On the Witch of Endor, against Origen

I have always admired the conspicuous zeal of your godly way of life, Eutropius, most distinguished herald of orthodoxy; and, amazed in many ways at the mark of your piety, I have marvelled not least, and indeed most of all, at this point: that, wishing to investigate precisely, you want to know what opinion I hold concerning the woman with a divining spirit whose story is told in the first book of Kingdoms. For you say you are not satisfied with what Origen published on this subject. Indeed I know of many others too who still find fault with what he so readily laid down; many are stung in their souls and are distressed beyond measure; but sometimes some are led on by what he wrote, assenting too easily to the reputation that had gone before him, and attending to the names rather than to the facts, as they ought. So that I may not seem to bring a lawsuit on my own, I think it not out of place to yoke his whole exposition together with this dictation of my letter, and to make the truth clear through both: so that no one may think we slander him, led to hold some opinion or other, nor again that the opinions of the two sides are open to dispute. For they think that, by setting them side by side, lovers of learning examine what view each side holds and choose the better opinion of the two. For a racehorse is not judged excellent by itself, running gracefully, not even if, very light as though winged, it shows off its movements; nor again an athlete who can run very fast in the stadium, nor anyone else, whether wrestling supply, or fighting the pancratium most roughly, or boxing, or beating the air with blows at nothing; but the combatants must stand against their opponents in close fight, so that from the two the superior may be discerned. Therefore Origen's work must be set first, and the opposing view must be examined with care in its own place.

Come, then, let us look at the very letter of the narrative, as far as we can, to see where we must begin. When Saul was governing the multitude of the people excellently, he removed all the ventriloquists, it says, and those called by the name of “knowers”, as most hateful destroyers. But when, having turned to the worst, he was bitterly driven by the wicked demon, he went back to the apparitions of their divination, building up again what he had pulled down a little before, and convicting himself as a transgressor by this very thing. For when the neighbouring peoples, with one-minded zeal, proclaimed the start of a war, gathered in the greatest possible numbers, drew up their phalanxes against him, and, having trained their weapons, marched out vigorously to battle, Saul, seeing their fortified camp with his own eyes, was, to sum it up, beside himself with terror, as the divine Scripture declares; and after this, it says, he inquired through the Lord, longing of course to know what to do. But the Lord did not answer him at all because of his iniquities, neither by dreams nor by the prophets. Indeed, the Deity gave no oracle at all to a man who had done lawless things. What does he do after this, stripped of help from on high? Instead of rather appeasing God with supplication and perseverance, he leaps away and increases the practices of apostasy. He commanded his servants to seek a woman who was a ventriloquist, so that he might go to her and inquire as at an oracle. And when the worst of his servants at once informed him of … the frenzied woman, Saul, without a thought, disguised himself and changed the garments he wore and went off at a run, leaving the army; and when he came to her by night with two men, he made his request to her, saying: “Divine for me by the ventriloquist spirit; bring up for me,” he says, “whomever I tell you.” So if Saul begged to divine through the ventriloquist, would anyone say her utterances were true? Is there anyone who does not know that he was driven by the demon with savage passions, having turned aside to incurable divinations and to the devilish workings of fables? For what? Is not God more trustworthy, who put the words into Balaam's mouth and allowed Moses to write expressly in Numbers: “For there is no augury in Jacob …”? Since such things have been forbidden, as loathsome abominations and causes of the most hateful idolatry, how could the witness be reliable who tried to use them most unholily? But we shall take this up again a little later and speak of it more fully; now we must return to the narrative of the text.

So when the woman saw the senseless Saul, she pretended not to know the ruler, and said, as he himself would know better, how much Saul had done to those skilled in these terrible arts, how he had destroyed the ventriloquists and the soothsayers from the land; and for this reason, she said, her soul was being snared by him to death. But when, pledging with an oath, he assured her that she would suffer nothing harmful, the wickedness took courage again, and the woman answers, of course, more boldly: “Whom,” she says, “shall I bring up for you?” Of what sort and what kind was this ill-starred old woman, that she should promise to bring up Samuel from the dead? Indeed, if one must speak setting aside his dignity, she could not bring up not only a prophet's soul, but not even the soul of any ordinary person at all, no, not even of an ant. For demons do not have authority over spirits and souls; God, who rules over all alike, has it; so that it must be granted to the divine nature alone to summon souls from Hades and call them back again. But the clever Origen, wishing to graft instruments of idolatry and inventions of necromancy onto the choir of the church, falsifies the divine text. For when Scripture itself cries out openly, “The woman said: Whom shall I bring up for you?”, he, turning it to the opposite, said that it was the person of the Holy Spirit that said these words. Then he was carried so far astray that he does not blush to ascribe to the Holy Spirit the words of the possessed woman; and blaspheming such things with a barer tongue, he refers the whole thing to the Holy Spirit, trying to win over his hearers with a show of trustworthiness. The woman asked, then, as I said, as though she had the authority to summon the dead, “Whom shall I bring up for you?”; and when the inquirer said that Samuel should be brought up, it goes on: “And the woman saw Samuel,” it says, “and cried out with a loud voice, and said to the ruler: Why have you deceived me? And you are Saul.” When the king said to her, “Do not fear,” and added, “What have you seen?”, the pythoness answered in turn: “I have seen gods coming up from the earth.” And when he finally asked, “What did you perceive?”, at once she replied: “A man standing upright, coming up from the earth; and he is wrapped in a double cloak.” What, then, does the divine Scripture declare after this? “And he knew that this was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground and did obeisance to him.” It appears, then, that nowhere at all did the sense of the divine text say that Samuel was brought up through the ventriloquist; but she herself first, through the demon that raved in her, declares that she must bring him up; then, boasting that she sees gods coming up, she gave by deceit the signs of the man as a snare; and the crazed Saul, from what he heard, recognized that this was Samuel himself.

… as to one who had accurately attained a true apprehension of knowledge, or to a demon boasting and promising to summon the souls of the righteous from Hades, let us judge among ourselves how full of blasphemy it would be to think these and such things, most excellent Eutropius. For Origen, it seems, has strayed far from the truth, although our Master Jesus Christ said expressly of the devil: “And he does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks the lie, he speaks from his own, for he is a liar and its father.” What then do you say, Origen? For I must ask you whether what the Saviour said is true, or whether you will retort the opposite. If the Lord's words are true, as is customary, then the demon lied in his boldness; if you lay down that the demon's words are free of falsehood, you attempt to make out the Lord a liar. Do you see into what absurdity the rule you lay down has fallen? For although demons are sometimes forced to tell the truth when racked by torments, they would not willingly say anything without falsehood. And if anyone lays down off-hand that this one must bring up even the righteous from Hades, how would it not be clear that he brings in the lie in exchange by deceit, wishing to throw someone headlong? “Yes,” he says, “but it was not the demon who said this, but the narrative voice of the writer; and the writer of the words is believed to be the Holy Spirit, not a man.” Then does he not notice how he shows things contrary to the sense of the narrative? Those who have dealt at leisure with every kind of literature know better that the narrative voice of the writer reported what the ventriloquist seemed to do or say to Saul, who was consulting her. Indeed, the writer, relating her story and setting out her words word for word, said: “And the woman said: Whom shall I bring up for you?” Who is so simple as to pretend not to understand that these are not the writer's words but those of the demon-possessed woman? And indeed, if one must speak as a lover of truth, the narrative said only this, that “the woman saw Samuel”; and it wrote this as speaking to those who knew it was speaking of a possessed woman. For there is no disputing that a demon brings up no one's soul, since, when commanded by godly men, it is driven out, burned, scourged, and flees, abandoning its dwelling; but the crazed woman saw what suited her, the shape of an imagined vision. For the beast is accustomed to change its forms; and, to speak with the holy Paul, I would say: “For Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.” It is no great thing, then, if in his discussion he set down this passage too, thinking by it to rule out those who bring in the truth against him, but, seeming to refute it with lack of art rather than with art …

