Academic Exercise on the Abstinence of the Early Christians from Reading Profane Books

Th. V.

The passage in Acts 19:19 testifies that it was a sufficiently ancient custom to commit to the flames books that were less approved: And many of those who had practiced curious arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. Which words philologists of no small repute translate thus: those who practiced curious arts; and they believe that men devoted to magical arts are to be understood here. b) In this sense, περίεργος is attributed to Antoninus in Herodian i); and in this same sense curiosus is used in Horace:

Or can I, who can move waxen images,
(As you yourself, being curious, know) and from the sky
Snatch down the moon with my incantations? k)

It is well known that men of this kind were at Ephesus, from those magical letters which were called Ephesian letters;

b) See Johann Quistorp’s Biblical Annotations on this passage. Compare Siberius’s Dissertation on the "periergia" of the Ephesians; likewise, Henricus Stephanus, Schediasma 28, book 2, p. m. 82. i) Book 4, concerning Antoninus. k) In the book of Epodes, the last ode.