The War of the "Intellectuals"

The Way of the "Intellectuals"

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has brought to light the dual nature of ancient Judaism, in which “the official and urban Judaism” is pitted against the more pious Jews “intent on going back to the most authentic sources of Jewish religion . . . in contrast to the rest of backsliding Israel” (Moscati). The official Judaism is the work of “intellectuals” who are not, however, what they say they are, namely seekers after truth, but rather ambitious men eager to gain influence and followers. The Book of Mormon presents a searching study of these people and their ways. There is the devout Sherem, loudly proclaiming his loyalty to the Church and his desire to save it from those who believe without intellectual proof. There is Alma, who represents the rebellion of youth against the teachings of the fathers. There is Nehor, the Great Liberal, proclaiming that the Church should be popular and democratic, but insisting that he as an intellectual be given special respect and remuneration. There is Amlici, whose motive was power and whose tool was intellectual appeal. There is Korihor, the typical Sophist. There is Gadianton, whose criminal ambitions were masked by intellectual respectability. For the Old World an exceedingly enlightening tract on the ways of the intellectuals is Justin Martyr’s debate with Trypho, which is also an interesting commentary on the Book of Mormon intellectuals whose origin is traced directly back to the “Jews at Jerusalem.”

Two Views

How does it come about that the most devout and disciplined segment of the believers in every age always appear as a despised and persecuted minority, regarded by the society as a whole as religious renegades and at best as a lunatic fringe? For one thing, those believers themselves have always fully appreciated their uncomfortable position, which can readily be explained by any number of scriptural declarations. The world’s ways are NOT God’s ways; they do not get along well together, for each is a standing rebuke to the other—”in the world ye shall have tribulation” (John 16:33).

In this conflict between two different views of religion, the opposition and overwhelming majority is as unchanging in its methods and attitudes as the saints themselves. It is hard to believe that the Book of Mormon was published more than a century ago when one reads its account of the smart, sophisticated, and scientific arguments put forward by those who would cast discredit on the whole Plan of Salvation. It is as modern as today’s newspaper; the situations it describes are those characteristic of our own generation, and quite different from those of Joseph Smith’s day, when one could still be a fundamentalist Christian and an intellectual.

The Book of Mormon Explains the Opposition

At the outset of the Book of Mormon Nephi states a clear-cut case for the whole thing—”O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and the frailties, and foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish” (2 Nephi 9:28). Here is the devil’s plan, and it is devilishly clever, the best possible way to turn men’s minds against the plan of salvation being the appeal to their vanity. The two things people want are to be successful and to be smart—The Elite: “and the wise, and the learned, and they that are rich, who are puffed up because of their learning, and their wisdom, and their riches,” are the ones who think they are putting God in his place, while it is He who is rejecting them: “yea, they are they whom he despiseth; and save they shall cast these things away, and consider themselves fools before God, and come down in the depths of humility, he will not open unto them” (2 Nephi 9:42). Nephi goes on to speak of conditions in these latter days:

And they shall contend one with another . . . and they shall teach with their learning, and deny the Holy Ghost (2 Nephi 28:4). They have all gone astray save it be a few; . . . nevertheless, . . . in many instances they do err because they are taught by the precepts of men (2 Nephi 28:14). Others he [the devil] flattereth away, and telleth them there is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none—and thus he whispereth in their ears (2 Nephi 28:22).

Since humility is one of the rarest of human qualities, the most direct and effective appeal is to vanity: “Priestcrafts are that men preach and set themselves up for a light unto the world, that they may get gain and praise of the world; but they seek not the welfare of Zion” (2 Nephi 26:29).