“And why,” he says, “is it not said, ‘The woman saw a demon which pretended to be Samuel’? But it has been written,” he says, besides this, “‘He knew that it was Samuel.’” Then he goes on again: “If it was not Samuel, it ought to have been written: ‘And he thought it was Samuel’; but now it is written”—and no one knew what was not—“‘He knew, then, that it was Samuel. He fell on his face to the ground and did obeisance to him.’” But so that I may not be drawn aside to his other examples, I will put my question here, from what he himself wrote, and then go on to his other examples. Tell me, before God, what do you say, Origen: did the woman bring up Samuel with his body, or wrapped in the shape of a shadowy outline? If she brought him up bodiless, then she did not raise Samuel, but the appearance of a spirit; for Samuel the man is the one composed of soul and body, who has a proportioned blend of both. But if she brought up the man himself with his body, how did Saul not see him? For if he had seen him with his own eyes, he would not have questioned the woman as though he could not see, saying in so many words, “What have you seen?” So if he was invisible, he was beyond doubt bodiless; but if he appeared in a shape, why did the pythoness say the opposite, that she had seen a man standing upright, coming up out of the earth, wrapped in a double cloak according to his former custom? So the very facts fight against your words, Origen. Saul, seeing nothing at all, asked as one speaking of an invisible phantom, saying, “What have you seen?”; she, on the contrary, cried out as one who had seen a man himself: “See, one standing upright coming up out of the earth”; and to persuade him that he himself was a man, she gives him a sign as well, adding: “And he is wrapped in a double cloak.” Why then, you advocate of unlawful divination, if he was a man, did Saul not see him? Unless you would say that he was blind in his bodily eye too, just as indeed in the eye of his understanding …

But perhaps, caught easily, you will say: “The very vehicle of the soul took on a human shape at that hour, so that, appearing, it might declare the future by prophetic disclosure, as sometimes in sleep spirits and souls appear to men in every way, showing human features, and indeed wearing various and many-coloured garments and bearing the marks of scars or blows or bruises, and of strokes or wounds.” If, then, you lay down that only a soul was brought up, and not a man with his body (for the text does not grant you that, even if you wish it), do you not perceive that you are pronouncing things that fight with themselves? Someone will retort this against you: Why did the woman not say, “I saw a prophetic soul,” but on the contrary, “a man standing upright”? For in the way you put it, why, you say, is it not said, “The woman saw a demon which pretended to be Samuel”? To this argument I in turn would reply: Why, if a soul was brought up, did she not say she had seen a soul, if that was the case, but on the contrary a man, and an upright one, which is the mark of bodily vigour? For the maddened woman did not say she saw a bent and stooping old man, but an upright one, erect, straightened, ever youthful for war in the outpourings of wickedness; and enticing the senseless man by deceit, she persuaded him by a sign that the one coming up from the earth was a man, and showed him wrapped in a cloak. Why then (someone might say), if a man was emerging with his body, would Saul not have seen him, but wants to learn from another what he is like, as though struck with blindness? So the facts themselves cry out that it was not a man, but, it seems, some unseen shadow; for otherwise it would not have been invisible. And if you think, Origen, that the soul of Samuel was there, why was the apparition seen wrapped in a double cloak? It is shown by a clear sign that all garments and coverings of clothing suit bodies rather than souls. For I do not think you will say, joking with pretence, that the double cloak remained in the tomb for so many years until that day, so that the prophet's soul might wear it and not go about naked; and yet one might say, as no one seems not to know, that the saints have incorruptible garments from heaven, shining with gleaming radiance, not woven clothes of varied colours. But if you lay down that what was seen was the soul of Samuel, and say that the garment was seen in a spiritual sense, so that the manner of his priestly ministry might be made plain (both of these being proper to intelligible things), it follows that the maddened woman reported nothing sound and nothing true. For she spoke of things other than what was, applying the names of sensible things and pointing to intelligible things. So, calling it an upright man, and its covering a woven, hand-made garment, though invisible, she brought in the opposite …

Tell me then, most excellent dogmatist, how did Saul know that this was Samuel himself, when he saw not even a fragment of a shadow, let alone the form of a man? But you do not blush to have said: “It ought to have been written, ‘And he thought it was Samuel’; but now it is written, ‘Saul knew.’” Then you keep saying, up and down, that the demon-driven man knew, having heard it from a demon-possessed woman; but that he saw nothing at all, you hide the text in silence, nowhere giving the refutation, thinking to deceive simple people and to raise an invention of divination like a fortress against everyone. For the knowledge of the demon-driven man was worthy of the proclamation of her who supplied him with the words. But you might say that he knew by knowledge and understanding, without seeing, and did not merely suppose. Yet every man who receives a thing by hearing rather than by sight supposes and thinks, not knowing the certainty, especially if he hears it from a person possessed by a demon; for only the words of God are confirmed for exact apprehension and firmness of faith. Indeed, if the psalmist said of men, “I said in my ecstasy: Every man is a liar,” how much more if someone tells of a frenzied woman? Then you say that “no one knew what was not”, as though talking straight to boys. Tell me then, how did he know what was, if he himself did not see it, but asked; seeing not the upright man, not the ephod he wore, not the high-priestly robe, but seeing nothing from anywhere, he was fanned up by empty words, just as you too with light talk give wings to the unstable? But the historian, putting first the name “ventriloquist”, first showed what kind the person was, a frenzied one; and then in this way he described her as having seen the vision, as befits those who think rightly about understanding; for no one would suppose that a person out of her wits sees what she ought. In the same way he said that the senseless Saul “knew”, as would be fitting to think of a madman, who for so many cycles of years was bitterly driven by the demon.

But that this is how things stand, the facts themselves cry out clearly. And so that I may establish the like from another example too, let us bring forward the story of the prophet Elijah, when they agreed that the side of each should be tested in a sacrifice, that no one should apply fire, but that the coming of fire should be brought on by prayers, so that the God who could hear all might send fire in flame from heaven out of the boasted height, and from this the authority of the stronger might be discerned and the better be plain to all. When he ordered those men to perform first, they chose a bullock and cut it in pieces as an offering of the one called Baal, and achieved nothing at all, but even cut themselves according to their custom with knives and lances, it says, until their blood poured out. Then, after this, the narrative voice of the writer adds: “And they prophesied until evening.” Since, then, the text does not say whether they prophesied truly or falsely, would anyone say from this that they were true prophets? For according to Origen's pronouncement it ought to have said, “They prophesied, as they thought, in appearance, saying nothing true” (since it is not lawful for foreknowledge to dwell among them), and not, in unqualified and plain words, “And they prophesied until evening.” So one may see consistently from the same narrative of the text that this befits them; for if the writer of both is the same, he leads the mind alike from both. But just as here, putting first the name of the idolaters, he showed by implication that one must take them to be false prophets lacking foreknowledge, so there too, putting first persons possessed by demons and the dramas of unlawful divination, he indicated by silence what the sane should think about the senseless.

