Stromateis 1 part 5/42

'For thus you shall cross over strange water' — reckoning heretical baptism not to be one's own and genuine water — 'and you shall pass over a strange river,' the one that sweeps along and drags down into the sea, into which is delivered the one who has turned aside from the steadfastness that is according to truth, swept away again into the pagan and disorderly waves of life.

Just as, among the many men who haul a ship, one would not say there are many causes, but rather one cause arising from many (for no single man by himself is the cause of the ship's being hauled, but only together with the others), so too philosophy, being a search for truth, cooperates toward the apprehension of truth — not being itself the cause of apprehension, but, together with the others, a cause and a co-worker.

Perhaps, indeed, the joint-cause too may be properly called a cause.

And just as, happiness being one, the virtues, being several, happen each to be a cause of it, and just as of being warmed there are the sun, fire, the bath, and clothing — so, truth being one, many things are apprehended toward the search for it, but the discovery of it comes through the Son.

If indeed we consider it, virtue is, according to its power, one; but it happens that this same virtue, when it arises in these matters, is called prudence, in those temperance, in others courage or justice.

By the same reasoning, then, truth being one, in geometry there is the truth of geometry, in music that of music, and in right philosophy there would be Greek truth.

But only this sovereign Truth is inviolable — that which we are taught by the Son of God.

We say it is in this way that one and the same drachma, when given to the ship-owner, is called fare; to the tax-collector, toll; to the landlord, rent; to the teacher, wage; and to the seller, a deposit.

Each of these — whether virtue or truth — though called by the same name, is the cause only of its own particular effect.

It is by the combined use of these that living happily comes about (for let us not, indeed, base our happiness on names), whenever we call the upright life happiness, and call happy the one whose soul is adorned virtuously.

But even if philosophy cooperates only from afar toward the discovery of truth, extending, by various approaches, toward that knowledge which directly touches the truth as we hold it, still it does cooperate with the one who is earnest to attempt, by reasoning, to lay hold of knowledge.

Greek truth is distinct from ours, even though it has come to share the same name, both by the greatness of its knowledge, by its more authoritative demonstration, by divine power, and by similar such things.

For we are taught of God, being instructed in truly sacred writings by the Son of God.

Hence they do not move souls in the same manner, but by a different kind of teaching.

But if it should be necessary for us, on account of the fault-finders, to make a distinction — calling philosophy a joint-cause and co-worker of the true apprehension, it being a search for truth — we shall acknowledge it to be a preparatory training for the Gnostic, not positing the joint-cause as the sole cause, nor indeed the co-worker as a constitutive cause, nor as that without which the apprehension cannot occur — since nearly all men, without the general education and Greek philosophy, and some even without letters, moved by a divine and barbarian philosophy, have in power received, through faith, the doctrine concerning God, having been taught by a self-working wisdom.

That which acts together with another — being incomplete to operate by itself — we call a co-worker and joint-cause: either from being a cause together with another cause, or from becoming, by combining with another, that which is named a cause, while being unable of itself to produce the true effect.

And yet even by itself philosophy once did justify the Greeks — not, however, unto universal righteousness (toward which it is found to be a co-worker, just as the first and second steps are to one ascending to the upper room, and the elementary teacher to one who will go on to philosophize), nor in such a way that, by its removal, either there would be a deficiency in the universal reason, or the truth would be destroyed — since sight too contributes toward truth, and hearing, and voice, yet it is the mind that recognizes it properly.

But among the co-workers, some contribute a greater power, others a lesser.

Clarity, then, cooperates toward the transmission of truth, and dialectic toward not falling prey to the heresies that assail us.

The teaching according to the Savior is, then, self-sufficient and in need of nothing, being the power and wisdom of God; but Greek philosophy, coming alongside it, does not render the truth more powerful — rather, by rendering ineffective the sophistic attack made against it, and by repelling the treacherous plots against the truth, it has fittingly been called 'the fence' and 'the wall of the vineyard.'

And the one — the truth according to faith — is, like bread, necessary for life.

But the preparatory training is like a relish and a dessert, or, as dinner draws to its close, a sweet morsel — according to Pindar the Theban.

And Scripture declared it outright:

'The innocent one, when he understands, will become shrewder; and the wise man will receive knowledge.'

