Miscellanies 5.4.19–5.7.43

But since they are unwilling to believe the good justly, or knowledge for salvation, we ourselves, considering their things our own, because all things are God's, and especially since good things have gone forth from us to the Greeks, will deal with them as they are naturally able to hear. For this great crowd judges what is intelligent or just not by the truth but by what pleases it; and it would be pleased by nothing more than by what is like itself. For whatever is still blind and deaf, without understanding or the fearless and keen-sighted vision of a soul that loves contemplation, which the Savior alone implants, like the uninitiated at the mysteries or the unmusical at the dances, not yet pure nor worthy of pure truth, but discordant, disorderly, and material, must still stand outside the divine chorus. “For we compare spiritual things with spiritual.” That is why the Egyptians, through what they call their sanctuaries, and the Hebrews, through the veil, hinted at the manner of concealment, which is truly divine and most necessary for us because of the sacred word stored up in the sanctuary of truth; through which only those consecrated were allowed to enter, that is, those dedicated to God, circumcised in the desires of the passions for love of the divine alone. For Plato too thought it unlawful for the impure to touch the pure.

From this, prophecies and oracles are spoken in riddles, and the mysteries are not shown freely to all who come, but with certain purifications and preliminary instructions. “For the Muse was not yet greedy for gain nor a hireling; nor were the sweet, honey-voiced, soft-sounding songs sold by Terpsichore, their faces silvered.” For example, those educated among the Egyptians first of all learn the method of Egyptian letters called epistolographic; second, the hieratic, which the sacred scribes use; and last and final, the hieroglyphic, of which one kind is literal, by the first letters, and another symbolic. Of the symbolic, one kind is literal by imitation, another is written as it were figuratively, and another is plainly allegorized by certain riddles. When they wish to write “sun,” at any rate, they make a circle, and for “moon” a crescent shape, according to the literal form. Figuratively, they engrave by transferring and transposing according to affinity, sometimes altering, sometimes transforming in many ways.

At any rate they record the praises of kings, handing them down in theological myths, through reliefs. Let this be an example of the third kind, by riddles: they likened the other stars to the bodies of snakes because of their oblique course, and the sun to that of the beetle, since it forms a round shape from ox dung and rolls it, facing backward. They say too that this creature lives six months under the earth and the other part of the year above the earth, and sows its seed into the ball and begets, and that there is no female beetle. All, then, so to speak, both barbarians and Greeks, who have treated of divine things have hidden the first principles of things, and handed down the truth in riddles and symbols, allegories and metaphors, and such figures; such too are the oracles among the Greeks, and Pythian Apollo is called Loxias (“the oblique”).

Indeed the sayings of those called the wise men among the Greeks show, in a few words, the expression of something greater; for example, “Spare time,” either because life is short and we must not spend this time in vain; or, conversely, spare your private expenses, so that, even if you live many years, it says, you may not lack necessities.

Likewise “Know yourself” indicates many things: both that you are mortal and that you were born a human being; and also, by comparison with the other eminences of life, that you are of no account, even if called glorious or rich; or, conversely, that being rich and glorious you should not pride yourself on an advantage that does not last. And know, it says, for what you were born, whose image you are, what your substance is, what your creation, and what your kinship to the divine, and the like. And the Spirit says through the prophet Isaiah: “I will give you dark, hidden treasures.” And the treasures of God and his unfailing wealth are wisdom, hard to hunt down.

And the poets too, who learned theology from these prophets, philosophize much by hidden meaning: I mean Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, Homer, Hesiod, and those wise in this way. The charm of poetry is a veil for them against the many; and dreams and symbols are all more obscure to men, not from envy (for it is not lawful to think of God as subject to passion), but so that inquiry, slipping into the meaning of the riddles, may run up to the discovery of the truth. So Sophocles, the tragic poet, says somewhere: “And I know the god to be such: to the wise always a riddler of oracles, but to the foolish a poor teacher, and in brief,” using “poor” for “simple.”

