Book 1

1.1. . . . so that you may read them at hand and be able to keep them safe. Now should writings be left to no one at all, or to some? If to none, what use are letters? But if to some, then either to the serious-minded or to those who are not. It would surely be absurd to reject the writing of the serious while approving the compositions of men who are nothing of the kind. Are we, then, to allow Theopompus and Timaeus to compose fables and slanders, and Epicurus besides, the founder of atheism, and Hipponax and Archilochus to write with such shamelessness, and yet forbid the man who proclaims the truth to leave behind a benefit for those who come after? It is a fine thing, I think, to leave good children behind for those who follow. Children of the body are offspring; words are the offspring of the soul. So we call our fathers those who instructed us; and wisdom is something shared and loving toward mankind. Solomon, at any rate, says: "My son, if you receive the saying of my commandment and hide it within yourself, your ear will hearken to wisdom." He means that the word, once sown, is hidden as in earth, in the soul of the learner; and this is a spiritual planting.

1.2. And so he adds: "And you will incline your heart to understanding; you will apply it for the admonition of your son." For soul, I think, joined to soul, and spirit to spirit in the sowing of the word, makes what is cast in to grow, and gives it life; and every son who is taught in obedience to the one who teaches is a son. "My son," he says, "do not forget my ordinances." But if knowledge does not belong to all, then writings are, for the many, "a lyre to an ass," as the proverb-makers say. Swine, at any rate, take more pleasure in mud than in clean water. "For this reason," says the Lord, "I speak to them in parables: because, seeing, they do not see, and hearing, they do not hear, nor do they understand" — not that the Lord causes their ignorance (it would be impious to think so), but that he reproves prophetically the ignorance already there, and declares that they will fail to understand what is said.

1.3. Already, indeed, the Saviour himself shows abundantly that, having distributed his goods to the servants according to the capacity of each — a capacity that must be increased by practice — he returns again to settle accounts with them. Then, having welcomed those who had increased his money, the faithful in little, and having promised to set them over much, he bade them enter into the joy of their Lord. But to the one who had hidden away the money entrusted to him for lending, and who gave back idle the very sum he had received, he said, "Wicked and slothful servant, you ought to have put my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have recovered my own"; and so the useless servant is cast into the outer darkness. "Be strong, then," says Paul also, "in the grace that is in Christ Jesus; and what you have heard from me through many witnesses, commit these things to faithful men, who will be competent to teach others also." And again: "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a workman who need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."

1.4. If, then, both proclaim the word — the one by writing, the other by the living voice — how are they not both to be welcomed, since they have made their faith active through love? As for the cause of one who fails to choose the better part, God is not to blame. To lend out the word is the work of the one; to test it and either choose it or not is the work of the other, and the judgment is decided within themselves. The science of heralding is already, in a manner, angelic, in whichever way it works — by the hand or by the tongue — for it brings benefit. "He who sows to the spirit will of the spirit reap eternal life; and let us not grow weary in doing the good." For the very greatest gifts are conferred, by divine providence, on whoever happens upon the word: a beginning of faith, an eagerness for the right way of life, an impulse toward truth, a movement that seeks, a trace of knowledge — in a word, it gives the occasions of salvation. And those who have been genuinely nourished on the words of truth, having received provision for the eternal life, take wing toward heaven. Most admirably, then, the Apostle says: "In everything commending ourselves as servants of God, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing all things; our mouth is open to you." And, writing to Timothy, he declares: "I charge you, before God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, that you keep these things without prejudice, doing nothing out of partiality."

1.5. Both of these men, then, must necessarily test themselves: the one, whether he is worthy to speak and to leave records behind; the other, whether he is fit to listen and to read — just as some, distributing the thanksgiving, allow each man of the people, as is the custom, to take his own portion. For conscience is the best guide to the exact choosing and avoiding; and its firm foundation is an upright life together with fitting instruction. And to follow those already tested and proved is best, both for grasping the truth and for carrying out the commandments. So "whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup."

1.6. It would be fitting, then, for one who has taken up the task of benefiting his neighbours to consider whether he has rushed rashly into teaching, out of rivalry with others; whether his sharing of the word is a thing of vanity; whether he reaps this reward alone — the salvation of his hearers; and whether he speaks not to please men. For the man who speaks through written records has escaped the reproach of flattery and of taking bribes alike. "For we were never found using words of flattery," says the Apostle, "as you know, nor a pretext for greed — God is witness — nor did we seek glory from men, neither from you nor from others, though we might have stood on our weight as apostles of Christ; but we were gentle in your midst, as a nurse cherishes her own children." In the same way, those who partake of the divine words must be watched: whether they come to this point merely out of curiosity, to inspect, as men inspect the buildings of cities; or whether they approach for some worldly advantage, having learned that those consecrated to Christ are generous with what they have. As for the hypocrites — let them be. But if anyone wishes not merely to seem just but to be so, it befits him to be conscious within himself of the noblest things.

1.7. If, then, the harvest is great but the labourers few, it is right indeed to pray that we may have as great an abundance of labourers as possible. And husbandry is twofold: the one unwritten, the other written. In whichever way the labourer of the Lord sows the noble grain, and makes the ears grow and reaps them, he will show himself a truly divine husbandman. "Labour," says the Lord, "not for the food that perishes, but for that which abides unto eternal life." And nourishment is taken either by food or by words. And truly, "blessed are the peacemakers" — those who teach anew the men here in this life who are warred upon by their wandering and by ignorance, and who lead them over into the peace that is in the word and in the life lived according to God, and who feed those who hunger after righteousness by the distribution of bread. For there are souls too that have their own nourishment: some growing by recognition and knowledge, others grazing upon Greek philosophy, of which, as of nuts, not the whole is edible. "He who plants and he who waters," being servants of him who gives the increase, "are one" in their service; "and each will receive his own wage according to his own labour. For we are fellow-workers of God; you are God's tillage, God's building," according to the Apostle.

1.8. We must not, then, allow the hearers to form their judgment by comparison, nor hand over the word for cross-examination to men reared in the arts of every kind of discourse and in the inflated powers of clever argument, whose souls are already preoccupied and not first emptied. But when a man, out of faith, chooses to feast, he stands firm for the reception of the divine words, having gained faith as a reasoned judgment; and there follows from this an abundant conviction. This, indeed, was that prophetic saying: "Unless you believe, neither will you understand." "So then, as we have opportunity, let us work the good toward all, but especially toward those of the household of faith." And let each of these, after the manner of blessed David, sing with thanksgiving: "You will sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed; you will wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow. You will make me hear joy and gladness; the bones that have been humbled shall rejoice. Turn your face away from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within my inmost parts. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the gladness of your salvation, and uphold me with a guiding spirit."

1.9. The man who speaks to those present both tests them by time and judges by discernment, and distinguishes from the rest the one who is able to hear, watching his words, his ways, his character, his life, his movements, his bearing, his glance, his speech — the crossroads, the rock, the trodden path, the fruitful earth, the land overrun with weeds, the rich and good and cultivated ground that can multiply the seed many times. But the man who speaks through written records makes his consecration to God, crying out these things in writing: not for gain, not for vainglory, not to be overcome by partiality, not to be enslaved by fear, not to be lifted up by pleasure — but to enjoy only the salvation of his readers, in which he has no share even now, but which he awaits in hope, expecting the recompense that will surely be paid by him who has promised to pay the labourers their wage according to their worth. Yet neither should the man enrolled among men aim at a return. For has not the one who has boasted of his good deed already received his recompense in the good repute it brought? And the man who does anything of his duty for the sake of a return — whether, as a benefactor, hastening to be repaid, or, as an evildoer, steering clear of recompense — is he not caught in worldly custom? But one must imitate the Lord so far as one can. And this would be the man who serves the will of God, having received freely and giving freely, taking as his worthy wage the very citizenship itself. "The hire of a harlot shall not enter the holy place," he says.

1.10. It is forbidden, then, to bring "the price of a dog" to the altar. But whoever has had the eye of his soul blunted, by bad nourishment and bad teaching, against its native light — let him walk toward the truth that makes plain in writing the unwritten things. "You who thirst, go to the water," says Isaiah; and "drink water from your own vessels," Solomon advises. In the Laws, indeed, Plato — that philosopher sprung from the Hebrews — bids the farmers neither to draw water for irrigation nor to take it from others, unless they have first dug for themselves down to the so-called virgin soil and found the ground without water. For it is just to relieve want, but not good to provision idleness; and so Pythagoras said that it is reasonable to help a man take up a burden, but not to help him lay it down. And the Scripture kindles together the spark of the soul and strains its native eye toward contemplation, perhaps even implanting something — as the husbandman who grafts — but rousing up what is already there. "For many among us," according to the divine Apostle, "are weak and sickly, and a good number sleep. But if we examined ourselves, we would not be judged."

1.11. This treatise is not a piece of writing artfully made for display; rather, these are memoranda stored up for my old age, a remedy against forgetfulness, simply an image and shadow-sketch of those vivid and living words, and of the blessed and truly memorable men, whom I was counted worthy to hear. Of these, one was in Greece, the Ionian; others were in Greater Greece — one of them from Coele Syria, another from Egypt; and others were across the East, the one of that region from among the Assyrians, the other in Palestine, a Hebrew by descent. But when I met with the last (though in power he was the first), I found rest, having tracked him down where he lay hidden in Egypt. A Sicilian bee in truth, plucking the flowers of the prophetic and apostolic meadow, he begot in the souls of his hearers a pure and undefiled thing of knowledge. These men, preserving the true tradition of the blessed teaching directly from Peter and James, from John and Paul, the holy apostles — son receiving from father (though few are like their fathers) — came, by God's will, down even to us, to deposit those ancestral and apostolic seeds.

1.12. And I know well that they will rejoice — I mean not that they take pleasure in this exposition itself, but only in the keeping of the tradition according to these notes. For such an outline is, I think, the work of a soul that longs to keep the blessed tradition unfading. "A man who loves wisdom will gladden his father." Wells that are drawn from yield clearer water; but what no one shares turns to corruption. Use too keeps iron cleaner, while disuse breeds rust upon it. In a word, regular exercise produces a healthy condition both in spirits and in bodies. "No one lights a lamp and puts it under the bushel, but on the lampstand, that it may shine for those counted worthy of the same feast." For what use is wisdom that does not make wise the man able to hear? Moreover, the Saviour saves always and works always, "as he sees the Father." And in teaching a man learns more, and in speaking he often hears along with those who listen to him; for there is one Teacher of both speaker and hearer, who pours forth upon both the mind and the word.

1.13. And so the Lord did not forbid us to "keep sabbath" from the good, but allowed us to share the divine mysteries and that holy light with those able to receive them. He did not, mark you, reveal to many what did not belong to many, but to the few, to those whom he knew it befitted, those able to receive and to be shaped to them. The unspeakable things, like God himself, are entrusted to the word, not to writing. And if anyone should say it is written, "Nothing is hidden that shall not be made manifest, nor anything covered that shall not be uncovered," let him hear from us too that to the man who listens in secret the secret will be made manifest — this is what was foretold through that oracle — and to the man able to receive in a veiled way what is handed down, the veiled and the truth will be revealed; and what is hidden from the many will become manifest to the few. For why do not all know the truth? Why is righteousness not loved, if righteousness belongs to all? But the mysteries are delivered mystically, that they may be in the mouth of the one who speaks and of the one to whom it is spoken — or rather, not in the voice, but in the understanding. "And God has set in the Church first apostles, then prophets, then evangelists, then pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ."

1.14. The writing of these memoranda of mine is, I know well, weak compared with that gracious spirit which we were counted worthy to hear; yet it would be an image recalling the archetype to the man "struck by the thyrsus." "Speak to a wise man," it says, "and he will be wiser; and to him who has, it shall be added." And it does not promise to interpret the unspeakable things adequately — far from it — but only to bring them to mind, whether for when we have forgotten, or so that we may not forget at all. Much, I know well, has slipped past us through length of time, falling away unrecorded. And so, easing the weakness of my memory, providing for myself a saving reminder, a systematic exposition of the chief points, I have of necessity made use of this outline. There are, indeed, some things we have not even recalled (for great was the power in those blessed men); there are also things which, remaining unrecorded, have now escaped with time; and others that were quenched within the very mind as they faded — for such a service is not easy for those not approved. These things, reviving by these notes, I willingly pass over some, selecting with knowledge, afraid to write what I guarded against even speaking — not from grudging (for that would not be lawful), but fearing for my readers, lest somewhere they should stumble in another direction, and we be found, as the proverb-makers say, holding out a sword to a child. For it is not possible that what has been written should not fall out, even if it has remained unpublished by me; rolling on forever, using only the one written voice, it answers nothing more than what is written to the one who questions it further. For it necessarily needs a helper, either the one who wrote it or some other who has stepped into the same track.

1.15. There are also things at which my writing will hint; some it will set forth plainly, others it will only mention; it will try to speak while hiding, to disclose while concealing, and to point while keeping silent. It will set out the teachings dogmatized by the notable heresies, and will answer them with all that ought to be arranged beforehand for the knowledge that comes by the higher contemplation — a knowledge which will advance for us, as we proceed according to the glorious and venerable rule of the tradition from the genesis of the world, setting out first the things that must be grasped before the contemplation of nature, and clearing away beforehand the obstacles that stand in the way of the sequence; so that our ears may be ready for the reception of the gnostic tradition, the ground having first been cleansed of thorns and of all the weeds, as a husbandman clears it for the planting of a vineyard. For there is a contest, and a preliminary contest; and there are mysteries before the mysteries. Nor will these notes of ours shrink from using the noblest things of philosophy and of the rest of the preliminary education. "For not only for the Hebrews and those under the Law," according to the Apostle, "is it reasonable to become a Jew, but also, for the sake of the Greeks, a Greek, that we may gain all." And in the Epistle to the Colossians he writes: "admonishing every man and teaching in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ."

1.16. The grace of contemplation suits the outline of these memoranda in another way too. The abundance of good learning is like a seasoning mingled in with the athlete's diet — not the diet of one given to luxury, but of one who, through honourable ambition, takes a good appetite. So in singing we relax the over-high pitch of solemnity with melody. And just as men who wish to address a crowd often do so through a herald, that what is said may be the better heard, so here too — for the discourse before the tradition itself is addressed to many — we must set out the familiar opinions and sayings that ring loud among them at every turn, by which the hearers will the more be turned. And, in a word (for in the many small pearls there is the one, and in the great catch of fish the finest fish), with time and toil the truth will shine out, if a good helper is at hand; for it is through men that most of God's benefits are bestowed.

1.17. All of us, then, who use our eyes behold what falls before them, but different men for different ends. The cook and the shepherd do not behold the sheep alike: the one is busy whether it is fat, the other watches it for good breeding. Let one man milk the sheep, if he needs nourishment; let him shear the wool, if he needs covering. So let the fruit of Greek good-learning come forward for me. For I do not think anyone holds any writing so fortunate that no one will contradict it; rather, that writing must be reckoned reasonable which no one will contradict reasonably. And so too one must accept that action and that choice — not the one that is blameless, but the one that no one will reasonably blame. Nor does it follow that if a man does not do a thing as his primary aim, he does it from circumstance; rather, managing something with godly wisdom and adapting himself, he will act. For the man who has virtue needs no further road to virtue, nor does the strong man need recovery. And just as farmers first water the ground, so we too, with the drinkable part of the discourse among the Greeks, first water their earthly element, that it may receive the spiritual seed cast into it and be able to nourish it with ease.

1.18. The Miscellanies will contain the truth mingled with the doctrines of philosophy, or rather veiled and hidden within them, as the edible kernel within the shell of the nut; for it is fitting, I think, that the seeds of truth be kept only for the husbandmen of faith. I am not unaware of the things harped on by certain ignorant and timid men, who say that one must busy oneself with what is most necessary and holds faith together, and pass over what is external and superfluous, since it wears us out to no purpose and detains us about things that contribute nothing to the end. Others even suppose that philosophy entered life for evil, to the harm of mankind, brought in by some wicked inventor. But I, throughout the whole of the Miscellanies, will show that wickedness has an evil nature and could never become the husbandman of anything good, hinting somehow that philosophy too is a work of divine providence.

2.19. Now, concerning these memoranda, which at the necessary points take in Greek opinion, I say this much to the fault-finders. First: even if philosophy were useless, if establishing its uselessness is useful, then it is useful. Next: it is not possible to condemn the Greeks while using only a bare statement of what they have dogmatized, without entering into the detailed examination of each point until one reaches understanding. For the refutation that comes with experience is most trustworthy, since the most perfect proof is found to be the knowledge of the things condemned. And indeed many things that do not contribute to the end still adorn the craftsman. Besides, wide learning helps to recommend the man who sets out the most authoritative of the doctrines for the persuasion of his hearers, and, breeding admiration in those being instructed, commends them toward the truth.

2.20. Such a winning of souls is worthy of trust — by which lovers of learning receive the truth in veiled form — so that neither do they seem to think philosophy corrupts life, being the maker of false things and base deeds, as some have slandered it (whereas it is a clear image of truth, a divine gift given to the Greeks), nor are we ourselves drawn away from faith, as though bewitched by some deceitful art; but, so to speak, by using a fuller covering we somehow furnish a kind of demonstrative exercise of faith. Indeed, the joining of doctrines through their comparison woos the truth, by which knowledge has followed — philosophy having entered not as the primary cause, but our taking, through the fruit that comes from knowledge, a firm conviction of true apprehension by the science of things that are inferred. For I say nothing of the fact that the Miscellanies, embodied by their wide learning, mean to hide artfully the seeds of knowledge.

2.21. As the man eager for the hunt finds his quarry by seeking, searching, tracking, and coursing with hounds, so the truth, when sought and won by toil, appears full of sweetness. Why, then, did it seem good to arrange these memoranda in this way? Because there is great danger in dancing out the truly secret discourse of true philosophy before men who unsparingly wish to contradict everything, and not justly, and who hurl away all names and words in no orderly fashion, deceiving themselves and bewitching those who cling to them. "For the Hebrews ask for signs," as the Apostle says, "and the Greeks seek wisdom."

3.22. Great is this crowd. Some of them, enslaved to pleasures, willing to disbelieve, laugh at the truth that is worthy of all reverence, setting down as a plaything what is "barbarian"; while certain others, exalting themselves, force themselves to find slanders against the words, devising contentious inquiries — hunters of little phrases, zealots of paltry arts, "wranglers and twisters of thongs," as that man of Abdera says: "For twisting is the tongue of mortals; in it are many tales, and a wide pasture of words of all kinds, this way and that"; and: "Whatever word you speak, such you will hear in return." Exalting themselves, then, by this art, the wretched sophists, prattling in their own quibbling, toiling all their life about the distinction of names and the particular composition and entanglement of phrases, show themselves more talkative than turtle-doves — scratching and tickling, not in manly fashion, as I see it, the ears of those itching to be scratched, a sheer river of words but a mere dripping of sense. Indeed, like old shoes, all the rest of them is weak and falls apart, and only the tongue is left.

3.23. Most nobly the Athenian Solon inveighs and writes: "You look to the tongue and to the words of a wheedling man; each one of you walks in the tracks of a fox, but in all of you together there is an empty mind." This is what that saving voice hints at: "The foxes have holes, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." For upon the believer alone, I think — wholly distinguished from the rest of the beasts named by the Scripture — the sum of all things finds rest: the good and gentle Word, "who catches the wise in their own craftiness; for the Lord alone knows the reasonings of the wise, that they are vain" — the Scripture calling "wise," of course, the sophists who are over-curious about phrases and arts.

3.24. Hence the Greeks themselves have called those who are over-busy about anything whatever both "wise" and "sophist," using the derived word. Cratinus, at least, in the Archilochi, after listing the poets, said: "What a swarm of sophists you have rummaged out." And Iophon likewise, as the comic poet does in the Flute-Singing Satyrs, says of rhapsodes and certain others: "For indeed a crowd of many sophists has come in, fully equipped." Of these and the like — all who have practised empty words — the divine Scripture says most nobly: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent I will set aside."

