Church History Books 1–9 (trans.) 2 part 1/2

XVI. How Mark first preached the knowledge of Christ throughout Egypt. — XVII. What things Philo wrote concerning the abstinent among the Egyptians. — XVIII. How many of Philo's books have come down to us. — XX. What things too were done at Jerusalem under Nero. — XXI. Concerning the Egyptian, of whom the Acts of the Apostles make mention. — XXII. How Paul, sent in chains from Judaea to Rome [defended himself]. — XXIII. That after Mark the first bishop of the church of Alexandria [was Annianus]. — XXV. Concerning the persecution of Nero, under whom Paul and Peter [ended their lives] in a pious contest, as it seems; for the Rufinian text [reads]...

...leads to [the reign of] Claudius. Whatever it was needful to set forth, as in the beginnings of an ecclesiastical history — whether concerning the divinity of the Savior, or concerning the antiquity of our religion and the venerable age of the doctrine, and how the institution of the Christians, which seems novel, was of old handed down, and also concerning the coming of the Lord and Savior himself [and the election of the apostles] — we have touched upon, with as much brevity as we could, in the preceding book.

Come now, let us see also the things that followed after his ascension, teaching them partly by the testimonies of the divine Scriptures, partly also from external sources, from those things which have been faithfully [preserved] in commentaries for the memory of posterity. First, then, into the apostolate in place of Judas the traitor, Matthias is chosen by lot, who was one of the disciples of the Lord, as was demonstrated above.

Now there are also ordained deacons, seven in number, through the prayers and the laying on of the hands of the apostles, for the sake of the ministry to the widows; among whom [Stephen] is stoned by those who also killed the Lord... [James], the brother of the Lord, because he was the son of Joseph — who was reckoned as the father of Christ, since indeed the virgin Mary had been betrothed to him, who [conceived] by the Holy [Spirit], as the Gospels attest — this same James, I say, who was also surnamed the Just by the ancients on account of the merit of his virtues and the privilege of his distinguished life, the histories have handed down as first to have received the seat of the church which is in Jerusalem, as Clement [says] in the sixth book of the Dispositions: 'For Peter,' he says, 'and James and John, after the assumption of the Savior, although they had been preferred by him to almost all, nevertheless did not claim for themselves the glory of the primacy, but [chose] James, who was called the Just.' The same author too, in the seventh book of the same work, adds concerning this James: 'To James,' he says, 'who was called the Just, and to John and Peter, after the resurrection the Lord handed over all knowledge; and they to the rest of the apostles, and the apostles to those seventy disciples, of whom one was also Barnabas.'

'Now it is established that there were two Jameses: one this Just, who was cast down from the pinnacle of the temple, struck with a fuller's club, and delivered to death; but the other is that one who was beheaded by Herod.' Of this Just James, then, Paul too makes mention, when he writes: 'But another,' he says, 'of the apostles I saw none, except James the brother of the Lord.'

At this time therefore Thaddaeus also, whom we mentioned above, according to the command of the Lord being sent to King Abgar, freed him indeed from the sickness of his bodily disease, but joined the whole city of the Edessenes to Christ the Lord with a faith of sufficient belief, so that to this day that city — inasmuch as it deserved to receive the writings of the Lord and Savior himself — is, as it were, dedicated by a certain special devotion to Christ. Meanwhile the first persecution against the church of God [arose, and] scattered the disciples, except the twelve, throughout all Judaea and Samaria — or rather, as the holy Scripture indicates, sowed them abroad.

Of these some came as far as Phoenicia and even to Cyprus and Antioch, who did not yet dare to entrust the mystery of the faith to the Gentiles, [preaching only to] the Jews. [Saul, entering] houses and dragging off men and women, delivered them to prison. But Philip, who was one of the seven ordained deacons with Stephen, went down to Samaria, filled with the power of the Lord, and preached first the word of God to the Samaritan nation. In which there was so great an efficacy of divine grace that... [Simon] was held in celebrated fame among the peoples of the Samaritans for a time, so that he was thought to be a great power of God.