Plainly, at any rate, it is written in the Psalms about all our Scripture, as spoken in parable: “Hear, my people, my law; incline your ear to the words of my mouth; I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter riddles from the beginning.” And the noble apostle says similar things thus: “We speak wisdom among the perfect, but a wisdom not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which God predestined before the ages for our glory; which none of the rulers of this age has known; for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” The philosophers were not moved to insult the Lord's coming; it remains, then, that the apostle rebukes the conceit of the wise among the Jews. That is why he adds: “But we preach, as it is written, what eye has not seen and ear has not heard and has not entered the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him. For God has revealed it to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.” For he knows as spiritual and knowing the disciple of the Holy Spirit supplied from God, which is the mind of Christ. “But the psychic man does not receive the things of the Spirit; for they are foolishness to him.”

For example, the apostle, in contrast to the perfection of knowledge, calls the common faith sometimes a foundation and sometimes milk, writing in this way: “Brothers, I could not speak to you as spiritual, but as fleshly, as infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able. But not even now are you able; for you are still fleshly. For where there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly and walking according to man?” These are the choices of sinful men; but those who have abstained from them think divine things and partake of knowing food. “According to the grace given me,” he says, “as a wise master builder I have laid a foundation, and another builds on it gold and silver, precious stones.” These are the knowing structures built on the foundation of faith in Jesus Christ; but “stubble” and “wood and hay” are the additions of the heresies. “And the fire will test what sort each one's work is.” Hinting at the knowing structure in the letter to the Romans too, he says: “For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you.” But it was not possible to write such gifts openly in a letter.

For example, the Pythagorean symbols depend very closely and in a very hidden way on barbarian philosophy. The Samian advises not to have a swallow in the house; that is, not to receive a talkative, whispering, loose-tongued man, unable to keep what he shares. “For the swallow and the turtledove, birds of the field, have known the times of their coming,” says Scripture; and one should never live with chatter. Indeed the turtledove, which murmurs, showing ungrateful slander and complaint, is fittingly driven out: “Let none of you sit by and mutter, one here and another there.” And the swallow, by which the myth of Pandion is hinted at, deserves to be shunned because of the sufferings told of it, from which we have received what Tereus suffered and what he did. It also hunts the musical cicadas; so the persecutor of the Word deserves to be driven away. “By Hera, scepter-bearer, who looks down on Olympus, I have a faithful storeroom on my tongue,” the poetry says. And Aeschylus: “But I too have a key as guard upon my tongue.” Again, Pythagoras commanded that, when the pot is taken off the fire, one should not leave its mark in the ashes, but confuse it, and, on rising from bed, disturb the bedclothes; for he hinted that one must not only destroy pride, but leave no trace of anger either, and when it has boiled up and ceased, calm it and wipe away all resentment. “Let not the sun go down on your anger,” says Scripture; and the one who said, “You shall not desire,” removed all resentment. For anger is found to be an impulse of desire of a tame soul, seeking revenge irrationally in excess.

In the same way the bed is advised to be disturbed, so that one may no longer remember any nocturnal emission, nor sleep by day, nor the pleasure of the night. Perhaps too he hinted that one must confuse the dark imagination by the light of truth. “Be angry and do not sin,” David says, teaching that one must not assent to the imagination nor carry out the deed confirming the anger. Again, “Do not sail on land” is a Pythagorean symbol, and it shows that one must refuse taxes and such hirings, being troublesome and unstable. That is why the Word says tax collectors will hardly be saved. Again, Pythagoras enjoins not to wear a ring, nor to engrave images of gods on them, as Moses long before expressly legislated that no carved, molten, molded, or painted image or likeness should be made, so that we may not attend to sensible things but pass to intelligible ones. For familiarity with the ready sight cheapens the dignity of the divine, and to worship intelligible substance through matter is to dishonor it through sense. That is why the wisest of the Egyptian priests set apart the shrine of Athena open to the sky, as the Hebrews built their temple without an image. And there are some who, worshiping God, make an image of heaven containing the stars and bow to it.

