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Plato’s Laws cites an old saying that God holds the beginning, middle, and end of all things. Revelation draws on the same Greek formula when God declares he is the beginning and the end, naming him the origin and goal of all that exists.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Plato Laws 715e
Classical
God, as the old tradition declares, holding in his hand the beginning, middle, and end of all that is, travels according to His nature in a straight line towards the accomplishment of His end. Justice always accompanies Him, and is the punisher of those who fall short of the divine law.
Date: c. 350 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Revelation 21:6
New Testament
5 And the one seated on the throne said: “Look! I am making all things new!” Then he said to me, “Write it down, because these words are reliable and true.” 6 He also said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the one who is thirsty I will give water free of charge from the spring of the water of life. 7 The one who conquers will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be my son.
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Notes and References
... This saying is alluded to in Plato Laws 4.715e, ‘God ... holds the beginning and the middle and the end of all things which exist,’ a saying quoted by a number of early Christian writers, including Pseudo-Justin Exhortation to the Greeks 25; Irenaeus Against Heresies 3.25.5; Hippolytus Refutation of All Heresies 19.6; Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 2.22; and Origen Against Celsus 6.15. The Jewish writer Aristobulus also refers to this saying in a fragment preserved in Eusebius Preparation for the Gospel 13.12 (666a), referring to God as ‘Himself the beginning, the middle and the end’ (Kern, Orphicorum Fragmenta, 247; see Holladay, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors 4:170) ...
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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