4.25. Homer too calls a craftsman "wise," and concerning the Margites — if indeed it is his — he writes somewhat thus: "Him the gods made neither a digger nor a ploughman, nor in any other way wise, but he missed every art." Hesiod, calling the lyre-player Linus "skilled in every kind of wisdom," does not shrink from calling a sailor too "wise," writing of one "in no way made wise in seamanship." And Daniel the prophet says: "The mystery which the king asks — it is not in the power of wise men, magi, enchanters, Gazarenes, to declare it to the king; but there is a God in heaven who reveals it." And indeed he calls the men of Babylon "wise." That the Scripture, by the same name, calls "wisdom" all worldly knowledge or art — and there are many such, devised by human reasoning in combination — and that the inventive and wise contrivance is from God, will be clear if we set down this passage: "And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Behold, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with a divine spirit of wisdom and understanding and knowledge in every work, to devise and to be master-builder, to work gold and silver and bronze, the blue and the purple and the scarlet, and the stone-cutting and the carpentry of wood, to work in all manner of work."

4.26. Then he adds a general statement: "And to everyone understanding in heart I have given understanding" — that is, to the man able to receive it by toil and training. And again, expressly in the name of the Lord, it is written: "And you, speak to all the wise in understanding, whom I have filled with the spirit of perception." The wise in understanding have a certain native property of nature, but they receive a twofold "spirit of perception" from the most authoritative Wisdom, when they have made themselves fit. For those who pursue the mechanical arts enjoy a surplus in the region of the senses: in hearing, the man commonly called the musician; in touch, the modeller; in voice, the singer; in smell, the perfumer; in sight, the engraver of the impressions on seal-stones. And those who spend their time on education are supplied with a perceptiveness by which the poets grasp metres, the sophists phrasing, the dialecticians syllogisms, and the philosophers the contemplation that belongs to them. For this perceptiveness is inventive and ingenious, persuading us to make a plausible attempt; and training toward knowledge increases the application.

4.27. With reason, then, the Apostle has called the wisdom of God "manifold," showing forth its own power "in many parts and in many ways" — through art, through knowledge, through faith, through prophecy — for our benefit, "since all wisdom is from the Lord, and is with him for ever," as the wisdom of Jesus says. "For if you call upon prudence and perception with a loud voice, and seek her as treasures of silver, and eagerly track her out, you will understand the fear of God and will find a divine perception" — the prophet has spoken thus by way of contrast with the perception that belongs to philosophy, which he teaches us to search out greatly and magnificently for our advance toward the fear of God. He has, then, set over against it the perception that is in the fear of God, hinting at knowledge, and saying this: "For God gives wisdom from his own mouth, and perception together with prudence, and stores up help for the just" — for to those justified by philosophy help is stored up, and the perceptiveness that is toward the fear of God.

5.28. Before the coming of the Lord, then, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness; and now it becomes useful toward the fear of God, being a kind of preliminary education for those who reap faith through demonstration. "For your foot," it says, "shall not stumble," if you refer good things to providence, whether they be Greek or our own. For God is the cause of all good things — but of some as primary, as of the Old Covenant and the New, and of others as consequent, as of philosophy. Yet perhaps philosophy too was given primarily to the Greeks then, before the Lord called the Greeks also; for it too was a schoolmaster bringing the Greek mind, as the Law brought the Hebrews, toward Christ. Philosophy, then, prepares the way beforehand, paving the road for the man who is being perfected by Christ. "Fortify wisdom," says Solomon, "and she will exalt you; with a crown of delight she will shield you" — since you too, fortifying her with the parapet of philosophy and of right magnificence, will keep her unassailable by the sophists.

5.29. One, then, is the road of truth; but into it, as into an ever-flowing river, the streams flow in from one place and another. With inspiration, then, it is said: "Hear, my son, and receive my words," it says, "that the ways of your life may be many; for I teach you the ways of wisdom, that the springs may not fail you" — the springs that gush from the same earth. He has not only reckoned up many saving ways for some one just man, but adds the many ways of the many just, indicating thus: "The ways of the just shine like the light." And the commandments and the preliminary studies too would be ways and starting-points of life. "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often did I wish to gather your children, as a hen her chicks." And "Jerusalem" is interpreted "vision of peace." He shows, then, prophetically, that those who in peace have looked upon things have been led by a schoolmaster in many ways to their calling. What then? He wished, but was not able. How often, or where? Twice: through the prophets, and through the coming. So "how often" indicates the manifoldness of wisdom; and in each single mode, of quality and of quantity, she certainly saves some, both in time and in eternity, "for the spirit of the Lord has filled the world." And if anyone, forcing the sense, should say — "Do not give heed to a worthless woman, for honey drips from the lips of a harlot" — that this means Greek learning, let him listen to what follows: "which for a season greases your throat," it says — but philosophy does not flatter. Whom, then, does it hint at as the woman who has played the harlot? It adds expressly: "For the feet of folly bring those who use her down to Hades with death, and her tracks are not firmly set. Make your way far, then, from foolish pleasure; do not stand at the doors of her house, lest you give over your life to others." And it bears witness: "Then you will repent in old age, when the flesh of your body is worn away" — for this is the end of foolish pleasure. So much for that. But when it says, "Be not much with a strange woman," it advises us to use worldly learning, but not to spend our time and remain in it; for it educates beforehand for the discourse of the Lord the things given, at the appointed seasons, to each generation for its benefit. For some, already, lured by the charms of the handmaids, have made light of the mistress, philosophy, and have grown old, some of them in music, others in geometry, others in grammar, and most of them in rhetoric.

5.30. But as the cycle of studies contributes to philosophy, their mistress, so philosophy itself works together toward the acquisition of wisdom. For philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, and wisdom is the knowledge of things divine and human and of their causes. Wisdom, then, is mistress of philosophy, as philosophy is of the preliminary education. For if philosophy promises self-control of tongue and belly and the parts below the belly, and is to be chosen for its own sake, it will appear the more venerable and authoritative if it is pursued for the honour and knowledge of God. The Scripture will furnish testimony of what has been said through these words: Sarah was once barren, the wife of Abraham. Bearing no child, Sarah entrusts to Abraham, for the bearing of children, her own handmaid, Hagar the Egyptian by name. Wisdom, then, who dwelt with the faithful man (and Abraham was reckoned faithful and just), was still barren and childless in that generation, having borne nothing virtuous to Abraham; and she rightly thought it fitting that the man who already had the season for advance should first lie with worldly education (and Egypt is allegorized as the world), and afterward come to her too, according to divine providence, and beget Isaac.

5.31. Philo interprets Hagar as "sojourning" (for here it is said: "Be not much with a strange woman"), and Sarah as "my sovereignty." It is possible, then, for one who has been educated beforehand to come to the most sovereign wisdom, from which the race of Israel is increased. From this it is shown that the wisdom which Abraham pursued is teachable — passing from the contemplation of heavenly things to faith and righteousness according to God. Isaac signifies the self-taught; and therefore he is found a type of Christ. He was the husband of one woman, Rebecca, whom they translate "endurance." Jacob is said to have come together with several, being interpreted "the exerciser" (and the exercises are by many and differing doctrines); whence he too is renamed Israel, the truly clear-sighted one, as being of much experience and given to exercise. There might be something else signified by the three forefathers: that the seal of knowledge is sovereign, composed of nature, learning, and exercise. You may also have another image of what has been said in Tamar, who sat at the crossroads and gave the appearance of a harlot, whom the learning-loving Judah (and "Judah" is interpreted "mighty"), leaving nothing unexamined and unsearched, looked upon and turned aside to her, keeping his confession toward God.

5.32. For this reason Abraham too, when Sarah was jealous of Hagar for outshining her — choosing, as it were, only the useful part of worldly philosophy — said, "Behold, the handmaid is in your hands; deal with her as is pleasing to you," showing that "I welcome worldly education both as the younger and as your handmaid, but I honour and revere your knowledge as the perfect mistress." "And Sarah ill-treated her" — the same as to say, she brought her to her senses and admonished her. Well, then, it is said: "My son, do not make light of the discipline of God, nor grow faint when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves he disciplines, and scourges every son whom he receives." Examined in other passages, however, the Scriptures cited present themselves as indicating other mysteries. We say, then, plainly in bare speech, that philosophy has its quest concerning truth and the nature of the things that are (and this is the truth concerning which the Lord himself said, "I am the truth"); and that the preliminary education for the rest that is in Christ exercises the mind and rouses the understanding, breeding a quickness that seeks, through true philosophy. Having found this — or rather, having received it from the Truth herself — the initiates possess it.

6.33. Readiness to see what is needful is much helped by preliminary training. And the objects of thought would be an exercise for the mind. Their nature is threefold, contemplated in quantities, magnitudes, and things expressed in speech. For the reasoning that comes from demonstrations sets exact conviction in the soul of the man who follows it, so that he cannot think the thing demonstrated could be otherwise; and it does not let us fall before those who steal up on us for deceit. In these studies, then, the soul is cleansed of the things of sense and rekindled, that at some time it may be able to discern the truth. For good nourishment and good education, when preserved, make good natures; and good natures, taking hold of such education, become better than before, both in other respects and in begetting — as in the case of the other animals too. Therefore it says: "Go to the ant, you sluggard, and become wiser than it, which lays up in the harvest much and varied nourishment against the threat of winter; or go to the bee, and learn how she is a worker — for she too, grazing over the whole meadow, brings forth a single honeycomb."

6.34. And if you pray in your closet, as the Lord taught, worshipping in spirit, your stewardship would no longer be only about the house, but also about the soul: what is to be apportioned to it, and how, and how much; what is to be laid up and treasured within it, and when these things are to be brought forth, and to whom. For not by nature but by learning do men become noble and good, like physicians and pilots. We all alike, at least, behold the vine and the horse; but the farmer will know whether the vine is good for bearing fruit or bad, and the horseman will easily distinguish the spiritless from the swift. And that some are better endowed by nature for virtue than others shows that certain pursuits of those so endowed surpass others; but it does not charge any of the better-endowed with perfection in virtue, since both those poorly endowed for virtue, when they have met with the fitting education, have for the most part attained nobility, and, on the other hand, those well endowed have become bad through neglect. By nature, again, God has fashioned us social and just.

6.35. Hence it must not be said that the just is manifest from nature alone; rather, we must understand that the good of our creation is rekindled by the commandment, the soul being educated by learning to be willing to choose the noblest. But just as we say it is possible to be faithful even without letters, so we confess that it is not possible, without learning, to understand the things said in the faith. For to admit what is well said and not to admit what is foreign is not the work of faith simply, but of faith concerned with learning. And if ignorance is at once want of education and want of learning, teaching sets in the knowledge of things divine and human. But just as it is possible to live rightly in poverty of life, so it is also possible in abundance; and we confess that, with preliminary education, one might hunt down virtue more easily and more quickly — though it is not unattainable even without these things, except that even then it is for those who have learned and have exercised their faculties of perception. "Hatred," says Solomon, "stirs up strife; but education guards the ways of life," that one be not deceived, that one be not robbed by those who have practised evil craft to the harm of their hearers. "And education unexamined goes astray," he says; and we must take part in the refuting kind, for the sake of beating back the deceitful opinions of the sophists.

6.36. Well, then, does Anaxarchus the Eudaemonic write in his work On Kingship: "Much learning helps greatly, but greatly harms the one who has it: it helps the man who is adroit, but harms the man who readily utters every word in every assembly. One must know the measures of the right moment; for this is the boundary of wisdom. But all who sing outside the door, even if they sing something prudent, are not reckoned among the wise, but have a mind of folly." And Hesiod: "Of the Muses, who make a man of many counsels inspired and clear-voiced" — for he calls the man of many counsels "well-supplied in words," the clear-voiced man "formidable," and "inspired" the man of experience and philosophy and knowledge of the truth.

7.37. The Greek preliminary education, then, together with philosophy itself, appears to have come from God to men, not as the primary thing, but in the way the rains break down upon the good earth and upon the dunghill and upon the housetops. Grass and wheat spring up alike; and a fig tree grows even on the tombs, and any of the more shameless trees, and the things that grow on these come up as a type of the true, because they have enjoyed the same power of the rain, but have not had the same grace as the things that grow in the rich soil, being either withered or torn up. And here too the parable of the seed, which the Lord interpreted, is of use. For there is one husbandman of the soil that is in men, who from above sows from the foundation of the world the nourishing seeds, who has rained down the Lord, the Word, at each season; but the seasons and the receptive places have bred the differences. Besides, the husbandman sows not only wheat (though even of this there are several kinds), but also the other seeds — barley and beans and peas and vetch and the garden seeds and the flowering seeds. And of the same husbandry is the planting of trees: to work all that pertains to the nurseries and to the gardens and the orchards, and, in general, the nature and nourishment of trees of every kind. Likewise, not only herding sheep, but also herding cattle and breeding horses and dogs and keeping bees are all arts; and, in a word, the keeping of flocks and the rearing of animals differ from one another in the more and the less, but all are useful for life. And by philosophy I do not mean the Stoic, nor the Platonic, nor the Epicurean and Aristotelian, but whatever has been well said by each of these schools, teaching righteousness with reverent knowledge — this whole eclectic body I call philosophy. But whatever they have cut off from human reasonings and falsified, this I would never call divine.

7.38. And let us consider this too: that if ever those who do not have knowledge live well — for they have fallen into well-doing — and some even hit upon the discourse concerning truth through understanding, yet Abraham was justified not by works but by faith. There is, then, no benefit to them after the end of life, even if they are now doers of good, unless they have faith. For this reason the Scriptures were translated into the speech of the Greeks, so that they might never be able to put forward ignorance as an excuse, being able to listen to our things too, if only they will. One man speaks of truth in one way; truth interprets herself in another. The guess at truth is one thing, truth is another; likeness is one thing, the being itself another; and the one is gained by learning and exercise, the other by power and faith. For the teaching of godliness is a gift, but faith is a grace. "For in doing the will of God we know the will." "Open, then," says the Scripture, "the gates of righteousness, that, entering through them, I may confess to the Lord." But the ways toward righteousness are many and varied — God saving in manifold ways, for he is good — and they lead to the sovereign way and gate. But if you seek the kingly and authentic entrance, you will hear: "This is the gate of the Lord; the just shall enter through it." Of the many gates that stand open, then, this gate in righteousness was the one in Christ, in which blessed are all who have entered and have set their journey straight in gnostic holiness. So Clement, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, says, word for word, setting out the distinctions of those approved in the Church: "Let one be faithful, let one be able to declare knowledge, let one be wise in the discernment of words, let one be vigorous in deeds."

8.39. The sophistic art, which the Greeks have zealously pursued, is a power of producing impressions, by means of words breeding false opinions as true. For it furnishes rhetoric for persuasion and eristic for contention; and these arts, if they are not joined with philosophy, would be more harmful than anything. Plato outright called sophistic a "base art," and Aristotle, following him, declares it a kind of thievery, inasmuch as it plausibly filches the whole work of wisdom and professes a wisdom it has not practised. To put it briefly: just as of rhetoric the beginning is the plausible, the work is the argument, and the end is persuasion; and of eristic the beginning is opinion, the work is the contest, and the end is victory; in the same way, of sophistic the beginning is the apparent, the work is twofold — the discursive part from rhetoric and the questioning part from dialectic — and its end is astonishment. And the dialectic harped on in the schools is shown to be the philosopher's exercise about the probable, for the sake of the power of arguing against; but nowhere in these things is the truth.

8.40. With reason, then, the noble Apostle, disparaging these superfluous arts of phrases, says: "If anyone does not come over to sound words, but is puffed up with some teaching while knowing nothing, but is sick about inquiries and battles of words, out of which come strife, envy, blasphemy, evil suspicions, the constant frictions of men corrupted in mind and robbed of the truth." You see how he is stirred against them, naming their logical art a "sickness," the art on which they pride themselves to whom this chattering base craft is dear, whether they be Greek or barbarian sophists. Most nobly, then, the tragic poet Euripides says in the Phoenician Women: "The unjust word, being sick in itself, has need of clever remedies." For the saving Word is called "sound," being itself truth; and the sound thing abides always immortal, while the separation from the sound and the divine is godlessness and a death-bringing passion. These are "ravening wolves hidden in sheep's clothing," enslavers of men and smooth-tongued seducers of souls, stealing secretly, but, when refuted, robbers, struggling to take captive, both by trickery and by force, us the unsophisticated — those, so to speak, less powerful in argument.

8.41. "Often a man caught in want of eloquence, though he has spoken what is just, fares worse than the eloquent. And now, with fluent mouths, they steal away the truest things, so that what ought to seem does not seem so" — so the tragedy says. Such are these eristics, whether they pursue heresies or train themselves in dialectic arts — these who "pull down the rigging and weave nothing," as the Scripture says, having pursued a vain labour, which the Apostle called "the dice-play of men" and "craftiness, fit for the method of error." "For there are many," he says, "insubordinate, vain talkers, deceivers of the mind." So it was not said to all, "You are the salt of the earth." For there are some, even of those who have heard the word, like the fish of the sea, which, though nourished from birth in brine, still need salt for their seasoning. I, for one, very much approve the tragedy that says: "O child, words well spoken may be false, and by the beauties of their phrases may conquer the truth; but this is not the most exact thing — rather, nature and the right; and he who conquers by fine speech is clever, but I reckon the facts ever stronger than the words." Never, then, must one be eager to please the many. For what pleases them, we do not practise; and what we know is far from their disposition. "Let us not become vainglorious," says the Apostle, "provoking one another, envying one another."

8.42. In this way the truth-loving Plato, as if inspired, says: "Such am I, as to obey nothing other than the reason which, on consideration, appears to me the best." He blames, at any rate, those who, without mind and knowledge, trust to opinions, as though, having left the right and sound reason in a way they should not, they trust the one who shares in falsehood. For to be deceived of the truth is an evil, but to speak truth and to hold opinions of the things that are is a good. Now of good things men are deprived against their will; yet they are deprived, all the same — either robbed, or bewitched, or forced, or persuaded. The man who has trusted willingly is thereby brought to waste; but he is robbed who is persuaded away and he who forgets, since of the one the time, of the other the argument, takes it away unnoticed; and often pain and grief, and again contentiousness and anger, force a man to change his opinion; and above all they are bewitched who have either been charmed by pleasure or terrified by fear. But all these changes are involuntary, and none of them would knowledge ever cast out.

9.43. But some, thinking themselves well-endowed, claim that one should touch neither philosophy nor dialectic, nor even learn natural contemplation, but require faith alone and bare — as if they expected, having taken no care of the vine, to gather the clusters straightway from the beginning. And the Lord is allegorized as the vine, from which, with care and the husbandry that is according to the Word, the fruit is to be gathered. One must prune, dig, tie up, and do the rest; and there is need, I think, of the pruning-hook and the mattock and the other husbandman's tools for the care of the vine, that it may show us the edible fruit. And just as in husbandry and in medicine the man of good learning is the one who has touched the more varied studies, so as to be able to farm and to heal the better, so here too I call the man of good learning the one who refers all things to the truth, so that, gathering the useful from geometry and music and grammar and philosophy itself, he keeps the faith guarded against plots. And the athlete too is looked down upon, as has been said, yet contributes to the whole array.

9.44. So we praise the pilot of much experience, "who saw the cities of many men," and the physician who has come to be in the experience of many — by which some even mould the empiric. And the man who refers each thing to the right life, bringing examples both from Greek and from barbarian sources, this man of much experience is a tracker of the truth and truly "of many counsels," being able, after the manner of the touchstone (the Lydian stone, believed to distinguish the spurious from the genuine gold), to separate — our man of much skill and gnostic — sophistic from philosophy, beautifying-art from gymnastic, cookery from medicine, and rhetoric from dialectic, and magic and the other heretical schools according to the barbarian philosophy from the truth itself. And how is it not necessary, for the man who longs to become a partaker of the power of God, to discourse, in philosophizing, about intelligible things? And how is it not useful to distinguish the ambiguous expressions and those uttered with the same name across the covenants? For it is by ambiguity that the Lord outwits the devil at the time of the temptation; and I, for one, no longer see here how the inventor of philosophy and of dialectic, as some suppose, is led astray, deceived in the manner of ambiguity.

9.45. And if the prophets and the apostles did not know the arts through which the exercises of philosophy are displayed, yet the mind of the prophetic and teaching Spirit, spoken in a hidden way because the understanding hearing is not of all, requires the arts of skill for the clearness of teaching. For the prophets and the disciples of the Spirit knew that mind securely; for it was from faith, and, as the Spirit has said, not easily. But it is not possible so to receive it for those who have not learned. "And write down the commandments," it says, "doubly, with will and knowledge, that you may answer words of truth to those who put questions to you." What, then, is the knowledge of answering? The same as that of asking; and this would be dialectic. And what — is not the saying also a work, and does the doing not come from reason? For if we did not act by reason, we would act unreasonably. And the rational work is accomplished according to God; and "nothing," it says, "came to be without him," the Word of God. Or did not the Lord too do all things by the Word? And the cattle too work, driven by the compelling of fear. And do not those called the orthodox-minded apply themselves to good works, not knowing what they do?