Indeed, since Scripture says, “Let us make man according to our image and likeness,” I think it worth setting out the saying of Eurysus the Pythagorean, which runs thus: in his work On Fortune, having said that the Creator made man using himself as a model, he added: “And the tent is like the rest, as having come from the same matter, but worked by the best craftsman, who crafted it using himself as the archetype.” And in general Pythagoras and his followers, together with Plato, most of all the philosophers, associated closely with the lawgiver, as can be gathered from their doctrines themselves. And by a certain happy report of divination, running together not without God into some prophetic sayings, grasping the truth in parts and kinds, they honored it with names not obscure nor going beyond the expression of the things, having received an impression of kinship with the truth. Hence Greek philosophy is like the light from a wick, which men kindle, skillfully stealing light from the sun; but when the Word was proclaimed, all that holy light shone out. Then in houses the stolen light is useful at night, but by day the fire is outshone, and the whole night is lit up by so great a sun of intelligible light.

For example, Pythagoras made a summary of what Moses said about justice, saying, “Do not step over the balance,” that is, do not transgress equality in distributions, honoring justice, “which always binds friends to friends, cities to cities, and allies to allies; for equality is by nature lawful for men, but the lesser is always hostile to the greater and begins the day of enmity,” as the poet gracefully says. That is why the Lord says, “Take my yoke,” because it is kind and light. And to his disciples contending for first place he enjoins equality with simplicity, saying that they must become like children. Likewise the apostle writes that in Christ no one is slave or free, Greek or Jew. For the new creation in Christ is without rivalry and greed, and is just equality; for envy, jealousy, and grief stand outside the divine chorus; for which reason the initiates too forbid eating the heart, teaching that one must never bite and devour the soul with heaviness and pains over what happens against one's will. Wretched, at any rate, was that man whom Homer too describes as wandering alone, “eating his own heart.”

Again, since the gospel and the apostles, like all the prophets, set forth two ways, and call the one narrow and hard, hedged in by commandments and prohibitions, and the opposite, leading to destruction, broad and spacious, unhindered by pleasures and anger, and say, “Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly and has not stood in the way of sinners,” the fable of Prodicus of Ceos about Virtue and Vice follows; and Pythagoras does not hesitate to forbid walking on the public roads, commanding that one must not follow the opinions of the many, which are undiscerning and discordant. And Aristocritus, in the first book of his Refutations against Heracleodorus, mentions a letter running thus: “Atoias, king of the Scythians, to the people of Byzantium: Do not harm my revenues, lest my mares drink your water.” For the barbarian symbolically indicated the war he was going to bring on them. Likewise the poet Euphorion brings in Nestor saying: “We have not yet watered the Achaean horses at the Simoeis.” For this reason too the Egyptians set up sphinxes before their temples, as the account of God is enigmatic and obscure; and perhaps too because the divine must be both loved and feared: loved as gentle and kind to the holy, feared as inexorably just to the unholy. For the sphinx hints at the image of a beast and a man together.

It would be long to go through all the prophetic and legal sayings spoken in riddles, picking them out; for almost all Scripture is uttered in this way. It is enough, I think, for one who has sense, to set out a few examples to show what is proposed. For example, the reference of the seven enclosures around the old temple, recorded among the Hebrews, confesses concealment, as does the arrangement of the long robe, hinting by various symbols of the phenomena at the connection from heaven to earth. And the covering and the veil were embroidered with blue and purple, scarlet and linen, and hinted that the nature of the elements contains the revelation of God; for purple is from water, linen from the earth, blue, being dark, is like the air, as scarlet is like fire.

Between the covering and the veil, where the priests were allowed to enter, lay the altar of incense, a symbol of the earth set in the middle of this world, from which the exhalations come. And that place was in the middle between the area inside the veil, where only the high priest was allowed to enter on set days, and the outer court all around, open to all the Hebrews; that is why they say it is the very middle of heaven and earth; others say it is a symbol of the intelligible and the sensible world. The covering (kalymma), then, a barrier (kōlyma) to popular unbelief, was stretched before the five pillars, keeping out those in the enclosure. For this reason, most mystically, five loaves are broken by the Savior and multiply for the crowd of hearers. For many attend to sensible things as though they alone exist. “Look around,” says Plato, “lest any of the uninitiated overhear.” These are those who think nothing exists but what they can grasp tightly with their two hands, and do not accept actions, becomings, and all the invisible as part of being. For such are those who attend only to the five senses. But the understanding of God is inaccessible to the ears and the like.

