1 (1) I have undertaken to compress briefly the things set forth in the sacred Scriptures from the beginning of the world, and to relate them selectively with a distinction of times down to our own memory, many earnestly demanding this of me, who were eager to learn divine matters by a compendious reading; and following their wish, I did not spare my own labour, (2) so as to confine within two little books those things which were contained written in very many volumes, thus aiming at brevity that I have withdrawn almost nothing of the events. (3) Moreover, it seemed to me not absurd, since I had run through the sacred history down to Christ's cross and the acts of the Apostles, to connect also the events that followed;
to speak of the destruction of Jerusalem, the persecutions of the Christian people, and soon the times of peace, and again of all things thrown into turmoil by the internal dangers of the churches. (4) For the rest, I shall not be ashamed to confess that, wherever reason required, in order to distinguish the times and to continue the sequence, I have made use of secular historians, and from these have borrowed what was lacking for the supplement of knowledge, that I might both instruct the unlearned and convince the learned. (5) Nevertheless, in these things which we have set in order abbreviated from the sacred volumes, I would not so present myself as an authority to readers, that, those sources from which they are derived being passed over, these should be sought after; unless someone, when he has come to know those well, should here recognize what he has read there;
(6) for indeed all the mysteries of divine things cannot be drawn except from the very fountains. Now I shall make a beginning of narrating. 2 (1) The world was established by God now almost six thousand years ago, as we shall set forth in the course of this volume; although those who have published their investigation of the reckoning of times agree but little among themselves. (2) Since this comes about either by God's will or by the fault of antiquity, it ought to be free from blame. Now when the world was established, man was made; his name was Adam, the woman's name was Eve. But being set in paradise, when they had tasted of the tree forbidden to them, they were cast out as exiles into our earth, as it were. (3) Then from these were born Cain and Abel; but the impious Cain slew his brother.
He had a son Enoch, by whom a city was first founded, called by the name of its builder. (4) From him was born Irad, and from him Mehujael. He had a son Methuselah, and he begot Lamech, by whom a young man is said to have been slain, yet the name of the slain is not reported; which indeed is judged by the prudent to have been put forth as a sign of a future mystery. (5) Therefore Adam, after the death of his younger son, begot a son Seth, when he had now completed his two hundred and thirtieth year of age; and he lived nine hundred and thirty years. Seth begot Enos, Enos Cainan, Cainan Mahalalel, Mahalalel Jared, Jared Enoch; who is said to have been translated by God on account of his righteousness. (6) His son was called Methuselah, who begot Lamech;
from whom Noah was born, eminent in righteousness, and beyond other mortals dear and acceptable to God. (7) At which season, when the human race now abounded, the angels, whose seat was heaven, captivated by the form of beautiful maidens, sought after unlawful lusts; and degenerate from their own nature and origin, leaving the higher regions whose inhabitants they were, they mingled themselves in marriages with mortals. (8) These, little by little sowing noxious morals, corrupted the human progeny, and from their union the Giants are said to have been brought forth, since the mingling of natures diverse among themselves begot monsters. 3 (1) Offended by which things God, and most of all by the malice of men, which had advanced beyond measure, had decreed utterly to destroy the human race.
But Noah, a righteous man, was spared the appointed sentence by his blameless life. (2) Warned by God that a flood threatened the earth, he wove together from timber an ark of immense size and, smearing it with pitch, made it impervious to the waters. In it he was shut up with his wife, his three sons, and as many daughters-in-law; pairs of birds also, and likewise of beasts of every kind, were received into that same enclosure, while all else was swept away by the flood. (3) So Noah, when he perceived that the force of the rains had now ceased and that the ark was being carried about over a quiet sea, judging—as was indeed the case—that the waters were receding, sent out first a raven to explore the matter; and when it did not return—detained, as I suppose, by the corpses—he sent out a dove.