'And he who speaks from himself seeks his own glory,' says the Lord, 'but he who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and unrighteousness is not in him.'

Conversely, then, the one who appropriates the possessions of the barbarians and boasts of them as his own does wrong, magnifying his own glory and falsifying the truth.

This man is called a thief by Scripture.

For falsehood leads the way to theft.

And already the thief truly possesses whatever he has stolen — be it gold, or silver, or a word, or a doctrine.

These things are true indeed, but they know them only conjecturally, and by the mere necessities inherent in arguments.

Having been made disciples, then, they will come to know with true comprehension.

Now, concerning the fact that the doctrines of the philosophers were pilfered from the Hebrews, we shall discuss a little later; but first — as was the natural order — we must now speak concerning the times of Moses, through which it will be shown, beyond all dispute, that the philosophy of the Hebrews is the most ancient of all wisdom.

Now these matters have been stated with precision by Tatian in his Address to the Greeks, and also by Cassian in the first book of his Exegetica.

Yet the present treatise requires us also to run briefly over what has been said on this subject.

Apion, then, the grammarian, surnamed Pleistonices, in the fourth book of his Egyptian History — although disposed with hostility toward the Hebrews, being Egyptian by race, to such a degree that he even composed a treatise against the Jews — mentions Amosis, king of the Egyptians, and the deeds done in his time, and cites as witness Ptolemy of Mendes.

And his very words run as follows:

'Amosis destroyed Avaris, having become contemporary with Inachus the Argive, as Ptolemy of Mendes recorded in his Chronicles.'

This Ptolemy was a priest, and having set forth the deeds of the kings of Egypt in three whole books, he says that, in the time of Amosis, king of Egypt, under the leadership of Moses, the Jews' journey out of Egypt took place; from which it may be inferred, taken together, that Moses flourished in the time of Inachus.

The most ancient of Greek affairs are the Argolic ones — I mean those from Inachus — as Dionysius of Halicarnassus teaches in his Chronicles.

Of these, the Attic affairs — those from Cecrops the two-natured, the autochthonous one — are, as Tatian says verbatim, forty generations more recent; and the Arcadian affairs, those from Pelasgus, are nine generations more recent.

And he too is said to be autochthonous.

Younger than these by yet another two generations are the Phthiotic affairs, those from Deucalion.

And down to the time of the Trojan affairs, from Inachus there are reckoned twenty generations, or one more, and in years, so to speak, four hundred and upward.

But if the affairs of the Assyrians are many years older than the Greek ones — as Ctesias relates — it will appear that in the four hundred and second year of the Assyrian empire, and in the thirty-second year of the eighth dynasty, that of Beluchus, occurred the departure of Moses from Egypt, according to the reckoning of Amosis the Egyptian and Inachus the Argive.

Now in Greece, in the time of Phoroneus who came after Inachus, occurred the flood of Ogyges, and the kingdom in Sicyon — first that of Aegialeus, then of Europs, then of Telchin — and the reign of Cres in Crete.

For Acusilaus says that Phoroneus was the first man to come into being.

Whence also the poet of the Phoronis called him 'the father of mortal men.'

From this, Plato in the Timaeus, following Acusilaus, writes:

'And once, wishing to draw them forward into discourse concerning ancient matters, he attempts to speak of the most ancient things belonging to this city, concerning Phoroneus, who was mentioned first, and Niobe, and the events after the flood.'

In the time of Phorbas, there was Actaeus, from whom Attica is called Actaea.

In the time of Triopas, there were Prometheus and Atlas and Epimetheus and the two-natured Cecrops and Io.

In the time of Crotopus, there occurred the conflagration under Phaethon and the deluge under Deucalion.

In the time of Sthenelus, there occurred the kingdom of Amphictyon, and the arrival of Danaus in the Peloponnese, and the founding of Dardania by Dardanus — whom, Homer says, cloud-gathering Zeus begot first — and the transfer of Europa from Phoenicia to Crete.

In the time of Lynceus, there occurred the rape of Kore, and the establishment of the sanctuary at Eleusis, and the farming of Triptolemus, and the arrival of Cadmus at Thebes, and the kingdom of Minos.

In the time of Proetus, there occurred the war of Eumolpus against the Athenians.

