/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21011788]

>You have filled the whole world with tombs and sepulchres, and yet in your scriptures it is nowhere said that you must grovel among tombs 138 and pay them honour. But you have gone so far in iniquity that you think you need not listen even to the words of Jesus of Nazareth on this |417 matter. Listen then to what he says about sepulchres :
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres; outward the tomb appears beautiful, but within it is full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness." 139
>If, then, Jesus said that sepulchres are full of uncleanness, how can you invoke God at them? . . .140

>Therefore, since this is so, why do you grovel among tombs? Do you wish to hear the reason? It is not I who will tell you, but the prophet Isaiah :
"They lodge among tombs and in caves for the sake of dream visions." 141
>You observe, then, how ancient among the Jews was this work of witchcraft, namely, sleeping among tombs for the sake of dream visions. And indeed it is likely that your apostles, after their teacher's death, practised this and handed it down to you from the beginning, I mean to those who first adopted your faith, and that they themselves performed their spells more skilfully than you do, and displayed openly to those who came after them the places in which they performed this witchcraft and abomination.


Against the Galileans: remains of the 3 books, excerpted from Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum (1923) pp.319-433

AGAINST THE GALILAEANS
[Translated by Wilmer Cave WRIGHT, PH.D.]