But if I were to bring forward such witnesses, time would perhaps fail me as I spoke; so, setting out one more image as an example, I begin. In the text of Exodus, then, we learn how the Lord himself commanded Moses and Aaron to throw the rod on the ground before Pharaoh, so that, changing its shape before their eyes, it might strike the Egyptians with a fearful sign. When this happened wondrously, the ruler in his folly summoned together the wise men and the sorcerers of Egypt: “And the enchanters of the Egyptians also did likewise with their sorceries,” it says, “and each threw down his rod, and they became serpents; and the rod of Aaron swallowed up their rods.” It is further reported that the enchanters of the Egyptians made blood and frogs likewise. Since, then, the narrative voice does not here distinguish the ranks of each side either, but said that the enchanters too did likewise, would you say from this that what was done by the sorcerers is like what came about through Moses? Not at all, one would say; it would not even be lawful to say that works of curious and magical art are made equal to heavenly signs. Whatever was done through Moses displayed the truth from the deeds; whatever was contrived by the enchanters made the eyes imagine an appearance; for the lie brought its own complete refutation from its impotence. Otherwise how did the one rod suddenly swallow up those many? Nor is it lawful to think that they could make living rods out of lifeless ones all at once; for those able to animate dead wood would perhaps be better than us; and perhaps Moses would have done nothing marvellous if he worked things like these. And how is it not right to show their impotence from the very account of Scripture? For if God, punishing the Egyptians, commanded all the streams of the waters to be changed into blood as a penalty, and if they, tormented by such plagues, changed the channels likewise into the appearance of blood, contriving to increase the suffering, for what reason do they ask and beg, pressed by thirst, that the waters throughout all Egypt be cleansed of the bloody mixture? Or again, seeing suddenly frogs without number, why, while begging to be rid of their swarms, did they fashion others, unless they cared nothing for those that appeared in shadow and the form of fancy, but were terribly harmed by those shown in reality? For no one would choose to add another countless multitude to an enemy multitude, instead of enlisting newly recruited bodyguards as allies; nor to rouse fever upon fever while longing to be rid of the first; nor does one scourged by the force of unbearable blows bring other blows upon himself while pleading with pure longing, embassy, and prayer to be released from them; nor does one whose house is burning, instead of instruments for quenching, pour on oil, raising the flame to measureless height and increasing the disaster as it burns, tastelessly watering fire with fire. So by the very things the sorcerers were eager to do, by these they thought they had to show themselves plainly. It is easy to see from this that even now the jugglers in the theatres do many more and greater things than these; and yet, though these men were plainly caught by an improvised power, nonetheless the narrative voice writes: “And the enchanters of the Egyptians did likewise with their sorceries.” It ought, then, as the dogmatist Origen has legislated, to have said: “The enchanters of the Egyptians did those things,” but not to say “likewise”, lest some should suppose that they set out from a like power. For if they were able to do things like those of Moses' company, they could likewise have warded off their opponents by equal means, so that the contests on each side would be evenly matched; but if not, then the workings of lifeless fancy are evident. Just so here too, the writer, putting first the name “enchanters” and the practices of sorcery, shows that one must not dispute at all that each of these magical things was done by the magicians through curious art; and such too are the dramas recorded in this narrative. For by naming her a ventriloquist, and then exposing the inventions of divination and showing that the one divining was the person of a demoniac, he made it plain by itself that these things are to be understood by us in this way.

Let us go back again, unrolling the tracks of the words. What then? When Saul asked the ventriloquist, saying, “What have you seen?”, first the crazed woman, answering, cries: “I have seen gods coming up out of the earth.” For since the devil, having seized the man, wished to throw him headlong in every way, he set out to show clearly that the demon had it in its power to bring up not just one righteous soul but all the souls of holy men together; he, on the contrary, arming here the army of demons and assembling a gathering in one moment of time, was boasting, wishing by this too to persuade everyone that he himself was God, the gatherer of the others. That, using his own madness, he is accustomed to make himself a god, Isaiah, rebuking him to his face, proclaims prophetically: “But you said in your heart: I will go up to heaven, I will set my throne above the stars; I will sit on a high mountain, on the high mountains toward the north; I will go up above the clouds; I will be like the Most High.” And the Lord himself testifies to like things, speaking openly through the prophet Ezekiel: “Because your heart was lifted up, and you said, I am God, I will dwell in the heart of the sea; but you are a man and not God.” How many punishments he threatens him with for this, it is easy to see from what follows; and that he relies on such apparitions, boasting each time, has been shown by the divine verdict. So if the demon was able to bring up those called by the name of gods, must one not think that the one who brings up is greater than those brought up? And if he surpasses the holy ones, it follows that the chief demon in turn surpasses him. And if anyone ascribes this to an irresistible power, it establishes that he is the God of gods, who assigns to his servants such authority that they summon the spirits and souls of the righteous from Hades. But no one in his right mind will ever lay this down, lest he cast his vote against the holy testimonies. When the crazed man asked a second time, “And he said to the woman, What did you perceive?”, she at once answered the question: “I saw a man standing upright, coming up out of the earth”; and he, as he heard the words, knew in his own notion that this was Samuel, being besieged from within by the demon; and as he was carried away by the naming of the signs, then, bowing his face to the ground, he did obeisance to him. First, then, one might quite rightly say: if that had been Samuel, and not the many-shaped serpent transformed, he would have answered with pious reasoning: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.” Second, I would say again: when Samuel ruled the whole people and was a chosen prophet, Saul, still a private man and looking for his father's asses, went to ask him, as a prophet, about the lost beasts, and nowhere appears to have done obeisance to him, though he needed him and was plainly subject to him as leader of the people. How then does the king, who did not do obeisance when he was a private man before a ruler, now on the contrary do obeisance to one who is a private man? Third, besides this I can ask why, when he heard of gods coming up, he did obeisance to none of them, but when he heard that the upright man had come up, then he did. Indeed, if, as Origen boldly declared, some of them were angels or choirs of prophets, he ought to have bowed to the greater. So from all the deeds together it is easy to see that Saul was blinded in his ruling mind, driven by the demon, while the devil changed himself into various forms, contriving to be worshipped by the ruler, so as thereby to deceive secretly as many as possible who would bow to him. And indeed this is not strange to say, since even when he saw the person of Christ, though within he saw him as God in act and the genuine Son of God by nature, observing him outwardly clothed with a pure, undefiled, spotless man, a very temple, he heedlessly approached to tempt him, fighting against God as usual; and when, having challenged him a first and second time, he was defeated and broken, the wretch, changing again to another manner, tried to show him the whole compass of this world and its kingdoms, and, emboldened by madness and lying speech, boasted: “All these I will give you, if you fall down and worship me.” Such words the impious one burst out with here, thinking to provoke to anger the patient character and by this to seem to lay hold of him; but the Lord silenced the avenger with long-suffering, as befits God; for it is proper to God to bear all things patiently. If, then, he thought nothing of addressing such words to the Lord himself, how is it not clear that he did these things wishing to be worshipped as equal to God? This, I think, is evident to all who think rightly: that through a frenzied woman he deceived the senseless ruler into bowing to him against what was right.

Next we must take up in order the very things that follow. When Saul had bowed down in obeisance, the crafty one again pretends to have suffered violence, having changed himself into the shape of Samuel; then he answers with irony, wishing to signify that the demon could summon the prophet even against his will and had such authority over him. And then some are so dim-sighted as not to be able to understand that all who sincerely think the things of Christ put the demons to flight in the divine name, and do not, on the contrary, as though subject to them, come up from Hades against their will when summoned by them. If anyone thinks that the demon of the ventriloquist could in no way be put to flight, being superior to all the others together, let him run back to the Acts of the Apostles, and looking into those very passages, let him see how Paul, the travelling herald, came to Philippi; and when he had enlightened Lydia, as she is called, with the knowledge of godliness, he then went to offer prayers: “And it came about,” it says, “that a slave girl met us having a spirit of Python, who brought her masters much gain. She cried after Paul and us, saying thus: These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation. And she did this for many days.” The demon, racked by an invisible scourge, was forced against its will to utter such words; but Paul, judging that its testimony was not trustworthy, quite rightly, being greatly troubled, said to the spirit: “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” Then the writer, narrating the affair, adds: “And it came out that very hour. When the masters of the slave girl saw that the hope of their gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers”; and they became the cause of insults and blows to them, slandering them with sedition. If, then, Paul, rebuking the spirit, drove out the pythoness's spirit all at once in that very moment, and the spirit fled at the authority of his word, unable to withstand the sound of his tongue, let him who stands by such a rule come forward openly and say: by the virtue of what power did the demon bring up from Hades Samuel, who shared Paul's faith, summoning him against his will? But he could show nothing of this to be true. So from these things too it is very easy to see that the demon pretended that he came up against his wish, unwilling, by necessity and force, as though commanded to be summoned by the stronger. The ruler answered: “I am in great distress; the foreigners are making war on me, and God has departed from me,” he says, “and no longer hears me, either by the hand of the prophets or in dreams; and now I have called you to make known to me what I should do.” Again, then, one must answer: if it had been Samuel, the renowned prophet, would he not have brought the man to his senses by admonishing him? Would he not have said to him first: “Tell me, most wretched of all men: if foreigners surround you, if God has departed from you and does not hear you at all, if neither have prophets gone down to intercede for you, nor in dream or waking has what you must do been revealed to you, ought you not rather to bow to God in propitiation, and wash away the causes of your charges by alms to the poor, instead of fleeing to a ventriloquist diviner, exchanging the tokens of piety for frenzied divination, and doubling the suffering against yourself? Or must you not consider that God expressly forbade such pollutions in Leviticus through Moses, saying: You shall not follow ventriloquists, and you shall not cleave to enchanters, to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God? Do you not think these impious abominations contrary to God, when you attempt to act them out? Hear also God's oracle later against such a venture: And the soul, he says, that follows ventriloquists or enchanters, so as to go whoring after them; and what it will suffer he declared as he went on, saying: I will set my face against that soul and destroy it from among its people”? If, then, God, legislating from the beginning, banished with stern edicts those given to such incantations or divinations, and fearfully threatens grim and dark punishments against those convicted in judgment, ought not the man dedicated to God from his tender years, the firm guardian of the law, to have charged him with these things first? Indeed the man learned in the law from boyhood, able to examine the letters of the law most precisely, would not have overlooked the fault, lest perhaps some be dragged by it into frenzied divinations, wretchedly caught by deceit. But he said and asked nothing of the kind; for it was not Samuel, but the one who has contrived such dramas from of old. Upon this he answers, putting on the person of the prophet: “Why do you ask me, when the Lord has departed from you and has gone over to your neighbour? And the Lord has done to you as he spoke by my hand.” These things he brings in as an enemy, sketching at the same time his departure: reminders of accusation.