When the dove found no place to settle, it returned. (4) Sent out again, it brought back an olive leaf, a clear sign that the tops of the trees were laid bare. Sent out a third time, at last it did not return; from this it was understood that the waters had ceased. (5) Thus Noah went forth from the ark. This took place, as I find, two thousand two hundred and forty-two years after the beginning of the world. 4 (1) And first Noah built an altar to God and offered sacrifices from the birds. Soon he was blessed by God together with his sons, and received a command that he should not eat blood nor shed the blood of man, because at the very beginnings of the world the book of Cain had stained this commandment. (2) So, the world being then empty, the seed sprang from the sons of Noah; for he had three: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
But Ham, because he had laughed at his father lying drunk with wine, earned a curse from his father. (3) His son, named Cush, begot the giant Nimrod, by whom the city of Babylon is said to have been built. Many other towns also are recorded as founded at that time, which it was not my intention to recount by name. (4) But although the human race was multiplying and mortals occupied diverse lands and islands, yet all used one language, until the multitude, which was to be scattered over the whole world, gathered itself into one place. (5) After the manner of human disposition, their plan was to seek fame by some notable work before they should be parted from one another.
(6) So they set about making a tower that should reach to heaven; but by God's will, that the labours of the workers might be hindered, they spoke in a manner of tongues much different from their accustomed kind of speech, and unintelligible to one another. Thereby they were the more readily scattered, since each easily abandoned the other as a stranger. (7) But to the sons of Noah the world was so divided that Shem was contained within the East, Japheth within the West, and Ham within the regions between. Thus the line of descent drawn down to Abraham held nothing especially notable or memorable in itself. 5 (1) Now Abraham was born of his father Terah in the one thousand and seventieth year after the flood. Abraham's wife was called Sarah, and his first dwelling was in the region of the Chaldeans. Thence he sojourned at Haran together with his father.
(2) At that time, being warned by God, leaving his native home and his father, and taking with him Lot his brother's son, he set out into the land of the Canaanites and settled in a place named Shechem. (3) Soon, because of a scarcity of grain, he withdrew into Egypt, and again returned. Lot, having parted from his uncle on account of the multitude of the household, so that they might make use of the wider spaces of the then unoccupied region, settled in Sodom. That town was notorious for its inhabitants, men assaulting men, and on that account it is recorded to have been hateful to God. (4) At that time the kings of neighbouring nations were in arms; whereas before there had been no conflict among mortals.
But against these who were attacking the neighbouring regions with war, the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and of the nearby regions burst forth into battle, and, routed at the first onset, yielded the victory. Then Sodom was plundered by the victors and became spoil for the enemy, and Lot was led away into captivity. (5) When Abraham had learned this, swiftly arming his servants, three hundred and eighteen in number, he stripped of their plunder and arms the kings, fierce with victory, and drove them into flight. (6) Then he was blessed by Melchizedek the priest, and gave to him the tithes of the spoil. The rest he restored to those from whom it had been seized. 6 (1) About the same time God spoke to Abraham, and promised that his seed should be multiplied like the sands of the sea and the stars of heaven.
And it was foretold that his seed should be sojourners, and that his descendants would endure servitude for four hundred years on a hostile soil, and afterwards be restored to liberty. (2) Then for him and his wife the name was changed by the addition of a single letter; so that now from Abram he is called Abraham, and from Sarai, Sarah. The not-empty mystery of this matter it is not the purpose of this work to expound. (3) At the same time the law of circumcision was imposed upon Abraham. He had moreover a son Ishmael by a handmaid. And when he himself was a hundred years old, and his wife ninety, God promised them a son to come, Isaac—God who had come to him with two angels.
(5) Then the angels, sent to Sodom, found Lot sitting in the gate; and when he, thinking them men, had received them with hospitality and was entertaining them after supper in his house, the wicked youth of the town clamoured for the new guests to abuse them shamefully. Lot, offering his daughters in place of his guests, when those who craved rather what was unlawful would not consent, was himself being dragged off to be abused. (5) The angels, swiftly delivering him from outrage, poured blindness upon the eyes of the shameless ones. Then Lot, instructed by his guests that the town was to be destroyed, went out swiftly with his wife and daughters; yet it was forbidden them to look back.
