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By Root 1293 0

of His Human Life on Earth, and Refutation of Marcion's Docetic Parody of the Same. There are, to be sure, other things also quite as foolish (as the birth of Christ), which have reference to the humiliations and sufferings of God.... But Marcion will apply the knife to this doctrine also, and even with greater reason.... Have you, then, cut away all sufferings from Christ, on the ground that, as a mere phantom, He was incapable of experiencing them? We have said above that He might possibly have undergone the unreal mockeries of an imaginary birth and infancy. But answer me at once, you that murder truth: Was not God really crucified? And, having been really crucified, did He not really die?

Here Tertullian is actually conceding that Jesus's birth and infancy may have been imaginary and "unreal mockeries."

To repeat, the Gnostic texts were non-historicizing, allegorical and mythological. In other words, they did not tell the story of a "historical" Jewish master. As a further example, regarding the Gnostic texts dating from the fourth century and found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, Frank Muccie exclaims, "Still another interesting fact recorded in this same Coptic collection of Gospel fragments is that the disciples did not refer to themselves as Jews, but were from other nations-and that Jesus was also not a Jew! "29

Several other Gnostic texts were non-historicizing and nonJudaizing, such as the Diatessaron of the Marcionite-Christian Tatian (fl. 170), a gospel purportedly compiled from the four canonical gospels and of which 200 copies were in use in Syrian churches as late as the time of "church superintendent" Theodoret (435), who removed them, no doubt violently, because they had no genealogies and did not declare Jesus to be "born of the seed of David." Thus, following Marcion, Tatian did not believe that Jesus Christ was a historical person, nor did he perceive of "the Savior" as being Jewish. In reality, Tatian's gospel was compiled not from the four canonical gospels but in the manner of the four Egyptian books of magic, using the same sources as the evangelists. This episode concerning Theodoret and the 200 texts in the Syrian churches also reveals that well into the 511, century there were still plenty of Christians who did not believe in the incarnation.

The Pagans

In addition to the non-carnalizing Gnostics were many nonGnostic "Pagan" detractors, although "Pagan" was a pejorative term used to describe illiterate country folk and applied by Christians in a fraudulent attempt to demonstrate that they were more learned than their critics. These "Pagan" critics were, in fact, highly erudite in their own right, much more scientific than their adversaries and, as noted, frequently more moral.

As non-Christians, the Pagans were less euphemistic than the Gnostics in their denial of Christ's appearance in the flesh, calling it a blatant fabrication and subjecting the Christians to endless ridicule, such that a number of Christian apologists were forced to write long, rambling and illogical rants in attempts to silence their critics. One of the harshest critics of Christianity was the Epicurean and Platonist philosopher Celsus, who was so potent in his arguments that Gnostic-Christian Origen was compelled to compose his refutation Against Celsus. Regarding Celsus's opinions of the Christian religion and its adherents, Doane relates:

Celsus (an Epicurean philosopher, towards the end of the second century) ... in common with most of the Grecians, looked upon Christianity as a blind faith, that shunned the light of reason. In speaking of the Christians, he says:

"They are forever repeating: 'Do not examine. Only believe, and thy faith will make thee blessed. Wisdom is a bad thing in life; foolishness is to be preferred.'

He jeers at the fact that ignorant men were allowed to preach, and says that "weavers, tailors, fullers, and the most illiterate and rustic fellows," were set up to teach strange paradoxes. "They openly declared that none but the ignorant (were) fit disciples for the God they worshiped," and that