Porphyry of Tyre; like Celsus the Epicurean who he was influenced by, (1) was an anti-Christian pagan intellectual who wrote one of the best known anti-Christian works of the late classical world; ‘Against the Christians’, of which we only have fragments that have been preserved in the works of several of the Fathers of the Church and the early Christian intellectuals notably Eusebius of Caesarea, Jerome and Macarius. Unlike Origen who quoted Celsus’ own words extensively these other Christian thinkers chose to attack Porphyry’s arguments without quoting them in the main so we are forced to work heavily from a selection of fragments in their writings on the presumption that they are not misrepresenting Porphyry’s arguments.

Fortunately we do have copies of some of Porphyry’s other works such as ‘On Abstinence from Animal Food’, ‘On the Cave of the Nymphs’ etc. This has allowed us to be able to compare; to a degree, the reasoning that the hostile Christian thinkers present as Porphyry’s with that in his existent works.

The best way to proceed with our analysis of Porphyry is to focus on the work that we know he wrote and then use the fragments preserved by the highly partisan Christian thinkers to help illuminate them. Where there is no reference from Porphyry’s known works: we are forced to rely on the later Christian interpretation of them. This is obviously a less than ideal situation to be in, but this is what we have to work with to understand Porphyry’s comments on the jews.

Porphyry; like Celsus, attacked Judaism largely through the medium of his critique of Christianity which was to both himself and Celsus: the more aggressive of the two subversive cults that we then causing murder and mayhem in pagan Rome.

In his treatise; ‘On Abstinence from Animal Food’, Porphyry mentions the jewish custom of regarding pork as being a forbidden; i.e. treif, food. (2) One reason that Porphyry doesn’t mention for why the jews may have originally felt that the pig was a particularly unclean animal is found in the fact that pigs will eat almost anything as part of their diet and a necessary implication of that is that they may drink/eat faeces, drink urine, roll around in cesspits to cool themselves etc. These are all things that both historically and currently jews have been particularly fearful of; i.e. their own bodily fluids, and have gone into great and frequent detail about the impact of faeces and urine on a jew’s religious life. (3) We may even reasonably trace this hypochondria to be the origins of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. (4)

However Porphyry’s own reason; that there simply weren’t any pigs where the jews lived, (5) can be dismissed as without foundation as we know of substantial deposits of pig bones in the kingdom of Judea for example. (6) We cannot criticise Porphyry much for this as many modern scholars have taken a similar line of thought as to the early date of the jews prohibition of park and subsequent lack of development of pig husbandry. (7) Porphyry seems to have come to this conclusion on the basis of the practices of the Greeks and using a bit of lateral thinking in so far Porphyry tells us that the Greeks do not sacrifice camels or elephants to the gods, because they are not indigenous to Greece. (8) Porphyry then logically extrapolates that the reasons that the jews and Phoenicians did not eat pork was because there weren’t pigs in their countries. Porphyry was however quite wrong on both counts. (9)

Porphyry then moves on to comment on the sacrificial practices within Judaism and in doing so he reveals his deep personal antipathy towards the jews as both a religion and as a people when he tells us as follows:

‘But of the Syrians, the Jews indeed, through the sacrifice which they first made, even now, says Theophrastus, sacrifice animals, and if we were persuaded by them to sacrifice in the same way that they do, we should abstain from the deed. For they do not feast on the flesh of the sacrificed animals, but having thrown the whole of the victims into the fire, and poured much honey and wine on them during the night, they swiftly consume the sacrifice, in order that the all-seeing sun may not become a spectator of it. And they do this, fasting during all the intermediate days, and through the whole of this time, as belonging to the class of philosophers, and also discourse with each other about the divinity. But in the night, they apply themselves to the theory of the stars, surveying them, and through prayers invoking God. For these make offerings both of other animals and themselves, doing this from necessity, and not from their own will.’ (10)

Here we find Porphyry’s tone rather changed from his passing comments about his theories about the origin of jewish dietary requirements. Instead Porphyry is confronting the jews directly and pointing out to his reader just how vile and abusive are the chosen of Yahweh.

Interestingly Porphyry’s argument points out that the jewish idea of the sacrifice was quite different to that as understood by the Roman and Greek world where the sacrifice of the chosen animal was a holy gift to the gods to win favour with them in their eternal whimsical existences. The method chosen; so Porphyry implies, was comparatively quick and involved the least amount of pain possible for the victim: an interpretation confirmed by Porphyry’s own earlier argument that kindness towards animals is also important. (11)

Porphyry is even persuaded to inform his reader that if the Romans and Greeks performed their animal sacrifices like the jews and Syrians did they would simply abstain from them. For Roman and Greeks; while being no shrinking violets when it came to blood, violence and animal sacrifice, detested cruelty for its own sake and found it to a decidedly ‘Eastern’ concept. We really cannot emphasise how unusual it is to find a Roman who endorses the blood sacrifices of animals to the gods suggesting that another people’s sacrifices are so cruel and evil that it would cause him and his nation to recoil in absolute horror!