The search for knowledge is only a pretext: “for they will not search knowledge, nor understand great knowledge, when it is given unto them in plainness, even as plain as word can be” (2 Nephi 32:7). There is only one way to know the answers: “And no man knoweth of his ways save it be revealed unto him” (Jacob 4:8); yet men will not humble themselves to pray for revelation (see 2 Nephi 32:8). “How blind and impenetrable are the understandings of the children of men; for they will not seek wisdom, neither do they desire that she should rule over them!” (Mosiah 8:20). When they say they are asking God, men prefer to tell him; rather than “take counsel from his hand,” they “seek . . . to counsel the Lord” (Jacob 4:10). They are invincibly reluctant to “believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend” (Mosiah 4:9), and firmly opposed to consider for a moment their own nothingness and the greatness of God (Mosiah 4:11).

Highlights in the History of Intellectual Pride

Lehi’s people inherited a tradition of intellectual arrogance from their forebears. “The Jews,” says Jacob, in a searching passage, “were a stiffnecked people; and they despised the words of plainness, and killed the prophets, and sought for things that they could not understand. Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, they must needs fall; for God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it” (Jacob 4:14).

Sherem

Early in Nephite history an ambitious intellectual by the name of Sherem, who was a master of smooth talk and rhetorical tricks and made a great show of being a good and devout church-member, set himself to the task of outshining all others as a Great Mind.

And he labored diligently that he might lead away the hearts of the people (Jacob 7:3). And he preached many things which were flattering unto the people; and this he did that he might overthrow the doctrine of Christ (Jacob 7:2). And he was learned, that he had a perfect knowledge of the language of the people; wherefore, he could use much flattery, and much power of speech (Jacob 7:4).

This man remonstrated sanctimoniously with “Brother Jacob” against “pervert[ing] the right way of God,” in a way which he said he found quite shocking to his religious sensibilities—it was blasphemy, no less, he declared, to go around teaching people that anyone could know of things to come—such a thing is simply against reason! (Jacob 7:7). While brushing aside Jacob’s testimony, which could tell of visitations of angels and hearing the voice of the Lord (Jacob 7:6) because he had not seen or heard, Sherem could none the less bear his own testimony: “but I know that there is no Christ, neither has been, nor ever will be” (Jacob 7:9; italics added). Yet after this resounding declaration he asked for a sign! The interesting thing about Sherem is his convincing performance as a devout and active churchman who is not attacking the gospel but defending it: no wonder he got a large following! In the same spirit the priests who put Abinadi to death did so in a spirit of righteous indignation (Mosiah 17:12), just as the Jews and Gentiles in killing the Apostles were to “think they do God a favor.”

Alma

The next intellectual who meets us is the great Alma, who grew up in a time when “the rising generation . . . did not believe the traditions of their fathers. They did not believe what had been said concerning the resurrection of the dead, neither did they believe concerning the coming of Christ” (Mosiah 26:1–2). True to form, Alma “was a man of many words, and did speak much flattery to the people . . . stealing away the hearts of the people; causing much dissension among the people” (Mosiah 27:8–9). Why would a man do that? we may ask, but it is experience, not reason, that so richly substantiates the truth of these stories, however implausible they may seem to the rational mind. Alma was one of the smart young men. It took an angel to convert him, yet he was made of the right stuff, as our intellectuals often are!¹