10.46. For this reason, then, the Saviour, having taken bread, first spoke and gave thanks; then, having broken the bread, set it forth, that we might eat rationally, and, recognizing the Scriptures, might order our life in obedience. And just as those who use a wicked word differ in nothing from those who use a wicked deed (for slander is the servant of the sword, and blasphemy breeds grief, from which come the overthrows of life — and these would be works of the wicked word), so too those who use a good word come near to those who accomplish the noble works. So the word too restores the soul and exhorts toward nobility; and "blessed is the man of ready hand on both sides." The benefactor, then, must not be reviled by the one able to speak well, nor must the one able to speak well be reviled by the one fit to do well; but let each act in that for which he is naturally fitted. What, then, the one shows by deed, the other speaks, as one preparing the way for the well-doing and leading the hearers to beneficence. For there is also a saving word, as there is a saving deed; righteousness, at any rate, is not established without the word.

10.47. And as the receiving of good is taken away, if we take away the doing of good, so obedience and faith are done away when neither the commandment nor the one who will make the commandment clear is taken along with it. But as it is, we are well supplied, for one another's sake, both with words and with deeds. But the eristic and sophistic art must be wholly declined, since the very phrases of the sophists not only bewitch and rob the many, but, forcing the issue, have sometimes carried off a Cadmean victory. For more than anything that psalm is true: "The righteous shall live unto the end, for he shall not see corruption, when he sees the wise dying." Whom, then, does it call wise? Hear from the wisdom of Jesus: "Wisdom is not the knowledge of wickedness." This he means, which the arts of speech and of dialectic have devised. "You will seek wisdom among the wicked and will not find it." And if you ask again, of what sort is this? "The mouth of the righteous," it will say to you, "will distil wisdom." But the sophistic art is called wisdom by the same name as the truth.

10.48. And it is, I think, with reason, set before me to live according to the Word and to understand the things signified, but, never being a zealot for fine speech, to be content only with hinting at what is meant. And by what name this is shown which I wish to present, I care nothing. For I know well that to be saved, and to lend a hand to those who long to be saved, is best, not to compose little phrases like ornaments. "And if you keep," says the Pythagorean in Plato's Statesman, "the not being in earnest about names, you will appear richer in prudence toward old age." And in the Theaetetus too you would find again: "And the easy use of names and verbs, not examined with exactness, is for the most part not ignoble, but rather its opposite is illiberal, though it is sometimes necessary." These things the Scripture brought out as briefly as may be, saying: "Be not much in words"; for the phrasing is like clothing on the body, but the matters are flesh and sinews. One must not, then, care for the clothing before the safety of the body. For not only a frugal diet, but also a discourse plain and without superfluity, must be practised by the man who has taken up the true life — if indeed we decline luxury as deceitful and prodigal, just as the ancient Spartans declined perfume and purple, supposing rightly — and naming them rightly — the garments "deceitful" and the unguents "deceitful," since neither is that a noble preparing of food which has more seasonings than nourishment, nor that an elegant use of speech which is able to delight the hearers rather than to benefit them. Pythagoras advises us to think the Muses sweeter than the Sirens, teaching to practise the parts of wisdom without pleasure, and refuting the rest of soul-leading as deceitful. To sail past the Sirens, one suffices; and to answer the Sphinx, another one; or, if you will, not even one.

10.49. We must not, then, ever broaden our phylacteries, being zealots for vainglory; it suffices the gnostic even if a single hearer be found. It is possible, at any rate, to hear Pindar the Boeotian too, writing: "Not to all is the ancient discourse to be broken open; sometimes the ways of silence are most trustworthy, and the prevailing word is a goad of battle." The blessed Apostle, then, very earnestly insists, exhorting us not to wrangle about words for nothing useful, to the overthrow of the hearers, but to shun the profane empty talkings; "for they advance further in impiety, and their word will have a spreading like a gangrene."

11.50. "This wisdom of the world, then, is folly with God; and the Lord knows the reasonings of these wise men, that they are vain." Let no one, then, boast, holding himself up in human understanding. For well is it written in Jeremiah: "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, and let not the strong man boast in his strength, and let not the rich man boast in his riches; but let him who boasts boast in this, to understand and to know that I am the Lord who does mercy and judgment and righteousness upon the earth, for in these is my will, says the Lord." "That we may not be trusting in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead," says the Apostle, "who delivered us from so great a death, that our faith may not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. For the spiritual man examines all things, but is himself examined by no one." And I attend to those words of his too: "And this I say, that no one may deceive you with persuasive speech, nor that the spoiler come stealing in." And again: "See, then, that there be no one who carries you off as spoil through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ" — not all philosophy, but the Epicurean, which Paul also mentions in the Acts of the Apostles, slandering it as doing away with providence and deifying pleasure, and any other that has over-honoured the elements without setting over them the efficient cause, and has not imagined the Creator.

11.51. But the Stoics too — whom he also mentions — say, not rightly, that God is a body and pervades the basest matter. By "human tradition" he means the logical quibbling. And so he writes those things as well: "Flee the newer inquiries, for such contentions are childish." But virtue is not a lover of boyish things, says the philosopher Plato; and our contest, according to Gorgias of Leontini, needs two virtues, boldness and wisdom: boldness, to endure the danger; wisdom, to know the riddle. For the Word, like the proclamation at Olympia, calls whoever is willing, but crowns the one who is able. The Word, then, does not want the believer to be unmoved toward truth and truly idle. "Seek," it says, "and you will find." But it brings the seeking to a finding, having driven out the empty chatter and approving the contemplation that fortifies our faith. "I say this," says the Apostle, "that no one may deceive you with persuasive speech" — meaning, of course, those who have learned to discern what is said by them, and have been taught to meet the objections brought forward.

11.52. "As, then, you received Jesus Christ the Lord, walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and made firm in the faith" — and persuasion is the making firm of faith — "see that there be no one who carries you off as spoil from the faith that is in Christ, through philosophy and empty deceit," the kind that does away with providence, "according to the tradition of men." For the philosophy that is according to the divine tradition establishes providence and makes it firm, and, this being done away, the whole dispensation concerning the Saviour appears a fable, since we are then borne along "according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ." For the teaching that follows Christ both deifies the Creator and brings providence down to particular things, and knows the nature of the elements to be changeable and generated, and teaches us to live a civic life in the power that makes us like to God, and to admit the dispensation as the governing principle of all instruction. As elements men worship — Diogenes the air, Thales water, Hippasus fire, and those who lay down the atoms as first principles, putting on the name of philosophy: certain godless little men, lovers of pleasure.

11.53. "For this reason I pray," he says, "that your love may yet more and more abound in full knowledge and in all perception, that you may approve the things that differ." For "when we were infants," says the same Apostle, "we were enslaved under the elements of the world. And the infant, even if he is an heir, differs in nothing from a slave until the time set by the father." Infants, then, are the philosophers too, unless they are made men by Christ. For if "the son of the handmaid will not inherit with the son of the freewoman," yet he is at least a seed of Abraham, though he has received what is his own not by promise, but as a gift. "But the solid food is for the perfect," for those who, by their habit, have their faculties of perception exercised for the discernment of good and evil. "For everyone who partakes of milk is without experience of the word of righteousness" — being an infant, not yet knowing the word according to which he has believed and acts, nor able to render the reason for it within himself. "Test all things," says the Apostle, "and hold fast the good" — speaking to the spiritual, who examine all that is said according to truth, whether it merely seems so, or truly holds to the truth.

11.54. "But education unexamined goes astray"; and "blows and reproofs give the discipline of wisdom" — reproofs made with love, of course; "for the upright heart seeks out knowledge," since "he who seeks God will find knowledge with righteousness, and those who have rightly sought him have found peace." "And I will know," he says, "not the speech of those who are puffed up, but the power" — writing to rebuke those who are reputed wise and think themselves so, but are not. "For the kingdom of God is not in word" — the true word — but, by assumption, in the plausible: "but in power," he said; for truth alone is power. And again: "If anyone thinks he has known something, he has not yet known as he ought to know." For truth is never mere opinion; the assumption of knowledge puffs up and fills with conceit, but love builds up, since it busies itself not about opinion but about truth. Hence: "If anyone loves, this man is known."

12.55. But since the tradition is not common and public — at least to one who has perceived the greatness of the Word — the wisdom spoken in a mystery, which the Son of God taught, must be kept hidden. So already Isaiah the prophet has his tongue cleansed by fire, that he might be able to tell the vision; and not the tongue alone, but our ears too must be purified, if indeed we try to be partakers of the truth. These things hindered me from writing, and even now I am cautious, as it is said, of "casting the pearls before swine, lest they trample them with their feet, and turn and tear you." For it is hard to display the truly pure and translucent words concerning the true light to swinish and uneducated hearers; for there are scarcely any things more laughable to the many than these, nor, on the other hand, more marvellous and inspiring to the well-endowed.

12.56. "But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him." And "the wise do not bring out of their mouth what they reason in council." But "what you hear in the ear," says the Lord, "proclaim upon the housetops" — bidding us receive the hidden traditions of true knowledge, interpreted in a high and excellent way, and, just as we have heard in the ear, so to hand them on to those for whom it is fitting, but not to give out unreservedly to all the things spoken to them in parables. But the outline of these memoranda is in truth such that they have the truth scattered here and there and strewn in, so that it may escape those who, like jackdaws, pick up seeds. And whenever it meets with a good husbandman, each of them will spring up and bring the wheat to light.

13.57. Truth, then, being one (for falsehood has ten thousand byways), the schools of philosophy, both the barbarian and the Greek, like the Bacchae tearing apart the limbs of Pentheus, each boasts of the part it has obtained as though it were the whole truth; but all things, I think, are lit by the rising of the light. All, then, both Greeks and barbarians, who have reached after the truth, may be shown to hold some part — some not a little, others, perhaps, only a portion — of the discourse of truth. For the age of time brings together in a moment the future and the present, and indeed the past as well; but truth is far more powerful than the age in gathering its own seeds, even if they have fallen into foreign ground. For we should find very many of the opinions dogmatized among the schools (all that have not been wholly deafened, nor cut off from the natural sequence, like the men whom the women's quarters have castrated of reason) — even if they seem unlike one another, yet agreeing in their kind and with the whole truth; for they are joined into one, either as a limb, or as a part, or as a species, or as a genus. The highest string, indeed, is opposite to the lowest, yet both are one harmony; and among numbers the even differs from the odd, yet both agree in arithmetic, as in figure the circle and the triangle and the square, and all the figures that differ from one another. And in the whole universe too all the parts, even if they differ from one another, preserve their kinship with the whole. So, then, the barbarian and the Greek philosophy have made a kind of rending of the eternal truth — not the rending of the mythology of Dionysus, but of the theology of the ever-existing Word. And the man who puts together again what is divided and unifies it will, be assured, behold the truth, the perfect Word, without danger.

13.58. It is written, at any rate, in Ecclesiastes: "And I added wisdom beyond all who were before me in Jerusalem; and my heart saw many things — wisdom and knowledge; I came to know parables and understanding. For this too is a preference of the spirit, that in the abundance of wisdom is the abundance of knowledge." And the man experienced in wisdom of every kind, he would properly be the gnostic. So it is written: "The abundance of the knowledge of wisdom will give life to the man who has it from her." And again this saying more clearly confirms what has been said: "All things are plain to those who understand" (and "all things" are both Greek and barbarian, but the other things are no longer "all"), "and straight to those who wish to carry off perception. Choose education and not silver, and knowledge above tested gold; and choose perception above pure gold; for wisdom is better than precious stones, and nothing of worth is equal to her."

14.59. The Greeks say that, after Orpheus and Linus and the most ancient of the poets among them, the first to be admired for wisdom were the seven called the Sages. Of these, four were from Asia: Thales of Miletus, Bias of Priene, Pittacus of Mitylene, and Cleobulus of Lindos; and two from Europe: Solon of Athens and Chilon of Sparta. As for the seventh, some say he was Periander the Corinthian, some Anacharsis the Scythian, and some Epimenides the Cretan — whom the Apostle Paul mentions in the Epistle to Titus, saying thus: "One of them, their own prophet, said: 'Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies'; and this testimony is true." You see how, even to the prophets of the Greeks, he grants something of the truth, and is not ashamed, when speaking for edification and for shaming, to make use of some Greek verses. So, to the Corinthians — for it is not only here — discoursing on the resurrection of the dead, he has made use of a tragic iambic line, saying: "What profit is it to me, if the dead are not raised? Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Be not deceived: bad company corrupts good morals." Some reckoned Acusilaus the Argive among the seven sages; others, Pherecydes the Syrian. And Plato, in place of Periander, as unworthy of wisdom because he had been a tyrant, sets in his stead Myson of Chenae.

14.60. That the sages among the Greeks came somewhat below the age of Moses will be shown a little later; but the manner of their philosophy, as being Hebraic and enigmatic, must now be examined. They welcomed, at any rate, the hortatory brevity of speech, the most useful kind. Plato, for instance, says that this manner was of old in vogue, commonly among all the Greeks, but especially among the Spartans and the Cretans, who had the best laws. Now the "Know yourself" some have supposed to be Chilon's, but Chamaeleon, in his work On the Gods, ascribes it to Thales, and Aristotle to the Pythia. It may, then, urge us to pursue knowledge; for it is not possible to know the parts without the essence of the whole. One must, then, busy oneself with the genesis of the world, through which it will also be possible to learn thoroughly the nature of man.

14.61. Again, to Chilon the Spartan they refer the "Nothing too much." Strato, in his work On Discoveries, attaches the saying to Sodamus of Tegea; Didymus assigns it to Solon, just as he assigns to Cleobulus the "Measure is best." And the "Give a pledge, and ruin is at hand" — Cleomenes, in his work On Hesiod, says was uttered before by Homer in these words: "Worthless are the pledges of worthless men, to be pledged for." But the followers of Aristotle think it Chilon's, while Didymus says the advice is Thales'. Then next, the "All men are bad," or "Most men are bad" (for the same saying is uttered in two ways), the followers of Sotades of Byzantium say is Bias'; and they wish "Practice accomplishes everything" to be Periander's; likewise the advice "Know the right moment" they hold to be Pittacus'. Solon, then, gave laws to the Athenians, Pittacus to the Mitylenaeans. And it was late that Pythagoras, the disciple of Pherecydes, first proclaimed himself a "philosopher."

14.62. After the men already mentioned, then, there arose three successions of philosophy named from the places where they spent their time: the Italic, from Pythagoras; the Ionic, from Thales; and the Eleatic, from Xenophanes. Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, was a Samian, as Hippobotus says; but as Aristoxenus, in his Life of Pythagoras, and Aristarchus and Theopompus say, he was a Tyrrhenian; and as Neanthes says, a Syrian or a Tyrian — so that, according to most, Pythagoras was a barbarian by race. Thales too, as Leander and Herodotus relate, was a Phoenician, though some have supposed him a Milesian. He alone is thought to have associated with the prophets of the Egyptians; but no teacher of his is on record, just as none of Pherecydes the Syrian, whose pupil Pythagoras was.

14.63. The Pythagorean philosophy, the Italic, grew old at Metapontum in Italy. Anaximander, son of Praxiades, the Milesian, succeeds Thales; him Anaximenes, son of Eurystratus, the Milesian; after whom Anaxagoras, son of Hegesibulus, of Clazomenae. This man transferred the school from Ionia to Athens. Him Archelaus succeeds, whose pupil Socrates was. "From these he turned aside, the stone-cutter, the babbler about laws, the enchanter of the Greeks," says Timon in the Silloi, because he turned aside from natural philosophy to ethics. Having heard Socrates, Antisthenes practised the Cynic way, and Plato withdrew to the Academy. Aristotle, having philosophized under Plato, passed over to the Lyceum and founded the Peripatetic school. Him Theophrastus succeeds, him Strato, him Lyco, then Critolaus, then Diodorus. Speusippus succeeds Plato; him Xenocrates, him Polemo. Hearers of Polemo were Crates and Crantor, in whom the Old Academy from Plato came to an end. Arcesilaus had part with Crantor, and from him, down to Hegesinus, the Middle Academy flourished.

14.64. Then Carneades succeeds Hegesinus, and those after him. And Zeno of Citium, who began the Stoic school, becomes a pupil of Crates. Him Cleanthes succeeds, him Chrysippus and those after him. Of the Eleatic conduct Xenophanes of Colophon is the head, who, Timaeus says, lived in the time of Hiero, lord of Sicily, and of Epicharmus the poet; while Apollodorus says he was born about the fortieth Olympiad and lasted down to the times of Darius and Cyrus. Parmenides, then, becomes a hearer of Xenophanes, and of him Zeno, then Leucippus, then Democritus. Hearers of Democritus were Protagoras of Abdera and Metrodorus of Chios, whose pupil was Diogenes of Smyrna, whose pupil Anaxarchus, and of him Pyrrho, of whom Nausiphanes. Some say Epicurus was a pupil of this man. Such, then, is the succession of the philosophers among the Greeks, given as in a summary; and the times of those who first began their philosophy must next be told, so that by comparison we may show the philosophy among the Hebrews to be older by many generations.

14.65. Concerning Xenophanes, who began the Eleatic philosophy, it has been said. And Eudemus, in his Astrological Histories, says that Thales foretold the eclipse of the sun which occurred at the time when the Medes and the Lydians joined battle with one another, in the reign of Cyaxares, the father of Astyages, over the Medes, and of Alyattes, the father of Croesus, over the Lydians. And Herodotus agrees with him in his first book. The time is about the fiftieth Olympiad. Pythagoras is found in the time of Polycrates the tyrant, about the sixty-second Olympiad. Mnesiphilus is recorded as an admirer of Solon, with whom Themistocles associated. Solon, then, flourished about the forty-sixth Olympiad. For Heraclitus, the son of Blyson, persuaded Melancomas the tyrant to lay down his rule. This man disdained Darius, who invited him to come to Persia.

15.66. Such are the times of the most ancient sages and philosophers among the Greeks. And that most of them were barbarians by race and were educated among barbarians — what need to say it, since Pythagoras was shown to be a Tyrrhenian or a Tyrian, Antisthenes a Phrygian, and Orpheus an Odrysian or a Thracian? For most make Homer an Egyptian. Thales, being a Phoenician by race, is said to have associated with the prophets of the Egyptians, as did Pythagoras with these same men, for whose sake he even had himself circumcised, that he might go down into the inner sanctuaries and learn thoroughly the mystic philosophy from the Egyptians; and he kept company with the best of the Chaldeans and the Magi, and his "common hearing-place" hints at what is now so called, the church. Plato does not deny that he imports the noblest things for philosophy from the barbarians, and confesses that he came to Egypt. So in the Phaedo he says the philosopher can be helped from every quarter, writing: "Great is Greece, O Cebes, in which there are everywhere good men, and many too are the races of the barbarians."

15.67. Thus Plato thinks that some of the barbarians too are philosophers, while Epicurus, on the contrary, supposes that the Greeks alone are able to philosophize. And in the Symposium Plato, praising the barbarians as having practised it surpassingly, says they alone truly philosophize, and "many others in many places, both among Greeks and barbarians, in whose honour many shrines have already arisen on account of such children." And the barbarians are clearly seen to have honoured surpassingly their lawgivers and teachers, calling them gods. For they suppose, according to Plato, that good souls, leaving the place above the heaven, have endured to come into this tartarus, and, taking on a body, to share in all the evils of generation, caring for the race of men — souls that have laid down laws and proclaimed philosophy, "than which no greater good ever came, or will come, to the race of men from the gods."

15.68. And it seems to me that, having perceived the great benefit conferred through the wise, they both revered those men and philosophized publicly. The Brahmans all, and the Odrysae and the Getae and the race of the Egyptians, treated their own matters as theology with exactness; the Chaldeans too, and the Arabians called blessed, and all who inhabited Palestine, and not the least part of the Persian race, and ten thousand other races besides. And Plato is plainly found always honouring the barbarians, remembering that both he and Pythagoras learned most of their doctrines, and the noblest, among the barbarians. For this reason he spoke of "the races of the barbarians," knowing the races of barbarian philosophers; and in the Phaedrus he shows the Egyptian king to be wiser even than Thoth, whom he knows to be Hermes. And in the Charmides he is seen to know certain Thracians, who are said to make the soul immortal.

