On the diversity of the genealogies recorded by Matthew and Luke; and VII On the slaughter of the infants at Bethlehem and the coming of the Magi; VIII On the torments of Herod himself, who ordered the infants to be killed; XI That the records which the Jews put forward are proved false even by the testimony of Josephus, from a comparison of the dates; XII That from the high priest Annas down to Caiaphas there were four high priests; XIII On John the Baptist, the testimony of Josephus, and that he affirms him to have been a just man, and that vengeance came upon the Jews on account of his death; XVI The text of the letter of Abgar to the Lord and of the Lord to him, and of those things which were consequently translated from the Syrian tongue.
...which have run down even to our own time, and what and what manner of things have in these been done regarding the state of the Church; what eminent men presided over the churches in the most renowned places, or who at each several period; and likewise who, and how great, and when, putting forward new doctrines against religion, in their zeal for contention slipped into the depth of error and professed themselves authors and teachers of a false knowledge, everywhere like grievous wolves tearing the flock of Christ; and also those evils which laid waste the Jews; by what modes too, and how often, and at what times the teaching of Christ and the divine word was assailed by the heathen, and how many in these storms contended even to the endurance of punishments and the shedding of blood for the truth of the word of God; and the martyrdoms borne in our own times. To me, then, wishing to write of these things, the sole most merciful support seems to be drawn from no other beginning than from the bodily presence itself of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
But I beg that pardon be granted me; for I confess that in this work I attempt things greater than our strength, since we dare to tread, as it were, a first journey of this kind upon a way much diverged from that of our predecessors. And although I am sure that God will be our guide and that the support of our Lord and Savior will be at hand for us, yet we perceive no footprints of men gone before, on which we might lean, except that here and there the records of individuals have been handed down; from these certain torches of light are kindled for us from afar, as for those set in darkness, and as from a lofty watchtower we are admonished by their voices whither we ought to direct our step and to guide the way of the word without error.
Whatever things, then, seemed to suit the proposed work, plucking the little flowers of the learned from their reasonable fields, we have attempted to gather and compact into one body by historical narration, deeming it abundantly gratifying if—even though not of all—at least of the most noble apostles of our Savior we seem to have taken up into one the successions handed down to the more famous churches, all the more necessary because, as I said above, I find that no ecclesiastical writer at least has applied his mind to this part of the narrative.
In which I hope this also: that this work of ours will be of very much use, from the knowledge of past deeds, to all who are studious. In that work which we composed concerning the reckoning of times I touched upon these things briefly and concisely, but more fully in the present work, of each matter. My discourse, then, will begin, as we promised, from the Lord Himself, Christ.
It seems good first to set forth whence this race of men takes its beginning, or what the meaning of its very name contains, from which this nation or people is called. Christ consists, as it were, of a twofold mode, and holds in Himself the fullness of the divine and human nature alike: in Him the divine substance is held to be as it were the head, the human—which He took up for our salvation—the feet; and so at last we may more perfectly begin, by which both the antiquity and the nobility of the Christians—who are believed to be a nation of a new name—are alike shown. To bring forth, then, and unfold the race of Christ and the very nature of His substance no discourse will suffice, since even the divine word so speaks of Him; but elsewhere too it is recorded of Him in heavenly utterances thus:
for 'no one knows the Son but the Father, nor does anyone know the Father but the Son.' He alone, therefore, who begot Him is said to know the Son—the Father; and without doubt He excluded all others from examining the knowledge, who referred the knowledge of the Son to the one Father alone. He, then, in these volumes which are believed to have been written by the divine Spirit, is proclaimed to be the eternal light, and to have been always, even before the beginning of the world; substantial Wisdom likewise, and the living Word, is related to have subsisted in the beginning with the Father, and the Word to be God. Who, then, will be able to comprehend in discourse Him who is described to have always been before every visible and invisible creature?
Who, in words, could explain Him as the Lord and Leader and Prince of all the heavenly, immortal, and divine powers, and the Angel of the heavenly host and of the great counsel, the efficacy of the paternal will—Him who, it is agreed, with the Father created and founded all things that are—as the true Son and Only-begotten, the Lord and King and Ruler of all things that have been created, governing all things by paternal power and authority? Save that, for the understanding of His fullness, one filled by the more secret things of the Spirit of God says: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God: all things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing.'
