City of God 18.43–18.50

Chapter 43. On the authority of the seventy translators, which, saving the honour of the Hebrew text, is to be preferred to all translators.

For though there have been other translators who rendered those sacred oracles from the Hebrew language into Greek, such as Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, and there is also that translation whose author is unknown and which is therefore called the fifth edition, without a translator's name, yet the church has received this one, which is the Septuagint, as though it were the only one, and the Greek Christian peoples use it, most of whom do not know whether there is any other. From this Septuagint translation there has also been translated into the Latin language what the Latin churches hold; although in our times there has not been lacking the presbyter Jerome, a most learned man and skilled in all three languages, who translated the same Scriptures into the Latin language not from the Greek but from the Hebrew. But though the Jews acknowledge that his so learned labour is truthful, and contend that the seventy translators erred in many things, yet the churches of Christ judge that no one is to be preferred to the authority of so many men, chosen for so great a work by Eleazar, then high priest. For even if there had not appeared in them one Spirit, without doubt divine, but the seventy learned men had compared the words of their translation among themselves in the manner of men, so that what pleased all should stand, no single translator ought to be preferred to them; but since so great a sign of divinity appeared in them, surely any other truthful translator of those Scriptures from Hebrew into any other language either agrees with those seventy translators, or, if he does not seem to agree, a prophetic depth is to be believed to be there. For the Spirit who was in the prophets when they spoke those things was the same Spirit who was also in the seventy men when they translated them; and he could surely, with divine authority, both say something else, as though the prophet had said both, because the same Spirit said both, and say the same thing differently, so that, if not the same words, yet the same sense might shine out to those who understand well; and he could omit something and add something, so that by this too it might be shown that in that work there was not the human servitude which a translator owed to words, but rather the divine power which filled and ruled the translator's mind.

Some, however, have thought that the Greek manuscripts of the Septuagint translation should be corrected from the Hebrew manuscripts; yet they did not dare to take away what the Hebrew did not have and the Seventy had put in; but they only added what was found in the Hebrew and was not in the Seventy, and they marked these at the beginnings of the same verses with certain signs made in the manner of stars, which signs they call asterisks. But those things which the Hebrews do not have but the Seventy do, they likewise marked at the beginnings of the verses with horizontal strokes, as ounces are written. And many manuscripts with these marks have been spread everywhere, Latin ones too. But things that are not omitted or added but said differently, whether they make another sense, itself not inconsistent, or are shown to express the same sense in another way, cannot be found except by inspecting both sets of manuscripts. If, then, as we ought, we look in those Scriptures at nothing else than what the Spirit of God has said through men, whatever is in the Hebrew manuscripts and is not in the seventy translators, the Spirit of God did not will to say through these, but through those prophets. But whatever is in the Seventy and not in the Hebrew manuscripts, the same Spirit preferred to say through these rather than through those, thus showing that both were prophets. For in this way he said some things through Isaiah, others through Jeremiah, others through one prophet or another, or the same things differently through this one and that, as he willed. Whatever, further, is found in both, the one and the same Spirit willed to say through both; but so that the former went before by prophesying and the latter followed by translating them prophetically; because, as in the former, saying true and concordant things, there was the one Spirit of peace, so in the latter too, not conferring with one another and yet translating everything as with one mouth, the same one Spirit appeared.

Chapter 44. How the destruction of the Ninevites is to be understood, whose announcement in the Hebrew extends to a space of forty days, but in the Septuagint is confined to the brevity of three.