But when this man [Simon] had seen the signs and miracles which were done by Philip through the power of divine grace, being astounded and terrified, he yielded and [professed] that he believed in Christ, so much so that even... And since it was an ancient custom among the Romans, that the governors of provinces, if perchance anything new had happened in the provinces which they ruled, should announce it either to the emperor or to the senate, that they might not seem to be ignorant of anything of what was being done, [Pilate] reports to the emperor Tiberius concerning the resurrection from the dead of our Lord and Savior, and also concerning his other wonders, and how, after his death, having risen again, he was already believed to be God by very many. Tiberius referred what he had learned to the senate.

But the senate is said to have spurned it, on the ground that this matter had not first been laid before it as an indication — [it being] anciently ordained that no one should be reckoned a god among the Romans unless confirmed by the decree and sentence of the senate. But truly the matter was so ordered for a true reason, that the divine power might not be thought to need human supporters. And when, according to what we said above, the senate had refused it, Tiberius should devise the contrary. These things Tertullian — a man most skilled in both the laws and institutions of the Romans, and among our writers exceedingly renowned — [relates] in his Apology, which he writes against the Gentiles on behalf of our faith: 'This was a decree, that no god should be consecrated by the emperor unless approved by the senate. Marcus Aemilius knows this concerning his god Alburnus.'

'This too makes for our cause, that among you divinity is weighed by human judgment; and unless a god shall have pleased a man, he will not be a god — man will now have to be propitious to god.' Tiberius therefore, in whose time the [Christian] name entered into the world, when it had been announced to him from Syria Palaestina the things which were true there, [referred it to the senate] with the prerogative of his own vote; the senate, because it had not itself approved it, rejected it. Caesar remained in his opinion, threatening danger to the accusers of the Christians. Whence too it came to pass that suddenly, as though a heavenly light were shown, or a certain ray of the sun bursting forth illumined the whole world with the brightness of a light from above, so that there might also be fulfilled that prophecy which had said: 'into all [the earth their sound went out], and unto the ends of the world their words.'

From which, throughout all cities and villages, immense multitudes, just as at harvest time the grain is gathered to the threshing-floors, so the peoples were gathered together to the churches. Whoever were held by the bonds of a diseased superstition handed down to them by their parents, having received the knowledge of the true God, as though freed from tyrannical masters, came to the one true God and Lord and their Creator, doing penance for their ancient error, with a faithful confession. When therefore now everywhere, even among all the peoples of the Gentiles, the divine favor was being poured out more abundantly, [Cornelius] with all his house is led to the faith of Christ, Peter ministering.

From that time onward very many others also from the Gentiles at Antioch came to the faith, drawn by the preaching of those whom, on account of the sedition stirred up against Stephen, we taught above to have been scattered abroad throughout every place. There were also very many men of the prophetic order, among whom were both Barnabas and Paul. And when all of them alike were living there in the grace of God and in unanimity, there for the first time the disciples were called Christians, as though a name taken from a perennial fount. At which season a certain Agabus, one of these [prophets, foretold a famine by divine] oracles. But Paul and Barnabas, with the ministry conferred on them by the brethren — which was to serve the uses of the saints — are appointed to Jerusalem. [Herod Agrippa,] his life exacted, made an end of living.

After him Gaius took up the imperial power, and he conferred the tetrarchies of Lysanias, together with which, a little later, he also bestowed those of Herod upon the same man. But Herod himself, who had been the instigator in the slaying of John and had taken part in the passion of the Lord, he condemned, tormented in many ways, to perpetual exile, as Josephus writes in the passages we have inserted above. Not only in our own, but even in the philosophy of the Greeks he was reckoned first among the first. This man, by descent a Hebrew from his forefathers, was at Alexandria more illustrious and more noble than all the famous and noble men there; and how great and of what quality he was in the divine laws and in the institutions of the fathers is well known.