15.69. It is recorded that Pythagoras was a pupil of Sonchis, the Egyptian arch-prophet; Plato of Sechnuphis of Heliopolis; and Eudoxus of Cnidos of Conuphis, who was also an Egyptian. And in the work On the Soul Plato . . . is again seen to recognize prophecy, bringing in as a prophet the spokesman of the word of Lachesis, who announces and foretells to the souls being allotted their lots. And in the Timaeus he brings in the most wise Solon learning from the barbarian. The words run thus: "O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children, and there is no aged Greek; for you have no learning grown grey with time." For Democritus made the "Babylonian discourses" his own ethical writings; for he is said to have arranged in his own compositions the inscription of Acicarus, when it had been translated, and one can note from him, "These things says Democritus," where he writes. And indeed, glorying over himself for his wide learning, he says somewhere: "Of the men of my time I wandered over the most land, inquiring into the farthest things, and saw the most climates and lands, and heard the most learned men, and in the composition of lines with demonstration no one yet surpassed me, not even the Egyptians called rope-stretchers, with whom in all I lived eighty years in foreign lands." For he travelled over Babylon and Persia and Egypt, learning from the Magi and the priests. And Pythagoras zealously followed Zoroaster the Persian Magus; and those who follow the school of Prodicus boast that they possess secret books of this man.

15.70. Alexander, in his work On Pythagorean Symbols, relates that Pythagoras was a pupil of Zaratus the Assyrian (whom some think to be Ezekiel, though he is not, as will afterward be shown), and would have it that Pythagoras besides heard the Galatians and the Brahmans. And Clearchus the Peripatetic says he knew a certain Jew who associated with Aristotle. For Heraclitus says that the future was shown to the Sibyl not in human fashion, but with God. They say, at any rate, that at Delphi, near the council-chamber, a certain rock is shown, on which the first Sibyl is said to have sat, who came from Helicon and was reared by the Muses. But some say she came from the Malians, being a daughter of Lamia, who was the daughter of Poseidon. And Sarapion, in his verses, says that even in death the Sibyl did not cease from prophecy; and that the part of her that passed into air after her death is what prophesies in rumours and omens, while from the body that was changed into earth grass naturally sprang up, and whatever cattle, feeding in that place, grazed upon it, showed to men, through their entrails, the exact disclosure of the future, as he writes; and he thinks her soul is the face that appears in the moon.

15.71. So much concerning the Sibyl. Numa, the king of the Romans, was a Pythagorean; and, helped by the writings of Moses, he forbade the Romans to make any image of God in the form of man or beast. So in the first hundred and seventy years, though they built temples, they made no statue, either moulded or painted. For Numa showed them, under a veil, that it is not possible to lay hold of the Best in any other way than by the mind alone. Philosophy, then, a thing of much benefit, flourished of old among the barbarians, shedding its light over the nations, and afterward came down to the Greeks also. At its head stood the prophets of the Egyptians, the Chaldeans among the Assyrians, the Druids among the Galatians, the Samanaeans among the Bactrians, the philosophers of the Celts, and the Magi of the Persians (who by their magic foretold the birth of the Saviour, coming into the land of Judaea led by a star), and among the Indians the gymnosophists, and other barbarian philosophers besides. Of these there are two kinds: some of them are called Sarmanae, others Brahmans. And of the Sarmanae those called the "forest-dwellers" neither inhabit cities nor have roofs, but are clothed in the bark of trees and feed on acorns and drink water with their hands; they know neither marriage nor the begetting of children, like those now called the Encratites. And there are among the Indians those who follow the precepts of Buddha, whom, for his surpassing solemnity, they have honoured as a god.

15.72. Anacharsis too was a Scythian, and he is recorded as surpassing many of the philosophers among the Greeks. And Hellanicus relates that the Hyperboreans dwell beyond the Rhipaean mountains, and are taught righteousness, not eating flesh but using acorns and the like; and those of sixty years they lead outside the gates and make away with. And among the Germans too there are the so-called holy women, who, gazing at the eddies of rivers and the windings and noises of streams, divine and foretell what is to come. These, at any rate, did not allow them to join battle with Caesar before the new moon shone. Of all these the race of the Jews is by far the most ancient; and that their philosophy, committed to writing, preceded the philosophy among the Greeks, the Pythagorean Philo shows at length, as do also Aristobulus the Peripatetic and very many others — that I may not waste time going through them by name. Most plainly the historian Megasthenes, who lived with Seleucus Nicator, writes thus in the third book of his Indica: "All that has been said about nature by the ancients is said also among those who philosophize outside Greece — some things among the Indians by the Brahmans, and some in Syria by those called Jews."

15.73. Some say, more in the manner of myth, that certain wise men, the so-called Idaean Dactyls, were the first; to whom is referred the discovery both of the so-called Ephesian letters and of the rhythms of music; for which cause the "dactyls" among the musicians have taken their name. And the Idaean Dactyls were Phrygians and barbarians. Herodorus relates that Heracles, having become a seer and a natural philosopher, received the pillars of the universe from Atlas the barbarian, the Phrygian — the myth hinting that he succeeded to the knowledge of heavenly things by learning. And Hermippus of Berytus calls Chiron the Centaur "wise," concerning whom the author of the Titanomachy too says that he was the first to lead the race of mortals into righteousness, by showing oaths and glad sacrifices and the figures of Olympus. Under him is educated Achilles, who marched against Ilium; and Hippo, the daughter of the Centaur, dwelling with Aeolus, taught him natural philosophy, the science of her fathers. Euripides too bears witness concerning Hippo, somewhat thus: "who first prophesied things divine by clear oracles, at the risings of the stars." Under this Aeolus Odysseus is entertained as a guest, after the capture of Ilium. Observe for me the times, for comparison with the age of Moses and with the most ancient philosophy of his time.

16.74. Not of philosophy only, but of nearly every art, the barbarians are the inventors. The Egyptians, at any rate, first brought astrology to men, and likewise the Chaldeans. The Egyptians again first showed how to burn lamps, and divided the year into twelve months, and forbade intercourse with women in the temples, and laid it down by law that men should not enter the temples after being with a woman without bathing; and the same men became the inventors of geometry. And there are those who say the Carians devised foretelling through the stars. The Phrygians were the first to observe the flights of birds, and the Tuscans, neighbours of Italy, perfected the art of inspecting victims. The Isaurians and the Arabians worked out augury, as the Telmesians did divination through dreams. The Tyrrhenians devised the trumpet, and the Phrygians the flute; for Olympus and Marsyas were Phrygians.

16.75. Cadmus was a Phoenician, the inventor of letters for the Greeks, as Ephorus says; whence Herodotus writes that the letters were called "Phoenician." But some say the Phoenicians and the Syrians were the first to devise letters. Medicine they say Apis, an Egyptian aboriginal, invented before Io came to Egypt, and that afterward Asclepius increased the art. Atlas the Libyan first built a ship and sailed the sea. Celmis again and Damnameneus, the Idaean Dactyls, first found iron in Cyprus, and Delas, another Idaean, found the tempering of bronze, though Hesiod says it was a Scythian. The Thracians, indeed, were the first to find the so-called harpe (a curved sword), and the first to use bucklers on horseback. Likewise the Illyrians invented the so-called parma. Further, they say the Tuscans devised modelling, and Itanus (he was a Samnite) first made the oblong shield. For Cadmus the Phoenician found out the cutting of stone and devised the gold mines around Mount Pangaeus. And yet another nation, the Cappadocians, first found the so-called nabla, as the Assyrians did the two-stringed instrument. The Carthaginians first built a quadrireme, and Bosporus built it offhand.

16.76. Medea, the daughter of Aeetes, the Colchian, first devised the dyeing of hair. The Noropes too (a Paeonian nation, now called Norici) were the first to work bronze and to refine iron. Amycus, the king of the Bebryces, first found the thongs for boxing. In music, Olympus the Mysian skilfully wrought the Lydian harmony; and those called the Troglodytes found the sambyke, a musical instrument. They say also that Satyrus the Phrygian found the transverse pipe; that Agnis, himself too a Phrygian, found likewise the three-stringed lyre and the diatonic harmony; that Olympus, likewise a Phrygian, found the strokes; as also that Marsyas, of the same country as those just named, found the Phrygian, the mixophrygian, and the mixolydian harmonies; and that Thamyris the Thracian devised the Dorian. We have heard, too, that the Persians were the first to make the carriage and the couch and the footstool, and the Sidonians to build the three-banked ship. The Sicels, near Italy, first found the phorminx, not much inferior to the lyre, and devised the castanets. In the time of Semiramis, king of the Egyptians, they relate that linen garments were found. And Hellanicus says that Atossa, who reigned over the Persians, was the first to compose letters.

16.77. Scamon of Mitylene, then, and Theophrastus of Eresus, and Cydippus of Mantinea, and besides Antiphanes and Aristodemus and Aristotle, and besides these Philostephanus, and Strato the Peripatetic too, in his works On Discoveries, related these things. I have set down a few of them to establish the inventive and life-benefiting nature among the barbarians, from whom the Greeks profited in their pursuits. And if anyone disparages the barbarian tongue — "To me," says Anacharsis, "all the Greeks speak Scythian." This was the man admired among the Greeks, who said: "My covering is a cloak, my supper milk and cheese." You see philosophy among the barbarians professing deeds, not words.

16.78. And the Apostle says thus: "You too, if you do not give an intelligible word through the tongue, how will what is spoken be known? For you will be speaking into the air. There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none without meaning. If, then, I do not know the force of the voice, I shall be a barbarian to the speaker, and the speaker a barbarian to me. And let him who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret." Indeed, it was late that the teaching and writing of discourses came to the Greeks. Alcmaeon, son of Perithus, of Croton, first composed a treatise on nature. And some relate that Anaxagoras, son of Hegesibulus, of Clazomenae, was the first to publish a book in writing. Terpander of Antissa first set melody to verse and put the laws of the Spartans into song; Lasus of Hermione devised the dithyramb; Stesichorus of Himera the hymn; Alcman the Spartan the choral dance; Anacreon of Teos the songs of love; Pindar the Theban the hyporcheme. And Timotheus of Miletus was the first to sing the laws in chorus and with the lyre.

16.79. Indeed, Archilochus of Paros devised the iambus, and Hipponax of Ephesus the limping iambus; Thespis the Athenian devised tragedy, and Susarion of Icaria comedy. The times of these the sons of the grammarians hand down; but it would be a long matter to set them out with exactness, since Dionysus himself, on account of whom the Dionysiac spectacles are held, is shown presently to be later than Moses. They say also that Antiphon of Rhamnus, son of Sophilus, first found out the discourses of the schools and the rhetorical idioms, and first pleaded for pay, writing a forensic speech for publication, as Diodorus says. And Apollodorus of Cyme first introduced the name of "grammarian" instead of "critic," and was called a grammarian; though some say it was Eratosthenes of Cyrene, since he published two books entitled Grammatica. But the first to be called "grammarian," as we now use the term, was Praxiphanes, son of Dionysophanes, of Mitylene. And Zaleucus the Locrian is recorded as the first to lay down laws, though some say it was Minos, the son of Zeus, in the time of Lynceus. He comes eleven generations above, from Inachus and Moses, after Danaus, as we shall show a little further on. And Lycurgus, who lived many years after the capture of Ilium, gives laws to the Spartans a hundred years before the Olympiads; for we have already stated the times of Solon.

16.80. Draco too, himself a lawgiver, is found to have lived about the thirty-ninth Olympiad. And Antilochus, who treated of the men of learning from the age of Pythagoras to the death of Epicurus . . . on the tenth of Gamelion at its beginning, brings the whole to three hundred and twelve years. Further, they say that Phanothea, the wife of Icarius, found the hexameter heroic verse, though some say Themis, one of the Titanides. And Didymus, in his work On Pythagorean Philosophy, relates that Theano of Croton was the first of women to philosophize and to write poems. Greek philosophy, then, as some hold, lays hold of the truth somewhat by chance, but dimly and not the whole of it; but as others would have it, it takes its movement from the devil. And some have supposed that certain inferior powers inspired the whole of philosophy. But even if Greek philosophy does not comprehend the greatness of the truth, and besides is too weak to do the commandments of the Lord, yet it does at least prepare the way beforehand for the most kingly teaching, in some way bringing to soberness and shaping the character in advance, and disposing toward the reception of the truth the man who glorifies providence.

17.81. Yes, they say, it is written: "All who came before the coming of the Lord are thieves and robbers." Now all who are in the Word — those, that is, before the incarnation of the Word — are understood more generally. But the prophets, sent and inspired by the Lord, are not thieves, but servants. So the Scripture says: "Wisdom sent her own servants, summoning with high proclamation to the bowl of wine." But philosophy was not sent by the Lord; rather, it came, it says, stolen, or given by a thief. So some power or angel, having learned something of the truth and not having remained in it, inspired and taught these things, having stolen them — not without the Lord's knowledge, who both knows the ends of things to be before the foundation of the world, and that each thing should be, but having not prevented it. For the theft, coming then to men, had a certain benefit, not because the thief looked to what was advantageous, but because providence guided the outcome of his daring toward what was advantageous.

17.82. I know that many continually fasten upon us and say that what does not prevent is a cause; for they say that the cause of a theft is the man who did not guard against it, or did not prevent it — as the cause of a fire is the man who did not quench the danger at its beginning, and of a shipwreck the pilot who did not take in the sail. So indeed those responsible for such things are punished by the law; for to the man who had the power to prevent is also attached the cause of what happens. We say, then, to them, that the cause is conceived as residing in doing and acting and effecting, but that what does not prevent is, in this respect, inactive. Further, the cause is bound up with the activity — as the shipwright with the building of the ship, the builder with the building of the house — but what does not prevent is separated from what comes to be. For this very reason it is accomplished, that the one who could prevent does not act, nor prevent. For what does the man who does not prevent effect? Indeed, the argument leads them into absurdity, if of the wound they will blame, not the arrow, but the shield that did not prevent the arrow from passing through; for so they would blame, not the thief, but the man who did not prevent the theft.

17.83. So let them say that it was not Hector who burned the ships of the Greeks, but Achilles, because, being able to prevent Hector, he did not prevent him. Yet Achilles, through wrath (and it was in his power both to be wrathful and not), did not keep off the fire, and perhaps was a joint cause; but the devil, being self-determining, was able both to repent and to steal, and is himself the cause of the theft, not the Lord who did not prevent it. But neither was the gift harmful, that the prevention should be passed over. And if we must speak exactly to them, let them know that what does not prevent — which we say happened in the case of the theft — is not at all a cause; but that what does prevent is liable to the charge of being a cause. For the man who holds his shield before another is the cause to the one shielded of his not being wounded, by preventing his being wounded; and to Socrates the divine sign was a cause not by not preventing, but by turning away, even if it did not urge on. Neither praises nor blames, neither honours nor punishments, are just, if the soul does not have the power of impulse and of holding back.

17.84. But since vice is involuntary, the man who prevents is a cause, while the man who does not prevent judges the soul's choice justly — that, most of all, God may remain to us not the cause of vice. And since moral choice and impulse begin the sins, and a mistaken assumption sometimes prevails — an assumption that is ignorance and lack of learning, from which we make light of departing — he would rightly punish. (For a fever too is involuntary; but when a man falls into fever through himself and through intemperance, we blame him.) And vice is involuntary; for no one chooses evil as evil, but, carried away by the pleasure that attends it, supposing it good, he thinks it something to be grasped. This being so, to be freed from ignorance and from the base and delightful choice, and, before these things, not to assent to those deceitful impressions, lies in our power. And the devil is called a robber and a thief, having mingled false prophets among the prophets, as tares among the wheat. "All, then, who came before the Lord are thieves and robbers" — not simply all men, but all the false prophets, and all who were not properly sent by him.

17.85. The false prophets too had the theft, the prophetic name, being prophets, but of the liar. For the Lord says: "You are of your father the devil, and you wish to do the desires of your father. He was a man-slayer from the beginning, and has not stood in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks the lie, he speaks of his own, because he is a liar and the father of it." And among their falsehoods the false prophets spoke some true things, and indeed these prophesied in ecstasy, as servants of the apostate. And the Shepherd too, the angel of repentance, says to Hermas concerning the false prophet: "For he speaks some true words; for the devil fills him with his own spirit, to see whether he can break any of the righteous." All things, then, are ordered from above for good, "that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God may be made known," according to the foreknowledge of the ages, "which he wrought in Christ." And to God nothing is opposed, nor does anything stand against him, since he is Lord and Almighty.

17.86. But the counsels and activities of those who have apostatized, being partial, arise indeed from an evil disposition, like the diseases of the body; yet they are steered by the universal providence to a wholesome end, even though the cause be disease-producing. The greatest work of the divine providence, indeed, is not to let the vice that has sprung from a voluntary apostasy remain useless and unprofitable, nor to let it become in every respect harmful. For it is the work of the divine wisdom and virtue and power not only to do good (for this is, so to speak, the nature of God, as of fire to heat and of light to give light), but especially this too: through the evils devised by certain ones to bring about some good and wholesome end, and to use to advantage the things that seem base — as the witness of martyrdom, which comes from temptation.

17.87. There is, then, even in philosophy — stolen, as it were, by Prometheus — a little fire, usefully rekindled to a light fit for its purpose: a certain trace of wisdom and a movement toward God. In this way the philosophers among the Greeks would be thieves and robbers, having, before the coming of the Lord, taken parts of the truth from the Hebrew prophets, not with full knowledge, but appropriating them as their own doctrines, and falsifying some, and, through over-curiosity, ignorantly sophisticating others, and even finding out some. For perhaps they too had a spirit of perception. And Aristotle agreed with the Scripture, calling sophistic a thievery of wisdom, as we have indicated before. But the Apostle says: "Which we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit." For concerning the prophets he says: "We all received of his fullness" — meaning, of course, of Christ. So the prophets are not thieves. And "My teaching is not mine," says the Lord, "but his who sent me, the Father." But concerning the thieves: "He who speaks of himself," he says, "seeks his own glory." Such are the Greeks: lovers of self and boasters. And the Scripture, calling them "wise," does not slander the truly wise, but those reputed wise.

18.88. "And of these," it says, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent I will set aside." So the Apostle adds: "Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age?" — setting, in contrast to the scribes, the seekers of this age, that is, the philosophers from among the nations. "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" — the same as to say he showed it to be foolish and not true, as they supposed. And if you ask the cause of their reputed wisdom, he will say it is through the hardening of their heart. "Since, in the wisdom of God" — that is, proclaimed through the prophets — "the world by wisdom" — the wisdom that speaks through the prophets — "did not know him," namely God, "it pleased" this God, "through the foolishness of the proclamation" — the foolishness it seems to the Greeks — "to save those who believe. Since the Jews," he says, "ask for signs" toward faith, "and the Greeks seek wisdom" — the so-called compelling arguments and the other syllogisms — "but we proclaim Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block," because, knowing the prophecy, they do not believe its fulfilment, "and to the Greeks foolishness"; for the reputed wise think it a fable that the Son of God should speak through a man, and that God should have a Son, and that this Son should have suffered. Hence the prepossession of their conceit persuades them to disbelieve; for the coming of the Saviour did not make them foolish and hard-hearted and unbelieving, but understanding and obedient and, beyond that, faithful. And those who did not wish to obey were shown, by the voluntary inclination of those who obeyed, to be set apart as without understanding and unbelieving and foolish; but to the called themselves, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

18.89. Should we not, then — and this is better — take "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" as a denial, equivalent to "He did not make it foolish," so that the cause of their hard-heartedness may not appear to have come to them from God, the one who made the wisdom foolish? For, on the contrary, though they were wise, they came under the greater charge for not believing the proclamation; for both the choice and the turning aside from the truth are voluntary. But by "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise" he means that it is outshone by the comparison with the despised and overlooked barbarian philosophy — just as the lamp, outshone by the sun, is said to have perished by not performing an equal activity. All men, then, being called, those who chose to obey were named "the called." For there is no injustice with God. So those of either race who believed, these are a peculiar people. And in the Acts of the Apostles you would find, word for word: "Those, then, who received his word were baptized; but those who would not obey set themselves apart, plainly."

