In the very captivity of Babylon Daniel and Ezekiel prophesied first—two others, namely, of the major prophets. Of whom Daniel even defined by a number of years the time at which Christ was to come and to suffer; which it would be long to show by computation, and it has been done by others before us. But concerning his power and the Church he spoke thus: 'I saw,' he says, 'in a vision of the night, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there was as it were a Son of man coming; and he came even to the Ancient of days, and was brought before him; and to him was given the principality and honor and kingdom, and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve him. His power is an everlasting power, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom shall not be destroyed.'
Ezekiel too, signifying Christ in the prophetic manner through David—because he took flesh of the seed of David (on account of which form of a servant, by which he was made man, the same Son of God is also called the servant of God)—thus foretells him by prophesying, in the person of God the Father: 'And I will raise up,' he says, 'over my flock one shepherd to feed them, my servant David; and he shall feed them and he shall be their shepherd. But I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David a prince in the midst of them; I the Lord have spoken.' And in another place: 'And there shall be one king,' he says, 'ruling over all; and there shall no more be two nations, nor shall they be divided any more into two kingdoms;'
neither shall they be defiled any more in their idols and abominations and in all their iniquities. And I will save them out of all their dwellings in which they sinned, and I will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God; and my servant David shall be king over them, and there shall be one shepherd of them all.' CHAPTER XXXV. Concerning the prophecy of three prophets, namely Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. There remain three minor prophets who prophesied at the end of the captivity, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. Of whom Haggai prophesies of Christ and the Church with this more open brevity: 'Thus says the Lord of hosts:'
Yet a little while, and I will shake the heaven and the earth and the sea and the dry land, and I will move all the nations, and the desired of all nations shall come.' This prophecy is seen partly already fulfilled, partly hoped to be fulfilled at the end. For he moved the heaven by the testimony of angels and stars when Christ was incarnate; he moved the earth by the great miracle of the virgin's very childbearing; he moved the sea and the dry land, since Christ is announced both in the islands and in the whole world: thus we see all nations being moved to faith. But now what follows: 'And the desired of all nations shall come,' is awaited from his last coming. For that he might be desired by those who await him, it was first necessary that he be loved by those who believe.
Zechariah concerning Christ and the Church says: 'Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, your king comes to you, righteous and a savior; he is poor and riding upon an ass and upon a colt, the foal of an ass; and his power shall be from sea to sea and from the rivers to the ends of the earth.' When this came to pass—that the Lord Christ on his journey used a beast of burden of this kind—is read in the gospel, where also this prophecy is recalled in part, as much as seemed sufficient for that passage. In another place, speaking to Christ himself in the spirit of prophecy concerning the remission of sins through his blood: 'You also,' he says, 'in the blood of your testament have sent forth your prisoners out of the pit in which there is no water.'
What he wishes to be understood by this pit, diverse things can be felt even according to right faith. Yet to me it seems to signify nothing better than the depth of human misery, dry in a certain manner and barren, where there are not the streams of righteousness but the mire of iniquity. For of this it is said also in the psalm: 'And he brought me up out of the pit of misery and out of the mire of clay.' Malachi, prophesying the Church which we perceive propagated through Christ, says most openly to the Jews in the person of God: 'I have no pleasure in you, and I will not accept a gift from your hand. For from the rising of the sun even to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place there shall be sacrificed and offered to my name a pure offering;'
for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord.' Since we now see this sacrifice offered to God in every place from the rising of the sun even to its setting through the priesthood of Christ after the order of Melchizedek, while the sacrifice of the Jews, to whom it was said: 'I have no pleasure in you, nor will I accept a gift from your hands,' has ceased—this they cannot deny. Why do they still await another Christ, when what they read prophesied and see fulfilled could not have been fulfilled except through him? For he says a little after concerning him in the person of God: 'My covenant with him was of life and peace; and I gave him, that he should fear me with fear and reverence before the face of my name. The law of truth was in his mouth.'
'Walking with me in peace and uprightness, he turned many away from iniquity; for the lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law from his mouth; for he is the angel of the Lord Almighty.' Nor is it to be wondered at that Christ Jesus is called the angel of the Lord Almighty. For just as he is called servant on account of the form of a servant in which he came to men, so he is called angel on account of the gospel which he announced to men. For if we translate this Greek, both the gospel is good news and the angel a messenger. For concerning him again it says: 'Behold, I will send my angel, and he shall look out the way before my face; and suddenly the Lord whom you seek shall come into his temple, and the angel of the testament whom you desire.'
