How the serious branches of learning passed from Barbarians to Greeks: also concerning the antiquity of the Hebrews
We have already set out the reasons for which we have preferred the philosophy of the Hebrews to that of the Greeks, and the considerations on which we accepted the sacred books current among those men; and we then showed that the Greeks themselves were not ignorant of these men, but mentioned them by name, were struck with admiration at their way of life, and gave a long account of their royal capital and of the rest of their history. Come, then, let us go on to observe how they not only thought the memory of these things worth writing down, but also became zealous imitators of teaching and learning like theirs in some of the doctrines that tend toward the improvement of the soul. I shall show very shortly how, one from one source and another from another, these admirable Greeks went round among the barbarians and gathered up the other branches of learning: geometry, arithmetic, music, astronomy, medicine, the very first elements of grammar, and countless other arts and pursuits useful for life. Our discourse has already shown that they took from barbarians their belief in many gods, their mysteries and rites, and also their histories and mythical narratives about the gods, the allegorical natural explanations of the myths, and the rest of their superstitious error; that was when we caught the Greeks, after wandering over much of the earth, building up their own theology in every point, not without toil indeed, but out of a collection of contributions from the learning current among barbarians. But that the teaching about the worship of the one God over all, and the doctrines most sought after for the benefit of the soul, which would indeed be the most essential parts of philosophical discussion, could have been obtained from no other source than from the Hebrews alone, will be shown before long. Or if not, and someone should say that they arrived at the same views moved by natural notions, this too would tell in our favor: for we have chosen to follow teachings handed down not to the Hebrews alone from the beginning of time by prophets who spoke of God, but also to some others, if not to all, at least to those of great renown in Greece, and examined in the schools of the philosophers. These men you would find few in number, since, as they say, all fine things are hard; nevertheless they have been honored with the first place among the philosophers of the Greeks, so that through their great fame they overshadow the reputation of their fellows. And no one should be surprised if we say that the doctrines of the Hebrews may have been pilfered by them, since they are shown not only to have robbed the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and the other barbarian nations of the other branches of learning, but even to this day are caught robbing one another of the credit for their own writings. Each one of them, at any rate, filched his neighbors’ phrases together with their thoughts and whole arrangements of arguments, and prided himself on them as on his own labors. And do not suppose this is my own statement; you will hear the all-wise men themselves once more convicting one another of literary theft. Since we have once started on it, this very point must be considered first of all, as a proof of the character of the men in question. Now our own Clement, in his sixth Miscellany, has set out the case on this at length. Take him first and read me these words of his:
Of the plagiarism of the Greek writers, from Clement
“Having shown that the meaning of Greek thought was lit up by the truth given to us through the Scriptures, according to the sense in which we took it that the theft of the truth (if it is not offensive to say so) reached them, come, let us bring forward the Greeks themselves as witnesses of the theft against themselves. For those who so openly steal their own writings from one another confirm that they are thieves, and show that, even against their will, they are secretly appropriating for their own countrymen the truth that comes from us. For if they do not keep their hands even off one another, they will hardly keep them off our writings. I shall say nothing of the doctrines of philosophy, since those who have divided into the schools confess in writing, so as not to be found ungrateful, that they received the most important of their doctrines from Socrates. But after using the testimony of a few men well known and esteemed among the Greeks, and exposing their way of stealing, drawing on various periods, I shall turn to what follows.” After saying this by way of preface, he brings forward the proofs one after another, using all kinds of demonstration, and first calls the poets to account for having stolen from their fellows, by setting out the words of each side by side. Then he adds next: “So that we may not leave philosophy and history, or even rhetoric, without a share in the same exposure, it is reasonable to set out a few examples from these as well.” Then in order he sets out passages of Orpheus, Heraclitus, Plato, Pythagoras, Herodotus, Theopompus, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Lysias, Isocrates, and countless others, whose words it is unnecessary for me to list, since the man’s writing is available; in it, after the proofs about these authors, he says again: “Let these be enough, then, as plain examples of Greek theft in thought, for anyone able to see clearly. But now they have been caught not only stealing and paraphrasing thoughts and expressions, but, as will be shown, stealing the works of others entire and publishing them as their own, as Eugammon of Cyrene took the whole book On the Thesprotians from Musaeus.” Again, after adding a great many proofs of his argument to these, he finally adds the following: “Life would fail me if I tried to go through each case, exposing the self-serving theft of the Greeks and how they claim for themselves the discovery of the finest doctrines among them, which they received from us. But now they are convicted not only of stealing their doctrines from the barbarians, but also of imitating our own records of the things done wonderfully long ago by the divine power through men of holy life for our conversion, and dressing them up as marvels in Greek mythology. And so we shall ask them whether the things they relate are true or false. False they would not say; for they would not willingly condemn themselves of the greatest folly, writing falsehoods. They must of necessity admit them to be true. How then can the things wonderfully displayed through Moses and the other prophets still seem incredible to them? For the almighty God, caring for all people, turns them toward salvation, some by commandments, some by threats, some by miraculous signs, and some by gentle promises. Now the Greeks, when once a drought was ruining Greece for a long time and a failure of crops prevailed, those who were left, they say, came as suppliants to Delphi because of the famine and asked the Pythia how they might be freed from the disaster. She gave them one way of release from the calamity: if they would use the prayer of Aeacus. So Aeacus, persuaded by them, went up the Hellenic mountain, stretched out his pure hands to heaven, called on God as common Father, and prayed him to have pity on worn-out Greece. And even as he prayed, extraordinary thunder rang out, and all the surrounding air was clouded over; violent and continuous rains broke out and filled the whole land. As a result a plentiful and rich harvest was brought to completion, cultivated by the prayers of Aeacus. ‘And Samuel called on the Lord,’ it says, ‘and the Lord gave thunder and rain in the day of harvest.’ Do you see that he who sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous through the powers subject to him is one God?” And so on. Adding countless such examples to these, Clement has caught the Greeks being thieves with indisputable proofs. But if you do not trust him, because he too, like us, has preferred the barbarian philosophy to the Greek, then let him be set aside, although he directed his argument not in his own words but in those of the Greeks themselves. But what would you say if you learned the same things from your own noble philosophers? Receive, then, their testimonies too. From Porphyry, Book 1 of The Lecture on Literature.
That the Greeks were plagiarists. From Porphyry, The Lecture on Literature, Bk. i
“Longinus, celebrating Plato’s birthday feast at Athens, invited many others and among them Nicagoras the sophist, Maior, Apollonius the grammarian, Demetrius the geometer, Prosenes the Peripatetic, and Calliëtes the Stoic. He himself reclined with them as the seventh. As the dinner went on, and a question about Ephorus arose among the others, he said, ‘Let us hear what this uproar about Ephorus is.’ Those disputing were Caystrius and Maximus: the one preferred him even to Theopompus, while Caystrius called him a thief. ‘For what is Ephorus’s own,’ he said, ‘when at times he transfers from the works of Daimachus, Callisthenes, and Anaximenes as many as three thousand whole lines in the very same words?’ Apollonius the grammarian answered him: ‘Do you not know that Theopompus too, whom you prefer, has been seized by this same failing? In the eleventh book of his Histories of Philip he copied word for word from Isocrates’ Areopagiticus the passage that “of good things and bad, none comes to people by itself,” and what follows. And yet he looks down on Isocrates, and says that his teacher was beaten by him in the contest over Mausolus. He has also made off with incidents, transferring what belongs to some people to others, so that he is caught as a liar too in this way. For Andron, in his Tripod, had told the story of the predictions of Pythagoras the philosopher, saying that once, being thirsty at Metapontum, he drew water from a well, drank, and foretold that in three days there would be an earthquake; and after adding some other things to these, he goes on: ‘Now all this that Andron had related about Pythagoras, Theopompus stole. Had he told it of Pythagoras, others too might perhaps have known about him and said so, and he would have been saying it as they did; but as it is, the change of name has made the theft plain. He has used the same incidents but substituted another name: he has made Pherecydes of Syros the one who foretold these things. He hides the theft not only by this change of name but also by changing the places. For the prediction of the earthquake, which Andron said was made at Metapontum, Theopompus says was made in Syria; the story of the ship he says was seen not from Megara in Sicily but from Samos; and he transferred the capture of Sybaris to that of Messene. And so as to seem to say something extra, he has added the name of the host as well, saying he was called Perilaus.’ ‘And I,’ says Nicagoras, ‘reading his Hellenica and Xenophon’s, have found him transferring much from Xenophon, and, what is shocking, for the worse. At any rate the account of Pharnabazus’s meeting with Agesilaus through Apollophanes of Cyzicus, and the conversations of the two with each other under truce, which Xenophon wrote in his fourth book very gracefully and fittingly for both, Theopompus transferred into the eleventh book of his Hellenica and made them sluggish, lifeless, and ineffective. For, eager because of the theft to put in rhetorical force and elaboration and to show off, he appears slow, hesitating, and like a man who keeps putting things off, and he ruins the life and vigor of Xenophon.’ When Nicagoras had said this, Apollonius said: ‘And why are we surprised if the failing of theft has touched Theopompus and Ephorus, men so sluggish, when even Menander was infected with this disease? Aristophanes the grammarian exposed him gently, because he was so fond of him, in his Parallels of Menander and of those from whom he stole; and Latinus, in six books entitled On What Is Not Menander’s Own, revealed the great number of his thefts, just as Philostratus of Alexandria composed a treatise On the Theft of Sophocles. And Caecilius, as if he had detected something great, says that Menander copied a whole play of Antiphanes, The Augur, from beginning to end into his Superstitious Man. But since you have decided, I do not know why, to bring the thieves into the open,’ he says, ‘I too inform against the fine Hyperides as having stolen much from Demosthenes, both in the speech against Diondas and in the one about the gifts to Eubulus. That one transferred from the other is obvious; but since they were contemporaries, it would be our task, Apollonius,’ he says, ‘to track down the thief from the dates. I suspect that the one who took is Hyperides; but since it is uncertain which, I admire Demosthenes if he took from Hyperides and corrected it as he should, and I blame Hyperides if he took from Demosthenes and twisted it for the worse.’” And shortly after he says: “And why tell you that Hellanicus’s Barbarian Customs is compiled from Herodotus and Damastes? Or that Herodotus in his second book transferred much from the Tour of the World of Hecataeus of Miletus word for word, with slight alterations: the account of the phoenix bird, of the river horse, and of the hunting of crocodiles? Or that what is said about examination under torture by Isaeus in the speech on the estate of Cylon also stands in Isocrates’ Trapeziticus and is said in almost the same words by Demosthenes in the speech against Onetor for ejectment? Or that Dinarchus in his first speech against Cleomedon for assault has transferred much in the same words from Demosthenes’ speech against Conon for assault? Or that Hesiod’s ‘For a man wins no prize better than a good wife, and none more chilling than a bad one’—this thought Simonides took over in his eleventh book thus: ‘A man wins nothing better than a good wife, nor more chilling than a bad one’; and Euripides in Melanippe in Chains: ‘Nothing is worse than a bad wife, and nothing by nature better beyond measure than a good one; their natures differ.’ And when Euripides had said, ‘We women are a most wretched growth,’ Theodectes says in his Alcmaeon: ‘A clear saying is sung among mortals, that no growth is more wretched than a woman.’ He has not only taken the idea from there but has used the very words; and he cunningly wanted it to seem rather a proverb, and to be using a saying of many, than to seem to have taken it from its author. And Antimachus, when he steals from Homer, alters him. For when Homer said, ‘And Idas, who was the strongest of men upon the earth,’ Antimachus says, ‘And Idas, who was strongest of men upon the earth.’ And Lycophron praises the change, as though the line were made firmer by it. For I say nothing of ‘And answering him spoke mighty Diomedes,’ since Homer was mocked by Cratinus for overusing ‘and answering him’; a phrase so trodden down Antimachus did not hesitate to take over. And since ‘over the peoples whom he ruled, and he was gentle as a father’ is Homeric, and elsewhere it is said, ‘And when on both sides they had strengthened their ranks,’ Antimachus has transposed the half-lines and made ‘over the peoples whom they ruled they strengthened their ranks.’ But so that I too, while accusing others of theft, may not be caught as a thief, I shall name those who have written on these matters. Lysimachus has two books On the Theft of Ephorus; Alcaeus, the poet of abusive iambics and epigrams, wrote parodies exposing the thefts of Ephorus; there is a letter of Pollio to Soteridas On the Theft of Ctesias, and by the same author a book On the Theft of Herodotus; and in the work entitled The Trackers much is said about Theopompus; and there is a treatise by Aretades On Coincidence, from which one can learn many such things.” And after other things: “And Prosenes said, ‘You have caught the others as thieves; but that this very hero Plato, whose festival named after him we are celebrating today, makes free use of many of those before him (for I am ashamed to use the word theft of him), you have not yet discovered.’ ‘What do you mean?’ said Calliëtes. ‘I not only say it,’ he said, ‘but also give proof of my statement. The books of those who lived before Plato are rare; otherwise perhaps one might have detected more thefts of the philosopher. I at any rate, by chance, reading Protagoras’s discourse On Being, find him using answers of this kind against those who hold that being is one; for I took care to remember what was said in the very words.’” And having said this, he sets out the proofs at greater length. But as to the character of the Greek writers, and that they did not spare even the exposure of themselves, I think what has been said, out of countless examples, is enough. Further, as a preparation for showing the benefit that flowed from the Hebrew writings to the Greeks, it seems to me good and necessary to show in general that the whole of the Greeks’ much-vaunted education and philosophy, both their first branches of learning and the august parts of logical science, was collected by them from barbarians, so that none of them may any longer blame us because we have preferred the piety and philosophy of the barbarians to the august things of their own.
That, not unreasonably, we have preferred the theology of the Hebrews to the Greek philosophy
That it was not without sound reason that we put the teachings of Greek philosophy second and preferred the theology of the Hebrews, you may learn from this: even those of the Greeks themselves who took up philosophy most correctly, and thought out something more and greater than the common talk about the gods, found no true doctrines other than those already ratified among the Hebrews. For some of them, carried away this way and that by various false opinions, were turned aside into an abyss of idle chatter; while others, who used reasoning that was in some measure fair-minded, have shown themselves sharers in the teaching of the Hebrews in those points in which they grasped the truth. It is likely, at any rate, that men who had become very learned and had examined the customs and learning of the nations with great curiosity were not ignorant of the philosophy of the people in question either, since they were born later in time, so to speak, than everyone: not only than the Hebrews, nor only than the Phoenicians and Egyptians, but even than the ancient Greeks themselves. For those ancients, Cadmus son of Agenor had brought some things from Phoenicia, and others about the gods came from Egypt or from somewhere else: mysteries and rites, the setting up of carved images, hymns, odes and incantations, established by the Thracian Orpheus or by some other, Greek or barbarian, who became leaders of the error. For the Greeks themselves would admit that they know of no one older than these. They say, at any rate, that first of all Orpheus, then Linus, and then Musaeus flourished, around the time of the Trojan War or a little before. But in their time nothing more than the error-filled theology of the Phoenicians and Egyptians was current among the Greeks. And among the other nations too, in all lands and cities, in temples and mysteries, these very things and others like them were kept up. The account of the gods described earlier prevailed widely among all; very beautiful temples, adorned with all kinds of statues and offerings, were built among all; and images of every material, shaped into every form of mortal creature, were lovingly made. And there was among all a very great and abundant wealth of oracles. Among the Greeks especially, a revered and great god was then at the height of his power: the Pythian, the Clarian, and the Dodonaean; then Amphiaraus and Amphilochus; and besides these a countless crowd flowing in, of oracle-singers rather than poets and rhapsodes. Long ages after these, when philosophy came among the Greeks, it found among their ancestors nothing that belonged to it, and recognized that the august and ancient parts of the theology that had come down to them from their fathers, and the very marvels that were famous among all, the divine shrines and oracles, were in fact superfluous and useless. Therefore it put these things in second place, as able to contribute nothing to its discovery of what is necessary and true; and for the rest, like someone naked and beggared of discourses and learning of her own, she went about searching out foreign and barbarian things, procuring for herself what was useful from every side, collecting and gathering contributions of whatever she might find among each of the nations. For she learned that the Greeks lacked not only true theology but also the most useful of the other arts and sciences. The Greeks themselves agree that after Orpheus, Linus, and Musaeus, who were the most ancient of all their theologians and first led them into the error of many gods, the seven men among them were admired for wisdom, whom they also named Sages. These flourished about the time of Cyrus king of the Persians. This was the time when the last of all the prophets among the Hebrews were prophesying: more than six hundred years after the Trojan War, and not less than fifteen hundred after the age of Moses. This will be clear to you when you go through the chronological records a little later. About then the Seven Sages, recent in time, are remembered for their success in a more ethical way of life; nothing more of theirs is remembered than their celebrated sayings. Only late, and lower down in time, are the philosophers among the Greeks remembered as having become distinguished. Of these Pythagoras, a pupil of Pherecydes, who invented the name “philosophy,” was first. According to some he was a Samian, but others say he was a Tyrrhenian, and some say he was a Syrian or a Tyrian; so that you must admit that the first of the philosophers, praised on the lips of all the Greeks, was a barbarian and not a Greek. They also record that Pherecydes, whose pupil they say Pythagoras was, was a Syrian. And Pythagoras is said to have associated not with him alone but also to have spent time with the Magi of the Persians and to have been a pupil of the prophets of the Egyptians, at the time when some of the Hebrews are seen to have migrated into Egypt and others to Babylon. Indeed, this man, busily seeking out the wisdom of each people, visited Babylon, Egypt, and all Persia, becoming a pupil of the Magi and the priests; and besides these he is reported to have heard the Brahmans (these are philosophers of the Indians). And having gathered astrology from some, geometry from others, arithmetic and music from others, and other things from others, from the wise men of the Greeks alone he got nothing, since they lived with poverty and lack of wisdom. On the contrary, he himself became for the Greeks the cause of their learning what he had procured from outside. Such, then, was Pythagoras. The first philosophy formed from his succession was the one called Italian, which got its name from his teaching in Italy; after it came the one called Ionian, from Thales, one of the Seven Sages; and then the Eleatic, which claimed Xenophanes of Colophon as its father. But Thales too, as some relate, was a Phoenician, though some have supposed him a Milesian; and he too is said to have consulted the prophets of the Egyptians. And Solon, also one of