Nehor

Next comes Nehor, the Great Liberal, “declaring unto the people that every priest and teacher ought to become popular; and they . . . ought to be supported by the people” (Alma 1:3). This is a familiar “liberal” paradox. The liberal is unpretentious and open-minded, just like everybody else—yet he forms a jealously guarded clique for the exploitation of the general public, and distinguishes sharply between the intellectual class to which he belongs as a special elite and the layman, who is expected to support him and to seek instruction at his feet. Of course Nehor preaches “that all mankind should be saved at the last day, and that they need not fear nor tremble, . . . for the Lord had created all men . . . and, in the end, all men should have eternal life” (Alma 1:4). In a discussion with a very old man named Gideon, who had been a great hero in his day, Nehor the Great Liberal and lover of mankind lost his temper and killed him (Alma 1:7–9). The crime Alma charged him with at the trial was priestcraft. Nehor’s teaching caught on, and years later we find one of his followers, a judge, using peculiarly brutal and cruel methods against those guilty of preaching the old faith (Alma 14:15–18). It is significant that the most violent and inhuman mass persecutions in history—those of the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries, the Mutazilites in Islam, and the Inquisition—were initiated and carried out by idealists and intellectuals. Churches of Nehor’s persuasion dotted the land as evidence of the popularity of his teaching, “that God will save all men,” as well as his common-sense rejection of “foolish traditions,” and the belief in such things as angels or the possibility of prophecy (Alma 21:6–8). It was simply not scientific to believe such stuff! To remonstrate with these open-minded believers was to incur both their wrath and their mockery (Alma 21:10). Now let us recall that it was the “priestcrafts” of the Jews at Jerusalem that made things hard for Lehi in the beginning; when he tried to tell his fellow citizens in simple straightforward terms that he had seen a vision they “did mock him,” and planned to put him to death (1 Nephi 1:19–20).

Amlici

Amlici was a man much like Nehor, we are told, and extremely clever, “a very cunning man, yea, a wise man as to the wisdom of the world,” who got such a huge following that he finally succeeded in getting himself crowned king (Alma 2:1–9), and caused an immense lot of trouble. In the years of turmoil that followed his rise to power a new type of intellectual became conspicuous, men “who were lawyers” (Alma 10:14), holding public office: “Now these lawyers were learned in all the arts and cunning of the people; and this was to enable them that they might be skilful in their profession” (Alma 10:15).

It was the same old type, only clothed with public office and authority. The essence of their activity and success was still the clever manipulation of words, especially in questioning the prophets of the church, “that by their cunning devices they might catch them in their words, that they might find witness against them” (Alma 10:13). They would lay their legal traps, and if they failed to work, became righteously indignant. “This man doth revile against . . . our wise lawyers whom we have selected” (Alma 10:24). “This man is a child of the devil, for . . . he hath spoken against our law. . . . And again, he has reviled against our lawyers, and our judges” (Alma 10:28–29). Such men are dangerous enough on their own, but when their position becomes official (either in education or government) they have a powerful lever for achieving their aims by force, as Amulek observes: “the foundation of the destruction of this people is beginning to be laid by the unrighteousness of your lawyers and your judges” (Alma 10:27).

Korihor

Korihor in the Old World would be classed as a Sophist, though his arguments are precisely those that had such an immense vogue among the liberals of the 1920s. He remarked, “Why do ye look for a Christ? For no man can know of anything which is to come. Behold, these things which ye call prophecies . . . , they are foolish traditions of your fathers . . . . Ye cannot know of things which ye do not see” (Alma 30:13–15). All this crazy stuff about remission of sins, he says, “is the effect of a frenzied mind; and this derangement of your minds comes because of the traditions of your fathers” (Alma 30:16). Taking up one of H. L. Mencken’s favorite refrains, he went about “telling them that when a man was dead, that was the end thereof” (Alma 30:18), and drawing the inevitable moral corollary that it makes precious little difference how one behaves in life, just so one gets on with people, since “every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime” (Alma 30:17). Such was the morality of the early Sophists, followed with such fatal effect by Plato’s relative Critias. Korihor was out to free the human mind from “foolish traditions of your fathers” and from the “foolish ordinances and performances which are laid down by ancient priests, to usurp power and authority over them, to keep them in ignorance” (Alma 30:23). His method was to subject all the claims of prophetic religion to a rigorous examination based on his own experience of things: “I say that ye do not know that there shall be a Christ” (Alma 30:26). The motive for this rule of ignorance, he says, is to keep people down, so that their leaders “may glut yourselves with the labors of [the people’s] hands . . . and that they durst not enjoy their rights and privileges. Yea, they durst not make use of that which is their own,” being kept in line by the priests with “their traditions and their dreams and their whims and their visions and their pretended mysteries, that they should, if they did not do according to their words, offend some unknown being . . . a being who never has been seen or known, who never was nor ever will be” (Alma 30:27–28). When this was written nineteenth century liberalism was yet to be born—the Book of Mormon in fact leaves virtually nothing for the liberals to say, for all their perennial claims to bold and original thinking. On the other hand, the whole case for their opponents is summed up in Alma’s answer to Korihor, including the challenge: “And now what evidence have ye that there is no God, or that Christ cometh not?” (Alma 30:40). Korihor gave the inevitable reply to this. His critical mind had not been satisfied, “If thou wilt show me a sign,” he said, “then will I be convinced of the truth of thy words” (Alma 30:43). “I do not deny the existence of a God,” he explained, “but I do not believe that there is a God; and I say also, that ye do not know that there is a God; and except ye show me a sign, I will not believe” (Alma 30:48).

