Preparation for the Gospel, Book 11

The book before this one, on the subject in hand of the Preparation for the Gospel, established, not by my own words but by testimonies from outside, that it is not unlikely that the Greeks, who contributed nothing wise except only skill and fluency in speech, and pilfered everything from barbarians, were not ignorant of the oracles of the Hebrews either, and in part laid hold of these too; since they did not keep their hands clean of theft even from the ambitions of their own countrymen in their writings. For it was not our argument, as I said, but their own that proved them thieves. Moreover, we learned at the same time, by comparing dates, that they are very young both in wisdom and in age, falling very far short of the antiquity of the Hebrews. That was the previous book. The present one now hastens to pay, like a debt, the promise made, and to bring to light the agreement of the Greek philosophers with the oracles of the Hebrews in some, if not in all, of their doctrinal teachings. Dismissing the superfluous, it calls on the chief of them all, thinking it right to use Plato alone, in place of all, as the measure of the question; since he alone, having outstripped all in fame, seems likely to be sufficient for us to establish what is sought. And if it should be necessary anywhere, for the sake of clarity about the man’s meaning, I shall also use as witnesses those who have followed his philosophy, setting out their words to establish the point in hand. Let it be kept in mind, however, that not everything was said rightly by the man, even if most things he uttered were true. This too we shall show at the proper time, not to accuse him but to defend ourselves, explaining why we confess that we have preferred the barbarian philosophy to the Greek.

How the philosophy of Plato followed that of the Hebrews in the most essential points

Plato divided the whole account of philosophy into three parts, natural, ethical, and logical, and again divided the natural into the study of sensible things and the understanding of incorporeal things. You would find this threefold form of teaching among the Hebrews too, since the like had been taught as philosophy among them before Plato was born. It is right to hear Plato’s views first, and then to examine those of the Hebrews. I shall give Plato’s doctrines from those who champion them. Of these Atticus, a distinguished man among the Platonic philosophers, sets out the man’s views somewhat as follows, in a work in which he opposes those who promise Plato’s teachings through Aristotle’s.

Atticus on the threefold division, of Plato's philosophy

“Complete philosophy, then, being divided in three, into the part called ethical, the natural, and further the logical: the first makes each of us noble and good, sets whole households right in the best way, and even orders a whole people with an excellent constitution and the most exact laws; the second extends to the knowledge of divine things, of the first principles themselves and the causes and everything else that comes from them, which Plato has called the inquiry into nature; and the third is employed for the discernment and discovery of both of these. That Plato was the first and chief to gather into one all the parts of philosophy, until then scattered and strewn about like the limbs of Pentheus, as someone said, and to show philosophy as a body and a complete living creature, is plain to all. For it is well known that Thales, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and their contemporaries spent their time on the inquiry into the nature of beings alone; nor does it escape anyone that Pittacus, Periander, Solon, Lycurgus, and those like them devoted their philosophy to civic life. And Zeno and the whole Eleatic school are also known for having devoted themselves above all to the art of argument. Coming after these, Plato, a man perfect by nature and far excelling, as truly sent down from the gods so that philosophy might be seen whole through him, left nothing out and worked out each part precisely, neither falling short of what is necessary nor being carried away into what is useless. Since, then, we said that the Platonist shares in all of them, both when speaking about morals and when discussing, come, let us examine each in turn.” So Atticus. The Peripatetic Aristocles also bears witness to the same, in the seventh book of the work he composed On Philosophy, speaking word for word as follows:

Aristocles on the philosophy of Plato

“Plato philosophized genuinely and completely, if anyone ever did. For those from Thales continued as natural philosophers; Pythagoras and his followers concealed everything; and Xenophanes and those after him, stirring up contentious arguments, cast philosophers into great dizziness but provided no help. Not least, Socrates became, as the saying goes, fire upon fire, as Plato himself said. Being most gifted and clever at raising difficulties about anything whatever, he introduced ethical and political inquiries, and was also the first to try to define the theory of the Ideas; but rousing every argument and inquiring into everything, he died first. Others cut off certain parts and spent their time on these: some on medicine, some on the mathematical sciences, some on the poets and music. Most, however, admired the power of words, of whom some called themselves rhetoricians, others dialecticians. Those who succeeded Socrates became very varied and opposed in their views. Some praised Cynicism, freedom from vanity, and freedom from passion; others, again, pleasures. Some boasted that they knew everything, others that they knew simply nothing. Further, some rolled about in public and in the sight of all, mixing with the crowd, while others, on the contrary, remained unapproachable and not to be spoken to. Plato, however, perceiving that the knowledge of divine and human things is one, was the first to divide it, and said that one part is the treatment of the nature of the universe, another of human affairs, and a third of discourse. He held that we cannot understand human things unless divine things are seen first. For just as physicians, when treating particular parts, first attend to the whole body, so one who is to understand things here must first know the nature of the whole: man is a part of what exists, and the good is twofold, ours and that of the universe, and that of the universe is the more important, for through it ours too comes about. Aristoxenus the musician says that this doctrine belongs to the Indians. For one of those men met Socrates in Athens and asked him what he was doing in philosophy; and when he said he was inquiring about human life, the Indian laughed at him, saying that no one can understand human things while ignorant of divine things. Whether this is true no one could say with confidence. At any rate Plato divided philosophy about the universe, political philosophy, and further logical philosophy.” Such being Plato’s philosophy, it is time to examine that of the Hebrews too, who philosophized in a similar way long before Plato was born. You would find among them too this concordant threefold division into ethical, logical, and natural learning, if you consider it in the following way.

On the ethical doctrines of the Hebrews

Their ethics, then, you would learn to have been pursued among them with zeal first of all, in deeds much earlier than in words, if you examine the lives of the men; since as the end of goods and the final limit of the blessed life they admired and pursued piety and friendship with God through the perfecting of character; not bodily pleasure, as Epicurus did; nor the threefold kind of goods, as Aristotle did, who valued the goods of the body and external goods equally with those of the soul. Nor yet the utmost ignorance and lack of learning, which some have proclaimed under the grander name of “suspension of judgment”; nor even the virtue of the soul alone; for how much of it is there among men, and what could it contribute by itself, without God, toward a life free from pain? For this reason they fastened everything to hope in God, as to an unbreakable cable, and declared that only the one dear to God is blessed, because God, the steward of all goods, the giver of life and source of virtue itself, and the provider of all goods of body and external goods, would alone be sufficient for the blessed life to one who has formed friendship with him through all-true piety. Hence the all-wise Moses, first of all men to hand down in writing the life of the Hebrews dear to God before him, set out the civic and practical way of life by means of historical narrative. He began his teaching from universals, laying down God as the cause of all things and describing the origin of the world and of mankind. Then, advancing in his account from universals to particulars, urging his pupils through the memory of the ancient men to emulate their virtue and piety, and himself appearing as the author of pious laws laid down by him, he would be clear in every respect to have taken thought, through care for character, for the God-loving way of life; as our discourse has already made plain earlier. It would be long to set down here the prophets after Moses as well, and their words urging toward virtue and turning away from all vice. And what if I were to bring before you the moral teachings of the most wise Solomon, to which he devoted a book of his own, calling the work Proverbs, gathering concise maxims like apophthegms into one subject? In this way, then, the sons of the Hebrews, from ancient times, before the Greeks even learned the first letters, were themselves educated in ethics and freely shared the same education with those who came to them.

On the logical method of the Hebrews

As for the logical branch of the Hebrews’ philosophy, they thought it should be pursued not, as the Greeks like, by cleverness in sophisms and reasonings contrived for deception, but by the grasp of truth itself, which their men wise in divine things found and were enlightened by, their souls lit up by divine light. To sharpen toward this truth those being educated in their own learning, they handed on to them from early childhood recitations of sacred words, narratives of solemn histories, metrical compositions of songs and chants, and also problems and riddles, and certain wise and allegorical contemplations, with beauty of expression and fluent recitation in their own language. Indeed they had certain deuterotai of the first lessons (for so they like to name the interpreters of their scriptures), who by translation and explanation brought to light what was shadowed in riddles, if not to all, at least to those fit to hear it. So again Solomon, the wisest among them, made the beginning of his book of Proverbs from some such point, all but teaching that this was the reason for his writing, where he said in so many words that every man must “know wisdom and instruction, and understand words of prudence, and receive turns of speech, and understand true righteousness and direct judgment; that I may give,” he says, “shrewdness to the innocent, and to the young child perception and thoughtfulness. For hearing these things the wise man will be wiser, and the understanding man will gain guidance; and he will understand a parable and a dark saying, the sayings of the wise and riddles.” Such was the promise of that book. As for the propositions about each of the things spoken of, and their solutions, and the logical treatment carried through all their prophetic writings in a way proper to the wisdom and language of these men, anyone who wishes will learn of it by taking their books in hand at leisure and reading them. And if anyone were to gain a good acquaintance with the language itself, he would see men, barbarians as they were, most skilled in reasoning, in no way inferior to sophists or orators in their own tongue. They also have metrical poems, such as the great Song of Moses and David’s 118th Psalm, composed in what the Greeks call heroic metre. They say, at any rate, that these are hexameters of sixteen syllables; and their other verse compositions are said to be made up of lines of trimeter and tetrameter in their own language. Such is their logical skill in expression; but their thought cannot even be compared with human thought. For they contain oracles of God and of truth itself uttered through them, divine sayings and predictions, pious teachings, and doctrines of the knowledge of what exists. You may take proofs of these men’s logical accuracy from the correctness of their giving of names, on which Plato too would plainly be bearing witness to the opinion of the Hebrews, and on this very point agreeing with their philosophy, as can easily be seen from what follows.