'Behold, he comes, says the Lord Almighty; and who shall endure the day of his entrance? or who shall stand in his sight?' In this place he foretold both the first and the second coming of Christ; the first, namely, of which he says: 'And suddenly the Lord shall come into his temple,' that is, into his flesh, concerning which he said in the gospel: 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up'; but the second, where he says: 'Behold, he comes, says the Lord Almighty, and who shall endure the day of his entrance? or who shall stand in his sight?' But in that he said: 'The Lord whom you seek, and the angel of the testament whom you desire,' he signified that the Jews too, according to the scriptures which they read, seek and desire Christ.
But many of them did not recognize that the one whom they sought and desired had come, being blinded in their hearts by their preceding deserts. As for what he here names the testament, whether above, where he says: 'My covenant was with him,' or here, where he called him the angel of the testament, without doubt we must understand the New Testament, where things eternal, not the Old, where things temporal, are promised. And many weak ones, holding such things as great and serving the true God for the reward of such things, when they see the impious abounding in them, are troubled. On account of which the same prophet, that he might distinguish the eternal blessedness of the New Testament, which shall be given to none but the good, from the earthly felicity of the Old, which is mostly given even to the wicked:
'You have made your words heavy against me, says the Lord, and you have said: Wherein have we detracted from you? You have said: Vain is everyone who serves God, and what more, because we have kept his observances, and because we have walked as suppliants before the face of the Lord Almighty? And now we call strangers blessed, and all who do iniquity are built up; and they have opposed God, and have been made safe.' These things spoke against him those who feared the Lord, each to his neighbor; and the Lord gave heed and heard; and he wrote a book of remembrance before himself for those who fear the Lord and reverence his name. By this book is signified the New Testament. Finally let us hear what follows:
'And they shall be mine, says the Lord Almighty, in the day in which I make for an acquisition, and I will choose them as a man chooses his son serving him; and you shall be converted, and you shall see between the just and the unjust, and between him who serves God and him who serves him not. For behold, the day comes burning like an oven, and it shall consume them, and all the aliens and all who work iniquity shall be stubble, and the day that comes shall set them on fire, says the Lord Almighty; and there shall not be left of them root nor branch. And to you who fear my name the Sun of righteousness shall arise, and health in his wings; and you shall go forth and exult like calves loosed from their bonds;'
and you shall tread down the wicked, and they shall be ashes under your feet in the day in which I act, says the Lord Almighty.' This is what is called the day of judgment; concerning which, if God wills, we shall speak more fully in its own place. CHAPTER XXXVI. Concerning Ezra and the books of the Maccabees. After these three prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, during the same time of the people's liberation from the Babylonian servitude, Ezra also wrote, who is held to be a writer of deeds done rather than a prophet (just as is also the book which is called Esther, whose deed done in praise of God is found not far from these times);
unless perhaps Ezra is to be understood to have prophesied Christ in that passage where, a question having arisen among certain young men as to what prevailed more in things, when one had said kings, another wine, the third women, who mostly command kings, yet the same third demonstrated truth to be victorious over all. Consulting the gospel, we recognize that Christ is the truth. From this time among the Jews, the temple being restored, there were not kings but princes, down to Aristobulus:
the computation of whose times is found not in the holy scriptures which are called canonical, but in others, among which are also the books of the Maccabees, which not the Jews but the Church holds as canonical, on account of the vehement and marvelous sufferings of certain martyrs who, before Christ had come in the flesh, contended even unto death for the law of God and endured most grievous and horrible evils. CHAPTER XXXVII. That prophetic authority is found more ancient than every origin of Gentile philosophy.
In the age, therefore, of our prophets, whose writings have by now reached the knowledge of almost all nations, the philosophers of the gentiles—who were called by that very name 'philosophers'—arose much later. The term began with Pythagoras of Samos, who at the time when the captivity of the Jews was ended began to rise to eminence and to be known. Far more, then, are the rest of the philosophers found to have lived after the prophets. For Socrates the Athenian himself, the master of all who then most flourished, holding the chief place in that branch which is called moral or active philosophy, is found in the chronicles after Ezra. Not long after, Plato too was born, who far surpassed the other disciples of Socrates.