Gadianton

When Nephite missionaries came among the Zoramites, a general assembly was held to discuss the threat to vested interests, “for it did destroy their craft” (Alma 35:3). Finally in Gadianton we find an out-and-out criminal using the intellectual appeal and garb of reason as an instrument to achieve his ends. This Gadianton “was exceedingly expert in many words” (Helaman 2:4), and in the end he “did prove the overthrow, yea, almost the entire destruction of the people of Nephi” (Helaman 2:13). And it all began with perfectly reasonable and plausible talk.

Faced with such a power what is one to do? The answer is simple, says Helaman: “whosoever will . . . lay hold upon the word of God” will have that “which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil” (Helaman 3:29). When in his day “angels did appear unto men, wise men, and did declare unto them glad tidings of great joy,” only “the most believing part” of the people were even interested, while the vast majority

began to depend upon their own strength and upon their own wisdom, saying: Some things they may have guessed right, among so many; but behold, we know that all these great and marvelous works cannot come to pass. . . . And they began to reason and to contend among themselves saying: That it is not reasonable that such a being as a Christ shall come (Helaman 16:14–18).

Their main objection was that Christ was to come in Jerusalem, according to the teachings of the fathers, “therefore they can keep us in ignorance, for we cannot witness with our own eyes that they are true” (Helaman 16:20).

Dangerous Passions

It was the overwhelming majority of unbelievers who actually set a date for a general massacre of those who expected the coming of Christ (3 Nephi 1:9, 16). Fantastic as this may seem, it has many parallels in history: the slaughter of the Magi in Lehi’s day, the Sicilian Vespers, the liquidation of the Mamlukes, St. Bartholomew’s, the slaughter of the Donatists, the Bloodbath of Stralsund, etc., most of them attempts at the complete wiping out of large unorthodox minorities, and most of them engineered by devout intellectuals.² It is a grim and authentic psychological touch in the Book of Mormon. When events proved the believers justified, the others were confounded—but not for long. In the Clementine Recognitions, Peter says that after the terrible upheavals of nature that accompanied the crucifixion the sun came out again, people went about their daily tasks, and quickly and efficiently forgot everything that had happened.³ So it was in the New World, where

the people began to forget those signs and wonders . . . and began to be less and less astonished at a sign or a wonder from heaven . . . and began to disbelieve all which they had heard and seen— Imagining up some vain thing in their hearts, that it was wrought by men and by the power of the devil (3 Nephi 2:1–2).

When later on “there began to be men inspired from heaven and sent forth,” they met with anger and resentment among the people, and especially among “the chief judges, and they who had been high priests and lawyers” (3 Nephi 6:20–21). In this case the defenders of rational theology, holding high office, were able to put the offenders out of the way secretly (3 Nephi 6:23), in cynical disregard of the laws which they were supposed to be administering (3 Nephi 6:24). When complaints were made to the governor of the land, the offenders formed a solid front in opposition, family and social ties confirming their common interests, and finally got afoot a scheme to overthrow the government and set up a king (3 Nephi 6:24–30). Such people, though they ask for miracles, actually hate miracles: “And again, there was another church which denied the Christ; and they did persecute the true church of Christ, . . . and they did despise them because of the many miracles which were wrought among them” (4 Nephi 1:29). Finally, Mormon, speaking of our own day, calls it “a day when it shall be said that miracles are done away” (Mormon 8:26) and he warns those who set themselves up as critics of God’s ways that they are playing a dangerous game, “for behold, the same that judgeth rashly shall be judged rashly again; . . . man shall not smite, neither shall he judge” (Mormon 8:19–20).

