Tiresias: The Ancient Mediterranean Religions Source Database

" ^2.21 and the appearances which came from heaven to those who strove zealously on behalf of Judaism, so that though few in number they seized the whole land and pursued the barbarian hordes,", "
^3.34 And see that you, who have been scourged by heaven, report to all men the majestic power of God.Having said this they vanished.",
^5.4 Therefore all men prayed that the apparition might prove to have been a good omen."

^24.37 πτοηθέντες δὲ καὶ ἔμφοβοι γενόμενοι ἐδόκουν πνεῦμα θεωρεῖν. ^24.38 καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς Τί τεταραγμένοι ἐστέ, καὶ διὰ τί διαλογισμοὶ ἀναβαίνουσιν ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ ὑμῶν; ^24.39 ἴδετε τὰς χεῖράς μου καὶ τοὺς πόδας μου ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι αὐτός· ψηλαφήσατέ με καὶ ἴδετε, ὅτι πνεῦμα σάρκα καὶ ὀστέα οὐκ ἔχει καθὼς ἐμὲ θεωρεῖτε ἔχοντα. ^24.40 ⟦καὶ τοῦτο εἰπὼν ἔδειξεν αὐτοῖς τὰς χεῖρας καὶ τοὺς πόδας.⟧, ^24.49 καὶ ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ἐξαποστέλλω τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν τοῦ πατρός μου ἐφʼ ὑμᾶς· ὑμεῖς δὲ καθίσατε ἐν τῇ πόλει ἕως οὗ ἐνδύσησθε ἐξ ὕψους δύναμιν.

^24.37 But they were terrified and filled with fear, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. ^24.38 He said to them, "Why are you troubled? Why do doubts arise in your hearts? ^24.39 See my hands and my feet, that it is truly me. Touch me and see, for a spirit doesnt have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.", ^24.40 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.
^24.49 Behold, I send forth the promise of my Father on you. But wait in the city of Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high."

^6.49 οἱ δὲ ἰδόντες αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης περιπατοῦντα ἔδοξαν ὅτι φάντασμά ἐστιν καὶ ἀνέκραξαν,

^6.49 but they, when they saw him walking on the sea, supposed that it was a ghost, and cried out;

^14.26 οἱ δὲ μαθηταὶ ἰδόντες αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης περιπατοῦντα ἐταράχθησαν λέγοντες ὅτι Φάντασμά ἐστιν, καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ φόβου ἔκραξαν.

^14.26 When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, "Its a ghost!" and they cried out for fear.

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" ^3.11 All these illusions of an imaginary corporeity in (his) Christ, Marcion adopted with this view, that his nativity also might not be furnished with any evidence from his human substance, and that thus the Christ of the Creator might be free to have assigned to Him all predictions which treated of Him as one capable of human birth, and therefore fleshly. But most foolishly did our Pontic heresiarch act in this too. As if it would not be more readily believed that flesh in the Divine Being should rather be unborn than untrue, this belief having in fact had the way mainly prepared for it by the Creators angels when they conversed in flesh which was real, although unborn. For indeed the notorious Philumena persuaded Apelles and the other seceders from Marcion rather to believe that Christ did really carry about a body of flesh; not derived to Him, however, from birth, but one which He borrowed from the elements. Now, as Marcion was apprehensive that a belief of the fleshly body would also involve a belief of birth, undoubtedly He who seemed to be man was believed to be verily and indeed born. For a certain woman had exclaimed, Blessed is the womb that bare You, and the paps which You have sucked! Luke 11:27 And how else could they have said that His mother and His brethren were standing without? Luke 8:20 But we shall see more of this in the proper place. Surely, when He also proclaimed Himself as the Son of man, He, without doubt, confessed that He had been born. Now I would rather refer all these points to an examination of the gospel; but still, as I have already stated, if he, who seemed to be man, had by all means to pass as having been born, it was vain for him to suppose that faith in his nativity was to be perfected by the device of an imaginary flesh. For what advantage was there in that being not true which was held to be true, whether it were his flesh or his birth? Or if you should say, let human opinion go for nothing; you are then honouring your god under the shelter of a deception, since he knew himself to be something different from what he had made men to think of him. In that case you might possibly have assigned to him a putative nativity even, and so not have hung the question on this point. For silly women fancy themselves pregt sometimes, when they are corpulent either from their natural flux or from some other malady. And, no doubt, it had become his duty, since he had put on the mere mask of his substance, to act out from its earliest scene the play of his phantasy, lest he should have failed in his part at the beginning of the flesh. You have, of course, rejected the sham of a nativity, and have produced true flesh itself. And, no doubt, even the real nativity of a God is a most mean thing. Come then, wind up your cavils against the most sacred and reverend works of nature; inveigh against all that you are; destroy the origin of flesh and life; call the womb a sewer of the illustrious animal - in other words, the manufactory for the production of man; dilate on the impure and shameful tortures of parturition, and then on the filthy, troublesome, contemptible issues of the puerperal labour itself! But yet, after you have pulled all these things down to infamy, that you may affirm them to be unworthy of God, birth will not be worse for Him than death, infancy than the cross, punishment than nature, condemnation than the flesh. If Christ truly suffered all this, to be born was a less thing for Him. If Christ suffered evasively, as a phantom; evasively, too, might He have been born. Such are Marcions chief arguments by which he makes out another Christ; and I think that we show plainly enough that they are utterly irrelevant, when we teach how much more truly consistent with God is the reality rather than the falsehood of that condition in which He manifested His Christ. Since He was the truth, He was flesh; since He was flesh, He was born. For the points which this heresy assaults are confirmed, when the means of the assault are destroyed. Therefore if He is to be considered in the flesh, because He was born; and born, because He is in the flesh, and because He is no phantom - it follows that He must be acknowledged as Himself the very Christ of the Creator, who was by the Creators prophets foretold as about to come in the flesh, and by the process of human birth."

