Praeparatio evangelica

7. The seventh book of the Preparation for the Gospel contains the following: 1. On the life of the ancient Hebrews and how we reasonably preferred their inspired scriptures to the ancestral accounts. 2. A recapitulation of the theology among the other nations and of what evils it was the cause in life. 3. A presentation of the manner of the Hebrews and how they thought concerning the maker and creator of the universe. 4. How they thought concerning the immortality of the soul and concerning the substance of bodies. 5. How, being lovers of God, they were deemed worthy of recorded theophanies and oracles. 6. That they were outside Judaism before Moses arose, having shone in piety. 7. How Moses himself recorded the lives of the Hebrews before his own time in his own writing. 8. How we accepted the history of these matters with reasonable judgment and sound reasoning. 9. A survey of the lives in question, both of the God-loving men before the flood and of those who continued afterward up to the generation of Moses. 10. On the doctrinal teachings among the Hebrews. 11. On universal providence. 12. On the constitution and creation of the world. 13. Opinions of the Hebrews concerning God, who is indeed the first cause of all things. 14. On the theology of the second cause. 15. On the constitution of rational beings. 16. On the opposing power. 17. On the nature of man. 18. On the fact that matter is not ungenerated. 19. That matter is neither ungenerated nor the cause of evils.

1. On the life of the ancient Hebrews and how we reasonably preferred their inspired scriptures to the ancestral accounts. It remains now to describe the manner of life of the Hebrews, and their philosophy and piety, which we have preferred to all ancestral traditions. For since we have not without reason, but by a considered and sober judgment, abandoned the false theology of all Greeks and barbarians alike, and have taken our stand, it is now time to resolve the second question, giving the reason for our adoption of the Hebrew writings. That no blame attaches to us for taking what is beneficial from barbarians we shall show at the proper time, by demonstrating that all philosophical learning, and all other common knowledge useful for civil life, were derived by the Greeks, even by their most celebrated philosophers, from barbarians; but that nothing has been found among any nations at all comparable to the good which we have obtained from the Hebrews will be made evident here.

2. Recapitulation of the theology among the other nations and of what evils it was the cause in life. All the rest of mankind, from the earliest establishment of life and into subsequent time, having applied themselves only to the perception of bodies, because they had formed no conception of the soul within them and considered that nothing beyond what is seen exists among beings, assigned the beautiful, the advantageous, and the only good to the pleasure of bodies. And this alone, as being the only good, agreeable, and pleasant, and self-sufficient for the enjoyment of a happy life, they posited as most to be sought after, and they considered and deified it as the greatest of gods, not even desiring life itself unless it partook of bodily pleasure, and embracing living not for the sake of living, but for the sake of living pleasantly, praying that this be present to their own children as the only good. Hence some, supposing that the sun, moon, and stars are the providers of embodied life, and being somehow struck by the sight of light, first proclaimed them gods, declaring them to be the sole causes of all things. Others honored the fruits of the earth, and the moist, dry, and hot substance, and the remaining parts of the world, through which their bodies, being nourished and fattened, sought after embodied life and pleasure, again with the appellation of gods. Others, much earlier than these, with bare and uncovered head, deified their own passions and their mistress pleasure, saying that Eros, Pothos, and Aphrodite rule even over the gods themselves.

Others deified certain men, tyrants and potentates, who became providers and inventors of pleasures for them, because of the enjoyments they received from them, both while they were still alive and after their death. Others, having become playthings of base spirits and demons, further increased the passionate part of their soul, procuring pleasures even from these through their customary worship. Others, rejecting none of these, introduced atheism as far superior to such theology. Others, more shameless than all these, declared that the philosophical and thrice-blessed life is nothing other than the pleasant life, defining pleasure as the end of goods. Thus the whole human race, enslaved as to a bitter and most harsh mistress—pleasure as a god, or rather a shameful and licentious demon—was embroiled in all kinds of miseries. "For their females," according to the holy apostle, "changed the natural use into that which is contrary to nature.

Similarly, the males, abandoning the natural use of the female, were inflamed in their desire for one another, males working shame upon males and receiving in themselves the recompense that their error deserved. In this way, both Greeks and barbarians, wise and ignorant, prostrating themselves on the ground and on their bellies, worshipped pleasure as a god, casting themselves prone like reptiles, and they considered and cherished this as an invincible and inexorable deity, in songs and hymns, in festivals of the gods, in public spectacles, initiating and celebrating only the orgies and indecent rites of shameful and licentious pleasure, so that, if anything else, this too has been well abolished among us: "For the beginning of fornication is the invention of idols." And the theology of the other nations had taken on such multiplicity, to speak briefly, attached to one principle, that of impure and defiling pleasure, but brought forth like a many-necked and many-headed hydra into many and varied divisions and branches. Since, then, they had set before themselves such an error, it was fitting that evils were gathered together for them by evils, as they used pleasure as a god and an evil demon, defiling their entire life with woman-madness, corruption of males, marriages to mothers, and intercourse with daughters, surpassing even the wild and bestial nature by an excess of depravity. Such, then, is the character of the ancient nations and their false theology, as has been demonstrated through the Greek logographers and philosophers collected by us in the preceding passages.

3. EXPOSITION OF THE HEBREW WAY AND HOW THEY GLORIFIED THE MAKER AND CREATOR OF ALL THINGS

If, then, the life of the ancients is clear to you, consider now in your mind that only the children of the Hebrews went the opposite way among so many. For they first and alone of all men, from the beginning of life, devoting their mind to rational contemplation and piously applying themselves to the natural philosophy of the universe, first learned that the elements of bodies—earth, water, air, fire, of which this universe is composed—as well as the sun, moon, and stars, are not gods but works of God, having understood that the nature of bodily substance is not only irrational but also inanimate, inasmuch as it is flowing and perishable. And then they reasoned that it is not possible for the order of the whole cosmos, well and wisely fitted together and full of animate beings, both rational and irrational, to ascribe its cause to chance, nor to suppose that the creative principle of animate things is inanimate, nor that the maker of rational beings is irrational; since neither would a building of wood and stone ever come together by chance, nor would a garment be completed without a weaver, nor would cities and constitutions exist without laws and ruling order, nor a ship without a pilot, nor would even the smallest instrument of art subsist without an artisan, nor would a well-harbored ship ever find a harbor without a good pilot. Therefore, neither will the nature of the elements as a whole, being inanimate and irrational, by its own account endure without the supreme wisdom, word, and life of God.

Having pondered these and similar thoughts, the fathers of Hebrew piety, with purified mind and the clear eyes of the soul, revered the creator god of all things from the magnitude and beauty of the creations.

4. HOW THEY THOUGHT ABOUT THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL AND ABOUT THE SUBSTANCE OF BODIES Then, perceiving themselves to be no small part of the whole, they considered that one part of themselves was honorable, and this was the true human being, conceived according to the soul, while the other part served as the place of its covering; and this was the body. And having made this distinction in this way, they devoted all care and zeal to the life of the inner human being, reasoning that this was also dear to the creator god of all things, who somewhere granted the human race dominion over all things on earth not by bodily strength but by virtue of soul; for some beings are soulless, such as stones and wood, others partake of vital power, such as plants from the earth, others are allotted sensation and impulsive imagination, such as irrational animals; and all these are enslaved to the single race of humans for service, constrained not by bodily strength and might, but by reason and virtue of soul, by which they understood that the ruling and kingly prerogative over all things on earth had been granted from above by the cause of all things.

Starting from this, they resolved to honor the body and bodily pleasures no more than the other creatures on the earth, but to regard the ruling element within themselves, as akin to the ruler of all, and the rational, intellectual, divine, and scientific part of the soul, as bearing the likeness of the god over all, as their sole concern. Then, considering nothing else to be good except the god who is the giver of all goods, they declared that the end of all happiness is knowledge of and friendship with him, because he alone is the cause of life itself, soul, body, and the necessities for these. Therefore, offering themselves entirely, body and soul, they dedicated themselves to him, suspending their whole life upon him, and deigning to attend to him alone and to nothing else among visible things. Thus appearing both lovers of god and beloved of god, they were shown to be truly servants and priests of the Most High, and were deemed worthy to be called a "chosen race," a "royal priesthood" of god, and a "holy nation," leaving a seed of this true piety to their posterity. Do you think, then, that by reason we have preferred these to the Greek, and to the Phoenician and Egyptian gods, and to the impious absurdities concerning the gods, and have accepted the Hebrew accounts of pious men?

5. How, having become lovers of God, they were deemed worthy of unwritten theophanies and oracles. See, then, to what extent they say the men in question advanced in godly virtue. The divine, having accepted their piety in other aspects of life, their philosophy, and their service to it, now deemed them worthy of more divine oracles, theophanies, and angelic visions, correcting what was lacking in mortal nature through precepts of what must be done, and revealing to them knowledge of doctrines and teachings befitting God, so that their minds were no longer illuminated by syllogisms or conjectures, but by the radiance of truth itself, so that they, now inspired, could contemplate the future as if present and prophesy what would happen to the human race in general. Such are the much-hymned and truly god-loving records of Hebrew virtue, which we have preferred over Greek and ancestral myths and nonsense; for the latter contained the most shameful things about gods, while the former contained pious teachings about god-loving men.

6. How They Were Outside Judaism Before Moses, Having Shone in Piety

These things were known long before, even before Moses and the race of the Jews came into being, from a remote age among the ancestors of the Jews. For it is also good to articulate this, that Judaism did not yet exist then, but the persons indicated were Hebrews both in name and in manner, while they were neither Jews nor called such. You may understand the difference between Hebrews and Jews as follows: the name of the latter derives from Judah, from whose tribe the kingdom of the Jews was established much later in time, while the former were named after Eber, who was the forefather of Abraham, and the sacred writings teach that Hebrews preceded Jews. As for the manner of piety, for the Jews Moses first began the legislation, delivering a certain day of the Sabbath and very great observance of it as a reminder of leisure for sacred discourses, a distinction between edible and inedible animals, annual feasts, and certain purifications of bodies and other rites of a long cycle performed according to more divine symbols. But the Hebrews, being older than Moses in time and unacquainted with all the legislation through Moses, accomplished a free and unconstrained manner of piety, adorned with a life according to nature, so as to be without need of laws.

they needed no rulers for themselves because of the extreme dispassion of their soul, and had taken up true knowledge of the doctrines concerning God. But since these matters have been stated in this way, it is time to proceed also through the written records.

7. How Moses Himself, a Hebrew, Has Recorded in His Own Scripture the Lives of the Hebrews Before His Time. The great theologian Moses, being a Hebrew of Hebrews, if anyone was, and well acquainted with the ancestral traditions, has in the prefaces of his sacred laws handed down to indelible memory the lives of the Hebrew forefathers—both the good things of which they were deemed worthy by God, and again the ways and punishments of others who were godless and impious—deeming it necessary that this should be a lesson for those who were to be instructed in his laws, both for avoiding imitation of the wicked and for encouragement toward the life of the pious. Moreover, it was necessary not to be ignorant that already, even before his written laws, many of the forefathers had been adorned with right reason and the virtue of piety; and these, having been called friends of God and prophets, obtained eternal remembrance with him, and their race was not alien to those for whom he was ordaining the laws. Therefore, it was all the more necessary that they, being descendants of god-loving and righteous men, should show themselves emulous of the piety of their forefathers and hasten to obtain from God the same things as their ancestors, and not grow slack or shrink back, despairing of the hope of good things as if they were impossible; for what had been fully accomplished by their own forefathers was possible.

of whom he also handed down the images to those being instructed in divine matters, recounting the lives of the ancients and delineating the particular virtue of each one as if in a painted image.

8. 9. How we have accepted the history of these matters with reasonable judgment and sound reasoning, and a survey of the God-beloved men before the flood and up to Moses. And none of these things prevents us from running through the history briefly. Now before the flood, as the writing of Moses himself contains—for it is necessary, I think, to examine the ancestral traditions of the Hebrews from no other source than again from within, just as we learned Egyptian matters from Egyptians and Phoenician matters from their own people, and again Greek matters from those distinguished in these things, and philosophical matters from philosophers, but not from those inexperienced in philosophy; and from what other source would it be fitting to inquire into medical matters than from the experts? So accordingly I think it necessary to accept the Hebrew matters from the oracles among the Hebrews, and not from anywhere else. Therefore, as the account among them holds, from the beginning, before the flood, from the first generation of men and in the subsequent successions, there were certain God-beloved and righteous men in greater number. Of these, one "hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God"; this indicates that no one except the one over all claimed the creator as both master and God of all.

For he was persuaded not only that the whole had been well and orderly arranged by a creative power, but also that, like a master of a great city, the one who rules, administers, and governs the entire universe is at once lord, king, and god. This one, the God-beloved indicated, first conceived the notion and appellation of him as lord and god, and in place of all existence, title, and possession—or rather, in place of every good—"hoped to invoke the name of the Lord God," having procured for himself this treasure of goods for both soul and body alike. For this reason he is recorded among the Hebrews as having first been called a true man. He is named Enos, which means "true man," by a fitting appellation. For they say that no other should be considered and called a true man than one who partakes of the knowledge of God and piety, the truly gnostic and pious alike; since those who are not such, differing in no way from irrational beasts, prostrate on their bellies for the sake of pleasure, the Hebrew scripture teaches to call beasts rather than men, being accustomed to use names with precise meaning. For this reason it is wont to address such persons sometimes as wolves and dogs, sometimes as swine wallowing and delighting in filth, and again as reptiles and snakes, corresponding to the manifold forms of vice.

