Stromateis 1 part 3/42

By what name that which I wish to convey is signified is of no concern to me.

For I know well that it is best to be saved and to assist those who long to be saved, not to compose fine little phrases as though they were ornaments.

And if you keep, says the Pythagorean in Plato's Statesman, from being overly earnest about names, you will appear richer in wisdom as you grow old.

And again, in the Theaetetus, you may find this:

"A certain looseness with names and words, not examined with precision, is in most cases not ignoble—rather, the opposite of this is illiberal—though there are times when precision is necessary."

Scripture has expressed these things as briefly as possible, saying, "Do not be excessive in words."

For diction is, as it were, clothing upon the body, while the substance of things is flesh and sinew.

One must not, therefore, care for the clothing before the safety of the body.

The ancient Lacedaemonians rightly judged and named purple dye: "deceitful are the garments, deceitful are the ointments"—since neither is that preparation of food good which contains more seasonings than nourishing substance, nor is that use of speech refined which is capable of delighting its hearers more than benefiting them.

Pythagoras exhorts us to consider the Muses sweeter than the Sirens, teaching that we should practice wisdom not for the sake of pleasure, and exposing every other form of soul-enchantment as deceptive.

It is enough that one man sailed past the Sirens, and one other alone gave answer to the Sphinx—or, if you prefer, not even one is needed.

One must therefore never widen one's phylacteries out of zeal for vainglory; it suffices for the true Gnostic even if only a single hearer is found.

Indeed, one may also hear Pindar the Boeotian writing:

"Do not break open the ancient saying before everyone."

"There are times when the paths of silence are most trustworthy; but the word that prevails is the goad of battle."

The blessed Apostle insists most emphatically, exhorting us not to wage word-battles for no useful purpose, to the ruin of the hearers, but to avoid profane and empty chatter.

"For they will advance further into ungodliness, and their word will spread like gangrene."

"This wisdom of the world, then, is foolishness with God; and the Lord knows the reasonings of these wise men, that they are vain."

Let no one, then, boast, exalting himself in human understanding.

For indeed, it is well written in Jeremiah:

"Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast in his might, and let not the rich man boast in his riches; but let him who boasts boast in this—to understand and know that I am the Lord, who works mercy and judgment and righteousness upon the earth, for in these things is my will, says the Lord."

"So that we might not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead," says the Apostle, "who delivered us from so great a death, so that our faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."

"For the spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by no one."

"I say this so that no one may delude you with persuasive speech, nor may the one who leads captive slip in."

"See to it, then, that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ"—not all philosophy, but the Epicurean, which Paul also mentions in disparagement in the Acts of the Apostles, the philosophy that abolishes providence and deifies pleasure, and any other philosophy that has honored the elements without attending to their efficient cause, and has not conceived of the Creator.

But the Stoics also, whom he likewise mentions, say—not rightly—that God, being a body, has passed through the most dishonorable matter.

By "the tradition of men" he means logical trickery.

"Avoid youthful speculations."

For such contentious disputes are the mark of striplings.

"But virtue does not love the stripling," says the philosopher Plato.

And our contest, according to Gorgias of Leontini, requires a twofold virtue: courage and wisdom.

Courage, to endure the danger; wisdom, to know the riddle.

For indeed the word, like the herald's proclamation at Olympia, calls whoever is willing,

but crowns only the one who is able.

The word, then, does not wish the believer to be unmoved toward truth and truly idle.

For it says, "Seek, and you shall find"; but it brings the seeking to completion in finding, driving out empty chatter, while approving the contemplation that fortifies our faith.

"This I say, so that no one may delude you with persuasive speech," says the Apostle—clearly speaking to those who have learned to discern what is said by him, and who have been taught to respond to the objections that are raised.

"As, then, you received Christ Jesus the Lord..."

"See to it that no one leads you captive away from the faith in Christ through philosophy and empty deceit—that which abolishes providence—according to the tradition of men."

For that philosophy which accords with divine tradition establishes and confirms providence; and if this is abolished, the economy concerning the Savior appears to be a myth, as we are then carried along according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ.