It is not pleasant to dwell on this melancholy theme, nevertheless the Book of Mormon places great emphasis upon it, and not without reason. In 1830 there were very few universities in the world, and they were very small. Modern science as we know it was yet to be born, scholarship, even at Oxford did not, according to Mark Pattison’s important essay on the subject, include the reading of the Classics; what higher education there was was old-fashioned and religious. It was after the middle of the nineteenth century that the illusion of critical objectivity and scientific detachment took over in all fields, bringing forth a vast outpouring of literary, philosophical, and scientific panegyrics to the gospel of “science” and reason. “Learning” is the knowledge that men take from each other. It cannot rise above its human source. “But today we have science!” the student cries. That is one of the oldest of illusions. We find it in the Book of Mormon, in the Sophists and among the Doctors of the Jews and Christians. The smart people of every age have thought they were being peculiarly “scientific” in their thinking. The “Modern Predicament” is as old as history. The present-day cry in liberal religion is that eschatology and the miraculous belong to another age different from ours and that they are hopelessly ancient and foreign to our thought patterns, meaningless to the “modern mind.”⁴ Yet that is exactly the argument that Korihor puts forward in the Book of Mormon. A bit of research will quickly reveal that it is precisely the charge made against the preaching of the gospel in the Old World. The words and doctrines of the ancient Apostles were just as queer and as distasteful to the people of their own day as they are to the modern existentialist, who quite wrongly blames his predicament on modern science and the differentness of the modern world.⁵ Every major “scientific” argument against the gospel may be found in the Book of Mormon passages we have quoted above.

The Situation at Jerusalem

One of the first, and certainly the greatest, of Christian Apologists was Justin Martyr. In his famous dialogue with the Jew Trypho, he charges “the teachers and leaders of the Jews” with having deliberately defaced and, where possible, removed from the scripture every trace of the true Messianic gospel which the Jews themselves once taught. He makes it very clear that Christianity is strictly an “eschatological” religion, that stands or falls on its apocalyptic claims. They are the same claims, he insists again and again, that the real inspired Jews of old used to make, the very things that the prophets always taught. The Christians alone, the dialogue insists, are in direct line with the ancient patriarchs and prophets;⁶ the Christians preach an eternal and unchanging gospel,⁷ the very same which was taught by the Patriarchs in the beginning. It was Christ whom Abraham saw and talked with;⁸ it was not an angel but the Lord himself who wrestled with Jacob.⁹ As Elias came anciently, so he came in John the Baptist to announce the Christ, and so he will come to herald him when he comes again.¹⁰ When Trypho declares this paradoxical, Justin points out that while Moses was still alive God caused the spirit of Moses to descend upon Joshua, who was thereby both a Moses and a Joshua. Circumcision began with Abraham, and sabbaths and sacrifices with Moses; but behind these was an eternal law that had no such beginning, and that is the law brought by Jesus Christ, withheld in other ages because of the wickedness of men and hardness of their hearts, but known to the patriarchs in the beginning none the less.¹¹

We are really in the same Tradition of teaching that you are, Justin tells Trypho the orthodox Jew,¹² but we look behind all tentative and provisional rules to the one eternal plan; behind all this passing show is the real thing, ageless and changeless.¹³

