Thursday, February 1, 2024

Abulfeda’s account of Galen’s Comments on Christians

  

According to the Kûmil (of Ibn Athîr) Galen lived in the days of this Commodus, having been born before the death of Ptolemy [literally: “and Galen lived to the time of Ptolemy”]. In his [i.e. Galen’s] time the religion of the Christians in his book Remark on the Book of Plato on the Republic, where he says: “The mass of the people are not able to follow the thread of an apodictic discourse, wherefore they need allusive (enigmatic) sayings, so that they may enjoy instruction thereby (by allusive sayings he means the tales concerning rewards and punishments in the world to come). Of this sort we now see the people who are called Christians deriving their faith from such allusive sayings. Yet on their part deeds have been produced equal to the deeds of those who are in truth philosophers. For example, that they are free from the fear of death is a fact which we all have observed; likewise their abstinence from the unlawful practice of sexual intercourse. And, indeed, there are some among them, men and women, also, who during the whole of their natural life refrain altogether from such intercourse. And some of them have attained to such a degree of severe self-control and to such earnestness in their desire for righteousness, that they do not fall short of those who are in truth philosophers. Thus far the words of Galen. (M. Sprengling, “Galen on the Christians,” American Journal of Theology 21, no. 1 [1917]: 96)