For who could worthily set forth how great was his training in the liberal letters, how great in philosophy, and above all how eminent he was in the Platonic and Pythagorean disciplines, so that he surpassed almost all who flourished together with him, and even those who had gone before him. This same man, then, in the times of Gaius, set forth in five books how great were the evils that befell the Jews, and how Gaius was so uplifted with pride that he wished to be called a god. And in these very books, where he relates the calamities of the Jews, he also describes his own embassy, which he undertook to the city of Rome on behalf of his fellow countrymen the Jews, and how, pleading before Gaius on behalf of the laws of the fathers, he gained nothing further than [mockery and peril].

But Josephus too makes mention of these things in the eighteenth book of his Antiquities, saying that when a sedition had broken out at Alexandria between the Jews and the Greeks, three envoys were sent by each of the two parties to Gaius. One of these accused the Jews in very many other matters, but most of all in this, that they did not render honor to Caesar, as it is the custom for all to do who are subject to the Roman rods of office. "These men," he said, "set up neither altars nor temples to Gaius, nor anything else of this kind by which divine honors are rendered to him by the provincials; but they alone are those who neither decree statues to him nor observe the sacred oath of his name."

And when Apion had alleged these and other more grievous charges, by which he believed Gaius would be provoked, Philo, who presided over the embassy of the Jews, a man in all respects distinguished, brother of Alexander the alabarch, and not unversed in philosophy, most powerfully refuted the accusations laid against them. But Gaius drove him away and ordered him at once to depart from his sight, while, filled with wrath, he pondered within himself what evil he might inflict upon them. And Philo, going out amid the insult, said to the Jews who stood beside him: "The divine help is at hand, where human aid fails." This much, indeed, is from Josephus. But Philo himself, in the very book which he composed concerning his embassy, relates in detail all the things that were done by himself.

Of these things I shall recall only such as will be plain to my readers: that a certain man of high standing before the emperor wished with the utmost effort to destroy their whole nation; and that in Judaea Pilate, under whom while all yet remained whole and unharmed, attempted to profane [the temple], and stirred them up with the greatest of tumults.

And after the death of Tiberius he relates that Gaius, his successor, showed himself most savage toward very many others, but then especially toward the nation of the Jews; which is evident also from the very words of that writer. "Great," he says, "was the depravity of disposition in Gaius, by which he was carried against all men, but then chiefly against the nation of the Jews; and with a certain peculiar cruelty he began, starting from Alexandria, to plunder those places of theirs which they hold consecrated to their divine supplications, and against [right] to fill them with images. The temple also of the holy city, which alone [remained untouched]."

"...had remained untouched by all profane contagion, and from the men of old had continued as a sanctuary — this he dared to change into a temple bearing his own name, so that it should be called the shrine of Jupiter, the most noble new god Gaius." The wrongs inflicted upon the Jews at Alexandria under Gaius the aforesaid man sets forth in the second book of his work On the Virtues. Moreover Josephus too, writing in agreement with him concerning the times of Pilate, [tells] of the evils that befell the whole nation as punishment for the outrages done to the Savior. Hear how he himself in the second book of the Jewish [War] says: "This man, who was sent into Judaea by Tiberius as procurator, Pilate, set up [the images]. And when day had dawned, he stirred up great disturbance among the peoples of the Jews, who were astonished and thrown into confusion at this new state of affairs."

"...their own laws and all the institutions of their fathers, within which nothing of the sort might be permitted." But this indeed is the very thing in which a swift vengeance condemned them for their impious profession, in return for the fact that, according to the account of the Gospel, the whole nation cried out together: "We have no king but Caesar." Then next the same writer records yet another disturbance brought upon them. "After these things there fell upon them still another commotion, for the reason that, contrary to right, they saw the funds of the public aqueduct being diverted for common uses — the aqueduct which was conducted from a distance of three hundred stadia — and on account of this the people were moved with excessive indignation. And when Pilate was present at Jerusalem, they dared to approach him and to wear him out with their outcries."