On the correctness of Hebrew names

Moses, long before the name of philosophy came to the Greeks, dealt in countless ways throughout his writing with the giving of names: sometimes arranging the names of all things in his account in a way most true to nature, sometimes leaving to God the decision to rename pious men, and teaching that names are attached to things by nature, not by convention. Plato follows him and agrees with the same views, mentioning none other than the barbarians and saying that this way is preserved among them, perhaps hinting at the Hebrews, since it is not easy to find such a theory kept among other barbarians. He says, then, in the Cratylus: “And that a name is not whatever some people agree to call a thing, uttering a piece of their own voice, but that there is by nature a certain correctness of names, the same for all, Greeks and barbarians.” And going on further he says: “Then will you not consider that the lawgiver, both the one here and the one among the barbarians, so long as he gives the form of the name proper to each thing in whatever syllables, is no worse a lawgiver, the one here than the one anywhere else?” Then next, saying again that the one who knows the correctness of names is the dialectician and the lawgiver, he speaks thus: “It is the carpenter’s work, then, to make a rudder, with a helmsman supervising, if the rudder is to be good. — So it seems. — And the lawgiver’s work, it seems, is a name, with a dialectician as supervisor, if a name is to be well given. — That is so. — It seems, then, Hermogenes, that the giving of names is not a trivial matter, as you think, nor one for trivial men or for anyone who happens along. And Cratylus is right in saying that names belong to things by nature, and that not everyone is a craftsman of names, but only he who looks to the name that belongs by nature to each thing and is able to put its form into letters and syllables.” Having said this much, after a great deal more he again mentions the barbarians, and then plainly admits that many names came to the Greeks from barbarians, saying in these words: “I notice that the Greeks, especially those living under the barbarians, have taken many names from the barbarians. — What then? — If one were to look for how these are fittingly given according to the Greek language, and not according to that from which the name comes, you know that he would be at a loss. — Naturally.” So Plato. But Moses anticipated him; hear what he says, as a wise lawgiver and dialectician alike: “And God formed out of the earth all the beasts of the field and all the birds of heaven, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.” For by saying “that was its name,” what else does he show but that the names were given according to nature? For what was then called by a name, he says, was also contained long before in nature, and this name, which the man in question, inspired by a higher power, gave, existed and pre-existed for each of the things named. And Adam itself, a Hebrew name, would in Moses be the name of the earth-born man, since among the Hebrews the earth is called adam; from which the first earth-born man was fittingly named Adam by Moses. The name could also have another sense, translated as “red,” and showing the nature of the body. But by the name Adam he indicated the earthy, terrestrial, and earth-born man, or the bodily and fleshly man. But the sons of the Hebrews also call man by another name, Enos, which they say is the rational part in us, different in nature from the earthy Adam. And Enos too has its own meaning, being translated into Greek as “forgetful.” Such by nature is the rational part in us, because of its union with what is mortal and irrational. For what is wholly pure, incorporeal, divine, and rational embraces, through the height of its virtue in contemplation, not only the memory of what has gone before but also the knowledge of what is to come. But what is packed into flesh, pinned down by bones and sinews, and weighed down by the great heavy mass of the body, the inspired writer of the Hebrews, seeing its great forgetfulness and ignorance, called by an apt name, Enos, which means “forgetful.” In a certain prophet, at any rate, it is written: “What is man, that you remember him? Or the son of man, that you visit him?” Here the Hebrew has Enos for the first name of man, as if he were saying more clearly, “What is this forgetful one, that you, God, remember him, although he is forgetful?” And for “or the son of man, that you visit him,” the Hebrew text has “or the son of Adam”; so that the same being is both Adam and Enos, the fleshly being shown by Adam, the rational by Enos. So the oracles of the Hebrews divide the etymology. But Plato says that in Greek man (anthrōpos) is so called from anathrein (“looking up”), saying: “Man, as soon as he has seen, that is, opōpe, also looks up at (anathrei) and reasons about what he has seen; hence he alone of the animals is rightly named anthrōpos, anathrōn ha opōpe (“looking up at what he has seen”).” Again, the Hebrews call a man (male) eis. The name is derived by them from es, by which they mean fire, so that the man is named from the heat and fiery quality of male nature. And the woman, since she is said to have been taken from the man, shares her name with the man; for among them the woman is called essa, as the man is eis. But Plato says that anēr (man) is named from anō rhoē (“upward flow”), and adds: “And gynē (woman) seems to me to mean gonē (birth).” Again, Moses fittingly calls heaven in the Hebrew tongue “firmament,” because it is the first solid and sensible body of this world after the incorporeal and intellectual substance. But Plato says that heaven (ouranos) is rightly named because it makes us look upward (ano horan). Again, the Hebrews say that the highest proper name of God is unspeakable and unutterable, not to be grasped even by the imagination of the mind. That by which we name him God they call Eloeim, from el, it seems, which they interpret as “strength” and “power”; so that the name of God among them is derived from the power and strength about him, through which he is understood as almighty and all-powerful, since he constituted all things. But Plato says that the heavenly luminaries were called theos and theoi (gods) from thein, that is, “to run.” Such, in outline, are the precise views of the Hebrews and of Plato on the correctness of names. Plato also says that the names of men were given with some meaning, and tries to give the reason, saying, I do not know how, that Hector was so called from holding (echein) and ruling, because he was king of the Trojans; Agamemnon from remaining exceedingly (agan menein), steadfastly and firmly persisting in his decisions about Troy; Orestes from the mountain-like (oreinon), wild and beastly character of his ways; Atreus because he had a baneful (atēros) character; Pelops as one who does not see distant things but only things nearby (pelas); and Tantalus, he says, means one most wretched (talantatos), because of his misfortunes. These and countless other such things you will find said by Plato, as he tries to teach that names were given to the first men by nature and not by convention. But you would not call Moses’ explanations forced, or made up by some sophistical play with words, when you learn that the Hebrew Cain is translated by the Greeks as “jealousy,” and that he was judged worthy of this name because he was jealous of his brother Abel. And Abel is translated “mourning,” since he too became the cause of such grief to his parents, who by some more divine foresight gave these names to their children when they were born. And what if I were to bring before you Abraham? Formerly, when he was pursuing the wisdom of the Chaldeans, he was a student of the heavens, skilled in observing the stars and in the sciences of the sky, and he was called Abram, which in the Greek tongue means “lofty father.” But God, leading him from things here to things unseen and beyond the visible, used a fitting change of name, saying, “Your name shall no longer be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you father of many nations.” What sense this has would be a long story. It is enough here to cite Plato as a witness to the point, saying that some names were given by a more divine power. He says, then, in these words: “For here especially the giving of names should have been done with care; and perhaps some of them were given by a power more divine than that of men.” This very point the sacred Scripture of the Hebrews confirms more fully; and Moses first of all taught that Abraham, his son Isaac, and also Israel were named by a more divine power. Isaac is translated “laughter,” bearing the symbol of the joy of virtue, which God has promised to give as a special prize to those dear to him. And his son Israel had formerly borne the name Jacob; but in place of Jacob God bestows on him the name Israel, moving him from the ascetic and practical life to the contemplative. For Jacob is translated “supplanter,” as one who strives in the contest of virtue; and Israel “seeing God,” such as the knowing and contemplative mind in man would be. Why need I now unfold, through countless other examples, the correctness of the all-wise Moses, or of the sacred oracles of the Hebrews, in giving their own names, when the subject needs a longer study? Thus, for instance, the Greeks could not give the etymologies even of the first letters of grammar, nor would Plato himself state the meaning or reason of the vowels or the consonants. But the sons of the Hebrews could tell the reason for Alpha, which among them is called Alph, meaning “learning”; and for Beta, which they like to call Beth, their name for a house; so that the meaning is “learning of a house,” as if it were said more clearly, a teaching and learning of household management. Gamma too, the third letter, is called among them Gimel, their name for fullness. Then, since they call tablets Delth, they named the fourth letter so, signifying by the two letters together that written learning is the fullness of tablets. And going through the rest of the letters, one would find each named among them with some reason and meaning; for they say that the combination of the seven vowels contains the utterance of a single unspeakable name, which the sons of the Hebrews, marking it with four letters, apply to the supreme power of God, having received it, son from father, as something unutterable and secret to the many. And one of the Greek sages, having learned this from somewhere I do not know, hinted at it, saying in verse somewhere: “Seven vowel letters praise me, the great imperishable God, the tireless Father of all. I am the imperishable lyre of all things, who tuned the lyre-like songs of the heavenly whirl.” You would find the meanings of the other Hebrew letters too, if you attended to each; this has already been shown by us earlier, when we were proving that the Greeks profited from barbarians in everything. And anyone who studies the Hebrew language would learn the great correctness of names current among these men; for the very name of the whole nation took its derivation from Heber. It means “one who crosses over,” since a crossing and one who crosses over are called heber in the Hebrew tongue. The word teaches us to cross over and pass from things here to things divine, and never to remain and stop at the sight of visible things, but from these to pass over to the unseen and invisible things of the theology concerning the Maker and Creator of the universe. For this reason they called the first men devoted solely to the supreme Ruler and Cause of all, holding fast to pure and true piety, Hebrews, calling such men crossers, as it were, who had passed over in mind. And why should I go on longer, collecting everything about the correctness and precision of Hebrew names, when the question needs a treatment of its own? But, to speak in outline, I think that by what has been said I have given proof of the logical teaching among the Hebrews, if indeed, according to Plato, it belongs not to trivial men or to chance comers, but to a wise and dialectical lawgiver, to find the nature of names proper to things; and such Moses and the oracles of the Hebrews have been shown to be. What, then, follows after logic but to consider physics, and how the sons of the Hebrews stood on this too?

On the natural philosophy of the Hebrews

And the third part of the philosophy of the Hebrews, the natural part, divided among them too into the contemplation of intelligible and incorporeal things and the natural study of sensible things, the prophets, perfect in all things, both knew and mingled into their own discourses when occasion called, not having learned it by guesses or the efforts of mortal understanding, nor priding themselves on human teachers, but ascribing their knowledge to inspiration by a higher power and the breathing of the divine Spirit. Hence they foretold countless things about the future, discussed countless things about the constitution of the universe, treated again countless things about the nature of animals, and each set down in his own prophecies a great many things about plants as well. Moses, knowing well the powers of stones too, made no incidental use of this knowledge in the vestment of the high priest. And again Solomon, if anyone, is testified by divine Scripture to have excelled in the natural study of these things, as it says: “And Solomon spoke three thousand parables, and his songs were five thousand; and he spoke of the trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that comes out through the wall; and he spoke of the cattle, and of the birds, and of the fishes. And all the peoples came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.” Starting from this, the one who put all-virtuous Wisdom in his person said: “For he gave me unerring knowledge of what exists: to know the constitution of the world and the working of the elements, the beginning and end and middle of times, the alternations of the solstices and the changes of seasons, the cycles of the year and the positions of the stars, the natures of living things and the tempers of wild beasts, the violence of winds and the reasonings of men, the varieties of plants and the powers of roots; all things hidden and manifest I learned; for Wisdom, the artificer of all, taught me.” Again the same Solomon, studying the fluid substance of bodies, says in Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What advantage has a man in all his toil at which he toils under the sun?” And he adds: “What is it that has been? The same that will be. And what is it that has been done? The same that will be done. And there is nothing at all new under the sun.” These and such things he taught about bodily substance. And going through the other wise men of the Hebrews, you would find them not without a share in the same knowledge. They have said countless things, as I said before, about plants, and about the nature of animals, land and water creatures, and birds too. Moreover, about the stars in heaven too: for no small mention of the Bear and the Pleiades, of Orion and Arcturus, which the Greeks like to call Arctophylax and Boötes, is found in the writings of these men. But they also comprehended very well and accurately the doctrines and contemplations about the constitution of the world, the turning and change of the universe, the substance of the soul, the nature of all rational beings, the visible and invisible creation, universal providence, and before these, about the first Cause of all things, the theology of the second, and the other things grasped by the mind alone; so that one would not be wrong to say that the later Greeks who investigated the nature of these things followed them as juniors follow elders. So much on their study of the nature of the universe. They also divided their teaching about these things in two. The teaching about sensible things they thought should not be carried to its height before the many, nor should the common crowd be taught the causes of the nature of things, except as much as was necessary to know: that the universe has not come about by itself, nor stands at random and by chance from an irrational motion, but is driven by the Word of God as charioteer and steered by the power of an unspeakable wisdom. About intelligible things, that they exist and what they are, and how they stand in order, power, and difference, this has been said and laid down in the sacred books and handed on for all to hear, as much as those who claim piety needed to know for taking up a reverent and sober life. But the deep and hidden teaching about these they left to be sought and taught in secret by those able to be initiated into such things. It would be well to go through their contemplation of these briefly and in outline, and to show that Plato here too thought the same as they.