In the time of Acrisius, there occurred the crossing of Pelops from Phrygia, and the arrival of Ion at Athens, and the second Cecrops, and the deeds of Perseus and Dionysus, and Orpheus and Musaeus.

In the reign of Agamemnon, Ilium was taken — in the first year of Demophon son of Theseus reigning at Athens, on the twelfth of the month Thargelion, as Dionysius the Argive says; but Agias and Dercylus say it happened in the third year, on the eighth day from the end of the month Panemus; for Hellanicus says it was on the twelfth of Thargelion, and some of those who have written on Attic affairs say it was on the eighth day from the end, in the last year of the reign of Menestheus, when the moon was full: 'It was the middle of the night,' says the composer of the Little Iliad, 'and the bright moon was rising.'

But others say it happened on that same day of Scirophorion.

Theseus, being an emulator of Heracles, is older than the Trojan affairs by one generation.

Homer, at any rate, mentions Tlepolemus, who was a son of Heracles, as having campaigned against Ilium.

Moses is thus shown to precede the deification of Dionysus by six hundred and four years, if indeed Dionysus was deified in the thirty-second year of the reign of Perseus, as Apollodorus says in his Chronicles.

And from Dionysus to Heracles and the heroes around Jason who sailed in the Argo, sixty-three years are reckoned.

Asclepius and the Dioscuri sailed together with them, as Apollonius of Rhodes testifies in his Argonautica.

And from the reign of Heracles in Argos to the deification of Heracles himself and of Asclepius, thirty-eight years are reckoned, according to the chronographer Apollodorus.

And from there to the deification of Castor and Pollux, fifty-three years.

Somewhere around this time also falls the capture of Ilium.

But if we must also give credence to the poet Hesiod, let us hear him say:

'To Zeus Atlantian Maia bore glorious Hermes, herald of the immortals, having gone up into his sacred bed.'

'And Cadmean Semele bore him a splendid son, having mingled with him in love — Dionysus, giver of much delight.'

Cadmus, the father of Semele, comes to Thebes in the time of Lynceus and becomes the inventor of the Greek letters; and Triopas is contemporary with Isis, in the seventh generation from Inachus (they say that Isis is also called Io, because of her wandering through the whole earth); and Istrus, in his work On the Egyptian Colony, says that she was the daughter of Prometheus.

And Prometheus, being contemporary with Triopas, belongs to the seventh generation after Moses, so that Moses appears to have flourished even before the origin of mankind according to the Greeks.

And Leon, who treated of the gods of Egypt, says that Isis is called Demeter by the Greeks; she belongs to the time of Lynceus, in the eleventh generation after Moses.

And Apis, king of Argos, founded Memphis, as Aristippus says in the first book of his Arcadica.

And Aristeas of Argos says that this man was surnamed Sarapis, and that he too—

—is the one whom the Egyptians worship. But Nymphodorus of Amphipolis, in the third book of his Customs of Asia, says that Apis the bull, when he died, was embalmed and placed in a coffin in the temple of the honored deity, and that from this he was called 'Soroapis,' and later, by a certain usage of the local inhabitants, 'Sarapis.'

And Apis is the third generation from Inachus.

Moreover, Leto is contemporary with Tityus, for Tityus dragged off Leto, the glorious consort of Zeus... and Tityus was contemporary with Tantalus.

It is fitting, then, that the Boeotian Pindar also writes:

'Apollo too came to be in time — and it is no wonder, seeing that he is even found serving as a bondsman to Admetus, together with the great Heracles, for a full year.'

And Zethus and Amphion, the inventors of music, lived about the age of Cadmus.

And even if someone should tell us that Phemonoe was the first to give an oracle to Acrisius, let him know that it was twenty-seven years after Phemonoe that Orpheus and Musaeus and Linus, the teacher of Heracles, lived.

Homer and Hesiod are much younger than the events at Ilium; and after them, much younger still, are the lawgivers among the Greeks, Lycurgus and Solon, and the Seven Sages, and those around Pherecydes of Syros and the great Pythagoras, who came into being somewhere down about the time of the Olympiads, as we have shown.

Thus Moses has been shown by us to be older not only than those called wise men and poets among the Greeks, but also than most of their gods.