But Moses also, the greatest and most ancient of the prophets, when, full of God, he disclosed the origin of the world and the beginnings of things, designates with mystical and hallowed words the Father, the maker of all, together with the Son. For he says: 'And God said: Let us make man after our own image and likeness.' But David also, himself most ancient, though later than Moses, [says]: 'by the Spirit of His mouth all their power'; and elsewhere the same nonetheless: '...and they were created'—in which words he plainly expressed the person of the Father commanding and of the Son working. Since, then, by these and very many other utterances it is made clear, it remains that of those things which after the creation of the world He transacted for the dispensation of men, we touch as briefly as we can.
It is shown that He stood by and taught many men endowed with piety even before, the things which seemed to pertain to divine worship. But more evidently and more familiarly is He described to have made Himself known—as far as it was right for God to be known to men—to Abraham and his household, and is related to have stood forth as a kind of teacher and monitor of that lineage. Finally, it is written in the divine oracles that God appeared to Abraham as some common man, sitting at the oak of Mamre. And he, rising up when he saw a man, adores Him as God and venerates Him as Lord. And by the profession of his own voice he attests that he is not ignorant of the divine presence, saying:
'O Ruler, Lord, who judgest all the earth, wilt Thou not do judgment?' All which things assuredly are to be referred not to the Father but to the Son, which the reckoning of the dispensation later fulfilled in the flesh designates as more fully accomplished. And the same prophet David says of God: 'He sent His word and healed them, and delivered them from their corruptions.' But still more evidently, through Moses, the divine oracles testify of Him that He Himself is Lord together with the Lord, when it says: 'The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord.' And the same Scripture designates Him to be God when He had appeared to Jacob, saying to Jacob: 'No longer shall thy name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name, because thou hast prevailed with God'; and a little after it says:
'And Jacob,' it says, 'called the name of that place the Vision of God,' saying: 'For I have seen God face to face, and my soul has been saved.' For it is not right to think these things of any of the angels or of the heavenly powers. For the divine word designates none of them as Lord or God, even when they are sometimes commanded by heavenly mandate to be present to mortals. He also said to Joshua, the successor of Moses, when He had stood by him and Joshua had asked who He was, with most evident replies; and when the servant, hearing this, had adored Him as was fitting: 'Loose,' He said to him, 'the strap of thy sandal; for the place in which thou standest is holy ground.'
In which the likeness of the precepts is to be considered, since this was none other than He who had said to Moses out of the fire of the bush: 'Do not draw near hither; loose thy sandals from thy feet; I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.' It became clear, then, from all these things, that the Word of God, and God, and Lord, and Creator of all, was designated as Son together with the Father. Now let us also see this: how He shows in the divine oracles, through Solomon, that He Himself exists substantially as the Wisdom of God: 'I dwelt, I invoked counsel and knowledge and understanding: by me kings reign and the mighty by me write justice; by me nobles are magnified, and tyrants by me obtain the earth.'
And after some things He says again: 'The Lord created me the beginning of His ways for His works; before the ages He founded me, in the beginning, before He made the earth, before the fountains of waters came forth, before the mountains were settled, and before all the hills He begot me. When He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him; and when He set the fountains firm beneath the heaven, I was with Him composing all things. I was the one in whom He daily delighted; and I rejoiced before Him at all times, when He rejoiced, the world being completed.' From all which it is established that Wisdom was from the beginning—nay, even before every beginning that can be named—begotten by the Father Himself.
But what the cause was that it did not become known to all everywhere, as now, even formerly, and that faith and knowledge of Him did not reach all, we shall set forth. The world, still raw and ignorant of all skill, could not yet grasp the perfect doctrine of the wisdom of Christ; for indeed at once in the beginnings, when those men who had first been created were yet living in blessedness, by their negligence the command of God being corrupted, they fell into this mortal life subject to frailty, and exchanged for the delights of paradise a dwelling of this earth damned by divine curse. And now those who were spread through the world from such progenitors, [living] more after a wild and bestial manner, held no laws for the justice of life.