the Seven Sages, who is said to have given the Athenians their laws, likewise attended the Egyptians, Plato says, at the time when the Hebrews were again living in Egypt. At any rate he brings him in, in the Timaeus, being taught by the barbarian, where the Egyptian says to him: “Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children, and there is not one old man among the Greeks, nor is there among you any learning gray with age.” And this Plato himself, after studying with the Pythagoreans in Italy, was not content with their teaching alone, but is said to have sailed to Egypt and devoted a very long time to their philosophy. He himself bears witness to the barbarians in many places of his own works, rightly in my view, and fairly does not deny that the finest contributions to philosophy were imported from the barbarians. You can hear him in many places, and especially in the Epinomis, where he mentions the Syrians and Egyptians together in some such way as this: “The cause of this is that the first who observed these things was a barbarian. For an ancient region nurtured the first who considered these matters, because of the beauty of the summer season, which Egypt and Syria have in abundance. From there it has spread everywhere and to us, tested by time over ten thousand years and more. And a little lower down he adds next: “Let us take it that whatever Greeks receive from barbarians, they finally work it up into something finer.” So Plato. And Democritus, still earlier, is said to have made the moral sayings of the Babylonians his own. And somewhere, boasting about himself, he says: “Of the men of my time I wandered over the most land, investigating the most distant things; I saw the most climates and countries, and heard the most learned men; and in the composition of lines with demonstration no one ever surpassed me, not even the so-called rope-stretchers of the Egyptians, with all of whom I spent eighty years abroad.” For he too visited Babylon, Persia, and Egypt, becoming a pupil of the Egyptians and the priests. Why should I list for you Heraclitus and the other Greeks, by whom the Greek commonwealth is shown to have been beggared for a long age and left bare of all learning? It adorned itself with temples of gods, statues and shrines, divinations and oracles, and the great pomp of the people-deceiving demons, but it was utterly bereft of true wisdom and of learning useful for life. Nor did their useless oracles contribute anything to the discovery of good teachings; not even the wonderful Pythian himself helped them toward philosophy at all, nor did any other of the gods assist them in the pursuit of anything necessary. Wandering here and there, running around all their life, they decked themselves out in borrowed feathers, as in the fable, so that their whole philosophy was put together from contributions. For they copied different branches of learning from different peoples: geometry they got from the Egyptians, astrology from the Chaldeans, and others again from others. But from no others did they find any such good as some of them found among the Hebrews. This was the knowledge of the God of the universe and the condemnation of their own gods, which our discourse will show a little further on. For the present it points out to readers only this much: that the ancient Greeks lacked not only true theology but also the learning useful for philosophy, and not only that, but even the common pursuits of civic life. I think this observation will contribute to proving the aim before us, since our task is to give an account showing that it was not without reason that we preferred the theology of the Hebrews, the barbarian one, as they would call it, to Greek philosophy. If, then, they are seen to have long ago pilfered everything from barbarians, and to have received no help whatever toward philosophy from their own gods, but even to have justly blamed their gods, and some on this account to have preferred atheism to the worship of the gods, why should anyone still blame us? Should they not rather accept and praise us, because, loving what is better, or rather having found and received what alone is true, we withdrew from falsehood, neither turned aside into godless reasoning like the wise men of the Greeks, nor, like the admired philosophers, kneading together the error of many gods with the knowledge of the God over all, nor mixing falsehood with truth? But not yet for this; first go through for me those things by which the Greeks are proved to have plundered everything from the barbarians, not only the philosophical sciences but also the common inventions useful for life.
That in all things the Greeks have profited by the Barbarians
First, then, the one who introduced to the Greeks the common letters, the very first elements of grammar, Cadmus, was a Phoenician by birth; for which reason some of the ancients have called the letters Phoenician. Some say that the Syrians were the first to invent letters. The Hebrews too would be Syrians, since they inhabited the land next to Phoenicia, which was itself anciently called Phoenicia, later Judea, and in our day Palestine; and the sound of the Greek letters appears especially close to theirs. Each of the letters among them, at any rate, bears its name according to some meaningful sense, which cannot be found among the Greeks; for this reason above all it is admitted that they are not the Greeks’ own. Among the Hebrews there are twenty-two letters in all. The first of them is Alph, which translated into Greek would be “learning”; the second Beth, which means “of a house”; the third Gimel, which is “fullness”; the fourth Delth, which means “of tablets”; the fifth He, which is “this.” Together they complete some such sense as this: “The learning of a house, the fullness of tablets, this.” Then after these comes the sixth letter, called among them Vau, which is “in it”; then Zai, which is “lives”; after it Heth, which is “the living one.” The whole means: “In it lives the living one.” After these the ninth letter is Teth, which is “good”; then Ioth, which is translated “beginning”: the two together, “a good beginning.” Next comes Chaph, which is “nevertheless”; then Labd, which is “learn”: the whole, “nevertheless learn.” After these the thirteenth letter is Mem, which is “from them”; then Nun, which is “everlasting”; then Samch, which is translated “help”: in which it is said, “from them everlasting help.” Next comes Ain, which translated means “fountain” or “eye”; then Phe, “mouth”; then next Sade, “righteousness”: the sense of these is “a fountain, or an eye, and mouth of righteousness.” After these the letter is Coph, which is translated “calling”; then Res, which is “head”; and after these Sen, which is “teeth”; and last of all the twenty-second letter is called among them [Thau], which means “signs.” The sense would be: “the calling of the head, and signs of the teeth.” Among the Hebrews, then, such is the translation and interpretation of the letters, completing a meaningful sentence suited to learning the letters and to what they profess. You would not find the like among the Greeks; hence, as I said, it must be admitted that they are not the Greeks’ own, but plainly adapted from the barbarian tongue. This is proved also from the very name of each letter. For how does Alpha differ from Alph? Or Beta from Beth? Or Gimel from Gamma? Or Delta from Delth? Or E from He? Or Zeta from Zai? Or Theta from Teth? And so with the others like them. So it is beyond dispute that such names are not the Greeks’ own; they are therefore the Hebrews’, among whom each of them is shown to mean something. Beginning first among them, they passed on to others and so to the Greeks. Let this be what I say about the first letters. Now hear what Clement too says, touching on the same subject as we:
On the same subject, from Clement
“They relate that Apis, an Egyptian, invented medicine, and that afterwards Asclepius advanced the art. Atlas the Libyan was the first to build a ship and sail the sea. The Egyptians were the first to bring astrology to mankind, and likewise the Chaldeans. Some say the Carians invented foretelling by the stars. The Phrygians were the first to observe the flights of birds. The Tuscans, neighbors of Italy, perfected the art of sacrifice; the Isaurians and Arabs worked out augury, just as the Telmessians did divination by dreams. The Tyrrhenians invented the trumpet and the Phrygians the flute; for Olympus and Marsyas were both Phrygians. The Egyptians were the first to show how to burn lamps; they divided the year into twelve months, forbade intercourse with women in temples, and laid down by law that no one should enter temples after being with women without washing. They also became the inventors of geometry. Celmis and Damnameneus, the Idaean Dactyls, first discovered iron in Cyprus. Delas, another Idaean, discovered the alloying of bronze, though according to Hesiod it was a Scythian. Indeed the Thracians first invented the so-called harpe, which is a curved sword, and were the first to use light shields on horseback. Likewise the Illyrians invented the so-called pelte. They say further that the Tuscans invented modelling, and that Itanus, who was a Samnite, first made the oblong shield. For Cadmus the Phoenician invented stone-cutting and discovered the gold mines around Mount Pangaeum. And now another nation, the Cappadocians, first invented the so-called nabla, just as the Assyrians did the two-stringed instrument. The Carthaginians first built the four-banked ship; it was built by [B]osporus, a native. Medea the Colchian, daughter of Aeetes, first invented hair dyeing. Moreover the Noropes (a Paeonian nation, now called Norican) worked copper and were the first to refine iron. Amycus king of the Bebryces invented boxing thongs. In music, Olympus the Mysian elaborated the Lydian mode; and the so-called Troglodytes invented the sambuca, a musical instrument. They say too that Satyrus the Phrygian invented the transverse pipe; that Hyagnis, also a Phrygian, likewise invented the three-stringed instrument and the diatonic mode; that Olympus, likewise a Phrygian, invented instrumental pieces, just as Marsyas, of the same country as those already named, invented the Phrygian, the Mixophrygian, and the Mixolydian modes; and that Thamyris the Thracian invented the Dorian. We have heard that the Persians first made the carriage, the couch, and the footstool, and that the Sidonians built the trireme. The Sicels near Italy first invented the phorminx, not much inferior to the cithara, and devised castanets. They relate that garments of fine linen were invented in the time of Semiramis, queen of the Assyrians. And Hellanicus says that Atossa, who reigned over the Persians, was the first to compose letters. Scamon of Mitylene, Theophrastus of Eresus, Cydippus of Mantinea, and also Antiphanes, Aristodemus, and Aristotle, and besides these Philostephanus, and Strato the Peripatetic too, recorded these things in their works On Inventions. I have set out a few of them to establish the inventive and useful nature of the barbarians, from whom the Greeks have profited in their pursuits.” So Clement, word for word, in his Miscellanies. To what has been said I think it well to add also the passages from the writing of Josephus the Hebrew, which he composed in two books On the Antiquity of the Jews, about the Greeks being recent, having profited from barbarians, and having written things inconsistent with one another; for these too will contribute to an accurate and secure confirmation of what has been said. Hear, then, what he too writes, word for word:
On the same subject, from Josephus