But if ever it is necessary to indicate the common and many man and the race itself, again using a proper and fitting appellation it signifies the whole man by the name Adam, because this is the proper and fitting name for the ancestor and forefather of all men, indicating the earth-born according to the translation into the Greek language. For Enos is recorded among the Hebrews as the first God-loving man, since he first "hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God," representing the truly rational and knowing soul and the scientific understanding of piety concerning the divine; of which the first would be demonstrative of true knowledge of God, the second of hope in the God who has been recognized. For not to neglect nor to place in second place the matters of divine recognition, but always and through everything to hope "to call upon the name of the Lord God," the one as of servants towards a master, the other as towards a gracious and good father, this would be the thrice-blessed end of all. Such then is the first and true man introduced among the Hebrews, not the earth-born called Adam who fell from the better portion through transgression of a command of God, but the very first God-loving man, who "hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God." Having judged with prudent reason, we ourselves have loved to emulate such a man, and have accepted as beneficial and most useful to us the narrative of the word, making a prayer equally with the image of the one indicated to call upon the name of the creator and master of all with firm and good hope.

But after the one mentioned, another "pleased the Lord and was not found," as Moses says, "because God translated him" on account of extreme perfection of virtue. For the truly wise man is hard to find. This would be the one perfect in God, the one translated from the company of the many. For he who is not such, pursuing marketplaces and law courts, retail trade and commerce, and the great crowd, jostling and being jostled, is swallowed up in the midst of the abyss of vice; but he who is taken by God and translated from here to there is invisible and undiscoverable to men, but having become a friend to God, is found by God. This one Enoch names "friend" in Hebrew; and the name would signify "grace of God." And therefore, deeming the life of this good image blessed, we have thought it worthy of emulation. A third after these, another "righteous man" having appeared, Noah, is testified to "in his generation." And evidence of his righteousness would be these things: a great drought and darkness of unspeakable wickedness had seized the whole race of men, and the giants, celebrated in everyone's mouth, were accomplishing the god-fights, proclaimed to this day, with impious and unholy undertakings; and already those of their generation

cause, whether they were of some better portion than the mortal nature or however constituted, having begun the superfluous teaching among men, are said to have handed down to life the contrivances of sorcery and other evil magic, so that the whole human race would be subject to one judgment from God. And indeed, when all were about to be destroyed by a single nod, only this one man now revealed to us was found righteous in his generation together with his household. When all on earth were perishing by flood and the earth itself was being cleansed of former evils by a sudden inundation of waters, the God-beloved, together with his children and wives, was most paradoxically preserved by God as a live spark for the subsequent life. And this man would be an archetypal living and animate image, providing an example of a God-beloved way of life to those born from him. Such were those before the flood; after it, others again were distinguished in piety, whose memory the sacred oracles preserve. One of these is called a priest of the highest God, a righteous king, named by the Hebrew appellation. To all these there was no account of bodily circumcision, nor of the Mosaic Jewish commandments; therefore it is not right to call them Jews, nor yet Greeks, because they did not believe in many gods like the Greeks or the other nations. They would more properly be called Hebrews, either from Heber or rather from the interpretation of the name. For they are interpreted as "those who cross over," having set out from here to the crossing and contemplation of the God of all.

For by natural reasoning and unwritten laws they directed the right path of virtue, and are recorded as having advanced beyond the pleasures of the flesh to a life of perfect wisdom and piety. Among all these, let the much-proclaimed founder of the whole nation, Abraham, be numbered, to whom the scriptures bear witness for righteousness—not that from the law of Moses again, since Moses did not yet exist, for Moses appeared in the seventh generation after Abraham; but this man is declared righteous and pious, if anyone is, in a manner similar to those previously mentioned. So the scripture says: "And Abraham believed in God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." The divine oracle proclaims that he will be "father of many nations," and expressly that "in him" it says "all the nations of the earth and all the tribes will be blessed," directly prophesying what is now being fulfilled in our time. But that Abraham, after his perfection in righteousness—not through the law of Moses, but through faith accomplished by him—and after the recorded theophanies, when in his old age he was about to become the father of a legitimate son, was the first of all, according to an oracle, to circumcise his body, and handed this down to be performed by those born from him, whether as a visible sign of the multitude of his children, or so that his children might have a hereditary mark, either living according to the zeal of their ancestors or falling short of their virtue, or for any other reasons whatsoever, which it is not now the time to investigate. Such then is this man, and we pray to imitate and emulate him along with the others.

After Abraham, Isaac is shown as the successor of both his father's knowledge of God and his love for God, having inherited from his father this most excellent and thrice-blessed of all inheritances. The divine oracles say that he consorted with one wife and engaged in a single procreation; and having been shown to be the father of twin offspring, he is said to have confined his intercourse with his wife to this, by an excess of temperance. Let Jacob, also called Israel, be introduced to you here, a man who bore two names corresponding to the differing progress of his own virtues. Now when he was training himself in practical habits and lives and was attempting the labors of piety, his name was Jacob, and the name, when translated into the Greek language, signifies an ascetic and an athlete; but when, having received the prizes of victory over his adversaries, he is crowned and already enjoys the goods of contemplation, then the God who gives oracles changes his name for him, at the same time deeming him worthy of the vision of God and bestowing upon him through the name the rewards of more divine honors and privileges. For the oracle says to him: "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name, because you have prevailed with God and are powerful with men," indicating the man of vision and contemplation, since the changed name signifies a man who sees God. Such then is this man, from whom the twelve-tribe race of the Jewish nation originated. Countless things could be said about the life of these men and their philosophical endurance and asceticism, some understood literally, others allegorically through underlying meanings.

Concerning these things it has been spoken by others, and also by us in the works we have composed "On the Many Children of the Ancient Men." Such then are these men. I have for you, besides them, another to mention, a man named Job, whom the sacred oracles testify to have been "a blameless, truthful, righteous, god-fearing man, abstaining from every evil deed." This man, indeed, though in no way belonging to the race of the Jews, is attested in all the achievements of piety. The sons of Jacob, moreover, having made the ancestral knowledge of God and piety their earnest concern, advanced the reputation of the ancient Hebrews to great glory, so that they even assumed rule over all Egypt. For Joseph, having first been crowned with the prizes of temperance and then having taken up the leadership of the Egyptians, displayed the god-beloved way of the Hebrews, which we ourselves have made it our prayer to emulate, for he became a slave through the conspiracy of his own people and a slave of an Egyptian man. As for the other things, such as the comeliness, strength of body, and beauty that were his good fortune, I think I shall pass them by, even if the oracles record that he surpassed all in the bloom of beauty; but as for the matters of the soul, how could one describe them, having chosen to set forth the praise of the man's virtue in a manner worthy of it? By nature, it is said, the mark of his free spirit was present in him, and the nobility of his character blossomed upon his countenance.

Among those who excelled in piety he was especially trained, so that his soul shone in temperance, justice, prudence, and courage, and far earlier in the knowledge and piety of the God of all, which his parents are said to have implanted in his soul from infancy. But when the wife of his master, maddened with passion, tried to drag his young body into licentious and amorous encounters, first attempting to deceive him with words, then beseeching him with entreaties, and finally daring to lay hands on him more violently and using shameless and brazen embraces, the hero, recalling the memory of his parents’ pious teaching and showing himself both in deeds and words to be a god-fearing and true Hebrew, shook off the shameful and licentious woman, thrusting her aside with a stronger hand, and, as if escaping from some terrible and rabid beast, secured his safety by flight. Then, with sober reasoning, he reflected within himself and said: “If my master knows nothing through me in his own house and has placed all that is his into my hands, how can I commit this great evil deed and sin before God?” After this, as if crowning him with the prizes of virtue, the God of all granted him kingship and rule over his masters and over Egypt itself. But this man too was a Hebrew from

of the Hebrews, not a Jew, since the Jewish nation did not yet exist, is counted among the most god-beloved and thrice-blessed. After the aforementioned Hebrews, when the race of their descendants had already increased to a multitude and the nation of the Jews had been constituted from them, and they were daily becoming more numerous and multiplying, the pious training of the ancient god-beloved forefathers gradually weakened and became dulled among them, while the influence of their sojourn among the Egyptians so prevailed over the multitude in question that they fell into forgetfulness of their ancestral virtue and were turned aside to the Egyptian way of life, so that they seemed to differ in no respect from the Egyptians in their manner. When they had thus become such, the God of their forefathers sends them a leader and lawgiver, Moses, confirming through oracles the promises made to their ancestors; and then through Moses, after accomplishing the recorded wonders and extraordinary divine signs, he sets forth a law suited to the characters of his hearers—not, indeed, to those who through stupidity of character were zealous for ancestral virtue, but to those whose souls were passionate and diseased, he delivered a polity appropriate to them, prescribing some things openly from the obvious, and hinting at others through hidden meanings, symbols, and shadows, but not enjoining them to preserve and observe naked truth.

And indeed the polity of the Jews, beginning from Moses at some point and continuing until the advent of our savior Jesus Christ, endures in accordance with the voices of their own prophets, because this too was an oracle of Moses himself and of the subsequent prophets, that the laws and ordinances of Moses would not cease before the appearance of Christ, that is, the things of the new covenant proclaimed through our savior to all nations; and this has here reached its fulfillment, as has been proclaimed. But since we have briefly gone through the life of the Hebrews before Moses and have set forth the character of their piety, it is time to examine their doctrinal manner from the writing of Moses and the prophets after him.

10. ON THE DOGMATIC THEOREMS AMONG THE HEBREWS. First of all, then, that marvelous theologian and lawgiver himself, laying down for the Jewish nation a polity befitting piety through his own writing, did not think it necessary to use the common and well-worn preludes of discourse, but, anticipating every prescriptive law of what must be done and prohibitive of what must not be done, and the public and political ordinances concerning contracts with one another, he thought it necessary to make the beginning of his teaching from the ancestral theology, considering no other learning suitable for laws pertaining to piety than the theology that came to him from above, from his forefathers.

It begins, therefore, from God according to the ancestral theology of the Hebrew forefathers, not as was customary for the Egyptians, nor similarly for the Phoenicians or the other nations who cast the venerable appellation into a multitude, considering as visible gods the luminaries in the heavens, and as invisible and unseen gods either the departed from among men or the chthonic and aerial daemons, as has been refuted by us earlier. But rather, having made the beginning of the entire account from the cause of all visible and invisible things, the creator, it teaches that this one is the lawgiver of the constitution of the whole, having established him as king of the cosmos, as of some single great city. It instructs, therefore, beginning from this, that he rules not only as the author and lord of the laws that will shortly thereafter be ordained for men by him, but also of those in the nature of the whole.

11. 12. ON UNIVERSAL PROVIDENCE AND ON THE CONSTITUTION AND CREATION OF THE COSMOS. For it teaches that he alone is king and lawgiver set over the ordering of the entire cosmos; for by his nod and power the substantial existence of all things has come to be, and by his laws and ordinances again the whole age is steered in path and order. For by the word and law of God, first of all, the heaven was made firm, and the heavy and solid mass of earth is wondrously suspended contrary to its own nature among the more subtle elements.

by divine word and law the alternating course of night and day revolves, and by the word and law of God the sun itself, the moon, and the dance of the remaining stars complete their proper journey in seemly order; by the law of the universal king the changes of the solstices, the alterations of the seasons, the cycles of the year, and the annual seasons are fulfilled in the all-harmonious symphony of the whole; by the law of God winter yields to spring, and this to the nearest turnings of the seasons; and the depths of the sea, swelling with winter floods, are confined by divine law within their own seas, so that they dare not overstep the boundaries of the sacred laws; and the dry substance, watered by rain showers and snowfalls again supplied in due measure by divine law, brings forth countless kinds of plants and animals. In a word, the all-mother nature of the universe, enslaved by the command of God, yields to divine laws and to the will of the all-ruling God; for such a great cosmos has not been constituted in vain, nor by chance, nor by an automatic and irrational motion, nor is this great and beautiful work of art the product of an uncaused nature, but it is a creation of the all-wise architect of the universe, and is governed by his words and sacred laws.

Thus beginning, the prophet, even before human legislation, set forth laws concerning the nature of the whole, and first of all commanded that one attend to the all-king God and not be negligent of his laws, because indeed the sun itself, the heaven, the cosmos, the earth, and all things on earth, and all that are considered works of nature, serve his commands, ordinances, sacred laws, and words. Therefore, the human race, being no small part of the whole, ought in consequence to attend to the divine ordinances and not fall short of the individual elements. For the earth, at the beginning, he legislated, saying: "Let the earth bring forth grass of the field, sow seed according to kind, and fruit-bearing tree produce fruit;" and it, having shown obedience to the law at the word, has not to this day neglected the divine ordinance. Likewise, concerning the liquid substance, when God said: "Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls and birds flying in the firmament of the heaven," it is seen that at the word the work was accomplished, and even now it offers obedience to the law. If then the sun, moon, and stars, for whom the divine law has ordained that they complete their proper courses and be "for signs, for seasons, for days, and for years," do not neglect the legislation, what excuse for escape would still remain for you who slight the divine laws? Having taught these things beforehand, the wonderful

It took us and naturally made us emulous of its own knowledge of God and piety, because we have been unable to find anything similar among the theologians of the previously mentioned nations. After the first theology, it proceeds to the second doctrine, both physical and philosophical. After the knowledge of God and the ordering of the whole, it advances in order to what is second by nature: this was the subject of human nature, since after knowledge of God it is necessary to know oneself. Therefore it next teaches what man is, and what leads him to knowledge and piety of God, and what is the life of man according to his leading principle. Dividing the account of soul and body, it defines the true man as in the soul, partaking of an intellectual, incorporeal, and rational substance, as having been created in the image of God; the body is an earthy covering of the soul; and thirdly it adds the breath of life, a unitive power that connects that which was taken from the earth with that which was made in the image of God. And it relates that the first abode of the man in question was in the thrice-blessed paradise of God, full of immortal and eternal goods; but that by the law of God this man, like the others at the beginnings of the universe, having been subjected through inattention and transgression of the divine commandment, was deprived of the much-desired life. These things Moses philosophizes in the preludes of the sacred laws, virtually proclaiming that we should not neglect our own worth and the assimilation to the divine which we have obtained, from which the immortality of the soul has also been allotted to us.