Of arts and disciplines and all philosophy not even the very name was held among them, but as rude and roving folk they wandered through the deserts with no fixed abodes. But if any good seeds had naturally grown in them through the clemency of the Creator, these they turned to baser ends, since the race inclines more readily to wickedness. Whence it came about that, dealing among themselves in nefarious crimes, now they were corrupted, now also they were destroyed by one another, until, as their savagery advanced, they were even devoured by one another. Hence those battles-of-the-gods, which left tales of crime to the world... and so that He might withstand by the deluge of flood, and now also by the devastation of a fiery shower, and restrain the monstrousness of crimes by the variety of punishments.
But since to its Creator the human race, corrupted by the disease and contagion of malice, seemed rather to be amended than destroyed, He then in pity... He who in the beginning was with God, God the Word and the Wisdom of the Father, now uses the embassies of angels and ministering powers, now also by ineffable condescension is Himself present; and wherever He finds some rare one mindful of God and of justice, He strives to reform and recall the human race from darkness by divine revelations, by wholesome admonitions, by instruction such as befitted God—in no other than human form, by which alone men can be taught something and instructed and helped—until little by little He converted a whole nation, which was called that of the Hebrews, to His worship and veneration.
On whom also—inasmuch as they were still rude and infected with the contagion of their former life—through Moses the prophet He impressed the types and shadowing-forth of the divine worship, through certain mystical sabbaths and the circumcision of the body signifying something higher in the spirit, and the other legal precepts of this kind, as it were the rudiments of a holier learning that was one day to come.
Yet this law, when it had shone forth as a kind of beginning of light upon this world, and by the fragrance of its odor [had given] a certain savor to the regions, the more prudent lawgivers and philosophers, taking it up, began little by little to hand on and instill into their hearers whatever precepts were modest and more decorous, and conscious of uprightness and justice, and to recall the wild and savage manners of men to comely and honorable institutions.
Then they taught men to come together in friendships among themselves and to enter into covenants of concord; then men learned to help one another and to have a common use of things, until the human mind, made docile by a more prudent training, was rendered patient of mutual fellowship—so that, this prelude of such a custom having been sent before, they might now become fit and prepared even for divine institutions, and exist as capable of the knowledge of God, the Father of all.
In which He again, Himself the master of all virtues, Himself the discourse and reason and Word and Wisdom of God, He who in the beginning had created man together with the Father, He, I say, having assumed also the substance of human nature and clothed in the appearance of a servile form, in nothing at all differing from that which we are... had He shown beforehand... entered this world by a common mode of birth with us, yet with no father disclosed; He did and endured those things which the prophets had foretold concerning Him.
For men divinely inspired sang in sacrosanct oracles that a man who should at once be also God would come to this world, and would be the teacher of all nations in paternal piety and religion; and also the manner of death by which He would depart from this life, and how again, in an unwonted way, He would return from the dead to the living, and after this would go to heaven, whence He had descended, and would return to God. Of which, though very many of the prophets evidently signified, yet, so far as the necessity of brevity allows, I will adduce the indication of one alone, namely Daniel. He says, then, of Him thus: 'I beheld, and lo, thrones were set, and the Ancient of days sat; and His garments were white as snow, and the hair of His head as clean wool:'
'His throne was a flame of fire, His wheels burning fire. A fiery stream issued forth before Him. Judgment was set, and the books were opened.' And after this: 'I beheld, and lo, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came even to the Ancient of days, and in His sight He was brought forth; and there was given to Him principality and honor and a 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.' All these things are most manifestly understood to be spoken of none other than of our Savior, who was in the beginning with God, God the Word.
For He is called the Son of man because of this, that in the last times... In their proper places we have arranged the assertions of these things. But how also this name of Christ which we have mentioned [was foreshown] through the prophet... wishing to show what of veneration the name of Christ and of the mystery contains in itself, when he was bidden to describe in the law the types and images of the heavenly sacraments, as had been shown him on the mountain, and when he handed down the rite of constituting a high priest—as far as it was right to teach a mortal—he named Christ the sacrament of a certain mystical anointing; so that by this those who were instructed through the law might learn that what is to be held above all men in honor and reverence is named Christ.