On the philosophy of the intelligible world

Moreover, in the teaching and contemplation of intelligible and incorporeal things too, the admirable Plato is shown by his own words to have followed the all-wise Moses and the prophets of the Hebrews: whether he learned by hearsay that reached him (since he is shown to have studied among the Egyptians at the very time when the Hebrews, driven from their land a second time, were living in Egypt under Persian rule), or whether he hit on the nature of things by himself, or whether in some way he was deemed worthy of the knowledge by God. “For God,” it says, “has shown it to them. For his invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and divinity, so that they are without excuse.” You may learn what has been said by examining it in some such way as this.

Moses and Plato on true being

Moses, in his sacred revelations, gave an oracle in the person of God: “I am He who is. Thus shall you say to the sons of Israel: He who is has sent me to you,” setting forth God as the only one who truly is, and declaring that he alone properly and fittingly deserves this name. And again, Solomon spoke about the coming into being and passing away of sensible and bodily things: “What is it that has been? The same that will be. And what is it that has been done? The same that will be done. And there is nothing at all new under the sun, of which one will speak and say, ‘See, this is new’; it has already been in the ages that were before us.” Following these, we too divide the universe in two, into the intelligible and the sensible, defining the intelligible as incorporeal and rational in nature, incorruptible and immortal, and the sensible as being in flux and corruption, change and alteration of substance; and summing up all things under one principle, we teach that this one is the unbegotten, that which properly and truly is, the cause of all things incorporeal and bodily. See how Plato, paraphrasing not only the thought but the very words and phrases of the Hebrew Scripture, makes the doctrine his own, explaining it more broadly somewhat as follows: “What is that which always is and has no becoming? And what is that which is always becoming but never is? The one is grasped by thought with reason, being always the same; the other is the object of opinion with irrational sensation, coming to be and perishing, but never really being.” Has not the admirable man clearly reworked the oracle in Moses that says “I am He who is” by his “What is that which always is and has no becoming?”; and made it plainer by saying that being is nothing other than what is not seen by the eyes of flesh but grasped by mind? At any rate, having asked what being is, he answers himself, saying, “that which is grasped by thought with reason.” And Solomon’s saying, “What is it that has been? The same that will be. And what is it that has been done? The same that will be done,” he would plainly have interpreted almost in the very words, saying, “but the other is the object of opinion with irrational sensation, coming to be and perishing, but never really being.” To which he adds: “For all these are parts of time, the ‘was’ and the ‘will be’; and we wrongly, without noticing, apply them to eternal being. For we say that it was, is, and will be; but in truth only ‘is’ belongs to it, while ‘was’ and ‘will be’ are fit to be said of becoming in time, for they are motions. But what is always the same and unmoved cannot become older or younger through time, nor ever have come to be, nor have come to be now, nor be hereafter at all, nor have any of the things that becoming attached to things borne about in sensation; these have come about as forms of time, which imitates eternity and circles according to number. And besides these, such expressions as: what has become is become, what is becoming is becoming, and what will become is going to become.” And so that no one may think we misinterpret the philosopher’s words, I shall use commentaries that bring out the meaning of these passages. Many have turned to their study, but for now it is enough for me to set out the words of a distinguished man, Numenius the Pythagorean, which he sets out in the second book of his work On the Good somewhat as follows:

Extract from Numenius, the Pythagorean, Concerning the good, Bk. ii

“Come then, let us bring ourselves as near as we can to Being, and say: Being never was, nor will it ever come to be; but it always is, in a defined time, the present only. If anyone wishes to call this present eternity, I agree. But the past time we must think has already slipped away and fled into being no longer; and the future is not yet, but promises that it will be able to come into being. So it is not reasonable to think in any way that Being either is not, or no longer is, or is not yet. For if it is so spoken of, a great impossibility arises in the argument: that the same thing both is and is not at once. And if this is so, hardly could anything else be, if Being itself is not, with respect to being itself. For Being is eternal and firm, always the same; it neither came to be and then perished, nor grew and then diminished; nor did it ever become more or less; and indeed, among other things, it will not move in place. For it is not lawful for it to move, either backward or forward; Being will never pass up or down, to right or to left; nor will it ever move about its own center; but rather it will stand fixed, firm and standing, always holding the same way and in the same manner.” And next, after other things, he adds: “So much, then, by way of introduction. I shall no longer pretend, nor say that I do not know the name of the incorporeal; for it now seems more pleasant to say it than not. And indeed I say that its name is this which has long been sought. But let no one laugh if I say that the name of the incorporeal is substance and being. The reason for the name ‘being’ is that it did not come to be and will not perish, and admits no other motion at all, nor change for better or worse, but is simple and unalterable, in the same form, neither departing from its sameness willingly nor compelled by another. And Plato too said in the Cratylus that names are themselves applied by likeness to the things. Let it be granted, then, and agreed that Being is incorporeal.” Then going on a little he adds: “I said that Being is incorporeal, and that this is the intelligible. What was said, as far as I can remember, was something like this. But I wish to encourage the one who seeks the argument, adding this much: that if these things do not agree with Plato’s doctrines, one must think they are those of some other great man of great power, such as Pythagoras. Plato says, at any rate (let me recall how he says it): ‘What is that which always is and has no becoming? And what is that which comes to be but never is? The one is grasped by thought with reason, the other is the object of opinion with irrational sensation, coming to be and perishing, but never really being.’ For he asked what Being is, saying unambiguously that it is unbegotten. For he said that Being has no becoming; for it would have been changed; and what is changed is not eternal.” Then going on he says: “If, then, Being is altogether and in every way eternal and unchangeable and never in any way departing from itself, but remains the same and stands in the same manner, this surely would be what is grasped by thought with reason. But if body flows and is carried along by immediate change, it runs away and is not. Hence would it not be great madness to deny that it is indefinite, an object of opinion only, and, as Plato says, ‘coming to be and perishing, but never really being.’” So Numenius, interpreting more clearly both Plato’s teaching and, much earlier, that of Moses. With good reason, then, the saying is attributed to him in which he is remembered to have said, “For what is Plato but Moses speaking Attic?” See besides whether Plutarch too, unfolding the present meaning further, would not agree both with the philosophers’ words just set out and with those of the Hebrews found in other passages about God, in which God who gives the oracle is brought in saying, “For I am the Lord your God, and I do not change”; and in which the prophet, looking to him, declares that all visible things may at some time be changed and altered, “but you are the same, and your years shall not fail.” Consider, then, whether, with these set out as propositions, Moses’ “I am He who is,” and “I am the Lord your God and I do not change,” and “but you are the same,” Plutarch would not seem to be interpreting the meaning in his work On the E at Delphi, where he says word for word:

From Plutarch's treatise entitled On the Εἶ at Delphi

“I think, then, that the letter signifies neither a number, nor an order, nor a conjunction, nor any other of the incomplete particles; but it is a complete address and salutation of the god, which, as soon as the word is spoken, brings the speaker to think of the god’s power. For the god addresses each of us as we approach here, as if greeting us, with “Know yourself,” which is no less than “Hail”; and we in turn answer the god, “You are” (Ei), rendering to him the address “You are” as true, unfeigned, and alone fitting to him alone.” “For we have truly no share in being; but every mortal nature, set between birth and decay, presents a phantom and a dim, unsteady semblance of itself. And if one presses the mind wishing to grasp it, then, just as a violent grip on water, by squeezing and compressing what flows through, loses what it clasps, so reason, pursuing the excessive clarity of each thing subject to change and alteration, is thwarted, now toward its becoming, now toward its perishing, unable to grasp anything that remains or really is. For it is not possible to step twice into the same river, according to Heraclitus, nor to touch a mortal substance twice in the same state; but by the sharpness and speed of its change it scatters and again gathers, or rather not again nor afterward, but at once it comes together and departs, approaches and goes away. Hence what comes to be from it never reaches being, because becoming never ceases or stops, but, always changing from seed, makes an embryo, then a babe, then a child, a youth next, a young man, a man, an elderly man, an old man, destroying the first births and ages by those that follow. Yet we ridiculously fear one death, though we have already died so many deaths and are dying. For not only, as Heraclitus said, is the death of fire birth for air, but still more clearly in our own case: the man in his prime perishes when the old man comes to be, the youth perished into the man in his prime, the child into the youth, the infant into the child; yesterday’s man has died into today’s, and today’s dies into tomorrow’s. No one remains, nor is one; but we become many, as matter is driven around and slips about some one phantom and common mould. For how, if we remain the same, do we delight now in some things and before in others, love and hate, admire and blame opposite things, use other words and other feelings, having no longer the same appearance, shape, or mind? For it is not likely that one experiences different things without change, nor that one who changes is the same. And if he is not the same, he is not at all, but, through his very changing, becomes one from another. And sensation, through ignorance of being, falsely says that what appears is.” “What, then, really is? The eternal, unbegotten, and incorruptible, to which no time brings change. For time is something moving, appearing together with moving matter, always flowing and not holding, like a vessel of decay and birth. Its ‘afterward’ and ‘before’, its ‘will be’ and ‘has been’, are at once a confession of not-being. For to say of what has not yet come into being, or has already ceased to be, that it is, is foolish and absurd. And that in time on which we most fix our thought, saying ‘it stands,’ ‘it is present,’ ‘now,’ this again reason dissolves and destroys. For it is squeezed out into the future and the past, like a gleam of light, necessarily parting for those who wish to see it. And if the nature that is measured has the same experience as the measure, it neither remains nor is, but comes to be and perishes according to its distribution in time. Hence nothing of the kind may be said of what is, that it was or will be; for these are inflections, transitions, and alterations of what by nature does not remain in being.” “But God is, if one must say so, and is in no time, but in eternity, unmoved, timeless, and without inflection, in which nothing is before or after, nor future nor past, nor older nor younger; but being one he has filled ‘always’ with one ‘now’; and only what is according to this really is, not having come to be nor going to be, nor having begun nor going to cease. So, then, worshipping, we should greet and address it thus, or even, by Zeus, as some of the ancients did, ‘You are One’ (Ei hen). For the divine is not many, as each of us is, a motley and crowded aggregate of countless differences arising in our experiences; but Being must be one, as the One must be; and otherness, the difference from Being, departs into the becoming of not-being.”

That the divine nature is ineffable

Moses and all the prophets among the Hebrews teach that the divine is ineffable, and hint at the symbol of the ineffable name by their unpronounceable notation; and in agreement with them Plato too, in his great Letter, says in these very words—listen: “For it is in no way expressible like other studies, but after long association with the matter itself and living with it, suddenly, like a light kindled from a leaping fire, it comes to be in the soul and at once nourishes itself.” And this example of the light was anticipated by another Hebrew prophet, who said, “The light of your face has been signed upon us, Lord”; and another again, “In your light we shall see light.”