Porphyry does not spare us the lurid details of the jewish ritual either and describes it in a manner that we would today more associate with witchcraft, Satanism and the Black Mass. (12) Indeed he recounts to us in detail that the jews; in a similar spirit as the sacrifice of children to the god Baal, throw their sacrificial victims into ‘the fire’ watching them burn. A key issue here is whether the jews were at this point slitting the throats of the victims before they threw them in the fire: however this is very difficult to determine with any certainty precisely because we have little testimony about the order of the jewish sacrifice in this period other than what biblical tradition would have us believe and what the Romans believed to have been the case. (13)

We may however briefly note that Porphyry’s picture of jewish sacrifice does; in fact, tally with that given by Apion when he accused the jews of keeping a gentile in the temple to fatten up, slaughter him and then ‘taste his entrails’.

To wit:

‘Antiochus found in our temple a bed, and a man lying upon it, with a small table before him, full of dainties, from the [fishes of the] sea, and the fowls of the dry land... he fell down upon his knees, and begged to be released; and that when the king bid him sit down, and tell him who he was, and why he dwelt there, and what was the meaning of those various sorts of food that were set before him the man made a lamentable complaint, and with sighs, and tears in his eyes, gave him this account of the distress he was in; and said that he was a Greek and that as he went over this province, in order to get his living, he was seized upon by foreigners, on a sudden, and brought to this temple, and shut up therein, and was seen by nobody, but was fattened by these curious provisions thus set before him; and that truly at the first such unexpected advantages seemed to him matter of great joy; that after a while, he inquired of the servants that came to him and was by them informed that it was in order to the fulfilling a law of the Jews, which they must not tell him, that he was thus fed; and that they did the same at a set time every year: that they used to catch a Greek foreigner, and fat him thus up every year, and then lead him to a certain wood, and kill him, and sacrifice with their accustomed solemnities, and taste of his entrails, and take an oath upon this sacrificing a Greek, that they would ever be at enmity with the Greeks; and that then they threw the remaining parts of the miserable wretch into a certain pit.’ (14)

Now if we compare that to what Porphyry describes the ritual of jewish sacrifice as follows: ‘For they do not feast on the flesh of the sacrificed animals, but having thrown the whole of the victims into the fire, and poured much honey and wine on them during the night, they swiftly consume the sacrifice, in order that the all-seeing sun may not become a spectator of it.’ (15)

The only slight difference in the ritual here prescribed is that in the version of Apion there is no explicit mention of the sacrificial fire, but that may be inferred from Apion’s assertion that the jews sacrifice the Greek ‘with their accustomed solemnities’ and ‘taste his entrails’, which we may reasonably take to mean that they cooked him so as to ‘taste his inner meats’ per one of the strange linguistic qwerks of ancient Greeks. (16)

Thus we can see that what Porphyry may; in fact, knowingly or unknowingly (the latter is more likely given the context and his lack of further mention) is a rite of human sacrifice within Judaism at this time. (17)

However if we assume; for the sake of argument, that he merely means the sacrifice of animals then the ritual that is being performed by the jews according to Porphyry has as its centre the consuming of the burnt offering by the jewish priests after engaging in a little culinary work by sprinkling generous doses of honey and wine on either the carcass or the dying animal. We may find in this ritual; if Porphyry’s description of it is correct, the suggestion of the origins of Judaism being not from the supposedly beautiful and ethical monotheism that the jews have long claimed it to be, but rather as a form of cruel oriental cult bent like the Aztecs on sacrificing as many victims as possible to their vengeful god. After all he did spend much of the Tanakh variously smiting the jews did he not?

What makes the cult of Yahweh somewhat unusual in this regard is both the fact that the jewish priests seemed to treat their sacrifice as if it were lunch and undoubtedly kept that from the rest of the population who were providing them with their the actual victims or the money to purchase them. This compares quite differently to the general pagan practice where the sacrifice was in itself holy but after a prescribed time it was well-known to the populace that the food would be consumed by the priests or fed to the deserving and in need.

We may also point out that the jewish cult of the Essenes; an off-shoot of the original Hasidim, quite possibly shared sacrificial communal meals with the initiates in the community rather than have the priests consume them in secret by night. (18) Evidence of this may adduced for the number of specifically buried remnants of sacrificial meals that have been found in various site associated with the Essenes. (19)

This compares rather starkly with Roman and Greek ritual as we can just imagine the jewish priests gorging themselves on fine roasted meats in secret midnight ceremonies. It is this that is of particular interest to us, because it indicates that Porphyry saw Judaism as a form of dishonest mystery cult that was unique to the jewish nation.