For the teaching that follows Christ both glorifies the Creator and extends providence down to particulars, and knows the nature of the elements to be mutable and created, and teaches us to conduct our lives, to the extent of our power, in a manner assimilating us to God, and admits the dispensation as the guiding principle of all instruction.

As for the elements, Diogenes reveres air, Thales water, Hippasus fire; and those who posit atoms as first principles—assuming the name of philosophy—are certain godless little men, lovers of pleasure.

For this reason, he says, I pray that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that excel.

For when we were infants, the same apostle says, we were enslaved under the elemental spirits of the world.

But the infant, even though he be an heir, differs in nothing from a slave until the time appointed by the father.

The philosophers, then, are also infants, unless they be made men by Christ.

For if the son of the slave woman will not inherit with the son of the free woman, still he is nonetheless a seed of Abraham—not the seed that comes of promise, but one that has received its own portion as a free gift.

But solid food belongs to the perfect, who through practice have their faculties trained to distinguish good and evil.

For everyone who partakes of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, being an infant and not yet knowing the reasoning by which he has believed and by which he acts, nor able to give the reason for it within himself.

'Test all things,' says the apostle, 'and hold fast what is good'—speaking to spiritual men who examine all things, whether what is said in accordance with truth merely seems so, or actually holds fast to the truth.

Instruction without correction goes astray, but stripes and reproofs give the discipline of wisdom—reproofs, that is, given with love.

For an upright heart seeks knowledge, because he who seeks God will find knowledge together with righteousness, and those who have rightly sought him have found peace.

'And I will know,' he says, 'not the speech of those who are puffed up, but their power'—writing this to rebuke those who merely fancy themselves wise and suppose themselves to be so, but are not wise.

For the kingdom of God is not in word—not in that which is not true but merely persuasive according to opinion—but, he said, in power.

For truth alone is powerful.

If anyone thinks he has known something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.

For truth is never mere conceit; rather, the mere supposition of knowledge puffs up and fills one with pride, but love builds up, being occupied not with conceit but with truth.

Hence he says, 'If anyone loves, this one is known.'

Since, then, the tradition is not common and open to all for one who has perceived the greatness of the Word, the wisdom spoken in mystery, which the Son of God taught, must therefore be concealed.

Indeed, even the prophet Isaiah had his tongue purified by fire, so that he might be able to speak of the vision; and it is fitting that not the tongue alone, but our ears also, be purified, if indeed we endeavor to have a share in the truth.

These things hindered me from writing, and even now I am still cautious, as he says, of casting pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot and turn and tear you to pieces.

For it is difficult to display discourses that are truly pure and lucid concerning the true light to hearers who are swinish and uneducated.

For there is scarcely anything more ridiculous than these things when heard by the multitude, nor again anything more admirable and inspiring when heard by those of good natural ability.

The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.

They take counsel together in the assembly.

'But what you hear in the ear,' says the Lord, 'proclaim upon the housetops'—thereby commanding that the hidden traditions of true knowledge be received as interpreted in a lofty and excellent manner, and that, just as we heard in the ear, so we should hand them down to those to whom it is fitting, charging us not to give out indiscriminately to all what has been spoken to them in parables.

But in truth the outline of these notes has the truth sown within it, scattered and dispersed here and there, so that it may escape the notice of those seed-picking chatterers, like jackdaws.

But when it meets with a good farmer, each of these seeds will spring up and bring forth the wheat.

Since, then, truth is one—for falsehood has countless deviations—the sects of philosophy, both barbarian and Greek, have torn it asunder, as the Bacchae tore apart the limbs of Pentheus, each one boasting, as though the portion it obtained were the whole of the truth.

But by the rising of light, I suppose, all things are illumined.

All, then, both Greeks and barbarians, who have reached after the truth—some possessing not a little, others some part of it, if indeed they possess it at all—would thereby be shown to have a share in the word of truth.

Indeed, the age of time instantaneously brings together the future and the present, and also the past; but truth is far more powerful than that age in gathering together its own seeds, even should they have fallen upon foreign soil.