18.90. To these the prophecy says: "If you are willing and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the earth" — proving that both the choice and the turning aside lie with us. And the Apostle called "the wisdom of God" the teaching that is according to the Lord, that he might show the true philosophy handed down through the Son. But indeed the reputed wise man too has certain exhortations, those in the Apostle that bid us "put on the new man, created according to God in righteousness and the holiness of the truth. Therefore, putting away falsehood, speak truth; do not give place to the devil. Let him who steals steal no more, but rather let him labour, working the good." And to work is to toil further while seeking the truth — together with rational well-doing, "that you may have to share with the one in need" both of worldly abundance and of divine wisdom. For he wants the word to be taught and the silver, exactly tested, to be put on the bankers' tables for lending out. Hence he adds: "Let no rotten word come out of your mouth" — a rotten word is this, the word from conceit — "but if there be any good word for the building up of the need, that it may give grace to the hearers." And of necessity the word of the good God is good. And how is the one who saves not good?

19.91. That the Greeks too are testified to dogmatize some true things, one may consider from this as well. Paul, in the Acts of the Apostles, is recorded as saying to the Areopagites: "I see that you are more religious. For, going through and observing the objects of your worship, I found an altar on which was inscribed: 'To the unknown God.' Whom, then, you worship in ignorance, this one I proclaim to you. God, who made the world and all things in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not in temples made with hands, nor is served by human hands as though he needed anything, himself giving to all life and breath and all things; and he made of one every race of men to dwell over all the face of the earth, having determined appointed seasons and the boundaries of their dwelling, that they should seek the divine, if perhaps they might feel after it or find it, though it is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, as some too of your own poets have said: 'For we are also his offspring.'" From which it is plain that, using also poetic examples from the Phaenomena of Aratus, he approves what has been well said among the Greeks, and through the "unknown God" he hinted that the Creator God was honoured by the Greeks by a periphrasis, but that he must be received and learned with full knowledge through the Son.

19.92. "For this reason, then, I have sent you to the nations," he says, "to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a portion among those sanctified by faith in me." These eyes of the blind, then, that are opened, are the knowledge of the Father through the Son, the grasping of the Greek periphrasis; and to turn from the power of Satan is to change from sin, through which the slavery had come about. We do not, however, simply accept all philosophy, but that of which Socrates too, in Plato, speaks: "For there are, as those concerned with the rites say, many bearers of the thyrsus, but few bacchants" — hinting that the called are many, but the chosen few. So he adds clearly: "These, in my opinion, are none other than those who have philosophized rightly. And of these I too, so far as I could, left nothing undone in my life, but strove in every way to become one. Whether I strove rightly and accomplished anything, we shall know clearly, when we have come there, if God will, a little later."

19.93. Does he not seem to you, from the Hebrew Scriptures, to be making plain the hope of the just man after death? And in the Demodocus — if indeed the work is Plato's — he says that this is not philosophizing: to live stooping over the arts, nor being a man of much learning, but something else; "since I, for one, thought it even a reproach." For he knew, I think, that "much learning does not teach one to have understanding," according to Heraclitus. And in the fifth book of the Republic he says: "Shall we, then, set down all these, and others of such sort, as mathematicians and as philosophers of the little arts? By no means, I said, but as like to philosophers. And whom, he said, do you call the true ones? Those, I said, who love to behold the truth." For philosophy is not in geometry, which has its postulates and hypotheses, nor in music, which is conjectural, nor in astronomy, crammed with physical and flowing and probable accounts, but is the knowledge of the Good itself and of the truth — those other things being distinct from the Good, but ways toward the Good. So not even he grants that the cyclic education of itself accomplishes anything toward the Good, but that it works together to rouse and to exercise the soul toward the objects of thought.

19.94. Whether, then, they say that the Greeks uttered some sayings of the true philosophy by chance, the chance is of the divine dispensation (for no one will deify the spontaneous through his ambition toward us); or whether by coincidence, the coincidence is not without providence; or whether, again, one should say the Greeks had a natural notion — we know the Maker of nature to be one, in the sense in which we have called righteousness too natural; or whether, indeed, they had a common mind, let us consider who is the father of this and of the righteousness that comes according to the apportioning of mind. For if one speaks of a foreannouncement and alleges a joint utterance, he speaks of kinds of prophecy. Indeed, others wish that some things were said to the philosophers by a reflection of the truth. The divine Apostle, then, writes concerning us: "For we now see as through a mirror" — knowing ourselves by reflection in it, and contemplating, so far as we can, the efficient cause from the divine within us. For "You have seen your brother," it says, "you have seen your God." The Saviour, I think, is called God to us now; but after the laying aside of the flesh, "face to face," then at last definitely and comprehensibly, when the heart has become pure. And by reflection and through a medium those who have exactly philosophized among the Greeks discern God; for such are the true impressions seen through weakness, as an image is seen in the waters, and as we see through transparent and translucent bodies.

19.95. Well, then, does Solomon say: "He who sows righteousness works faith. And there are those who, sowing their own, make more." And again: "Take care of the green things in the field, and you will shear grass; and gather the ripe hay, that you may have sheep for clothing." You see how one must take thought for the covering and the guarding from outside. "And you will know with knowledge the souls of your flock." For "when the nations that do not have the Law do by nature the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves" — the uncircumcision keeping the ordinances of the Law, according to the Apostle, both before the Law and before the coming. And the discourse, as if making a comparison of those from philosophy with those called heretics, says very plainly: "Better is a friend near than a brother dwelling far off; and he who leans upon falsehoods, this man herds the winds and pursues winged birds." I do not think the discourse means philosophy here. Indeed, in many things philosophy attempts what is probable and is persuasive; but it rebukes the heresies. So it adds: "For he has left the ways of his own vineyard, and has wandered from the tracks of his own tillage." And these are they who forsake the Church that is from the beginning. So the man who has fallen into heresy passes through a waterless desert, having left the truly existing God; bereft of God, seeking waterless water, coming upon the uninhabited and thirsty land, gathering barrenness with his hands.

19.96. "And to those wanting in understanding I give command, saying" — says wisdom, meaning, of course, those about the heresies — "Touch with pleasure the hidden loaves and the sweet stolen water." By "bread and water" the Scripture plainly means none other than the heresies that use bread and water in the offering not according to the rule of the Church. For there are some who give thanks even with bare water. "But spring away; do not linger in her place" — calling the synagogue a "place," and not, by the same name, a church. Then it cries out: "For so you will cross over strange water" — reckoning the heretical baptism not proper and genuine water — "and you will pass over a strange river" that carries along and drags down into the sea, into which the man who has turned aside from the steadfastness that is according to truth is poured out, swept away again into the worldly and disordered waves of life.

20.97. As the many men who drag down the ship would not be said to be many causes, but, of many men, one cause (for each is not a cause of the ship's being dragged down, but together with the others), so philosophy too, being a search for truth, contributes to the grasping of the truth, not being a cause of the grasping, but, together with the others, a cause and a co-worker. And perhaps the joint cause is a cause. And as, happiness being one, the virtues that are its causes are several; and as of being warmed the sun and the fire and the bath and clothing are causes; so, truth being one, many are the things that contribute to the search for it, but the finding is through the Son. If, then, we consider, virtue is one in power, but it has come about that, when present in these matters, it is called prudence, in these temperance, in these courage or righteousness. By the same account, then, truth too being one, in geometry there is the truth of geometry, in music that of music, and in right philosophy there would be Greek truth. But this sovereign truth alone is not to be tampered with, in which we are educated by the Son of God.

20.98. In this way we say that one and the same drachma, when given to the shipmaster, is called fare; to the tax-collector, toll; rent to the landlord; wage to the teacher; and earnest-money to the seller. And each thing, whether virtue or truth, called by a synonymous name, is the cause only of the result that belongs to it. And by the joint use of these comes about the living happily (for let us not be happy merely in names), when we call the right life happiness, and call happy the man whose soul is virtuously ordered. And if philosophy contributes, even from afar, to the finding of truth — reaching, by its various attempts, toward the knowledge that is according to us, which touches truth nearly — yet it does contribute to the man who has been earnest to lay hold of knowledge by attempting it rationally. But Greek truth is separated from ours, even if it has shared the same name, both in the greatness of knowledge and in the more authoritative demonstration and in the divine power and the like. For we are taught of God, being instructed in the truly sacred letters by the Son of God; whence, too, they do not move souls in the same way, but by a different teaching.

20.99. And if, for the sake of the fault-finders, we must make a distinction, then in calling philosophy a joint cause and a co-worker of the true apprehension, being a search for truth, we shall confess it to be a preliminary education of the gnostic, not setting down the joint cause as a cause, nor the co-worker as something that holds together, nor philosophy as a thing without which there is nothing. For nearly all of us, without the cyclic education and Greek philosophy — and some even without letters — moved by the divine and barbarian philosophy, have received by faith, in power, the word concerning God, educated by self-acting wisdom. And what acts with another, being incomplete to act of itself, we call a co-worker and a joint cause, named from being a cause together with a cause, or from becoming a cause by coming together with another, but not able of itself to furnish the result that is according to truth. And yet philosophy of itself once justified the Greeks, not unto the universal righteousness, toward which it is found a co-worker (just as the first and second step are to the man going up to the upper room, and the writing-master is to the one who is to be a philosopher); nor as though, by its removal, the universal account would be deficient or the truth done away. For sight contributes, and hearing and voice, toward truth, but it is the mind that recognizes it of itself. But of the co-workers some bring greater, some less power. So clearness is a co-worker toward the handing down of the truth, and dialectic toward not falling before the heresies that run riot.

20.100. Self-complete, then, and in need of nothing, is the teaching that is according to the Saviour, being the power and wisdom of God; and Greek philosophy, coming to it, does not make the truth more powerful, but, by rendering powerless the sophistical attempt against it and beating back the treacherous plots against the truth, it has fitly been called a fence and a wall of the vineyard. And the truth that is according to faith is necessary for life, as bread; while the preliminary education is like a relish and a dessert — "a sweet morsel at the close of dinner," according to Pindar the Theban. The Scripture has plainly declared: "The harmless man, understanding, will become more cunning, and the wise man will receive knowledge." And "he who speaks of himself seeks his own glory," says the Lord, "but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is true, and there is no unrighteousness in him." On the contrary, then, he does wrong who appropriates the things of the barbarians and boasts of them as his own, increasing his own glory and falsifying the truth. This man is called a thief by the Scripture. So it says: "My son, do not become a liar; for the lie leads to theft." And the thief truly has what he has stolen, whether it be gold or silver or speech or doctrine. In part, then, the things they have stolen are true, but they know them by conjecture and by the necessities of argument. Once discipled, then, they will recognize them comprehensibly.

21.101. Concerning the fashioning of the doctrines of the philosophers from the Hebrews, we shall treat a little later; but first, as was the next thing, we must now speak of the times of Moses, by which it will be shown beyond dispute that the philosophy of the Hebrews is the most ancient of all wisdom. These matters have been treated exactly by Tatian in his Against the Greeks, and also by Cassian in the first book of his Exegetica; yet the present work requires that we too run over what has been said on the subject. Apion the grammarian, then, surnamed Pleistonices, in the fourth book of his Egyptian Histories — though he was hostile in disposition toward the Hebrews, being an Egyptian by race, so that he even composed a book against the Jews — mentioning Amosis, king of the Egyptians, and the deeds done in his time, cites as witness Ptolemy of Mendes. And his words run thus: "Amosis razed Auaris, living in the time of Inachus the Argive, as Ptolemy of Mendes recorded in his Chronicles." And this Ptolemy was a priest, who, setting out the deeds of the Egyptian kings in three whole books, says that under Amosis, king of Egypt, the journey of the Jews out of Egypt took place under the leadership of Moses; from which it is seen that Moses flourished in the time of Inachus.

21.102. The most ancient of Greek matters are the Argive, those from Inachus I mean, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus teaches in his Chronicles. Younger than these by forty generations are the Attic matters, those from Cecrops, the two-natured and earth-born, as Tatian says word for word; and by nine generations the Arcadian, those from Pelasgus — he too is said to be earth-born. And by another two generations younger than these are the Phthiotic matters, those from Deucalion. From Inachus to the time of the Trojan War twenty generations, or one more, are reckoned, and, so to speak, four hundred years and beyond. And if the Assyrian matters are, by many years, older than the Greek, from what Ctesias says, the departure of Moses from Egypt, under Amosis the Egyptian and under Inachus the Argive, will appear to fall in the four hundred and second year of the Assyrian empire, and in the thirty-second year of the dynasty of Belochus the eighth. And in Greece there were, under Phoroneus who came after Inachus, the flood in the time of Ogyges and the kingdom in Sicyon — first of Aegialeus, then of Europs, then of Telchis — and the kingdom of Cres in Crete. For Acusilaus says that Phoroneus was the first man; whence the author of the Phoronis too said that he was "the father of mortal men."

21.103. From this Plato, following Acusilaus, writes in the Timaeus: "And once, wishing to draw them on to discourse about the ancient things, he tries to tell the most ancient things of this city, concerning Phoroneus, said to be the first, and Niobe, and the things after the flood." Under Phorbas was Actaeus, from whom Attica is called Actaea. Under Triopas were Prometheus and Atlas and Epimetheus and the two-natured Cecrops and Io. Under Crotopus was the conflagration in the time of Phaethon and the deluge in the time of Deucalion. Under Sthenelus were both the kingdom of Amphictyon and the coming of Danaus to the Peloponnese, and the founding of Dardania by Dardanus, whom "first," says Homer, "the cloud-gatherer Zeus begot," and the carrying back of Europa from Phoenicia to Crete. Under Lynceus were the rape of the maiden and the founding of the precinct at Eleusis, and the husbandry of Triptolemus, and the coming of Cadmus to Thebes, and the kingdom of Minos. Under Proetus was the war of Eumolpus against the Athenians. Under Acrisius were the crossing of Pelops from Phrygia, and the arrival of Ion at Athens, and the second Cecrops, and the deeds of Perseus and of Dionysus, and Orpheus and Musaeus.

21.104. And in the eighteenth year of the kingdom of Agamemnon Ilium was taken, in the first year of the reign at Athens of Demophon, son of Theseus, on the twelfth of the month Thargelion, as Dionysius the Argive says; but Agias and Dercylus say on the eighth from the end of the month Panemus; for Hellanicus says on the twelfth of the month Thargelion. And some of those who have written the Attic histories say on the eighth from the end, in the last year of the reign of Menestheus, when the moon was full. "It was midnight," says the author of the Little Iliad, "and the bright moon was rising." Others say on the same day of the month Scirophorion. And Theseus, being a rival of Heracles, is older than the Trojan matters by one generation. For Homer mentions Tlepolemus, who was a son of Heracles, as having marched against Ilium.

21.105. Moses, then, is shown to be earlier than the deification of Dionysus by six hundred and four years, if indeed Dionysus was made a god in the thirty-second year of the reign of Perseus, as Apollodorus says in his Chronicles. And from Dionysus to Heracles and the chiefs about Jason who sailed in the Argo, sixty-three years are reckoned together; and Asclepius and the Dioscuri sailed with them, as Apollonius of Rhodes testifies in his Argonautica. And from the reign of Heracles in Argos to the deification of Heracles himself and of Asclepius thirty-eight years are reckoned, according to the chronographer Apollodorus. From that point to the deification of Castor and Polydeuces, fifty-three years. And somewhere here is the capture of Ilium. And if we must trust Hesiod the poet too, let us hear him: "To Zeus the Atlantid Maia bore glorious Hermes, the herald of the immortals, having mounted the holy bed; and the Cadmean Semele bore him a shining son, having joined in love, Dionysus the bringer of much joy."

21.106. Cadmus, the father of Semele, comes to Thebes in the time of Lynceus and becomes the inventor of Greek letters; and Triopas is contemporary with Isis in the seventh generation from Inachus (and they say Isis is the same as Io, because she went, wandering, through the whole earth); and Ister, in his work On the Egyptian Colony, says she was the daughter of Prometheus. And Prometheus, under Triopas, is in the seventh generation after Moses, so that Moses is shown to have flourished even before the origin of mankind according to the Greeks. And Leon, who treated of the gods of Egypt, says that Isis is called Demeter by the Greeks, who comes in the time of Lynceus, in the eleventh generation later than Moses. And Apis, the king of Argos, founds Memphis, as Aristippus says in the first book of his Arcadica. And Aristeas the Argive says that this man was surnamed Sarapis, and that this is the one whom the Egyptians worship; while Nymphodorus of Amphipolis, in the third book of the Customs of Asia, says that the bull Apis, having died and been embalmed, was laid in a coffin (soros) in the temple of the honoured deity, and that from this he was called Soroapis, and later, by a certain habit of the natives, Sarapis.

21.107. And Apis is the third from Inachus. Leto, indeed, is in the time of Tityus, for "Leto he dragged, the glorious consort of Zeus"; and Tityus was contemporary with Tantalus. With reason, then, the Boeotian Pindar too writes: "And in time Apollo was born" — and no wonder, since he is found serving Admetus, together with Heracles, for a great year. And Zethus and Amphion, the inventors of music, lived about the age of Cadmus. And if anyone tells us that Phemonoe first delivered oracles to Acrisius, let him know that twenty-seven years after Phemonoe came Orpheus and Musaeus and Linus, the teacher of Heracles. And Homer and Hesiod are much younger than the Trojan matters; and after them, much younger still, are the lawgivers among the Greeks, Lycurgus and Solon, and the seven sages, and those about Pherecydes the Syrian and Pythagoras the great, who lived somewhere low down about the Olympiads, as we have shown. So Moses is proved to be older than most of the gods among the Greeks, and not only than the so-called sages and poets.

21.108. And not he alone, but the Sibyl too is older than Orpheus; for there are several accounts both of her surname and of the oracles ascribed to her — that, being a Phrygian, she was called Artemis, and that she, coming to Delphi, sang: "O Delphians, servants of the far-shooting Apollo, I have come to deliver the mind of aegis-bearing Zeus, being wroth with my own brother Apollo." And there is another, the Erythraean, called Herophile; Heraclides of Pontus mentions these in his work On Oracles. I pass over the Egyptian and the Italian, who dwelt at the Carmalum in Rome, whose son was Evander, the founder of the shrine of Pan in Rome called the Lupercal.

21.109. It is worthwhile here to inquire also into the times of the other prophets among the Hebrews after Moses. After the end of Moses' life, Joshua succeeds to the leadership of the people, making war for sixty-five years, and resting in the good land another twenty-five. But, as the book of Joshua contains, the man just named succeeded Moses for twenty-seven years. Then, the Hebrews having sinned, they are handed over to Chusachar, king of Mesopotamia, for eight years, as the book of Judges relates; and afterward, having besought God, they receive as leader Gothoniel, the younger brother of Caleb, of the tribe of Judah, who, having killed the king of Mesopotamia, ruled the people for fifty years in succession. And again, having sinned, they were handed over to Eglom, king of the Moabites, for eighteen years; and when they turned back, Aod led them again for eighty years, an ambidextrous man of the tribe of Ephraim; this is the man who slew Eglom.

21.110. And when Aod had died, having sinned again, they were handed over to Jabim, king of Canaan, for twenty years. In his time Deborah prophesies, the wife of Lapidoth, of the tribe of Ephraim; and the high priest was Ozius, the son of Riesus. Under her leadership of the army, Barak, the son of Benner, of the tribe of Naphtali, having drawn up against Sisera, the commander-in-chief of Jabim, conquered; and from this Deborah ruled the people, judging, for forty years. And when she had died, the people, having sinned again, is handed over to the Midianites for seven years. After these, Gideon, of the tribe of Manasseh, the son of Joas, having gone out to war with three hundred men, and having destroyed a hundred and twenty thousand of them, ruled for forty years. After him his son Abimelech for three years. Him succeeds Bolea, son of Bedan, son of Charran, of the tribe of Ephraim, who ruled twenty-three years. After him, the people, having sinned again, is handed over to the Ammonites for eighteen years.

21.111. And when they had repented, Jephthah the Gileadite, of the tribe of Manasseh, leads them, and ruled six years; after him ruled Abatthan of Bethlehem, of the tribe of Judah, seven years; then Hebron the Zebulonite, eight years; then Eglom of Ephraim, eight years. But some join Hebron's eight years to Abatthan's seven. And after this the people, having sinned again, comes under the foreign Philistines for forty years. And when they had turned back, Samson, of the tribe of Dan, leads them, having conquered the foreigners in war. He ruled for twenty years. And after him, there being no rule, Eli the priest judged the people for forty years. Him Samuel the prophet succeeds, with whom Saul reigned, holding rule for twenty-seven years. This Samuel also anointed David.