For it is not lawful, he says, for the image of a king to be defaced. And the archetypal and true image of the God of all is his own Logos, who is self-wisdom, self-life, light, truth, and whatever good and excellent one might conceive. The image of that image is the human mind, on account of which it is acknowledged that man was made in the image of God. He thought it necessary that those who are about to attend to the sacred laws should be pre-educated in these matters, and should remember what is taken from the earth and will again be dissolved into earth, and what in us is superior and like God, and how one ought to treat each of the things mentioned, neither insulting nor impiously treating the man who is in the image of God, nor defiling him with shameful and lawless deeds, but always bearing the desire for that first and thrice-blessed state and life, and hastening to run back, making a prayer to attain that first and thrice-blessed life and dignity. Moreover, they should prepare themselves even here for the journey there, since it is not otherwise possible for the profane and unpurified to enter those sacred precincts, from which the first man, through inattention and contempt of the divine command, fell away. To these things the hierophant adds another most comprehensive doctrine, teaching that one should not be ignorant of the fact that an evil demon is present to each person as a watcher, envious and hating the good, and from the beginning a plotter against human salvation. And he calls this a dragon and a serpent, something black and akin to darkness and full of the venom of wickedness.

He says that this one even now still tries to trip up and undermine each of those who devote themselves to God, through envy of our divinely inspired life; and that by his deceit our first ancestors also fell from the more divine portion of the race, for which reason we must always be on guard against the cunning artifices of the one indicated. But why should I anticipate these things, when it is necessary now at last to go through each of the things prescribed from the written records themselves? Let us begin again, then, from God, first calling upon him as our helper through our Savior.

13. Opinions of the Hebrews concerning God, the First Cause of All

Now the account according to them sets the beginning of theology from the creative and demiurgic power of the universe, not by syllogisms or plausible arguments, but more dogmatically and didactically, being inspired by the Holy Spirit; by which Moses, being God-inspired, began theology somewhat as follows: "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." Then he says: "God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." And again: "God said, 'Let there be a firmament,' and it was." And again: "God said, 'Let the earth put forth grass, sow seed according to kind and likeness, and fruit-bearing tree producing fruit, whose seed is in itself, according to kind upon the earth,' and it was." And again: "God said, 'Let there be luminaries in the firmament of the heaven, to shine upon the earth, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years,' and it was." And again: "God said,

Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls according to kind, and all the flying things of the heaven according to kind, and it came to pass. And again: Let the earth bring forth quadrupeds and creeping things and wild beasts of the earth according to kind, and it came to pass. In these things, when the scripture says "God said," it represents the divine nod and the will of God that beings should come into being in this way, not that it is necessary to conceive of him speaking with voice and syllables, but summarizing the whole account, it says: "This is the book of the generation of heaven and earth, on the day when God made the heaven and the earth and all things in them." Such is the theology according to the Hebrews, teaching that all things were constituted by the creative word of God. Then it does not teach that the whole cosmos was left desolate like an orphan abandoned by its father by the one who established it, but that it is always administered by the providence of God, so that God is not only the creator and maker of all things, but also savior, administrator, king, and governor, presiding over the sun, moon, stars, and the whole heaven and cosmos through eternity, overseeing all with a great eye and divine power, being present to all heavenly and earthly things, and ordering and administering all things in the cosmos. Just as indeed the prophets after this, themselves also divinely inspired in accordance, sometimes cried out from the divine person itself, saying: "I am a God who draws near, says the Lord, and not a God far off. If a man does something in secret, will I not know it? Do I not fill the heaven and the earth?

The Lord says. And then elsewhere, theologizing: "Who measured the water with his hand, and the heaven with a span, and all the earth with a fist? Who set the mountains with a balance and the glens with a scale? Who knew the mind of the Lord, and who became his counselor?" And again: "He who set the heaven like a vault and stretched it out like a tent to dwell in." And again: "Lift up your eyes to the height and see who has pointed out all these things." And then: "The Lord God, who made the heaven and fixed it, who made firm the earth and what is in it, and gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who tread upon it, I am the Lord God." And then: "I alone stretched out the heaven and made firm the earth; I am the Lord God, and there is none besides me." And again: "Thus you shall say to them: Gods who did not make the heaven and the earth, let them perish from the face of the earth and from beneath the heaven. The Lord who made the earth by his might set upright the inhabited world by his wisdom, and by his intelligence he stretched out the heaven and brought up clouds from the end of the earth, made lightning for rain, and brought forth winds from his treasuries. Every man has been made foolish in knowledge." And again: "Where shall I go from your spirit, and

from your face where shall I hide? If I go up into heaven, you are there; if I spread out into Hades, you are present. If I should take up my wings at dawn and settle in the farthest parts of the sea, even there your hand will guide me." But these and similar things belong to the theologians after Moses, who are themselves Hebrews, and who theologize in harmony with the most ancient forefathers. But of the God-beloved and thrice-blessed men before Moses, who were the first Hebrews, and of the very first of all, Abraham, who is called the forefather of the entire Jewish nation, hear: "And Abraham said to the king of Sodom, 'I will stretch out my hand to the most high God, who created the heaven and the earth.'" And before Abraham, Melchizedek is introduced as priest of the most high God, blessing Abraham with these words: "Blessed is Abraham to the most high God, who delivered your enemies into your hands; and blessed is the God who created the heaven and the earth." Moreover, the account introduces Abraham conversing with his servant as follows: "Place your hand under my thigh, and I will adjure you by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of the earth." And he adds: "The Lord is the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, who took me from my father's house and from the land where I was born." Finally, in the theophany to Moses himself, when Moses asked whom one should consider God, the oracle says: "I am the one who is.

Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'He who is has sent me to you.'" Let these things, then, be set forth from the countless instances of Hebrew theology. Is it, then, worthwhile to compare with them the theologies of the wise Greeks—some declaring that there is no god at all, others claiming that the stars are gods, which they say are like red-hot iron masses or plates fixed in the sky, others that god is a craftsmany fire proceeding in a path, and some that the world is not governed by divine providence but by some irrational nature, others that only the heavenly realm is governed by god, but not the things on earth, and again that the world is ungenerated and not at all brought into being by god, but subsists spontaneously and by chance, and others that the constitution of the universe has come about from atoms and fine bodies, some soulless and irrational? But such, in brief, are the things from the oracles among the Hebrews concerning the god of all. It follows next to consider what has been philosophized by the Hebrews concerning the beginning of generated things, after the god of all.

14. On the Theology of the Second Cause. Thales of Miletus declared that the principle of all things is water, Anaximenes that it is air, Heraclitus fire, Pythagoras numbers, Epicurus together with Democritus atomic bodies, Empedocles the four elements. Let us then also examine the sayings among the Hebrews. After the unoriginate and ungenerated substance of the God of all, which is unmixed and beyond all comprehension, they introduce a second substance and divine power, a principle of all generated things, first subsisting and generated from the first cause, calling it Word and Wisdom and Power of God. This is first taught by Job, who says: "But whence was wisdom found? And what place is there of knowledge? No mortal knows its way, nor has it been found among men, but we have heard of its fame. The Lord established its way, and he himself knows its place." And David somewhere in his Psalms, addressing wisdom by another name, says: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm," the

having praised the creative Word of God in this manner. Moreover, his son Solomon personifies Wisdom herself, speaking thus: "I, Wisdom, have made my dwelling in counsel and knowledge, and I have summoned thought. Through me kings reign, and rulers inscribe justice." To which he adds: "The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works; he established me before the age, in the beginning before he made the earth and before the abysses came to be, before the mountains were set firm, and before all hills he gives birth to me. When he prepared the heaven, I was with him, and as he set the springs beneath the heaven securely, I was with him, fitting them together. I was the one in whom he delighted daily, and I rejoiced before him at all times, when he rejoiced in completing the inhabited world." These things Solomon says in the Proverbs. And these things are spoken from his own person: "What Wisdom is and how it came to be, I will declare and will not conceal mysteries from you, but I will trace it from the beginning of its generation." To which he adds: "For this is a noetic, holy, only-begotten, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, undefiled, all-powerful, all-overseeing spirit, and it passes through all spirits, noetic, pure, and most subtle. For Wisdom is more mobile than any motion, and it penetrates and passes through all things because of its purity. For it is a vapor of the power of God and a pure effluence of the glory of the Almighty; hence nothing defiled falls into it. For it is a radiance of eternal light and an unblemished mirror of the energy of God and an image of his goodness.

It extends from one end to the other vigorously and administers all things beneficently. And indeed, this divine Word the holy Scripture introduces as sent from the Father for the salvation of men. It records that he revealed himself to Abraham, Moses, and the other God-beloved prophets, and instructed them through oracles and foretold many future events, whenever it mentions that he appeared as God and Lord and came into conversation with the prophets. It also prophesies that he would come to the knowledge of all men, as a savior for the sick and a physician of souls sent by the greater one, in these words: "He sent his Word, and he healed them and delivered them from their corruptions." And again on another occasion it says: "His Word will run swiftly." Hence the evangelical teaching, renewing the prophetic and ancestral doctrine, clarifies the theology thus: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This one was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him not one thing that has come to be came to be. In him was life, and the life was the light of men." Fittingly, then, with the same spirit, the all-wise Moses, beginning his cosmogony in the previously cited passage, says that God made the heaven and the earth; and he introduces God, as if conversing with his own and firstborn Word, concerning the creation of man, in the words he writes: "And God said, 'Let us make man according to our image and likeness.'" This also the Psalmist hinted at when he discoursed about the first cause.

He himself spoke, and they came into being; he himself commanded, and they were created, plainly positing the arrangement and injunction of the first cause in relation to the second, as of a father to a son. For it is entirely obvious, I suppose, that everyone who says something says it to another, and everyone who gives a command gives it to another distinct from himself. And again, Moses explicitly mentions both lords, namely father and son, somewhere in the account of the punishment of the impious, saying: And the Lord rained down from the Lord upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire. In agreement with this, David also chanted: The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I set your enemies as a footstool under your feet. And proceeding further, he hinted at his secret and ineffable generation, saying: From the womb before the morning star I begot you. But lest you think I am fabricating these things, I will present to you a Hebrew man as an interpreter of the meaning in Scripture, one who accurately knows his ancestral traditions and has learned the doctrine from teachers, if indeed Philo is such a man for you. Listen, then, to him as well, how he interprets the divine utterances: Why does it say, in the image of God I made man, as if speaking of another god, and not in his own image? This has been very beautifully and wisely uttered. For nothing mortal could be modeled after the highest and father of all, but only after the second god, who is his word. For the rational type in the human soul had to be impressed by the divine word, since the god prior to the word is superior to every rational nature.

For that which is established in the best and some exceptional form beyond reason, it was not lawful for anything generated to be likened. Let these things stand for me from the first of Philo's "Questions and Solutions." And the same author, in the earlier work "On Agriculture," names this firstborn Logos of his as son of God in this manner: "Now all these things the shepherd and king God leads according to justice, having set before him his right Logos and firstborn son, who, like some viceroy of a great king, will take over the care of this sacred flock." And again in the second book, the same author writes these things verbatim: "If, then, anyone wishes to escape the perplexities in the matters under investigation, let him say with frankness that none of the things in matter is so strong as to be able to bear the weight of the cosmos. But the eternal Logos of the eternal God is the most secure and firm support of the whole. This, stretched from the middle to the ends and from the extremes to the middle, runs the invincible course of nature, gathering and binding all the parts together. For the father who generated him made him an unbreakable bond of the universe. Naturally, then, not all the earth will be dissolved by all the water which the hollows of it have received, nor will fire be extinguished by air, nor, conversely, will air be kindled by fire, since the divine Logos stations himself as a boundary between the voiceless elements, so that the whole, as in written music, may sound together, mediating and arbitrating the threats of opposites by harmonious persuasion." These things Philo says.

And another wise man of the Hebrews, Aristobulus, who flourished during the reign of the Ptolemies, confirms the doctrine as ancestral, addressing to Ptolemy himself the interpretation of the sacred laws, in which he says: "The same might also be transferred to wisdom; for all light is from it. Hence some of those belonging to the Peripatetic school have said that it holds the rank of a lamp. For following it continuously, they will be established untroubled throughout their whole life. But more clearly and more beautifully one of our ancestors, Solomon, said that it exists before heaven and earth; and this is in agreement with what has been said before." These things, then, and suchlike concerning this matter have been philosophized by the children of the Hebrews. Would not this, then, be the most godly of doctrines, which attributes the beginning of the constitution of the universe to the rational and all-wise power of God, or rather to wisdom itself and to the Word of God himself, rather than to lifeless and irrational elements? For such are the teachings among the Hebrews concerning the beginning of all things. But let us also examine what they teach concerning the constitution of rational beings, those after the first principle.