...this one; but the Sibyl too is more ancient than Orpheus.

For many accounts are given both concerning her name and concerning the oracles attributed to her: that being a Phrygian, she was called Artemis, and that, having come to Delphi, she sang:

'O Delphians, servants of far-shooting Apollo, I have come to declare the mind of aegis-bearing Zeus, being angered at my own brother Apollo.'

There is also another Sibyl, an Erythraean, called Herophile.

Heraclides of Pontus mentions these women in his work On Oracles.

I pass over the Egyptian Sibyl, and the Italian one, who dwelt at Carmentum in Rome, whose son was Evander, the founder of the shrine of Pan at Rome called the Lupercal.

Having arrived at this point, it is worthwhile to investigate also the dates of the other prophets among the Hebrews who came after Moses.

After the end of Moses' life, Joshua succeeds to the leadership of the people, waging war for sixty-five years, and thereafter resting a further twenty-five years in the good land.

But as the Book of Joshua contains it, the aforementioned man succeeded Moses for twenty-seven years.

Then, having sinned, the Hebrews were delivered over to Chushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia, for eight years, as the Book of Judges relates.

But afterward, having entreated God, they received as leader Othniel, the younger brother of Caleb, of the tribe of Judah, who, having slain the king of Mesopotamia, ruled the people for fifty consecutive years.

And again, having sinned, they were delivered to Eglon, king of the Moabites, for eighteen years; and when they turned back again, Ehud led them for eighty years, an ambidextrous man of the tribe of Ephraim.

This is the one who slew Eglon.

And when Ehud died, having sinned again, they were delivered to Jabin, king of Canaan, for twenty years.

In his time Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, of the tribe of Ephraim, prophesies; and the high priest was Ozious, son of Rhiesous.

Under her guidance, Barak son of Benner, of the tribe of Naphtali, having drawn up the army against Sisera, the commander-in-chief of Jabin, won the victory; and from then Deborah, judging the people, ruled for forty years.

And when she died, the people, having sinned again, were delivered to the Midianites for seven years; after this, Gideon of the tribe of Manasseh, son of Joash, marching out with three hundred men and destroying one hundred twenty thousand of them, ruled for forty years; after him his son Abimelech ruled for three years.

Bolas, son of Bedan, son of Charran, of the tribe of Ephraim, succeeds him, ruling for twenty-three years.

After him, the people having sinned again, were delivered to the Ammonites for eighteen years.

And when they repented, Jephthah the Gileadite, of the tribe of Manasseh, led them and ruled six years; after him Abdon, from Bethlehem of the tribe of Judah, ruled seven years; then Hebron the Zebulunite ruled eight years; then Eglom of Ephraim ruled eight years.

But some join the eight years of Hebron together with the seven years of Abdon.

And after him, the people, having sinned again, came under the foreigners, the Philistines, for forty years.

And when they turned back, Samson, of the tribe of Dan, led them, having conquered the foreigners in war.

This man ruled for twenty years.

And after him, there being anarchy, Eli the priest judged the people for forty years.

And the prophet Samuel succeeds him, together with whom Saul reigned, holding power together for twenty-seven years.

This man also anointed David.

And Samuel died two years before Saul, in the time of the high priest Abimelech.

This man anointed Saul as king, who was the first to reign over Israel after the judges, whose total number, up to Samuel, comes to four hundred sixty-three years and seven months.

Then, according to the first Book of Kingdoms, Saul reigned twenty years, since it was after he had been confirmed anew that he began to reign.

...and Gad and Nathan [prophesied] in his time.

From Joshua son of Nun, then, until David received the kingdom, there are, according to some, four hundred fifty years; but according to the chronography now before us, the years reckoned up to the death of David amount to five hundred twenty-three years and seven months.

And after these things, Solomon, son of David, reigned forty years.

In his time Nathan continued to prophesy, who also exhorted him concerning the building of the temple.

Likewise Ahijah of Shiloh also prophesied; and both kings, David and Solomon, were themselves prophets as well.

And Zadok the high priest was the first to serve as priest in the temple which Solomon built, being the eighth from Aaron, the first high priest.

From Moses, then, to the age of Solomon, there are, as some say, five hundred ninety-five years; but as others say, five hundred seventy-six.