We must observe how, passing over the very charges that hold the matter together, he feigns to speak with a more demonstrative air; but, saying nothing worthy of foreknowledge, he artfully repeats all that Samuel, while still alive, had foretold would befall Saul, which in prophesying he had proclaimed beforehand as though already done. Indeed, the one who said to him, “Why do you ask me?” plainly admits that these are the things he had said before, confirming the first things by the later ones, as a pretext, by sorcery. But Origen, on the contrary, taking word for word the very sayings proclaimed long before by the prophet, defines them as fresh and new utterances of prophecy; and for this reason he wants Samuel to have been brought up, although Scripture refutes him directly, as he himself partly admits in one place. But what did it add after this, when the apparition was talking with the ruler? “The Lord will tear the kingdom out of your hand and give it to your neighbour David, because you did not listen to the voice of the Lord and did not carry out the fury of his anger on Amalek. Therefore the Lord has done this thing to you this day, and the Lord will give Israel with you into the hands of the foreigners.” If anyone wishes to verify what is plain, let him go back to the narrative of the text, running back a little; and unrolling the very passage where Saul, having defeated Amalek, appropriated the best of the spoils and, as though with understanding, thought he should offer whole burnt offerings from them, he would find that Samuel at that time foretold all these words word for word. For he said, “And the Lord has torn the kingdom out of his hand,” when the ruler took hold of the hem of his robe and tore it; and he foretold to him besides that the kingdom would be given to his neighbour, who was better than he, and he prophesied also in what way Israel would be divided because of this and would no longer return. And having said this, he confirmed what was spoken together with deeds; for not long after, sent by divine decision, he anointed David king. So the one said to have been brought up through the ventriloquist announced nothing new, but shaped as his own what Samuel had said before, impersonating him by deceit, and, repeating it with persuasive artistry, pretended to speak prophetically. But just as begging soothsayers, hurrying to the doors of the rich, at once amaze their hearers by telling offhand what has already passed in their lives and what happened long before, and then, having beguiled them into simple belief, fabricate whatever they like about the future; so too the apparition of the ventriloquist, transformed, recited the very prophetic sayings of Samuel and thought it was prophesying in appearance, though it knew nothing; it set forth another's words as its own and astounded the accursed man, and through them easily stole upon him and stole his mind away. What, then, was added after this? “And you,” it says, “tomorrow, and your son Jonathan”: the demon seemed to say this as its own; “and the Lord will give the camp of Israel into the hands of the foreigners.” But these things …

We must inquire whether it foretold the truth, or spoke at a guess, announcing from guesswork and chance; and besides, whether it could foreknow anything at all. First, then, Saul does not appear to have perished on the next day, as the apparition said in its utterance. For if, having heard the words, from excessive despondency he did not eat bread all that day and all that night, as the divine Scripture declares, and after this the woman again urged him to take food, since a journey lay ahead of him, it is plain that it was on the second day, after that fast all night and all day, that she persuaded him, lying slack on the ground, to get up and sit more decently on the couch; and the suckling calf she had, she quickly slaughtered and prepared as food; and when she had made the meal eagerly and set it before him and those with him, he, being urged, took food there; and we must understand that he came to further hours of the night, if indeed he set out from there by night. So the demon is convicted of lying by this fact itself; for it did not happen as he said, “Tomorrow you will be with me,” since Saul spent the next day there without food, and then, having taken food on the second, he went to the camp. Nor is he caught only in saying what was contrary to the fact; he also said that Jonathan alone, together with his father, would end up with him; but on the contrary, the narrative voice of Scripture declares that Saul was slain together with three sons, not with one only, as he said. So, for lack of foreknowledge, the demon said nothing true; for he would not have announced things contrary to what happened. Rather, having stolen, as I said, what Samuel had said before, he added a few things to it, weaving in similar things from what was probable; so he threatened the ruler with death, making use of Samuel's words, and promised besides the handing over of the camp of Israel, because the prophet had said that the people would be divided. For he saw the engines of war set up against him, and the leader of the people terrified, and moreover abandoned by God himself (from which the ruler, guessing, admitted that the prophet's proclamation was being fulfilled here), and he pretended to make his proclamation in accordance with the present movements. But whatever he added on his own, by itself, he was plainly caught lying in it; for he could not foretell the day of death, nor the killings of the sons of Saul, whom Scripture names. From this it is not hard to understand that the spirit announced nothing of its own, nothing true; but when it secretly stole the words of Samuel and appropriated them, it thought it was prophesying. But above all it cannot be said that it prophesied this without falsehood; and if indeed it did foretell the outbreak of war and the incurable streams of bloodshed, who is the cause of all wars? Is it not the devil? Did he not ask for Job? Did he not suddenly raise an undeclared war against him, and, transforming himself in different ways in different places, become at once his own messenger, witness, and war-leader, slipping into the inmost parts of men?

But the figure has been thought unclear by most; we must go on, then, consistently to the tracks of the third book of Kingdoms. It appears there how the prophet Micaiah is questioned by Ahab; and since he was compelled to tell the truth without disguise, he said he had seen the Lord sitting on a throne, and the heavenly armies standing around him on the right and on the left; and together with the account of the vision he said he had heard a voice of this kind: “Who will deceive Ahab, so that he will go up to Ramoth-gilead and fall there?” Then he says (to pass over what lies between and say what is to the point): “A spirit came out and stood before the Lord and said: I will deceive him”; and when the Lord answered, “By what?”, it replied again: “I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.” To this the Stronger said: “You will deceive, and you will prevail. And now, behold,” he says, “go and do so.” The prophet, telling these very things to the king, at once adds: “God has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these prophets of yours, and the Lord has spoken evil against you.” So if we must understand that this spirit, the cause of lying speech, is not good but evil, it follows that it is this very instrument of the devil. And if this is shown to be properly so, then he had heard beforehand how the vile Ahab would die when he went to war; for he resolved to cast out the truth with the lie, so as himself to bring about the outbreak of war and destroy the unjust man shamefully. So by these deeds too it is shown that he himself is the stage-manager of all evils for the unjust. But in Saul's case, whatever he added of his own and joined to Samuel's sayings, in it he not only lied persuasively but also blasphemed impiously. Hence the first blasphemy is refuted. First, in imitation, as the Lord said to the thief who confessed the power of his kingdom, “Today you will be with me in paradise,” the crafty one said the same to Saul, who had carried out the acts of divination: “Tomorrow you will be with me, you and Jonathan your son.” Second, he wants to show by this that the righteous man differs in nothing from the unrighteous, contriving to cut down the zeal of the godly. No one seems unaware that there is no fellowship of the believer with the unbeliever; or again, how the man who revelled in insatiable wealth was separated far from the dwelling of Lazarus, though he had done nothing like Saul. For he never gave anything to the poor man, nothing at all, not even of the crumbs that fell to the ground; but he did not maltreat the man with blows, nor torture him with scourges and drive him farther off. Yet when both departed and passed from here, the one came to rest in the bosom of the forefather Abraham, the other was given over to the sleepless flames of fire; and as he burned, tormented in Hades, he sees the forefather from afar, and beholds Lazarus too in his bosom; and burning in the flame he begged Abraham earnestly to send the poor man to him; for he asked that Lazarus might come and dip the tip of his finger in water and cool his tongue, touching it with moisture: such things the wretch asked in supplication. And when the forefather, answering him directly, showed that each in his own part had received fitting returns as his reward, then he added: “And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who wish to cross from here to you cannot, nor can those from there cross over to us.” If, then, there is a kind of chasm separating the righteous and the unrighteous, so that those from here cannot be ferried there, nor those from there come here, it is established that Saul, being unrighteous, is not with the prophet Samuel. For if the rich man cannot be with the poor man, and that though he did him no wrong and did not persecute him, but only did not readily share with him from what he had, how much more is this wretched man unworthy of the company of the saints …