But someone says: “How am I to know what the prophet Jonah said to the Ninevites: ‘Three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,’ or ‘Forty days’?” For who does not see that both could not have been said then by the prophet, who had been sent to terrify the city with the threat of impending destruction? If its destruction was to be on the third day, then certainly not on the fortieth; but if on the fortieth, then certainly not on the third. If, then, I am asked which of these Jonah said, I think rather that which is read in the Hebrew: “Forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” The Seventy, translating long afterwards, could say something else, which nevertheless pertained to the matter and ran together into one and the same sense, though under a different signification, and which might admonish the reader, despising neither authority, to raise himself from the history to seek those things for the signifying of which the history itself was written. For those things were done in the city of Nineveh, but they also signified something which goes beyond the measure of that city; just as it was done that the prophet himself was three days in the belly of the whale, and yet it signified another who would be three days in the depth of the underworld, who is the Lord of all the prophets. Therefore, if by that city the church of the nations is rightly taken to be prophetically represented, overthrown, that is, by repentance, so that it was no longer what it had been, since this was done through Christ in the church of the nations, of which that Nineveh bore the figure, then, whether by forty days or by three, the same Christ was signified: by forty, because he spent that many days with his disciples after the resurrection and ascended into heaven; by three, because he rose on the third day. It is as if the seventy translators, being prophets as well, had roused from sleep the reader who wished for nothing but to cling to the history of events, to search into the depth of the prophecy, and had said in a way: “Seek in the forty days him in whom you may also find the three days; the one you will find in his ascension, the other in his resurrection.” For this reason it could be most fittingly signified by both numbers, one of which the one and the same Spirit spoke through the prophet Jonah, the other through the prophecy of the seventy translators. I avoid length, so as not to demonstrate this through many instances in which the seventy translators are thought to differ from the Hebrew truth and, when well understood, are found to agree. Hence I too, according to my small measure, following in the footsteps of the apostles, since they too set down prophetic testimonies from both, that is, from the Hebrew and from the Septuagint, have thought that both authorities should be used, since both are one and divine. But now let us pursue, as we can, what remains.

Chapter 45. That after the restoration of the temple the Jews ceased to have prophets and from then until the birth of Christ were afflicted with continual adversities, so that it might be proved that the building of another temple had been promised by the prophetic voices.

After the Jewish nation began to be without prophets, it undoubtedly became worse, at the very time, namely, when, the temple having been restored after the captivity in Babylonia, it hoped that it would be better. For so that carnal people understood what was foretold through the prophet Haggai, saying: “Great shall be the glory of this latter house, more than of the former”; which he showed a little above to have been said of the new testament, where he says, openly promising Christ: “And I will move all nations, and the one desired by all nations shall come.” In this place the seventy translators, by prophetic authority, gave another sense, more suited to the body than to the head, that is, more to the church than to Christ: “The chosen things of the Lord shall come from all nations,” that is, men, of whom Jesus himself says in the gospel: “Many are called, but few are chosen.” For by such chosen ones from the nations the house of God is built through the new testament with living stones, far more glorious than was that temple which was built by King Solomon and restored after the captivity. For this reason, then, that nation had no prophets from that time, and was afflicted with many disasters by foreign kings and by the Romans themselves, so that it might not suppose that this prophecy of Haggai was fulfilled in that restoration of the temple.

For not long afterwards, at the coming of Alexander, it was subjugated; when, though no devastation took place, because they did not dare to resist him and therefore, submitting, received him very easily appeased, yet the glory of that house was not so great as it was under the free power of its own kings. Alexander indeed offered sacrifices in the temple of God, not converted to his worship with true piety, but thinking with impious vanity that he was to be worshipped along with false gods. Then Ptolemy the son of Lagus, as I mentioned above, after Alexander's death carried captives from there into Egypt, whom his successor Ptolemy Philadelphus most kindly sent back from there; through whom it came about, as I related a little before, that we have the Scriptures of the seventy translators. Then they were crushed by the wars which are set out in the books of the Maccabees. After this they were taken by Ptolemy, king of Alexandria, who was called Epiphanes; then by Antiochus, king of Syria, they were compelled with many and most grievous evils to worship idols, and the temple itself was filled with the sacrilegious superstitions of the Gentiles; which nevertheless their most vigorous leader Judas, who was also called Maccabeus, cleansed from all that contamination of idolatry after he had driven out the generals of Antiochus. Not long afterwards a certain Alcimus, through ambition, though he was a stranger to the priestly family, which was unlawful, was made high priest. From then, after about fifty years, in which they nevertheless had no peace, though they did some things successfully, Aristobulus was the first among them to take the diadem and was made both king and high priest. For before, from the time when they returned from the Babylonian captivity and the temple was restored, they had not kings but leaders or rulers; although he who is king can also be called ruler, from the rulership of command, and leader, because he is the leader of the army; but not all who are rulers or leaders can at once also be called kings, as this Aristobulus was. He was succeeded by Alexander, himself also king and high priest, who is said to have reigned cruelly over his own people. After him his wife Alexandra was queen of the Jews, and from her time on graver evils followed them. For the sons of this Alexandra, Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, fighting between themselves for power, called out the forces of Rome against the Israelite nation. For Hyrcanus asked them for help against his brother.