(6) But the woman, too little heedful of the command—by that human fault whereby one hardly abstains from what is forbidden—turned back her eyes, and is recorded to have been at once changed into a heap. (7) But Sodom blazed up with divine fires. Lot's daughters, however, thinking that the human race had perished, made their drunken father drunk and sought his bed; whence Moab and Ammon were born. 7 (1) About the same time, when Abraham was now a hundred years old, his son Isaac was born. Then Sarah drove out the handmaid by whom Abraham had begotten a son; she is recorded to have dwelt in the desert together with her son and to have been defended by the protection of God. (2) Not long after, God, testing Abraham's faith, demanded that his son Isaac be offered to Him in sacrifice by his father.
He, not hesitating to offer him, when he had laid the boy upon the altar and was drawing his sword, a voice was sent from heaven that he should spare the boy; a ram was at hand as the victim. And the sacrifice being completed, God spoke to Abraham, promising those things which He had already pledged. (3) But Sarah, when she was passing her hundred and twenty-seventh year, departed; her body, by her husband's care, was buried in Hebron, a town of the Canaanites, for there Abraham was dwelling. (4) Then Abraham, seeing Isaac his son of youthful age—since indeed he was passing his fortieth year—commanded his servant to seek a wife for him, yet from that tribe and land from which he himself appeared to have sprung;
only that he should bring the girl, once found, into the region of the Canaanites, and should not suppose that he would return to his native soil for the sake of a wife. And that the servant might diligently carry out these commands, having touched his master's thigh, he gave an oath. (5) So the servant set out into Mesopotamia and came to the town of Nahor, Abraham's brother. He came into the house of Bethuel the Syrian, born of his father Nahor; and catching sight of his daughter Rebekah, a beautiful virgin, he asked for her and brought her to his master. (6) After this Abraham took a wife named Keturah, who in Chronicles is called a concubine, and begot sons by her. But to Isaac, born of Sarah, he handed over his substance, while to those whom he had begotten of concubines he distributed gifts. And so they were separated from Isaac.
(7) Abraham reached the end of his days, having completed a hundred and seventy-five years; his body was laid in the tomb of Sarah his wife. 8 (1) But Rebekah, long barren, by the constant prayers of her husband to the Lord, about the twentieth year from the day of her marriage, brought forth twins; who are recorded often to have struggled in their mother's womb, and it was said by the response of God that two peoples were foretold in them, and that the elder should be made subject to the rule of the younger. But the first brought forth, rough with bristles, was called Esau; the younger had the name Jacob. (2) At that time a severe scarcity of grain had set in. By this necessity Isaac withdrew into Gerar, to king Abimelech, being warned by the Lord not to go down into Egypt;
and the possession of all that land was promised to him, and there he was blessed; and being multiplied in cattle and all substance, he was driven out by the inhabitants through their envy. Driven out, he settled at the well of the oath. (3) Then, being heavier with years, his eyesight clouded, when he was preparing to bless his son Esau, by the counsel of his mother Rebekah, Jacob presented himself to be blessed in place of his brother. Thus Jacob, to be worshipped by princes and nations, was set above his brother. (4) Inflamed by these things, Esau was plotting his brother's death. Through this fear Jacob, at his mother's urging, fled into Mesopotamia, warned by his father to take a wife from the house of Laban, Rebekah's brother; so great was their care that, though they dwelt in foreign lands, they should yet draw their lineage from within their own family.