For we might find that very many of the doctrines esteemed among the sects—those, at least, which have not been rendered wholly deaf nor cut off from the natural sequence of reasoning, as the eunuchs of the harem, by cutting off the male member, cut off reason as well—even though they seem unlike one another, nevertheless agree in kind with the whole of truth.

For either as a limb, or as a part, or as a species, or as a genus, it is joined together into one.

Indeed, even the lowest note, though opposite to the highest, yet both together make one harmony; and among numbers the even differs from the odd, yet both agree in belonging to arithmetic—just as, in figures, the circle and the triangle and the square, and all the shapes that differ from one another, agree in belonging to geometry.

Moreover, in the whole cosmos, all the parts, even though they differ from one another, preserve their kinship with the whole.

So, then, both the barbarian and the Greek philosophy have made the eternal truth into a kind of dismemberment—not of the myth of Dionysus, but of the theology of the Word who eternally is.

But whoever puts together again the things that have been divided, and unifies them, may be assured without risk that he beholds the perfect Word—the truth.

It is written, then, in Ecclesiastes:

And I added wisdom beyond all who were before me in Jerusalem.

And my heart saw much: wisdom and knowledge; I came to know parables and understanding.

For even this is a striving of the spirit, because in much wisdom is much knowledge.

But he who is experienced in wisdom of every kind—this man alone would properly be called 'the gnostic,' the one who truly knows.

The abundance of the knowledge of wisdom shall give life to the one who has it from her.

Again, moreover, the following saying confirms more clearly what has been said:

'All things are plain to those who understand'—and 'all things' means the Greek and the barbarian together, while either one of the two alone is no longer 'all'—'and right to those who wish to receive understanding.'

Choose instruction rather than silver, and knowledge rather than tested gold; choose also understanding rather than pure gold.

For wisdom is better than precious stones, and nothing of value is worthy of it.

The Greeks say that, after Orpheus and Linus and the most ancient poets among them, the first to be admired for wisdom were the seven who were called 'the wise men'—four of whom were from Asia: Thales the Milesian, Bias of Priene, Pittacus of Mytilene, and Cleobulus of Lindos; and two from Europe: Solon the Athenian and Chilon the Lacedaemonian; and as for the seventh, some say it was Periander the Corinthian, others Anacharsis the Scythian, and others Epimenides the Cretan.

(whom he knows as a Greek prophet, the one whom the apostle Paul mentions in his epistle to Titus, saying thus:

'One of them, a prophet of their own, said thus:

Liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.'

And this testimony is true.

Do you see how he grants even to the prophets of the Greeks some share of the truth, and is not ashamed, when arguing for edification and for rebuke, to make use in some cases of Greek poems? For instance, writing to the Corinthians—for it is not only here—when discussing the resurrection of the dead, he makes use of a tragic iambic line: 'What good is it to me,' he says, 'if the dead are not raised? Let us eat and drink,'

for bad company corrupts good morals.)

But some have included Acusilaus the Argive among the seven wise men, others Pherecydes the Syrian.

But Plato, in place of Periander—as unworthy of wisdom because he had been a tyrant—substitutes Myson of Chenae.

That the wise men among the Greeks arose somewhat later than the age of Moses will be shown a little further on.

But the manner of philosophy among them, being Hebraic and enigmatic, must now be examined.

They embraced, then, the hortatory brevity of speech, which is most beneficial.

For instance, Plato long ago says that this manner came about through diligent cultivation, commonly among all the Greeks, but especially among the Lacedaemonians and the Cretans, who were most law-abiding.

Now, as for 'Know thyself,' some have supposed it to be Chilon's saying, but Chamaeleon, in his work On the Gods, attributes it to Thales, while Aristotle attributes it to the Pythia.

It can also be understood as urging one to pursue knowledge.

For it is not possible to know the parts without knowing the essence of the whole.

One must, then, investigate diligently the origin of the world, through which it will also be possible to come to a thorough understanding of the nature of man.

Again, on the other hand, they attribute to Chilon the Lacedaemonian the saying 'Nothing in excess.'