And if to these we add even the earlier men, who were not yet called philosophers—namely the seven sages, and after them the natural philosophers who succeeded Thales in investigating the nature of things, imitating his pursuit: namely Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and several others, before Pythagoras was the first to profess himself a philosopher—not even these precede all our prophets in antiquity of time, since Thales, after whom the rest came, is said to have become eminent during the reign of Romulus, at the very time when from the springs of Israel, in those writings which were to flow out over the whole world, the river of prophecy burst forth.
Only those theological poets, then—Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, and any other there was among the Greeks—are found to be earlier than these Hebrew prophets whose writings we hold as authoritative. Yet not even they preceded in time our true theologian Moses, who truthfully proclaimed the one true God, and whose writings now stand first in the canon of authority. And on this account, as far as concerns the Greeks—in whose tongue the literature of this world has most fervently flourished—they have nothing whereby to boast of their wisdom, by which our religion, in which is true wisdom, might seem, if not superior, at least more ancient.
Nevertheless, what must be admitted is that, not indeed in Greece, but among barbarian nations—as in Egypt—there had already existed before Moses a certain learning which might be called their wisdom; otherwise it would not have been written in the holy books that Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians—at the time, namely, when he was born there and adopted and nourished by Pharaoh's daughter, and even liberally educated. But not even the wisdom of the Egyptians could precede in time the wisdom of our prophets, since Abraham too was a prophet. And what wisdom could there have been in Egypt before Isis—whom, after her death, they thought fit to worship as a great goddess—delivered letters to them?
Isis, moreover, is reported to have been the daughter of Inachus, who first began to reign over the Argives, at the time when Abraham's grandsons are found to have already been born. CHAPTER XXXVIII. That the ecclesiastical canon did not receive certain writings of holy men on account of their excessive antiquity, lest through their occasion false things should be inserted among the true. Now indeed, if I should go back to things far more ancient: even before that great flood our patriarch Noah certainly existed, whom I would not unfittingly call a prophet also, seeing that the very ark which he made, and in which he escaped with his own, was a prophecy of our times. And Enoch, the seventh from Adam—is he not declared to have prophesied even in the canonical epistle of the apostle Jude?
That the writings of these men were not held as authoritative among the Jews or among us was caused by their excessive antiquity, on account of which they seemed to be suspect, lest false things should be put forward in place of true. For indeed certain things are put forward, claimed to be theirs, by those who, according to their own fancy, indiscriminately believe whatever they wish. But the purity of the canon did not receive these, not because the authority of those men who pleased God is rejected, but because these things are not believed to be theirs. Nor ought it to seem surprising that those things are held suspect which are brought forward under the name of so great an antiquity;
since indeed in the very history of the kings of Judah and the kings of Israel, which contains the deeds about which we believe the same canonical Scriptures, very many things are mentioned which are not there set forth, but are said to be found in other books which the prophets wrote; and in some places even the names of those prophets are not passed over in silence—yet they are not found in the canon which the people of God received.
The reason for this matter, I confess, escapes me, except that I judge that even those men themselves, to whom the Holy Spirit revealed those things which ought to be in the authority of religion, could write some things, as men, by historical diligence, and other things, as prophets, by divine inspiration; and that these were so distinguished that the former should be judged as to be attributed to the men themselves, but the latter as to God speaking through them; and that thus the former pertained to the abundance of knowledge, the latter to the authority of religion. In which authority the canon is guarded; and beyond it, if now any writings, even under the name of true prophets, are brought forward, they are of no avail even toward the store of knowledge, since it is uncertain whether they are theirs whose they are said to be;
and on this account no credence is given to them—especially to those in which certain things are even read contrary to the faith of the canonical books, on account of which it is clearly evident that these are in no way theirs. CHAPTER XXXIX. Concerning the Hebrew letters, which never failed to exist in the proper character of their own tongue. It is not therefore to be believed, as some suppose, that the Hebrew tongue alone was preserved through that man who was called Heber—whence comes the name of the Hebrews—and that it thus passed down to Abraham, but that the Hebrew letters began from the Law which was given through Moses; but rather that through that succession of the fathers the said tongue was guarded together with its letters.