(5) So Jacob, having set out into Mesopotamia, is recorded to have seen the Lord in sleep; and on that account holding the place of the dream as sacred, he took a stone from it, and vowed that, if he returned with prosperity, it should become for him a pillar of the house of God, and that he would give to God the tithes of all that he should acquire. (6) Thence he betook himself to Laban his mother's brother, who, recognizing him as his sister's son, received him kindly into hospitality. 9 (1) Laban had two daughters, Leah and Rachel; but Leah is recorded to have been less comely in her eyes, and Rachel beautiful. Captivated by her beauty, Jacob was burning with love for the maiden, and asking her of her father for himself in marriage, he bound himself to a servitude of seven years. (2) But when the time was fulfilled, Leah was substituted for her;
and again he was subjected to a servitude of seven years, and Rachel was given to him. But we have learned that she was long barren, while Leah was fruitful. (3) The names of the sons whom Jacob had by Leah are these: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Dinah; by Leah's handmaid were born Gad and Asher, by Rachel's handmaid Dan and Naphtali. But Rachel, now despairing of childbearing, brought forth Joseph. (4) Then Jacob, desiring to return to his father, when Laban his father-in-law had given him a part of the flocks as the wage of his servitude, and that too little—Jacob the son-in-law, reckoning him unfair to himself and suspecting trickery from him, set out secretly about the twentieth year after he had come. Rachel, her husband unaware, carried off her father's idols by theft;
by which wrong Laban pursued his son-in-law; but the idols not being found, peace was made and he returned, earnestly adjuring his son-in-law not to take other wives over his daughters. (5) Setting out thence, Jacob is recorded to have seen angels and the camp of God. But when he was directing his journey past the region of Edom, which his brother Esau inhabited, having first sent envoys and gifts, he sounded out his brother, who was suspect to him. Then Esau came forth to meet his brother; yet Jacob did not further trust himself to his brother. (6) But on the day before the brothers met together, God, having taken on human form, is reported to have wrestled with Jacob. And although Jacob had prevailed against God, yet he was not ignorant that He was not mortal; he begged earnestly to be blessed by Him.
(7) Then his name was changed by God, so that from Jacob he should be called Israel. But when he in turn sought from God the name of God, the answer was that it should not be sought, because it was wonderful. From the wrestling, moreover, the breadth of Jacob's thigh went numb. 10 (1) So Israel, turning aside from his brother's house, advanced his band to Salem, a town of the Shechemites, and there, having received the place for a price, set up a tent for himself. Over this town Hamor, prince of the Hivites, presided. (2) His son Shechem subjected to defilement Dinah, the daughter of Jacob born of Leah. When this was discovered, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, by a stratagem destroyed all the male sex in the town, and energetically avenged the wrong done to their sister; the town was plundered by the sons of Jacob and all the spoil carried off.
(3) Jacob is recorded to have taken this deed very ill. Soon, warned by God, he sought Bethel and there set up an altar to God. Thence he pitched his tent in the part of the tower of Eder. Rachel died in childbirth; the boy was called Benjamin. Isaac departed at the age of a hundred and eighty years. (4) But Esau was powerful in riches, having taken to himself wives even from the nation of the Canaanites; whose offspring I have not thought fit to insert in so condensed a work. If anyone is more zealous, let him return to the source. After his father's passing, Jacob dwelt in that same soil in which Isaac had lived. His sons at one time went off with their flocks for the sake of pasture, while Joseph, however, and little Benjamin remained at home.
(6) Joseph was very dear to his father and on that account hateful to his brothers, especially because by his frequent dreams it seemed to be portended that he should become greater than all. So, sent by his father to inspect the flocks and to visit his brothers again, he proved a fit object for outrage. (7) For at the sight of their brother they formed a plan to kill him. But Reuben resisting—whose mind shrank from so great a crime—he was let down into a pit; soon, at Judah's persuasion, they were brought to a milder counsel and sold him to traders who were then making for Egypt. And by these he was handed over to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh. 11 (1) About the same time Judah, Jacob's son, took in marriage Shua, a Canaanite woman. By her he raised three sons: Er, Onan, Shelah.
But Er was joined in wedlock to Tamar. When he died, Onan took his brother's wife; who, because he poured his seed upon the ground, is recorded to have been put to death by God. (2) Then Tamar, having put on the garb of a harlot, lay with her father-in-law, and by him brought forth twins. (3) In that birth, moreover, there was a marvel: for when, to discern which should be born first, the midwife had bound with scarlet the hand of the boy as he came forth, the boy, drawn back into his mother's womb, was born later. The infants were given the names Perez and Zerah. (4) But Joseph, when he was kindly treated by the royal steward who had bought him for a price, and managed his house and household, himself handsome and of striking appearance, had turned upon himself the eyes of his master's wife.