15. On the Constitution of Rational Beings

After the unoriginate and ungenerated substance of God the All-King, they teach that there is a beginning which has been generated from no other source than the Father, being both firstborn and co-worker of the Father's counsel, and imaged after him. This beginning holds primacy over all subsequent created things, on account of which they are accustomed to call it image of God, power of God, wisdom of God, and word of God, and indeed also commander-in-chief of the Lord's power, and "angel of great counsel." The noetic and rational powers after this beginning are not to be described by human nature, both because of their multitude and their specific differences, except insofar as it is possible to apply to the patterns from the analogy of visible things—sun, moon, stars, and heaven itself, which encompasses all things under itself. "For there is one glory of the sun, and another of the moon, and another glory of the stars," says the divine apostle, "for star differs from star in glory.

Thus, one must conceive of the cosmos in incorporeal and intellectual substances as well, the ineffable and infinite power of the God of all encompassing everything simultaneously, while the creative and illuminating power of the divine Word holds second place after the Father—hence the Hebrews are accustomed to call him true light and sun of righteousness—and third, after the second substance, is established the Holy Spirit in the region of the moon, which they also count among the first and royal rank and honor of the principle of all things, as a beginning for the things generated thereafter—I mean those that are inferior and in need of its provision—and it too has been assigned by the maker of all. But this, occupying the third rank, provides for the inferior among the superior powers within it, and indeed also receives from another, namely from the divine Word, who is higher and superior, whom we said holds second place after the highest and ungenerated nature of God the All-King; from whom the divine Word itself, being supplied and as if drawing from an ever-flowing spring of divinity that wells up, imparts to all together, and indeed to the Holy Spirit itself—which is closest and most proximate to him of all—and to the intellectual and divine powers after this, the radiance of its own light abundantly and without envy.

the ungenerated beginning of all things, being the source of all goods and of divinity and of life together and of light and the cause of every virtue, and being the first of the first and the beginning of beginnings, or rather beyond beginning and first and every expressible and comprehensible conception, communicates all things, as many as it has encompassed in ineffable powers, to the first offspring alone, as to the only one capable of receiving and containing the abundance of the father of goods, which is not attainable or containable for the others. And it provides in part to those worthy in part through the service and mediation of the second, according to what is attainable for each; of these, the perfect and most holy things have been gifted to the third, which is from itself a ruler and leader of those after it, receiving through the son what comes from the father. Hence all the theologians of the Hebrews, after the God over all and after his firstborn wisdom, deify the third and holy power, calling it holy spirit, by which they were inspired and illuminated. Next, concerning heaven and sun and moon, they say "star differs from star in glory." Now for mortal nature it is not possible to find the number of stars, but nevertheless the oracles of the Hebrews say that the all-king God is not ignorant of the multitudes and the names of the heavenly host; therefore it is said among them: "the one who numbers the multitudes of stars and calls them all by name." Thus after the first of the

incorporeal powers by which stars are conceived, distinguished in power and substance by intelligible light, there is for us a great and inconceivable difference, and countless tribes and kinds, but not for the maker of all things. Therefore, one of the theologians, presenting that their comprehension belongs to God alone, says: "Countless myriads served him, and thousands of thousands stood before him," indicating by the number their comprehensibility to God, and by the quantity their infinity to us; for which reason we are accustomed to call many and infinite things 'myriad' by way of hyperbole. Another prophet, discoursing about their substance, theologizes about the maker of all things somewhat as follows, saying: "Lord my God, how greatly you have magnified yourself, you have put on confession and magnificence, wrapping yourself in light as a garment, stretching out the heaven like a tent; making his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire." Do not think that the things indicated partake of the substance of the mortal and earthly fire among us, nor of the spirits of irrational nature from the air.

but as they also name God himself, incorporeal and immaterial and self-intellect, or rather beyond intellect and beyond all reason in nature, and more figuratively also called spirit and fire and light and by certain other appellations suitable for mortal ears, angels indeed and archangels and spirits and divine powers and heavenly hosts, and principalities and authorities and thrones and dominions, as if countless myriads of stars and luminaries, the intelligible and rational substances which the divine words have named, they say that the "sun of righteousness" and its consort the holy spirit rule over all and preside. And all things together, son and holy spirit, both intelligible and rational living beings together with the visible things in heaven, heaven itself and all that it contains within itself, to the one God over all, the king and ruler through all and in all, the cause of all, as creator and maker and provider of all, the divine and prophetic scripture commands to offer the appropriate hymn and fitting theology, saying: "Praise God from the heavens, praise him in the highest, praise him all his angels, praise him all his powers, praise him sun and moon, praise him all the stars and the light, praise him the heavens of heavens, and let the waters above the heavens praise the name of the Lord, for he spoke, and they came to be, he commanded, and they were created.

he set them for eternity and for the eternity of eternity, he established a decree, and it shall not pass away." Such are the doctrines of the Hebrews, which we have preferred to the polytheistic and demonic error of the Greeks, knowing and honoring as is fitting the divine powers that are servitors and ministers of the all-king God, but confessing and worshipping only that one God, whom heaven itself and all things in heaven and beyond heaven have been taught to revere, hymn, and theologize; for even the only-begotten of God and firstborn of all, the beginning of all things, commands us to consider his own father alone as true God and to worship only him.

10. CONCERNING THE OPPOSING POWERS. It follows next to examine what the oracles of the Hebrews transmit concerning the opposing power. Now the divine powers, which by the nod of the father preside over the entire cosmos, and the "ministering spirits sent for service for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation," and the holy angels of God and archangels, and the entire ministering intellectual substance of good things, which is luminous and the servant of all goods bestowed from God upon men, attend the all-king God as his bodyguard; and then, like the stars in heaven, the "sun" of "righteousness" and its consort, the holy spirit, revolve around him, enjoying the light of their chorus, and are therefore fittingly compared to the luminaries in heaven.

The one who has been perverted from these and, through his own baseness, has been deprived of the chorus of the better, and has exchanged darkness for light, he names, contrary to the first, with appellations suited to the depravity of his character. For example, the one who began the fall, becoming the cause of apostasy from the better for himself and others, as one who has utterly fallen from piety toward the diviner things and has made himself the creator of the venom of evil and impiety, and has become a maker of darkness and irrationality from his voluntary withdrawal from light, he is accustomed to call a dragon and a serpent, black and creeping, generative of deadly venom, a wild beast and man-eating lion, and again the basilisk among reptiles. And the divine words say that the cause of his fall was madness of mind and derangement of thought, relating his fall and his mental injury somewhat as follows: "How did the morning star, which rises early, fall from heaven? The one who sends to all nations was crushed upon the earth. But you said in your mind: I will ascend to heaven, I will place my throne above the stars of heaven, I will be like the Most High." And again: "Thus says the Lord, the Lord: Because your heart was lifted up and you said, I am God, I have dwelt in the dwelling of God." And again: "You are the seal of likeness and the crown of beauty, you were born in the delight of the paradise of God, you are adorned with every precious stone," and so forth. To which he adds:

On a holy mountain of God you were born, in the midst of fiery stones you were born, you were blameless in your days, from the day you were created until wrongdoings were found in you. Your heart was lifted up at your beauty, your knowledge was corrupted along with your beauty; because of the multitude of your sins I cast you down to the earth. Through these words we have clearly learned of the earlier sojourn of the being in question among the more divine powers and its fall from the better ones due to its own arrogance and rebellion against God. There is also another countless class subject to this one, guilty of similar offenses, which, because of its impiety, having fallen from the company of the pious, instead of its former luminous and more divine covering, its honor in the royal courts, and its sojourn among blessed and angelic choirs, now dwells by just judgment and decree of the great God in the place befitting the impious, Tartarus, which the divine words call the abyss, and has exchanged darkness—not that among us, but that indicated by the divine oracles. A small and slight fragment of these, left behind for the sake of training the athletes of piety around the earth and the air beneath the moon, has become co-responsible for the polytheistic error among men, which differs in no way from atheism. Holy Scripture has also assigned fitting names to these, more plainly when it calls them evil spirits and demons, principalities and powers, world-rulers and spiritual evils, and symbolically when it urges the friend of God to fear nothing from the throng of hostile demons, through the words:

You will tread upon the asp and the basilisk, and you will trample the lion and the dragon. A proof of this hostility toward God is their desire to proclaim themselves gods and to usurp for themselves the honors due to God, and to attempt by means of oracles and prophecies, as with certain charms and missiles, to entice the credulous and to draw them away from the ascent to the God of the universe, and to drag them down into the utterly destructive depth of impious and atheistic superstition. Therefore, from the beginning, for all time, it was earnestly sought by the Hebrews alone to flee headlong from their deceptions, as they explicitly teach that "all the gods of the nations are demons." But now, if one may say so with God, through the evangelical teaching of our Savior, all the nations of the inhabited world everywhere, freed from demonic bonds, hymn the God whom we have learned alone exists as savior, king, and God of the universe.

17. CONCERNING THE NATURE OF MAN. Here again, the zoogony of the Phoenicians and Egyptians introduced the spontaneous generation of all things on earth, both animals and men, describing one and the same nature as having come forth by chance from the earth, and positing that the irrational differs in no way from the rational soul and substance. This, at any rate, was shown by the previously cited passages from their writers. But the children of the Hebrews have again been rightly preferred by us, having treated the matter of the first formation of men in a manner that is altogether beautiful, wise, and true.

They say that some part of us is divine and immortal, incorporeal in nature and bodiless, and that this is the true human being, made in the image and likeness of God, and that it is a work of God, not of chance or spontaneous nature, but of the very cause of all things, who by divine judgment willed that the regions of the earth should not lack intelligent and rational substance, so that through all things—heavenly, ethereal, and the rational beings on earth capable of apprehending his divinity—the proper hymn might be sent up. Thus the Hebrew oracles contain: "And God said, 'Let us make man in our image and likeness'; and God made man; he made him in the image of God." And again: "And God took dust from the earth and fashioned man and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul." And again the Hebrew Philo interprets these things, adding to his own words already set forth the following: "But others, saying that our mind is a portion of the ethereal nature, have linked man's kinship to the aether. The great Moses, however, likened the form of the rational soul to none of the things that have come into being, but said that it is a genuine coin of that divine and invisible spirit, marked and stamped with the seal of God, whose character is the eternal Word. For he says, 'God breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul,' so that the receiver must necessarily be imaged after the sender.

Therefore it is said that man was made in the image of God, and not in the image of any created thing. It was fitting, then, that when the human soul was modeled after the archetypal reason of the cause, the body also should be raised toward the purest part of the universe, the heaven, and direct its gaze upward. So says this author. And fittingly indeed does divine scripture say that man was not made like the other animals; for the others came forth from the earth at a single command of the universal king, or flew up from the watery substance again at his nod; but only the most God-beloved of the creatures on earth, ourselves, were made in the image of God and in likeness as to the soul. Hence man is seen to be by nature ruling and kingly, and alone among earthly beings to be rational, creative, critical, legislative, and capable of comprehending arts and sciences; for the soul in man alone is an intellectual and rational substance, which the other creatures on earth do not share. Therefore the latter serve and provide the place of servants to man, while man, as master and leader, enslaves and subdues those far superior in bodily strength but inferior through deprivation of intellectual substance. This man, then, they say was brought into being in the image and likeness of God by God himself with some surpassing preeminence. Hence he is able to form conceptions of God, to grasp wisdom and justice and every virtue, and to count the courses of the sun, moon, and stars and the cycles of days and hours, by reason of his kinship with the higher realm, which alone among mortals man displays.

The external substance moulded around this is of a different kind and earth-born, yet it too is a work of God, taken from earth and returning to it. Therefore one must care for this part, as for an irrational beast whose master is displeased, leading it gently and nourishing it like a slave, well-adapted for the service of human life; but the inner master, being noble and akin to God by nature, must be honoured with liberal ways, since it too has been honoured by the cause of all. The oracles say, then, that the universal king, having first adorned the nature of man with divine powers and the likeness of God, allotted to him, as befitting the gifts he had bestowed, the first abode of life in a paradise of goods, enrolling him among divine choirs. And that the Father gave him these things in the beginning as wholly good, but that he fell away by his own free choice from the better things and exchanged the mortal region for the divine commandment through neglect. Therefore it is especially fitting to cultivate piety first and to correct the original error by favourable second efforts, hastening towards the recovery and restoration of one’s own state. For the end of human nature is not here on earth, nor does it terminate in corruption and destruction, but there, whence the first man deviated. Hence one must recover again the pure and godlike element of the intellectual substance in us, towards which all men who care for piety and virtue must strive with all their might to ascend. Such are the things philosophized by the Hebrews concerning the nature of man from above, before the Greeks came among men.

Some who are but of yesterday and quite new, having sprung up from the earth, and having conceived the idea of plundering the doctrines of the barbarians, have not even spared those of the Hebrews, as the argument will presently show. But since it was a peculiarity of Hebrew teaching to consider the one God over all as the maker of all things, and also of the substance underlying bodies, which the Greeks are wont to call matter, and since countless barbarians and Greeks alike have taken the opposite side—some declaring matter to be the source of evil and ungenerated, others that it is in its own nature without quality and without form, but that by the power of God the world has received it together with its qualities—it must be shown how much better the opinion of the Hebrews is, as it is presented with logical demonstration in the problem and refutes the contrary argument by right reasoning. I shall set forth not my own words, but those of men before us who have accurately examined the doctrine, and first of all Dionysius, who in the first book of his works against Sabellius writes as follows concerning the subject: 18. That matter is not ungenerated. "For not even those are pious who give matter as ungenerated and subordinate to God for the purpose of ordering it; for it is passive and changeable, yielding to the divinely wrought alterations. And let them explain how there can be anything similar or dissimilar between God and matter. For there must be some

conceive of anything better, which it is not even lawful to conceive concerning God. For the term 'unbegotten,' being used alike in both cases but understood differently by each, whence did it arise in them? For if God is self-unbegotten and his essence is, as one might say, unbegottenness, then matter would not be unbegotten; for God and matter are not the same. But if each is what it is, matter and God, and the attribute 'unbegotten' belongs to both, it is clear that this attribute is something distinct from each and prior and superior to both. Moreover, the difference in their opposite qualities completely destroys the notion that they coexist, and even more so the notion that one of them, matter, exists by itself. For let them state the reason why, when both are unbegotten, God is impassible, immutable, unmoved, and active, while matter has the opposite qualities: passible, mutable, unstable, and transformable. And how did they harmonize and come together? Did God, by adapting himself to the nature of matter, work upon it as a craftsman? But this is absurd, making God work like men who work in gold and stone, and in the other arts where materials can be shaped and formed, as if by hand. But if, according to his own wisdom, he qualified matter as he wished, impressing upon it the manifold and variegated form and type of his own creation, then this account is both reverent and true, and moreover it confirms that the substance of all things, God, is unbegotten. For by being unbegotten, he also attached to it a certain mode of being. The argument against these men is extensive, but it is not our present task.