But he — for he had foreseen the sedition — having given them the command that against the seditious they should use not swords, but cudgels.

"Therefore, when the moment came, at a signal given from the tribunals, they began to strike them down and lay them low; some perished from the wounds of those who beat them, but very many, while, turned to flight, they rushed headlong, were crushed and killed by their own crowding together; and the rest [escaped scarcely alive]." Besides this, the same writer sets forth that many disasters befell them at Jerusalem, while they ever more seditiously pursued new schemes; showing that, from the time of the sacrilege committed, the fury of their seditions never ceased among them, nor did wars and deaths, until at last the final and destructive [ruin came upon them]. And Pilate too, who in the case of the Savior discharged the office of an unjust judge, was in those same times of Gaius so tortured by such and so great disasters of evils that with his own hand he ran himself through and cast away his wicked life by violence, as we find in the histories of the Greeks — namely of those who chronicled the Olympiads. Claudius the emperor succeeded, under whom a very dire famine [oppressed] the whole world, as they had foretold — as it is related in the Acts of the Apostles that a certain prophet named Agabus declared that a great famine would come to pass under the emperor Claudius.

But Luke, who relates these things concerning Agabus, adds also this: that through Paul and Barnabas, the brethren who were at Antioch, according to their means [relief was sent to those at Jerusalem], marking the time in which the famine occurred. "He sent forth," he says, "Herod the king his hands to afflict certain of the church, and he killed [James]." The Alexandrian also writes a certain story worthy of remembrance in the seventh book of his Institutions, which had been brought down to him by tradition. "For," he says, "even he who had delivered him up to the judge, [was moved to become a Christian]. Both," he says, "were led together to punishment; and as they were being led, on the way he asked James to grant him forgiveness. And he, deliberating a little, said: 'Peace be to you,' and kissed him."

And so both [were beheaded]. Herod, because the slaying of James was pleasing to the Jews, went on further and cast Peter also into prison, doubtless wishing to punish him too, had not the divine help been present, whereby an angel, standing by him in the night, wondrously loosed him from the bonds of his chains and bade him go free to the ministry of preaching. And with Peter, indeed, these things came to pass. But the king's crime perpetrated against the apostles did not brook any delay of vengeance; rather, at once the avenging right hand of God was present, as the history written in the Acts of the Apostles teaches us: "When," it says, "at Caesarea, arrayed [in royal robe], he had taken his seat before the tribunal and from on high was making an oration to the people, and when the people acclaimed him:"

"'This is the voice of a god, and not of a man' — immediately," it says, "the angel of the Lord smote him, and he expired." And it is worthy of wonder that so great a harmony of the divine Scriptures with the historian of that nation should be found. For Josephus himself, making mention of these same events in the nineteenth book of the Antiquities, relates it in these words which are written below: "He had completed," he says, "the third year of his rule over all Judaea, when he chanced to come to Caesarea, which was formerly called Strato's Tower."

"There, when he was presenting spectacles to the citizens in honor of Caesar, on a votive [day], having put on a garment gleaming with gold and silver marvelously interwoven, and having received it upon the fold of the robe, the splendor being reflected, the flashing of the flashing metal poured out to the spectators a doubled light, so that the terror of the sight dazzled the eyes of those who beheld, and through this, by his arrogance, the craftsman falsely feigned something more of him than belongs to human nature. At once the voices of the flattering crowd rang out, sounding forth honor but bearing destruction; and from this side and that, as the throngs cried aloud, he was addressed as a god, and, that he might be propitious, he was suppliantly entreated, the people saying: 'Until now we have feared you as a man, but from this time onward we confess that you are above human nature.'"

"But the king did not repress the acclamation raised contrary to right, nor did he shudder at the impiety of the unlawful flattery, until, looking a little later, he saw an angel hanging over and pressing upon his head, and at once he perceived him to be the minister of his own destruction, whom before he had known as the provider of good things. And behold, suddenly a torment seized him from an incredible pain of the belly and a swelling; and looking to his friends: 'Behold,' he said, 'I, that god of yours — behold, I am at once driven off and hurled down out of life, since the divine power has now convicted the false voices bestowed upon me; and I who was but now called immortal by you, headlong am even now being snatched into death. But the sentence which God has decreed must be received.'"

