On the Witch of Endor, against Origen

Contents

Reading pages: 1–9 · 10–16 · 17–25 · 26–30

1. 1Eustathius tells Eutropius that, since he and many others are dissatisfied with Origen's homily on the witch of Endor, he will set Origen's text first and then refute it point by point.
2. 2Eustathius retells how Saul, after banishing the mediums, was abandoned by God and in terror of the Philistines sought out the woman of Endor, and argues that divination forbidden by God cannot yield true testimony.
3. 3Eustathius argues that no demon or medium has power to bring up any soul from Hades, that Origen wrongly attributes the woman's words to the Holy Spirit, and that the text says only that Saul inferred from her description that it was Samuel.
4. 4Eustathius argues from Christ's words that the devil is a liar that the demon's promise to bring up a righteous soul cannot be true, and rejects Origen's claim that the narrative voice, being the Holy Spirit's, vouches that Samuel was seen.
5. 5Eustathius quotes Origen's argument that Scripture says Saul “knew” it was Samuel, and replies with a dilemma: if what came up was bodiless it was not Samuel the man, and if it had a body Saul would have seen it himself.
6. 6Eustathius rejects the explanation that Samuel's soul took human shape, arguing that the woman's description of an upright man in a cloak fits a body, not a soul, and that if it was a soul her description was false.
7. 7Eustathius answers Origen's appeal to the word “knew” by arguing that Saul saw nothing and only believed what a possessed woman told him, so that the narrator's “knew” reports a madman's supposition, not the truth.
8. 8Eustathius argues from the prophets of Baal, of whom Scripture says simply “they prophesied”, that the narrator's plain words do not vouch for the truth of what false prophets and mediums do.
9. 9Eustathius adds the example of Pharaoh's magicians, of whom Scripture says they did “likewise”, arguing that their wonders were illusions and that the narrator's words do not make magic equal to God's signs.
10. 10Eustathius argues that the “gods coming up” were the devil's show of power, that a true Samuel would have refused worship, and that the devil, who even asked Christ to worship him, tricked Saul into doing obeisance to him.
11. 11Eustathius argues that Christians put demons to flight, as Paul did the spirit of Python at Philippi, so no demon could summon Samuel, and that a real Samuel would first have rebuked Saul for consulting a medium against the law.
12. 12Eustathius shows that the apparition's prophecy only repeated what Samuel had told Saul after the war with Amalek, as fortune-tellers impress clients by reciting the past, and that only the words about “tomorrow” were its own.
13. 13Eustathius argues that the apparition's own predictions were false, since Saul did not die the next day and died with three sons, not only Jonathan, and that whatever it said truly about war it knew as the devil, the author of all wars.
14. 14Citing the lying spirit sent to deceive Ahab, Eustathius argues that the devil engineers the ruin of the wicked, and that the apparition's “tomorrow you will be with me” blasphemously mimics Christ's promise to the thief, since, as the parable of Lazarus shows, the wicked Saul could not be with Samuel.
15. 15Eustathius argues that Saul, who disobeyed God, persecuted David, killed the priests and consulted a medium, could not be with Samuel, so the promise “tomorrow you will be with me” was a lie, and that the faithful Jonathan could not share his father's lot.
16. 16Eustathius quotes Origen's rhetorical questions and his warning that to deny the story's truth leads to unbelief, and replies that Scripture records the medium's words and the devil's boasts without endorsing them.
17. 17Eustathius insists that the question is not whether Samuel was in Hades but whether a demon can summon righteous souls, and attacks Origen's claim that Christ in Hades was “above in purpose”, saying it treats Christ as a mere man, whereas the Word is everywhere by his Godhead and Christ's soul freed the souls in Hades.
18. 18Eustathius argues that Christ's soul descended to Hades and on the same day brought the penitent thief into paradise, and that sayings in John about the Son of Man in heaven and the Son in the Father's bosom show him present everywhere as God while on earth in the body.
19. 19Citing Wisdom's description of the Word who touched heaven while standing on earth, Eustathius argues that the Son, as God and creator, fills all things by his Godhead, so that Origen's notion of Christ being above only “in purpose” is ignorant.
20. 20Eustathius ridicules Origen's suggestion that the souls of other prophets and angels came up with Samuel, arguing that this puts the saints under a demon's power and that angels stand before God, while only Christ descended to Hades and freed its captives.
21. 21Eustathius charges Origen with inconsistency: he allegorizes paradise, Abraham's wells, Rebecca's jewellery, Job's daughters, Lazarus and the stoning of Jesus, yet insists on the literal truth of the medium's words, and he misreads John on the stoning.
22. 22Eustathius criticizes Origen's allegories built on names, since the righteous and wicked often share names, refers to Methodius's refutation of Origen's view of the resurrection, and notes that Origen alone refused to allegorize the medium's words.
23. 23Answering Origen's claim that a demon could not know of David's coming kingship, Eustathius argues that David's anointing and victories were public and written in Scripture, which the devil knows, as the demons knew Christ and the devil quoted the Psalms to him.
24. 24Eustathius ridicules Origen for denying a demon power to prophesy while granting it power to bring up souls and angels, notes that even Caiaphas prophesied unwittingly, and cites the laws of Deuteronomy and Leviticus condemning mediums, reading in Deut 13:3 the Father and the Son.
25. 25Eustathius argues that the law would not command the stoning of mediums if they truly brought up souls and foretold the future, and that the Scriptures consistently condemn them, as in the accounts of Manasseh and Josiah and in Isaiah's rebuke of those who consult the dead.
26. 26Eustathius charges that Origen ignored the decisive texts, and that in a later defence he conceded that Scripture does not say the woman brought Samuel up, which leaves him unable to say who did; he adds that the very word engastrimythos means a myth made in the belly.
27. 27Eustathius defines a myth, following the rhetorical handbooks, as an artful fiction that portrays things that never happened, like a painting without substance, to show that a “belly-myth” is a falsehood.
28. 28Eustathius quotes Plato's Republic on the danger of telling children false myths and the need to censor the myth-makers, beginning with Homer and Hesiod.
29. 29Eustathius argues that if Plato rejected even Homer's and Hesiod's tales as false myths, the possessed woman's “belly-myth” must be false, as the very name implies.
30. 30Eustathius concludes that the woman of Endor's oracle was a myth from the belly, staged by a shape-shifting demon who mimics the dead, and that only God and his Son can bring souls up from Hades; the text breaks off.