In comparison with the most godless polytheists, these are more reverent." So much from Dionysius. And hear also from Origen: "But if someone is offended because human craftsmen cannot conceive of God constructing beings without pre-existing unbegotten matter, since neither a sculptor can make his work without bronze, nor a carpenter without wood, nor a builder without stones, we must inquire of him concerning the power of God: if God wills to bring into existence whatever he wishes, his will not being at a loss nor powerless, can he not bring into existence what he wills? For by the same reasoning by which, according to all who introduce providence, he brings into being the qualities, which do not exist in their own right, as he wishes for the ordering of the whole by his ineffable power and wisdom, by that same reasoning his will is able to cause the substance, of whatever quantity he needs, to come into being. For we shall argue against those who do not wish this to be so: does it not follow for them that God was fortunate to have found unbegotten substance, and that if the unbegotten had not been placed under him, he would have been able to do no work, but would have remained not a craftsman, not a father, not a benefactor, not good, nor anything else that is reasonably said of God? And whence also the measuring of the underlying substance to such an extent as to suffice for the subsistence of so great a cosmos? For, as it were, some providence older than God will necessarily have placed matter under God, taking forethought that the art inherent in him should not suffer in vain from the absence of substance with which he, being able to deal, adorned the beauty of so great a cosmos.

From where, then, has matter become receptive of every quality that God wishes, unless God himself made it for himself of such a kind and quantity as he desired it to have? At any rate, accepting by hypothesis that matter is ungenerated, we will say this to those who hold this view: if, without providence supplying substance to God, matter has become such, what more would providence, if it existed, have done than what happened of itself? And if God himself, when matter did not exist, wished to construct it, what more would his wisdom and divinity have done than what subsisted from the ungenerated? For if what comes about through providence is found to be the same as what subsisted without providence, why should we not also reject the creator and craftsman in the case of the cosmos? For just as it is absurd to say of the cosmos, which is so skillfully constructed, that it came to be such without a wise craftsman, so too it is equally irrational for matter, which is so great and of such a kind and so receptive to the craftsman’s divine reason, to have subsisted ungenerated. In reply, however, to those who object that no craftsman works without matter, it must be said that they make an unequal comparison. For providence supplies matter to every craftsman from a prior art, whether human or divine, which comes from elsewhere. So much, then, will suffice for now against those who, because it is said, “and the earth was invisible and unformed,” suppose that the corporeal nature is ungenerated.” So much from him as well. And the Hebrew Philo, in his On Providence, discusses these matters concerning matter as follows: “Concerning the quantity of substance, whether it has indeed come to be, this must be said:

God calculated for the generation of the cosmos a most self-sufficient matter, so that it neither fell short nor exceeded. For it would be absurd that craftsmen in their particular fields, whenever they create something and especially something costly, should measure out the sufficiency in materials, while he who discovered numbers and measures and the equalities in them should not have taken care of what is sufficient. I shall say with frankness that neither less nor more substance was needed for the construction of the cosmos, since it would not have been perfect nor complete in all its parts, and it was well crafted and completed from a perfect substance. For it is characteristic of all-wise art, before beginning any construction, to see the sufficient matter. Now a man, even if he surpasses others in knowledge, being unable entirely to escape the congenital error of mortals, might perhaps be deceived concerning the quantity of matter, when he practices his craft, sometimes adding as if it were too little, sometimes subtracting as if it were excessive; but he who is a kind of fountain of sciences was not going to admit anything deficient or superfluous, using measures that are extraordinarily precise and in all respects praiseworthy. But he who wishes to prate otherwise would not be able to set the works of all craftsmen in opposition, as if they had obtained a better construction by some addition or reduction of materials? For it is the work of sophistry to invent arguments, but of wisdom to investigate each thing in nature. And let the words of Philo be thus. To Maximus, a man not obscure in the school of Christ, a discourse of his own has been written, On Matter.

from which I think I will usefully set forth a moderate amount for a precise refutation of the problem.

9. THAT MATTER IS NOT UNGENERATED NOR THE CAUSE OF EVILS "That it is impossible for two ungenerated things to exist together, I think not even you are unaware, even though you seem to have anticipated this and added to the argument that one must necessarily say either that God is separated from matter or, on the other hand, that he is inseparable from it. If, then, one should wish to say that he is united with it, he will declare that the ungenerated is one; for each of these will be a part of the other. But being parts of each other, they will not be two ungenerated things, just as we do not divide different parts into many generated things, but rather, as reason demands, we say that man, a composite thing, has been made one generated thing by God. Thus, necessarily, if God is not separated from matter, one must say that the ungenerated is one. But if one should assert that he is separated, there must be something between both, which also shows their separation. For it is impossible for something to be examined as being at a distance from something else, if there is not another thing by which the distance of each occurs. And this does not stop only at this point, but extends to very many things. For the argument we stated concerning the two ungenerated things,

This must necessarily proceed in the same way, if three ungenerated things were granted. For in their case I would ask whether they are separated from each other, or again each is united with its neighbor. For if one should wish to say they are united, he will hear the same argument as the first; but if again they are separated, he will not escape the necessary subsistence of that which separates. But if someone should also state a third argument as fitting to be said about ungenerated things, namely that God is not separated from matter nor again united as a part, but that God is in matter as in a place, or matter in God, let him hear the conclusion: that if we say matter is the place of God, it is necessary to say that he is both contained and circumscribed by matter. Moreover, it is necessary that he is similarly borne about with matter in a disorderly manner, and that he neither stands nor remains by himself, since that in which he is is carried now one way, now another. In addition to these things, it is necessary to say that God has come to be in worse conditions. For if matter was once without order, and he adorned it, choosing to change it for the better, there was once a time when God was in unordered things. And I would rightly ask this argument as well: whether God filled matter or was in some part of matter. If, then, one should wish to say that God is in some part of matter, he says that he is as much smaller than matter as possible, if indeed a part of it contained the whole of him; but if he should say that he is in all matter, let him explain how he fashioned it. For it is necessary either to speak of some contraction of God, by which, when it occurred, he fashioned that from which he withdrew, or that he himself co-fashions with matter, having no place of withdrawal.

But if someone says that matter is in God, we must likewise examine whether it is as if he is separated from himself and, as in the air there exist kinds of animals, he is divided and partitioned for the reception of the things that come to be in him, or as in a place, that is, as water in earth. For if we were to say as in air, we must necessarily say that God is divisible; but if as water in earth, and matter was disordered and unadorned, and moreover also contained evils, we must necessarily say that God is a place for the unadorned and for evils. This does not seem to me to be reverent, but rather precarious. For you wish matter to exist so that you may not say that God is the maker of evils, and in choosing to avoid this, you say that he is a receptacle of evils. Now if you were to say that matter is ungenerated from the supposition of generated things, I would have made a long argument about it to demonstrate that it is impossible for it to be ungenerated; but since you said that the generation of evils is the cause of such a supposition, for this reason I think I come to the examination of these matters. For when the account becomes clear as to the manner in which evils exist and that it is not possible to say that God is without responsibility for evils by positing matter for him, I think that such a supposition is removed. You say, then, that qualityless matter coexists with God, from which he crafted the generation of this cosmos. So it seems to me. Therefore, if matter happened to be qualityless, and the cosmos came to be by God, and in the cosmos there are qualities, then God has become the maker of the qualities. So it is.

Since I heard you saying earlier that it is impossible for anything to come into being from non-existent things, answer my question: does it seem to you that the qualities of the world have not come into being from pre-existing qualities? It does. And are they something other than the substances? So it is. If, then, God did not create the qualities from pre-existing qualities nor from the substances, since they are not substances, it is necessary to say that they have been brought into being by God from non-existent things. Hence you seemed to me to be speaking superfluously when you said it is impossible to hold that anything has come into being from non-existent things by God. But let the argument about this stand as follows. For we also observe among ourselves men making something from non-existent things, even if they seem to be making it in something, as for example let us take the case of architects. For they build cities not from cities, and temples likewise not from temples. But if, because substances underlie these things, you think they make them from existent things, you are mistaken in your reasoning. For it is not the substance that makes the city or again the temples, but the art applied to the substance; and the art does not come from some pre-existing art in the substances, but comes from what is not present in them. You seem to me to respond to the argument thus, that the craftsman makes the art in the substance from the art he possesses. To this, it seems to me well said that not even in man does the art come from some pre-existing art. For it is not possible for it, being by itself, to give the art; for it is among the accidents and among things that receive their being at the time when they come to be in a substance.

For man will exist even without the art of building; but the art will not exist unless man exists first. Hence it is necessary to say that the arts naturally come into being from non-existent things into men. If, then, we have shown this to be the case with men, how is it not fitting that God should be able to produce not only qualities from non-existent things, but also substances? For that it is possible for something to come into being from non-existent things shows that substances also are so constituted. But since you have a desire to inquire about the origin of evils, I will come to the account of these. And I wish to ask you briefly: do evils seem to you to be substances or qualities of substances? It seems to me well to say that they are qualities of substances. And was matter without qualities and without form? I stated this earlier in the argument. Therefore, if evils are qualities of substances, and matter was without qualities, and you said that God is the maker of qualities, then God will also be the creator of evils. So then, since even in this way it is not possible to say that God is blameless of evils, it seems to me superfluous to attribute matter to him. But if you have anything to say in reply to this, begin your argument. If our inquiry were from contentiousness, I would not deign to define a second time concerning evils; but since we are conducting the examination of the arguments for the sake of friendship and for the benefit of our neighbor, I ask to be allowed to define concerning these matters from the beginning.

I think my purpose and my earnestness in arguments have long been clear to you: that I do not wish to win by speaking a plausible falsehood, but that the truth be shown through accurate examination; and I clearly know that you are similarly disposed. Therefore, use whatever method you think can discover the truth, and employ it without any hesitation. For you will not only benefit yourself by using the better method, but you will certainly also benefit me concerning things I do not know. It seems clear to me that evils also exist as some substances; for I do not see them as beings outside substances. Since, then, my friend, you also say that evils are substances, it is necessary to examine the account of substance. Does it seem to you that substance is some bodily composition? It does. Does this bodily composition itself exist by itself, not needing anything in which, once it has come to be, it will receive its being? So it is. Does it seem to you that evils are activities of something? So it appears to me. Do activities receive their being only when the agent is present? So it is. And if the agent does not exist, will that which it does ever exist? It will not. Therefore, if substance is some bodily composition, and bodily composition does not need anything in which, once it has come to be, it will receive its being, and evils are activities of something, and activities need something in which, once they have come to be, they receive their being, then evils will not be substances. But if evils are substances, and murder is an evil, then murder will be a substance; yet murder is an activity of something, so murder is not a substance. If you wish that the agents are substance, I agree with you as well. For example, a man who is a murderer, insofar as he is a man, is a substance.

The murder which he commits is not the substance, but an activity of the substance. We say that a human being is sometimes evil because of committing murder, and again sometimes good because of doing good. And these names are attached to the substance from the accidents that belong to it, which are not the substance itself; for neither is murder the substance, nor again adultery, nor any of the similar evils; but just as from grammar the grammarian is named, and from rhetoric the rhetor, and from medicine the physician, while the substance is neither medicine nor rhetoric nor grammar, but receives its appellation from the accidents belonging to it, from which it seems to be so named, though it is none of them, so it appears to me that the substance also receives a name from the things that seem to be evils, though it is none of them. And consider similarly for me, if you fashion in your mind any other cause of evils for human beings, that that one also, in so far as he acts in these things and prompts the doing of evils, is himself evil because of what he does. For that is why that one also is said to be evil, because he is a maker of evils. But what one does is not oneself, but one's activities, from which one receives the appellation of being called evil. For if we were to say that he himself is what he does, and he does murders and adulteries and thefts and all such like things, he himself will be these things; but if these things are himself, and these things, when they occur, have existence, and when they do not occur, cease to be, and these things are done by human beings, then human beings will be makers of them and causes both of their being and of their ceasing to be.