But must we not consider how, for the sake of shameful gain, he set aside the divine command; and, struck incurably by a demon, was driven by envy to persecute the saintly David in no fitting manner, though David soothed with prophetic psalmody the savagery of the demon raging within him; how he slaughtered the priests of the Lord, three hundred and fifty in number; how he departed from God, divining impiously? If he did these things and things akin to them, how can one suppose that he came to rest with the wonder-working Samuel, who asked that rain should come in the season of harvest, and at his word a countless mass of waters was poured out? And if it cannot be said that Saul is with Samuel, then he lied who said to him, “Tomorrow you will be with me.” Therefore, if the one who said this is a liar, it is plain that this is not Samuel; for a prophet of the Lord would not lie so out of season. So such words, split off by themselves, show bare the many-faced beast hidden deep within. It is he, then, who dragged the frenzied Saul too down into the chasm of Tartarus; hence, having got hold of him, he addressed him as his own: “Tomorrow you and Jonathan your son will be with me.” Trying to establish, by naming two persons, that the righteous never differs from the unrighteous, he declared that Jonathan too would carry off the same lot as his father, though he did not share his cruelty. Who that exists pretends not to understand that he who lived most excellently, the lover of the prophet David, who did not attempt to persecute the righteous unjustly, does not bear the same lot as his father? For, to sum it all up, a son will not die for an unjust father.

[16] Indeed, he is refuted also by what follows in this account, for the writer added: “And Saul hastened, and fell full length on the ground, and was very much afraid,” it says, “at the words of Samuel”; for he knew that these were the words of Samuel, which Samuel had prophesied when present in body and tongue; but the apparition picked these out … and brought them forth as its own; and the ruler, frightened, and seeing the signs of war plainly set up against him, became terrified, thinking of their outcome. But Origen, fabricating doctrines for himself, knowing that very many vote for these things, when he argued against those who contradicted him, did not take pains to examine what was needful with due reverence; but declaring beforehand that the drama of the ventriloquist touches everyone, and calling the truth to an ill-considered examination, he plainly fights against the truth itself. Then, going through the praises of Samuel, all that the divine Scriptures say of him, he again declares him to be under the authority of the demon, in these very words and syllables: “Was so great a man under the earth? And did the ventriloquist bring him up? Does a demon have authority over a prophetic soul?” These things he is sometimes thought by some to say as one raising a difficulty, or perhaps asking. But so that he might establish by the conclusions that follow that this is how things are, he added in clearer words: “These things are written,” he says; “are they true or not true? To say they are not true leads to unbelief: it will come back on the heads of those who say it; to say they are true gives us inquiry and difficulty.” After this, again confirming without examination what he puts forward, and setting out the opinions of those who held contrary views, he adds: “And indeed we know some who say: I do not believe the ventriloquist. The ventriloquist says she saw Samuel; she is lying.” And he says many other things besides, through which he openly rebukes those who declare the ventriloquist's divinations false, and, cursing, brings it back on the heads of those who do not believe her. Wishing to persuade the facile very easily, he attaches this to Scripture itself, saying: “Or is it not written? Are these things true or not true?” And yet, he said, that the prophet's soul was not brought up gives us difficulty and inquiry; but to grant such things to the demon, how full of impiety is that? He no longer speaks as one inquiring, nor attends with his mind, struck by sheer folly; for to God alone belongs such authority, to command souls to be called back from Hades. So we must reply here again: these things are recorded in the holy Scriptures, but the writer did not declare that such a text was set down in his own person; for the book would not be read in the church if it cried out against the prophetic words, as we showed before and shall say a little later; rather, it engraved the words of the ventriloquist, and the knowledge of the frenzied ruler, shown by his deeds to be full of ignorance. For if it is fitting to lay such a charge on the holy Scriptures, then, since they say that the devil openly proclaims himself God, must we believe him because of this, attributing the whole to the narrative sense of the text, as Origen proposes? For this too has been recorded in the Scriptures themselves. Or again, when, with measureless arrogance, he says that the whole compass of this world, and its kingdoms, are his own, would anyone say that we must therefore understand that he is the creator of all things? Not at all, one would say; for the narrative voice engraved his boasts, but does not declare them true; nor could anyone ever show that it does. But there are countless such things to see besides; it is not possible to bring them all forward, lest by speaking at length we seem to be driven out …

So, since he seemed to rebuke not a little those who think most rightly, he again slipped away and leapt to another idea, and made a great show, playing the demagogue, of the fact that they say, among other things, that it would be dreadful to suppose that the renowned Samuel had been in Hades, he who had been honoured with the choice dignity of prophecy. This he repeats up and down like an old woman, contriving by deceit to shift his hearers from one thing to another. But we do not differ about matters agreed by all, but about those which we have decided are properly in dispute; for the question is not whether Samuel was in Hades, but whether a demon has such authority as to call back the souls of the righteous from Hades and send them back again. Since, then, caught in the act, he was convicted of pouring out blasphemy, he turns aside the ears of his hearers with deceitful art, and takes refuge, of course, in the person of Christ, so that, comparing it with the holy men, he might show that Christ too went down to Hades together with all the others. But while he was showing this, and exhorting each one, he said: “Why are you afraid to say that every place needs Christ and the prophets?” And, putting a few things in between, he weaves in another blasphemy, declaring that Christ, even when he was below, “so to speak,” he says, “being in the place below, was above in his purpose”. Speaking as though of a mere man, and no longer aiming at his divine nature, he said that he came to the lowest places but was of course above by his purpose, just like other men. “For so,” he said, “the prophets too and Samuel, even if they go down where the souls below are, can be in the place below, but they are not below in their purpose.” Deafening the world with endless talk, he does not even understand this: that any man whatever, even if he is very wicked, when he has gone down to Hades is above in his purpose; for there is no one, righteous or unrighteous, who, living at any time, does not long to hold to what is highest and be rid of the places under the earth. If, then, all who have been brought down to Hades alike love the regions above in their purpose, though some did not at all care for a righteous life, what special dignity of the prophetic choir did he make clear? And what did he report as distinctive of the Lord, when he declared him like all others? So ignorantly did he sound out this saying, not understanding that the Word was God: he is present everywhere at once not rather by purpose but by the power of the Godhead. And if indeed he allowed his chosen temple to be destroyed, he at once raised it again on the third day; and the soul of this human tabernacle, going down to the lowest parts of the earth, threw open the gates there with a single stroke and set free the souls shut in there. So it has been strengthened with divine power through its union with God and the Word, so as to have an authority that reaches everywhere.

