Nimrod the inventor of magic arts (1)

Text
pseudo-Clement, Recognitions 4.29:
First among them (born in the fourteenth generation) is named a certain king Nimrod, to whom the magic art was handed down as by a flash; the Greeks also called him Ninus, from whom the city of Nineveh took its name. In this way, therefore, diverse and erratic superstitions took their beginning from the magic art. For because it was difficult to draw away the human race from the love of God and attach it to deaf and lifeless images, the magicians made use of higher efforts, that men might be turned to erratic worship by signs among the stars and motions brought down as it were from heaven, and by the will of God. And those who had been first deceived, collecting the ashes of Zoroaster - who, as we have said, was burned up by the indignation of the demon, to whom he had been too troublesome - brought them to the Persians, that they might be preserved by them with perpetual watching, as divine fire from heaven, and might be worshipped as a heavenly God.

Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
pseudo-Clement, Recognitions 4.29

Bibliography

Amar Annus

URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000248.php