Hence the Son is called the Face of the Father, having become flesh-bearing through the five senses, the Word who makes known the Father's character. “And if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” “We walk by faith, not by sight,” says the noble apostle. Inside the covering, then, the priestly ministry is hidden, and it keeps those laboring in it far from those outside. Again, the veil at the entrance into the holy of holies; four pillars there, a sign of the holy tetrad of the ancient covenants; and also the mystic four-lettered name, which those alone to whom the sanctuary was accessible wore; it is pronounced Iaoue, which is interpreted “he who is and will be.” And indeed among the Greeks too the name theos contains four letters. And into the intelligible world the Lord alone, having become high priest, enters, penetrating through his sufferings into the knowledge of the unspeakable, withdrawing above every name known by voice. Indeed the lampstand lay to the south of the altar of incense, by which the motions of the seven light-bearers are shown, which make their circuits to the south. For three branches grew on each side of the lampstand, with the lamps on them; since the sun too, like the lampstand, set in the middle of the other planets, gives light, by a kind of divine music, to those above it and those below it.

The golden lampstand has another riddle too, of the sign of Christ, not only in its shape, but in shedding light in many ways and in many parts on those who believe in him, hope, and see, through the ministry of the first-created. They say that the seven eyes of the Lord are the seven spirits resting on the rod that flowers from the root of Jesse. To the north of the altar of incense the table was placed, on which the loaves were set out, because the north winds are the most nourishing. They might also be certain dwelling places of churches breathing together into one body and one assembly. And what is recorded about the holy ark signifies the things of the intelligible world, hidden and closed to the many. Indeed, those golden figures, each with six wings, show either the two Bears, as some would have it, or, rather, the two hemispheres; and the name Cherubim means much knowledge. But both together have twelve wings, and through the zodiac and the time carried with it they signify the sensible world.

About these, I think, the tragedy too, speaking of nature, says: “Unwearied Time goes around, full, in ever-flowing stream, begetting itself; and the twin Bears, with swift-wandering beats of their wings, guard the Atlantean pole.” Atlas, the pole that does not suffer, can also be the fixed sphere; but perhaps it is better understood as motionless eternity. But I think it better that the ark, called by the Hebrew name thēbōtha, signifies something else. It is interpreted “one in place of one of all places.” Whether, then, the Ogdoad and the intelligible world, or God who contains all things, shapeless and invisible, is indicated, let it be put off for now; except that it signifies the rest with the glorifying spirits, which the Cherubim hint at. For the one who bade us not even to fashion a carved image would never himself have made a likeness of holy things; nor is there at all any composite and sensible living being in heaven like this; but the face is a symbol of the rational soul, the wings of the lofty ministries and activities of powers on the right and left, and the voice is thankful glory in unceasing contemplation.

It is enough to have gone this far with the mystical interpretation. The long robe of the high priest is a symbol of the sensible world; the five stones and the two carbuncles, of the seven planets, for Saturn and the Moon; for the one is southern, moist, earthy, and heavy, the other airy; that is why she is called by some Artemis, as “air-cutter” (aerotomos), and air is dark. And those set over the planets, cooperating according to divine providence in the begetting of things here, he fittingly describes as set on the breast and shoulders, through which comes the activity that produces generation, the first seven; and the breast is the dwelling place of heart and soul. The stones might also otherwise be various ways of salvation, some set in the upper, others in the lower parts of the whole body being saved. And the three hundred and sixty bells hanging from the long robe are the time of a year, “the acceptable year of the Lord,” proclaiming and resounding the greatest appearing of the Savior. And the golden headdress raised up shows the royal authority of the Lord, since the Savior is the head of the church.