But Strato, in his work On Discoveries, attributes the saying to Sodamus of Tegea, while Didymus ascribes it to Solon—just as, for that matter, he ascribes 'Measure is best' to Cleobulus.

But as for 'Give a pledge, and ruin is at hand,' Cleomenes, in his work On Hesiod, says that it had already been said beforehand by Homer, in these words:

Wretched indeed are the pledges that wretched men give as surety.

But the followers of Aristotle consider it to be Chilon's, while Didymus says the maxim belongs to Thales.

Then, next, the saying 'All men are evil,' or 'Most men are evil' (for the same maxim is expressed in two forms), the followers of Sotades of Byzantium say belongs to Bias; and they wish 'Practice conquers all things' to be Periander's; and likewise they hold that the maxim 'Know the right occasion' belongs to Pittacus.

Solon, then, gave laws to the Athenians, and Pittacus to the Mytilenaeans.

But it was Pythagoras, the disciple of Pherecydes, who at a late date was the first to proclaim himself a philosopher.

After the aforementioned men, then, there arose three successions of philosophy named after the regions in which they dwelt: the Italian, from Pythagoras; the Ionian, from Thales; and the Eleatic, from Xenophanes.

Now Pythagoras was the son of Mnesarchus and a Samian, as Hippobotus says; but according to Aristoxenus in his Life of Pythagoras, and also Aristarchus and Theopompus, he was a Tyrrhenian; while according to Neanthes...

...he was Syrian or Tyrian, so that, according to most, Pythagoras was a barbarian by race.

Moreover Thales too, as Leander and Herodotus relate, was a Phoenician, though some have supposed him to be a Milesian.

He alone is recorded to have conversed with the prophets of the Egyptians; and no teacher of his is recorded, just as none is recorded for Pherecydes the Syrian, under whom Pythagoras studied.

But the Italian philosophy according to Pythagoras grew old and died out at Metapontum in Italy.

Anaximander, son of Praxiades and a Milesian, succeeded Thales; he was succeeded by Anaximenes, son of Eurystratus, also a Milesian; after whom came Anaxagoras, son of Hegesibulus, of Clazomenae.

This man transferred the school from Ionia to Athens.

He was succeeded by Archelaus, whose pupil Socrates was.

From these, then, turned aside the stone-carver, the babbler about laws,

the enchanter of the Greeks—so Timon says in his Silloi, because he had turned away from natural philosophy to ethics.

Having heard Socrates, Antisthenes became a Cynic, while Plato withdrew to the Academy.

Aristotle, having studied philosophy under Plato, moved on to the Lyceum and founded the Peripatetic school.

He was succeeded by Theophrastus, whom Strato succeeded, whom Lyco succeeded, then Critolaus, then Diodorus.

Speusippus succeeded Plato, and he was succeeded by Xenocrates, whom Polemon succeeded.

The pupils of Polemon were Crates and Crantor, in whom the Old Academy deriving from Plato came to its end.

Arcesilaus was associated with Crantor, and from him the Middle Academy flourished down to Hegesinus.

Then Carneades succeeded Hegesinus, and those after him.

Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoic school, became a pupil of Crates.

He was succeeded by Cleanthes, whom Chrysippus succeeded, and those after him.

Xenophanes of Colophon inaugurates the Eleatic school; Timaeus says he lived in the time of Hiero, ruler of Sicily, and of Epicharmus the poet, while Apollodorus says he was born about the fortieth Olympiad and lived on to the times of Darius and Cyrus.

Parmenides, then, became a pupil of Xenophanes; his pupil was Zeno, then Leucippus, then Democritus.

The pupils of Democritus were Protagoras of Abdera and Metrodorus of Chios; the latter's pupil was Diogenes of Smyrna, whose pupil was Anaxarchus; his pupil was Pyrrho, whose pupil was Nausiphanes.

Some say that Epicurus became his pupil.

Such, in summary, is the succession of philosophers among the Greeks; next the dates of those who first established their philosophy must be stated.

so that, by comparison, we may demonstrate that the philosophy of the Hebrews is older by many generations.

