Note 12 — Lecture II. The Literary Opposition of Heathens Against Christianity in the Early Ages.

Tzchirner has investigated this subject in an interesting dissertation, Græci et Romani Scriptores cur rerum Christianarum raro meminerint; Opusc. Acad. p. 283. Lips. 1829, (translated in the Journal of Sacred Literature, Jan. 1853;) and has discussed the passages where mention is made of Christianity. The following is the substance of his inquiries.

Though the notices concerning Christianity in heathen writers are scanty, the silence of Eusebius gives good ground for inferring, that not many further notices existed concerning it in the works which are lost, than have been preserved to us. Perhaps a few passages may have been erased in which Christianity was blasphemed, even in that which is preserved.

The silence concerning Christianity during the first century is not surprising; because the Christians, if known at all, would be regarded as a Jewish sect, as in Acts xviii. 15; xxiii. 29; xxv. 19. In the third century they are both noticed and attacked. The inquiry therefore with regard to the silence about them, refers only to the period from about A.D. 80-180.

During this period, among the Greek writers who omit all mention of Christianity, are Dio Chrysostom; Plutarch (for the passage, Quæst. iv, 4. § 3, about happiness consisting in hope, probably does not refer to them); Œnomaus, who wrote expressly to ridicule religion; Maximus Tyrius; and Pausanias: and among Latin ones, Juvenal, who several times mentions the Jews, but only indirectly refers to the Christians (Sat. i. 185-7), Aulus Gellius, and Apuleius; (for the opinion of Warburton, Div. Leg. [pg 401] b. ii. § 4, that an allusion is intended, is now rejected,1063 unless one perhaps exists in Met. ix. ed. Panck. ii. 195.)

Among those who name Christians we find,—

In Trajan's reign, Tacitus, who describes their persecution by Nero (Ann. xv. 44); Suetonius, who names them, Vit. Neron. ch. 16, and describes them as seditious, Vit. Claud. 25, if indeed the word Chresto in the paragraph is intended for Christo; and Pliny the younger, in the well-known letter to Trajan (Ep. x. 96).

In the reign of Hadrian we find, in a fragment of Hadrian's works in Vopiscus's Life of Saturninus (ch. viii.) a mention of them, comparing them with Serapid worshippers; and one quoted by Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. iv. 9, addressed to a proconsul of Asia. Also Arrian names them in two passages, in one describing them as obstinate, Diss. Epictet. b. iv. ch. vii. and in the other speaking either of them or of the Jews as βαπτισταί (b. ii. ch. ii.)

In the reign of the Antonines we find Galen stigmatising them for obstinacy (De Pulsuum Diff. b. iii. ch. iii.), and for believing without proof (b. ii. ch. iv.); and Marcus Aurelius himself inquires (Comment. b. xi. ch. iii), what can be the cause of their inflexibility. His two epistles which contain allusions to Christianity, one of them attributing his victory over the Marcomanni to the thundering legion, and the other stating that it is the business of the gods and not men to punish, are rejected as spurious.

In the same reign we find Crescens and Fronto, who are treated of elsewhere, Lect. II. p. 48; and Lucian (p. 49). Tzchirner denies the allusions supposed to lurk in many passages of Lucian examined by Krebsius and Eichstadt; but, independently of those in the Peregrinus, ch. xi-xiv, on which see Lect. II and Note 13, there remains one where Alexander the magician is said to exclude Christians and Epicureans from his magical rites. In the same reign we meet with Celsus; after which time the notices of Christianity are frequent; the account of which will be found in Lardner's Works, vol. viii.

If now we pass from the facts to the cause, and ask why the notices are so few, Tzchirner very properly answers, that the silence in the first century is explained, partly by the general poverty and retirement of the Christians, and partly by the circumstance named above, that they were included among Jews. But in the second century, when Christianity was so far known that several learned men abandoned heathenism for it, such as Quadratus, Melito, Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Minucius Felix; Tzchirner refers the silence chiefly to the fact that the opinions and position of the Christians prevented them from being considered worthy of attention by members of any of those schools of philosophy whose probable opinions in reference to it have been already explained in Lect. II. Celsus alone had the far-sightedness to apprehend danger from them, both philosophically and politically.