (Ægyptiaca, ii. 16, 17) compares the Jewish with the Egyptian "ritus lucernarum."
[678] Tertullian, in his tract de Jejun. xvi., speaks of the Jews praying (after the loss of their temple, and in their dispersion) in the open air, "per omne litus."
Chapter XIV. [679] --The Vile Calumny About Onocoetes Retorted on the Heathen by Tertullian.
Report has introduced a new calumny respecting our God. Not so long ago, a most abandoned wretch in that city of yours, [680] a man who had deserted indeed his own religion--a Jew, in fact, who had only lost his skin, flayed of course by wild beasts, [681] against which he enters the lists for hire day after day with a sound body, and so in a condition to lose his skin [682] --carried about in public a caricature of us with this label: Onocoetes. [683] This (figure) had ass's ears, and was dressed in a toga with a book, having a hoof on one of his feet. And the crowd believed this infamous Jew. For what other set of men is the seed-plot [684] of all the calumny against us? Throughout the city, therefore, Onocoetes is all the talk. As, however, it is less then "a nine days' wonder," [685] and so destitute of all authority from time, and weak enough from the character of its author, I shall gratify myself by using it simply in the way of a retort. Let us then see whether you are not here also found in our company. Now it matters not what their form may be, when our concern is about deformed images. You have amongst you gods with a dog's head, and a lion's head, with the horns of a cow, and a ram, and a goat, goat-shaped or serpent-shaped, and winged in foot, head, and back. Why therefore brand our one God so conspicuously? Many an Onocoetes is found amongst yourselves.
[679] Comp. The Apology, c. xvi.
[680] In ista civitate, Rome.
[681] This is explained in the passage of The Apology (xvi.): "He had for money exposed himself with criminals to fight with wild beasts."
[682] Decutiendus, from a jocular word, "decutire."
[683] This curious word is compounded of honos, an ass, and koiasthai, which Hesychius explains by ierasthai, to act as a priest. The word therefore means, "asinarius sacerdos," "an ass of a priest." Calumnious enough; but suited to the vile occasion, and illustrative of the ribald opposition which Christianity had to encounter.
[684] We take Rigaltius' reading, "seminarium."
[685] Tanquam hesternum.