“My first impulse, then, is to be utterly amazed at those who think that on the most ancient events one should attend to the Greeks alone and learn the truth from them, but disbelieve us and the rest of mankind. For I see the very opposite to be the case, if one is not to follow empty opinions but to take what is right from the facts themselves. For among the Greeks one would find everything new, done, as one might say, yesterday or the day before: I mean the founding of their cities, the invention of the arts, and the writing down of their laws; and the newest of almost all among them is their concern with writing history. Yet the records of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Phoenicians (for I now forbear to count ourselves with them) have, as they themselves admit, the most ancient and most lasting tradition of memory. For they all inhabit places least exposed to destruction from the surrounding climate, and they took great care to leave nothing done among them unremembered, but to have it always consecrated in public records by their wisest men. But countless destructions overtook the region of Greece, wiping out the memory of past events; and as they kept establishing new ways of life, each people thought that the world began with themselves. Late and with difficulty did they learn the nature of letters. Those, at any rate, who would have their use of them be most ancient pride themselves on having learned them from the Phoenicians and Cadmus. Yet no one could show a record preserved even from that time, either in temples or in public monuments; for even about those who campaigned against Troy so many years later there has been much doubt and inquiry whether they used letters; and the truth rather prevails that they did not know the present use of letters. In general no writing agreed to be older than the poetry of Homer is found among the Greeks; and he too evidently lived after the Trojan War. And they say that not even he left his poetry in writing, but that it was preserved by memory and later put together from the songs, and that for this reason it contains many inconsistencies. Those among them who undertook to write histories, I mean such as Cadmus of Miletus, Acusilaus of Argos, and any others said to have come after him, lived only a little before the Persian invasion of Greece. Moreover, all agree that the first among the Greeks to philosophize about heavenly and divine things, such as Pherecydes the Syrian, Pythagoras, and Thales, were pupils of the Egyptians and Chaldeans and wrote little; and these writings the Greeks think the most ancient of all, and they scarcely believe that they were written by those men.” “How then is it not absurd for the Greeks to be puffed up as the only ones who know antiquity and hand on the truth about it accurately? Or who could not easily learn from the writers themselves that they wrote nothing from sure knowledge, but as each guessed about the facts? At any rate they refute one another in their books more than anything, and do not hesitate to say the most contradictory things about the same events. It would be superfluous for me to teach those who know better than I how often Hellanicus disagrees with Acusilaus about the genealogies, how often Acusilaus corrects Hesiod, or how Ephorus shows Hellanicus to be lying in most things, Timaeus Ephorus, those after him Timaeus, and everyone Herodotus. Nor did Timaeus see fit to agree about Sicilian history with Antiochus, Philistus, or Callias; nor again have the writers of the Atthides followed one another about Attic history, nor the historians of Argos about Argive history. And why speak of the histories of cities and smaller matters, when about the Persian invasion and what was done in it the most esteemed writers have disagreed? Even Thucydides is accused by some of many falsehoods, although he is thought to have written the most accurate history of his time.” “Many other causes of such disagreement might perhaps appear to those who wish to look for them, but I attach the greatest weight to the two I shall set out. I will state first the one that seems to me the more important. That from the beginning the Greeks took no care to keep public records of what was done at each time: this above all gave rise to error and to licence to lie for those who later wished to write anything about ancient times. For not only among the other Greeks were records neglected; even among the Athenians themselves, who claim to be sprung from the soil and careful of learning, nothing of the kind is found to have existed. They say that the oldest of their public writings are the laws on homicide written for them by Draco, a man who lived a little before the tyranny of Pisistratus. As for the Arcadians, who boast of antiquity, what need is there to speak? They were scarcely taught letters even later.” “Since, then, no record had been laid down beforehand that would teach those wishing to learn and refute those who lied, the great disagreement among the writers arose. Besides this a second cause must be set down. Those who set out to write did not take pains about the truth, although this profession is always ready on their lips, but displayed their power of speech; and in whatever way they supposed they would surpass the others in this, they adapted themselves to it, some turning to fables, some praising cities or kings to win favor, while others went on to find fault with the events or with the historians, thinking to win a reputation that way. In short, they go on doing what is most contrary of all to history. For it is a proof of true history if all say and write the same things about the same events; but they thought that if they wrote differently from others, they would themselves appear the most truthful of all.” So much Josephus. The seal on what has been said may be the testimony of Diodorus, which I shall set out from the first book of his Library, word for word as follows:
Diodorus, the author of the Bibliotheca, on the same subject
“These things having been settled by us, we must state which of those esteemed among the Greeks for understanding and learning visited Egypt in ancient times in order to share in the customs and learning there. For the priests of the Egyptians relate from the records in their sacred books that Orpheus, Musaeus, Melampus, and Daedalus visited them, and besides these Homer the poet and Lycurgus the Spartan, and also Solon the Athenian and Plato the philosopher; and that Pythagoras of Samos and Eudoxus the mathematician came, as well as Democritus of Abdera and Oenopides of Chios. Of all these they show signs: likenesses of some, and places or buildings named after others. And from the learning each pursued they bring proofs, establishing that they carried over from Egypt everything for which they were admired among the Greeks. For Orpheus brought from the Egyptians most of the mystic rites, the orgies celebrated about his own wandering, and his mythology of those in Hades. The rite of Osiris is the same as that of Dionysus, and that of Isis most like that of Demeter, only the names being exchanged; and the punishments of the impious in Hades, the meadows of the pious, and the fanciful images common among the many he introduced in imitation of the burial customs of Egypt. For Hermes the conductor of souls, according to the ancient custom among the Egyptians, brings up the body of Apis to a certain point and hands it over to one wearing the mask of Cerberus. And when Orpheus had shown this among the Greeks, Homer followed him and put it in his poetry: ‘And Cyllenian Hermes called forth the souls of the heroes; and he held a wand in his hands.’” Then going on further he adds: “They say that Melampus brought from Egypt the rites customarily performed for Dionysus among the Greeks, the myths about Cronus and about the battle of the Titans, and in general the history of the sufferings of the gods. They say that Daedalus copied the maze of the labyrinth, which survives to the present time and was built, as some say, by Mendes, or as others say, by King Marrus, many years before the reign of Minos; and that the proportions of the ancient statues in Egypt are the same as those made by Daedalus among the Greeks. And that Daedalus designed the very beautiful gateway of the temple of Hephaestus at Memphis, and, being admired, was granted a wooden statue of himself in that temple, made with his own hands; and finally, judged worthy of great fame for his genius and having invented much besides, he received honors equal to the gods. For on one of the islands near Memphis there is still a shrine of Daedalus honored by the inhabitants. Of Homer’s visit they bring forward other signs, and especially the drug given by Helen to Telemachus at Menelaus’s house, and the forgetting of the evils that had happened. For the poet evidently had accurately investigated the drug that banishes grief, which he says Helen received in Egypt from Polydamna, the wife of Thon. For they say the women there still use this power, and that from ancient times a remedy for anger and grief has been found among the women of Diospolis alone; and that Thebes and Diospolis are the same; and that by ancient tradition Aphrodite is called “golden” by the natives, and there is a plain called “of golden Aphrodite” near the place named Momemphis. And he took from there the myths about Zeus and Hera’s union and his journey to Ethiopia. For every year among the Egyptians the shrine of Zeus is carried across the river into Libya and after some days brought back again, as though the god had come from Ethiopia; and the union of these gods is shown when at the festivals both shrines are carried up a mountain decked by the priests with flowers of every kind. And that Lycurgus, Plato, and Solon put many Egyptian customs into their own legislation; and that Pythagoras learned from the Egyptians the doctrines of his sacred discourse, the theorems of geometry, the theory of numbers, and also the transmigration of the soul into every living creature. They suppose that Democritus too spent five years among them and was taught much of astronomy; and that Oenopides, who likewise spent time with the priests and astronomers, learned among other things especially that the sun’s circle has an oblique course and moves in the direction opposite to the other stars. Similarly Eudoxus, having studied astronomy among them and published much that was useful to the Greeks, gained notable fame. And of all the ancient sculptors the most famous, Telecles and Theodorus, the sons of Rhoecus, who made for the Samians the statue of Pythian Apollo, spent time among them.” So much Diodorus too. But let this argument, thus proved, end here. No one should accuse us any longer of unreason if we too, from longing for true piety, have gone over to the teachers of the wise Greeks and of their very philosophers, I mean the barbarians, since the Hebrews are barbarians. It would be well to go through the times at which Moses and the prophets after Moses flourished, since this too would be one of the most essential points for the present work: before touching their oracles, to settle first their antiquity. Then, if those among the Greeks are seen to agree with the prophets and theologians of the Hebrews, you would no longer doubt who probably gathered what from whom: whether the elder took from the younger, Hebrews from Greeks and barbarians from philosophers whose language they probably did not even understand; or, what is much more likely, the younger from the elder, and the Greeks, who had busily explored most of the nations, were not ignorant of the Hebrews’ writings either, which had been translated into the Greek language from early on.