Indeed, Moses appointed among the people men to preside over the teaching of letters, before they knew any letters of the divine Law. These the Scripture calls grammatoeisagogeis, who in Latin may be called 'inducers' or 'introducers of letters,' because they induce, that is, introduce, the letters in a certain way into the hearts of the learners—or rather introduce the learners themselves into the letters. No nation, therefore, may boast with any vanity about the antiquity of its wisdom above our patriarchs and prophets, in whom dwelt divine wisdom; since not even Egypt is found—which is wont falsely and emptily to glory about the antiquity of its teachings—to have by any wisdom of its own anticipated, in the time of our patriarchs, the wisdom of our patriarchs.
For no one will dare to say that they were most skilled in marvelous disciplines before they knew letters—that is, before Isis had come there and taught them. Moreover, their own memorable learning, which was called wisdom, what was it but chiefly astronomy, and whatever else of such disciplines is wont to avail more for exercising men's wits than for illuminating their minds with true wisdom?
For as concerns philosophy, which professes to teach something whereby men may become blessed, studies of that kind flourished in those lands around the times of Mercury, whom they called Trismegistus—far indeed before the sages or philosophers of Greece, but nevertheless after Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and indeed even after Moses himself. For at the very time when Moses was born, that great Atlas, the astrologer, brother of Prometheus and maternal grandfather of the elder Mercury, is found to have lived—whose grandson was this Mercury Trismegistus. CHAPTER XL. Concerning the most lying vanity of the Egyptians, which ascribes a hundred thousand years to the antiquity of their knowledge.
In vain, therefore, do certain men prate with the most empty presumption, saying that from the time when Egypt comprehended the reckoning of the stars, more than a hundred thousand years are numbered. In what books, indeed, did they gather this number—they who learned letters from their teacher Isis not much more than two thousand years ago? For Varro is no small authority in history, who handed this down, which is not at variance even from the truth of the divine letters. For since from the very first man, who is called Adam, not yet six thousand years are completed, how are these men not rather to be laughed at than refuted, who try to persuade us of things about the span of times so divergent and so contrary to this well-explored truth?
For whom do we better believe when he narrates the past, than him who also foretold future things which we now see present? For the very disagreement of the historians among themselves furnishes us occasion that we ought rather to believe him who does not contradict the divine history which we hold. But on the other hand, the citizens of the impious city, scattered everywhere throughout the lands, when they read most learned men—none of whose authority would seem contemptible—disagreeing among themselves about deeds most remote from the memory of our own age, find not whom they ought rather to believe.
But we, in the history of our religion, supported by divine authority, do not doubt that whatever resists it is most false, however the other matters may stand in secular writings, which, whether they be true or false, bring nothing of moment toward our living rightly and blessedly. CHAPTER XLI. Concerning the disagreements of philosophical opinions, and the concord of the canonical Scriptures in the Church.
But that we may now leave aside the knowledge of history: the philosophers themselves, from whom we have proceeded to these matters, who seem to have labored in their studies for no other end than to find out how one ought to live so as to attain blessedness—why did they disagree, both disciples from their masters, and fellow-disciples among themselves, except that, as men, they sought these things with human senses and human reasonings? Wherein, although there may also have been a zeal for vainglory, by which each one desires to seem wiser and more acute than another, and in a certain way not bound to another's opinion,
but rather be the inventor of his own dogma and opinion—yet, granting that some, or even very many of them, were such as the love of truth tore away from their teachers or fellow learners, so that they contended for that which they thought to be the truth, whether it were so or not: what does human unhappiness accomplish, or by what way, that it may attain to blessedness, if divine authority does not lead it? Therefore, far be it that our authors, in whom the canon of the sacred letters is fixed and bounded not in vain, should by any reasoning disagree among themselves.
Hence it was not without reason that, when they wrote those things, with God speaking either to them or through them, not a few who were garrulous in schools and gymnasia with quarrelsome disputations, but in the fields and cities, with the learned and the unlearned, so many and so great peoples believed. They themselves indeed ought to have been few, lest by their multitude that should become cheap which it behooved to be precious through religion; and yet not so few that their agreement should not be wondered at. For not even in the multitude of philosophers, who by literary labor left behind the monuments of their dogmas, would anyone easily find any among whom all the things they held would agree—which to show in this work would be tedious.