If you say that these are his activities, from which he derives being evil, it is not from that which he is in substance. And we have said that evil is spoken of from the accidents that belong to substance, which are not the substance itself, as the physician is named from the medical art. But if he is evil from that which he does, and what he does takes a beginning of being, then he also began to be evil, and these evils also began. And if this is so, evil will not be without beginning, nor will evils be ungenerated, since they are said to be generated by him. The argument against your companion, my friend, you seem to me to have made sufficiently. For from the premises he assumed in the argument, you seemed to draw conclusions well. For truly, if matter happened to be without qualities, and God is the creator of qualities, and evils are qualities, then God will be the maker of evils. So let this argument be well spoken against him, but to me it seems false to say that matter is without qualities. For it is not possible to say of any substance whatsoever that it is without qualities. For in saying that it is without qualities, you indicate its quality, describing what matter is like, which is a form of quality. Hence, if it pleases you, take up the argument with me from the beginning. For it seems to me that matter has qualities without beginning. For thus I say that evils come from its effluence, so that God may be blameless for evils, and matter is the cause of all these. I accept your eagerness, my friend, and I praise your diligence in arguments. For it is truly fitting for each lover of learning not to assent to what is said simply and at random, but to make a precise examination of the arguments.

For even if the one who inquires, having defined contrary to reason, provides an occasion for the interlocutor to draw a conclusion as he wishes, this will not persuade the hearer; rather, he will say whatever seems capable of being spoken well. In that case, one of two things will happen: either, having heard what he is thought to be moved toward, he will be fully benefited, or he will refute the interlocutor as not speaking the truth. You do not seem to me to have spoken appropriately in saying that matter has qualities from above. For if this is so, of what will God be the maker? For if we say of substance, we affirm that this pre-exists; or if again of qualities, these also pre-exist. Therefore, since both substance and qualities exist, it seems to me superfluous to call God a craftsman. But so that I may not appear to be constructing some argument for myself, answer now when asked: in what manner do you say that God is a craftsman? Is it because he changed the substances so that those which once existed no longer exist, but others came into being instead of them, or because he preserved those substances which existed before this, but changed their qualities? It does not seem to me that any change of substances has occurred; for this appears to me absurd to say. But I affirm that a change of qualities has occurred, on account of which I say that God is a craftsman. And as one might say, for example, that a house has come into being from stones, in which case it cannot be said that the stones no longer remain in substance, having become a house. For I affirm that the house has come into being by the quality of composition, the previous quality of the stones having been changed, evidently.

Thus it seems to me that God also, while the substance remains, has made a certain change of its qualities, according to which I say that the generation of this world has come about from God. Since, then, you say that a certain change of the qualities has been made by God, answer me, as I choose to ask a few brief questions. Tell me, then, whether it seems to you likewise that evils are qualities of substances? It does. Were these qualities in matter from the beginning, or did they have a beginning of existence? I say that these qualities coexist ungeneratedly with matter. Do you not say that God has made a certain change of the qualities? I say this. Was it for the better or for the worse? It seems to me to be for the better. Therefore, if evils are qualities of matter, and God turned its qualities for the better, why must we seek for evils? For the qualities did not remain as they were by nature. Or if, on the one hand, there were not previously evil qualities, but you say that from the change made by God the first qualities of this kind around matter came to be evil, then God will be the cause of evils, having turned qualities that were not evil into being evil; or, on the other hand, does it not seem to you that God turned the evil qualities for the better, but you say that only the remaining qualities, which were indifferent for the sake of ordering, were turned by God? This is how I have held from the beginning. How, then, do you say that he left the qualities of the base as they were? Was it that he was able to remove those as well but did not wish to, or that he did not have the power?

If, then, you say that he was able but not willing, it is necessary to say that he himself is the cause of these things, because, being able to make evils not exist, he allowed them to remain as they were, and especially when he began to work upon matter. For if he had no concern at all for matter, he would not be responsible for what he allowed to remain; but since he worked upon one part of it and left another part just as it was, being able to change those parts also for the better, he seems to me to deserve to incur blame, having left a part of matter to be evil for the destruction of the part he worked upon. Moreover, I think that the part which he fashioned of matter is itself most greatly wronged by this, as it now receives the evils. For if one examines the matter precisely, he will find that matter has suffered more grievously now than in its former disorder. For before it was distinguished, it had the advantage of not perceiving evils; but now each of its parts receives perception of evils. Take the example of a human being. For before it was formed and became a living creature by the craftsman's art, it had from nature the property of perceiving none of the evils; but from the time it becomes a human being by God, it also acquires the perception of approaching evil, and this, which you say has come about for the benefit of matter by God, is found to have accrued to it rather for the worse. But if you say that evils have not ceased because God is unable to remove them, you will assert that God is impossible. And the impossible will be either because he is weak by nature or because he is enslaved by fear and overcome by some stronger being.

If, then, you would dare to say that God is weak by nature, you seem to me to endanger his very preservation; but if you say that he is overcome by fear of a greater power, then evils will be greater than God, overcoming the impulse of his will—which seems to me absurd to say about God. For why should not these things rather be gods, being able, according to your argument, to overcome God, if we call that which has authority over all things God? I wish to ask you a few things also about matter itself. Tell me, please, whether matter was simple or composite; for the difference of the things that have come into being leads me into such an examination of this argument. For if matter happened to be simple and uniform, but the cosmos is composite and has its constitution from different substances and mixtures, it is impossible to say that it has come into being from matter, since composite things cannot have their constitution from a single simple thing; for the composite indicates a mixture of certain simple things. But if, on the other hand, you should wish to say that matter is composite, you will certainly affirm that it has been compounded from certain simple things. But if it was compounded from simple things, then the simple things once existed by themselves, and by their combination matter came into being, from which it is shown to be also generated. For if matter is composite, and composite things have their constitution from simple things, there was once a time when matter did not exist, that is, before the simple things came together. But if there was once a time when matter did not exist, and there was never a time when the ungenerated did not exist, then matter will not be ungenerated. From this it will follow that there are many ungenerated things. For if God was ungenerated, and the simple things from which matter was compounded were also ungenerated, then there will not be only two ungenerated things.

Does it seem to you that none of the things that exist are opposed to themselves? It does. Is water opposed to fire? It seems to me to be opposed. And similarly, darkness to light, cold to heat, and in addition to these, moisture to dryness? That seems to me to be the case. Therefore, if none of the things that exist are opposed to themselves, but these are opposed to each other, they will not be a single matter nor from a single matter. I wish to ask you again a similar argument. Does it seem to you that the parts are not destructive of each other? It does. Are fire and water, and likewise the rest, parts of matter? That is so. What then? Does it not seem to you that water is destructive of fire, light of darkness, and all other such things? It does. Therefore, if the parts are not destructive of each other, but the parts of matter are destructive of each other, they will not be parts of each other; and if they are not parts of each other, they will not be of a single matter. But indeed, they will not even be matter themselves, since nothing that exists is destructive of itself according to the argument of opposition. For nothing is opposed to itself; things that are opposed are by nature opposed to others. For example, white is not opposed to itself, but is said to be opposed to black; and light is shown not to be opposed to itself, but appears to be so in relation to darkness, and likewise many other things. If, then, there were a single matter, it would not be opposed to itself. And with the opposites being so, it is shown that matter does not exist. So much for the previously mentioned author.

Since the discourse has received a sufficient outline, having moved to the eighth book of the Evangelical Preparation, we will supply what is lacking for the present inquiry, having called upon God as an ally.

8. The eighth book of the Evangelical Preparation contains the following treatises: 1. On the pious polity according to Moses 2. Aristeas on the interpretation of the writings among the Jews 3. Letter of Demetrius of Phalerum to Ptolemy, king of Egypt 4. Letter of King Ptolemy to Eleazar, the high priest of the Jews 5. Letter of Eleazar the high priest to King Ptolemy 6. Philo on the departure of the Jews from Egypt 7. By the same author, on the pious polity according to Moses 8. Josephus on the polity according to Moses 9. Outline of Eleazar the high priest of the allegorical meaning in the sacred laws. From the works of Aristeas 10. Aristobulus on the so-called members of God 11. Philo on the virtue in life of those who philosophized among the Jews in ancient times. From the apology for the Jews 12. Again on the same subjects. From the work that every good man is free 13. By the same author, on God and on the world being created 14. By the same author, on the world being governed by divine providence

Chapter 1. Prooimion: On the Mosaic Theosebes Politeuma. The lives of the ancient Hebrews, those men beloved of God who truly fulfilled that appellation, who before the appearance of Moses were crowned with the prizes of every virtue, together with their theosebe dogmata and paideumata, and further their pious and entirely true theologies, for which we have confessed to have come to love and desire, having traversed these in the preceding book, I now proceed, using the same order, to the Mosaic politeia, which holds the second rank of piety after that first degree, the one indeed legislated for the Jewish nation alone. For we will show that the things through Moses were suitable for the Jews alone, and no longer for the nations throughout the world, nor possible for all men, I mean for those dwelling far from the land of Judaea, both Greeks and barbarians, to observe according to the proper time. And now also of this, I mean of the Mosaic life, I will set forth the manner not in my own words, but again only of those men who are approved in their ancestral education. For I consider it fitting for me, as I also began, to provide the testimonies of the proofs through the appropriate authorities for each. Just as I summoned Phoenicians and Egyptians and Greeks as witnesses from among their own notable men in their own country, so too does the present occasion seem to me suitably to adopt these, and not for us ourselves to be thought to fabricate foreign matters.

Before coming to this, I consider it necessary to set before my readers a clear account of how the oracles among the Hebrews passed over to the Greeks, and of the manner in which the interpretation of the divine scriptures entrusted to them was established, and through how many and what kind of men, and through how much royal zeal, the translation into the Greek language was accomplished; for the exposition of these matters will not, I think, be without counsel for the demonstration of the Evangelical Preparation. For when, not long afterward, the life-beneficial proclamation of our savior was about to shine forth to all men under the Roman empire, and a discourse not ordinary was to carry the prophecies concerning him, the life of the ancient God-beloved Hebrews, and the teachings of their pious instruction, which had been concealed in their ancestral tongue for a long age, were at last to pass over to all the nations to whom the knowledge of God was about to be imparted; God himself, the author of these goods, anticipating the future by his foreknowledge as God, arranged that the predictions concerning the savior and teacher of piety, who was soon to appear for all men, and concerning the one God over all, who was to be established for all nations under the sun, should be revealed to all, brought to light, accurately translated, and deposited in public libraries, having put it into the mind of King Ptolemy to do this, as a preparation, as it seems, for the imminent conversion of all nations from them.

translation. For we would not have obtained these things from the Jews in any other way, since they would have hidden their own oracles out of envy toward us, but we were deemed worthy of these things from the divinely ordained translation by men among them who were approved both in understanding and in their ancestral education, who rendered them. Now Aristaeus writes these things, a learned man otherwise, but also one who was present at the events under the second Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, at which time the translation of the Jewish scriptures was accomplished through the zeal of the king and deemed worthy of the libraries in Alexandria. It is time to hear him, as he recounts the manner in the following words verbatim:

2. ARISTAEUS ON THE TRANSLATION OF THE SCRIPTURES AMONG THE JEWS: "Demetrius of Phalerum, having been placed in charge of the king's library, was commissioned with many funds to collect all the books throughout the inhabited world, and by making purchases and transcriptions he brought to completion, as far as it depended on him, the king's purpose. So when we were present, being asked how many tens of thousands of books there were, he said: 'More than twenty, O king; but I will endeavor in a short time to have the remaining ones reach five hundred thousand. It has also been reported to me that the laws of the Jews are worthy of transcription and of a place in your library.' 'What then prevents you,' he said, 'from doing this? For everything you need has been provided.' And Demetrius said: 'They require translation; for they use their own characters in Judea, just as the Egyptians use their own arrangement of letters, and they also have their own language. They are thought to use Syriac.'

But this is not the case; rather, it is a different manner. When the king had received each of these things, he ordered that a letter be written to the high priest of the Jews, so that the aforementioned matters might be brought to completion.» And after other things he adds: «When these things had been accomplished, he ordered Demetrius to submit a report concerning the transcription of the Jewish books. For everything was managed by these kings through decrees and great precision, and nothing was done carelessly or at random. For this reason I have also recorded the copy of the report and the copies of the letters, as well as the number of those sent and the construction of each, because each of them excels in magnificence and craftsmanship. And the copy of the report is as follows:

3. Letter of Demetrius of Phalerum to Ptolemy, King of Egypt: «To the great king from Demetrius. Since you, O king, have given orders concerning the books that are still missing for the completion of the library, that those which have been scattered should be collected and receive the appropriate restoration, I, having applied myself not casually to the care of these matters, report to you. The books of the law of the Jews, along with a few others, are still missing. For they are written in Hebrew characters and language, and they have been copied carelessly and not as they actually are, according to the report of those who know; for they have not received royal attention. It is necessary that these also be available to you in an accurate form, because this legislation is more philosophical and pure, as being divine.

Therefore, both the writers and poets and the multitude of historians have been far from mentioning the aforementioned books and the men who lived according to them, because the contemplation in them is pure and holy, as Hecataeus of Abdera says. If it seems good, O king, a letter will be written to the high priest in Jerusalem to send men who have lived most virtuously and are elders, experienced in their own law, six from each tribe, so that, having examined the agreement from the majority and obtained accuracy in translation, we may set it forth worthily both of the matters and of your purpose, with good order. Farewell always. When this proposal was made, the king ordered that a letter be written to Eleazar about these matters, also indicating the ransom of the captives that had taken place. He also gave for the construction of mixing bowls, phials, a table, and libation vessels fifty talents of gold and seventy talents of silver and a considerable quantity of stones. He ordered the treasurers to give the craftsmen the selection of whatever they might choose, and one hundred talents for sacrifices and other expenses. We will inform you about the construction when we have gone through the copies of the letters. The king's letter was of this form:

4. Letter of King Ptolemy to Eleazar the High Priest

"King Ptolemy to Eleazar the high priest, greetings and good health. Since it happens that many of the Jews have been settled in our country, having been taken as captives from Jerusalem by the Persians during the time they held sway, and also that captives came with our father into Egypt, from whom he enrolled many in the military formation with higher pay, and likewise, judging those already there to be trustworthy, he built fortresses and gave them to them, so that the Egyptian nation might have fear through these; and we, having received the kingdom, treat all more humanely, but much more so your fellow citizens; we have freed more than ten thousand captives, paying to those who held them the appropriate silver price, also correcting whatever was done badly due to the impulses of the mobs, having resolved to do this piously and to dedicate it as a thank-offering to the greatest god, who has preserved our kingdom in peace and in the strongest glory throughout the whole inhabited world; and we have placed those most vigorous in age into the army, and those able to be with us and worthy of trust concerning the court we have appointed, judging them. And since we wish to gratify both you and all the Jews throughout the inhabited world and those hereafter, we have chosen to have your law translated into Greek letters from the Hebrew letters among you, so that these too may be with us in the library along with the other royal books.