But if one were to add, to the four hundred fifty years from Joshua to David, the forty years of Moses' leadership and the other eighty years during which Moses lived before the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt took place, and were then to add to these the forty years of David's reign, he will reckon a grand total of six hundred ten years.

But our own chronography proceeds more accurately, if one were to add to the five hundred twenty-three years and seven months up to the death of David both the hundred twenty years of Moses and the forty years of Solomon;

for it will reckon the total, up to the death of Solomon, at six hundred eighty-three years and seven months.

Hiram gave his own daughter to Solomon at the time when, after the capture of Troy, Menelaus arrived in Phoenicia, as Menander of Pergamum and Laetus say in their Phoenician History.

And after Solomon, his son Rehoboam reigns for seventeen years, and the high priest was Abimelech, son of Zadok.

In his time, the kingdom having been divided, Jeroboam, of the tribe of Ephraim, the servant of Solomon, reigns in Samaria; and Ahijah the Shilonite still prophesies, and Shemaiah son of Elami, and the man from Judah who went to Jeroboam and prophesied against the altar.

After him his son Abijam reigns for twenty-three years, and likewise his son Asa for forty-one years.

This man, in his old age, suffered from gout; and in his time Jehu son of Hanani prophesied.

After him his son Jehoshaphat reigns for twenty-five years.

In his time Elijah the Tishbite prophesies, and Micaiah son of Imlah, and Obadiah son of Hanani.

And in the time of Micaiah, Zedekiah son of Chenaanah was also a false prophet.

After these follows the reign of Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat, for eight years, in whose time Elijah prophesies, and after Elijah, Elisha son of Shaphat.

In his time, those in Samaria ate dove's dung and their own children.

But the time of Jehoshaphat extends from the last part of the third book of Kingdoms to the fourth.

In the time of Jehoram, Elijah was taken up, and Elisha son of Shaphat began to prophesy for six years, being forty years old.

Then Ahaziah reigned one year; in his time Elisha still prophesies, and with him Abdadonaeus.

After him, Athaliah, the mother of Uzziah, reigns for eight years, having slain the children of her brother;

for she was of the family of Ahab.

But the sister of Uzziah, Jehoshabeath, secretly rescued Uzziah's son Joash, and later bestowed the kingdom upon him.

In the time of this Athaliah, Elisha still prophesies; after her reigns, as I said before, Joash, who was saved by Jehoshabeath, wife of Jehoiada the high priest, and the whole comes to forty years.

It is reckoned, then, from Solomon to the death of Elisha the prophet, according to some, one hundred five years; according to others, one hundred two; but as the present chronography shows, from the reign of Solomon, one hundred eighty-one years.

From the Trojan War to the birth of Homer, according to Philochorus, it is one hundred eighty years after the Ionian colonization.

He says that Homer is to be reckoned by the Ionian colonization, which took place one hundred forty years after the events at Troy.

But Apollodorus places him one hundred years after the Ionian colonization, when Agesilaus son of Doryssus was king of the Lacedaemonians, so that Lycurgus the lawgiver, being then still young, was his contemporary.

But Euthymenes, in his Chronicles, says that he flourished at the same time as Hesiod, and arose in Chios in the days of Acastus, about the two-hundredth year after the fall of Troy.

Archemachus also holds this same opinion, in the third book of his Euboean History.

...so that he himself, and Hesiod, were contemporaries also of Elisha the prophet.

And even if one should wish to follow Crates the grammarian, and say that Homer arose at the time of the return of the Heraclidae, eighty years after the fall of Troy, he will again be found later than Solomon, in whose time occurred the arrival of Menelaus in Phoenicia, as has been said before.

But Eratosthenes places Homer's age after the hundredth year from the fall of Troy.

Indeed, Theopompus, in the forty-third book of his Philippica, records that Homer arose five hundred years after those who campaigned against Troy.

But Euphorion, in his work On the Aleuadae, places him in the time of Gyges, who began to reign from the eighteenth Olympiad, and whom he also says was the first to be called a tyrant.

But Sosibius the Laconian, in his Register of Times, places Homer in the eighth year of the reign of Charillus son of Polydectes.