That God is One only

Moses said of the God of the universe, “Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” Again Plato, agreeing with this, teaches that there is one God, as there is one heaven, saying in the Timaeus somewhat as follows: “Have we, then, rightly spoken of one heaven, or would it be more right to speak of many and infinite? One, if it is to be made according to the pattern. For that which contains all intelligible living things could never be second with another.” And that he knew one God, even if, as is customary among the Greeks, he used to speak of many, is clear also from his letter to Dionysius, in which, giving signs to distinguish the letters he wrote in earnest from those dashed off otherwise, he said that he would put the name “gods” at the head of those that had nothing serious in them, and “God” at the head of those composed with care. He speaks thus word for word: “As to the sign concerning letters, which ones I send in earnest and which not, I think you remember it; still, consider and pay close attention. For many bid me write, whom it is not easy to refuse openly. God, then, begins the serious letter, and gods the less serious.” And the same man expressly admits that he learned the doctrine about God from the ancients, saying in the Laws: “God, as the ancient saying has it, holding the beginning, the end, and the middle of all things that are, accomplishes his course straight, going about according to nature. And Justice always follows him, the avenger of those who fall short of the divine law. He who is to be happy holds fast to her and follows her, humble and orderly; but one who is lifted up by boasting, or elated by wealth or honors or beauty of body, with youth and folly, burns in his soul with insolence, as though he needed neither ruler nor any guide, but were able to guide others too; he is left forsaken by God; and being forsaken, and taking others like himself, he leaps about throwing everything into confusion, and to many he seemed to be someone; but after no long time, paying a penalty not to be blamed by Justice, he utterly overthrows himself, his house, and his city.” So Plato. But set beside “God, holding the beginning, the end, and the middle of all things that are” the words of the Hebrew prophecy, “I am God the first, and I am after these things”; and beside “accomplishes his course straight, going about according to nature,” the words “His face saw uprightness.” And with “Justice always follows him, the avenger of those who fall short of the divine law,” compare “The Lord is righteous and has loved righteousness,” and “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord,” and “For the Lord is an avenger, and repays those who act with excessive pride.” And following “he who is to be happy holds fast to her and follows her, humble” is “You shall walk after the Lord your God.” And with “one lifted up by boasting is left forsaken by God,” compare “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble,” and “the joy of the ungodly is a monstrous fall.” These are a few out of countless sayings about the God over all. But see also what the teachings about the second cause are in their meaning.

On the Second Cause

Let what concerns the first Cause of all be agreed by us in this way. Now consider also what concerns the second, whom the oracles of the Hebrews teach to be the Word of God and God from God, just as we ourselves have been taught to speak of God. Moses, then, expressly speaks of two Lords, where he says, “And the Lord rained from the Lord fire and brimstone on the city of the ungodly”; where, as is usual, he put the same Hebrew characters for both; that is the four-letter name of God, unpronounceable among them. And David too, another prophet and king of the Hebrews, agreeing with this, says, “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand,” indicating the supreme God by the first “Lord,” and the one second to him by the second name. For to whom else is it right to suppose the right hand of the unbegotten Godhead is granted than to him alone of whom we speak? The same prophet in other places shows him more clearly to be the Word of the Father, setting forth the one of whom he speaks as Creator of the universe, where he says, “By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made firm.” And he presents the same one as Savior of those who need his healing, saying, “He sent his Word and healed them.” And his son and successor Solomon, presenting the same thought with another name, saying “Wisdom” instead of “Word,” relates the following as in her person: “I, Wisdom, made counsel my dwelling, and called on knowledge and understanding.” Then next he adds: “The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for his works; before the age he founded me, in the beginning, before he made the earth, before the mountains were settled; and before all the hills he begets me. When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him.” And again these words are his: “God by Wisdom founded the earth, and prepared the heavens in understanding.” And these too are said to be his: “And all things hidden and manifest I learned; for Wisdom, the artificer of all, taught me.” Then he adds: “What Wisdom is and how she came to be I will declare, and I will not hide mysteries from you, but will trace her out from the beginning of her origin.” And next he explains as follows: “For in her is a spirit intelligent, holy, only-begotten, manifold, subtle, nimble, clear, undefiled, all-powerful, all-surveying, and passing through all spirits that are intelligent, pure, and most subtle. For Wisdom is more mobile than any motion; she pervades and penetrates all things because of her purity. For she is a breath of the power of God and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled enters into her. For she is a radiance of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness. And she reaches mightily from end to end and orders all things well.” So the Scripture. Philo the Hebrew, interpreting more plainly the meaning of the doctrine, sets it out in this way:

Philo on the Second Cause

“For it is fitting for those who have made fellowship with knowledge to long to see Being; but if they cannot, at least its image, the most sacred Word.” In the same work he also says this: “Even if one is not yet worthy to be called a son of God, let him strive to be adorned according to his firstborn Word, the eldest of the angels, as it were an archangel of many names. For he is called Beginning, and Name of God, and Word, and the Man after God’s image, and He who sees, Israel. For this reason I was led a little before to praise the virtues of those who say, ‘We are all sons of one man.’ For even if we have not yet become fit to be thought children of God, yet we may be children of his invisible image, the most sacred Word; for the eldest Word is the image of God.” And again he adds: “I have heard also one of the companions of Moses utter such an oracle as this: ‘Here is a man whose name is Dawn.’ A most novel title, if you think it is said of the one composed of body and soul; but if of that incorporeal one who bears the divine form, you will agree that the name Dawn has been given him most fittingly. For the Father of the universe caused this eldest son to rise, whom elsewhere he named Firstborn. And the one begotten, imitating the ways of his father, looked to his archetypal patterns and shaped the forms.” Let these passages from Philo the Hebrew be set down here, taken from the work entitled That the Worse Is Wont to Attack the Better. I have already elsewhere, in setting out the doctrines of the piety of the ancient Hebrews in the books of the Preparation for the Gospel, treated adequately of the second cause too, and to those passages I shall refer the studious now. So many teachings, then, about the second cause of the universe having been given among the Hebrews in this way, it is now time to listen to Plato saying this in the Epinomis:

Plato on the Second Cause

“And let us give honors, not appointing a year to one and a month to another, nor to others any portion or time in which it goes through its own orbit, helping to complete the cosmos which the Word, most divine of all, ordered; which the happy man first admired, and then conceived a love to learn all that is possible for mortal nature.” And in the letter to Hermeias, Erastus, and Coriscus he has set down the doctrine very guardedly, writing word for word: “This letter you three must all read, preferably together, or if not, two by two in common, as often as possible; and use it as a compact and sovereign law, as is just, swearing by it with a seriousness not without culture and with education, the sister of seriousness; and swearing by the God of all things, the leader of things present and to come, and by the Lord and Father of the leader and cause; whom, if we philosophize rightly, we shall all know clearly, so far as is possible for happy men.” Does it seem to you that in saying this Plato followed the doctrines of the Hebrews, or from where else did it occur to him to speak of another God greater than the cause of all created things, the Father of the ruler of all? And where did he get the idea of applying the name “Lord” to the Father of the Creator, when nothing of the kind had yet come to the ears, or even into the mind, of any Greek before him? And if we again need other witnesses for an undisputed demonstration of the philosopher’s meaning and of the construction of the argument, listen to what Plotinus makes clear in what he wrote On the Three Principal Hypostases:

Plotinus on the same

“If anyone admires this sensible world, looking at its size and beauty and the order of its eternal motion, and the gods in it, some visible and some unseen, and the daemons, and all animals and plants, let him go up to its archetype and the truer world, and there see all things intelligible, eternal in their own understanding and life, and over them pure Mind presiding, and wisdom beyond reckoning.” Then next he adds: “Who, then, begot this? The simple one, prior to such a being, the cause both of its being and of its being many, the maker of number. For number is not first; the One is before the dyad, and the dyad is second, having come from the One. And again further on he adds: “How, then, and what must we think about that which remains? A radiance from it, but from it while it remains, like the bright light around the sun, running round it, always born from it while it remains. And all beings, while they remain, give out from their own substance, from the power present in them, a necessary existence around them toward what is outside them, dependent on them, being as it were an image of the archetypes from which it sprang. Fire gives out the heat from itself, and snow does not keep its cold only within. Fragrant things above all bear witness to this; for while they exist something goes out from them around them, which whatever is near enjoys while they exist. And all things that are already perfect beget; and what is always perfect begets always and something eternal; and it begets something less than itself. What then must we say of the most perfect? That nothing comes from it except the greatest things after it. And the greatest after it is Mind, and it is second. For Mind sees it and needs it alone, while it needs nothing of Mind. And what is begotten from what is greater than Mind is Mind; and Mind is greater than all things, because the others come after it.” Next to this he adds: “Everything longs for what begot it and loves it, especially when begetter and begotten are alone. And when the begetter is also the best, the begotten is necessarily with it, so as to be separated only by otherness. We say that Mind is its image; for we must speak more clearly.” And again he adds to this: “And for this reason Plato’s things are threefold: ‘All things are about the King of all,’ he says, the first things; ‘and the second about the second, and the third about the third.’ He also says there is a ‘father of the cause,’ calling Mind the cause; for Mind is his Demiurge. And he says that this one makes the soul in that mixing bowl. And the cause being Mind, he calls the Good its father, beyond Mind and beyond being. In many places he calls being and Mind the Idea. So Plato knew that Mind comes from the Good and Soul from Mind; and these teachings are not new, nor of today, but were said long ago, though not openly; and our present teachings have become interpreters of those, proving by testimonies from Plato’s own writings that these views are ancient.” So Plotinus. And Numenius, championing Plato’s views in his books On the Good, also interprets as follows in speaking of the second cause:

Numenius on the Second Cause

“Whoever is to understand about the first and the second God must first distinguish each thing in order and with a certain good arrangement; and then, when it seems to be in good shape, he must attempt to speak in an orderly way, and not otherwise; or else, for one who lays hold too early, before the first things are in place, the treasure, as they say, turns to ashes. Let us not suffer the same; but calling on God to become the guide of our discourse about himself and to show us a treasure of thoughts, let us begin thus. We must pray now, but we must also make distinctions. The first God, being in himself, is simple, because, being wholly united with himself, he is never divisible. The God who is second and third, however, is one; but coming into contact with matter, which is a dyad, he unifies it, but is split by it, since it has a desiring character and is in flux. Because he is not turned toward the intelligible (for then he would be turned toward himself), through looking at matter and caring for it he becomes neglectful of himself. And he touches the sensible and tends it, and still raises it up to his own character, having reached out toward matter.” And after other things he says: “For the first God must not create, and the first God must be thought to be the father of the creating God. If, then, we were inquiring about the creative principle, saying that the one who existed first ought in this way to be especially fitted to make, this approach would be the proper one for the argument. But if the discussion is not about the Creator, and we are inquiring about the First, I retract what has been said, and let those things be unspoken; and I shall go on to capture the argument, hunting it from another side. But before the capture of the argument, let us agree among ourselves on a statement not open to dispute: that the first God is idle of all works and is king, while the creative God governs, traveling through heaven. Through him our voyage too takes place, as Mind is sent down in passage to all who are appointed to share in it. When God looks at each of us and is turned toward us, bodies then live and are quickened, God tending them with his rays; but when God turns away to his own watch-tower, these are extinguished, while Mind lives, enjoying a blessed life.” So Numenius. But set beside his words those sung long ago among the Hebrews in the prophecy of David in this way: “How great are your works, Lord! In wisdom you have made all things; the earth is filled with your creation. All things wait for you, to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they will gather it; and when you open your hand, all things will be filled with goodness. But when you turn away your face, they will be troubled; you will take away their spirit, and they will fail and return to their dust. You will send forth your spirit, and they will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth.” For how would these differ from the philosopher’s thought, which says that “when God looks at each of us and is turned toward us, bodies then live and are quickened, God tending them with his rays; but when God turns away to his own watch-tower, these are extinguished”? Again, since the saving Word has said among us, “I am the vine, my Father is the husbandman, you are the branches,” hear what Numenius teaches about the second cause: “And again, as the husbandman is related to the planter, in the same way above all is the first God related to the Demiurge. For he, being the seed of every soul, sows it into all things that partake of him; while the lawgiver plants and distributes and transplants into each of us what has been sown beforehand from there.” And next, again, on how the second came to exist from the first cause, he says this: “Whatever things, when given, pass to the receiver and depart from the giver, are service, goods, money, coin minted and stamped; these are mortal and human. But divine things are such that, when imparted, they come to be there from here, yet have not departed from here; and having come there they benefit the one and do not harm the other, and further benefit him by recollection of what he knew. This fine possession is fine knowledge, which benefits the receiver while the giver is not deprived of it. As you might see a lamp lit from another lamp having light, which has not robbed the first, but its own material was kindled from that one’s fire. Such is the possession of knowledge: given and received, it remains with the giver and is present the same with the receiver. The cause of this, stranger, is nothing human; but that the state and substance that possesses knowledge is the same both in God who gave it and in me and you who received it. That is why Plato too said that wisdom came to men from Prometheus with a most brilliant fire.” And again going on next he says: “These are the lives, the one of the first, the other of the second God. Clearly the first God will be stationary, while the second, on the contrary, is in motion. The first is concerned with intelligible things, the second with intelligible and sensible. Do not be surprised that I said this; you will hear something far more surprising. Instead of the motion belonging to the second, I say that the rest belonging to the first is an innate motion, from which the order of the cosmos, its eternal permanence, and its preservation are poured out upon the universe.” Besides this, in the sixth book too he adds this: “Since Plato knew that among men only the Demiurge is known, while the first Mind, which is called Being itself, is wholly unknown among them, he therefore spoke as though one were to say thus: ‘Men, the Mind you conjecture is not the first; there is another Mind before this, older and more divine.’” And after other things he adds: “A helmsman, borne along in the middle of the sea, sitting high above the rudders, steers the ship with the tillers; but his eyes and mind are stretched straight up to the ether, to the things on high, and his course goes up through heaven while he sails below on the sea. So too the Demiurge, binding matter with harmony so that it may neither break apart nor wander off, is himself seated above it, as above a ship on the sea, namely matter; he steers the harmony, guiding it by the Ideas, and instead of heaven he looks to the God above, who draws his eyes upward; and he takes his power of judgment from contemplation and his impulse from desire.” And the saving Word among us says: “The Son can do nothing of himself, unless he sees the Father doing something.” But so much for Numenius on this too. That he was explaining not his own views but Plato’s, there is no need to add to his own words. And that Plato was not the first to use these conceptions, but the wise men of the Hebrews anticipated him, has been shown by what has been set out. With good reason, then, Amelius, who became distinguished among the recent philosophers, a zealous follower of Plato’s philosophy if anyone was, though he called the Hebrew theologian a barbarian, and even if he did not think fit to mention John the evangelist by name, nevertheless bears witness to his words, writing these very words:

Amelius on the theology of our Evangelist John

“And this, then, was the Word, by whom the things that came to be, being always, came to be, as Heraclitus too would hold; and, by Zeus, the one whom the barbarian holds, established in the rank and dignity of the beginning, to be with God and to be God; through whom all things without exception came to be; in whom what came to be has its nature as living and life and being; and who falls into bodies, and, having put on flesh, appears as a man, while even then showing the greatness of his nature; and indeed, when released again, is deified and is God, such as he was before he was brought down into the body, the flesh, and the man.” These words would be plainly seen to have been paraphrased from the barbarian theology, no longer veiled but now openly, with uncovered head. And who was his barbarian but John, the evangelist of our Savior, a Hebrew of the Hebrews? At the beginning of his own writing he speaks of God somewhat thus: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be that has come to be. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father.” And hear what another theologian of the Hebrews relates about the same: “Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him were created all things in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible; and all things hold together through him, and all things were created in him, visible and invisible.” So also on the existence and substance of the second cause the wise men of the Greeks agree with the Hebrews. Let us pass on to other matters.

On the three primary Hypostases

The oracles of the Hebrews, after the teaching about Father and Son, list the Holy Spirit in the third rank, and set forth the holy and blessed Trinity in this way: the third power transcends all created nature, and is the first of the intelligent substances that came to exist through the Son, and third from the first cause. See how Plato too hinted at some such things in his letter to Dionysius, saying: “I must tell you in riddles, so that if the tablet should meet with any accident in the folds of sea or land, whoever reads it may not understand. It is thus: all things are about the King of all, and all things are for his sake, and he is the cause of all fine things; and the second is about the second things, and the third about the third. The human soul, then, longs to learn about them what sort they are, looking to the things akin to itself.” Those who try to explain Plato refer these words to the first God, to the second cause, and third to the soul of the world, defining it too as a third God. But the divine oracles place the holy and blessed Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the rank of the first principle, in the way that has been set out. Next it follows to examine the nature of the Good.

On the essence of the good

The divine Scripture of the Hebrews teaches in various ways that the nature of the Good, and the Good itself, is nothing other than God, where it says: “The Lord is good to all who wait for him, to the soul that will seek him”; and “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures for ever”; and where the saving Word declared to one who asked him about this: “Why do you ask me about the good? No one is good but one, God.” Hear what Plato says in the Timaeus: “Let us say, then, for what cause the framer framed becoming and this universe. He was good; and in the good no envy ever arises about anything. Being free of this, he wished all things to become as like himself as possible.” And in the Republic he says this: “Is not the sun, then, not sight, but, being its cause, seen by sight itself? — So it is, he said. — This, then, I said, you may say I mean by the offspring of the Good, which the Good begot in proportion to itself: as the Good is in the intelligible realm to mind and its objects, so is this in the visible realm to sight and its objects.” And next he adds: “This, then, which gives truth to the things known and gives the knower the power of knowing, you may say is the Idea of the Good.” And again he says: “You will say, I think, that the sun gives to visible things not only the power of being seen, but also their coming into being, growth, and nourishment, though it is not itself coming-into-being. — How could it be? — Say, then, that to things known not only their being known is present from the Good, but also their being and their substance come to them from it, though the Good is not substance, but beyond substance, surpassing it in dignity and power.” In these words Plato says most clearly that the intelligible substances have from the Good, that is, from God, not only their being known but also their being and substance; and that the Good “is not substance, but beyond substance, surpassing it in dignity and power.” So he does not make them of the same substance with it, nor think them unbegotten, since they received their being and substance from him who is not substance but beyond substance, surpassing it in dignity and power; whom alone the oracles of the Hebrews rightly proclaim as God, since he is the cause of all things. Things, then, that have neither their being nor their substance from themselves, and are not of the nature of the Good, it is not reasonable to regard as gods, since the good is not theirs by nature; for this must be ascribed to one alone and to no other, to the only Good, which Plato admirably proclaimed “beyond all substance, surpassing it in dignity and power.” Again Numenius too, in his books On the Good, interpreting Plato’s meaning, sets it out in this way:

Numenius on the good

“Bodies we can grasp, by signs taken from like things and from the marks present in things nearby; but there is no means whatever to grasp the Good from anything nearby or from any like sensible thing. Rather, it will be as if someone sitting on a look-out, peering sharply, caught sight with one glance of a small fishing boat, one of those skiffs, alone, solitary, deserted, caught between the waves: so someone must go far away from sensible things and commune with the Good alone, one with one, where there is neither man nor any other living thing, nor body great or small, but a certain unspeakable and indescribable, truly divine solitude, where are the haunts, pastimes, and splendors of the Good; and it itself in peace, in kindness, the tranquil, the ruling, gracious, riding upon substance. But if anyone, clinging to sensible things, imagines the Good flitting upon them, and then in his luxury thinks he has met with the Good, he is entirely wrong. For in truth no easy but a divine method is needed toward it; and it is best, having neglected sensible things and applied oneself vigorously to the mathematical sciences and contemplated numbers, so to study the lesson: what is Being.” This in the first book; and in the fifth he says this: “If substance and the Idea are intelligible, and Mind was agreed to be older than this and its cause, this alone is found to be the Good. For if the Creator God is the principle of becoming, the Good suffices to be the principle of substance. As the Creator God is to the Good, being its imitator, so is becoming to substance; for it is its image and imitation. And if the Creator of becoming is good, surely the Creator of substance will be the Good itself, inherent in substance. For the second, being double, himself makes his own Idea and the cosmos, being Creator; and then he is wholly contemplative. Having counted up the names of four things, let these be the four: the first God, the Good itself; his imitator, the good Creator; and substance, one that of the first, another that of the second; whose imitation is the beautiful cosmos, adorned by participation in the beautiful.” And in the sixth he adds: “Those that partake of it partake in nothing else but in thinking alone; in this way, then, they would benefit from the meeting with the Good, and not otherwise. And indeed thinking has fallen to the first alone. Since, then, it is by it that the others are colored and made good, if this belongs to it alone, one alone, it would be the mark of a foolish soul still to dispute. For if the second is good not of himself but from the first, how is it possible that the one by participation in whom he is good is not good, especially if the second has received a share of him as good? So it is that Plato, by reasoning, rendered to the sharp-sighted that the Good is one.” And again next he says: “These things being so, Plato set them down separately here and there. For apart he wrote of the Creator, the cyclic one, in the Timaeus, saying “He was good”; while in the Republic he called the Good the Idea of the Good, as though the Good were the Idea of the Creator, since he appears to us good by participation in the first and only one. For as men are said to be shaped by the Idea of Man, oxen by that of Ox, and horses by the Idea of Horse, so also, fittingly, if the Creator is good by participation in the first Good, the first Mind would be the Idea, being the Good itself.”

On the Ideas in Plato

“Having come to be in this way (clearly, the cosmos), it has been fashioned after what is grasped by reason and understanding and is always the same. And these things being so, it is wholly necessary that this cosmos be an image of something. … For that contains within itself all intelligible living things, just as this cosmos contains us.” So Plato in the Timaeus. The meaning of what has been said I shall set out from the work composed by Didymus On the Doctrines of Plato. He writes thus: “He says that the Ideas are certain defined patterns, by kinds, of sensible things according to nature, of which knowledge and definitions arise; for beside all men a certain Man is conceived, beside all horses a Horse, and in general beside living things a Living Thing unbegotten and incorruptible. And as many impressions come from one seal and many likenesses of one man, so from each single Idea come a multitude of natures of sensible bodies: from that of Man all men, and on the same principle with the other natural things. And the Idea is an eternal substance, the cause and principle of each thing’s being such as it itself is. As, then, the particular Ideas precede sensible bodies as archetypes, so the most beautiful and most perfect substance, containing all of them in itself, is the pattern of this cosmos; for it was made like this by God who created it, by providence, out of all substance.” So too from the man just mentioned. But the all-wise Moses anticipated these things too, teaching that before the visible sun and stars, before the seen heaven, which he calls the firmament, before our dry land, and before our day and night, another light different from the sun’s, a day and night and the rest were made by God, the ruler and cause of all. And the sons of the Hebrews after Moses also define a certain incorporeal sun, not visible to all nor subject to mortal eyes, as the prophet says in the person of God: “But to those who fear me the sun of righteousness shall rise.” And righteousness itself, not the kind that is in men but its Idea, another prophet of the Hebrews knows, who says of God: “Who raised up righteousness from the east? He called it before his face, and it shall go before the nations.” And our common discourse a little earlier showed from the Scripture of the Hebrews the divine Word, incorporeal and substantial. Of this Word it is also said among them: “who was made for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” He is also called life, also wisdom, also truth. And the writings of the Hebrews teach that all things that exist and subsist in substance (if indeed the apostles and disciples of our Savior too are Hebrews), and indeed countless other incorporeal powers, beyond heaven and all material and flowing substance; whose images, they say, are stamped in sensible things; and in these cases they have adopted the very name “image.” At any rate they have said expressly that man is an image of an intelligible pattern, and that the whole life of men passes in an image. Moses says: “And God made man; in the image of God he made him.” And again another Hebrew, philosophizing on the teachings of his fathers, says: “Surely man walks about in an image.” And now hear how the interpreters of the sacred laws make clear the meaning in the writings of Moses. Philo the Hebrew, interpreting the teachings of his fathers, says in these words:

Philo on the Ideas in Moses

“If one wished to use plainer terms, he would say that the intelligible cosmos is nothing other than the Word of God already engaged in making the cosmos. For the intelligible city too is nothing other than the reasoning of the architect, already planning to found the city. This doctrine is Moses’, not mine. For in recording the creation of man afterward he expressly admits that he was fashioned after the image of God. And if the part is an image of an image, then clearly the whole form too, this whole sensible cosmos, if it is greater than the human, is an imitation of the divine image; and the archetypal seal, which we say is the intelligible cosmos, would itself be the pattern, the archetypal Idea of Ideas, the Word of God.” “He says that in the beginning God made the heaven and the earth, taking ‘beginning’ not, as some think, as a beginning in time (for there was no time before the cosmos), but either it came to be with it or after it. For since time is the interval of the motion of the cosmos, and there could be no motion before the thing moved, but motion must arise either after it or with it, it is necessary that time too came to be either of the same age as the cosmos or younger than it; and to dare to declare it older is unphilosophical. And if ‘beginning’ is not now taken in the temporal sense, it would be likely that the numerical sense is indicated, so that ‘in the beginning he made’ is equal to ‘first he made the heaven.’” Then next he says: “First, then, the Maker made an incorporeal heaven and an invisible earth, and the Idea of air and of the void; the one he named darkness, since air is by nature black, the other the abyss, for the void is very deep and yawning. Then the incorporeal substance of water and of spirit, and above all, seventh, of light, which again was incorporeal, the intelligible pattern of the sun and of all the light-bearing stars that were to be established in the heaven. Spirit and light were granted precedence. The one he named ‘of God,’ because spirit is most life-giving and God is the cause of life; the light, because it is surpassingly beautiful. For the intelligible is as much brighter and more radiant than the visible, I think, as the sun than darkness, day than night, and mind, the ruler of the whole soul, than the criteria of sense, the eyes of the body. That invisible and intelligible light has become an image of the divine Word who interpreted its creation; and it is a super-celestial star, a source of the sensible stars, which one would not be off the mark to call ‘all-brightness,’ from which the sun, moon, and the other planets and fixed stars draw, each according to its power, the gleams that befit them, that unmixed and pure radiance being dimmed when it begins to turn in the change from intelligible to sensible; for nothing in the realm of sense is pure.” And after a little he adds: “When light had come to be, and darkness had withdrawn, and boundaries were fixed in the intervals between, evening and morning, at once the measure of time was necessarily completed, which the Maker rightly called day; and not ‘first’ day but ‘one’ day, which is so said because of the singleness of the intelligible world, which has the nature of a unit. The incorporeal world, then, was now complete, established in the divine Word; and the sensible world was being brought to completion after its pattern. And first of its parts, the best of all, the Creator made heaven, which he fittingly called firmament, since it is bodily. For body is by nature solid, being extended in three dimensions; and what other notion of solid and body is there but what is extended in every direction? With good reason, then, setting the sensible and bodily over against the intelligible and incorporeal, he called this firm.” So Philo. And Clement agrees with him in his sixth Miscellany, saying thus:

Clement on the same

“Again, the barbarian philosophy knows one world as intelligible and another as sensible, the one archetypal and the other an image of the beautiful pattern. And it assigns the intelligible to the monad and the sensible to the number six; for among the Pythagoreans six is called marriage, as a generative number. And in the monad it establishes an invisible heaven, a holy earth, and intelligible light. ‘For in the beginning,’ it says, ‘God made the heaven and the earth; and the earth was invisible.’ Then it adds, ‘And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.’ But in the sensible creation it makes a solid heaven (and what is solid is sensible), a visible earth, and light that is seen. Does not Plato seem to you to have left the Ideas of living things in the intelligible world from this source, and to create the sensible forms according to the intelligible kinds? With good reason, then, Moses says that the body was moulded from earth, which Plato calls the earthly tent, but that the rational soul was breathed from above by God into the face. For there, they say, the ruling part is seated, interpreting the entrance of the soul through the senses as an addition in the first-formed man; and for this reason man came to be after the image and after the likeness. For the image of God is the divine and royal Word, the impassible Man, and the image of the image is the human mind.” Let us also hear what is to be said next.

The Hebrews and Plato on the adverse powers

Further, Plato, following the teachings of the Hebrews, says that there are not only incorporeal and good powers but also opposite ones, writing somewhat as follows in the tenth book of the Laws: “If soul manages and dwells in all things that move everywhere, must we not say that it manages the heaven too? — Certainly. — One soul, or more? — More, I will answer for you both. Let us set down no fewer than two: one that does good, and one able to work the opposite.” Then further on he says: “For since we have agreed among ourselves that the heaven is full of many good things, but also of the opposite, and more of those that are not good, such a battle, we say, is undying and needs wonderful watchfulness. And gods and daemons are our allies, and we in turn are the possessions of gods and daemons.” Where Plato got these things I could not say; but what I can say truly is that this doctrine too had been agreed among the Hebrews countless ages before Plato was born. Their Scripture says: “And it was as this day, and the angels of God came to stand before God; and the devil came in the midst of them, having gone round the earth and walked about in it”; calling the opposite power the devil, and the good ones angels of God. These good powers it calls divine spirits and ministers of God, where it says: “Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.” And the struggle against the opposing ones is set forth thus by the one who says: “Our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” And Plato seems plainly to paraphrase the oracle of Moses that says: “When the Most High divided the nations, when he scattered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God”; by which he determined that the whole human race is the possession of gods and daemons.

The Hebrews and Plato on the immortality of the soul.

And in the teaching on the immortality of the soul Plato differs in no way from Moses in opinion. Moses first defined the soul in man as an immortal substance, saying that it is an image of God, or rather that it was made after the image of God. “For God said,” he says, “Let us make man after our image and likeness. And God made man; after the image of God he made him.” And next, dividing the composite being in his account into the visible body and the man understood as soul, he adds: “And God took dust from the earth and formed man, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.” He also says that man was made ruler and king of all things on earth. He says: “And God said, Let us make man after our image and after our likeness, and let them rule over the fishes of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, and all the earth. And God made man in his image; after the image of God he made him.” How else could the image and likeness of God be conceived but according to the powers in God and the likeness of virtue? Hear what Plato, as one taught by Moses in these matters too, says in the Alcibiades: “Can we say, then, that there is anything in the soul more divine than that with which knowing and understanding are concerned? — We cannot. — This part of it, then, resembles God; and anyone looking to this, and knowing all that is divine, God and understanding, would so know himself best. — Apparently. — Then, just as mirrors are clearer, purer, and brighter than the mirror in the eye, so God is purer and brighter than the best in our soul? — It seems so, Socrates. — Looking at God, then, we should use him as the finest mirror, and, among human things, the virtue of the soul; and so we should best see and know ourselves. — Yes.” So in the Alcibiades. And hear how in the dialogue On the Soul he explains more broadly the matters in these passages: “Shall we then assume, he said, two kinds of things, the one visible, the other invisible? — Let us assume it, he said. — And the invisible always the same, the visible never the same? — Let us assume this too, he said. Come then, he said, is there any other part of ourselves, or is one part body and the other soul? — No other, he said. — To which kind, then, should we say the body is more like and more akin? — That is clear to everyone, he said: to the visible. — And the soul? Visible or invisible? — Not visible to men, at least, Socrates, he said. — But we were speaking of what is visible and not to the nature of men, or do you think to some other? — To that of men. What then do we say about the soul? That it is visible or invisible? — Not visible. — Invisible, then? — Yes. — The soul, then, is more like the invisible than the body is, and the body more like the visible. — Absolutely necessarily, Socrates. Were we not saying this too long ago, that the soul, when it uses the body to examine something, through seeing or hearing or some other sense (for to examine something through the body is to do so through sense), is then dragged by the body to things that are never the same, and itself wanders, is confused, and is dizzy as if drunk, since it is touching such things? — Certainly. But when she examines by herself alone, she goes away there, to what is pure and always is and is immortal and unchanging; and being akin to it, she is always with it, whenever she is by herself and is free to be; and she has ceased from her wandering, and in relation to those things she is always the same and unchanging, since she is touching such things. And this state of hers is called wisdom. Altogether well and truly said, Socrates, he said. — To which kind, then, does the soul seem to you more like and more akin, from what was said before and what is said now? — Everyone, I think, Socrates, he said, even the slowest to learn, would agree from this way of inquiry that the soul is in every respect more like what is always the same than what is not. And the body? — To the other. — Look at it this way too: when soul and body are together, nature orders the one to serve and be ruled, the other to rule and be master. In this respect again, which seems to you like the divine and which like the mortal? Or does it not seem to you that the divine is by nature fit to rule and lead, the mortal to be ruled and serve? — It does to me. Which, then, does the soul resemble? — Clearly, Socrates, the soul the divine, the body the mortal. — Consider, then, Cebes, he said, whether from all that has been said this follows for us: the soul is most like the divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, and always the same with itself; the body, on the other hand, most like the human, mortal, unintelligible, multiform, dissoluble, and never the same with itself. Have we anything else to say against this, dear Cebes, to show it is not so? — We have not. — Well then, this being so, is it not fitting for the body to be quickly dissolved, but for the soul to be wholly indissoluble, or nearly so? How could it not? — Do you notice, then, he said, that when a man dies, his visible part, the body, which lies in the visible world and which we call the corpse, whose nature is to be dissolved, to fall apart and be dispersed, does not at once suffer any of these things, but lasts a fair time; and if one dies with his body in good condition and at such an age, a very long time indeed. For the body, shrunk and embalmed like those embalmed in Egypt, remains nearly whole for an incredible time. And some parts of the body, even if it decays, bones and sinews and all such things, are nevertheless, so to speak, immortal, are they not? — Yes. And the soul, then (the invisible, which goes to another place like itself, noble and pure and invisible, to Hades in truth, to the good and wise God, where, if God wills, my soul too must go shortly), this soul of ours, being such and of such a nature, is it, when released from the body, at once blown away and destroyed, as most men say? Far from it, dear Cebes and Simmias; rather it is much more like this. If she departs pure, dragging nothing of the body with her, since she willingly had no communion with it in life, but fled it and gathered herself into herself, always practising this (and this is nothing other than philosophizing rightly and truly practising being dead readily; or would this not be a practice of death? — Altogether so.) Then, being so, she goes away to what is like her, the invisible, the divine, immortal, and wise; arriving there, it is hers to be happy, freed from wandering and folly, fears, wild loves, and the other human evils, and, as is said of the initiated, truly spending the rest of time with the gods. Shall we say so, Cebes, or otherwise? — So, by Zeus, said Cebes. But if, I think, she departs from the body polluted and impure, since she was always with the body, serving it and loving it, bewitched by it and by its desires and pleasures, so as to think nothing true but the bodily, what one can touch and see and eat and drink and use for sexual pleasure, while what is dark to the eyes and invisible, but intelligible and to be grasped by philosophy, she was accustomed to hate, fear, and flee; do you think a soul in this state will depart by itself, pure? — Not at all, he said.” So Plato. Porphyry unfolds the meaning in the first book of his work Against Boethus, On the Soul, writing in this way:

Porphyry on the same

“For example, the argument from likeness seemed strong to Plato for establishing the immortality of the soul. For if it is like the divine, immortal, invisible, indivisible, indissoluble, substantial, and established in incorruption, how could it not belong to the class of its pattern? For when, between two clearly opposite extremes, such as rational and irrational, there is dispute about which side some other thing belongs to, one way of proof is to show which of the opposites it is like. So, although the human race in its first age is held in irrationality, and many abound in the errors of irrationality even to old age, still, because it bears many likenesses to the purely rational, this race was believed from the beginning to be rational. Since, then, the system of the gods is plainly divine, pure, and indissoluble, and on the other hand the earthly is clearly dissoluble and liable to corruption, and some dispute to which of these sides the soul has gone over, Plato thought the truth must be tracked down from likeness. And since it is in no way like the mortal, dissoluble, unintelligent, lifeless, and therefore tangible, sensible, coming to be and perishing, but like the divine, immortal, invisible, intelligent, living, and akin to truth, and all that he reckons up about it, he thought one should not admit that the other likenesses to God are in it while wishing to deny it the likeness of substance, through which it has come to have these too. For as things unlike God in their activities at once differ from him in the constitution of their substance, so it follows that things that share in the same activities in some way have already acquired likeness of substance. For through being a certain kind of substance, activities too are of a certain kind, as flowing from it and being its offshoots.” Hear now Boethus removing the force of this argument right at the start of the discussion he composed, writing thus: “Whether the soul is immortal and a nature superior to all destruction, one must wait for many arguments and go through them before declaring. But that nothing in us is more like God than the soul, one would believe without needing much effort, not only because of the continuous and unceasing motion it imparts in us, but because of its own mind. Looking at this, the natural philosopher of Croton too said that it is immortal and by nature flees all rest, like the divine bodies. Indeed, in general, if one considers the form of the soul, and especially the ruling mind in us, what great counsels and what sort of impulses it often sets in motion, a great likeness to God would appear.” And next he adds: “For if the soul is shown to be the most like the divine of all things, what further need is there of other arguments to prove its immortality, beginning with this one and not counting it as one among many, since it is enough to put fair-minded people to shame, that it could not have shared in activities like the divine unless it were itself divine? For if, though buried in what is mortal, dissoluble, unintelligent, dead in itself, always perishing and flowing toward the change of destruction, it makes and holds this together, and shows its own divine substance, though screened and hindered by the all-destructive figure set before it, how, if it were separated by reason, like gold from the clay plastered round it, would it not at once reveal its own form, as alone like God, and also, because it shares in him, preserving the likenesses in its activities, and even in its most mortal part (as when it is shut up in the mortal) not being dissolved for this reason, that it was of a nature without share in corruption?” And further on he says: “Fittingly it appears divine from its likeness to the indivisible, and mortal from the things it draws near to; and it goes down and goes up, and is mortal in form and like the immortals. For it is a man who stuffs his belly and strives to be glutted, like the beasts; and it is a man who can save the ship in the sea in dangers by knowledge, and save in sickness, and who finds the truth, and has devised methods for grasping knowledge, inventions of fire-sticks, the observation of sundials, and imitations of the Creator’s works. For man devised a way to construct on earth the conjunctions of the seven planets with their motions, imitating by machines the things in heaven. And what has he not devised, showing the divine mind within him, equal to God? From these he shows the daring of an Olympian, divine, and in no way mortal being; but because the many, through self-love and their own downward bent, cannot see him, he has persuaded them to judge him, from external appearances, as mortal in form like themselves; this too being one way of consolation from vice, to persuade themselves, resting on the comparison of their own wretchedness through outward appearances, that all men are alike, outside and inside.” Moses has been shown to be the teacher of all these things; in relating the first creation of man in the words set out above, he confirmed the teaching on the immortality of the soul through its likeness to the divine. But since the views of Moses and Plato on incorporeal and invisible substance have been shown to agree and harmonize, it is time to look at the other parts of Plato’s philosophy too, and to show that the man is in all things friendly to the Hebrews, except where he turned aside and was led to say something more human than the true doctrine. For example, whatever the man said rightly agrees with the doctrines of Moses, while whatever he held that was not acceptable to Moses and the prophets would not have a consistent argument. This will be shown by us at the proper time. Meanwhile, since what was laid down in the contemplation of intelligible things has been found harmonious and in agreement, it is time to return again to the study of sensible nature and run briefly over the man’s agreement with the teachings of the Hebrews.

That the world is created

Moses declared that this universe came into being, made by God. At the start of his writing he says, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth,” and after the particulars he adds, “This is the book of the generation of heaven and earth, when it came to be, in the day that God made the heaven and the earth.” Hear how Plato does not depart from this meaning, writing somewhat as follows himself: “Again, everything that comes to be must come to be by some cause; for it is altogether impossible for anything to have becoming without a cause.” And he adds: “The whole heaven, or cosmos, or whatever other name it would best accept, let it be so named by us. We must first consider about it what is laid down that one must consider about everything at the outset: whether it always was, having no beginning of becoming, or has come to be, having begun from some beginning. It has come to be. For it is visible and tangible and has a body; and all such things are sensible, and sensible things, grasped by opinion, were shown to come to be and to be begotten. And what comes to be, we say, must come to be by some cause. Now to find the maker and father of this universe is a task, and having found him, it is impossible to declare him to all.” And again next he says: “So, then, according to the likely account we must say that this cosmos came to be a living being, ensouled and intelligent in truth, through the providence of God.”

On the luminaries in heaven

Again, Moses taught that these too had come to be, where he said: “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to shine on the earth; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years. And God made the two great lights, and the stars; and he set them in the firmament of heaven.” Likewise Plato: “From such a word and thought of God,” he says, “concerning the coming to be of time, so that time might be born, the sun, the moon, and five other stars, called planets, came to be for the marking and guarding of the numbers of time. And God, having made their bodies, set them in their orbits.” Observe whether Plato’s words “from the word and thought of God” would not be like the Hebrew saying, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.” And when Moses said, “and he set them in the firmament,” Plato too used a similar word, “set,” saying, “and God, having made their bodies, set them in their orbits.”

That all the works of God are good

The Hebrew Scripture says over each of the things created, “And God saw that it was good,” and at the summing up of all, “And God saw all things, and they were very good.” Hear how Plato says: “If this cosmos is beautiful and its maker good, clearly he looked to the eternal.” And again: “For it is the most beautiful of things that have come to be, and he the best of causes.”

On the alteration and change of the world

And on this the whole Scripture of the Hebrews speaks: at one time where it says, “And the heaven shall be rolled up like a scroll”; at another where it adds, “And there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, which I make to remain before me, says the Lord”; and again elsewhere where it says, “For the form of this world is passing away.” And hear how Plato establishes the doctrine, saying in the Timaeus: “And he framed a heaven visible and tangible; and for these reasons, from these elements, four in number, the body of the cosmos was begotten, agreeing through proportion, and it gained friendship from them, so that, coming together into one with itself, it became indissoluble by any other except by the one who bound it together.” Then next he says: “Time, then, came to be with the heaven, so that, born together, they might also be dissolved together, if ever a dissolution of them should come.” And again, having said, “Gods of gods, whose maker and father of works I am, which, having come to be through me, are indissoluble unless I will it,” he adds next: “All that is bound can be dissolved; yet to wish to dissolve what is well fitted and in good state is the part of an evil one. Therefore, since you have come to be, you are not immortal nor wholly indissoluble; yet you shall certainly not be dissolved, nor meet the fate of death, having obtained my will as a still greater and more sovereign bond than those with which you were bound when you came to be.” And in the Statesman the same man says this: “For this universe God himself at one time guides on its way and helps to turn, and at another lets it go, when its revolutions have now reached the measure of time fitting for it; and it turns back again of itself in the opposite direction, being a living creature and having received understanding from the one who fitted it together in the beginning. And this going back has necessarily become innate in it for this reason. — For what reason? — To be always the same and unchanging and identical belongs only to the most divine of all things, and the nature of body is not of this rank. What we have named heaven and cosmos has received many blessed things from its begetter, but it has also shared in body; hence it cannot be wholly without change, but as far as possible it moves in the same place, in the same way, with one motion; therefore it has received reverse rotation, as the least departure from its own motion. To turn itself always is hardly possible for anything except the leader of all things that move; and for him to move it now one way and then the opposite is not lawful. From all this we must say neither that the cosmos always turns itself, nor that it is wholly turned by God in two opposite revolutions, nor again that two gods with opposing minds turn it; but, what was just said and is the only remaining option, that at one time it is guided by another, divine cause, regaining life and receiving a renewed immortality from the Creator, and at another, when let go, it goes by itself, released at such a time that it travels backward for many tens of thousands of revolutions, because, being greatest and most evenly balanced, it moves resting on the smallest foot. — It seems indeed that all you have gone through has been said very reasonably. — Let us reason, then, and understand from what has now been said the event which we said was the cause of all the marvels. For it is just this. — What? — That the motion of the universe at one time goes in the direction in which it now revolves, at another in the opposite. — How so? — We must consider this change the greatest and most complete of all the turnings that take place in the heaven. — So it seems. — We must think, then, that the greatest changes then occur for us who dwell within it. — That too is likely. — And do we not know that the nature of living creatures bears with difficulty great, many, and manifold changes coming together? — Of course. — Then the greatest destructions of the other living creatures necessarily occur, and of the human race too only a little is left. And among these many other strange and new experiences happen together, and this the greatest, which follows the unrolling of the universe, when the turning becomes opposite to the one now established.” Going on further from all this, he next adds the following about the return to life of the dead, moved by views like those of the Hebrews:

On the return of the dead to life, from the same

“But what was the generation of living creatures then, stranger, and in what way were they begotten from one another? — Clearly, Socrates, being begotten from one another was not in the nature of things then; but the earth-born race that is said to have once existed was the one that in that time returned again out of the earth. It was remembered by our first ancestors, who lived in the time next to the end of the former revolution and were born at the beginning of this one. For these became for us the heralds of these accounts, which are now wrongly disbelieved by many. For we must, I think, consider what follows from this. It follows from old men going toward the nature of a child that, from the dead in turn, lying in the earth, people are put together there again and come back to life, following the turning, as generation revolves back in the opposite direction; and those born from the earth by necessity in this way have that name and account, all whom God has not carried to another lot. — This certainly follows from what was said before.” Then going on further again he sets out, like the doctrines of the Hebrews about the consummation of the world, the following:

Again concerning the end of the world

“For when the time of all these things was completed and a change had to come, and the whole earthly race had now been used up, each soul having rendered all its births, and having fallen into the earth as seed as many times as had been ordained for each, then the helmsman of the universe, letting go, as it were, the tiller of the rudder, withdrew to his own watch-tower, and fate and innate desire turned the cosmos back again. All the gods, then, who ruled together with the greatest deity in their regions, knowing what was happening, let go in turn of the parts of the cosmos in their care. And the cosmos, turning back and colliding, driven by an impulse opposite to beginning and end, causing a great earthquake within itself, brought about another destruction of all kinds of living creatures. And after this, when sufficient time had passed, ceasing now from tumult and confusion and earthquakes, and reaching calm, it went on into its accustomed course, ordering itself, having the care and control of the things in it and of itself.” And after a little he says again: “Therefore then God, who ordered it, seeing it in difficulty, and concerned that, storm-tossed by confusion and dissolved, it might sink into the boundless region of unlikeness, taking his seat again at its rudder, turning back what had fallen sick and been loosened in its previous revolution on its own, orders it and, setting it right, makes it immortal and ageless. This, then, has been said as the end of all.”