21.112. And Samuel died two years before Saul, under the high priest Abimelech. He anointed Saul as king, who was the first to reign over Israel after the judges, of whom the whole number, down to Samuel, comes to four hundred and sixty-three years and seven months. Then, through the first book of Kingdoms, the years of Saul are twenty, since, being renewed, he reigned. And after the death of Saul, David, the son of Jesse, of the tribe of Judah, reigns the second time, in Hebron, for forty years, as the second book of Kingdoms contains; and the high priest was Abiathar, the son of Abimelech, of the kindred of Eli; and Gad and Nathan prophesy in his time. So from Joshua the son of Nun until David took over the kingdom there are, as some say, four hundred and fifty years; but, as the chronography here set forth shows, five hundred and twenty-three years and seven months are reckoned together, down to the death of David.

21.113. And after these things Solomon, the son of David, reigned forty years. In his time Nathan continues prophesying, who also exhorted him concerning the building of the temple; likewise Achias of Shilom prophesies; and both kings, David and Solomon, were prophets. And Sadon the high priest was the first to perform priestly service in the temple which Solomon built, being the eighth from Aaron the first high priest. So from Moses to the age of Solomon there are, as some say, five hundred and ninety-five years; but, as others say, five hundred and seventy-six. And if one should reckon together with the four hundred and fifty years from Joshua to David the forty years of Moses' campaign and the other eighty years which Moses had lived before the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt came about, and should add to these the forty years of the reign of David, he will bring the whole to six hundred and ten years.

21.114. But our chronography proceeds more exactly, if to the five hundred and twenty-three years and seven months down to the death of David one should add the hundred and twenty years of Moses and the forty of Solomon; for the whole, down to the death of Solomon, will come to six hundred and eighty-three years and seven months. Hiram gives his own daughter to Solomon at the time when, after the capture of Troy, Menelaus came to Phoenicia, as Menander of Pergamum and Laetus say in their Phoenician histories. And after Solomon, Rehoboam his son reigns seventeen years, and the high priest was Abimelech, the son of Sadok. In his time, the kingdom being divided, Jeroboam, of the tribe of Ephraim, the servant of Solomon, reigns in Samaria; and there still prophesy Achias the Shilonite and Samaias the son of Ailam, and the man who came from Judah against Jeroboam and prophesied at the altar.

21.115. After him Abium his son reigns three years, and likewise his son Asa forty-one; this man, in his old age, suffered from gout; and in his time Iu, the son of Ananias, prophesies. After him Jehoshaphat his son reigns twenty-five years; in his time prophesy Elijah the Tishbite and Michaias the son of Iebla and Abdias the son of Ananias. And in the time of Michaias there was also a false prophet, Sedekias the son of Chanaan. These are followed by the reign of Joram the son of Jehoshaphat, for eight years, in whose time Elijah prophesies, and after Elijah, Elisha the son of Saphat. In his time those in Samaria ate dove's dung and their own children. And the time of Jehoshaphat extends from the last things of the third book of Kingdoms to the fourth. And in the time of Joram, Elijah was taken up, and Elisha the son of Saphat began to prophesy for six years, being forty years old. Then Ochozias reigned one year, in whose time Elisha still prophesies, and with him Abdadonaeus.

21.116. After him Gotholia, the mother of Ozias, reigns eight years, having killed the children of her own brother; for she was of the family of Ahab. But Josabaia, the sister of Ozias, stole away Joas, the son of Ozias, and afterward set the kingdom upon him. In the time of this Gotholia Elisha still prophesies, after whom reigns, as I said before, Joas, who was saved by Josabaia, the wife of Jodae the high priest; and the whole comes to forty years. So from Solomon to the death of Elisha the prophet there are, as some say, a hundred and five years; but, as others say, a hundred and two; but, as the chronography here set forth shows, from the reign of Solomon, a hundred and eighty-one years.

21.117. From the Trojan matters to the birth of Homer is, according to Philochorus, a hundred and eighty years, after the Ionian colony. But Aristarchus, in his Notes on Archilochus, says he flourished about the Ionian colony, which took place a hundred and forty years after the Trojan matters. And Apollodorus says it was a hundred years after the Ionian colony, when Agesilaus the son of Doryssaeus reigned over the Spartans, so that Lycurgus the lawgiver, still a young man, overlapped with him. But Euthymenes, in his Chronicles, says he flourished together with Hesiod, in the time of Acastus, and was born in Chios about the two-hundredth year after the capture of Ilium. Of this opinion too is Archemachus in the third book of his Euboica; so that he and Hesiod are even younger than Elisha the prophet. And if anyone wishes to follow the grammarian Crates and says that Homer lived about the return of the Heraclidae, eighty years after the capture of Ilium, he will again be found later than Solomon, in whose time was the coming of Menelaus to Phoenicia, as has been said. And Eratosthenes sets the age of Homer after the hundredth year from the capture of Ilium. Indeed, Theopompus, in the forty-third book of his Philippica, relates that Homer was born five hundred years after those who marched against Ilium. And Euphorion, in his work On the Aleuadae, places him in the time of Gyges, who began to reign from the eighteenth Olympiad, and whom he says was the first to be called "tyrant." And Sosibius the Laconian, in his register of times, sets Homer in the eighth year of the reign of Charillus, the son of Polydectes. Now Charillus reigns sixty-four years, after whom his son Nicander reigns thirty-nine; and in the thirty-fourth year of his reign, he says, the first Olympiad was established; so that Homer is some ninety years before the establishment of the Olympic games.

21.118. After Joas, Amasias his son succeeds to the kingdom for thirty-nine years; him Ozias likewise, his son, for fifty-two years, and this man died a leper; and in his time prophesy Amos and Isaiah his son, and Hosea the son of Beeri, and Jonah the son of Amathi, of Geth Chober, who preached to the Ninevites, the one who came forth from the whale. Then Jonathan, the son of Ozias, reigns sixteen years; in his time Isaiah still prophesies, and Hosea and Micah the Morasthite and Joel the son of Bathuel.

21.119. Him succeeds his son Ahaz, for sixteen years; in whose fifteenth year Israel was led away to Babylon, and Salmanasar, the king of the Assyrians, removed those in Samaria to the Medes and to Babylon. Again, Ahaz is succeeded by Hosea for eight years, then Hezekiah for twenty-nine years. To this man, for his holiness, near the end of his life, God grants through Isaiah to live another fifteen years, by the going-back of the sun. Down to this time Isaiah and Hosea and Micah continue prophesying. And these are said to have lived after the age of Lycurgus the lawgiver of the Spartans; for Dieuchidas, in the fourth book of his Megarica, sets the flourishing of Lycurgus about the two hundred and ninetieth year after the capture of Ilium. And Isaiah, from the reign of Solomon, in whose time Menelaus was shown to have come to Phoenicia, in the three-hundredth year, is found still prophesying, and Micah with him, and Hosea, and Joel the son of Bathuel.

21.120. After Hezekiah his son Manasseh reigns fifty-five years, then his son Amos two years, after whom Josiah his son, the most law-abiding, thirty-one years. This man set the limbs of men upon the limbs of the idols, as it is written in Leviticus. In his eighteenth year the Passover was kept, which had not been performed since Samuel, nor in the time between. Then too Chelkias the priest, the father of the prophet Jeremiah, having lighted upon the book of the Law laid away in the temple, read it and died. In his time prophesy Oldas and Sophonias and Jeremiah. And in the time of Jeremiah Ananias becomes a false prophet. This Josiah, having disregarded Jeremiah the prophet, was slain by Nechao, king of Egypt, at the river Euphrates, having gone to meet him as he set out against the Assyrians.

21.121. Josiah is succeeded by Jechonias, also called Joachas, his son, for three months and ten days. Nechao, king of Egypt, having bound him, led him away to Egypt, setting up in his place as king his brother Joakim, on tribute of the land, for eleven years. After him his namesake Joakim reigns three months, then Sedekias eleven years. And down to this time Jeremiah continues prophesying; and there prophesy also Buzi and Urias the son of Samaeus, and Ambacum with him; and the line of the Hebrew kings comes to an end. So from the birth of Moses to this captivity there are, as some say, nine hundred and seventy-two years; but, according to the exact chronography, a thousand and eighty-five years, six months, ten days; and from the reign of David to the captivity that came about under the Chaldeans, four hundred and fifty-two years and six months; but, as our exactness of the times reckons it, four hundred and eighty-two years, six months, ten days.

21.122. And in the twelfth year of the reign of Sedekias, Nebuchadnezzar, seventy years before the rule of the Persians, marched against the Phoenicians and the Jews, as Berossus says in his Chaldean histories. And Juba, writing about the Assyrians, confesses that he took the history from Berossus, bearing witness to the man's truth. Nebuchadnezzar, then, having blinded Sedekias, leads him away to Babylon and removes all the people (and the captivity lasts seventy years), except a few, who fled into Egypt. And in the time of Sedekias too there still prophesy Jeremiah and Ambacum; and in the fifth year of his reign Ezekiel prophesies in Babylon, after whom Naum the prophet, then Daniel; and again, after him, prophesy Aggaeus and Zacharias, in the time of Darius the First, for two years; after whom the Messenger among the Twelve.

21.123. And after Aggaeus and Zacharias, Nehemiah, the chief cup-bearer of Artaxerxes, the son of Acheli the Israelite, builds the city of Jerusalem and repairs the temple. In this captivity are Esther and Mardochaeus, of whom a book is current, as also that of the Maccabees. During this captivity Misael, Ananias, and Azarias, unwilling to serve the image, are cast into a furnace of fire and saved by the appearance of an angel. Then Daniel, cast into a lions' den on account of the dragon, fed by the providence of God through Ambacum, is brought safe on the seventh day. Here too the sign of Jonah came about; and Tobias, through Raphael the angel, takes Sarah to wife, the demon of hers having killed her seven first suitors; and after the marriage of Tobias his father Tobit recovers his sight.

21.124. Here Zorobabel, having conquered his rivals by wisdom, obtains from Darius, having bought it, the renewal of Jerusalem, and with Esdras returns to the land of his fathers; through him come about the redemption of the people, the recognition and renewal of the inspired oracles, the keeping of the saving Passover, and the dissolution of foreign marriages. Cyrus too had proclaimed beforehand the restoration of the Hebrews; and when the promise was fulfilled under Darius, the feast of the dedication is kept, as also at the time of the tabernacle. And the whole of the years, together with those of the captivity, down to the restoration of the people, comes, from the birth of Moses, to one thousand one hundred and fifty-five years, six months, ten days; and from the reign of David, as some say, five hundred and fifty-two years, but, more exactly, five hundred and seventy-two years, six months, ten days.

21.125. From the captivity, then, that came about under Jeremiah the prophet, when it was carried to Babylon, were fulfilled the things spoken by Daniel the prophet, which run thus: "Seventy weeks have been cut short upon your people and upon the holy city, to finish sin, and to seal up sins, and to wipe out the iniquities, and to make atonement, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal vision and prophet, and to anoint the Holy of Holies. And you shall know and understand, that from the going forth of the word to answer and to build Jerusalem until Christ the leader are seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; and it shall return and the street and the wall be built, and the times shall be emptied. And after the sixty-two weeks the anointing shall be utterly destroyed, and there is no judgment for it; and the city and the holy place he shall destroy together with the leader who comes; they shall be cut off in a flood; and to the end of the war, cut short, with desolations. And he shall make firm a covenant for many for one week; and in the half of the week my sacrifice and libation shall be taken away; and upon the temple the abomination of the desolations, and until the consummation of time a consummation shall be given upon the desolation. And in the half of the week he shall cause to cease the incense of sacrifice and of the pinnacle of desolation, until the consummation and the haste of the order of desolation."

21.126. That the temple, then, was built in seven weeks, this is plain; for it is written in Esdras. And so Christ became king of the Jews, the leader, in the fulfilment of the seven weeks, in Jerusalem; and in the sixty-two weeks all Judaea was at rest and was without wars; and our Lord Christ, the Holy of the holy, having come and fulfilled the vision and the prophet, was anointed in the flesh by the spirit of his Father, in these sixty-two weeks, as the prophet said. And in the one week, the half of which week Nero held when he was reigning, and in the holy city Jerusalem set up the abomination; and in the half of the week he himself was slain, and Otho and Galba and Vitellius; but Vespasian prevailed and tore down Jerusalem and laid waste the holy place. And that these things are so, it is plain to the one able to understand, as the prophet too has said.

21.127. In the fulfilment of the eleventh year, then, at the beginning of the following one, when Joakim was reigning, the captivity to Babylon comes about under King Nebuchadnezzar, in his seventh year of reigning over the Assyrians, while Vaphres reigned over the Egyptians in his second year, and Philip was archon at Athens in the first year of the forty-eighth Olympiad; and the captivity remained for seventy years, ending in the second year of Darius the son of Hystaspes, who became king of the Persians and Assyrians and Egyptians, in whose time, as I said before, Aggaeus and Zacharias and the Messenger among the Twelve prophesy, and the high priest was Jesus the son of Josedek. And in the second year of the reign of Darius, whom Herodotus says broke the rule of the Magi, Zorobabel the son of Salathiel is sent to raise and adorn the temple in Jerusalem.

21.128. The times of the Persians too, then, are reckoned together thus: Cyrus thirty years, Cambyses nineteen, Darius forty-six, Xerxes twenty-six, Artaxerxes forty-one, Darius eight, Artaxerxes forty-two, Ochus eight, Arses three. . . . The whole of the Persian period comes together to two hundred and thirty-five years. And Alexander the Macedonian, having overthrown this Darius, begins to reign in the years above set out. Likewise, then, the times of the Macedonian kings are brought down thus: Alexander eighteen years, Ptolemy the son of Lagus forty years, Ptolemy Philadelphus twenty-seven years, then Euergetes twenty-five years, then Philopator seventeen years, after whom Epiphanes twenty-four years; him Philometor succeeds and reigns thirty-five years, after whom Physcon twenty-nine years, then Lathurus thirty-six years, then the one surnamed Dionysus twenty-nine years.

21.129. After all these Cleopatra reigned twenty-two years, after whom the kingdom of Cleopatra's children of eighteen days. The times of the Macedonian kings, then, come together to three hundred and twelve years and eighteen days. So those who prophesied in the time of Darius the son of Hystaspes, in the second year of his reign — Aggaeus and Zacharias and the Messenger among the Twelve, who prophesied in the first year of the forty-eighth Olympiad — are shown to be older than Pythagoras, who is placed about the sixty-second Olympiad, and than the oldest of the sages among the Greeks, Thales, who lived about the fiftieth Olympiad. And those reckoned with Thales among the sages were his contemporaries, as Andron says in his Tripod. For Heraclitus, being later than Pythagoras, mentions him in his treatise.

21.130. Hence, beyond dispute, older than the age of the prophets just mentioned, together with the so-called seven sages, would be the first Olympiad, which is also shown to be later than the Trojan matters by four hundred and seven years. It is easy, then, to see that Solomon, who lived in the time of Menelaus (and Menelaus was in the time of the Trojan matters), is older by many years than the sages among the Greeks. And by how many years Moses again is earlier than Solomon, has been shown by us in what went before. And Alexander, surnamed Polyhistor, in his treatise On the Jews, recorded certain letters of Solomon to Vaphres the king of Egypt and to the king of the Tyrians of Phoenicia, and theirs to Solomon, by which it is shown that Vaphres sent him eighty thousand Egyptian men for the building of the temple, and the other an equal number, together with a Tyrian master-builder of a Jewish mother, of the tribe of David, named, as it is there written, Hyperon.

21.131. Indeed, Onomacritus the Athenian, whose are said to be the poems ascribed to Orpheus, is found in the time of the rule of the Pisistratids, about the fiftieth Olympiad. And Orpheus, who sailed with Heracles, was the teacher of Musaeus. For Amphion precedes the Trojan matters by two generations; and Demodocus and Phemius, after the capture of Ilium (the one among the Phaeacians, the other among the suitors), were of good repute for their playing of the lyre. And the oracles ascribed to Musaeus they say are Onomacritus'; the Krater of Orpheus is Zopyrus' of Heraclea, and the Descent into Hades is Prodicus' of Samos. Ion of Chios, in his Triagmoi, relates that Pythagoras too referred some things to Orpheus. And Epigenes, in his work On the Poetry Ascribed to Orpheus, says that the Descent into Hades and the Sacred Discourse are by Cercops the Pythagorean, and the Peplos and the Physica by Brontinus. Indeed, some make Terpander archaic; Hellanicus, at any rate, relates that he lived in the time of Midas, while Phanias, setting Lesches the Lesbian before Terpander, makes Terpander younger than Archilochus, and says Lesches contended with Arctinus and conquered. And Xanthus the Lydian says Thasos was founded about the eighteenth Olympiad (but Dionysius says about the fifteenth), so that it is evident that Archilochus was already known after the twentieth Olympiad. He mentions, at any rate, the destruction of the Magnesians as recently happened. Simonides, then, is placed in the time of Archilochus; but Callinus is older by not much, for Archilochus mentions the Magnesians as destroyed, while Callinus mentions them as prosperous. And Eumelus the Corinthian, being older, is said to have overlapped Archias, the founder of Syracuse.

21.132. And these things we have been led to say, because the poets of the Cycle especially are placed among the very ancient. And already among the Greeks too many oracle-mongers are said to have arisen, like the Bacides (one a Boeotian, the other an Arcadian), who foretold many things to many. And by the counsel of the Athenian Amphilytus, Pisistratus too established his tyranny, when the man had pointed out the moment for the attack. For let there be silence about Cometes the Cretan, Cinyras the Cypriot, Admetus the Thessalian, Aristaeus the Cyrenian, Amphiaraus the Athenian, Timoxenus the Corcyrean, Demaenetus the Phocaean, Epigenes the Thespian, Nicias the Carystian, Ariston the Thessalian, Dionysius the Carthaginian, Cleophon the Corinthian, and Hippo the daughter of Chiron, and Boeo and Manto, and the multitude of the Sibyls — the Samian, the Colophonian, the Cymaean, the Erythraean, Phyto, Taraxandra, the Macetian, the Thessalian, the Thesprotian — and Calchas again and Mopsus, who lived in the time of the Trojan matters; but Mopsus is older, as having sailed with the Argonauts.

21.133. And they say that Battus the Cyrenian compiled the so-called Mantike of Mopsus; and Dorotheus, in the first book of his Pandect, relates that Mopsus understood the kingfisher and the crow. And Pythagoras the great too always attended to foreknowledge, and Abaris the Hyperborean and Aristeas of Proconnesus and Epimenides the Cretan, who came to Sparta, and Zoroaster the Mede and Empedocles of Acragas and Phormion the Laconian, indeed Polyaratus the Thasian and Empedotimus the Syracusan, and besides these, especially, Socrates the Athenian. "For there is for me," he says in the Theages, "beginning from childhood, by a divine lot, a daemonic sign that comes upon me; and this is a voice, which, when it comes, restrains me from what I am about to do, but never urges me on." And Execestus, the tyrant of the Phocians, wearing two enchanted rings, by the sound they made against each other perceived the right moments for his actions; yet he died, treacherously slain, even though the sound had given warning beforehand, as Aristotle says in his Constitution of the Phocians.

21.134. But there were also, among the Egyptians, men who were once living and afterward became gods by human opinion: Hermes the Theban and Asclepius of Memphis; and again Tiresias and Manto at Thebes, as Euripides says; and Helenus too and Laocoon and Oenone, the daughter of Cebren, at Ilium. For Crenus too, one of the Heraclidae, is recorded as a notable seer, and another Iamus in Elis, from whom come the Iamidae, and Polyidus at Argos and at Megara, whom the tragedy mentions. Why should I reckon up for you Telemus, who, being a seer of the Cyclopes, prophesies to Polyphemus the things of the wandering of Odysseus; or Onomacritus at Athens; or Amphiaraus, who is recorded as being older by one generation than the capture of Ilium, having been among the seven who marched against Thebes; or Theoclymenus in Cephallenia, or Telmessus in Caria, or Galeus in Sicily? And there would be others besides these: Idmon, who was with the Argonauts; Phemonoe the Delphian; Mopsus the son of Apollo and Manto, in Pamphylia and Cilicia; Amphilochus the son of Amphiaraus, in Cilicia; Alcmaeon, among the Acarnanians; Anius, in Delos; and Aristander of Telmessus, who was with Alexander. And already Philochorus relates that Orpheus too became a seer, in the first book of his work On Divination.