But the same Moses, foreseeing far ahead through the Spirit of God who would be prepared as his successor, and foreknowing that he who should take up the kingdom after him would be the minister of a greater sacrament, surnamed Jesus him who had previously been called by the appellation Auses (Hoshea) of his parents, knowing that in the sacrament of this name there would be set forth a king of a certain greater glory than mortal nature receives. Thus, then, through these twin indications of appellation, the insignia of the priesthood are expressed in the one, and of the royal form in the other.
And He is named both Jesus and Christ, as one who is at once King and Priest, so that the people, mystically instructed through the preceding sacraments, might recognize that nothing pertaining to religion nor to power was lacking in Him. Whence the prophets, moved by the divine Spirit, foresaw in Him at once both the impiety of the Jews and of the Gentiles and salvation. And one of them, whose name is Jeremiah, foretold some such thing: 'The Spirit of our countenance, Christ the Lord,' he says, 'was taken in our corruptions, of whom we said: In His shadow we shall live among the nations.' But David also, the magnificent seer, records these things of the same One: 'Why did the nations rage and the peoples imagine vain things?'
'The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together in one against the Lord and against His Christ.' And a little after he says, in the person of Christ Himself: 'The Lord said to me: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee. Ask of me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance and the ends of the earth for Thy possession.' Now not only the high priests were consecrated with the ointment of chrism among the Hebrews, but also the kings, who themselves too, because by the nod of the Godhead through the prophets [they were so appointed], were nevertheless themselves also called 'christs' (anointed ones), so that in them too the image and likeness of the heavenly King might be preserved.
But also in the order of the prophets we find that some, consecrated in like manner with the ointment of chrism, rendered ministry to the divine oracles and were made knowers of things to come. Since, then, He is the true King of all the ages, and the true Priest of things to come, and the true Prophet—inasmuch as He inspires and fills the prophets—therefore He is truly named Christ, of whose name, through those whom we enumerated above, the priests, prophets, and kings were the type and image which had gone before. They were [so] called only for the preserving of the image of the true Christ, although by a certain mystical compounding of consecrated oil—yet of this material and liquid which is wont to be had among us—they were anointed.
But this true One, who had come from the heavens and for whom all the deeds that went before had been wrought, becomes Christ not by ointments sought by human resources, but in a new and singular manner, being infused and anointed by the paternal Spirit; just as many ages before, the seer Isaiah had foretold of Him, in the person of Christ Himself, saying: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me; He has sent me to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and sight to the blind.' Nor did Isaiah alone foretell these things in divine oracles, but David also, similarly inspired, testifies of Christ, saying to Christ Himself: 'Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever; the rod of equity is the rod of Thy kingdom.'
'Thou hast loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore God, Thy God, has anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.' In which words he first plainly designates Him as God, and secondly, by the rod of equity, commemorates the royal scepter in Him. But afterward he also indicates in what manner He was made Christ, saying that God was anointed by God, not with common oil, but with the oil of gladness; and not as His fellows—that is, those who had gone before in the image—but above His fellows. And the oil of gladness, in the sacred volumes, by a mystical understanding, designates the Holy Spirit.
But also concerning His priesthood the same David in another place signifies some such thing in secret words, as in the person of the Father pronouncing of the Son: 'From the womb,' he says, 'before the morning star I begot Thee. The Lord has sworn and will not repent: Thou art a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.' Now this Melchizedek is recorded in the divine volumes to have been a priest of God the Most High—but one who was not anointed with common oil, nor who received the priesthood from a succession of lineage, as was the custom among the Hebrews. And therefore Christ is said to be a priest to come according to his order, who is consecrated not by the liquor of oil, but by the power of the heavenly Spirit.
Therefore, although many among the Hebrews were solemnly anointed with oil consecrated for this very purpose, and were thereby made 'christs' (anointed ones), and were thus instituted whether as kings or prophets or high priests, none of them was able to give his own name to a people or to disciples or to followers, or to call his disciples 'Christians,' except this one alone, who is the true Christ, anointed not with human oil but with the Father's Spirit. He it is who caused the peoples of his followers, and the whole nation gathered from throughout the world under his name, to be called by the perpetual name of 'Christians,' derived from the title of the true Christ.