That Plato records that dead have been raised in accordance with the statements of the Hebrews

“These things, then, I said, are nothing in number or greatness compared with those that await each of the two after death; and these must be heard, so that each may fully receive what the argument owes him to hear. — Speak on, he said, since there are not many things I would more gladly hear. — Yet it is not a tale of Alcinous I will tell you, I said, but of a valiant man, Er son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by race; who once died in war, and when the dead were taken up on the tenth day already decayed, he was taken up whole; and having been brought home, when he was about to be buried, on the twelfth day, lying on the pyre, he came back to life, and having come back to life he told what he had seen there. He said that when his soul went out of him, it traveled with many others, and they came to a certain marvelous place, in which there were two openings in the earth next to each other, and in the heaven above two others opposite them. And judges sat between these, who, when they had passed judgment, told the just to go the way to the right and upward through the heaven, fastening signs of their judgment on them in front, and the unjust the way to the left and downward, they too having behind them signs of all they had done. And when he himself came forward, they said that he must become a messenger to men of the things there, and they told him to listen to and watch everything in the place.” So Plato. And Plutarch relates something akin to this in the first book of On the Soul, somewhat as follows:

Plutarch on the like matter

“We ourselves were present with this Antyllus; but let us tell it to Sositeles and Heracleon. Being ill recently, he seemed to the physicians beyond saving. Recovering a little from an unsteady stupor, he did and said nothing else that was deranged, but he said that he had died and been released again, and would not die at all of that illness, and that those who had brought him had been scolded by their master; for they had been sent for Nicandas and had come back bringing him instead. Nicandas was a shoemaker, but otherwise one of those who frequented the wrestling schools, and well known and familiar to many. So the young men came up and mocked him as having run away and bribed the officers from there. He himself was clearly troubled at once and vexed; and at last a fever fell on him and he died suddenly on the third day. And this man came back to life and is alive, and doing well, the most excellent of our friends.” Let this be set down here, because returns to life of the dead are also recorded in the Scriptures of the Hebrews. And since they also contain promises that a land will be given only to those dear to God, according to the oracle that says, “But the meek shall inherit the earth,” and the saying that says, “But the Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother,” makes clear that this land is heavenly, and the prophet hints allegorically that it is made of costly and precious stones, saying, “Look, I prepare for you carbuncle as your stone, and I will make your battlements jasper, and your foundations sapphire, and your enclosure choice stones”—see how Plato too, in his work On the Soul, admits that he is persuaded these very things, or things like them, are true, putting the account in the mouth of Socrates somewhat as follows:

That Plato describes the so-called celestial earth in the same way as the Hebrews

“But indeed, Simmias, it does not seem to me to need the art of Glaucus to tell what they are; yet to show that they are true seems to me harder than the art of Glaucus. And at the same time I perhaps could not do it, and at the same time, even if I knew how, my life, Simmias, seems to me not to suffice for the length of the account. But nothing prevents me from telling what I am persuaded the form of the earth is, and its regions. — Well, said Simmias, that is enough. — I am persuaded, then, he said, first, that if it is round and in the middle of the heaven, it needs neither air nor any other such force to keep it from falling, but the uniformity of the heaven itself in every direction and the earth’s own equilibrium are enough to hold it; for a thing in equilibrium placed in the middle of something uniform will have no reason to incline more or less in any direction, but being alike will remain without inclining. This, then, I am persuaded of first. — And rightly, said Simmias. — Further, he said, that it is very great, and that we who dwell from the Phasis to the Pillars of Heracles live in a small part of it around the sea, like ants or frogs around a pond, and that many others live elsewhere in many such places. For there are everywhere around the earth many hollows of all kinds of shapes and sizes, into which water, mist, and air have flowed together; but the earth itself lies pure in the pure heaven, in which are the stars, which most of those who speak of such things call the ether; of which these things are the sediment and always flow together into the hollows of the earth. We, then, living in its hollows, have not noticed it, and think we live above on the earth; as if someone living in the middle of the bottom of the sea were to think he lived on the sea, and, seeing the sun and the other stars through the water, should think the sea was heaven, and because of slowness and weakness had never come to the top of the sea, nor seen, emerging and raising his head out of the sea into this place here, how much purer and more beautiful it is than his own, nor heard of it from anyone who had seen it. We have experienced this very thing: living in a hollow of the earth we think we live on top of it, and call the air heaven, as though the stars moved through this as heaven. But it is the same: through weakness and slowness we cannot pass through to the outermost air; for if anyone came to its top, or became winged and flew up, he would look up and see, as fish here looking up out of the sea see the things here, so one would see the things there; and if his nature were able to bear the sight, he would know that that is the true heaven and the true light and the true earth. For this earth, and the stones and the whole region here, are corrupted and eaten away, as things in the sea are by the brine; and nothing worth speaking of grows in the sea, nor is anything, so to speak, perfect, but there are caves and sand and endless mud and mire wherever there is earth too, not at all worthy to be compared with the beautiful things among us. And those things in turn would appear to differ from ours still much more. For if it is good to tell a myth too, it is worth hearing, Simmias, what the things on the earth under the heaven are like. — Indeed, Socrates, said Simmias, we would gladly hear this myth. — It is said, then, my friend, he said, first, that the earth itself, if one should look at it from above, is like the balls made of twelve pieces of leather, variegated, marked out with colors, of which the colors here, those the painters use, are like samples; but there the whole earth is made of such colors, and of far brighter and purer ones than these. For one part is purple of wonderful beauty, another golden, another, which is white, whiter than chalk or snow; and it is made up of the other colors likewise, and of still more and more beautiful ones than we have seen. For even these hollows of it, full of water and air, give an appearance of color, gleaming in the variety of the other colors, so that it appears as one continuous variegated form. And on it, being such, grow in proportion such trees and flowers and fruits; and the mountains likewise and the stones have, on the same principle, smoothness, transparency, and more beautiful colors; of which our little stones here, so prized, are fragments, sardians and jaspers and emeralds and all such; but there there is nothing that is not such, and still more beautiful than these. And the cause of this is that those stones are pure and not eaten away or corrupted, like those here, by decay and brine and the things that have flowed together here, which bring ugliness and diseases to stones and earth and to other animals and plants. And the earth itself is adorned with all these, and further with gold and silver and the other such things. For they are by nature exposed to view, being many in number, large, and in many places of the earth, so that it is a sight for blessed onlookers.”

That Plato agrees with the Hebrews in believing that there will be the judgment after death

The Scripture of the Hebrews foretells that there will be a tribunal of God and a judgment of souls after their departure from here, through countless passages, and where it says: “The court sat, and the books were opened, and the Ancient of Days was seated. A river of fire flowed before him; ten thousand times ten thousand ministered to him, and thousands of thousands stood before him.” Hear Plato, who mentions the divine judgment, and even names the river, and describes, in agreement with the words of the Hebrews, many dwellings of the pious and different punishments of the impious. He says, then, in On the Soul: “A third river issues between these, and near its source falls into a great region burning with much fire, and makes a lake larger than our sea, boiling with water and mud. From there it goes round in a circle, turbid and muddy, and winding about within the earth it comes to other places and to the edge of the Acherusian lake, not mixing with its water; and after winding about many times under the earth it falls into Tartarus at a lower point. This is the one they call Pyriphlegethon, of which the streams of lava too send up fragments wherever on earth they happen to be. Opposite this in turn the fourth issues, first into a place terrible and wild, as is said, having all a color like lapis, which they call the Stygian; and the lake the river makes by falling into it, Styx. Having fallen in there and received terrible powers in its water, it sinks under the earth and, winding about, goes opposite to Pyriphlegethon and meets it from the opposite side in the Acherusian lake; and its water too mixes with none, but it also, going round in a circle, falls into Tartarus opposite to Pyriphlegethon; and its name, as the poets say, is Cocytus. These things being so by nature, when the dead come to the place to which his daemon brings each, first they are judged, both those who lived well, piously, and justly, and those who did not. Those who are judged to have lived a middling life go to the Acheron, embark on the vessels there for them, and on these arrive at the lake; and there they dwell and, being purified, are released from their wrongdoings by paying the penalty, if anyone did wrong, and receive honors for their good deeds, each according to his desert. But those judged incurable because of the greatness of their sins, having committed many great sacrileges, or many unjust and lawless murders, or other such things, their fitting fate casts into Tartarus, from which they never come out. Those who are judged to have committed curable but great sins, such as having done some violence to father or mother in anger and lived the rest of their life in repentance, or who have become murderers in some such way, must fall into Tartarus; but when they have fallen in and been there a year, the wave casts them out, the murderers by Cocytus, the parricides by Pyriphlegethon. And when they are carried to the Acherusian lake, there they shout and call, some those they killed, others those they wronged, and having called, they plead and beg to be allowed to come out into the lake; and if they persuade them, they come out and cease from their evils; but if not, they are carried back into Tartarus and from there again into the rivers, and suffering these things they do not cease until they persuade those they wronged. For this penalty was ordained for them by the judges. But those who are judged to have excelled in holy living are those who are freed and released from these regions in the earth, as from prisons, and come up to the pure dwelling and dwell upon the earth. And of these, those who have sufficiently purified themselves by philosophy live wholly without toil for all time to come, and come to dwellings still more beautiful than these, which it is neither easy to describe nor is the time sufficient now. But for the sake of what we have gone through, Simmias, one must do everything to have a share of virtue and wisdom in life; for the prize is noble and the hope great.” So Plato. But beside “and they come to more beautiful dwellings, which it is neither easy to describe nor is the time sufficient now,” you will set what we have: “For eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him”; and beside the dwellings mentioned, the many mansions with the Father promised to those dear to God; and beside what is said about Pyriphlegethon, the eternal fire threatened against the ungodly, according to the Hebrew prophet who says to them: “Who will tell you that a fire is burning? Who will tell you of the eternal place?” And again: “Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be a spectacle to all flesh.” And note how Plato too, agreeing with these, after saying that the ungodly will go into Tartarus, adds, “from which they never come out.” And again, after saying that the godly will live among the blessed, he adds, “for all time to come.” And his phrase “without toil” would be like “pain and sorrow and sighing have fled away.” And when he says that those going to the Acheron do not simply arrive at it, but first embark on the vessels there for them, what can the vessels mean but the bodies, embarking on which the souls of the dead are punished together with them, according to what is held among the Hebrews? But since this discussion too has received a sufficient conclusion, I shall pass to the twelfth book of the Preparation for the Gospel.