70 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystus
appreciate this tension and to accept it as a result of the polemical character
of the treatise or even, perhaps, as one of those paradoxes and ambiguities
which are characteristic of religious thought – even the religious thought
of intellectuals.^60
It may be thought that this view amounts, after all, to the position
which I rejected at the end of the introduction, namely that we need
not be surprised to find intellectuals holding or expressing religious ideas
which seem incompatible with each other (either for social or for private
reasons). But it will by now have become clear for what reasons (apart from
those mentioned ad loc.) I did not accept that position. We have seen that
the interpretation of the author’s statements about the divine character of
the disease, as well as the attempt to deduce his theological ideas from these
statements, involved many problems. We have also seen the difficulties
involved in the evaluation of the author’s accusations ofasebeia, and I have
shown that it is possible to discern, in spite of the hypothetical character
of most of these accusations, elements of the author’s own conviction.
If the results of this discussion (especially my views on the range and
on the rhetorical impact of the assertions about the divinity of diseases)
are convincing, the discrepancy noted at the beginning of this paper has
decreased considerably, though it has not disappeared. Yet we are now in a
much better position to formulate the problem more adequately and to look
for an explanation that is more to the point than the one offered in section 1.
4 conclusion
It will by now have become clear why the word ‘theology’ in the title of this
chapter has been put between quotation marks. It is certainly wrong to hold
that the author ofOn the Sacred Diseasesystematically exposes his religious
beliefs and his ideas on the nature of divine causation in this text. Yet what
he does show of these beliefs admits of the following conclusions. The
writer believes in gods who grant men purification of their transgressions
!
), et le monde c ́eleste, s ́ejour des dieux incorruptibles, qui habitent sans doute les astres.
Ainsi les phenom ́ `enes naturels, pluie et secheresse, vents et saisons, qui entrent pour une bonne part ́
dans les causes des maladies, sont dus des enchaˆınements aveugles, ou la responsabilit` ́e des dieux
n’est nullement engag ́ee.’ But this view is a consequence of Thivel’s interpretation of 18. 1 – 2 , which
he takes as implying that natural phenomena have no divine aspect whatsoever (see n. 25 above). It
will be clear that I cannot endorse this interpretation. As for Norenberg see n. ̈ 9 above: his account
of the problem is closer to the text, but it is confused because of his failure to distinguish between
interpretations ( 1 ) and ( 2 ).(^60) Similar ambiguities may be found in the religious thought of, e.g., Plato and Aristotle; see Verdenius
( 1960 ); Babut ( 1974 ).