However much they may quarrel about other things, there are two basic doctrines, says Justin, in which all Christians must believe. The resurrection and the millennium.¹⁴ Why don’t the Jews believe in them? Because, says he, they have been led astray by their “teachers” (didaskaloi) and “leaders” (archontes). It is they who make and control the official doctrines, and because they happen to sit in Moses’s seat and enjoy the support of the government and the control of the schools, it does not follow for a moment that their “official” doctrine is the true patriarchal tradition they claim it is. Indeed, they fight that tradition tooth and nail. “You know very well that your teachers whenever they detect anything in your scriptures that might refer to Christ, diligently efface it.”¹⁵ “Your teachers not only undertake their own interpretations in preference to the Septuagint (once their official Bible), but have also removed many passages from the text entirely.” To this the indignant Trypho replies: “Do you mean to charge us with completely rewriting the scriptures?” And in answer Justin cites three important passages—all strong evidence for the gospel of Christ—that have been deliberately removed from the scriptures by “the leaders of the people.”¹⁶ “The teachers of the Jews have shut their minds to the great possibilities of the scripture,” he continues,—and are determined to fix things so that no one else will see them either. Motivated by love of wealth, glory, and ease, they have always persecuted the true Church in every age.¹⁷ Justin repeatedly notes that the principal foes of the Savior were always the Scribes and the Pharisees.¹⁸ “It is not surprising that they hate us,” he says, “since they have always killed the prophets,”¹⁹ thus placing Christianity in the prophetic line. His most serious charge against the doctors is, indeed, that they no longer have prophets among them.²⁰

In an enlightening passage, Justin tells how “the leaders of the Jews” went about combating what they regarded as the fanatical sects. “You select special men for the job, and send them out from Jerusalem to every region, warning all against the atheism of the Christians and making all sorts of unsubstantiated charges against us.”²¹ The thing is done officially and systematically. One can get an idea of the sort of misinformation that went out by eavesdropping on a moment of learned gossip. “Rabbi Eleazer spoke to the scholars (Hakhimim). The son of Sotedas brought magic arts out of Egypt tattooed on his body! They answered: ‘He was a fool, and you can’t get reliable evidence from a fool. Son of Sotedas, you say? He was the son of Pandera!’ Rabbi Hisda said: ‘The man’s (mother was) Sateda, and her paramour was Pandera; her husband was Paphos ben Jehuda! His mother was called Sateda? No, it was Mary; she was a ladies’ hairdresser.’ In Pumbadetha they explain (the nickname) thus: ‘Satath-da, meaning she was false to her husband.’“²² This passes as first-hand evidence about Jesus. The method of research is that employed by the average “scholarly” investigator of the Mormons.

An Old, Old Story

But how can the doctors of the Law, devout men that they were, have so fallen from grace? Justin explains that as part of the pattern; it did not begin with Christianity. As Israel has rejected the Messiah, so anciently it rejected the higher law which Moses would have given.²³ Enoch found no place in the world and left it to its own darkness, a darkness which is to characterize this world until the “eternal and indissoluble kingdom” and the final resurrection.²⁴ Justin reviews the great dispensations—Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham-Melchizedek, Moses, David—and duly notes that after each there was an immediate falling-away.²⁵ In the place of living waters, he says, the schoolmen in every age busy themselves digging out “puddles that can hold no water.” The figure is a powerful one. We see the doctors diligently scraping out holes in the earth in which they hope to preserve the precious water which has ceased to flow from its source. But though they no longer have living water, continually flowing as living water must, the standing pool is not without its uses. “After they fell,” says Justin, “they still kept a permanent memory about God, and a questioning in their hearts.” He admits that the Jews still have no small “reminder of piety,” and he wonders just how much of the Old Law is still valid for Christians.²⁶ But in refusing to recognize and accept the truth, men lose their capacity for doing so, and the knowledge of the Son is deliberately withheld from them: “these things seem strange to you, . . . because God has hidden from you the power of recognizing the truth, and that because of your wickedness.”²⁷

One thing the Book of Mormon illustrates is that there is no compromise possible with those who attack the gospel on what they call intellectual grounds. The church flourished mightily when it got rid of them, but suffered gravely while they were in its midst. No men spent more time with Jesus than the Scribes and Pharisees; they questioned him constantly, and he always answered them—yet there is no instance of his ever converting one of them. The doctors talked his language, they studied the scriptures day and night, they heard him preach, and they held long discussions with him, yet though he converted dockworkers and bankers, farmers and women of the streets, tax-collectors and soldiers, he never converted the doctors. It was they who planned his death.