Indeed I am persuaded that there is clear evidence of this too: at the time when he came to the places under the earth, at the same time he also brought the thief's soul into paradise that very day. For if salvation came to all men through one man, it is plain that his soul ransoms the souls of its own kind, at once going down to the regions of the chaos below the earth, and at once restoring to the most ancient pasture of paradise the one who slipped in under the power of his unconquered kingdom. And consistently with this, the Servant of God testified even before, saying beforehand: “No one has gone up into heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.” So if he said that the one sprung from the human race had gone up into heaven, alone of all, and had come down here again from there, and that, having come here, he went about in heaven, it is established that the man did these things in a singular way by the power of his soul. For the holy soul of Christ, dwelling together with God and the Word, goes about through all things together and has gone into the highest heaven itself, into which no other man has gone up; but these things are attached to the very human form which God and the Word wore. And that the Son of God is present everywhere at once, John too stands as witness, not least, who heard Christ himself and cries out loudly in so many words: “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” And indeed, if Christ, present here in the body, was going about when John reported these words, and he who received these sayings proclaimed that he was in the bosom of the Father while being entertained on earth in his body, how are we not to understand that he had both gone into the heavens, as dwelling within the bosom of the Father, and sojourned on earth as befits God, and was present to all at once, being God?

But if anyone, sick with Jewish blindness, does not accept the words of the Gospel, we must bring against him the sayings of Solomon and speak somewhat as follows: “For while gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its own swiftness was half gone, your all-powerful Word leapt from heaven, from the royal throne, bearing as a sharp sword your unfeigned command, and stood and filled all things with death; and it touched heaven while it stood upon the earth.” If, then, the only-begotten Son is proclaimed the Word of God himself and God, in a company of equal glory, through whom angels, heavens, earth, sea, depths, and the lights that run through the sky, and, in a word, the whole constitution of things that have come into being were made; and if he, correcting all with just judgment, holds the throne of the everlasting kingdom from heaven and punishes the unjust with swift justice; then, being all-powerful in act and deed, since he is God and the Word of God, he touched heaven while he stood upon the earth, at the same time, plainly filling all things in every way by the power of his Godhead. So, if his nature is such, those are impious who think that the divine is circumscribed by a place or by some particular portion of space; and Origen speaks offhand from ignorance rather than from well-ordered wisdom when he says that Christ, having gone down to the lowest parts of the earth, abode above in his purpose. For he did not understand that this one, being God, was not present above by eagerness of will, in seeming and in desire, so much as he fills all things for all, as much as possible, by the working of his Godhead.

But such opinions about Christ befit the man who lays down that prophetic souls are brought up by a demon. The pythoness, when she saw the demons who shared her belly, cried out as though she had seen certain gods coming up from the earth, goddesses, if one must say so. But the grandiloquent Origen was not afraid to say that the demon brought up not only the prophet's soul, but: “Did not other holy souls of prophets come up with him?” he said. And, not satisfied with this madness, he laid down that the angels too came up with their spirits; for he said that they came up here for the salvation of those in need. Origen, it seems, ascribes very great hopes to the angels and prophets, or even to the whole choir of the saints together: first representing them as under the authority of a demon, and then indicating that they were brought up here through a frenzied woman to heal the suffering, led forth like prisoners. He does not seem to me to speak any less crazily than she. Let it be so: he has pitifully belittled the holy men, and was not ashamed before the order of the angels either. Or let him who stands by such a rule show clearly whence he got it that the angels who feast in heaven came up from the earth. For it was not they who went down to Hades bringing ransoming releases to the captives, but Christ, since he set up a victorious trophy against the enemy and, having snatched away the spoils of the captives, ascended aloft with his body into heaven; while angels stand before God at all times, eager to perform the services due, but they do not dwell in Hades.

But Origen, it seems, pretends not to understand, so that he may set up a superstitious divination; then, having undertaken to allegorize all the Scriptures, he does not blush to take this passage alone according to the letter, … with pretence. But discussing the paradise which God planted in Eden, and wishing to explain how the fruit-bearing trees sprang up, he added among other things: “When in reading we go up from the myths,” he said, “and from the literal sense, we ask what those trees are which God cultivates; we say that they are not sensible.” Speaking figuratively in this way, he does not shudder to call myths the things that God is recorded to have made and that Moses, the most faithful servant of God, wrote down; but, on the contrary, what the myth fashioned in the belly obscurely whispers, this he confirms with a dogmatic decree, showing it to be true. The words of the ventriloquist he establishes as having been spoken through the Holy Spirit, and he deems that they remain unshaken, ascribing the appearance to Scripture; but the very messages of God delivered through Moses he calls myths, and changes their meaning, not judging it right to abide by the literal sense. Does he not allegorize the wells dug by Abraham and his household, and, stretching out such a swarm of words, destroy their whole account by transferring it to another meaning, though the wells can still be seen in the country even now? Did he not turn into figures the affairs of Isaac and Rebecca, saying that the earrings and bracelets were not of gold, forcing the whole subject and carrying it over to the intelligible? And dealing with the much-enduring Job, instead of admiring his endurance, praising his labours, extolling his prowess, accepting his faith, describing the examples of his fortitude, urging newly enlisted recruits through him to virtue by courage and strength of mind, arming the contestants to fight manfully for godliness, he left that aside and, rushing loftily to the names of the daughters, wore himself out like an old woman. What nonsense he talked, rushing at the name “Day”, and “Cassia”, and the “horn of Amalthea”, it is not even possible to say; for it is full of every kind of mockery. About Lazarus I write this: instead of glorifying Christ's mighty work and showing clearly by it that he is God, who by his authority summoned the stinking corpse from the tomb, and by the release of his word restored the swollen body, he says nothing on this account, but brought Lazarus, the friend of the Lord, whom he loved, not without reason, for his virtue, down to the figure of one sick and dead in sins. But no one said or wrote such things against the righteous man; for the Lord would not have loved him so indiscriminately if he were not bound to a divine way of life. And no less, observing the drama of the stoning, since he tries to treat this too figuratively, he falsifies the text of the Gospel, saying: “Searching in what goes before, we did not at all find that the Jews took up stones to stone him”; then after a little he says: “For if they took them up again, they took them up before.” And up and down he wants to make out that no other such account precedes, so as to establish that it was words, not stones, that they rashly took up against him; although the evangelist had said earlier: “So they took up stones to throw at him.” And after he had written this, passing over about a hundred and thirty-five lines in between, he adds: “The Jews took up stones again to stone him.” These are recorded in two places and appear to have been done at different times, since they do not have the same connections or combinations of words; but Origen, who thinks he knows all the Scriptures, did not read this, though he writes these things as though he knew the whole Gospel word for word.

If anyone supposes that we are inventing these things, by reading the very statements of the Gospel and the works he laboured over on this subject, he will find that we have said nothing false. But what need is there to say more? Allegorizing nearly everything, so to speak, from the names, he destroys the substance of the facts, not even considering this: that there are many names shared by the righteous and the unrighteous, and that unlike ways of life cannot be judged alike from one name. There is Judas the traitor, and the other Judas, the apostle; or again Zechariah, a most unjust king, and another Zechariah, the prophet. Moreover, there is Hananiah, who was thrown into the furnace of fire; and besides him another Ananias, who persecuted the church instead of being persecuted, and ordered the apostle to be struck, to whom Paul retorted to his face: “God is about to strike you, you whitewashed wall; and do you sit judging me according to the law, and contrary to the law order me to be struck?” Therefore, if things are judged by the name, let those who rely on such tropologies say by what method they think fit to interpret unlike kinds of knowledge or the ascents of different ways of life from shared names. Indeed many Jews even today, bearing the names of forefathers or prophets, do lawless things; and many among the Greeks, called Peter and Paul, do incurable things. So the empty parts of Origen's words are caught not least by such levity. But what he introduces wrongly about the resurrection cannot be shown at present. For Methodius, worthy of holy remembrance, wrote sufficiently on this subject and showed openly that Origen gave the heretics an unguarded entry by defining the resurrection as being of the form, not of the body itself. That he overturned everything with tropologies and sowed the seeds of wrong belief everywhere, it is easy to see; and, repeating himself up and down, he filled the world with measureless chatter. Yet, though he habitually allegorized everything in every way by such a method, he was not able to treat figuratively the words of the ventriloquist alone, nor even to give a clear account of the story from its very sequence.

