Cynics and Christians, Oedipus and Thyestes

Abstract

Justin and the other second-century Christian apologists endeavour to present their beliefs and life-style as a ‘ philosophy’ best compared with that of Plato, and Christians as a philosophical sect. This was a ‘quite implausible’ suggestion according to R. L. Wilken, commenting on Justin. Yet a number of outsiders in the second century do seem to have seen the Christians in such terms, although not as intellectually respectable as the apologists would have liked.‘What distinguished them from wandering Cynic philosophers?’, asks Stephen Benko, and replies, ‘Outwardly, probably nothing’. The evidence for these preliminary assertions will be sketched at the end of this discussion. But if this is a plausible reading of the reaction to Christians of such outsiders as Aristides, Galen, Celsus, and Crescens, and of Lucian's Peregrinus, it provides a context in which better sense may be made of the charges widely evidenced at least from Justin's time onwards and levelled against the early Christians, of indulging in Oedipoean intercourse and Thyestean feasts.. Accused of incest and cannibalism the Christians are thought to be practising a Cynic philosophical ‘naturalism’ that deliberately flouts mere social conventions. This affords a more plausible explanation for the indictment than that generally offered, namely the suspicions thought likely to have been aroused by any secretive religious group, a suggestion for which the evidence profferred is far from convincing.

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