After all, no man can learn enough in a lifetime to count for very much, and no one knows that better than the man who diligently seeks knowledge—that is the lesson of Faust. How then can any honest man believe that his modicum of knowledge can supersede revelation and supplant the authority of the priesthood?

Questions

1. According to the ancient Apostles, did the greater danger to the Church come from the outside or the inside? Explain.
2. How does human vanity oppose the teachings of the gospel? Why?
3. What was the intellectual orientation of the Jews at the time of Lehi?
4. Plato says that the man who calls himself an intellectual cannot really be one. Do you agree?
5. What was Sherem’s motive for stirring things up? What did he say was his real motive and concern? Was he sincere?
6. What does the case of Alma teach us with regard to making hasty judgments?
7. Are those who talk most about broadmindedness and toleration always the most broadminded and tolerant of people?
8. What was the position of Korihor? Were his arguments really scientific?
9. Do people who ask for signs really want to be converted? Illustrate from the Book of Mormon.
10. Is the “Modern Predicament” really modern? Is science a peculiar product of the modern age, unknown to earlier periods?
11. What was Justin’s grave charge against the doctors of the Jews? How does it explain the loss of many precious things?

Notes

1. On the little understood paradox of good men as false prophets, see Hugh W. Nibley, The World and the Prophets (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1954), 230–32; reprinted in CWHN 3:253–56.
2. Walter M. Patton, Aḥmed ibn Ḥanbal and the Miḥna (Leiden: Brill, 1897), reviewed by Ignac Goldziher, “Anzeigen,” ZDMG 52 (1898): 155–60, has treated this strange theme. More readily available are the comments of Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler (New York: Collier, 1956).
3. Recognitiones Clementinae (Clementine Recognitions) I, 42, in PG 1:1231.
4. See above, 10–12.
5. Christ’s teachings were utterly strange and hostile to the world into which they were introduced, a slap in the face to all conventional thoughtforms, as the celebrated Karl Holl puts it; Karl Holl, “Urchristentum und Religionsgeschichte,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 2 (1924): 402–3; cf. Nibley, The World and the Prophets, 146; CWHN 3:160, n. 20.
6. Justin Martyr, Dialogus cum Tryphone (Dialogue with Trypho) 52, in PG 6:589–92.
7. Ibid., 29–30, in PG 6:537–40.
8. Ibid., 56, in PG 6:596–605.
9. Ibid., 58–60, in PG 6:605–13.
10. Ibid., 49, in PG 6:581–85.
11. Ibid., 43, in PG 6:565–68.
12. Ibid., 11, in PG 6:497.
13. Ibid., 45, in PG 6:572–73.
14. Ibid., 80, in PG 6:664–68.
15. Ibid., 120, in PG 6:753–56.
16. Ibid., 71–72, in PG 6:641–45.
17. Ibid., 82, in PG 6:669–72.
18. Ibid., 51, in PG 6:588.
19. Ibid., 39, in PG 6:560–61.
20. Ibid., 51, 52, 87, in PG 6:588–92, 681–85.
21. Ibid., 17, in PG 6:512–13.
22. TB, Shabbath, 104b.
23. Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 46–47, in PG 6:572–80.
24. Ibid., 117, in PG 6:748.
25. Ibid., 19–20, in PG 6:516–20.
26. Ibid., 114, 46–47, in PG 6:737–40, 572–80.
27. Ibid., 55, in PG 6:596.