If then we ask whence he derives his origin, let us consider what the divine oracles declare through David, that most excellent prophet, speaking in the person of the supreme Father himself, as we also recalled a little earlier: 'From the womb...'
'Before the morning star I begot thee,' he says. And although the term 'womb' would seem scarcely fitting for one who is rightly believed to be incorporeal, nevertheless by figurative and mystical laws this is what is signified: that the Father did not substitute a Son from outside or from some other source, but from his very own self and, if it may be said, from his own inmost being; so that he who was born should be the very same as he who begot, and lest the Son should seem to have been taken up from outside by a law of adoption, but rather—so far as the term 'womb' suggests to our understanding—that, with the reverence due to his incorporeality preserved, he should be shown as brought forth from within by the truth of his nature. And in that he says 'before the morning star,' he designates the beginning before the world and before all creation.
A clear proof of the distinction between the true Christ and those imaginary ones who had gone before is given in this: that those former 'christs' were known to almost none save their own nation, whereas of this true Christ not only the name, but also his power and kingdom have been spread through all nations and throughout the whole circle of the earth—consecrated not merely by the recognition of his title, but by the worship of his divinity and the reverence of religion. For in every land Christ Jesus is honored and adored as the Word and Wisdom of the Father, as God and Lord, even as the divine utterance proclaimed concerning him, saying:
'That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Christ is in the glory of God the Father.' Whence not only his power and kingdom, but also so great an affection and love for him have grown deep in the minds of believers, that the faith and reverence of those who love him keep them ready even to lay down their lives and offer their necks for his name against his persecutors.
Let these things, meanwhile, have preceded of necessity the narration of the matters which we have set out to pursue—in which it is shown that the name of Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior, is not that of some newly coined appellation, nor derived from this fleshly nativity, but takes its origin from God himself. But since the Christian people seems to be of a recent name, and the rite of its observance to have arisen but lately, let us also show what antiquity this very novelty contains within itself.
I judge the race of the Hebrews to be reckoned the most ancient of well-nigh all nations—a thing that ought to seem doubtful to no one—and that among this very nation a certain more hidden worship of religion and observance is contained in the divine volumes; in which are recorded those who lived even before the Flood, and others also after the Flood, wherein it is written of Noah and his sons and all his lineage, and the account extends down to Abraham, who is established to be the ancestor of the Hebrew race. Therefore, if anyone should say that all those who from Abraham upward, back to the first man, were Christians in respect of religion, he does not seem to me to err.
For since the name 'Christian' signifies this—that a person, believing in Christ, holds through his teaching faith, piety, and righteousness, and cleaves to the pursuits of divine wisdom, and carries out all that pertains to virtue—if they mean by it one who is a follower of religion, then this too were those holy men of whom we spoke above, which men now profess to be Christians. For neither did bodily circumcision belong to them, nor observance of the Sabbath (just as it does not belong even to us), nor any scruple concerning the observance of foods, nor the other things that are handed down. Since therefore those religious men, whom we mentioned above, were religious apart from all these observances, and yet followed his faith,
—the faith of him, that is, of Christ, whom we now follow, and whom we have proved in the preceding pages to have frequently appeared to them and to have taught and admonished them in the things that pertain to faith and piety—how shall it be doubted that from those men this nation's origin began and was derived, seeing that they too followed the same God as author and guide of life, and persisted in a like observance of religion? Indeed, this religion was so far foreshadowed and prefigured in them that they are not held to be strangers even in the very name (which alone would seem to make the difference); rather, the divine oracles testify that even then they were called not only Christians but even 'christs' (anointed ones). For it is said of them, in the person of God, to foreign nations:
'Touch not my christs, and do my prophets no harm.' Since these words are recorded as spoken concerning Abraham and those who in that time belonged to the worship of God, it is most evidently and more clearly than light shown that in them and before them a people of Christians already existed even then, and held to all the observance of piety and religion—which observance, it is established, has now, through the coming of Christ's bodily presence, been shared among all nations and imparted to all peoples; so that the treasure of wisdom and piety, which was kept as it were within a narrow chamber for certain rare worshipers, might enrich the whole world with an outpouring of faith and religion, and that what before was granted to individuals should now, at once and suddenly, be brought to whole nations and peoples and races.