21.135. And Theopompus and Ephorus and Timaeus record a certain Orthagoras as a seer, as does Pythocles of Samos, in the fourth book of his Italica, Gaius Julius Nepos. But these are all thieves and robbers, as the Scripture says, having foretold most things from observation and from probabilities, like the physicians and seers who judge by physiognomy; while others were moved by demons, or disturbed by waters and incenses and a certain quality of air. But among the Hebrews the prophets prophesied by the power of God and his inspiration: before the Law, Adam, foretelling concerning the woman and concerning the naming of the animals; and Noah, proclaiming repentance; and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, plainly showing forth not a few of the things to come and already present. And with the Law, Moses and Aaron, after whom prophesy Joshua the son of Nun, Samuel, Gad, Nathan, Achias, Samaias, Iu, Elijah, Michaias, Abdiu, Elisha, Abdadonai, Amos, Isaiah, Hosea, Jonah, Joel, Jeremiah, Sophonias, Buzi, Ezekiel, Urias, Ambacum, Naum, Daniel, Misael (the author of the syllogisms), Aggaeus, Zacharias, and the Messenger among the Twelve.

21.136. And the prophets in all are thirty-five. And of women (for these too prophesied), Sarah and Rebecca and Mariam and Deborah and Olda. . . . Then, about the same times, John prophesies down to the saving baptism; and after the birth of Christ, Anna and Symeon; for Zacharias too, the father of John, is said in the Gospels to prophesy even before the child. Let us, then, from the beginning, from Moses, gather together the chronography according to the Greeks. From the birth of Moses to the exodus of the Jews out of Egypt are eighty years, and the other forty down to his death; the exodus takes place in the time of Inachus, before the Sothiac period, Moses having gone out of Egypt three hundred and forty-five years earlier. And from the leadership of Moses and Inachus to the flood of Deucalion — the second deluge, I mean — and to the conflagration of Phaethon, which fall in the time of Crotopus, forty generations are counted; but to a hundred years three generations are reckoned. And from the flood to the conflagration of Ida and the finding of iron and the Idaean Dactyls, seventy-three years, as Thrasyllus says. And from the conflagration of Ida to the rape of Ganymede, sixty-five years.

21.137. From this to the expedition of Perseus, when Glaucus too established the Isthmian games in honour of Melicertes, fifteen years. From the expedition of Perseus to the founding of Ilium, thirty-four years. From this to the sailing of the Argo, sixty-four years. From this to Theseus and the Minotaur, thirty-two years; then to the seven against Thebes, ten years; to the contest at Olympia, which Heracles established in honour of Pelops, three years; and to the expedition of the Amazons against Athens and the rape of Helen by Theseus, nine years. From this to the deification of Heracles, eleven years; then to the rape of Helen by Alexander, four years; then to the capture of Troy, twenty years. And from the capture of Troy to the return of Aeneas and the founding of Lavinium, ten years; to the rule of Ascanius, eight years; and to the return of the Heraclidae, sixty-one years; and to the Olympiad of Iphitus, three hundred and thirty-eight years.

21.138. And Eratosthenes records the times thus: from the capture of Troy to the return of the Heraclidae, eighty years; from this to the founding of Ionia, sixty years; the things next after these, to the guardianship of Lycurgus, a hundred and fifty-nine years; to the year preceding the first Olympiad, a hundred and eight years; from that Olympiad to the crossing of Xerxes, two hundred and ninety-seven years; from that to the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, forty-eight years; and to its end and the defeat of the Athenians, twenty-seven years; and to the battle at Leuctra, thirty-four years; after which, to the death of Philip, thirty-five years; and after these, to the passing of Alexander, twelve years. Again, from the first Olympiad some say that to the founding of Rome are reckoned twenty-four years. From this to the abolition of the kings, when there came to be consuls, two hundred and forty-three years; and from the abolition of the kings to the death of Alexander, a hundred and eighty-six years.

21.139. From this to the victory of Augustus, when Antony slew himself in Alexandria, two hundred and ninety-four years, when Augustus was consul for the fourth time. From which time to the contest which Domitian established in Rome, a hundred and fourteen years; and from the first contest to the death of Commodus, a hundred and eleven years. And there are those who reckon together, from Cecrops to Alexander the Macedonian, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight years; from Demophon, one thousand two hundred and fifty; and from the capture of Troy to the return of the Heraclidae, a hundred and twenty years, or a hundred and eighty. From this to the archon Euaenetus, in whose time they say Alexander crossed into Asia, as Phanias says seven hundred and fifteen years, as Ephorus seven hundred and thirty-five, as Timaeus and Cleitarchus eight hundred and twenty, as Eratosthenes seven hundred and seventy; and as Duris, from the capture of Troy to the crossing of Alexander into Asia, a thousand years. From this to Euaenetus, the archon at Athens, in whose time Alexander dies, eleven years. From this to the rule of Germanicus Claudius Caesar, three hundred and sixty-five years; from which time the years down to the death of Commodus, however many are reckoned together, also become plain.

21.140. And after the Greek matters, we must render an account also from the times among the barbarians, according to the greatest intervals. From Adam to the flood are reckoned together two thousand one hundred and forty-eight years, four days; from Shem to Abraham, one thousand two hundred and fifty years; from Isaac to the giving of the inheritance, six hundred and sixteen years. Then from the judges to Samuel, four hundred and sixty-three years, seven months. And after the judges, the years of the kings, five hundred and seventy-two years, six months, ten days. After which times, the years of the Persian kingdom, two hundred and thirty-five; then of the Macedonian, down to the slaying of Antony, three hundred and twelve years, eighteen days. After which time, the kingdom of the Romans, down to the death of Commodus, two hundred and twenty-two years. And again, from the seventy-year captivity and the restoration of the people to the land of their fathers, to the captivity under Vespasian, are reckoned together four hundred and ten years; and lastly, from Vespasian to the death of Commodus, are found a hundred and twenty-one years, six months, twenty-four days.

21.141. And Demetrius says, in his work On the Kings in Judaea, that the tribe of Judah and Benjamin and Levi were not led captive by Sennacherim, but that from this captivity to the last, which Nebuchadnezzar made out of Jerusalem, are a hundred and twenty-eight years, six months. And from the time when the ten tribes became captive out of Samaria, down to Ptolemy the Fourth, five hundred and seventy-three years, nine months; and from the time out of Jerusalem, three hundred and thirty-eight years, three months. And Philo too himself recorded the kings of the Jews, at variance with Demetrius. And further, Eupolemus, in a similar work, says that the whole of the years from Adam to the fifth year of the reign of Demetrius, when Ptolemy was reigning the twelfth year over Egypt, come together to five thousand one hundred and forty-nine years. And from the time when Moses led the Jews out of Egypt to the aforesaid term, are reckoned together one thousand five hundred and eighty years. And from this time down to the consuls in Rome, Gnaeus Domitius and Asinius, are gathered together a hundred and twenty years.

21.142. And Ephorus and many other historians say that there are seventy-five nations and tongues, having heard the voice of Moses, which says: "And all the souls from Jacob, those who went down to Egypt, were seventy-five." And according to the true account too the generic dialects appear to be seventy-two, as our Scriptures hand down; while the other many come about by the sharing of two or three or even more dialects. And a dialect is a manner of speech that shows the proper character of a place, or a manner of speech that shows the proper or common character of a nation. And the Greeks say that the dialects among them are five — the Attic, the Ionic, the Doric, the Aeolic, and fifth the Common — but that the tongues of the barbarians, being innumerable, are not called dialects but languages.

21.143. And Plato assigns even to the gods a certain dialect, judging especially from dreams and oracles, and also from those possessed by demons, who utter not their own voice or dialect, but that of the demons that have entered them. And he thinks there are dialects even of irrational animals, which those of the same kind understand. When an elephant, for instance, fell into the mud and cried out, another that was present and saw what had happened turned back and, after no long while, brings with him a herd of elephants and saves the one that had fallen in. And they say that in Libya a scorpion, if it cannot reach to strike a man, goes off and returns with several others, and, fastening one to another like a chain, in this way contrives to get the start in carrying out the plot — the irrational animals surely not using some unseen nod, nor indicating to one another by gesture, but, I think, by their own dialect. And certain others say that if a fish drawn up escapes when the line has broken, no fish of the same kind will any longer be found in the same place that day. But the first and generic dialects, though barbarian, have their names by nature, since men too confess that the prayers spoken in the barbarian tongue are more powerful. And Plato, in the Cratylus, wishing to interpret "fire," says the name is barbarian; he testifies, at any rate, that the Phrygians so call it, with a small variation.

21.144. And I think it no worse, in addition to these things, to set out also the times of the Roman kings, for the showing of the birth of the Saviour: Augustus forty-three years, Tiberius twenty-two years, Gaius four years, Claudius fourteen years, Nero fourteen years, Galba one year, Vespasian ten years, Titus three years, Domitian fifteen years, Nerva one year, Trajan nineteen years, Hadrian twenty-one years, Antoninus twenty-three years, and likewise again Antoninus and Commodus thirty-two years. The whole, from Augustus to the death of Commodus, is two hundred and twenty-two years; and from Adam to the death of Commodus, five thousand seven hundred and eighty-four years, two months, twelve days. Some, however, record the times of the Roman kings thus: Gaius Julius Caesar three years, four months, six days, after whom Augustus reigned forty-six years, four months, one day; then Tiberius twenty-six years, six months, nineteen days, whom Gaius Caesar succeeds, three years, ten months, eight days; him Claudius, thirteen years, eight months, twenty-eight days; Nero thirteen years, eight months, twenty-eight days; Galba seven months, six days; Otho five months, one day; Vitellius seven months, one day; Vespasian eleven years, eleven months, twenty-two days; Titus two years, two months; Domitian fifteen years, eight months, five days; Nerva one year, four months, ten days; Trajan nineteen years, seven months, fifteen days; Hadrian twenty years, ten months, twenty-eight days; Antoninus twenty-two years, three months, seven days; Marcus Aurelius Antoninus nineteen years, eleven days; Commodus twelve years, nine months, fourteen days. From Julius Caesar, then, to the death of Commodus there are two hundred and thirty-six years, six months. And all the years from Romulus, the founder of Rome, to the death of Commodus, are reckoned together as nine hundred and fifty-three years, six months.

21.145. Our Lord was born in the twenty-eighth year, when the first census was ordered to be made under Augustus. And that this is true is written in the Gospel according to Luke thus: "And in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar the word of the Lord came upon John the son of Zacharias." And again in the same Gospel: "And Jesus was coming to the baptism about thirty years of age." And that he had to preach for only one year, this too is written thus: "He has sent me to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." This both the prophet said and the Gospel. The fifteen years of Tiberius, then, and the fifteen of Augustus — so are fulfilled the thirty years, down to the time when he suffered. And from the time he suffered to the destruction of Jerusalem there are forty-two years, three months; and from the destruction of Jerusalem to the death of Commodus, a hundred and twenty-two years, ten months, thirteen days. So from the time when the Lord was born to the death of Commodus, the whole is a hundred and ninety-four years, one month, thirteen days. And there are those who, more curiously, add to the birth of our Saviour not only the year but also the day, which, they say, was the twenty-fifth of Pachon, in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus.

21.146. And those of the school of Basilides keep also the day of his baptism as a feast, passing the night beforehand in readings. And they say that the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar is the fifteenth of the month Tybi, but some again the eleventh of the same month. And, dealing exactly with his passion, some bring it, in the sixteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, on the twenty-fifth of Phamenoth, others on the twenty-fifth of Pharmuthi; and others say the Saviour suffered on the nineteenth of Pharmuthi. Indeed, some of them say he was born on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of Pharmuthi. And these too must be rendered to the chronography — the days, I mean, at which Daniel hints, from the desolation of Jerusalem . . . the years of Vespasian, seven, eleven months. For the two years are added to the seventeen months and eight days of Otho and Galba and Vitellius, and so come to three years and six months, which is the half of the week, as Daniel the prophet has said. He said that two thousand three hundred days come about from the time the abomination was set up by Nero in the holy city until its destruction. For so the appended text shows: "Until when shall the vision stand — the sacrifice taken away, and the sin of desolation that is given, and the power and the holy place be trodden down together? And he said to him: Until evening and morning, two thousand three hundred days; and the holy place shall be cleansed." These two thousand three hundred days, then, come to six years, four months, of which the half Nero held while reigning, and it became the half of a week; and the other half Vespasian, together with Otho and Galba and Vitellius. And for this reason Daniel says: "Blessed is he who comes to the one thousand three hundred and thirty-five days." For down to these days was the war, and after these it ceased.

21.147. And this number too is shown from the appended passage, which runs thus: "And from the time of the changing of the continual sacrifice, and the giving of the abomination of desolation, a thousand two hundred and ninety days. Blessed is he who endures and comes to the one thousand three hundred and thirty-five days." And Flavius Josephus the Jew, who composed the Jewish histories, bringing down the times, says that from Moses to David are five hundred and eighty-five years; from David to the second year of Vespasian, one thousand one hundred and seventy-nine. Then from this to the tenth year of Antoninus, seventy-seven years; so that from Moses to the tenth year of Antoninus the whole is one thousand eight hundred and thirty-three years. And others, reckoning down to the death of Commodus from Inachus and Moses, said the years come to one thousand eight hundred and forty-two; but others, one thousand and twenty-one. And in the Gospel according to Matthew the genealogy from Abraham is carried down to Mary the mother of the Lord; for, it says, from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, and from David to the removal to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the removal to Babylon to Christ likewise another fourteen generations — three mystical intervals, completed in six weeks.

22.148. Let what has been thus variously recorded by many concerning the times, and set forth by us, so stand. And they say that the Scriptures, both those of the Law and the prophetic, were interpreted from the dialect of the Hebrews into the Greek tongue in the reign of Ptolemy the son of Lagus, or, as some say, of the one surnamed Philadelphus, who brought the greatest ambition to this task, Demetrius of Phalerum having dealt exactly with the matters of the interpretation. For while the Macedonians still held Asia, the king, being ambitious to adorn with all writings the library founded by him in Alexandria, requested the men of Jerusalem to interpret their prophecies into the Greek dialect.

22.149. And they, as being still subject to the Macedonians, chose out from the most approved among them seventy elders, experienced in the Scriptures and skilled in the Greek dialect, and sent them to him, together with the divine books. And when each had interpreted each prophecy separately, by himself, all the interpretations, compared together, agreed both in their sense and in their words; for it was a purpose of God studied for Greek ears. Nor is it strange that, by the inspiration of God who gave the prophecy, the interpretation too should be wrought, as it were, a Greek prophecy, since in the captivity under Nebuchadnezzar too, when the Scriptures had been destroyed, in the times of Artaxerxes the king of the Persians, Esdras the Levite, the priest, becoming inspired, prophesied, renewing again all the ancient Scriptures.

22.150. And Aristobulus, in the first book of his work addressed to Philometor, writes word for word: "And Plato too followed our legislation, and is plainly seen to have worked carefully through each of the things said in it. And before Demetrius it had been interpreted by others, before the conquest of the Persians by Alexander — both the things concerning the leading of the Hebrews, our fellow-citizens, out of Egypt, and the manifestation to them of all that had happened, and the mastery of the land, and the exposition of the whole legislation; so that it is quite plain that the aforesaid philosopher took much from it (for he became a man of much learning), just as Pythagoras too transferred many of our things into his own doctrine-making." And Numenius the Pythagorean philosopher writes outright: "For what is Plato but Moses speaking Attic?" This Moses was a theologian and prophet, and, as some say, an interpreter of sacred laws. His race and his deeds and his life the Scriptures themselves, worthy of trust, proclaim; yet we too must speak of them, as briefly as may be.

23.151. Moses, then, being a Chaldean by descent, is born in Egypt, his forefathers having migrated from Babylon to Egypt on account of a long-lasting famine. Born in the seventh generation and reared royally, he met with such a circumstance as this. The Hebrews having increased to a great multitude in Egypt, the king of the country, fearing a plot from their number, ordered them to rear the females among the children born of the Hebrews (for a woman is weak for war), but to destroy the males, suspicious of a vigorous youth. The child being of noble birth, his parents reared him hidden three months in succession, natural affection conquering the tyrannical cruelty; but afterward, fearing they might perish together with the child, having made a kind of vessel from the native papyrus and placed the child in it, they expose him by the banks of the river, which was marshy; and the child's sister watched, standing at a distance, for what would come about.

23.152. Here the daughter of the king, who for a long time had not conceived but desired children, comes on that day to the river to use it for bathing and sprinkling; and hearing the child wailing, she orders it to be brought to her, and, taking pity, sought a nurse. Then the child's sister, running up, said that she could present to her, if she wished, a Hebrew woman who had given birth not long before, to be a nurse; and when she had agreed and asked her, she brought the mother, who was to be the child's nurse, as though she were some other woman, for a fixed wage. Then the queen gives the child the name Moses, fitly, because she took it up out of the water (for the Egyptians call water mou), into which it had been exposed to die. For they call Moses one who has breathed out his life in the water.

23.153. It is plain, then, that in the earlier time, when the child was circumcised, his parents gave him a name; and he was called Joacheim. And he had also a third name in heaven, after his assumption, as the initiates say, Melchi. And when he came of age, he was taught arithmetic and geometry, rhythm and harmony, and besides metric and music, by the most distinguished of the Egyptians, and further the philosophy through symbols, which they display in the hieroglyphic letters. And the rest of the cyclic education the Greeks taught in Egypt, as for a royal child, as Philo says in his Life of Moses; and he learned besides the letters of the Assyrians and the science of heavenly things both from the Chaldeans and from the Egyptians, whence in the Acts he is said to have been instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. And Eupolemus, in his work On the Kings in Judaea, says that Moses was the first wise man, and the first to hand down grammar to the Jews, and that the Phoenicians received it from the Jews, and the Greeks from the Phoenicians. And, having sprung up to the nature of men, he strained his understanding, zealously following his kindred and ancestral education, until he even struck and killed the Egyptian who had unjustly attacked the Hebrew.

23.154. And the initiates say that he slew the Egyptian by a word alone, just as later Peter, in the Acts, is recorded as having killed by a word those who had embezzled the price of the land and lied. Artapanus, at any rate, in his work On the Jews, relates that Moses, having been shut up in prison by Chenephres the king of the Egyptians, for petitioning that the people be released from Egypt, when the prison was opened by night according to the will of God, came forth and, going to the palace, stood over the sleeping king and roused him; and the king, astonished at what had happened, ordered Moses to tell the name of the God who had sent him; and Moses, bending to his ear, told it; and the king, hearing it, fell speechless, but, held up by Moses, came to life again.

23.155. Concerning the rearing of Moses, Ezekiel too, the poet of the Jewish tragedies, will sing in tune with us, in the drama entitled Exagoge, writing thus in the person of Moses:

"For seeing our race grown numerous enough, King Pharaoh devised much guile against us, torturing some mortals at the brick-making and the heavy buildings, and walling cities, for the sake of his own ill-fated ends. Then he proclaimed to us, the race of the Hebrews, to cast the males into the deep-flowing river. Here my mother who bore me hid me three months, as she said; but, not escaping notice, she put me secretly away, having wrapped a covering about me, by the river's edge, in the deep, shaggy marsh. And Mariam my sister kept watch nearby; and then the king's daughter came down with her maids, to brighten her young skin with bathing. And seeing me at once, and pitying me, she took me up, and knew that I was a Hebrew; and Mariam my sister, running up, says this to the princess: 'Do you wish that I find for you quickly a nurse for this child from among the Hebrews?' And she urged on the girl. And going, she told my mother, and quickly she was present, my mother herself, and took me in her arms. And the king's daughter said: 'Nurse this one, woman, and I will give you your wage.' And she named the name Moses, for the reason that she took me up from the watery river-bank. And when the time of infancy had passed for me, my mother brought me to the princess's halls, having told me everything in story and recounted to me my father's race and the gifts of God. And so, as long as we had the time of childhood, she promised everything by royal rearings and trainings, as though from her own womb. But when the full circle of days was at hand, I went out of the royal house."