But what did he bring in besides? When the apparition said to Saul, “The Lord will tear the kingdom out of your hand,” he retorted against this, plausibly, that one should not think that a demon prophesies about the Israelite kingship. But we said already before that the demon stole these words, spoken earlier by Samuel, so that, deceiving the senseless Saul, he might seem to speak his own. This man, however, does not pretend to know such dramas of the devil. So when the demon seemed to foretell that the kingdom of the crazed man would be torn away, he then added: “And he will give it to your neighbour David.” The very learned Origen, moved at this point, said: “A demon cannot know the kingship of David, appointed by the Lord.” But I cannot help wondering how this man carries off a reputation among the many for good counsel, as being sensible and most excellent in judgment. If the kingship had been obscure, one might perhaps have pretended ignorance by way of excuse. But if David had been attested by God, and anointed besides by Samuel, and, always excelling in the wars, had been shown to be the king's son-in-law, so that the dancing women ascribed the tens of thousands to him and the thousands to Saul; if these and such things were plain, what was strange or marvellous if the demon recognized the kingship that had been appointed by the Lord through the prophet? For we need not think, if one must speak by way of exaggeration, that he saw only bodily things, as the use of the oil involves the perceptible application of touch; but no one will dispute that these things were evident to all. But let me add and say what is greater. Even if these things were not plain, which would be greater by comparison: to know the kingship of David, or to bring up prophetic souls from Hades? And indeed this has been shown in the case of the greater Person; for in the case of Christ too, the demons, racked and unwilling, cry out in so many words: “What have we to do with you, Son of God? Have you come before the time to destroy us?” But to summon souls from Hades, and to call heaven-flying choirs of angels with them, God alone has authority to accomplish, and his most divine Son, but no one else at all. If, then, they recognized the invisible kingship of God, anointed with the Holy Spirit, could they not much more recognize that of David, conferred through a perceptible anointing and a visible rite? Did the wicked one not know the things done and recorded in the Scriptures about David, he who approached the Lord when he was clothed with the body and said boldly: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,” he says, “that he will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone”? So if he pretends to speak from the holy Scriptures, he knows what is written, with an evil learning; and if he is acquainted with them, he was not ignorant of the kingship of David, which is engraved in the sacred writings; so that, in speaking what was written, the demon prophesied nothing …

But the much-renowned Origen, finding nothing at all to say, took refuge artfully in this, adding elsewhere: “But I,” he says, “cannot grant a demon such great power that it should prophesy about Saul and the people of God, and prophesy about the kingship of David, that he is going to reign.” Then one might say: “O most foolish of men, you do not grant it the power to prophesy, but you allow it to bring up prophets from Hades and suddenly to summon choirs of angels, which is greater and more eminent and belongs to a more divine authority? Who ever thought so feebly or so poorly?” But above all I would reply that the demon prophesied nothing, as we have shown before; and even if it spoke things worthy of prophecy, not even so should we suppose that the demon brought up spirits and souls of the righteous from Hades. For Caiaphas too prophesied concerning the plot against Christ, saying: “It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.” He did not say this of himself, as the most wise John has recorded; but being high priest that year, he prophesied. If, then, this man, who formed unjust counsels against the Lord, nevertheless does not prophesy of himself, but, moved of course by another, makes the refutation against himself, then, if anyone else does something of this kind, we must not take it that he is therefore attached to a more divine power. Nor must we tolerate it if people say that by demonic divination one seems to bring up souls from Hades and armies of angels, as God does. For we must listen to what Moses, in his oracles in Deuteronomy, declares about such prophets: “But if there arises among you,” he says, “a prophet, or one who dreams a dream, and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass of which he spoke to you, saying, Let us go and serve other gods whom you do not know, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet,” he says, “or to that dreamer of the dream; for the Lord your God is testing you, to see whether you love the Lord your God.” Here, presenting the pair of the Father and the only-begotten Son, he names one the Lord who tests, and another besides him the beloved Lord and God, so that from the pair he may show the one Godhead and the true divine begetting. And if that prophet who promised to show the sign or the wonder must be utterly rejected because he introduces lawless idolatry, even if the power of the sign is working before him, how much more must one not believe a demon promising to summon souls and spirits of the righteous from Hades? Nor would anyone say, without impiety, that while they were divining, God raised Samuel, wishing to test the unjust man, so as to credit the drama to the demon's promise and by this pretext to ruin some by deceit; for one must by all means guard against the pollution of divination, as the lawgiver decreed. Does anyone not think the causes of augury abominable, and the divinations of the ventriloquist and the tokens of omens? Let him hear how, a little before, he laid down again: “But if,” he says, “you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to do according to the abominations: purifying one's son and one's daughter in fire, and divining divination, and enchantment, a ventriloquist, a diviner of portents, one who inquires of the dead; for everyone who does these things is an abomination to the Lord.” After this, showing that because of these things he threatens even the foreigners with death and destruction, he added at once: “For because of these abominations the Lord will destroy them from before you.” It appears, then, that the divination of the ventriloquist is yoked with all the causes of idolatry together, like refuse lying within in a fever, rousing the sickness, foul tinder, accustomed to bring the disease to a head by swelling and corruption. And if he called the joyless visions recounted of ventriloquists “divinations of portents”, he established that there is nothing true in them. Hence, I think, in Leviticus too he issued a grimmer sentence against them, adding in these very words: “And a man or a woman,” he says, “who is a ventriloquist or an enchanter among you, let them be put to death; stone them with stones; they are guilty.”

What, then, do those say who hold that Origen's vainglorious opinions should be embraced? Does the law command that the ventriloquists be put to death as the causes of most hateful practices, or, on the contrary, as counsellors of good works? If they are the perpetrators of impious dramas, the lawgiver rightly drives out the accursed, who announce nothing true; but if they are the inventors of the finest deeds, the law voted against them for nothing. For if they bring up souls from Hades, and these, arriving here, proclaim the future, they furnish usefully those in need; then the lawgiver did not justly decree that benefactors be stoned. So one of two things is necessary: either to make these words void, or to discredit the words of the ventriloquist as stale and false. But what shall we say? Do the divine Scriptures contradict themselves? Does the one vote fight with the many? And even if there is some conflict, the many prevail. And indeed, on the contrary, these things are treated as done unholily; no less is it recorded in the fourth book of Kingdoms that Manasseh … and worshipped all kinds of idol-shaped matter: “He made for himself,” it says, “ventriloquists.” And conversely again Josiah the king, distinguished by the virtue of righteousness, pulled down all the hand-made images together and destroyed them by fire; and besides this, it says, he removed the ventriloquists and the teraphim; then after a little it says that he burned them too, being of course lawless. So, if the writer of both texts is the same, and here he describes the lives of two persons, kings, and of these he introduces the unjust one as having chosen, besides other things, the ventriloquists too, and praises the one roused by zeal for removing the ventriloquists besides all the enemies; if this is so, it is established that he did not put out words that fight with themselves. Nor again did he say that the Holy Spirit declared that Samuel came up; but he narrated the words of the ventriloquist, as she thought and boasted in appearance to the unwary; for otherwise he would somehow fight with himself and with all the other Scriptures. And not only do these sayings refute this, but another illustrious witness also adds his vote to them, the prophet Isaiah, who, in one place forbidding such abominations, in another quite rightly exhorting those who heard him, sings: “And if they say to you, Seek the ventriloquists and those who speak from the earth, the empty talkers who speak from the belly, will not a nation seek its God?” Then, adding something after this, he goes on: “Why do they seek the dead on behalf of the living? For he gave the law as a help, so that they should not speak like this word, for which there are no gifts to give.” By a clear holy utterance he renounced the race of ventriloquists. And if he rejected such a gathering, he showed beyond dispute that none of them ever says anything at all true, but that by empty lying they spread deceit and by stale empty talk lead the ignorant astray. Hence, consistently, he mocked those who ask the dead about the living; for they themselves, being wholly dead and maimed, these empty talkers, pretend to serve the voices of the dead; and the prophet testified, crying out, that an unbreakable law is laid down concerning these things, so that not according to the … for this, I think, is the guarding of the law: to call on help from heaven, and not to beg aid from earthly things, into the very …