By then Rome had subjugated Africa, had subjugated Greece, and, ruling widely over other parts of the world too, as though unable to bear itself, had in a way broken itself by its own greatness. For it had come to grave domestic seditions, and from there to the Social wars and soon to the civil wars, and had so shattered and worn itself down that a change in the constitution of the state, by which it would be ruled by kings, was impending. Pompey, then, the most illustrious leader of the Roman people, entering Judea with an army, takes the city, opens the temple, not with the devotion of a suppliant but by the right of a conqueror, and goes into the holy of holies, where no one but the high priest was allowed to enter, not as a worshipper but as a profaner; and having confirmed the high priesthood of Hyrcanus and set over the subjugated nation Antipater as guardian (they then called them procurators), he leads Aristobulus away with him in chains. From that time the Jews also began to be tributaries of the Romans. Afterwards Cassius even plundered the temple. Then, after a few years, they deserved to have even Herod, a foreigner, as king, in whose reign Christ was born. For there had now come the fullness of time signified by the prophetic Spirit through the mouth of the patriarch Jacob, where he says: “A prince shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes for whom it is laid up; and he is the expectation of the nations.” There did not fail, then, a prince of the Jews from among the Jews down to this Herod, whom they first received as a foreign king. It was now the time, then, for him to come for whom was laid up what was promised in the new testament, that he himself should be the expectation of the nations. But it could not be that the nations should await his coming, as we see him awaited, to come to execute judgment in the splendour of power, unless they first believed in him when he came to undergo judgment in the humility of patience.

Chapter 46. On the birth of our Saviour, according to which the Word was made flesh, and on the dispersion of the Jews among all nations, as had been prophesied.

When Herod, then, was reigning in Judea, and among the Romans, the constitution of the state having now been changed, Caesar Augustus was emperor, and through him the world was at peace, Christ was born, according to the preceding prophecy, in Bethlehem of Judah, man manifest from a human virgin, God hidden from God the Father. For so the prophet had foretold: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel,” which is interpreted, “God with us.” To commend God in himself, he did many miracles, of which the gospel Scripture contains some, as many as seemed sufficient to proclaim him. The first of them is that he was so wonderfully born; the last, that with his own body raised from the dead he ascended into heaven. But the Jews, who killed him and would not believe in him, because it was necessary for him to die and rise again, were laid waste more unhappily by the Romans and utterly rooted out of their kingdom, where foreigners were already ruling over them, and dispersed through the lands (since indeed they are not lacking anywhere); and through their Scriptures they are a testimony to us that we have not invented the prophecies about Christ. Very many of them, considering these, believed in him both before his passion and especially after his resurrection; of whom it was foretold: “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved.” But the rest were blinded, of whom it was foretold: “Let their table become a snare and a retribution and a stumbling block. Let their eyes be darkened so that they do not see, and bend their back always.” Accordingly, when they do not believe our Scriptures, their own, which they read blind, are fulfilled in them.