Therefore you will do well, and in a manner worthy of our zeal, by selecting men who have lived well, elders, having experience of the law and able to interpret, six from each tribe, so that from the majority the agreement may be found, since the inquiry concerns greater matters. For we think that when this is accomplished, we shall gain great renown. We have sent concerning these matters Andreas, one of the chief bodyguards, and Aristeas, men honored among us, to converse with you and to bring first-fruits for the temple as dedications and for sacrifices and the other things, one hundred talents of silver. Write also to us concerning whatever you wish; for you will be gratified and will do something worthy of friendship, as the matters concerning which you choose will be accomplished as quickly as possible. Farewell." To this letter Eleazar replied appropriately as follows:

5. Letter of Eleazar the High Priest to King Ptolemy "Eleazar the high priest to King Ptolemy, a genuine friend, greetings. If you yourself are well, and the queen Arsinoe, the sister, and the children, it would be well and as we wish, and we ourselves are healthy. Having received your letter, we rejoiced greatly because of your purpose and your good counsel, and having gathered the whole multitude we read it to them, so that they might know the piety you have toward our God.

We also displayed the bowls which you sent, twenty of gold and thirty of silver, five mixing-bowls and a table for dedication, and for the offering of sacrifices and for the repairs of whatever the temple might need, a hundred talents of silver, which were brought by Andrew, one of those honored by you, and Aristeas, men who are good and noble, distinguished in education, and worthy in every respect of your upbringing and justice. They also communicated to us what came from you, to which we have responded in a manner fitting to your affairs. For everything that is to your advantage, even if it is contrary to nature, we will comply. For this is a sign of friendship and affection. For you have greatly and unforgettably benefited our citizens in many ways. Immediately, therefore, we offered sacrifices on your behalf and on behalf of your sister, your children, and your friends, and the whole multitude prayed that it might be for you as you desire always, and that the God who rules over all may preserve your kingdom in peace with glory. And so that the transcription of the sacred law might be carried out advantageously and with security, in the presence of all I selected good and noble men, elders, six from each tribe, whom we have sent bearing the law. Therefore you will do well, O just king, by ordering how the transcription of the books is to be done, so that the men may be safely restored to us again. Farewell. After these things, having said much in the course of the proposed treatise, after the interpretation of the scriptures he adds in these very words:

When the rolls had been read, the priests, the senior interpreters, and the leaders of the people from the citizen body stood and said: Since the translation has been made well and piously and with complete accuracy, it is fitting that these things should remain as they are and that no revision should take place. And when all had assented to what was said, they ordered that a curse be pronounced, as is their custom, if anyone should revise by adding or altering anything whatsoever in the written text or by making a deletion; and they did this well, so that it might be preserved unchanged forever. When these things were reported to the king, he rejoiced greatly, for he thought that the purpose he had in mind had been securely accomplished. Everything was also read to him, and he greatly admired the mind of the lawgiver and said to Demetrius: How is it that, with such great things accomplished, none of the historians or poets has undertaken to mention them? And he replied: Because the legislation is sacred and has come from God, and some of those who attempted it were struck by God and desisted from their attempt. For he said that he had heard of Theopompus, that when he was about to relate some of the things already translated from the law in a rather reckless manner, he suffered a disturbance of his mind for more than thirty days; and that when, in response to his prayer, he propitiated God, it became clear to him why this had happened; and that, having learned through a dream that he was meddling with divine matters and bringing them out to common people, he desisted and thus recovered.

And from Theodectes, the tragic poet, I learned that when he was about to bring forward something from the writings recorded in the book for a drama, his eyes grew dim, and suspecting that this had happened to him for that reason, he propitiated the god and after many days recovered. And the king, as I said before, having learned of these things from Demetrius, prostrated himself and ordered that great care be taken of the books and that they be preserved reverently. Let this be abridged for us from the writing of the aforementioned author. Come then, let us also examine the constitution of the Mosaic legislation from the works of distinguished men. First I will set down the words of Philo concerning the departure of the Jews from Egypt, which they made under the leadership of Moses, from the first book of his Hypothetica, where, making a speech on behalf of the Jews as against their accusers, he says the following:

6.

Philo on the Departure of the Jews from Egypt: "Their ancient ancestor was from the Chaldeans, and this people arose from Egypt, having been formerly settled from Syria, teeming with countless myriads, and the land not being sufficient, and moreover being nurtured in great pride of spirit, and at the same time the god revealing to them an exodus through visions and dreams, and they fell, no less than by divine impulse, into a longing for their ancestral and ancient land, whence indeed that ancestor of theirs had come to Egypt, whether by the god's will or by some providence that all might especially prosper, so that from that time until the present their nation has both come into being and endured and even exceeded to such a degree in populousness." And shortly after he says: "A man indeed led them in the exodus and the journey, in no way different from the many, if you will; thus they reviled him as a sorcerer and a cunning chatterer. Yet what a fine sorcery and cunning! From which he not only preserved the entire people in waterlessness, famine, ignorance of the roads, and lack of all necessities, to the fullest extent, and as if in complete abundance and with safe passage through the intervening nations, but also kept them free from strife among themselves and especially obedient to him. And this not for a short time, as you might suppose, but for as long as not even a household is likely to remain in harmony with complete prosperity. And neither thirst, nor famine, nor bodily destruction, nor fear of the future, nor ignorance of what would happen, incited those deceived and utterly ruined peoples against that sorcerer.

And what shall we say? That he possesses such great skill or rhetorical power or intelligence as to prevail over so many and such absurdities, all leading to destruction? For either the natures of the men under him are not ignorant or difficult, but obedient and not without forethought for the future, or these men are as evil as possible, while God softens their difficulties and presides over both present and future. For whichever of these seems to you most true from these considerations, it appears to hold force for praise, honor, and emulation concerning all of them together. So much for the departure. But when they came to this land, how they were settled and took possession of the country is revealed in the sacred records; I, however, do not deem it right to go through the probabilities concerning them more by historical narrative than by some reasoning. For do you wish that the multitude, still surviving in body, though utterly afflicted, yet strong and with arms in hand, then took the land by force, conquering both Syrians and Phoenicians fighting in their own land? Or shall we suppose that they were unwarlike and cowardly and altogether few and lacking in military preparations, but obtained respect from these and

to take land from willing givers, and then immediately, not long after, to build the temple and establish the other things for piety and sanctity? For this shows, it seems, that they were acknowledged as most beloved of God even by their enemies; for they were necessarily enemies of those whose land they suddenly came to as if to take it away. Yet among these they received respect and honor—how do they not appear to surpass others in good fortune? What then shall we say are the second or third things in order after these? Is it their good order and obedience, or their holiness, justice, and piety? But that man, whoever he was who gave them the laws, they admired so greatly that whatever seemed good to him seemed good to them as well. Whether he himself reasoned or heard from a demon and spoke, they refer all this to God, and though many years have passed—I cannot say exactly how many, but it is more than two thousand—they have not moved even a single word of what he wrote, but would endure death ten thousand times rather than be persuaded to act contrary to his laws and customs. Having said this, he summarizes the polity established for the Jewish nation from the laws of Moses, writing as follows:

7. On the Godly Polity According to Moses "Is there any of these things or anything similar to them among those people, which seems gentle and tame and involves delays, pretexts, postponements, valuations, and revaluations of suits? Nothing, but everything is simple and clear. If you are a pederast, if you commit adultery, if you force a male child—do not even mention it—but likewise if you force a female, if you prostitute yourself, if you suffer or seem to suffer or are about to suffer something shameful beyond your age, the penalty is death. If you insult the body of a slave, if you insult a free person, if you confine with bonds, if you lead away and sell, if you steal profane or sacred things, if you commit impiety, not only by deed but also by any chance word—concerning God himself, may God be gracious to us and may it not even be worthy to mention the thought of such things—but if you speak against your father or mother or benefactor, death likewise, and this not an ordinary or chance death, but the one who merely speaks must be stoned, as having committed no less an impiety. And then again, other things of a certain kind: women are to serve their husbands, not for any insult but for obedience in all things; parents are to rule their children, for their preservation and honor; each person is to be master of his own possessions, not ascribing them to God nor dedicating them as to God. But if a mere promise in word should occur, it is not permitted to touch or handle them, but one is immediately excluded from all.

Do not let me snatch the offerings of the gods, nor despoil what others have dedicated, but also, as I said, if some word of one’s own falls out and escapes him in a dedication, and he says he is deprived of everything, and if he repents or corrects what was said, he is also deprived of his life. And in the other matters over which he is master, the same principle applies. If a man declares his wife’s food to be sacred, she must abstain from food; if a father declares it to his son, if a ruler to his subject, the same. And release from such declarations is either the most perfect and greatest, when the priest declares it; for he is authorized by God to receive it; and after this, the piety of those who are always more authoritative declares the god to be propitious, so that it is not even necessary to accept the dedication. And there are countless other things besides these, both in unwritten customs and practices and in the laws themselves. What one hates to suffer, he should not do to another; what he has not deposited, he should not take up, nor from a garden bed, nor from a wine vat, nor from a threshing floor; he should not remove anything from a heap, great or small, simply nothing; he should not refuse fire to one in need.

envy; not to block the streams of waters, but to hold out reverently to the god for beggars and the blind who gather food; not to exclude a corpse from burial, but to add to them as much earth as is needed for piety; not to disturb tombs or monuments of the departed at all; not to add bonds or any further evil to one in distress; not to cut off the seed of men, nor to cause abortion in women through contraceptives and other devices; not to treat animals contrary to what either the god or some lawgiver has ordained; not to destroy seed; not to enslave offspring; not to impose an unjust yoke, nor an unfair measure, nor a false coin; not to reveal the secrets of friends in enmity; where indeed, by the god, are those Bouzygian curses for you? And see other things besides these: not to separate parents from children, even if you have captives; not to separate a wife from her husband, even if you are a master who has lawfully purchased him. How much more solemn and greater these are. And other small and ordinary things: not to empty a domestic bird's nest, he says, nor to kill animals that take refuge, as sometimes happens when they flee; not to do anything lesser of such things. Perhaps you would say these are worth nothing; but the law concerning them is great and the cause of all care, and the proclamations are great and the curses for destruction, and the god himself is the overseer of such things and the punisher everywhere." And after a little he says: "If it happened to be a whole day, or rather not even one, but many, and these not immediately consecutive, but at intervals, and these every seven days, with the custom of the profane, as is likely, always prevailing, do you not wonder that none of the commandments would be transgressed?

Is it, then, only for the sake of training in self-control that they have this, so that they are equally able both to work hard at tasks and to refrain from them, if need be? Not at all; rather, the lawgiver thought it necessary that they be capable not only of doing and not doing other things in like manner, but also of being experienced in the ancestral laws and customs. What, then, did he do on these seventh days? He deemed it right that they should gather together in the same place and, sitting with one another in reverence and order, listen to the laws, so that no one might be ignorant of them. And indeed they always assemble and sit together, the majority in silence, except that it is customary to acclaim what is read; one of the priests present, or one of the elders, reads the sacred laws to them and explains each point until nearly late afternoon; and from this they depart, having experience of the sacred laws and having greatly advanced in piety. Do these things seem to you to belong to idlers, and are they not rather more necessary to them than any pursuit? Therefore they do not go to oracle-mongers to inquire about what is to be done or not, nor do they act carelessly on their own through ignorance of the laws; but if you question any one of them and inquire about the ancestral customs, he is readily and easily able to speak, and a man to his wife, a father to his children, and a master to his slaves seems capable of transmitting the laws. And indeed it is likewise easy to speak about the seventh year, though perhaps not the same thing.

For they do not themselves abstain from the works as on those seventh days, but they leave the land fallow for future seasons, for the sake of abundance. For it makes a great difference that the land, having taken a rest, is then cultivated the following year and not worn out by the continuousness of labor. And you would see the same thing happening with bodies for strength; for it is not only for health that doctors prescribe intervals and certain rests from labors; for the continuous and uniform, especially in works, seems to cause harm. And here is a sign: if someone were to promise them to work this very land much more than before during this seventh year and to yield all the crops entirely, they would by no means accept it. For they do not think that they themselves alone ought to endure the labors—and yet even if they did this, it would be nothing remarkable—but that the land should have some relaxation and ease, as a beginning for the subsequent care and cultivation. For what, by God, prevented them from having leased it out in the past year and collecting that year's tribute from the workers? But, as I said, in no way do they accept any such things, as it seems to me, out of foresight for the land. And this too is truly a great sign of their philanthropy: since they themselves abstain from the labors of that year, they do not think they ought to gather or store the crops that grow, as they do not come to them from their own labors.

but when God has provided for them, the land yielding spontaneously, they deem it right that those who wish or need, whether travelers or others, may use it without hindrance. And concerning these matters, enough for you. For as to the law that established these things for them on the seventh days, you would not require me to explain, since perhaps you have often heard from many, both physicians and philosophers and naturalists, before now, what power this principle of the seventh has with regard to the whole universe and indeed to human nature.” So much for Philo. And Josephus, in the second book of his work entitled *On the Antiquity of the Jews*, relates similar things, writing in this manner:

8. JOSEPHUS ON THE MOSAIC CONSTITUTION: “Who it was that most perfectly established the laws and attained the most just belief concerning God, it is possible to perceive from the laws themselves by comparing them; for now we must speak about these matters. Now the differences in customs and laws among all peoples are infinite in detail. But if one were to summarize: some have entrusted the authority of their governments to monarchies, others to oligarchies, others to the masses. Our lawgiver, however, looked to none of these, but, as one might say, compelling the argument, he set forth the constitution as a theocracy, assigning the rule and power to God, and persuading all to look to him as the cause of all good things, both those common to all men and those which they themselves obtained when in need in difficult circumstances.