" ⁴ Since, therefore, you do not reject the assumption of a body as impossible or as hazardous to the character of God, it remains for you to repudiate and censure it as unworthy of Him. Come now, beginning from the nativity itself, declaim against the uncleanness of the generative elements within the womb, the filthy concretion of fluid and blood, of the growth of the flesh for nine months long out of that very mire. Describe the womb as it enlarges from day to day, heavy, troublesome, restless even in sleep, changeful in its feelings of dislike and desire. Inveigh now likewise against the shame itself of a woman in travail which, however, ought rather to be honoured in consideration of that peril, or to be held sacred in respect of (the mystery of) nature. of course you are horrified also at the infant, which is shed into life with the embarrassments which accompany it from the womb; you likewise, of course, loathe it even after it is washed, when it is dressed out in its swaddling-clothes, graced with repeated anointing, smiled on with nurses fawns. This reverend course of nature, you, O Marcion, (are pleased to) spit upon; and yet, in what way were you born? You detest a human being at his birth; then after what fashion do you love anybody? Yourself, of course, you had no love of, when you departed from the Church and the faith of Christ. But never mind, if you are not on good terms with yourself, or even if you were born in a way different from other people. Christ, at any rate, has loved even that man who was condensed in his mothers womb amidst all its uncleannesses, even that man who was brought into life out of the said womb, even that man who was nursed amidst the nurses simpers. For his sake He came down (from heaven), for his sake He preached, for his sake He humbled Himself even unto death - the death of the cross. Philippians 2:8 He loved, of course, the being whom He redeemed at so great a cost. If Christ is the Creators Son, it was with justice that He loved His own (creature); if He comes from another god, His love was excessive, since He redeemed a being who belonged to another. Well, then, loving man He loved his nativity also, and his flesh as well. Nothing can be loved apart from that through which whatever exists has its existence. Either take away nativity, and then show us your man; or else withdraw the flesh, and then present to our view the being whom God has redeemed - since it is these very conditions which constitute the man whom God has redeemed. And are you for turning these conditions into occasions of blushing to the very creature whom He has redeemed, (censuring them), too, as unworthy of Him who certainly would not have redeemed them had He not loved them? Our birth He reforms from death by a second birth from heaven; our flesh He restores from every harassing malady; when leprous, He cleanses it of the stain; when blind, He rekindles its light; when palsied, He renews its strength; when possessed with devils, He exorcises it; when dead, He reanimates it - then shall we blush to own it? If, to be sure, He had chosen to be born of a mere animal, and were to preach the kingdom of heaven invested with the body of a beast either wild or tame, your censure (I imagine) would have instantly met Him with this demurrer: This is disgraceful for God, and this is unworthy of the Son of God, and simply foolish. For no other reason than because one thus judges. It is of course foolish, if we are to judge God by our own conceptions. But, Marcion, consider well this Scripture, if indeed you have not erased it: God has chosen the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise. 1 Corinthians 1:27 Now what are those foolish things? Are they the conversion of men to the worship of the true God, the rejection of error, the whole training in righteousness, chastity, mercy, patience, and innocence? These things certainly are not foolish. Inquire again, then, of what things he spoke, and when you imagine that you have discovered what they are will you find anything to be so foolish as believing in a God that has been born, and that of a virgin, and of a fleshly nature too, who wallowed in all the before-mentioned humiliations of nature? But some one may say, These are not the foolish things; they must be other things which God has chosen to confound the wisdom of the world. And yet, according to the worlds wisdom, it is more easy to believe that Jupiter became a bull or a swan, if we listen to Marcion, than that Christ really became a man.",

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