On the antiquity of Moses and the Hebrew Prophets
On Moses and the antiquity of the prophets after him very many others have earnestly set down the proof in their own writings, from which I shall shortly set out a few small extracts. I too, traveling a newer road than those writers, shall use this method. Since it is agreed that the times of Augustus, emperor of the Romans, and the birth of our Savior coincide, and that Christ began the teaching of the gospel in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, if anyone wishes to reckon the number of years from this point, going back to the earlier times as far as Darius king of the Persians and the rebuilding in his reign of the temple in Jerusalem, which took place after the return of the Jewish nation from Babylon, he would find 548 years from Tiberius to the second year of Darius. For the second year of Darius falls in the first year of the 65th Olympiad, and the fifteenth year of Tiberius’s reign over the Romans coincides with the fourth year of the 201st Olympiad. So between Darius the Persian and Tiberius emperor of the Romans there are 137 Olympiads, which make a total of 548 years, reckoning four years to an Olympiad. And since the second year of Darius was the seventieth of the desolation of the temple in Jerusalem, as the history shows, if we run back again from there, from the second year of Darius to the first Olympiad would be 256 years, or 64 Olympiads; and you would find as many going back from the last year of the desolation of the said temple to the fiftieth year of Uzziah king of the Jews, in whose time Isaiah and Hosea prophesied, and those who were their contemporaries; so that the first Olympiad of the Greeks falls in the time of Isaiah the prophet and his contemporaries. Again, going back from the first Olympiad to the earlier times as far as the capture of Troy, you will find a total of 408 years, as the Greek chronological records contain. And according to the Hebrews, going back from the fiftieth year of Uzziah king of the Jews to the third year of Labdon, who was a judge among the Hebrews, you will reckon the same number of years, 408; so that the capture of Troy falls in the time of Labdon the judge, seven years before Samson ruled the Hebrews, who, they say, was irresistible in bodily strength, like the celebrated Heracles of the Greeks. And going on from there to earlier times, and reckoning for yourself a number of 400 years, you would find Moses among the Hebrews and Cecrops the earth-born among the Greeks. The things admired among the Greeks are recorded as later than the times of Cecrops. For after Cecrops came the flood in the time of Deucalion, the conflagration in the time of Phaethon, the birth of Erichthonius, the rape of Kore, the mysteries of Demeter, the founding of the Eleusinian rites, the farming of Triptolemus, the carrying off of Europa by Zeus, the birth of Apollo, the arrival of Cadmus at Thebes; and later still Dionysus, Minos, Perseus, Asclepius, the Dioscuri, and Heracles. Moses is shown to be older than all these, since he flourished in the age of Cecrops. And going back again from Moses to the first year of Abraham’s life, you will find 505 years. Counting as many years back from the said year of Cecrops’ reign, you will come to Ninus the Assyrian, who they say was the first to rule all Asia except the Indians; after him the city Ninus was named, which among the Hebrews is called Nineveh; in his time Zoroaster the magus reigned over the Bactrians. The wife of Ninus and successor to his kingdom was Semiramis; so that Abraham lived in their time. These things were established with proof, as they stand, in the Chronological Canons on which we labored. For the present, in addition to what has been said, I shall use as a witness to the antiquity of Moses the most hostile and bitter enemy of all, both of the Hebrews and of us: I mean the philosopher of our own day, who, putting forward his compilation against us out of excess of hatred, subjected not only us but also the Hebrews, Moses himself, and the prophets after him to the same slanders. For in this way, through the admission of enemies, I think the promise will be confirmed beyond dispute. In the fourth book of his compilation against us, then, Porphyry writes these words: “The most truthful account of the Jews, because most in agreement with their places and names, is given by Sanchuniathon of Berytus, who received the records from Hierombalus, priest of the god Ieuo. He dedicated his history to Abelbalus king of Berytus, and it was accepted by him and by the examiners of truth in his time. Their times fall even before the Trojan War and come close to those of Moses, as the successions of the kings of Phoenicia show. And Sanchuniathon, who in the Phoenician language collected and wrote the whole ancient history in a truth-loving way from the city records and the registers in the temples, lived in the time of Semiramis, queen of the Assyrians.” So Porphyry. The premises must be reasoned out somewhat as follows. If Sanchuniathon lived in the time of Semiramis, and she is admitted to have lived long before the Trojan War, Sanchuniathon too would be older than the Trojan War. But he is said to have received the records from others older than himself; and these, being more ancient than he, are said to come close to the times of Moses: not themselves contemporary with Moses, but coming close to his times. So Moses is older than Sanchuniathon by as much as Sanchuniathon falls short of his predecessors, who were admitted to come close to Moses. By how many years Moses probably surpassed them it is hard to say; so I think I shall pass this over. Granting that Moses lived in the time of Sanchuniathon himself, and not earlier, I shall pursue the proof thus. If Sanchuniathon was known in the time of Semiramis queen of the Assyrians, and let Moses be no earlier but flourishing at the same time, then he too would be of the time of Semiramis. Our own account showed that Abraham lived in her time, while the philosopher’s makes Moses older still. And Semiramis is shown to have lived a full eight hundred years before the Trojan War; so Moses too, according to the philosopher, will precede the Trojan War by as many years. The first to reign over the Argives was Inachus, when the Athenians had as yet neither their city nor their name. This first ruler of the Argives ruled in the time of the fifth Assyrian king after Semiramis, 150 years later than her and Moses, during which nothing notable is recorded to have happened among the Greeks. At this time the Judges ruled among the Hebrews. Then again three hundred years later, when more than four hundred full years had been completed since Semiramis, the first king of the Athenians was Cecrops, celebrated among them as earth-born, while Triopas ruled Argos, the seventh after Inachus, the first Argive king. Between these, the flood in the time of Ogyges is recorded; Apis was first named a god in Egypt; and Io the daughter of Inachus, whom the Egyptians worship under the changed name Isis, and Prometheus and Atlas were known. From Cecrops to the capture of Troy are counted another almost four hundred years, during which the marvels of the Greeks are told in myth: the flood in the time of Deucalion and the burning in the time of Phaethon, when, as is likely, many local destructions of the earth took place. Cecrops is said to have been the first to call God “Zeus,” a name not used among men before; then the first to set up an altar among the Athenians, and again the first to erect a statue of Athena, as none of these things existed from of old. After him all the gods of the Greeks have their genealogies. Among the Hebrews at this time those of David’s line were reigning and the prophets after Moses were shining forth; so that from Moses to the capture of Troy more than 800 years in all are counted, according to the philosopher’s testimony set out above. And much later than the Trojan War is the time of Homer, Hesiod, and those mentioned with them. Yesterday and the day before, after these, about the fiftieth Olympiad, Pythagoras, Democritus, and the philosophers after them became famous, about seven hundred years after the Trojan War. Moses, then, and the prophets of the Hebrews after him are shown to precede the philosophers of the Greeks by fifteen hundred years, by the admission of the man in question. This we have said briefly. It is time to consider the proofs of those before us on the same subject. There have been learned men among us, second to none in education, and closely conversant with the divine writings, who examined the present subject accurately and established the antiquity of the Hebrews, using a rich and varied apparatus of proof. Some calculated the times from certain agreed histories, others confirmed the testimony from more ancient writings; some used Greek writers, others those who recorded the history of the Phoenicians, Chaldeans, and Egyptians. And all together, gathering the Greek and barbarian records and those of the Hebrews themselves, setting the histories of all side by side and testing one against the other, examined together what was done among all peoples at the same times. Then each, having made his construction of the proofs by his own methods, brought forward a consistent and agreed proof. For this reason above all I thought I should give over the present discussion to their own words, so that the fathers of these works might not be robbed of their own fruits, and so that, through several witnesses and not one, the establishment of the truth might receive undisputed confirmation.