Now concerning Xenophanes, who inaugurated the Eleatic philosophy, we have already spoken; and Eudemus, in his Astrological Histories, says that Thales foretold the eclipse of the sun that occurred at the time when the Medes and the Lydians joined battle with one another, Cyaxares, father of Astyages, being king of the Medes, and Alyattes, father of Croesus, king of the Lydians.

Herodotus, too, agrees with him in his first book.

The date is about the fiftieth Olympiad.

Pythagoras, in the time of the tyrant Polycrates, is found to have flourished about the sixty-second Olympiad.

Mnesiphilus is recorded as an emulator of Solon, with whom Themistocles associated.

Solon, then, flourished about the forty-sixth Olympiad.

For Heraclitus, son of Blyson, persuaded the tyrant Melancomas to lay down his rule.

This man disregarded King Darius when he urged him to come to Persia.

Such, then, are the dates of the earliest sages and philosophers among the Greeks.

But as for the fact that most of them were barbarians by race and were educated among barbarians, what need is there even to say it, seeing that Pythagoras was shown to be a Tyrrhenian or Tyrian, Antisthenes was a Phrygian, and Orpheus an Odrysian or a Thracian? For most writers show that Homer too was an Egyptian.

Thales, being Phoenician by race, is said to have conversed with the prophets of the Egyptians, just as Pythagoras also conversed with these same men—on whose account he even had himself circumcised, so that, entering into the innermost sanctuaries, he might learn thoroughly the mystical philosophy of the Egyptians; and he also associated with the best of the Chaldeans and Magi, and by his own 'homakoeion' darkly hints at what is now called 'the church.'

Plato, moreover, does not deny that he imported the finest things for philosophy from the barbarians, and he admits that he went to Egypt.

At any rate, in the Phaedo he says that the philosopher can be benefited from every quarter, writing as follows:

'Great is Greece, O Cebes,' he said, 'in which there are altogether good men.'

'and many too are the races of the barbarians.'

Thus Plato thinks that there are also philosophers among the barbarians, whereas Epicurus, on the contrary, supposes that only Greeks are capable of philosophizing.

And in the Symposium, praising the barbarians as having practiced philosophy in an exceptional manner, Plato says that they alone truly did so, and that in many other places besides, both among Greeks and barbarians, many shrines have already arisen on account of such children.

having addressed them as divine teachers, as gods.

For according to Plato they suppose that good souls, having left the supercelestial place, endured to come down into this Tartarus and, taking on a body, to share in all the evils involved in becoming, out of concern for the human race—souls that established laws and proclaimed philosophy, a good greater than which has never come to the human race from the gods, nor ever shall come.

And it seems to me that, perceiving the great benefit conferred through these sages, all the Brahmins and the Odrysians and the Getae and the race of the Egyptians revered these men and publicly practiced philosophy, and expounded their theology with precision—as did the Chaldeans, and the Arabians called the Blessed, and all who dwelt in Palestine, and no small part of the Persian race, and countless other races besides these.

Plato, then, is plainly found always to hold the barbarians in honor, remembering that both he himself and Pythagoras learned most of their finest and noblest doctrines among the barbarians.

For this reason he spoke of 'races of barbarians,' knowing that there were races of philosophic barbarian men; and in the Phaedrus he presents to us the Egyptian king as wiser than Thoth, whom he knows to be Hermes.

But also in the Charmides he appears to be acquainted with certain Thracians, who are said to render the soul immortal.

It is recorded that Pythagoras was a pupil of Sonchis, the Egyptian arch-prophet; Plato of Sechnuphis of Heliopolis; and Eudoxus of Cnidus of Conuphis, likewise an Egyptian.

In his treatise On the Soul, Plato again shows himself acquainted with prophecy, introducing a prophet who proclaims the word of Lachesis to the souls receiving their lots, and foretells things to come.

And in the Timaeus he presents the most wise Solon as a learner at the feet of the barbarian.

The wording is as follows:

'O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children; there is no such thing as an old Greek.'

'For you have no learning that is hoary with age.'

