The Chaldean Magi

Arnobius

Arnobius (died c. 330) was an early Christian apologist of Berber origin during the reign of Diocletian (284–305). According to Jerome's Chronicle, Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distinguished Numidian rhetorician at Sicca Veneria (El Kef, Tunisia), a major Christian center in Proconsular Africa, and owed his conversion to a premonitory dream.

According to Jerome, to overcome the doubts of the local bishop as to the earnestness of his Christian belief he wrote (c. 303, from evidence in IV:36) an apologetic work in seven books, which St. Jerome calls Adversus gentes (“Against the Heathens”) but which is entitled Adversus nationes in the only (9th-century) manuscript that has survived. Jerome's reference, his remark that Lactantius was a pupil of Arnobius and the surviving treatise are all the surviving facts about Arnobius.

Against the Heathen

Book I, Chap 5:

Did we bring it about, that ten thousand years ago a vast number of men burst forth from the island which is called the Atlantis of Neptune, as Plato tells us, and utterly ruined and blotted out countless tribes? Did this form a prejudice against us, that between the Assyrians and Bactrians, under the leadership of Ninus and Zoroaster of old, a struggle was maintained not only by the sword and by physical power, but also by magicians, and by the mysterious learning of the Chaldeans?

Against the Heathen

Book IV: 12:

If the magi, who are so much akin to soothsayers, relate that, in their incantations, pretended gods steal in frequently instead of those invoked; that some of these, moreover, are spirits of grosser substance, who pretend that they are gods, and delude the ignorant by their lies and deceit,-why should we not similarly believe that here, too, others substitute themselves for those who are not, that they may both strengthen your superstitious beliefs, and rejoice that victims are slain in sacrifice to them under names not their own?

Against the Heathen

Book VI: 1:

Having shown briefly how impious and infamous are the opinions which you have formed about your gods, we have now to speak of their temples, their images also, and sacrifices, and of the other things which are nailed and closely related to them. For you are here in the habit of fastening upon us a very serious charge of impiety because we do not rear temples for the ceremonies of worship, do not set up statues and images of any god, do not build altars, do not offer the blood of creatures slain in sacrifices, incense, nor sacrificial meal, and finally, do not bring wine flowing in libations from sacred bowls; which, indeed, we neglect to build and do, not as though we cherish impious and wicked dispositions, or have conceived any madly desperate feeling of contempt for the gods, but because we think and believe that they -if only they are true gods, and are called by this exalted name -either scorn such honours, if they give way to scorn, or endure them with anger, if they are roused by feelings of rage.

Against the Heathen

Book VI: 3:

...For what are these temples? If you ask human weakness -something vast and spacious; if you consider the power of the gods-small caves, as it were, and even, to speak more truly, the narrowest kind of caverns formed and contrived with sorry, judgment.

Against the Heathen

Book VII: 10:

It is not right to assert or maintain a likeness where the main features do not show similar lines... The Sun is clearly seen by all men to be smooth and rounded, but you ascribe to him human face and features. The Moon is always in motion, and assumes thrice ten forms in her changing monthly circuit. According to your representation she is a woman, with a countenance that does not alter, though her daily variation carries her through a thousand forms. We all know that the winds are pulsations of the atmosphere, set in motion and stirred by mundane forces. You give them the faces of men with cheeks distented with the violent blasts of their trumpets. Among your gods we see the grim face of a lion smeared with vine and bearing a name reminiscent of the crops [Saturn].