"'For we have lived not despicably, and we have fulfilled that length of life which is thought blessed.' And when he had said these things, more violently agitated by the force of pain, he was at once carried back to the palace. And when it was noised abroad that he would soon die, a vast multitude of every age and sex, gathering according to the ancestral custom, laid low upon sackcloth, made supplication to almighty God for the king's safety, and the whole royal house resounded with lamentations and groanings. Meanwhile the king himself, reclining in a lofty upper chamber and looking down, and seeing all bowed down and prostrate with weeping, could not himself refrain from tears.'"

"But, tortured for five continuous days by pains of the belly, he violently broke off his life, in the fiftieth year of his age, having reigned [certain] years under Gaius Caesar, holding the tetrarchy of Philip for three years, and in the fourth adding to himself also that of Herod, while the remaining three years were spent under Claudius Caesar." Whereas in very many other matters Josephus [agrees], but in these things he so entirely varies only in the name of the king, since both the time and the deeds and the circumstances show him to have been the same man, it is possible that — just as we find in very many other names of the Jews — this man too was called by a double name, of which our Luke used the one, and Josephus the other.

[Gamaliel], when a deliberation was being held in the assembly of the Jews concerning the apostles, said at this very time: "For there rose up a certain Theudas, saying that he was some magician; who was destroyed, and all who followed him were scattered." Come then, let us hear also of him: by what name he persuaded the multitude of the people, with their own goods carried off, to leave the cities and to beset the banks of the river Jordan. He said, moreover, that he himself was even a prophet, and that by the command of his word he could divide the streams of the river [and dry them]; and by saying such things he deceived many.

"But Fadus did not long indulge his madness, but sent out a squadron of cavalry, which, rushing upon them unexpectedly, slew very many of them indeed, yet took many also alive; and the head of Theudas himself, cut off, they carried to Jerusalem." "About the same time," he says, "a great famine had besieged Judaea also; at which season a queen named Helena, distributing grain purchased with much money from Egypt and brought down to Jerusalem, ministered to the needy." What could be so in tune and so in agreement as these things are with [the account of the Acts], that the people who were at Antioch, according as each was able, sent relief to be conveyed to the saints dwelling in Judaea, through the hands of Barnabas and Paul, and to be dispensed through the presbyters.

Now of this Helena, of whom the historian introduced mention, it is related that she [came to know God] among the nation of the Adiabeni. While the minds of all were growing and the increases of religion were being propagated day by day, the enemy of human salvation by no means rests, but summons up [Simon], of whom we spoke above in the earlier passages. By whose wicked arts, himself supplying still greater supports, he cast very many of the citizens of that city into the bonds of his error. These things are described by a man noble among writers, arisen not long after the time of the apostles, Justin, concerning whom in their proper places we shall assign what is fitting. This man, then, in the Apology which he writes on behalf of our faith to the emperor Antoninus, relates concerning these matters in this manner:

"And after the ascension of the Lord to heaven," he says, "the demons instigated certain men who said that they were gods, whom we have put to flight. Finally a certain Simon, a Samaritan of the village which is called Gitthon, under Claudius Caesar, being exalted by magical arts and the aid of demons in your city, which holds the empire of all, was decreed a god — very many having been deceived through his phantasms — and was honored among you with the honor of a statue as though a god, set up in the river Tiber between two bridges, bearing [an inscription]; and almost all the Samaritans, and some also from the other nations, both adore and confess him as the supreme god."

