When moreover we come to the discussion of the Jews, Celsus breaks out that the 'Jews were mere Egyptian runaways, and that this darling people of God had never done anything worth remembering ,' just as if he had passed over the names of the Patriarchs and fastened on the admission that the Jews had come out of Egypt. Accordingly Origen replies that it is universally agreed that the Jews reckon their genealogy from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; [Greek].
When Aristides deals with the beliefs of the Jews he expresses the remarkable opinion that the Jewish ritual is rather an adoration of angels than a worship of God. The expression is the more remarkable, because Aristides affects to reason throughout as the |23 philosopher rather than the Christian, arid he forgets himself and introduces the angels without even an explanation to the emperor, as to what beings are intended. What shall we say then when we find Celsus affirming that the Jews worship angels ? [Greek] And Origen is so puzzled as to ask 'where in the world did Celsus find in the Mosaic writings instruction in the worship of angels?' It is certainly curious that we find the missing link supplied by the Apology of Aristides.
No doubt further analogies might be traced; for example, Celsus is especially irate with the Christians for their ridicule of Egyptian superstitions , they see nothing except ephemeral animals, instead of grasping eternal ideas. Now there is no doubt that it is a very common subject of Christian merriment, but perhaps no one of the early Christian Writers has laughed so much in detail about it as Aristides. We will not however press the matter further: there are always numerous points of contact and necessary collisions between the attack and the defence of given religions: suffice it to say that we have shewn it to be by no means an inconceivable proposition that Celsus had read the Apology of Aristides before he penned his 'Alhqh_j lo&goj .
The Symbol of the Faith in the time of Aristides.
Aristides the Philosopher is a Christian who has preserved the philosophic manner, and probably the philosophic dress, with a view to future service in the gospel. It seems to have been the practice of not a few of the famous second-century Christians to attract an audience in this way. Justin certainly did so, and almost as surely Tatian; and if these why not Aristides? But as we have already said, the professedly dispassionate presentation of the Christian case, the endeavour to talk reasonably on all sides successively, soon breaks down; the man throws off his disguise and gives the note of challenge: Christianus sum; nihil Christianum alienum a me puto. He talks of angels as though all men knew them, dashes through the dogmatic statements of the Church as though they were perfectly familiar, and without a |24 word of preliminary explanation of terms, makes a peroration of the impending judgment-day. And so the philosopher with an imperial audience turns out to be another illustration of the Christian city that is set on a hill and cannot be hid.
It is especially interesting to observe that in the time of Aristides the Church already had a Symbol of the Faith: and we may reconstruct a good many of its sentences. Of course in such matters we proceed from the things that are practically certain to those which are less demonstrable; we should not start by saying that the words "Maker of heaven and earth" were proof of the existence of an approximately fixed symbol. But if we can establish other sentences with good confidence, there is no reason to omit these words from the reconstructed formula.
The certain passage from which we proceed is in the words:
"He was pierced (crucified) by the Jews;
"He died and was buried;"
" and they say that
after three days He rose,
and ascended into Heaven."
It may be taken for granted that these words represent a part of the Symbolum Fidei as known to Aristides.
What else may we say was contained in his creed? We may add words which must have stood respectively at the beginning and ending of the Creed: viz. that God was the Maker of Heaven and Earth; and that Jesus Christ was to come to judge the world.
Whether we can go further is a more difficult question: but there is at least a strong suspicion that the creed contained the clause "He was born of the Virgin Mary;" for in Aristides' statement the language about the 'Hebrew virgin' precedes the account of the Crucifixion; moreover, here also, we find Aristides is most pronounced in the enunciation of the doctrine, and Celsus is emphatically scornful in the rejection of it. Accordingly Celsus brings forward the story of the infidelity of Mary, affirming that the father of Jesus was in reality a soldier whose name was Panthera . The same story appears in the Talmud under the name Pandera, which is a transliteration of the foregoing. |25
Indeed it has been generally held that the legend was invented by the Jews, through the difficulty of accounting for our Lord's birth; apparently, therefore, the Jews were in search of a more tenable hypothesis than the paternity of Joseph; and it is not unreasonable to refer to an early Jewish scandal the story which we find in the Talmud and in Celsus.
But if the story be Jewish in origin, it was certainly Greek in manufacture. Some persons have tried to explain the Greek name Panthera by regarding it as a symbol of violent and unrestrained lust. They are, however, mistaken: the name is simply a Greek anagram on the word 'Parthenos,' by which the Blessed Virgin was commonly known. Those who are familiar with the literary tricks of that time, its anagrams, acrostics, isopsephics, and the like, will have not the least difficulty in seeing that this is the true solution. The inventor has only changed the order of the letters and slightly altered the ending of the word. Everything that we know of the dogmatics of the early part of the second century agrees with the belief that at that period the Virginity of Mary was a part of the formulated Christian belief. Nor need we hesitate, in view of the antiquity of the Panthera-fable, to give the doctrine a place in the creed of Aristides.
We restore the fragments of Aristides' creed, then, as follows:
We believe in one God, Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth:
And in Jesus Christ His Son
* * * *
Born of the Virgin Mary:
* * * *
He was pierced by the Jews:
He died and was buried: