欢迎回到「Shameless Popery」。 Welcome back to Shameless Popery.
我是Joe Heschmeyer，我很兴奋地告诉你 ，新的考古证据再次显示早期基督徒确实向圣徒祈祷。 I'm Joe Heschmeyer, and I'm excited to tell you that new archaeological evidence has pointed to more evidence that the early Christians prayed to the saints.
其中有些是非常新的发现，大约在2024年12月才向公 众公布，也有一些是在我们过去所知的基础上再作拓展。 Some of this is very new evidence, as in like December 2024 is when this was announced to the public, and some of this builds on what we already knew.
先说点背景：最近在「Catholic Answers Live」的一次节目 里，赛·凯莱特问起了这项来自德国法兰克福的证据，而我之前完全没听说过呢。 So, a little bit of backstory here: On an episode of Catholic Answers Live recently, Cy Kellett asked me about this evidence out of Frankfurt, Germany, and I had not heard about it.
不过我很高兴能了解到，因为该证据与所谓阿尔卑斯山以北第一位基督徒有关。 But I'm very happy to have done so because the evidence is of what's being called the first Christian north of the Alps.
他们之所以知道他是基督徒，是因为他身上带着 阿尔卑斯山以北迄今发现最古老的基督徒文物。 They realize he's a Christian because he was carrying the oldest Christian artifact ever found north of the Alps.
当然，没有人真的认为他就是阿尔卑斯山以北第一位基督徒，但 他是我们所知的第一位，而这是我们已知最早的基督徒文物。 Now, of course, no one thinks he is literally the first Christian north of the Alps, but he's the first one we know about, and this is in fact the oldest Christian artifact we know about.
我们等会儿就会谈到那件文物到底是什么——相当酷哦。 We'll get into what that artifact is in a second—it's pretty cool.
不过先来一点背景：当时有一座名叫Nida的罗马小城，位于现今德国的深处。 But first, a little bit of context here: There was a small Roman city called Nida that was pretty deep into what's now Germany.
它毗邻法兰克福，放在今天相当于法兰克福的郊区。 It's near the city of Frankfurt; it'd be in the kind of Frankfurt suburbs today.
可是在当时，它当然不在法兰克福市里——那时候法兰克福都还没出现呢。 But at the time, it was obviously not part of the city of Frankfurt—it shouldn't exist yet.
那地方属于罗马的上日耳曼尼亚行省，讽刺的是它位置更靠南，却在河流更上游。 It was part of the Roman province of Upper Germania, which is ironically further south but further up the river.
如果你在看地图，肯定会觉得很混乱！ So confusing if you're looking at a map!
上日耳曼尼亚是与众多罗马异教部族毗邻的边境行省。 Upper Germania is this border province abutting all these different Roman pagan tribes.
2018年，考古学家在那里发现了一个古罗马墓地，这本身就非常了不 起，因为我们能看到的大部分罗马遗存都来自更南方，比如罗马那一带。 In 2018, archaeologists discovered an ancient Roman cemetery there, and it's a great find already because a lot of the Roman stuff we have comes from further south, places like Rome.
Nida本身也很古老，似乎在公元三世纪后期，也就是二百七 十年代左右，就因像阿勒曼尼亚这样的北方部族入侵而消亡了。 Nida also is pretty old; it seems to have gone out of existence in the later 200s, maybe 270s, as northern tribes like the Alemannia kind of encroached and pushed them out.
因此，这个古罗马墓地确实少见，一般我们很难在这里发现什么有趣的古罗马文物。 So it's an ancient Roman cemetery, a place we don't usually find cool ancient Roman stuff.
后来他们继续挖掘，就发现墓地里一具遗骸脖子上 挂着一个小金属盒，里面有一段基督徒的祈祷文。 Then they go digging and realize that one of the skeletons in the cemetery has a little metal box around his neck with a Christian prayer inside.
媒体的报道将它称为护身符，许多参与发现的人也觉得它近乎某种异教或带点神秘色彩。 Now, the press descriptions have called this an amulet, and many of those involved in the find seem to think of it as something almost like pagan or almost magical.
他们没有说它是异教——他们不用这个词是有原因的——但确实用了些带魔幻意味的描述。 They don't say pagan—and there's a reason they don't say pagan—but they do use kind of magical language around it.
例如，歌德大学在一则新闻稿里称它是一枚小银护身符，也 就是所谓的护身盒，推测他当时就是用带子戴在脖子上。 So, for instance, Goethe University in a press release described it as a small silver amulet, a so-called phylactery, which he probably once wore on a ribbon around his neck.
这种护身盒就是一种随身佩戴的容器，里面装着带有神秘作 用的内容物，或在后世可能放着圣髑，用来保护持有人。 Such a phylactery is a container worn on the body that holds magical contents or, in later times, relics, and is intended to protect the wearer.
不过要是你熟悉这个词，就会知道护身盒里不光可 能装神秘物件或圣髑，也不只是源自异教而已。 But if you're familiar with that term phylactery, you probably also realize phylacteries didn't just have magical contents or relics, and they're not something coming only from paganism.
很多不同的群体都会在脖子上佩戴各式各样的东西。 There are lots of groups that would wear things around their necks.
「phylactery」这个词表明这是源自犹太教的一种物件。 The term phylactery signals the fact this is something coming from Judaism.
举例来说，耶稣在马太福音第23章里批评文士和法利赛人，并不是因为他们佩 戴了护身盒，而是因为他们把护身盒加宽，故意炫耀，让人看见他们多么虔敬。 Jesus, in Matthew 23, for instance, criticizes the scribes and the Pharisees not for wearing phylacteries but for widening their phylacteries in this kind of ostentatious way so that people can see how holy they are.
犹太人将护身盒系在前臂与额上，这样的做法并非源自异教，而是出自圣经的教导。 This Jewish practice of wearing phylacteries around the forearms and the forehead, in their cases, comes again not from paganism but from the Bible.
在申命记第11章里，神吩咐以色列人要把祂的话系在手上为记号，戴在额上为头带。 In Deuteronomy 11, God instructs the Israelites to bind His words as a sign upon their hands and as frontlets between their eyes.
所以他们尽力以最忠实、最字面的方法来实践这条吩咐。 So this was their attempt to take that as faithfully and literally as they could.
如今，护身盒在基督信仰以及许多其他文化中都有一段漫长而复杂的历史。 Now, there's a long, complicated history of phylacteries within Christianity and a bunch of other cultures.
不过我们也知道，有相当多证据显示基督徒曾沿用这种做法，比如把某段经文或某个祷文像 卷轴一样卷起来，再放入一个小盒子里挂在脖子上，随时拿出来展开诵读，以作灵修之用。 But we know that there's plenty of evidence for Christians following this practice of having some passage of scripture, for instance, or some prayer wound up like a scroll and then placed in a little box around their neck where they could then unroll it and be reminded to pray, using it kind of for devotional purposes.
[后续的逐字稿也是类似的内容，标点、大写以及转录错误等都已修正。] [The rest of the transcript continues in a similar manner, with corrected punctuation, capitalization, and transcription errors.]
我想在这里稍微补充一些背景，帮助大家理解为什么会有戴护身盒的做法。 I'm trying to give it a little bit of context as we kind of make sense of what the whole practice of wearing a phylactery was even about.
不过，无论如何，这位德国人的护身盒究竟是什么呢？ But in any case, what was this German guy's phylactery?
其实，这份卷轴本身过于脆弱，若再去展开就有损坏的风险，但他们使 用了相当酷炫的技术——这是另一个话题——将其以数位方式重现。 Well, the scroll itself was actually too fragile to physically unroll without risk of damaging it, but they used some pretty cool technology—that's a whole other story—to digitally reconstruct it.
于是我们看到的内容是这样，不过要记得有些字眼已经无法辨认，目前只能尽力还 原：首先有向圣提多的呼求，接着是对耶稣基督「圣哉，圣哉，圣哉」的颂扬。 So here's what we find, but bear in mind some of the words are impossible to make out, and this is sort of a best attempt at reconstruction: It has an invocation to St. Titus, followed by praise of Jesus Christ as Holy, Holy, Holy.
这也是我们所知最早的一例使用三重「圣哉」的案例，与当时的礼仪背景相当符合。 This is one of the earliest known uses of this thrice-holy, which we find liturgically from around this same time period.
随后是一段祈求保护的祷文，或是宣告敬虔的佩戴者已经得到庇护。 Then there's a prayer for protection or perhaps a declaration that the faithful wearer is protected.
很遗憾的是，这里的文字其实相当难以辨认。 The writing here is actually a little hard to decipher, unfortunately.
最后以对腓立比书第2章第10至11节的明显引用作结——提到在耶稣的 名下，天上、地上、地底下的一切都要屈膝，并且众口都要承认祂的名。 And then it closes with a clear reference to Philippians 2, verses 10 to 11, about how every knee shall bend in heaven, on earth, under the earth at the name of Jesus, and every tongue shall confess His name.
有几个要点特别突出：大家要记住，这个人大约在公元230到270年间去 世，因为这是他的墓地——这是他过世并下葬的时间，而不是他生存的年限。 Several things kind of stand out: Remember, this guy died somewhere between 230 and 270 because this is his grave—this is not when he lived, this is when he died and was buried.
这名男子看来当时在35到45岁之间（和我差不多，听起来怪怪的） 。所以我们可以推算，他可能出生在公元185到最晚225年之间。 The man himself appears to be between 35 and 45 years of age (like me, ominously). So he was probably born, we can do the math, between the years 185 and 225 at the latest.
这个时间点相当早。 This is quite early.
更何况，在发现这位之前，我们已知最早的证据是科隆 的一位主教在大约公元313年曾前往罗马的元老院。 What's more, prior to finding this guy, the earliest evidence we had was of a bishop of Cologne in like 313 going to the Senate of Rome.
因此，我们知道在这片德国地区肯定有一些基督徒，否则不可能在没有基督徒的 地方出现一位主教，但我们此前并不了解他们是谁，也不清楚他们何时出现。 So we knew there must have been some Christians in this kind of German area because you wouldn't have a bishop in a place where there weren't any Christians, but we didn't know much of anything about who they were or when they showed up.
而这位人的发现就把这个起始时间向前推进了。 So this guy has now moved that date earlier.
将来或许还会有新的发现，让这个时间点更早。 Some future discovery may move it earlier yet.
不过，歌德大学也指出，这个时期的时间点还很重要，因为当时基督信仰仍是非法的。 But the timing is also significant for another reason, as Goethe University points out: This is a time when Christianity is still illegal.
这人在那个时代把这样的基督徒物品戴在脖子上，真可以说是把性 命都豁出去了，一旦被人发现，他很可能会遭到酷刑甚至被处死。 This man was literally risking his life by wearing this around his neck at a time when being discovered with Christian items could mean being tortured and killed.
因此，我想把我们刚刚了解到的发现，跟我们已经知道的事情结合起来。 So I want to take what we've just kind of found out with this and apply it to what we've already known.
接着，我想带大家再往更南边看看。 I want to move now further south.
到罗马帝国核心地带、罗马城中的那些受迫害的基督徒，他们躲在 地下墓穴里，在基督信仰还被禁止的年代，通过弥撒私下敬拜神。 To the persecuted Christians in the very heart of the Roman Empire in the city of Rome who are down there in the catacombs, privately worshipping God in the celebration of the Mass at a time when Christianity has been outlawed.
牛津大学与华沙大学以及雷丁大学（雷丁不仅仅是一座培养阅读能力的大学，而 是一座城市）合作，建立了一个名为「晚期古代圣徒崇敬」的大型在线资料库。 The University of Oxford, working with the University of Warsaw and the University of Reading (which is a city, not just a university that teaches people to read), created a large online database called the Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity.
他们的目标是汇集从基督信仰起始到约公元700年间，与早 期基督徒对圣徒的崇敬有关的所有早期文献和考古证据。在这 个资料库里，我们发现了——嗯，有数百处不同的涂鸦铭文。 It aims to gather together all of the early documentation and archaeological evidence for what early Christian devotion to the saints was like from the beginning of Christianity up to about the year 700. In that database, we find evidence of—well, there are hundreds of different inscriptions in graffiti.
（「graffiti」是个意大利词，这并非巧 合——在罗马几乎逢墙必写是一种古老的习惯。） (There's a reason graffiti is an Italian word—it's a longstanding custom of writing on every available wall in Rome.)
在那些地下墓穴里，已知就有大约538处不同的涂鸦。 There are like 538 different known instances of graffiti in the catacombs.
当然，它们并不全是同样的内容，可是在那538处涂鸦中，有一些很有意思的东西。 Not all of them are obviously saying the same thing, but among those 538, we find some pretty interesting things.
这里所说的地下墓穴就位于城外圣西巴斯提安圣殿的下方。 The catacomb in question here is beneath the Basilica of St. Sebastian's Outside the Walls.
这点真的蛮棒，因为那里原本就是古老的地下墓穴，等到基督信仰 合法化后，他们就在原本聚会敬拜的地方上头直接盖了一座教堂。 This is actually really great because there was an ancient catacomb, and then once Christianity was legalized, they built a church right on top of where they'd already been going and worshipping.
这样就形成了一个非常清晰的地层结构。 So that gives us a very clear strata.
当你往教堂下面进入古老的地下墓穴，就好像回 到公元300年代中期建这座教堂之前的时光。 When you go underneath the church into the ancient catacombs, you know you're, as it were, going back in time from before the church was built in the mid-300s.
这样我们就能得到相当准确的年代范围。 That gives us a pretty accurate date range.
当我们查看这些涂鸦时，根据周边的情况，推测它们不可能早于公元244年，也 绝不可能晚于公元356年，因为那时那里已经建起教堂，无法再到里面写字。 When we're looking at this graffiti, we're looking at things that seemingly couldn't have been earlier than 244 based on some surrounding stuff, and they couldn't have been physically later than 356 because there was a church there where they wouldn't have been able to get in and write on the walls.
所以，这样就有了一个时间范围，大约一百出头的年限。 So we have a nice little range there, a little more than 100 years.
不过，这个区间里比较早的那段时间，对我们目前的研究似乎更相关。 But the earlier part of that range is probably more relevant to our purposes.
在公元258年，罗马皇帝瓦勒良开始迫害基督徒。 In the year 258, the Roman Emperor Valerian begins persecuting Christians.
在那段时期，我们可以从《354年纪年录》中找到一些线索（ 有意思的是，这部纪年录也为12月25日圣诞节提供了依据— —这边暂且不做讨论）。《354年纪年录》时常被提到。 In the midst of that, there's some evidence from the Chronograph of 354 (which is also interestingly where we get evidence of December 25th for Christmas—leave that aside). The Chronograph of 354 comes up a lot.
总之，里面有一处很隐晦的记载，提到基督徒把圣彼得的遗体迁至圣西巴斯提安圣堂。 In any case, it has this cryptic reference about the Christians moving St. Peter's body to the Church of San Sebastiano.
根据《354年纪年录》的记载，这事发生在公元258年左右。也就是说 ，这大概在公元200年代中期，不会晚于公元300年代早期到中期。 According to the Chronograph, this happens in the year 258. So we're seemingly looking at mid-200s here, and it couldn't be later than early to mid-300s.
那么，我们在这些基督徒的地下墓穴里看到了什么？ And what do we find on these Christian catacombs?
对了，不好意思，还要再补充一点：它不会晚于300年代 早期的另一个原因是，到了那个时候基督信仰已经合法了。 Also, sorry, I should add one more thing: Another reason why we wouldn't expect it to be later than the early 300s is Christianity is legalized.
一旦信仰合法化，人们大概就不会再刻意在地下墓穴中继续举行聚会了。 Once you're legalized, you're probably not going to continue to just celebrate in the catacombs on purpose.
之所以这样做，是因为罗马异教徒不会轻易在那些公墓、墓园、地下墓穴里发现你。 This was done because Roman pagans weren't about to find you out in the cemeteries, in the graveyards, in the catacombs.
那么，我们在这些地下墓穴里看到了什么呢？ So what do we find in the catacombs?
再说一次，大概可能是在公元258年左右，我们 发现大量祈祷文，尤其是向圣彼得和保罗的祈祷。 Again, maybe the 258 period or thereabouts, we find a lot of prayers, particularly to St. Peter and Paul.
这也是我强调在公元258年左右彼得的遗体似乎被迁到那里的原因，因为 这就能解释为何有那么多对彼得和保罗的祈求。他们常被呼求于祷文之中。 Now that's why I'm stressing that Peter's body seems to have been moved there in 258, because it makes sense why you get so many references to Peter and Paul, who are often invoked as a prayer.
你会看到这些祈祷词，像「哦，彼得和保罗，请将我们常记在心、为我们祈祷」， 还有「哦，保罗和彼得，为我们众人代求并拯救我们」、「哦，彼得和保罗，与我 们同受殉并在主内施行拯救」、「哦，保罗和彼得，为维克多代求」、「哦，保罗 ，请帮助我的父亲」、「哦，保罗和彼得，请记挂我儿子欧斐迪欧」之类的话语。 You find these prayers like: O Peter and Paul, keep in your mind, keep in your prayers, and O Paul and Peter, intercede for us all and save, O Peter and Paul and Martyr us and save in the Lord, O Paul and Peter, intercede for Victor, O Paul, help my father, O Paul and Peter, keep in mind Ophidios, my son.
就是这些类型的祈祷文。 Those kind of things.
很多都是对圣徒的呼求祈祷。 A lot of these invocations to saints.
我在这里要说明的是，我们那位德国朋友并不是唯一一个敬奉圣徒的人。 The point I'm making here is that our German friend isn't the only one with a devotion to a saint.
这样的现象在早期受迫害、处于地下状态的基督徒之间似乎相当普遍。 This rather appears to be quite widespread among the early persecuted underground Christians.
那么，这对我们有什么启示呢？ Now, what are the implications of that?
我认为，这颠覆了许多新教徒对圣徒敬奉如何进入教会的想象。 I think this upends the way many Protestants imagine devotion to the saints arrives in the Church.
也就是说，我想许多新教徒认为这是在很晚才出现的，并且觉得这是从 异教传入的——当君士坦丁使基督信仰合法化，或后来它成了罗马帝国 的官方宗教后，就有很多异教徒半信半疑地接受基督信仰，却依旧敬拜 他们的异教神明，只不过改用「圣徒」之名，好让罗马皇帝看不出来。 By which I mean, I think many Protestants imagine this happens much later and I think they imagine this is coming from paganism—that as Constantine legalizes Christianity, or later when it becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire, they get all these pagans that become sort of half-Christians and they keep worshipping their pagan gods but they slap the name Saint on there so that the Roman Emperor doesn't know about it.
但这完全不正确，因为罗马皇帝想要人们敬拜异教神，而这些人却因为拒绝 才被逼到地下墓穴里。我觉得，加文·奥特隆博士的看法就颇具代表性。 But that's totally wrong, because the Roman Emperor wants you to worship pagan gods, and these are the people who are in catacombs because they won't. I think a pretty representative view is Dr. Gavin Ortlund.
他在Twitter或X上宣称，有一个缓慢积累的过程，让周边的异教做法 逐渐渗透进教会，直到在中世纪出现一些在教父看来会引发公愤的祈祷形式。 He, over on Twitter or X, claims that there was this slow process of accretion by which the surrounding pagan practice began infiltrating the Church until you see in the medieval era you would have prayers that would have scandalized the Church Fathers.
我再说一次，我认为这倒是相当能代表很多新教徒的想象。 Again, I think that's pretty fair as a representation of what many Protestants imagine.
这其实并不十分精准。 It's not particularly precise.
其中并没有很多可供查证的人名、日期或史实。 There aren't a lot of names or dates or facts you could check.
只是一个松散的概念，认为基督信仰是慢慢地堕落的，具体发生在什么 时代——我也不知道，也许是中世纪，也许是黑暗时代，也许有人会说 是君士坦丁时期，或者说是在公元380年基督信仰成为官方宗教的时 候。反正不会一夜之间发生，就是一个缓慢的过程，诸如此类。 It's just this kind of loose idea that slowly Christianity went bad, and when—I don't know—maybe the Middle Ages, maybe the Dark Ages, maybe if you're a different type of person, Constantine, or when Christianity becomes the official religion in 380 AD. But it doesn't happen overnight; it's just a slow process, that sort of thing.
接着，还有你可能注意到的另一层主张，就是加文会随口抛出的那种看法——我曾问过他这 件事，但从来没有获得任何能支持他结论的明确证据——即这些东西都源于异教的说法。 And then second, you've got that claim that you may have noticed Gavin just sort of throws out—which I've pressed him on and I've never gotten any clear evidence to support his claim—this idea that all of this somehow came from paganism.
可就我所知，这些说法没有一条是真的。 Well, none of this, as far as I can tell, is true.
我们不断发现越来越早的基督徒敬奉圣徒的证据，而这让 那个所谓的「缓慢累积论」变得时间越来越不够用了。 We keep finding earlier and earlier evidence of Christians who have a devotion to the saints, which makes the slow accretion theory have a shorter and shorter time period.
如果你要说这是慢慢发生的，那当我们发现阿尔卑斯山以北最早的 基督徒就已明确敬奉圣提多，又看到地下墓穴的基督徒敬奉彼得和 保罗，并且还能举出许多此类例子时，你的论断其实很难站住脚。 If you're going to say this happened slowly, it doesn't give you a lot of runway when we find the oldest known Christian north of the Alps with a clear devotion to St. Titus, and you find the Christians in the catacombs with devotions to Peter and Paul, and you can continue to multiply those kind of examples.
比方说，我想起过去有一些质疑基督信仰的人就声称，新约经卷不 可能是使徒所写，因为他们认为这些书卷其实写于公元二世纪。 I'm reminded, for instance, there were skeptics of Christianity who would claim the New Testament text couldn't have been written by the apostles, say, because they were actually written in the second century.
可是随着人们不断发现更早的手稿，这种理论最终就站不住脚了。 And then they were answered ultimately because they kept finding older and older manuscripts that showed that their theory just didn't really work.
所以，虽然我们从来没找到最早的——比如没找到圣经的原始手稿，也许 它们早就不见了——类似的，我们也不大会找到第一个在祈祷中呼求圣徒 的基督徒，但从趋势上看，这种证据确实越来越早、越来越早地出现。 So even though we have never found the oldest—like we haven't found the original autographs, maybe we don't have them anymore—and similarly, we're not going to find the first Christian to ever invoke a saint in their prayers, we see directionally this is getting earlier and earlier and earlier.
因此，这些「缓慢累积」的理论，不管是用于解释圣经的成 形，还是解释对圣徒的敬奉，似乎都越来越难以令人信服。 And so these slow accretion theories become less and less and less plausible, whether we're talking about the slow accretion to get the Bible or the slow accretion to devotion in the saints.
如果留给「基督信仰如何逐渐堕落」的推想时间越来越短，那这些理论便无法成立。 It just doesn't work if you get less and less runway to imagine Christianity going bad.
接下来第二部分，如我所说，是那种声称这源自异教的说法。 But then the second part, as I say, is this alleged coming from paganism.
如果你接受那种缓慢累积论，一旦基督信仰变得流行，就会有许多异教徒仅仅是 随大流、半调子地信，并继续他们的异教习俗，这时这理论看起来似乎合理。 That makes sense if you buy a slow accretion theory once it becomes a popular religion and you've got all these pagans who are just doing it to be cool and they're lukewarm and all that.
听起来似乎毫无问题。 Totally makes sense.
可情况显然不是这样。 That's not what's going on here, though.
我们说的，是在地下墓穴里的基督徒。 These are the Christians in the catacombs.
我们说的，也包含在Nida发现的那位孤零零的基督徒。 These are the Christians where it's the lone Christian we're finding in Nida.
他就是这么一个人。 He's the one guy.
说他只是随便地、半调子地接受基督信仰，这完全说不通。 The idea that he's just lukewarmly accepting Christianity doesn't really make sense.
因此，所谓「这源于异教」的说法就更站不住脚了。 And so the idea this is coming from paganism becomes less plausible.
顺带一提，如果你了解异教徒的历史，以及他们与圣徒 祈祷之间的关联，你也会发现这说法更加难以成立。 It also becomes less plausible, by the way, if you know anything about the history of pagans and their interaction with prayer to the saints.
其中一个最有名的例子就是背教者尤利安。 The most famous example is from Julian the Apostate.
如果不熟悉他，他是一位罗马皇帝，虽然自小受基督信仰薰陶 ，但后来却背弃基督信仰，回归到早期罗马皇帝的传统异教。 If you don't know, he was a Roman emperor who, despite being raised as a Christian, rejected Christianity and reverted to the ancestral paganism of the earlier Roman emperors.
他曾尝试让帝国重新回归异教，但并不成功。 He tried to bring the empire back to paganism—unsuccessfully.
他在《驳加利利人》这本著作中写下许多对基督信仰的激烈攻击，其 中也嘲笑向圣徒祈祷，讽刺的是理由与许多新教徒的立场异曲同工。 And he writes these nasty kind of arguments against Christianity in a work called Against the Galilean, and in there he actually mocks prayers to the saints on ironically much the same ground that many Protestants do.
他的论点是，即便再有德行的人也比不上众神，（或者从 新教角度看来，不及神），因此向他们祈祷是浪费时间。 His argument is that even the most virtuous men are inferior to the gods (or, a Protestant would say, to God), and so therefore it's a waste of time to pray to them.
他说，为什么要向这些有限、不完满的力量祈祷呢？ Why would you pray to these incomplete, impartial powers?
这就是他的说法。 That's his argument.
可见，这并不是对异教的某种妥协。 So it's striking that this is not a concession to paganism.
异教徒并没有把向圣徒祈祷看成是「哦，对啊，这跟我们敬奉诸神一样」。 The pagans didn't look at the prayer to the saints and say, Oh yeah, that's just like what we're doing with the gods.
不，他们排斥这样的做法，因为大家都明白人类的圣徒跟罗马众神并不是同样的东西。 No, they rejected it because we understood human saints and Roman gods are not the same thing.
你不能简单地把两者画上等号。 You can't just make a one-to-one equation.
这可不是某种宗教替代品，说我原本对众神的敬奉能随便加个「圣」字就这样继续下去。 This is not some kind of religious methadone where my devotion to the gods I can just slap Saint in front of it and then keep going.
我不会说「他不再是墨丘利，我改叫他圣墨丘利」。 Now I'm not going to call him Mercury, I'm going to call him Saint Mercury.
不，这事根本不是这么回事。 No, it doesn't work like that.
历史上也绝不是这样发展的。 It doesn't work like that historically.
其实我们很清楚地发现，异教徒对基督徒向圣徒祈祷这件事并不认可。 We find clear evidence that the pagans were not cool with the Christian practice of praying to the saints.
就我们所知，这是今天相当具有基督徒色彩的做法，而且它的历史比你想象得要悠久得多。 This is, as far as we can tell, a distinctly Christian practice today and a practice much older than you might have believed.
所以，最后给大家三个想法：第一，敬奉圣徒并没有明显从异教传入的痕迹。 So three final thoughts: 1. Devotion to the saints is not coming in any obvious way from paganism.
第二，就我们看过的资料而言，它并不是在很晚才出现的，也不是慢慢发展而成 的，而是在，比如说尼西亚信经之前很久，教会当中就已经存在这种敬奉了。 2. It's not some late or gradual arrival, as far as we can see, but is present in Christianity long before say, the Nicene Creed.
第三，我们其实才刚开始而已。 3. We're just getting started.
换句话说，没有理由认为这件事就是我们所能发现的、最早呼求圣徒的考古证据。 In other words, there's no reason to believe this is going to be the earliest archaeological find we ever have of somebody with an invocation to the saints.
因此，如果你对公教对圣徒的敬奉的反对，是建立在那种「从异教缓 慢积累」的理论上，那么我觉得，随着新发现的不断出现，这种说法 会越发难以立足，因为多年来我们发掘的证据已经证明它并不成立。 So if you're banking your objection to Catholic devotion to the saints on a slow accretion from paganism kind of theory, that's going to get less plausible, I think, as we move forward, because it's gotten less plausible over the years as we've found more and more evidence that it simply is not true.
所以，我对此感到非常兴奋。 So I'm excited by this.
我也希望你同样觉得兴奋。 I hope you are too.
如果你对圣徒还不太能接受，希望这能给你带来一些冲击。 And if you're someone who's maybe uncomfortable with the saints, I hope you're challenged by this.
也许——我不确定——当你了解到那群最早的基督徒，也就是你很可 能敬重他们的信德与热忱，并且甘愿为信仰牺牲性命的人，都相当自 在地呼求圣徒帮忙，而且做得相当频繁时，你会更能坦然接受吧。 Maybe—I don't know—maybe a little more comfortable knowing the earliest Christians, the ones that you hopefully respect because of the authenticity and fervor of their faith, the people who were willing to die for their faith, were totally cool asking the saints for help and they did it a lot.
我们有证据表明这一点。 We have the evidence to show that.
说我们可以相信这些人——他们敬虔又为信仰殉道——显然更合理，而 不是说「哦，那早在尼西亚信经之前就早已是异教化的基督信仰了」。 It seems much more plausible to say we can trust those guys—they were holy and died for the faith—rather than, Oh yeah, that's already pagan Christianity from long before the Nicene Creed.
「Shem's Popery」，我是Joe Heschmeyer。 For Shem's Popery, I'm Joe Heschmeyer.
愿神赐福你。 God bless you.