A Note on the Text and the Controversy

The following translation and partial reconstruction of the "objections" in the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes is based on the edition of C. Blondel, Macarii Magnetis quae supersunt, ex inedito codice edidit (Klincksieck: Paris. 1876). Extensive use has been made of Harnack's apparatus criticus, selection, and annotations (Porphyrius "Gegen die Christen": 15 Bilcher. Zeugnisse und Referate, Abhandlung der kon. preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaft. phil.-hist. Klasse I [Berlin, 1916]). Occasional reference has been made to T. W. Crafer, The Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes: Greek Texts. Series I (London and New York: Macmillan, 1919), running corrections of which can be found in the critical notes accompanying the translation.

The confidence of Harnack, that the Apocriticus undoubtedly reflects the philosophy of Porphyry, has been challenged repeatedly, before and since 1916, but most significa.ntly by T. D. Barnes, "Porphyry Against the Christians: Date and the Attribution of Fragments," JTS, n.s. 24 (1973): 424-42. In turn, there has been a growing skepticism about Barnes' dating of the material and his pessimism about the work's being Porphyry's, notably the work of Robert Waelkens, "L'Economie, theme, apologetique et principe hermeneutique dans l'apocritique de Macarios Magnes," Recueil de Travaux d'Histoire et de Philologie (Louvain, 1974). Anyone interested in pursuing the history of guesswork concerning the attribution of fragments may begin with these.

It is my belief that Harnack's painstaking work has not been superseded and that his informed guesswork was substantially correct: that the pagan voice to be heard in the criticisms of Macarius' pagan is none other than Porphyry. Because this translation is not meant to be a contribution to the ascription debate, however, I have outlined my reasons within the text in the critical notes to the translation.

Neither Harnack nor Crafer was unaware of the checkered history of the text of the Apocriticus between the ninth and the sixteenth century, nor of the difficulty of identifying the author of the work, Macarius Magnes. In quoting passages from the book against the Protestants, the Jesuit Turianus claimed in the sixteenth century that the book was written by a certain "Magnetes" around 150 -- which would place the pagan source well out of range of Porphyry. By the time Blondel and Duchesne in the nineteenth century began their editing labors, the preferred "average" date was somewhere in the fourth century -- between 300 and 350 -- with the place of composition being Magnesia or Edessa. As the Germans could not accept the primacy of French Catholic scholarship on the point, they offered that the work dated from the fifth century, and that its author was the bishop of Magnesia who, in 403, accused Heraclides of Ephesus of following the errors of Origen at the synod of the Oak.

The theory that the "pagan" philosopher cited in the work is Porphyry has been argued since the sixteenth century, with occasional suggestions that Porphyry's pupil Hierocles or one of three pagan critics remembered by the Christians as the "authors of persecution" was the source. The epithet derived from the belief that their literary attacks had incited Aurelian's successors to renew the battle against the spread of Christian teaching. Uncertainties about the date of the work, the authorship of the Apocriticus and the identity of the pagan opponent were compounded by the fact that the manuscript tradition itself was spotty: the Apocriticus had disappeared from view in the sixteenth century in the vicinity of Venice and was only "discovered" in Athens in 1867.

In 1911, Adolf von Harnack, the great Berlin church historian, entered the debate. Although his conclusions are now challenged by some modern scholars, he argued convincingly that the pagan opponent in the Apocriticus is Porphyry and that the work contained material for an edition of his lost treatise Against the Christians (Texte und Untersuchungen 37, Leipzig, 1911). Harnack was mistaken, I believe, for reasons stated above, in thinking that Macarius did not know the excerpts to have been Porphyry's; in his view, Macarius knew the extracts from a later (anonymous) writer, since at one point the pagan is actually referred to Porphyry's treatise On Abstinence.

Crafer (1919) attempted a number of modifications of Harnack's thesis, arguing that the work reflects the "master mind of Porphyry" but is really the work of the philosopher Hierocles. A great deal was made to hang by Crafer on Hierocles' unfavorable comparison between Apollonius of Tyana (whose miracles and feats were said to be greater) and Jesus; the theme is recorded by the pagan in the Apocriticus. But as the comparison is a natural one -- Celsus had used it in the second century -- there is no reason to suppose that Porphyry would not have referred to the Apollonius story.

A comparison of the sayings of the pagan philosopher with the "circumstantial" evidence of patristic quotations and characterizations of the book make it highly probable that Porphyry is at least the inspiration and, in some cases, the actual critical voice of the pagan philosopher in the Apocriticus. From it we can draw an adequate, if approximate, view of the nature and scope of pagan objections to the increasingly successful church of the late third century. In theme, philosophical orientation, style, and literary approach the evidence points to Porphyry more directly than to any lesser light.

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