And what founder of any sect whatsoever was so approved in this demon-worshipping city that the rest who held divergent and adverse opinions were disapproved? Were not the Epicureans famous at Athens, asserting that human affairs do not pertain to the care of the gods—and the Stoics too, who, holding the contrary, disputed that these affairs are governed and protected by the gods as helpers and guardians? Whence I marvel why Anaxagoras was made a defendant because he said the sun was a burning stone, certainly denying it to be a god; while in the same city Epicurus flourished in glory and lived secure, not only not believing the sun or any of the stars to be a god, but even contending that neither Jupiter nor any of the gods at all dwelt in the world, to whom the prayers and supplications of men might come.
Was not Aristippus there, placing the highest good in the pleasure of the body; and there Antisthenes, asserting rather that a man is made blessed by the virtue of the soul—two noble philosophers, and both Socratics—placing the supreme good of life in ends so diverse and mutually contrary, of whom the one said that the commonwealth ought to be shunned by the wise man, the other that it ought to be administered—each gathering disciples to follow his own sect? Indeed, openly in the conspicuous and most famous portico, in the gymnasia, in the little gardens, in public and private places, they contended in throngs, each for his own opinion: some asserting one world, others innumerable worlds; and that one world itself, some that it had a beginning, others that it had no beginning; some that it would perish, others that it would exist forever;
some that it is driven by a divine mind, others by chance and accidents; some that souls are immortal, others that they are mortal; and of those who held them immortal, some that they revolve into beasts, others by no means; while of those who held them mortal, some that they perish immediately after the body, others that they live on even afterward, whether a little or longer, yet not forever; some placing the end of good in the body, others in the soul, others in both, others adding to soul and body even external goods; some thinking that the bodily senses must always be trusted, others not always, others never.
These and other almost innumerable disagreements of the philosophers—what people, what senate, what public power or dignity of the impious city ever took care to adjudicate, approving and receiving some, disapproving and rejecting others? Did it not rather, indiscriminately and confusedly, without any judgment, hold in its bosom so many controversies of dissenting men—not about fields and houses or any monetary matter, but about those things whereby one lives either miserably or blessedly? Wherein, even if some true things were said, falsehoods too were said with the same license, so that not without reason did such a city receive the mystical name of Babylon. For Babylon is interpreted 'confusion,' which we remember we have already said.
Nor does it concern the devil, its king, with what mutually contradictory errors they quarrel, whom he equally possesses, deservedly, by their manifold and varied impiety. But that nation, that people, that city, that commonwealth, those Israelites, to whom were entrusted the oracles of God, in no way confounded false prophets with true prophets by an equality of license; but, being in concord among themselves and in nothing dissenting, they were acknowledged and held as truthful authors of the sacred letters. These same men were their philosophers—that is, lovers of wisdom—their sages, their theologians, their prophets, their teachers of probity and piety.
Whoever was wise and lived according to them, was wise and lived not according to men but according to God, who spoke through them. If sacrilege was there forbidden, God forbade it. If it was said, 'Honor thy father and thy mother,' God commanded it. If it was said, 'Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not commit murder, thou shalt not steal,' and other things of this kind, it was not human mouths but divine oracles that poured these forth. Whatever certain philosophers, amid the falsehoods which they opined, were able to see as true, and strove by laborious disputations to make persuasive—that God made this world and that He Himself most providently governs it; concerning the honor of the virtues, concerning the love of one's country;
concerning the faith of friendship, concerning good works, and all things pertaining to upright morals—though they knew not to what end and in what manner all these things were to be referred—these were, by prophetic, that is, divine voices, though through men, commended to the people in that city; not driven home by the contentions of arguments, so that the one who came to know them might dread to despise not the genius of man, but the eloquence of God. CHAPTER XLII. By what dispensation of God's providence the sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament were translated from Hebrew into the Greek tongue, that they might become known to the gentiles. These sacred letters even one of the Ptolemies, kings of Egypt, was eager to know and to possess.