But Origen, who thought he had interpreted all the Scriptures, does not pretend to know these testimonies, nor does he set them down, as he ought; but while he calls in those that contribute nothing at all to the question, he passes over those that belong to it by their very nature; for he seems either to do this foolishly out of ignorance, or to contrive it boldly out of ill will. But, as though playing both sides, having said, “What, then, does the ventriloquist do here? What does the ventriloquist do with the bringing up of the soul of the righteous man?”, for want of an argument he fled aloft, he who ascribes to others what he himself did; and attributing the whole to Scripture itself, he insists that Samuel was brought up, but no longer dares to repeat: “Who brought him up?” I think that afterwards too, being always refuted by those who think most rightly, and defending himself again in a second exposition, he said that the passage about the ventriloquist had been carefully kept; then he says also that it is written that the ventriloquist brought someone up, and that it is recorded that Saul spoke to Samuel. And after repeating many such things with much chatter, he adds again: “But it did not say,” he says, “whether he came up willingly; for you do not have it set down,” he said, “whether the ventriloquist brought him up; let anyone who has read the Scripture refute me.” So, refuted to his face, he plainly denied what he had before held from ill counsel; for there he laid down that it was Scripture itself, rather than the woman, that said “Whom shall I bring up for you?”; but here, being plainly caught, he hastened to escape the charge by forgetting it. So everywhere he sets out openly opinions that fight with themselves, just as here too, fighting against his own judgment, he was caught hastening to escape the trial on the charge. Since, then, dragged against his will, he has admitted that the woman did not bring up the prophet's soul, let him say who it was that brought it up; for he persisted unmovably in laying down only that it had been brought up. This pythoness was alone, and Saul, who begged her to bring up the prophet. But Saul would not be the doer of the drama; for he would not have needed the ventriloquist, coming to her by night. And if the deed was done, what was done must not be ascribed to anyone else; so one of two things must be said: either this never happened at all, or the upright man was brought up through the ventriloquist and the demon. So, while seeming to disown his own words, does he not deceitfully introduce the same vainglorious opinion by another method? Through the very things by which he seems to defend himself, he introduces the lie as truth. So many prophetic testimonies do not shame him, nor the rest of the narrative; … the words of the ventriloquist, prescribing newer instruments of idolatry, and … by the impious divination of demons. Nor does the compound name persuade him what meaning it bears. For “ventriloquist” (engastrimythos) is interpreted from showing a myth fashioned in the belly; and the composition of the myth, plausibly pitched like a tent within the belly, utters plainly not the truth but the lie. Those who have dealt with the various references of words know much better what its kind is; and, above all, feverish with Greek superstition, he secretly introduces divination.

Nevertheless I think we should not refuse to refute his lack of understanding from this point too, briefly, as is fitting. For the rhetorical handbooks show clearly that a myth is a fiction composed with charm for some purpose useful in life; and it is called a fiction, they say, by general agreement, from its having been fashioned; for it would no longer be thought a myth if it had happened in truth. And if myth-making is the composition of an improvised fiction, it is shown in fact to be far from the truth, and in word it depicts the materials of things while falling short in action; for it seems to make things that do not exist plausible as existing, and so gives form to things with no foundation underneath, as firmly as possible. The fashioning of a myth seems to me no different from a lifeless shadow-painting; for, like a picture, it is drawn with the line itself, and with a similar likeness it personifies a subject, observing in each case the proportions as far as possible. It paints the onsets and the end of war, figures that seem to walk, lips speaking, peculiarities of voices, laughter and weeping, or the harangues of magistrates, or banquets and revels, or Bacchic frenzies, or initiations, or unbridled drunkenness, or the excesses of love, or the plunder of robbers, or incurable ruin, or indiscriminate slaughter, or poverty feigned, or wealth flowing in. With verisimilitude it characterizes everything and portrays men's deeds; for myth-makers, picking out flowery words, produce varied kinds of colours and weave them into the personification; then, seasoning them with sweet words, they put together the whole narrative of the myth; and, like painters of living figures hastening to render the appearance with words and shapes, they fall short in fact of the material features of truth itself. These men, then, embroider the images of myths in this way; and from this a musical harmony arises, and of poetic …

Indeed Plato, when asked, defines that discourses belong to music, saying: “They are of two kinds,” he said, “the one true, the other false; and we must educate in both, but first in the false.” For he said that children are first enrolled through the charm of myths. “So the beginning of every work is the most important, especially for anyone young and tender; for it is then above all that it is moulded and takes on the stamp that one wishes to impress on each.” Through such sayings he tries to show that one should not pour unmixed falsehoods into the ears of newcomers, since the stamps of wrong belief impressed on boys at an early age tend to become fixed and hard to wash out; and so he consistently goes on: “Shall we then so easily allow the children to hear any chance myths made up by any chance people, and to take into their souls opinions for the most part contrary to those we shall think they ought to have when they are grown up?” “By no means,” he said, “shall we allow it.” “First, then, it seems, we must supervise the myth-makers; whatever fine myth they make, we must accept, and whatever not, reject; and we shall have the nurses and mothers tell the accepted ones to the children, and mould their souls with myths far more than their bodies with their hands; but most of those they tell now must be thrown out.” Then, when asked about the proportionate difference between them, he said that the lesser myths are recognized in the greater; and when Adeimantus asked again, showing that he did not know these either, he answered in turn: “Those which Hesiod and Homer told us; for these, I suppose, composing false myths for men, told …”

If, then, Plato declares the epics of Homer and Hesiod to be false myths, though they charm their hearers especially for the sake of education and moreover rouse the mind by beauty of diction to perfect eloquence, how much more will one define as false myth-making the words the demon-possessed old woman uttered, since the very name “ventriloquist” (engastrimythos) dictates this sense? For the sons of the Greeks, who also examine precisely the naming of each thing in the Greek tongue, call myths false fictions; and it follows that from the name one may see the thing to which it is properly assigned. The fables of Aesop know such fictions of myths, as boys too play them in many ways, jesting in their games, and old crones sing them with chattering words, sometimes doing so while soaking their throats with much wine and attending immoderately to the drink of the cup; but those who think to honour the ways of philosophy rightly discredited even the poems of the Muses as false kinds of myth.

If, then, the name itself is rightly assigned to the thing, the ventriloquist seems to fashion a belly-myth. For she does not speak soberly from her natural mind; but the demon, lurking in her inmost parts, feeds on her and damages her understanding, and from the belly he sounds out, putting together mythical fictions; and, transformed into various forms, he leads the soul astray with various phantoms. And since, being many-faced, he changes into all kinds of shapes, no less does he pretend to come up from the earth and to speak; then, exchanging his roles on either side together with his forms, he seems to present the one coming up as other than the one who calls; but the same one, running about here and there, changes his forms, so as to show by deeds and words that he is a liar. He pretends, then, to bring up the very persons of the dead, as one may reasonably suppose from such a drama: with a joyless look, artfully bringing in sullen apparitions, presenting them all downcast and full of the smell of the dead, he makes a terrible show of them as recalled from Hades, and as released for a little from a prison or from bonds, and then passing back again from here to there. So he astounds the soul with terrors from what it sees, fashioning pale forms and a grim or downcast eye, as of the dead who have just breathed again and promise to return. For the forger is accustomed by pretence to shape himself to terrors. And sometimes he uses as helpers the demons of like character to himself; but he does not summon from Hades the souls of prophets, nor the spirits of the righteous, nor the angelic ranks; on the contrary, he came to be crushed by the angels and was handed over to the best of men, so as to be … thrown headlong to the ground, broken. He, borne down from the highest places with a violent rush, had his back laid low; but to God almighty alone, and to his most divine Son, it belongs to bring up souls from Hades and to have choirs of angels standing by in order, which is the choice property of the …