Unless perhaps someone should say that the Christians invented those prophecies about Christ which are put forward under the name of the Sibyl, or of others, if there are any, who do not belong to the Jewish people. For us, certainly, those suffice which are brought forward from the books of our enemies; whom we acknowledge, because of this testimony which they bear us against their will by having and preserving these same books, to be themselves too dispersed among all nations, wherever the church of Christ spreads. For a prophecy about this was set forth beforehand in the Psalms, which they also read, where it is written: “My God, his mercy shall go before me; my God has shown me in my enemies: do not kill them, lest at some time they forget your law; scatter them in your power.” God has shown the church, then, in its enemies the Jews, the grace of his mercy, since, as the apostle says, “their offence is salvation for the Gentiles”; and therefore he has not killed them, that is, he has not destroyed in them what they are as Jews, though they have been conquered and oppressed by the Romans, lest, forgetting the law of God, they should be of no value for this testimony of which we are treating. Therefore it was not enough for him to say, “Do not kill them, lest at some time they forget your law,” unless he also added, “Scatter them”; because if they were, with this testimony of the Scriptures, only in their own land and not everywhere, surely the church, which is everywhere, could not have them among all nations as witnesses to the prophecies which were set forth beforehand concerning Christ.

Chapter 47. Whether before Christian times there were any outside the Israelite race who belonged to the fellowship of the heavenly city.

Therefore, whoever of foreign race, that is, not born of Israel nor received by that people into the canon of the sacred writings, is read to have prophesied anything about Christ, if he has come or shall come to our knowledge, can be mentioned by us as an addition; not that he is necessary, even if he is lacking, but because it is not unfittingly believed that there were among other nations too men to whom this mystery was revealed, and who were also impelled to foretell these things, whether they were partakers of the same grace or without it and were taught by evil angels, who, we know, confessed Christ even when he was present, whom the Jews did not recognize. Nor do I think that the Jews themselves dare to contend that no one belonged to God except the Israelites, from the time when the line of Israel began, his elder brother being rejected. For in truth there was no other people which could properly be called the people of God; but they cannot deny that there were among other nations too certain men who belonged, not by earthly but by heavenly fellowship, to the true Israelites, the citizens of the heavenly homeland. For if they deny it, they are very easily refuted by the holy and wonderful man Job, who was neither a native nor a proselyte, that is, a newcomer among the people of Israel, but, deriving his descent from the Idumean nation, was born there and died there; who is so praised by the divine word that as regards righteousness and piety no man of his times is equalled to him. Though we do not find his times in the Chronicles, we gather from his book, which the Israelites for its merit received into canonical authority, that he was later than Israel by three generations. I do not doubt that it was divinely provided that from this one man we might know that there could have been among other nations too those who lived according to God and pleased him, belonging to the spiritual Jerusalem. This must be believed to have been granted to no one except him to whom was divinely revealed the “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” who was foretold to the saints of old as to come in the flesh, just as he is announced to us as having come, so that one and the same faith through him might lead all who are predestined to the city of God, the house of God, the temple of God, to God. But whatever prophecies of others are put forward concerning the grace of God through Jesus Christ can be thought to have been invented by the Christians. Therefore nothing is stronger for refuting any outsiders whatever, if they dispute about this, and for making them ours, if they are rightly wise, than to bring forward those divine predictions about Christ which are written in the books of the Jews; who, torn away from their own seats and dispersed over the whole world for the sake of this testimony, have made the church of Christ grow everywhere.

Chapter 48. That the prophecy of Haggai, in which he said that the glory of the house of God would be greater than that of the first, was fulfilled not in the rebuilding of the temple but in the church of Christ.

This house of God is of greater glory than was that first one built of wood and stone and other precious things and metals. The prophecy of Haggai, then, was not fulfilled in the restoration of that temple. For from the time it was restored it is never shown to have had so great a glory as it had in the time of Solomon; rather it is shown that the glory of that house was diminished, first by the cessation of prophecy, then by the great disasters of the nation itself, down to the final destruction, which was done by the Romans, as the things mentioned above testify. But this house, which belongs to the new testament, is of so much greater glory as the living stones, believing and renewed, of which it is built are better. But it was signified by the restoration of that temple because the very renewal of that building signifies in prophetic speech the other testament, which is called new. When, then, God said through the prophet mentioned, “And I will give peace in this place,” by the signifying place is to be understood that which is signified by it; so that, since by that restored place was signified the church which was to be built by Christ, nothing else is to be understood by what was said, “I will give peace in this place,” but “I will give peace in the place which this place signifies.” For all things that signify seem in a way to bear the persons of the things they signify; as it was said by the apostle, “The rock was Christ,” because that rock of which this was said certainly signified Christ.