Now Charillus reigned sixty-four years, and after him his son Nicander reigned thirty-nine years;

and he says that in the thirty-fourth year of his reign the first Olympiad was instituted,

so that Homer would be about ninety years before the institution of the Olympic Games.

After Joash, his son Amaziah succeeds to the kingdom for thirty-nine years; and after him likewise his son Uzziah, for fifty-two years, and he died a leper;

and in his time prophesy Amos, and Isaiah his son, and Hosea son of Beeri, and Jonah son of Amittai, from Gath-hepher, who preached to the Ninevites, and who had come forth from the sea monster.

Then Jotham, son of Uzziah, reigns for sixteen years;

in his time Isaiah still prophesies, and also Hosea, and Micah the Morasthite, and Joel son of Bethuel.

His son Ahaz succeeds him, for sixteen years;

in the fifteenth year of his reign, Israel was carried away to Babylon, and Shalmaneser king of the Assyrians resettled those in Samaria among the Medes and in Babylon.

Again, Hoshea succeeds Ahaz for eight years, then Hezekiah for twenty-nine years.

To him, because of his piety, when he had come near the end of his life, God granted, through Isaiah, fifteen more years to live, by the turning back of the sun.

Up to this point Isaiah and Hosea and Micah continue prophesying.

These are said to have arisen after the age of Lycurgus, the lawgiver of the Lacedaemonians;

for Dieuchidas, in the fourth book of his Megarian History, places the prime of Lycurgus about the two hundred ninetieth year after

the fall of Troy—that is where he places the prime of Lycurgus.

But Isaiah is still found prophesying in the three-hundredth year from the reign of Solomon, in whose time Menelaus was shown to have come to Phoenicia; and with him, at that time, are also Micah and Hosea and Joel son of Bethuel.

After Hezekiah, his son Manasseh reigns fifty-five years; then his son Amon, two years; after whom his son Josiah, most devoted to the Law, thirty-one years.

He laid the bones of men upon the bones of the idols, just as it is written in Leviticus.

In his eighteenth year the Passover was kept—such a one as had not been observed since the days of Samuel, nor in all the time between.

At that time also Hilkiah the priest, the father of the prophet Jeremiah, came upon the book of the Law lying in the temple, and having read it, died.

In his time prophesy Huldah, and Zephaniah, and Jeremiah.

In the time of Jeremiah, Hananiah becomes a false prophet.

...at the Euphrates, having met him as he was hastening against the Assyrians.

Josiah is succeeded by Jeconiah, also called Joahaz, his son, for three months and ten days;

him Necho, king of Egypt, bound and led away into Egypt, setting up in his place as king his brother Jehoiakim, under tribute imposed on the land, for eleven years.

After him, his namesake Jehoiakim reigns three months, then Zedekiah eleven years.

And up to this time Jeremiah continues prophesying; Buzi also prophesies, and Uriah son of Shemaiah, and Habakkuk together with him; and here the history of the Hebrew kings comes to an end.

There are, then, from the birth of Moses to this deportation, according to some, nine hundred seventy-two years; but according to the exact chronography, one thousand eighty-five years, six months, and ten days;

and from the reign of David to the captivity brought about by the Chaldeans, four hundred fifty-two years and six months; but as the precision of chronology reckons it among us, four hundred eighty-two years, six months, and ten days.

In the twelfth year of the reign of Zedekiah, Nebuchadnezzar, seventy years before the Persian dominion, made war upon the Phoenicians and the Jews, as Berossus states in his Chaldean Histories.

And Juba, writing about the Assyrians, acknowledges that he took his account from Berossus, thereby testifying to that man's reliability.

Nebuchadnezzar, then, having blinded Zedekiah, led him away to Babylon and deported the whole people (and the captivity lasted seventy years), except for a few, who fled for refuge into Egypt.

And also in the time of Zedekiah, Jeremiah and Habakkuk still prophesy; and in the fifth year of his reign, Ezekiel prophesies in Babylon; after him, Nahum the prophet; then Daniel; and again after him prophesy Haggai and Zechariah, in the second year of Darius the First; after whom comes the one among the Twelve called the Angel [Malachi].

After Haggai and Zechariah, Nehemiah, chief cupbearer of Artaxerxes, son of Hachaliah the Israelite, builds the city of Jerusalem and repairs the temple.