From Africanus
“Up to the Olympiads nothing accurate has been recorded by the Greeks; everything is confused, and the earlier accounts agree with one another in nothing. But the Olympiads have been accurately recorded by many, because the Greeks made their records of them not at long intervals but every four years. For this reason I shall pick out the most famous mythical histories and run over them briefly as far as the first Olympiad. The later ones, any that are notable, I shall pair each by date, Hebrew with Greek, examining the Hebrew in detail and touching on the Greek, and fit them together in this way: taking one Hebrew event contemporary with an event recorded by the Greeks, holding to it, subtracting and adding, and noting which Greek, or Persian, or anyone else was contemporary with the Hebrew event, I may perhaps attain my aim. “The most notable event of the Hebrews, then, is their exile, when they were taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; it lasted seventy years, as Jeremiah prophesied. This Nebuchadnezzar is mentioned by Berossus the Babylonian. After the seventy years of the captivity Cyrus became king of the Persians, in the year when the 55th Olympiad was held, as can be found from the Library of Diodorus, the histories of Thallus and Castor, and also Polybius and Phlegon, and others who took care with Olympiads; for in all of them the date agreed. Cyrus, then, in the first year of his rule, which was the first year of the 55th Olympiad, made the first and partial release of the people through Zerubbabel, with whom was Jesus son of Josedek, when the seventy years were completed, as is recorded among the Hebrews in Ezra. So the histories of Cyrus’s reign and the end of the captivity coincide, and the reckoning by Olympiads will thus be found to agree down to our time; following these we shall fit the other histories to one another on the same principle. The earlier events are calculated by the Attic chronology somewhat as follows. From Ogyges, believed among them to be sprung from the soil, in whose time the great and first flood occurred in Attica while Phoroneus was king of Argos, as Acusilaus relates, to the first Olympiad, from which the Greeks considered that they calculated dates accurately, 1,020 years are counted, which agrees with what has been said and will be shown from what follows. For this is stated by the historians of Athens, Hellanicus and Philochorus, author of the Atthides; by the historians of Syria, Castor and Thallus; by Diodorus, historian of all peoples, author of the Library; and by Alexander Polyhistor, who recorded our history, and all of Attic history too, with more accuracy. If, then, any notable history falls within the 1,020 years, it will be selected as useful.” And shortly after he adds: “We say, then, on the basis of this work, that Ogyges, who gave his name to the first flood, being saved when many perished, lived at the time of the exodus of the people with Moses from Egypt, in this way. To the first Olympiad mentioned, from Ogyges, will be shown to be 1,020 years; from the first Olympiad to the first year of the 55th, that is, to the first year of Cyrus’s reign, which was the end of the captivity, 217 years. From Ogyges to Cyrus, then, 1,237 years. And if one counts back 1,237 years from the end of the captivity, by analysis the same interval is found to the first year of Israel’s exodus from Egypt through Moses as from the 55th Olympiad to Ogyges, who founded Eleusis. From this point the Attic chronology can be grasped more clearly. And after other things: “So much for events before Ogyges. In his times Moses went out of Egypt; and we show that it is not incredible that these things happened then, as follows. From the exodus of Moses to Cyrus, who reigned after the captivity, are 1,237 years. For the remaining years of Moses are forty; of Joshua, who led after him, twenty-five years; of the elders, the judges after Joshua, thirty years; of those contained in the book of Judges, 490 years; of the priests Eli and Samuel, 90 years; of the kings of the Hebrews who followed, 490 years; and of the captivity seventy, whose last year was the first year of Cyrus’s reign, as we said before. To the first Olympiad from Moses are 1,020 years, since there are 1,237 years to the first year of the 55th; and in the Greek records the date has agreed. After Ogyges, because of the great destruction from the flood, what is now Attica remained without a king for 189 years until Cecrops. For Philochorus says that Actaeus, who came after Ogyges, or whatever invented names there are, never even existed.” And again: “From Ogyges to Cyrus, then, are as many years as from Moses to the same time, 1,237. And some of the Greeks also relate that Moses lived at the same times: Polemon, in the first book of his Greek Histories, saying, ‘In the time of Apis son of Phoroneus a part of the Egyptian army was driven out of Egypt; they settled not far from Arabia in the part of Syria called Palestine’—evidently those who went with Moses. And Apion son of Posidonius, the most inquisitive of grammarians, in his book Against the Jews and in the fourth book of his Histories, says that in the time of Inachus king of Argos, when Amosis reigned over the Egyptians, the Jews revolted, led by Moses. Herodotus too mentions this revolt and Amosis in his second book, and in a way the Jews themselves, counting them among those who are circumcised and calling them the Assyrians in Palestine, perhaps because of Abraham. And Ptolemy of Mendes, writing the history of the Egyptians from the beginning, agrees with all these; so that the variation in the dates is not significant. It should be noted that whatever the Greeks tell in their myths as special because of its antiquity is found to be after Moses: floods and conflagrations, Prometheus, Io, Europa, the Sown Men, the rape of Kore, the mysteries, the legislations, the deeds of Dionysus, Perseus, the labors of Heracles, the Argonauts, the Centaurs, the Minotaur, the story of Troy, the return of the Heraclids, the Ionian colonization, and the Olympiads. It seemed good to me, since I am about to set the Greek histories beside the Hebrew, to set out the previously mentioned date of the Attic kingdom; for anyone who wishes, taking the starting point from me, will be able to calculate the number as I do.” “So, of the 1,020 years set out from Moses and Ogyges to the first Olympiad, in the first year occur the Passover and the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt, and in Attica the flood of Ogyges; and with good reason. For when the Egyptians were being scourged by the anger of God with hail and storms, it was likely that some parts of the earth suffered with them; for it was likely that the Athenians would share the same fate as the Egyptians, since they were thought to be their colonists, as others say and Theopompus in his Tricaranus. The intervening time, in which nothing special is recorded by the Greeks, has been passed over. Ninety-four years later came Prometheus, according to some, who in the myth fashions men; for being wise he refashioned them from extreme ignorance into culture.” So Africanus. But let us pass to another.
From Tatian
“But now I think it fitting for me to show that our philosophy is older than the pursuits of the Greeks. Moses and Homer will be our boundary marks. Since each of them is very ancient, the one the oldest of poets and historians, the other the founder of all barbarian wisdom, let them now be taken by us for comparison. For we shall find that our teachings are older not only than the learning of the Greeks but even than the invention of letters. And I shall not take witnesses from home, but rather make use of Greeks as helpers. For the one would be foolish, since it would not be accepted by you; but the other, if proved, would be remarkable, when, resisting you with your own weapons, I take up against you proofs beyond suspicion. For on the poetry of Homer, his family, and the time when he flourished, inquiries have been made, earliest by Theagenes of Rhegium, who lived in the time of Cambyses, Stesimbrotus of Thasos, Antimachus of Colophon, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, and Dionysius of Olynthus; after them by Ephorus of Cyme, Philochorus of Athens, and the Peripatetics Megaclides and Chamaeleon; and then by the grammarians Zenodotus, Aristophanes, Callimachus, Crates, Eratosthenes, Aristarchus, and Apollodorus. Of these, Crates and his followers say that he flourished before the return of the Heraclids, within eighty years after the Trojan War; Eratosthenes and his followers, after the hundredth year from the capture of Troy; Aristarchus and his followers, at the time of the Ionian colonization, which is 140 years after the Trojan War; Philochorus, forty years after the Ionian colonization, when Archippus was archon at Athens, 180 years after the Trojan War; Apollodorus and his followers, a hundred years after the Ionian colonization, which would be 240 years after the Trojan War. Some said he lived before the Olympiads, that is, 400 years after the capture of Troy; others brought the date lower, saying Homer lived with Archilochus; and Archilochus flourished about the twenty-third Olympiad, in the time of Gyges the Lydian, 500 years after the Trojan War. About the times of the poet just mentioned, I mean Homer, and the strife and disagreement among those who have spoken about him, let this be enough said by us in summary for those able to examine closely. For anyone can show that their opinions about the narratives too are false. Among those whose record of dates is incoherent, not even the facts of history can be told truly.” And shortly after: “But let Homer be not only later than the Trojan War; let him be supposed to have lived at the very time of the war, and even to have campaigned with Agamemnon, and, if anyone wishes, to have lived before the invention of letters. For the Moses already mentioned will appear to be older than the capture of Troy by very many years, and much more ancient than the founding of Troy, and than Tros and Dardanus. For proof I shall use as witnesses Chaldeans, Phoenicians, and Egyptians. And why should I say more? One who undertakes to persuade must make his accounts of the facts rather brief for his hearers. Berossus, a Babylonian, priest of their Bel, who lived in the time of Alexander, arranged the history of the Chaldeans in three books for Antiochus, the third after Seleucus. Setting out the history of the kings, he tells of one of them named Nebuchadnezzar, who campaigned against the Phoenicians and Jews, events which we know were proclaimed through our prophets, and which happened much later than the age of Moses, seventy years before the rule of the Persians. Berossus is a most competent man; proof of this is Juba, who, writing On the Assyrians, says he learned the history from Berossus; he has two books On the Assyrians.” “After the Chaldeans, the Phoenician evidence is as follows. There were among them three men, Theodotus, Hypsicrates, and Mochus. Their books were translated into the Greek language by Laetus, who also wrote carefully about the lives of the philosophers. In the histories of these men it is shown that under one of the kings occurred the carrying off of Europa, the arrival of Menelaus in Phoenicia, and the dealings of Hiram, who gave his daughter in marriage to Solomon king of the Jews and presented him with timber of every kind for building the temple. Menander of Pergamum also wrote a record of the same things. The time of Hiram comes close to the Trojan War; and Solomon, Hiram’s contemporary, is much later than the age of Moses.” “The Egyptians have accurate records of dates. The interpreter of their writings is Ptolemy, not the king, but a priest of Mendes. He, setting out the deeds of the kings, says that in the time of Amosis king of Egypt the Jews made their journey out of Egypt into the lands they wished, led by Moses. He speaks thus: ‘Amosis lived in the time of King Inachus.’ After him Apion the grammarian, a man of the highest repute, in the fourth book of his Egyptian History (he wrote five), says among much else that Amosis razed Avaris, living in the time of Inachus of Argos, as Ptolemy of Mendes recorded in his Chronicles. The time from Inachus to the capture of Troy fills twenty generations. And the proof is as follows.” “The kings of the Argives were these: Inachus, Phoroneus, Apis, Argeius, Criasus, Phorbas, Triopas, Crotopus, Sthenelaus, Danaus, Lynceus, Abas, Proetus, Acrisius, Perseus, Eurystheus, Atreus, Thyestes, Agamemnon, in the eighteenth year of whose reign Troy was taken. And the sensible person must understand with all accuracy that according to the tradition of the Greeks there was among them not even any written record of history. For Cadmus, who handed on the letters to them, came to Boeotia many generations later. After Inachus, under Phoroneus, the savage and nomadic life was with difficulty brought to an end, and people were brought to order. Therefore, if Moses is shown to have lived in the time of Inachus, he is older than the Trojan War by four hundred years. That this is so is shown from the succession of the Attic kings, the Macedonian and Ptolemaic, and also the Antiochene. Hence if the most famous deeds among the Greeks were recorded and are known after Inachus, it is clear that they are also after Moses. For in the time of Phoroneus, after Inachus, Ogyges is remembered among the Athenians, in whose time came the first flood; in the time of Phorbas, Actaeus, from whom Attica was called Actaea; in the time of Triopas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, Atlas, Cecrops of the double nature, and Io; in the time of Crotopus, the conflagration of Phaethon and the deluge of Deucalion; in the time of Sthenelaus, the reign of Amphictyon, the coming of Danaus to the Peloponnese, the founding of Dardania by Dardanus, and the carrying of Europa from Phoenicia to Crete; in the time of Lynceus, the rape of Kore, the founding of the sanctuary at Eleusis, the farming of Triptolemus, the coming of Cadmus to Thebes, and the reign of Minos; in the time of Proetus, the war of Eumolpus against the Athenians; in the time of Acrisius, the crossing of Pelops from Phrygia, the arrival of Ion at Athens, the second Cecrops, and the deeds of Perseus; and in the reign of Agamemnon Troy was taken.” “From what has been said, then, Moses has been shown to be older than the heroes, cities, and demons. And one ought to believe the one who is senior in age rather than the Greeks, who drew his teachings as from a spring without understanding. For many sophists among them, using curiosity, tried to counterfeit whatever they learned from Moses and from those who philosophized like him: first, so that they might be thought to say something of their own; second, so that, covering up with artificial rhetoric whatever they did not understand, they might misrepresent the truth as myth.” “About our way of life, the history according to our laws, what the learned among the Greeks have said, and how many and who those are who have mentioned them, will be shown in my work Against Those Who Have Declared Things about God; but for now I must hasten to make clear with all accuracy that Moses is older not only than Homer but also than the writers before him: Linus, Philammon, Thamyris, Amphion, Orpheus, Musaeus, Demodocus, Phemius, the Sibyl, Epimenides the Cretan who came to Sparta, Aristaeus of Proconnesus who wrote the Arimaspea, Asbolus the Centaur, Isatis, Drymon, Euclus the Cyprian, Horus the Samian, and Pronapides the Athenian. For Linus was the teacher of Heracles, and Heracles is shown to be one generation before the Trojan War. This is clear from his son Tlepolemus, who fought at Troy. Orpheus lived at the same time as Heracles; besides, they say that the works ascribed to him were composed by Onomacritus the Athenian, who lived during the rule of the Pisistratids, about the fiftieth Olympiad. Musaeus was a pupil of Orpheus. Amphion, who preceded the Trojan War by two generations, keeps us from writing more for those eager to learn. Demodocus and Phemius lived during the Trojan War itself; the one stayed with the suitors, the other with the Phaeacians. Thamyris and Philammon are not much older than these. So we have written for you, I think, with all accuracy about the treatment of each, their dates and the record of them; and to complete what is still lacking, I shall also give the proof about those considered wise. Minos, thought to excel in all wisdom, shrewdness, and lawgiving, lived in the time of Lynceus, who reigned after Danaus, in the eleventh generation after Inachus. Lycurgus, born long after the capture of Troy, gave laws to the Lacedaemonians a hundred years before the Olympiads. Draco is found to have lived about the thirty-ninth Olympiad, Solon about the 46th, Pythagoras in the sixty-second. And we have shown that the Olympiads began 407 years after the Trojan War. These things having been briefly proved thus, we shall also write about the age of the Seven Sages. Since the oldest of them, Thales, lived about the fiftieth Olympiad, what concerns those after him has also been told by us, nearly enough, in brief. “These things, men of Greece, I, Tatian, who philosophize after the manner of the barbarians, have composed: born in the land of the Assyrians, educated first in your learning, and second in what I now undertake to proclaim. Knowing now who God is and what his creation is, I present myself ready for you to examine my teachings, while my way of life according to God remains undeniable.” So much Tatian too. Let us pass on to Clement as well.
From Clement
“These matters have been treated accurately by Tatian in his work To the Greeks, and also by Cassian in the first book of his Exegetics. Yet our commentary requires us too to run over what has been said on the subject. Apion the grammarian, then, surnamed Pleistonices, in the fourth book of his Egyptian History, although hostile toward the Hebrews, being an Egyptian by race, so that he even composed a book against the Jews, when he mentions Amosis king of the Egyptians and the deeds of his time, cites as witness Ptolemy of Mendes. His words run thus: “Amosis razed Avaris, living in the time of Inachus of Argos, as Ptolemy of Mendes recorded in his Chronicles.” This Ptolemy was a priest, and setting out the deeds of the Egyptian kings in three whole books, he says that in the time of Amosis king of Egypt the Jews made their journey out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses; from which it is seen that Moses flourished in the time of Inachus. And Dionysius of Halicarnassus teaches in his Chronicles that the Argive history, I mean that from Inachus, is remembered as older than the rest of Greek history. Younger than this by forty generations is the Attic history, that from Cecrops, the one of double nature and sprung from the soil, as Tatian says word for word; and by nine the Arcadian, that from Pelasgus, who too is said to be sprung from the soil. Younger than these by another two is the Phthiotic history, that from Deucalion. From Inachus to the time of the Trojan War twenty generations, or one more, are counted, and in years, so to speak, four hundred and more. And if Ctesias says that Assyrian history is many years older than Greek, Moses’ departure from Egypt in the time of Amosis the Egyptian and Inachus the Argive will appear in the 402nd year of the Assyrian empire and the 32nd of the reign of Belochus, the eighth king. In Greece, in the time of Phoroneus, after Inachus, came the flood in the time of Ogyges and the kingdom at Sicyon, first of Aegialeus, then of Europs, then of Telchis; and the kingdom of Cres in Crete. For Acusilaus says that Phoroneus was the first man; which is why the poet of the Phoronis too said he was “father of mortal men.” Following Acusilaus, Plato writes in the Timaeus: “And once, wishing to draw them into talk about ancient things, he undertook to tell the most ancient things in this city, about Phoroneus, said to be the first, and Niobe, and what came after the flood.” In the time of Phorbas came Actaeus, from whom Attica was called Actaea; in the time of Triopas, Prometheus, Atlas, Epimetheus, Cecrops of the double nature, and Io; in the time of Crotopus, the conflagration of Phaethon and the deluge of Deucalion; in the time of Sthenelaus, the reign of Amphictyon, the coming of Danaus to the Peloponnese, and the founding of Dardania by Dardanus, whom, as Homer says, “first cloud-gathering Zeus begot”; and the carrying from Crete to Phoenicia; in the time of Lynceus, the rape of Kore, the founding of the sanctuary at Eleusis, the farming of Triptolemus, the coming of Cadmus to Thebes, and the reign of Minos; in the time of Proetus, the war of Eumolpus against the Athenians; in the time of Acrisius, the crossing of Pelops from Phrygia, the arrival of Ion at Athens, the second Cecrops, the deeds of Perseus and Dionysus, and Orpheus and Musaeus; and in the eighteenth year of Agamemnon’s reign Troy was taken, in the first year of the reign of Demophon son of Theseus at Athens, on the twelfth of the month Thargelion, as Dionysius of Argos says; Agis and Dercylus, in their third book, on the eighth from the end of the month Panemus; Hellanicus, on the twelfth of Thargelion; and some of the writers of Attic history, on the eighth from the end, in the last year of Menestheus’s reign, at the full moon: “It was midnight,” says the author of the Little Iliad, “and the bright moon was rising.” Others say it was on the same day of Scirophorion. Theseus, a rival of Heracles, is one generation older than the Trojan War; Homer, at any rate, mentions Tlepolemus, a son of Heracles, as having fought at Troy. Moses, then, is shown to precede the deification of Dionysus by 604 years, if he was deified in the thirty-second year of the reign of Perseus, as Apollodorus says in his Chronicles. From Dionysus to Heracles and the heroes with Jason who sailed in the Argo are counted 63 years. Asclepius and the Dioscuri sailed with them, as Apollonius of Rhodes testifies in the Argonautica. From Heracles’ reign in Argos to the deification of Heracles himself and of Asclepius are counted 38 years, according to Apollodorus the chronographer; and from then to the deification of Castor and Polydeuces, 53 years. About this time too came the capture of Troy. And if we must believe Hesiod the poet too, let us hear him: “To Zeus, Atlas’s daughter Maia bore glorious Hermes, herald of the immortals, having gone up into his holy bed. And Cadmus’s daughter Semele, joined with him in love, bore him a splendid son, Dionysus of many joys.” Cadmus, Semele’s father, came to Thebes in the time of Lynceus and became the inventor of the Greek letters. And Triopas was contemporary with Isis, in the seventh generation from Inachus. Some say Isis is Io, because she went (ienai) wandering through the whole earth. Ister, in his work On the Colony of the Egyptians, says she was the daughter of Prometheus. Prometheus lived in the time of Triopas, in the seventh generation after Moses; so that Moses is even earlier than the Greek origin of mankind. And Leon, who wrote on the gods of Egypt, says that Isis is called Demeter by the Greeks; she lived in the time of Lynceus, in the eleventh generation after Moses. Apis, king of Argos, founded Memphis, as Aristippus says in the first book of his Arcadian History. Aristeas of Argos says he was named Sarapis, and that he is the one whom the Egyptians worship. But Nymphodorus of Amphipolis, in the third book of his Customs of Asia, says that the bull Apis, when it died and was embalmed, was laid in a coffin (soros) in the temple of the honored deity, and was therefore called Soroapis and later Sarapis. Apis was the third from Inachus. Moreover Leto lived in the time of Tityus: “For he dragged Leto, the glorious consort of Zeus.” And Tityus was contemporary with Tantalus. With good reason, then, the Boeotian Pindar writes, “In time Apollo was born.” And it is no wonder, since he is found serving Admetus with Heracles too, “for a year.” Zethus and Amphion, the inventors of music, lived about the age of Cadmus. And if anyone tells us that Phemonoe was the first to give oracles, to Acrisius, let him know that twenty-seven years after Phemonoe came Orpheus, Musaeus, and Linus the teacher of Heracles. Homer and Hesiod are much later than the Trojan War, and long after them came the lawgivers of the Greeks, Lycurgus and Solon, and the Seven Sages, and Pherecydes the Syrian and the great Pythagoras, who lived lower down about the Olympiads, as we have shown. So Moses has been shown by us to be older than most of the gods of the Greeks, not only than their so-called wise men and poets.” So Clement too. But since before our own writers the sons of the Hebrews themselves had studied the subject before us, it would be well to look at their work too. In place of all I shall use the words of Flavius Josephus:
From Josephus
“I shall begin first with the writings of the Egyptians. It is not possible to set out their own texts; but Manetho, an Egyptian by race, a man who had shared in Greek education, as is clear, for he wrote his country’s history in the Greek language, translating it, as he himself says, from the sacred records, and who often refutes Herodotus as having erred about Egyptian matters through ignorance, this Manetho, then, in the second book of his Egyptian History writes as follows about us. I shall set out his words, as though bringing forward the man himself as a witness. … “whose name was Timaeus. In his reign, I do not know how, God blew against us, and unexpectedly men of obscure race from the regions of the east boldly invaded the country and easily took it by force without a battle.” And shortly after he adds: “Their whole nation was called Hycsos, that is, ‘shepherd kings.’ For hyc in the sacred language means ‘king,’ and sos is ‘shepherd,’ and ‘shepherds’ in the common dialect; and so compounded it becomes Hycsos. Some say they were Arabs. In another copy it is said that the name Hycsos does not mean ‘kings’ but, on the contrary, indicates ‘captive shepherds’; for hyc in Egyptian, and hac with the rough breathing, plainly mean ‘captives.’ And this seems to me more credible and in keeping with ancient history. He says that these kings already named, those of the so-called shepherds, and their descendants, ruled Egypt for 511 years. After this, he says, the kings of the Thebaid and of the rest of Egypt rose up against the shepherds, and a great and long war broke out. In the reign of a king named Misphragmouthosis, he says, the shepherds were defeated, driven out of the rest of Egypt, and shut up in a place with a circumference of ten thousand arourae; the place was called Avaris. Manetho says that the shepherds surrounded this whole place with a great, strong wall, so as to keep all their possessions and their captured goods in a stronghold. Thmouthosis, the son of Misphragmouthosis, tried to take them by force through siege, investing the walls with 480,000 troops; but when he gave up the siege, he made terms, that they should leave Egypt and all go away unharmed wherever they wished. And on these terms they, with their whole households and possessions, no fewer than 240,000 people, traveled out of Egypt through the desert into Syria; and fearing the power of the Assyrians, who then ruled Asia, they built a city in what is now called Judea, large enough for so many tens of thousands of people, and named it Jerusalem.” Next, after listing the succession of the Egyptian kings with the length of their reigns, he adds: “So much Manetho. It is clear from the years stated, when the time is calculated, that the so-called shepherds, our ancestors, left Egypt and settled this land 393 years before Danaus came to Argos; and yet the Argives think him most ancient. So Manetho has borne witness for us to the two most important points from the Egyptian writings: first, the arrival in Egypt from elsewhere; then the departure from there, so ancient in date that it precedes the Trojan War by nearly a thousand years.” So the evidence from Egyptian history has been set out at length by Josephus in some such way. From Phoenician history, using as witnesses the writers of Phoenician history, he shows that the temple in Jerusalem was built by King Solomon 143 years and eight months before the Tyrians founded Carthage. Then, passing on, he sets out the testimonies to the antiquity of the Hebrews from the history of the Chaldeans as well.
That the times of the Greek Philosophers are more recent than the whole history of the Hebrews
But why heap up a multitude of proofs, for one who loves truth rather than quarrelling and is content with what has been said, since it contains a varied demonstration of the matter in hand? Our purpose was to show that the writings of Moses and the prophets are older than those of the Greeks. Since, then, Moses has been shown to have lived long before the Trojan War, come, let us look at all those after him too. That Moses appeared in life last in time of the true Hebrews before him, Heber and Abraham, from whom the name derived from them was given to these men, and of the other ancient men dear to God, is clear from his own history. After Moses, then, Joshua led the Jewish nation, as some say, for 30 years; then, as Scripture says, foreigners ruled for eight years; then Othniel for fifty years; after him Eglon king of Moab, 18 years; after him Ehud, 80 years; after him foreigners again, 20 years; then Deborah and Barak, 40 years; then the Midianites, 7 years; then Gideon, 40 years; Abimelech, 3 years; Tola, 23; Jair, 22; the Ammonites, 18; Jephthah, 6 years; Esbon [Ibzan], 7 years; Elon, 10 years; Labdon [Abdon], 8 years; foreigners, 40 years; Samson, 20 years; then Eli the priest, according to the Hebrew, 40 years, in whose time the capture of Troy falls. After Eli the priest, Samuel led the people. After him Saul was their first king, for 40 years; then David for 40 years; then Solomon for 40 years, who also first built the temple in Jerusalem. After Solomon, Rehoboam reigned 17 years; Abijah, 3 years; Asa, 41 years; Jehoshaphat, 25; Joram, 8 years; Ahaziah, 1 year; Athaliah, 6 years; Joash, 40 years; Amaziah, 49 years; Uzziah, 52 years, in whose time Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, and Jonah prophesied. After Uzziah [Jotham] reigned 16 years; after him [Ahaz] 16 years. In his time the first Olympiad was held, in which Coroebus of Elis won the footrace. Hezekiah succeeded Ahaz for 29 years; in his time Romulus founded Rome and reigned. After Hezekiah, Manasseh reigned 55 years; then Amon, 2 years; then Josiah, [31] years, in whose time Jeremiah, Baruch, Huldah, and other prophets prophesied. Then Jehoahaz, 3 months; after him Jehoiakim, 11 years; after him, last of all, Zedekiah, 12 years. In his time Jerusalem was besieged by the Assyrians and the temple was burned, and the whole Jewish nation was carried off to Babylon; and there Daniel and Ezekiel prophesied. After a span of seventy years Cyrus became king of the Persians; he also ended the captivity of the Jews, allowing those who wished to return to their own land and rebuild the temple. Then Jesus son of Josedek and Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel went up. They laid the foundations, while Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, last of all, prophesied; after them there was no longer a prophet among them. In the time of Cyrus, Solon the Athenian was known, and those called the Seven Sages among the Greeks, before whom no philosopher is remembered among them. Of these seven, Thales of Miletus, the first natural philosopher among the Greeks, discussed the solstices of the sun, eclipses, the phases of the moon, and the equinox; and he became the most famous man among the Greeks. Anaximander became a hearer of Thales, the son of Praxiades, also a Milesian by birth. He was the first to construct sundials for determining the solstices, seasons, hours, and the equinox. Anaximenes son of Eurystratus, a Milesian, was a pupil of Anaximander; and his was Anaxagoras son of Hegesibulus, of Clazomenae. He was the first to set out clearly the doctrine of first principles. For he declared not only about the substance of all things, like those before him, but also about the cause that moves it. “In the beginning,” he says, “things were mixed together; but Mind came in and brought them from disorder into order.” Anaxagoras had three pupils: Pericles, Archelaus, and Euripides. Pericles became first among the Athenians and surpassed his contemporaries in wealth and birth; Euripides turned to poetry and was called by some the philosopher of the stage; and Archelaus succeeded to Anaxagoras’s school in Lampsacus, then moved to Athens and taught there, and had many Athenian pupils, among them Socrates. At the same time as Anaxagoras flourished the natural philosophers Xenophanes and Pythagoras. Pythagoras was succeeded by his wife Theano and his sons Telauges and Mnesarchus. Empedocles became a hearer of Telauges, in whose time Heraclitus the Obscure was known. Parmenides is said to have succeeded Xenophanes, Melissus Parmenides, and Zeno of Elea Melissus. They say that Zeno, having formed a plot against the tyrant of the time, was caught; and being tortured by the tyrant to make him write down the names of the men who were with him, he did not give in to the tyrant’s punishments, but bit through his tongue, spat it at him, and so died enduring the tortures. Leucippus became his hearer, Democritus Leucippus’s, and Protagoras Democritus’s, in whose time Socrates flourished. Other natural philosophers before Socrates can be found here and there; but all, beginning from Thales, evidently flourished after Cyrus king of the Persians. And Cyrus clearly lived long after the captivity of the Jewish nation in Babylon, when the prophets among the Hebrews had already ceased and their holy capital had been besieged. So you must admit that Greek philosophy is much more recent than Moses and the prophets after him, and above all Plato’s, who first was a hearer of Socrates and then associated with the Pythagoreans, and outstripped all before him in reason, understanding, and the doctrines of philosophy. Plato lived about the last years of the Persian empire, a little before Alexander of Macedon, and not much more than 400 years before Augustus. If, then, Plato and those after him should be shown to you to have taught a philosophy in agreement with the Hebrews, it is time to consider the date at which he lived, and to compare the antiquity of the theologians and prophets among the Hebrews with the age of all the Greek philosophers. But now that these things have been shown, it is time to return and see the wise men of the Greeks become emulators of the Hebrew teachings, so that the slanderers may no longer reasonably blame us if we too, loving the same things as their own philosophers, have resolved to honor the oracles of the Hebrews.
Connections in Preparation for the Gospel, Book 10
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