Greater, then, is the glory of this house of the new testament than that of the former house of the old testament; and it will appear greater when it is dedicated. For then “the one desired by all nations shall come,” as it is read in the Hebrew. For his first coming was not yet desired by all nations. For they did not know whom they ought to desire, in whom they had not believed. Then too, according to the seventy translators (for that too is a prophetic sense), “the chosen things of the Lord shall come from all nations.” For then truly there will come only the chosen, of whom the apostle says: “As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” For the architect himself, who said, “Many are called, but few are chosen,” was to show the house built not of those who, being called, came in such a way as to be thrown out of the banquet, but of the chosen, a house which will fear no ruin thereafter. But now, when those too fill the churches whom the winnowing will separate as on a threshing floor, the glory of this house does not appear as great as it will appear then, when whoever is there will be there for ever.

Chapter 49. On the indiscriminate increase of the church, by which in this world many reprobates are mixed with the elect.

In this evil world, then, in these evil days, when the church through present humility is preparing for future exaltation, and is trained by the goads of fears, the torments of sorrows, the troubles of labours, and the dangers of temptations, rejoicing in hope alone when its joy is sound, many reprobates are mixed with the good, and both are gathered as into the gospel net; and in this world, as in a sea, both, enclosed in the nets, swim without distinction until the shore is reached, where the wicked are to be separated from the good, and in the good, as in his temple, God is to be all in all. Accordingly we now recognize the fulfilment of the words of him who spoke in the psalm and said: “I have announced and have spoken; they are multiplied beyond number.” This is happening now, from the time when first through the mouth of his forerunner John, and then through his own mouth, he announced and spoke, saying: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.” He chose disciples, whom he also named apostles, lowly born, without honour, unlettered, so that whatever great thing they were and did, he himself might be and do it in them. He had among them one whom, using an evil man well, he employed both to fulfil the plan of his passion and to give his church an example of bearing with the wicked. When the holy gospel had been sown as far as was fitting through his bodily presence, he suffered, died, and rose again, showing by his passion what we ought to endure for the truth, by his resurrection what we ought to hope for in eternity, apart from the depth of the sacrament by which his blood was shed for the forgiveness of sins. He lived on earth forty days with his disciples, and while they watched ascended into heaven, and after ten days sent the promised Holy Spirit; of whose coming upon those who had believed the sign then was very great and very necessary, that each one of them spoke in the tongues of all nations; thus signifying that the unity of the catholic church would be among all nations and so would speak in all tongues.

Chapter 50. On the preaching of the gospel, which was made more illustrious and powerful through the sufferings of its preachers.

Then, in accordance with that prophecy, “Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,” and in accordance with the predictions of the Lord Christ himself, when after the resurrection he opened the mind of his astonished disciples so that they might understand the Scriptures, and said to them that thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for Christ to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and for repentance and forgiveness of sins to be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem; and when again, as they asked about his last coming, he answered and said: “It is not for you to know the times which the Father has put in his own power; but you shall receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth”: the church spread itself first from Jerusalem; and when a great many in Judea and Samaria had believed, it went also to other nations, through those announcing the gospel whom he himself, like lamps, had both fitted by his word and kindled with the Holy Spirit. For he had said to them: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” And so that they might not be chilled with fear, they burned with the fire of love. Finally, not only through those who had seen and heard him both before his passion and after his resurrection, but also after their death through their successors, amid horrible persecutions and various tortures and deaths of martyrs, the gospel was preached in the whole world, God bearing witness with signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit; so that the peoples of the nations, believing in him who was crucified for their redemption, might venerate with Christian love the blood of the martyrs which they had shed with devilish fury, and the very kings by whose laws the church was being laid waste might submit to their salvation to that name which they had cruelly tried to take away from the earth, and might begin to persecute the false gods for whose sake the worshippers of the true God had formerly been persecuted.