And when she was perishing with base love, having often solicited him and he not yielding to her, she defamed him with a false crime and complained to her husband that defilement had been attempted upon her. Thus Joseph was cast into prison. There were in the same custody two of the king's servants; (5) who, when they had related their dreams to Joseph, divining the future from the dream, he declared that one of them should pay the penalty with his head, the other should be acquitted. And so it came to pass. Then after two years a dream was set before the king. (6) When it could not be unravelled by the wise men of the Egyptians, that servant of the king, released from prison, reminded the king that Joseph was a wonderful interpreter of dreams. (7) So Joseph was loosed and interpreted the king's dream;
that in the next seven years there would be the greatest abundance of crops, and in those following, scarcity. Struck with this fear, the king, seeing the divine spirit in Joseph, set him over the matter of grain-supply, making his power equal to his own. (8) Then Joseph, the grain abounding throughout all Egypt, gathered a great store; and, multiplying granaries, had provided against the coming famine. At that time the hope and salvation of Egypt rested in him. (9) About the same time he begot two sons by Asenath, Manasseh and Ephraim; he himself, when he received the highest power from the king, was thirty years old; for at seventeen years of age he had been sold by his brothers. 12 (1) Meanwhile, matters in Egypt against famine being well arranged, a grievous scarcity of grain was shaking the world.
Compelled by this necessity, Jacob sent his sons into Egypt, keeping only Benjamin at home with him. (2) So they came to Joseph, who was master of affairs and in whose hands was the control of the grain-supply, and bowed before him after the royal manner. Seeing them, he, craftily concealing his recognition, charged that they had come in hostility and were slyly spying out the places. (3) He was troubled, however, because he did not see his brother Benjamin. The matter therefore was brought to this point: that they should promise his presence—doubtless that it might be inquired of him whether these men had entered Egypt for the sake of spying. As pledge of the promise, Simeon was handed over as a hostage; to themselves the grain was given freely. So, returning again, they brought down Benjamin, as had been agreed.
(4) Then Joseph made himself known to his brothers, not without shame on the part of those who had ill deserved of him. So, loading them with grain and bestowing many gifts, he sent them home, forewarning them that the famine would still last five years; that they should migrate, with their father and all their offspring and household. (5) Thus Jacob went down into Egypt, the Egyptians greatly rejoicing, the king glad, and he was kindly received by his son. This took place in the hundred and thirtieth year of Jacob's age, and in the one thousand three hundred and sixtieth year from the flood. Moreover, from the time when Abraham settled in the land of the Canaanites to that in which Jacob entered Egypt, two hundred and fifteen years are reckoned.
(6) So Jacob, in the seventeenth year after he had come into Egypt, pressed by illness, adjured his son Joseph to render his body to the tomb. (7) Then Joseph offered his sons to be blessed; and when they were blessed—though by the merit of the blessing he set the younger before the elder—he hallowed all his sons with a blessing. He died, moreover, at the age of a hundred and forty-seven years. The funeral was magnificently provided for; Joseph laid the body in the tomb of his fathers. (8) After his father's death, the brothers, fearful by reason of their conscience, he treated kindly. Joseph himself, moreover, died in the hundred and tenth year of his age. 13 (1) So the Hebrews, who had come into Egypt—it is incredible to relate how quickly they were increased in number, and, their offspring being multiplied, filled Egypt.
(2) But the king who had cherished them kindly on account of Joseph's merits being dead, they were oppressed by the rule of the succeeding kings. For both the hard work of building cities was imposed upon them, and—because the now overflowing multitude was feared, lest at some time they should claim liberty by arms—they were compelled by royal edict to drown in the waters the little ones newly born. (3) Nor was it permitted to disguise the bloody command. At that time the daughter of Pharaoh took up an infant found in the river to be nursed as her own son; she gave the boy the name Moses. (4) This Moses, when he was in his manly years, beheld a Hebrew being beaten by an Egyptian; moved with grief at this, vindicating his brother from the wrong, he slew the Egyptian, struck down with a blow.