That it was unique to the jewish nation we can see from Porphyry’s earlier assertion that:

‘From all these causes, therefore, we do not spare the life of brutes; but we destroy those who commence hostilities against us, as also those who do not, lest we should suffer any evil from them. For there is no one who, if he sees a serpent, will not, if he is able, destroy it, in order that neither it, nor any other serpent, may bite a man. And this arises, not only from our hatred of those that are the destroyers of our race, but likewise from that kindness which subsists between one man and another. But though the war against brutes is just, yet we abstain from many which associate with men.’ (20)

We can see here that although Porphyry is only seemingly talking about animals his thought process is also applicable to peoples as well. He means very simply that we do not spare the life of psychotic or very bad-tempered animals, because they are likely to cause evil. So thus he logically reasons that it must also be so with humans and their groups; i.e. nations, suggesting implicitly that one should not be afraid to raise their hand against what they perceive to be evil and that which would do them harm.

That which Porphyry particularly wises to erase is the jewish cult; i.e. Judaism, that he considers so odious in its sacrifices that if the Greeks or Romans adopted a similar system they would reject sacrifice altogether!

Porphyry finds particular fault in the jews ‘discoursing on the nature of god’ after having partaken of such horrific sacrifices and tells us that in this time they apply themselves to the ‘theory of the stars’ by which he means astrology for which the jews have a particular penchant (21) and have long been under explicit halakhic ban to have no involvement with it.

It is also interesting to note that Porphyry’s passing reference to the ‘all-seeing sun’ is possibly a reference to the conjectured Atenist origins of Moses and the original jews. (22)

So from this we begin to see that Porphyry is being a little less obvious in his animosity towards jews than Celsus for example, but that animosity is still very much there and layered into his thought. All we need do is but extract it and boil it down to its essence to see that Porphyry really was no shrinking violet from implicitly advocating stringent measures against the jews as a people and Judaism as a subversive cult.

(1) On Celsus the Epicurean’s anti-Semitism please see my article; ‘The Jew as Untermensch: Celsus the Epicurean on the Jews’, which is available at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.com/2011/05/jew-as-untermensch-celsus-epicurean-on.html.
(2) Porph. Abst. 1.14
(3) For example: Solomon Ganzfried, Kitzur Schulchan Aruch, 4; 5
(4) I will be going deeply into the origins of Freudian psychoanalysis within Judaism in detail at a later date.
(5) Porph. Abst. 1.14
(6) Brian Hesse, Paula Wapnish, 1997, ‘Can Pig Remains be used for Ethnic Diagnosis in the Ancient Near East?’ in Neil Asher Silberman, David Small (Eds.), 1997, ‘The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting the Present’, 1st Edition, Sheffield Academic Press: Sheffield, pp. 251-253
(7) Richard Hess, 1993, ‘Early Israel in Canaan: A Survey for Recent Evidence and Interpretations’, Palestine Exploration Quarterly, Vol. 125, No. 2, p. 138
(8) Porph. Abst. 1.14
(9) Brian Hesse, 1990, ‘Pig Lovers and Pig Haters: Patterns of Palestinian Pork Production’, Journal of Ethnobiology, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 195-225. This is in spite of the fact that Porphyry himself was of Phoenician origin and spent part of his life in and around the port of Tyre.
(10) Porph. Abst. 2.26
(11) Ibid, 1.12-14
(12) In spite of his infinite credulity Montague Summers’ extremely detailed and learned work is still the best run-down of satanic and witch real and alleged practices in my opinion. See Montague Summers, 1946, ‘Witchcraft and Black Magic’, 1st Edition, Rider: London and Montague Summers, 1994, [1925], ‘The History of Witchcraft’, 1st Edition, Senate: London.
(13) The issue of animal and human sacrifice in Judaism will be treated in a separate article as it is much too complex and distracting to go into here. A comparative and useful treatise to consult on this matter; however indirectly, is Dennis Hughes, 1991, ‘Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece’, 1st Edition, Routledge: New York and as a companion volume for context please see Michael Cosmopoulos, 2003, ‘Greek Mysteries: The Archaeology and Ritual of Ancient Greek Secret Cults’, 1st Edition, Routledge: New York
(14) Joseph. Ap. 2.8
(15) Porph. Abst. 2.26
(16) Hom. Il. 1.450-470
(17) As has been suggested to me in correspondence there is evidence in the Tanakh for just such a practice. For example Ex. 24; Lv. 27; Ez. 20; Jgs. 11
(18) Geza Vermes, 1990, ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls in English’, 3rd Edition, Penguin: London, pp. 6-7; 51-52
(19) John Allegro, 1959, ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls’, 3rd Edition, Penguin: London, pp. 114-116; John Allegro, 1985, ‘Physician Heal Thyself…’, 1st Edition, Prometheus: New York, p. 17
(20) Porph. Abst. 1.14
(21) The Sefer Yetzirah (or ‘Book of Creation’) makes explicit use of astrology for example and is one of the earliest jewish texts extant. It is also a widely referred to text in jewish mysticism that Saadia Gaon; for example, wrote a famous commentary on also using astrology in combination with philosophy to support the Sefer Yetzirah.
(22) I have covered the Atenist theory in summary in my article; ‘Strabo on the Jews’, which is available at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.com/2011/05/strabo-on-jews.html.

This was originally published at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.com/2011/05/neo-platonic-jew-hater-porphyry-of-tyre.html