It is impossible to escape his notice, either in any of the things that are done or in what one might conceive in his own mind. But he declared him both unbegotten and, for eternal time, unchangeable, surpassing every mortal form in beauty, and known to us in power, but unknowable as to what he is in essence. That the wisest among the Greeks thought these things about God, having been taught them, with him providing the beginnings, I now refrain from saying; but that they are good and fitting to the nature and majesty of God, they have strongly testified. For Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato, and those after him from the Stoic school, and nearly all, are manifest to have thought thus about the nature of God. But they, philosophizing for the few, did not dare to bring the truth of the doctrine out to the multitudes held captive by opinions; whereas our lawgiver, since he provided works in harmony with the laws, not only persuaded those of his own time, but also implanted in those who would ever be born from them an unshakable faith concerning God. The reason is that he also differed greatly in the manner of his legislation, for the benefit of all. For he did not make piety a part of virtue, but made the other virtues parts of it, and he both understood and established them—I mean justice, temperance, endurance, and the harmony of the citizens with one another in all things. For all the actions and pursuits and

All discourses have their reference to piety toward God; for he left none of these things unexamined or undefined. There are two modes of all education and of the formation of character, one of which is teaching by word, the other through the practice of habits. Now other lawgivers have differed in their opinions and, choosing whichever of these two seemed good to each, have neglected the other. For example, the Lacedaemonians and Cretans educated by customs, not by words, while the Athenians and almost all other Greeks prescribed by their laws what should or should not be done, but neglected to habituate people to these through actions. Our lawgiver, however, combined both of these with great care; for he neither left the practice of habits mute nor allowed the word of the law to be inoperative, but beginning from the very first nurture and the daily life of each household, he left nothing, not even the smallest things, to the free will of those who would use them, but concerning what foods must be abstained from and what should be taken, and concerning those who would share in the diet, and the intensity of work, and conversely rest, he himself established a limit and a rule, the law, so that living under this as under a father and master, we might err neither by will nor by ignorance. For he did not even leave the excuse of ignorance, but showed the law to be the most beautiful and most necessary instruction, not for those who hear it once or twice or many times, but he commanded that every week, abstaining from other works, they should assemble for the hearing of the law and learn it accurately.

which all lawgivers seem to have omitted. And so far are most men from living according to their own laws that they scarcely even know them; but when they transgress, then they learn from others that they have broken the law. Even those who administer the greatest and most authoritative offices among them confess their ignorance; for they appoint as overseers of the management of affairs those who profess to have experience of the laws. But if one were to choose any of our people, one could more easily recite all the laws than one's own name. Therefore, from the very first perception we learn them thoroughly, having them as if engraved in our souls, and the transgressor is rare, while remission of punishment is impossible. This first of all has produced in us that wonderful concord. For to have one and the same opinion about God, and to differ in nothing from each other in life and customs, produces the finest harmony in human characters. For among us alone will one hear no contradictory discourses about God, such as are many among others, uttered not only by ordinary people according to the passion that befalls each, but also dared by some philosophers, some of whom have attempted to abolish the whole nature of God by their arguments, while others have denied his providence for men; nor will one see any difference in the practices of our lives, but among us all works are common, and there is one discourse in harmony with the law concerning God, saying that he oversees everything.

And indeed, concerning the practices of life, that all other things must have piety as their end, one might hear even from women and slaves. Hence also the accusation brought against us by some, that we have produced no men who are inventors of new works or words, has arisen from this. For others consider it good to abide by none of their ancestral customs, and they attribute cleverness of wisdom to those who most dare to transgress them, but we on the contrary have assumed that prudence and virtue are one and the same, namely to do or think nothing at all contrary to the laws originally established. This would reasonably be a proof that the law was laid down most excellently. For things not having this character are shown by experience to need correction; but for us, who have been persuaded that the law was laid down from the beginning according to the will of God, it was not even pious not to keep it. For what could one move from it, or what better could one discover, or what from others could one transfer as superior? The whole constitution of the polity? And what could be more beautiful or more just than that which has made God the leader of the whole, which entrusts to the priests in common the administration of the greatest matters, and which has again entrusted to the high priest of all the leadership of the other priests? These the lawgiver did not at once appoint to the honor according to wealth or certain other automatic advantages, but those among his followers who excelled the others in persuasiveness and temperance, to these he entrusted especially the service concerning God.

This was the precise care of the law and of all other practices; for the priests were appointed as overseers of all things, judges of disputed matters, and punishers of those condemned. What office, then, could be more holy than this? What honor more fitting for God? The whole multitude was fashioned toward piety, while the special care was entrusted to the priests, and the entire polity was administered as a kind of initiation. For what others, practicing for a few days, call mysteries and rites and cannot preserve, we guard with great pleasure and unwavering resolve throughout all time. What, then, are the prophecies and proclamations? They are simple and clear. The first and foremost is that concerning God, which says: God holds all things together, perfect and blessed, sufficient to himself and to all; he is the beginning, middle, and end of all things, manifest in his works and graces and clearer than anything else, yet in form and magnitude most invisible to us. Every material, even if costly, is dishonored compared to an image of him; every art is artless compared to the conception of an imitation; we have seen nothing like him, nor can we conceive of him, nor is it holy to form a likeness. We see his works: light, heaven, earth, sun and moon, rivers and sea, the generations of animals, the production of fruits. These God made, not with hands or labors, nor needing any co-workers, but as soon as he willed them beautifully, they were beautifully made. All must follow him and serve him by practicing virtue; for this is the most holy way of serving God.

one temple of one God, for like is always dear to like, common to all, of a common God of all. The priests serve him continually; and the first among them by descent always leads them. He, together with the other priests, will sacrifice to God, guard the laws, judge disputed matters, and punish those convicted. Whoever disobeys him will pay the penalty, as one who impiously offends against God himself. We offer sacrifices not for our own gratification and drunkenness—for these are displeasing to God and would be a pretext for insolence and extravagance—but soberly, orderly, and modestly, so that those sacrificing may be especially temperate. And at the sacrifices, one must pray first for the common safety, then for oneself; for we are born for community, and one who prefers this to his own private interest would be most pleasing to God. Let the appeal to God be through prayer and supplication, not that he may give good things—for he himself has freely given and laid them out in common for all—but that we may be able to receive them and, having received them, keep them. The law has prescribed purity at sacrifices from mourning, from sexual intercourse, from relations with a woman, and from many other things, which it would be long to write now. Such is our account concerning God and his worship; and this same account is also law. And who are the

Concerning marriages: the law recognizes only natural union with a woman, and that only if it is for the sake of children. It abhors union with a male, and death is the penalty if anyone attempts it. It commands that one marry not by attending to dowry, nor by violent abduction, nor yet by guile and deceit, but by betrothal from the one authorized to give her and according to suitability of kinship. Woman is inferior, it says, to man in all things; therefore let her obey, not for insult, but that she may be ruled; for God has given power to the man. The husband must be with her alone; to tempt another's wife is unholy. If anyone does this, there is no remission of death, whether he violates a virgin betrothed to another or seduces a married woman. It commanded that all children be reared. And it forbade women either to abort the conceived or to destroy it; if one were discovered, she would be a child-killer, destroying a soul and diminishing the race. Therefore, even if one passes over the corruption of the bed, it is not then proper to be pure. And after lawful intercourse of man and woman, one must wash; it supposed this to be a division of the soul to another region; for the soul, when implanted in bodies, suffers evil, and again when separated from them by death. Therefore it ordained purity in all such matters.

Nor did it permit feasting and occasions for drunkenness even at the birth of children, but immediately ordained a temperate beginning of nurture and commanded that they be taught letters, to learn the laws and the deeds of their ancestors, the latter so that they might imitate them, the former so that, being reared with them, they might neither transgress nor have the excuse of ignorance. It provided for piety toward the dead, not through costly funerals or the construction of conspicuous monuments, but it assigned the rites of burial to the nearest relatives to perform, and made it lawful for all who pass by when someone is being buried to approach and join in the lamentation. And it commands that both the house and its inhabitants be purified from a funeral, so that one who has committed murder may be as far as possible from being considered pure. It placed honor of parents second after that toward God; and one who does not repay their kindnesses, but falls short in any respect, it hands over to be stoned. It commands that the young hold every elder in honor, since God is the most ancient. It allows nothing to be hidden from friends, for there is no friendship that does not entrust everything; and if any enmity occurs, it has forbidden revealing secrets of these matters. If a judge takes bribes, the penalty is death. One who overlooks a suppliant, when able to help, is liable. What one has not deposited, one shall not take away. One shall touch nothing belonging to others. One who lends shall not take interest. These and many similar things hold together our common life. And how the lawgiver provided for gentleness toward foreigners is worth seeing.

For he will be seen to have made the best provision for all things, so that we neither destroy our own nor begrudge those who choose to share in our ways. For all who wish to live under the same laws as us, submitting themselves, he receives kindly, considering kinship to lie not only in race but also in the choice of life; but those who approach casually to mingle in our customs he has not wished to admit. The other things of which the sharing is necessary he has prescribed beforehand: to provide to all who are in need fire, water, food, to point out roads, not to leave a corpse unburied. And the measures judged toward enemies are also equitable; for he does not permit burning their land, nor has he allowed cutting down cultivated trees; but he has also forbidden stripping the fallen in battle, and has made provision for captives, that outrage be kept from them, especially from women. And he has been so zealous to teach us gentleness and philanthropy from afar that he has not even neglected irrational animals, but has permitted only the customary use of them, and has forbidden all other.

...themselves to the same laws as us, he forbade killing them, even as they fled to houses like suppliants; nor did he permit their parents to be taken together with the young; he commanded to spare even in enemy territory the animals that work, and not to kill them. Thus from all sides he provided for fairness, using the aforementioned laws as teaching, and setting in place punitive laws against transgressors not without reason. For the penalty for most transgressions is death: if one commits adultery, if one violates a maiden, if one dares to attempt a male, if the one tempted submits. And the law is equally inexorable for slaves. But also concerning measures, if one should cheat in weights or in unjust sale made by deceit, or if one should steal another's property, or take up what one did not deposit, there are punishments for all, not as among others, but more severe. For concerning injustice to parents or impiety toward God, even if one intends it, he is immediately destroyed. However, for those who do everything according to the laws, the reward is not silver or gold, nor a crown of wild olive or celery and such a proclamation, but each one, having his own conscience as witness, has believed that the lawgiver prophesied and that God provided strong assurance that for those who preserve the laws, even if they must die for them, and die willingly, God has granted that they come to be again and receive a better life through renewal.

I would now hesitate to write these things, were it not evident to all from the facts that many of our people have already, and often, nobly endured everything rather than utter a single word contrary to the law. And yet, if it were not that our nation is known to all men and our voluntary adherence to the laws lies in plain sight, but someone were to say that he himself read to the Greeks, or claimed to have encountered outside the known world, men holding such a reverent opinion of God and having steadfastly abided by such laws for a long age, I think everyone would marvel because of the constant changes among them. Indeed, they accuse those who have attempted to write something similar on government and laws of composing marvels, claiming they have taken impossible hypotheses. And I pass over the other philosophers, all who have treated such matters in their writings; but Plato, admired among the Greeks as having excelled in dignity of life and in power of speech and persuasion beyond all who have been in philosophy, is continually mocked and ridiculed by those who claim to be skilled in politics, almost to the point of being laughed at. Yet, examining his works frequently, one would find them easier and closer to the common custom. Plato himself admitted that it was not safe to bring the true opinion of God to the ignorance of the masses. But some consider Plato's words to be empty speeches, elegantly written with great license.

Above all, the lawgivers have admired Lycurgus, and everyone praises Sparta because they persevered in his laws for the longest time. So let it be agreed that this is a proof of virtue: obedience to the laws. But those who admire the Lacedaemonians should compare their duration with the more than two thousand years of our polity; and further, let them consider that the Lacedaemonians, as long as they had their freedom, seemed to preserve the laws strictly, but when changes of fortune befell them, they all but forgot all their laws; whereas we, having been in countless circumstances due to the changes of the rulers of Asia, did not betray the laws even in the extremes of calamities. So says Josephus concerning the polity of the Jews under Moses. But concerning the hidden and allegorical theory in the laws laid down by him, although I have much to say, I consider the accounts of Eleazar and Aristobulus sufficient—men who were of Hebrew descent originally and who flourished in the time of the Ptolemies. Of these, Eleazar, who was honored with the dignity of the high priesthood, was mentioned by us a little earlier; he, when those sent by the king to him on an embassy for the translation of the Hebrew writings into Greek, outlining the manner of the allegorical idea in the sacred laws, made such a teaching of the discourse.