"But also a certain Selene, the companion of his error and deception, who had previously stood in a brothel in the city of Tyre in Phoenicia, [they honor] together with him as though a certain First Mind." This much, indeed, is from Justin. And in agreement with him Irenaeus too writes, in the first book Against Heresies, in which he relates more fully both who Simon himself was and how impure were his works and doctrine — which it would be too long to insert here, since it is open to those who wish to learn these things one by one, and from the various heresies to know more diligently of their venomous dogmas. The head, therefore, of all depravity and the beginning of every heresy we have received as having begun from Simon.

From him, even down to the present day, his followers, feigning that they embrace the most pure philosophy of the Christians, which they see [to be esteemed], while they seem to forsake the superstition of idols, are again enmeshed in [its] bonds, worshiping and venerating the picture and image of Simon and of her whom we have said to have been the associate of his crime and baseness, Selene. To these they offer kindled incense; to these they pour out impure sacrifices and libations. But [they have] certain unspeakable things among themselves, which, when anyone first hears them, may depart from his mind and, as if struck down by their power, may remain as one thunderstruck, and even come to the point of madness. Since these things are so, they say that it is impossible either that they be committed to writing or uttered by mouth and lips.

These things, whoever hears, [understands] that they are such as, on account of their impurity and obscenity, are held execrable and utterly to be shuddered at by chaste and modest ears. For whatever is base and impure, that can be devised by anyone, this is handed down as being more impure than all of it — with which the initiates of this most defiled heresy, [defiled] and laden with sins, as the apostle says, detestably mock. This father and author, then, of such evils, Simon, at that same time the devil raised up from the number of his own attendants, and compelled to go to the greatest city, Rome, that there he might resist the most mighty athletes of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the apostles, appointed by Him for this very purpose.

[The divine providence] forsakes not its own, [but] with all speed quenches the kindled flame of the evil one; for which reason neither Simon nor any other who then joined battle against the apostles of the Lord was able to prevail, because the light of truth and the brightness of the divine word, which for the salvation of men had lately shone forth, through His apostles [scattered] the fog of all falsehood from human minds [and put to flight the darkness] of ignorance. [Simon,] struck [with blindness], forthwith fell into the blindness of a disordered mind — inasmuch as he, having already before in Judaea, through the apostle Peter, been confuted concerning the crimes he was committing, undertook flight across the sea, and pressed on from the east even to the west, nowhere finding safety for his life except in the aid of flight — [and] in [that] time came to such a pitch of evils that even [he sought] a falsely-acquired divinity [that] endures by fraud [in a statue].

For at once, in those very [days] of Claudius, [the same divine providence] leads to the city of Rome, as against a common plague of the human race about to fight back, Peter, the chief and foremost of the apostles by the magnificence of his faith and the merit of his virtue — a leader and master of His warfare, knowing how to wage divine battles and to [command] the camps of the virtues. [Simon,] a trafficker in the merchandise of the divine light, brought his wares [for sale], if anyone were prepared to purchase; and by the word of the saving proclamation [Peter] was the first in the city of Rome [to make] the clear light of the word of God [shine] with his Gospel.

[The light having] arisen, the darkness of Simon [gave way]. Now the word of truth and light, which was preached through Peter, illumined the minds of all with its gentle hearing, so that daily [the number of] hearers [increased]. And they entreated Mark his disciple with all prayers, that he would commit to writing, for the sake of their having a perpetual reminder, the things which he preached by word, so that at home and abroad they might continue in meditations of this kind of word; nor did they cease from beseeching before [Mark did what] they had prayed for — [what] is called the Gospel. But Peter, when through the Holy Spirit he learned that he had been despoiled of it by a religious theft, was delighted, considering their faith and devotion through these things; and he confirmed the deed and delivered the writing to the churches to be read in perpetuity.

Clement [relates] these things in the sixth book of his Institutions; [and] the bishop named Papias [confirms this], who also says this, that Peter in his first epistle, which he writes from the city of Rome, makes mention of Mark, in which he figuratively names Rome as Babylon, when he says: "She who is in Babylon, elect together with you, salutes you, and Mark my son"; and that there [Mark] preached the Gospel which he himself had composed, and that he himself first established the church at Alexandria.