23.156. Then, having narrated the struggle of the Hebrew and the Egyptian, and the burial of the Egyptian in the sand, he says thus of the second fight: "'Why do you strike one weaker than yourself?' And he said: 'Who sent you here as a judge or overseer over us? Will you not kill me as you did the man yesterday?' And, afraid, I said: 'How did this become known?'" So he flees from there and tends sheep, being taught beforehand for leadership by the shepherd's craft. For shepherding is a preliminary exercise of kingship for the man who is to preside over the gentlest flock of men, just as hunting is for those naturally inclined to war. And from there God leads him to the command of the Hebrews.

23.157. Then the Egyptians, who were often without understanding, are often admonished; and the Hebrews became spectators of the evils which others endured, learning thoroughly, without danger, the power of God. And further, the Egyptians, not accepting by hearing the effects of the power, the infants disbelieving through folly, then, as has been said, "the infants knew the deed when it was done"; and afterward, going out, the Hebrews carried off much spoil of the Egyptians and departed — not through love of money, as their accusers say (for God did not persuade them to covet others' things), but, first, receiving the necessary wage for what they had served the Egyptians during all that time; and then, in a manner, requiting and paying back the money-loving Egyptians by the carrying off of the spoil, just as those had paid back the Hebrews by their enslavement. So whether one should say this happened as in war — they thought it right to carry off the enemy's things by the law of the conquerors, as stronger over weaker (and the cause of the war was just: the Hebrews came as suppliants to the Egyptians on account of famine; but the Egyptians, having enslaved the strangers, forced them to serve them in the manner of captives, not even paying the wage) — or whether as in peace, they took the spoil as wage from the unwilling, who for a long time did not pay it but defrauded them.

24.158. Moses, then, is to us prophetic, legislative, skilled in tactics, in generalship, in statesmanship, a philosopher. How he was prophetic will be told afterward, when we treat of prophecy. The tactical part would be a part of the generalship, and the generalship of the kingly part; and again the legislative part would be a part of the kingly, as also the judicial. And of the kingly part one portion is divine, that which is according to God and his holy Son, from whom both the goods that come from the earth and the external goods and perfect happiness are supplied; for, "Ask," it says, "for the great things, and the small shall be added to you." And a second kind of kingship, after the pure rational and divine administration, is that which uses for kingship the spirited part of the soul alone — the kind by which Heracles reigned over Argos and Alexander over the Macedonians. And a third is that which aims at the one thing, to conquer and subdue only (and to make the victory toward evil or toward good does not belong to such a one) — which the Persians, marching against Greece, used. For of the spirited part one element is merely contentious, having made its power for the sake of mastering itself; the other is honour-loving, when the soul uses the spirited part for the noble end.

24.159. And fourth, the worst of all, is set down the kingship that is according to the desires, like that of Sardanapallus and of those who make their end in the desires, to gratify as much as possible. And of the kingly art — both that which conquers by virtue and that which conquers by force — the instrument is the tactical; but it is one for one nature and matter, another for another. In arms and the fighting animals, through living and lifeless things, the soul and mind are what marshal; but in the passions of the soul, over which we prevail by virtue, reasoning is the tactical part, setting its seal upon self-control and temperance together with holiness, and good knowledge with truth, referring its end to the reverence of God. For to those who so use virtue, prudence is the marshalling power: in things divine, wisdom; in things human, statesmanship; in all things together, kingship. A king, then, is one who rules according to laws, who has the science of ruling the willing — such as is the Lord, welcoming those who believe in him and through him. For God has handed over all things and subjected all things to Christ our king, that "in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is to the glory of God the Father."

24.160. And the conduct of a campaign is held in three forms: the safe, the hazardous, and the mixed of these; and each of these is composed of three: either by word, or by deeds, or by both of these together. And it will be possible to accomplish all these either by persuading, or by forcing, or by doing wrong in self-defence; among which are included either doing what is just, or lying, or telling the truth, or using some of these together at the same time. And all these, and how one must use each of them, the Greeks, having taken from Moses, have profited by. For the sake of a model I shall mention one or even two examples of generalship. Moses, having led out the people, suspecting that the Egyptians would pursue, left the short and direct road and turned toward the desert, and used the night for the most part of the journey. For there was another dispensation, according to which the Hebrews were being educated through much desert and long time, being accustomed, by sober endurance, to believing only that God is.

24.161. The generalship of Moses, then, teaches that, before the dangers, one must perceive what is useful, and so set about it. Indeed, what he suspected came about; for the Egyptians pursued on horses and chariots, but perished quickly when the sea broke and flooded over them, horses and chariots together, so that not even a remnant of them was left. And after these things a pillar of fire following (for it led on before them) led the Hebrews by night through trackless places, exercising and training them, in toils and journeyings, toward manliness and toward endurance, that the things of the land too might appear good after the trial of what seemed terrible, the land into which he was conducting them out of the pathless region.

24.162. Indeed, having routed the enemies who sat before the country, he killed them, attacking them from a desert and rough road (for such is the virtue of the general). For it was the work of experience and generalship to take the country of the enemy. Perceiving this, Miltiades, the general of the Athenians, who conquered the Persians in the battle at Marathon, imitated this manner: he led the Athenians by night, going through trackless places and eluding the barbarians who watched him. For Hippias, having revolted from the Athenians, brought the barbarians into Attica, and, having seized beforehand the opportune places, kept guard, because he had experience of the country. It was a task, then, to escape Hippias' notice; whence Miltiades, fittingly making use of a trackless way and the night, and attacking the Persians, whom Datis led, accomplished the victory in the contest with those whom he himself led.

24.163. But for Thrasybulus too, when he was bringing back those who had been driven out from Phyle and wished to escape notice, a pillar became a guide, as he went through untrodden places. To Thrasybulus, by night, when the weather had become moonless and stormy, a fire was seen going before, which, having conducted them without stumbling along Munychia, vanished where now the altar of the Light-bearer is. Let our things, then, be made credible to the Greeks even from this, that it is possible for the almighty God to make, going before the Hebrews by night, a pillar of fire, which also led the way for them on the road. And it is said too in a certain oracle: "A pillar to the Thebans is Dionysus, bringer of much joy" — from the history among the Hebrews. But Euripides too, in the Antiope, says: "and within the chambers of the herdsmen, a pillar of the Euian god, crowned with ivy." And the pillar signifies the imagelessness of God; and the lighted pillar, besides signifying the imagelessness, shows the standing and abiding nature of God, and his unchangeable and figureless light.

24.164. So, before the postures of statues were made exact, the ancients, setting up columns, worshipped these as images of God. So the author of the Phoronis writes: "Callithoe, key-bearer of the Olympian queen, Argive Hera, who first adorned with fillets and tassels the long column round the queen." But the author of the Europia too relates that the statue of Apollo at Delphi is a column, in these words: "that we might hang for the god a tithe and first-fruits from the most holy stalls and from the lofty column." Apollo, however, mystically understood by way of privation of the many, is the one God. But that fire which was like a pillar, and the fire that was in the bush, is a symbol of the holy light that passes over from earth and runs up again to heaven through the wood, through which the seeing intelligibly too has been granted to us.

25.165. And Plato the philosopher, helped by the things of Moses concerning legislation, censured the polity of Minos and Lycurgus, as looking to courage alone, but praised, as more venerable, that which says some one thing and ever inclines toward one doctrine; for he says that it is more fitting, by strength and venerableness and prudence, that we should philosophize toward the dignity of heaven, using without change the same judgment about the same things. Does he not, then, interpret the things according to the Law, looking to one God and enjoining the doing of justice? And of the statesman he says there are two kinds, the one named "legal," the other "political" by the same name; and as "political" in the proper sense he hints at the Creator, in the book of that name, and those who look to him and live actively and justly, together with the contemplation, he names "political"; but the "political" called on a par with the "legal" he divides both into a worldly magnanimity and into a private arrangement, which they have named orderliness and harmony and temperance — when rulers are fitting to the ruled, and the ruled become obedient to the rulers, which the work according to Moses is earnest to bring about.

25.166. And further, that the legal pertains to generation, but the political to friendship and concord — Plato, being helped, in the Laws set down the philosopher in the Epinomis, the man who knows the course of all generation through the wandering stars; and another philosopher, the Timaeus, who is astronomical and a contemplator of their motion and of their sympathy and fellowship with one another, he joins, in due order, to the Republic; and then . . . For the end, I think, both of the statesman and of the man who lives according to law is contemplation. It is necessary, then, to take part rightly in civic life, but best to philosophize. For the man who has mind would live having strained all that is his own toward knowledge, having set straight his life by good works, and dishonoured the contrary, and pursued the studies that contribute toward truth. And law is not the things customary (for neither are the things seen sight), nor is it every opinion (for not the worthless), but law is good opinion, and the good is the true, and the true is that which finds the being and attains it. "He who is has sent me," says Moses. By which some, following, of course, the good opinion, called law right reason, enjoining what is to be done and forbidding what is not to be done.

26.167. Hence the law is rightly said to have been given through Moses, being a rule of just and unjust things. And this we may properly call an ordinance, the one handed down by God through Moses. For it has the leading toward the divine. And Paul too says: "The law was added for the sake of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom it was promised." Then, as if explaining further the meaning, he adds: "But before faith came we were kept guarded under the law, shut up" — by fear, that is, from sins — "toward the faith that was about to be revealed. So that the law became our schoolmaster toward Christ, that we might be justified by faith." And the legislator is one who assigns what is fitting to each part of the soul and to its works; and Moses, to speak briefly, was a living law, governed by the good Word.

26.168. He administered, at any rate, a good polity; and this is the noble nourishment of men in fellowship. So he handled the judicial art, which is a science correcting the things sinned, for the sake of justice. And of the same row with it is the punitive, which is a science of the measure in punishments. And punishment, being just, is a correction of the soul. And, to speak generally, the whole conduct of Moses is educative of those able to become noble and good men, and a hunting of such men, which would be generalship. And the wisdom that uses, in due manner, those hunted by reason, would be the legislative; for to acquire and to use this belongs to the most kingly art. For the philosophers proclaim the wise man alone king, legislator, general, just, holy, dear to God. And if we should find these things about Moses, as is shown from the Scriptures themselves, we might declare, with very full conviction, that Moses was truly wise.

26.169. As, then, we say that the shepherd's art is to take forethought for the sheep — "the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" — so we shall say that the legislative art is to bring about the virtue of men, rekindling the human good according to its power, being a thing that presides over and cares for the herd of men. And if the flock allegorized by the Lord is nothing other than a certain herd of men, the same will be both shepherd and good legislator of the one herd of the sheep that hear him — the one guardian, who seeks out and finds the lost by law and by reason, if indeed the law is spiritual and leads to happiness; for the man who has become spiritual by the Holy Spirit is spiritual. And this is the legislator in truth, who not only professes good and noble things but also knows them. And his law — the law of the one who has the knowledge — is the saving command; or rather, the law is the command of knowledge, for the Word of God is power and wisdom. And he himself again is the expounder of laws, through whom the law was given, the first expounder of the divine commands, the only-begotten Son who expounds the bosom of the Father.

26.170. Then those who obey the law, by having some knowledge of it, can neither disbelieve nor be ignorant of the truth; but those who disbelieve, and have least of all wished to be among the works, are confessed, if any others, to be ignorant of the truth. What, then, is the unbelief of the Greeks? Is it not their unwillingness, somehow, to obey the truth which says that the law was given by God through Moses — when they themselves, out of their own, honour Moses? For they relate that Minos received his laws from Zeus every ninth year, going to the cave of Zeus; and Plato and Aristotle and Ephorus write that Lycurgus was educated in legislation by continually going to Delphi to Apollo; and Chamaeleon of Heraclea, in his work On Drunkenness, and Aristotle, in his Constitution of the Locrians, record that Zaleucus the Locrian received his laws from Athena. But those who, exalting the trustworthiness of the legislation among the Greeks, so far as they can, toward the divine, after the image of the prophecy according to Moses, are without sense, in that they do not at once confess both the truth and the archetype of the things recorded among them.

27.171. Let no one, then, run down the law on account of the punishments, as though it were not noble and good. For the man who removes a disease of the body will be thought a benefactor, and shall not the man who tries to free the soul of injustice be all the more its guardian, by as much as the soul is more honourable than the body? But for the health of the body we submit to incisions and cauteries and the drinking of drugs, and the one who applies these is called a saviour and a physician — not out of any grudge or ill-will toward the patient, but as the reason of the art dictates — even cutting off certain parts, that the healthy may not be corrupted along with them; and no one would charge the physician's art with wickedness. And shall we not, for the soul's sake, likewise submit, whether it be banishment, or the paying of penalties, or bonds, if only one is ever to gain righteousness out of injustice? For the law, caring for its subjects, educates toward the reverence of God and dictates what is to be done, and keeps back each of the sins, imposing penalties on the moderate ones; but whenever it sees someone so disposed as to seem incurable, driving on to the extreme of injustice, then at last, caring for the others, that they may not be corrupted by him, as though cutting off a part of the whole body, it puts such a one to death in the most wholesome way.

27.172. "And being judged by the Lord," says the Apostle, "we are disciplined, that we may not be condemned with the world." For the prophet said before: "Disciplining, the Lord disciplined me, but to death he did not hand me over." "For, in order to teach you his righteousness," it says, "he disciplined you and tested you and made you hunger and made you thirst in a desert land, that all his ordinances and judgments might be known in your heart, all that I command you today; and you shall know in your heart that, as a man might discipline his son, so the Lord our God will discipline you." And that the example brings to soberness, it says at once: "The cunning man, seeing the wicked man punished severely, is himself disciplined."

27.173. For "the fear of the Lord is the offspring of wisdom." And it is the greatest and most perfect good, when one is able to bring someone over from acting badly to virtue and well-doing — which the law accomplishes. So that even when one falls into some incurable evil, having been seized by injustice and greed, he would be benefited by being put to death; for the law is a benefactor, able both to make the unjust just, if only they will hearken to it, and to free the others from present evils. For it promises immortality to those who have chosen to live temperately and justly. And to know the law belongs to a good understanding. And again: "Bad men do not understand the law, but those who seek the Lord will have understanding in every good thing." The administering providence must, then, be both sovereign and good. For by both the power administers salvation: the one bringing to soberness by punishment, as sovereign; the other showing kindness through well-doing, as benefactress. And it is possible not to be a son of disobedience, but to pass over from darkness to life, and, having set one's ear to wisdom, to be by law a servant of God — at the first a slave, then a faithful attendant, fearing the Lord God; and if one should advance, to be reckoned among the sons, and, when love covers a multitude of sins, having grown in love, to await the perfecting of the blessed hope, the man enrolled in the elect adoption that is called the friend of God, already singing the prayer and saying: "Let the Lord become to me a God."

27.174. And the Apostle has shown the beneficence of the law, through the passage about the Jews, writing somewhat thus: "But if you are surnamed a Jew and rest upon the law and boast in God and know his will and approve the things that differ, being instructed out of the law, and have persuaded yourself that you are a guide of the blind, a light to those in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, having the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law." For it is confessed that the law can do these things, even if those who do not order their lives according to the law boast as though living in the law. "And blessed is the man who has found wisdom, and the mortal who has seen prudence; and from her mouth" — that is, of wisdom — "righteousness goes forth, and she bears law and mercy upon her tongue." For of one Lord, who is the power and wisdom of God, is the activity, both the law and the Gospel; and the fear which the law begot, this is merciful unto salvation. "And let not mercies and faith and truth fail you, but fasten them about your neck."

27.175. And, like Paul, the prophecy reproaches the people as not understanding the law: "Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known; there is no fear of God before their eyes. Professing to be wise, they were made foolish." "And we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully; but those who wish to be teachers of the law," says the Apostle, "understand neither what they say nor concerning what they affirm; and the end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and unfeigned faith."

28.176. The philosophy according to Moses, then, is divided into four parts: into the historical and the properly so-called legislative, which would be the proper concerns of ethical treatment; the third into the part concerning sacred service, which already belongs to natural contemplation; and fourth, above all, the theological kind, the higher vision, which Plato says is of the truly great mysteries, and which Aristotle calls the kind that comes "after the natural things" (the metaphysical). And the dialectic according to Plato, as he says in the Statesman, is a certain science discovering the disclosure of the things that are; and it is to be acquired by the temperate man, not for the sake of saying or doing anything toward men, as the dialecticians now do who busy themselves about sophistical things, but for being able both to say what is pleasing to God and to do what is pleasing to him, the whole according to one's power.

28.177. And the true dialectic, being mixed with the true philosophy, examining the things and testing the powers and authorities, ascends up to the essence most sovereign of all, and dares beyond, to the God of the universe, professing not experience of mortal things but knowledge of things divine and heavenly, with which there follows also the proper use of human things, both in words and in actions. With reason, then, the Scripture too, wishing us to become such dialecticians, exhorts thus: "Become approved bankers, rejecting some things, but holding fast the good." For this is in truth the dialectic — a prudence that divides about the objects of thought, and shows each of the things that are unmixed and pure in its underlying nature, or a power that divides about the genera of things, descending to the most particular, presenting each of the things that are pure, such as it is, to appear.

28.178. Wherefore this alone leads by the hand to the true wisdom, which is a divine power, knowing the things that are as they are, having the perfect, freed from all passion — not without the Saviour, who, by the divine Word, has drawn off from the seeing part of our soul the misty ignorance poured over it by base conduct, and given back the best, "that we might know well both god and man." This is he who has in truth shown how one must know oneself; this is he who uncovers the Father of the universe to whomever he wishes, so far as human nature can hold it. "For no one knew the Son but the Father, nor the Father but the Son and he to whom the Son reveals him."

28.179. With reason, then, the Apostle says that by revelation he came to know the mystery: "As I wrote before in brief, by which, when you read, you can perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ." "By which you can," he said, since he knew that some had received milk only, and not yet solid food — and indeed not simply milk. And we must take the meaning of the law in three ways: either as showing forth a sign, or as confirming a commandment toward right conduct of life, or as prophesying as prophecy. And I know well that to discern and to tell such things belongs to men; for the whole of Scripture is not, for understanding, "one Myconos," as the proverb-makers say; but one must approach it as dialectically as possible, hunting for the sequence of the divine teaching.

29.180. Hence most nobly the Egyptian priest in Plato: "O Solon, Solon," he said, "you Greeks are always children, having in your souls not a single ancient opinion through old hearing, and there is no aged Greek" — calling "aged," I think, those who know the more ancient things, that is, our things, just as, on the contrary, "young" those who know the newer things and the things practised by the Greeks, the things that happened yesterday and lately, but who record them as old and ancient. So he added: "learning grown grey with time," we using the metaphor in a certain barbarian way, unaffected and not over-precise. So the well-disposed approach the whole figure of the interpretation simply. And of the Greeks he says that their conceit differs little from children's stories; for we must not understand children's fables, nor yet the fables made for children; and he called the very fables "children," as if the reputed wise among the Greeks saw but little, hinting at "the grey learning," the truth most ancient among the barbarians; to which word he opposed "child's fable," refuting the fabulous character of the attempt of the newer men, as having, like children, nothing older — presenting both their fables and their discourses together as childish.

29.181. Divinely, then, the power that speaks the visions to Hermas by revelation says that both the visions and the revelations are for the sake of the double-minded, who reason in their hearts whether these things are or are not. And likewise the demonstrations that come from the abundance of wide learning strengthen and make firm and ground the demonstrative arguments, as far as their minds, being still young, flutter. "A lamp, then, is a good commandment," according to the Scripture, "and the law is a light of the way; for education reproves the ways of life." "Law, the king of all, both mortals and immortals," says Pindar. And I understand by this the one who established the law; and the saying of Hesiod too I take to have been spoken of the God of all, even if it was said by the poet conjecturally and not comprehensibly: "This law the son of Cronus ordained for men: for fishes and beasts and winged birds, to devour one another, since there is no justice among them; but to men he gave justice, which is far the best."

29.182. Whether, then, he means the law given together with generation, or the one given afterward — yet from God is both the law of nature and the law of learning, being one, as Plato too in the Statesman says there is one legislator, and in the Laws one who will understand the things of music, teaching by these that the Word is one and God is one. And Moses is plainly seen calling the Lord a covenant: "Behold," he says, "my covenant is with you"; since he had said before "covenant," . . . not to seek it in writing. For there is a covenant which God, the cause of the universe, establishes; and "God" is named from "establishing" (thesis) and ordering, the arrangement of the world. And in the Preaching of Peter you would find the Lord called both law and Word. But let this first Miscellany of gnostic notes according to the true philosophy be here circumscribed for us.