The headdress above it, at any rate, is a sign of the most sovereign rule; besides, we have heard, as it has been said, “And the head of Christ is God,” the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed the breastpiece, made up of the ephod, which is a symbol of work, and the oracle (this hints at the Word), is also an image of heaven, which came to be by the Word, subject to Christ, the head of all things, and moving in the same way and likewise. The shining emerald stones on the ephod, then, signify the sun and moon, the helpers of nature. And the shoulder, I think, is the beginning of the hand. The twelve set on the breast in four rows describe for us the zodiac according to the four turnings of the year. Besides, the law and the prophets had to be set under the Lord's head, through which the righteous are indicated in each of the covenants; for we would say well that the apostles are both prophets and righteous, the one and the same Holy Spirit working through all. And as the Lord is above the whole world, or rather beyond the intelligible, so the name inscribed on the plate has been thought worthy to be above every rule and authority; and it is inscribed because of the written commandments and because of the sensible coming. And it is called the name of God, since the Son, as he sees the goodness of the Father, works, having been called God the Savior, the beginning of all things, which was imaged first from the invisible God before the ages, and has shaped all things that came after itself.

Indeed the oracle signifies prophecy, which cries out by the Word and proclaims, and the judgment to come, since the same Word prophesies, judges, and discerns each thing. They say too that the garment, the long robe, prophesies the arrangement according to the flesh, by which he was seen more closely in the world. So the high priest, taking off the consecrated tunic (for the world and creation in the world have been consecrated by the one who approved the things that came to be as good), washes and puts on the other tunic, holy of holy, so to speak, which enters the sanctuary with him; showing, it seems to me, the Levite and knowing man as leader of the other priests, those washed in water and clothed only in faith and awaiting their own dwelling; he himself, having distinguished intelligible things from sensible, hastening by ascent beyond the other priests to the passage to the intelligible, washed from things here no longer with water, as he was purified before when enrolled in the tribe of Levi, but now by the knowing Word.

Pure, then, in all his heart, having brought his conduct too very well to its height, having grown beyond the priest to something greater, simply purified in word and life, having put on the brightness of glory, having received the unspeakable inheritance of that spiritual and perfect man, “which eye has not seen and ear has not heard and has not entered the heart of man,” having become son and friend, he is now filled face to face with insatiable contemplation. Nothing is like hearing the Word himself, who gives more understanding through Scripture. For he says thus: “And he will take off the linen robe which he had put on when entering the holy place, and lay it aside there. And he will wash his body with water in a holy place and put on his robe.” In one way, I think, the Lord takes off and puts on, coming down into sense; in another way the one who has believed through him takes off and puts on, as the apostle too indicated, the consecrated robe. Hence, in the image of the Lord, high priests were chosen from the consecrated tribe, the most approved, and those chosen for kingship and for prophecy were anointed.

Hence the Egyptians too did not entrust their mysteries to anyone at all, nor reveal the knowledge of divine things to the profane, but only to those who were going to proceed to kingship and to those of the priests judged most approved by nurture, education, and birth. The riddles of the Egyptians, at any rate, are like those of the Hebrews in concealment. Some of the Egyptians show the sun on a ship, others on a crocodile. And they signify that the sun, making its journey through sweet and moist air, begets time, which the crocodile hints at because of some other sacred story. Indeed in Diospolis in Egypt, on the gateway of the temple called the sacred one, there are carved a child, a symbol of birth, and an old man, of decay, and a hawk, of God, as the fish is of hatred; and, with another meaning again, the crocodile of shamelessness.

The whole symbol, then, put together, appears to mean this: “O you who come into being and pass away, God hates shamelessness.” And those who fashion ears and eyes from precious material consecrate them to the gods, dedicating them in the temples, hinting no doubt that God sees and hears all things. Besides these, the lion is for them a symbol of strength and might; as the ox, of course, of the earth itself, of farming, and of food; the horse of courage and boldness; and the sphinx of strength with intelligence, having the whole body of a lion and the face of a man. Likewise with these, man is carved on their temples, hinting at intelligence, memory, power, and art.

Indeed, in what they call the processions of the gods, they carry about golden images, two dogs, one hawk, and one ibis, and call the four images four letters. The dogs are symbols of the two hemispheres, as though going around and guarding; the hawk of the sun, for it is fiery and destructive (indeed they attribute pestilential diseases to the sun); and the ibis of the moon, likening its shadowy parts to the black and its bright parts to the white of its feathers. Some would have the tropics indicated by the dogs, which guard and keep the gates of the sun's passage south and north; the hawk shows the equator, being high and burning, as the ibis shows the ecliptic; for the ibis, of all animals, seems to have given the Egyptians the beginning of the conception of number and measure, as the oblique circle among the circles.