(5) Soon, fearing punishment for the deed, he fled into the land of Midian; and lodging with Jethro, the priest of that region, he took his daughter Zipporah in marriage, and by her raised two sons, Gershom and Eliezer. (6) In this span of times Job lived, embracing by the law of nature both the knowledge of God and all righteousness, exceedingly rich in possessions and the more illustrious in this, that he was neither corrupted by them while intact nor depraved by their loss. (7) For when, through the devil, he had been stripped of his goods and bereaved even of his children, and at the last afflicted with dreadful ulcers, he could not be overcome so as to sin in any part through impatience of grief. (8) Having at length obtained the reward of the divine testimony, restored to health, he received double all that he had lost.
14 (1) But the Hebrews, pressed by the multiplied evil of their servitude, with their complaints turned toward heaven, were awaiting the hope of help from God. Then to Moses, as he was pasturing sheep, a bush suddenly seemed to burn, yet—what was more marvellous—unharmed by the flames. (2) Astounded by this strange thing, he drew nearer to the bush, and at once God spoke to him in words to about this effect: that He was the Lord of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose offspring, oppressed by the dominion of the Egyptians, He desired to be snatched from their evils; that he should therefore go to the king of Egypt and show himself the leader of the people to be restored to liberty. As he hesitated, He confirmed him with power, imparting to him the virtue of working signs.
(3) So Moses, having set out into Egypt, first showing signs among his own people, taking his brother Aaron, approached the king; he declared that he had been sent by God, and that he spoke the words of God, that he should let the Hebrew people go. But the king, denying that he knew the Lord, refused to obey the command. (4) And when Moses, in testimony of God's commands, had made a serpent from his rod, and soon had turned all the waters into blood and filled the whole land with frogs—the Chaldeans doing the like—he pronounced that whatever was done by Moses was magic arts rather than the power of God, until, locusts being brought on, the land was filled, the Chaldeans confessing that these things were done by divine majesty.
(5) Then the king, constrained by the calamity, having summoned Moses and Aaron to himself, gave the people leave to depart, only on condition that they should avert the calamity that had been brought on. (6) But when the calamity was removed, his ungoverned spirit, returning into itself, would not suffer the Israelites to go forth as had been agreed. At the last he was crushed and overcome by ten plagues of body and of his kingdom. 15 (1) But on the day before the people went forth from Egypt, those still untaught of the seasons were instructed by the commands of God: that they should recognize that month, which was then current, to be the first of all months; that the sacrifice of that day was to be celebrated as a solemnity of the ages to come in this manner—that on the fourteenth day of the month an unblemished, year-old lamb should be slain as the victim, and the doorposts smeared with its blood;
the flesh was to be eaten entirely, but the bone not to be broken; for seven days they should abstain from leaven and use unleavened bread, and hand down this rite to their posterity. (2) Thus the people went forth, rich both in their own resources and the more heaped up with the spoils of Egypt; whose number had grown, from the seventy-five Hebrews who first went down into Egypt, to six hundred thousand men ... and this in the four hundred and thirtieth year from the time when Abraham first came to the land of the Canaanites, and the one thousand five hundred and seventy-fifth from the flood. (3) So, as they went forth in haste, a pillar of cloud was carried before them by day, and a pillar of fire by night.
But since, because of the intervening gulf of the Red Sea, the road led past the land of the Philistines, lest afterwards, the Hebrews disdaining the desert, a means of returning into Egypt by a known route through continuous lands should lie open to them, by God's will they were turned aside and brought to the Red Sea, and there, lingering, they pitched their camp. When this was announced to the king—that the Hebrew people, by error of the road, had come down to the sea that barred them, and that there was no exit for them, the element opposing—mad in spirit, since he was tormented that so many thousands of men should depart from his kingdom and power, he swiftly led out his army.