For Democritus took over the Babylonian ethical discourses and made them his own.

For it is said that he incorporated the translated pillar-inscription of Achicarus into his own writings, and one can note the very place where Democritus writes, 'thus says Democritus.'

Indeed, boasting of himself somewhere on account of his great learning, he says:

'I, of all the men of my time, wandered over the most land, inquiring into the most distant things; I saw the most skies and lands, and I heard the discourse of the most learned men; and in the composition of lines with demonstration none has yet surpassed me, not even the Egyptians called Harpedonaptae; and besides all this, I spent eighty years in foreign lands.'

For he traveled through Babylon, Persia, and Egypt, studying under the Magi and the priests.

Pythagoras was an admirer of Zoroaster the Persian Magus; and those who follow the school of Prodicus boast that they possess this man's secret books.

Alexander, in his work On Pythagorean Symbols, relates that Pythagoras was a pupil of Zaratas the Assyrian (whom some suppose to be Ezekiel, but this is not so, as will be shown later), and he further claims that Pythagoras also listened to the Galatians and the Brahmins.

Clearchus the Peripatetic says that he knew of a certain Jew who conversed with Aristotle.

For Heraclitus says that the future was revealed to the Sibyl not in a human manner, but by divine agency.

At any rate, they say that at Delphi, beside the council-house, a certain rock is pointed out.

on which it is said the first Sibyl used to sit, having come from Helicon and having been raised by the Muses.

But some say that she came from the Malians, being the daughter of Lamia, the daughter of Poseidon.

He writes that she used to reveal to men, by means of entrails, a manifestation of what was to come; and he supposes that her soul is the face that appears in the moon.

Numa, the king of the Romans, was a Pythagorean; and having benefited from the teachings of Moses, he forbade the Romans to fashion an image of God in human or animal form.

At any rate, in the first hundred and seventy years, while building temples ... they made no image, neither molded nor indeed painted.

For Numa showed them, by way of concealment, that it is not possible to lay hold of the best except by the mind alone.

Philosophy, then, a thing of great benefit, flourished long ago among the barbarians, shining forth throughout the nations, and only later came down also to the Greeks.

Its leaders were: among the Egyptians, the prophets; among the Assyrians, the Chaldeans; among the Gauls, the Druids; among the Bactrians, the Samanaeans; among the Celts, those who practiced philosophy; and among the Persians, the Magi (who by their magic foretold beforehand the birth of the Savior, coming into the land of Judea guided by a star); and among the Indians, the gymnosophists; and other barbarian philosophers besides.

There are two classes of these: some of them are called Sarmanae, others Brahmans.

And of the Sarmanae, those called forest-dwellers neither inhabit cities nor have roofs; they clothe themselves in the bark of trees, eat fruit from the trees, and drink water with their hands; they know neither marriage nor the begetting of children, like those now called Encratites.

And there are among the Indians those who obey the precepts of Buddha.

whom, on account of the excess of his majesty, ... they have honored as a god.

Anacharsis, too, was a Scythian, and he is recorded as surpassing many philosophers among the Greeks.

Hellanicus records that the Hyperboreans dwell beyond the Rhipaean mountains, and that they are taught righteousness, not eating flesh but living on tree-fruits.

These lead those who are sixty years old outside the gates and make them disappear.

Among the Germans, too, there are the so-called sacred women, who, gazing upon the eddies of rivers and the windings and murmurs of the currents, make conjectures and foretell things to come.

These, at any rate, would not allow them to join battle against Caesar before the new moon had shone forth.

Of all these, by far the oldest is the race of the Jews, and that their philosophy, having become a written thing, preceded the philosophy of the Greeks, Philo the Pythagorean demonstrates at length; and not only he, but also Aristobulus the Peripatetic and several others besides ... lest I linger going through them one by one by name.

Most plainly of all, Megasthenes the historian, who lived together with Seleucus Nicator, writes as follows in the third book of his Indica:

All that has been said concerning nature among the ancients is also said among those who philosophize outside of Greece: among the Indians by the Brahmans, and in Syria by those called Jews.