Miscellanies 6.3.28–6.5.43

Now they are convicted not only of stealing doctrines from the barbarians, but also of imitating the things wondrously done among us from above by divine power, through those who lived holy lives, for our conversion, and of dressing them up as marvels in Greek mythology. So we shall ask them whether what they recount is true or false. False they would not say (for they would not willingly condemn themselves of the greatest folly, writing falsehoods); they would have to admit that it is true. How then do the things shown wondrously through Moses and the other prophets still appear incredible to them? For God Almighty, caring for all people, turns some to salvation by commandments, others by threats, some by wondrous signs, and some by gentle promises. But take the Greeks. Once, when a drought had been ravaging Greece for a long time and the crops were failing, those who were left, they say, came to Delphi as suppliants because of famine and asked the Pythia how they might be freed from the calamity. She declared to them one remedy for the disaster: to make use of the prayer of Aeacus. Persuaded by them, Aeacus went up the Hellenic mountain, stretched out pure hands to heaven, called on God as the common father, and prayed him to pity Greece in its distress. And as he prayed an extraordinary thunder crashed, all the surrounding air was filled with cloud, and violent, continuous rains burst down and filled the whole country. From this came an abundant and rich harvest, cultivated by the prayers of Aeacus.

“And Samuel,” it says, “called on the Lord, and the Lord gave thunder and rain in the day of harvest.” Do you see that he who sends rain on the just and the unjust through the powers subject to him is the one God? And the whole of our Scripture is full of God hearing and fulfilling each request at the prayers of the righteous. Again, the Greeks relate that once, when the Etesian winds failed, Aristaeus sacrificed in Ceos to Zeus Icmaeus; for there was great destruction, everything being scorched by the heat, and in particular the winds that usually cool the crops were not blowing; and he easily called them back. And the Delphians, when Xerxes marched against Greece and the Pythia proclaimed, “O Delphians, pray to the winds, and it will be better,” built an altar and offered sacrifice to the winds and had them as helpers; for they blew violently around Cape Sepias and shattered the whole armament of the Persian fleet.

And Empedocles of Acragas was called Wind-Stopper. It is said that once, when a wind blew from the mountain of Acragas, heavy and unhealthy for the inhabitants, and even causing barrenness in their wives, he stopped the wind. Hence he himself writes in his verses: “You will stop the might of the tireless winds, which rise over the earth and waste the fields of mortals; and again, if you wish, you will bring the winds back in return.” And he said that there followed him some “in need of prophecies, and others long pierced by grievous diseases.” Clearly, then, they have come to believe from our Scriptures that the righteous perform healings and signs and wonders. For even if certain powers move the winds and distribute the rains, let them hear the psalmist: “How lovely are your dwellings, Lord of powers.” He is the Lord of the powers and principalities and authorities, of whom Moses says, so that we may be with him: “And you shall circumcise your hardness of heart and no longer stiffen your neck; for the Lord your God, he is Lord of lords and God of gods, the great and strong God,” and what follows. And Isaiah says: “Lift up your eyes on high and see: who has displayed all these things?”

Some say, then, that plagues, hailstorms, gales, and the like tend to happen not only from the disorder of matter but also through the anger of certain daemons, or even of angels who are not good. For instance, they say that the magi at Cleonae, watching the sky for clouds about to hail, turn aside the threatened wrath by incantations and sacrifices; and indeed, if ever they lack an animal, they are content to offer blood from their own finger as the sacrifice. And Diotima of Mantinea, when the Athenians had sacrificed before the plague, brought about a ten-year postponement of the disease, just as the sacrifices of Epimenides the Cretan put off the Persian war for the same Athenians for the same length of time. They think it makes no difference whether we call these souls gods or angels. For instance, those experienced in this teaching, when founding temples, set up the tombs of the departed in many of them, indeed in almost all, calling their souls daemons and teaching that they are to be worshiped by men, as having received authority, through the purity of their life and by divine providence, to go about the region around the earth for the service of men; for they knew that some souls are held fast by nature in the body.

But we shall discuss these matters at the proper time, as our writing proceeds, in the account of angels. Democritus, foretelling many things from observing the heavens, was nicknamed Wisdom. When his brother Damasus received him kindly, he judged from certain stars that there would be much rain and foretold it. Those who believed him gathered in their crops (for it was summer and they were still on the threshing floors); but the others lost everything when an unexpected, heavy rain burst down. How, then, will the Greeks still disbelieve the divine manifestation at Mount Sinai, when fire blazed without consuming any of the things growing on the mountain, and the sound of trumpets was carried, blown without instruments? For that so-called descent of God upon the mountain is a manifestation of divine power pervading the whole world and proclaiming the unapproachable light. Such is the allegory according to Scripture. The fire, however, was seen, as Aristobulus says, by the whole multitude, not less than a million, apart from those under age, assembled around the mountain, whose circuit was not less than five days' journey.

So from every place from which it could be seen, the fire was beheld blazing by all of them round about, as though they were encamped around it, so that the descent was not a local one; for God is everywhere. And those who have compiled histories say that near the island of Britain there is a cave lying under a mountain, with a chasm at the summit; when the wind falls into the cave and breaks against the hollows of the cavity, a sound is heard like cymbals struck in rhythm. And often in the woods, too, when the leaves are moved by a sudden gust of wind, a sound strikes the ear like the song of birds. And those who have written Persian histories relate that in the upland regions, in the country of the Magi, three mountains lie in a row on a long plain. Those who travel through the place hear, when they come to the first mountain, a confused noise, as of many tens of thousands shouting, as in battle array; when they reach the middle one, they perceive a din at once louder and clearer; and at the last they hear men singing a paean as if victorious. The cause of every echo, I think, is the smoothness of the places and their cave-like character. For the air that enters, being thrown back and moving again into the same space, sounds more violently.

So much for these. But for God Almighty it is possible, even when nothing underlies it, to produce a voice and an appearance in the hearing, showing his own majesty beyond the customary things that follow a natural sequence, for the conversion of the soul that does not yet believe and its reception of the commandment that is given. And when there is a cloud and a high mountain, how is it not possible for a distinct sound to be heard, when the air is moved by the active cause? That is why the prophet says: “You heard a voice of words, and you saw no likeness.” You see how the Lord's voice is the Word without form; for the power of the Word, the luminous utterance of the Lord, truth that came from heaven above to the assembly of the church, was at work through a luminous and attentive ministry.

We might find yet another testimony confirming that the best of the philosophers appropriated the finest of their doctrines from us and boast of them as their own: that they have culled from the other barbarians too some things that contribute to each school, above all from the Egyptians, among other things the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul. For the Egyptians pursue a philosophy of their own; their sacred worship shows this most of all. First comes the Singer, carrying one of the symbols of music. He, they say, must have learned two of the books of Hermes, one of which contains hymns to the gods and the second an account of the king's life. After the Singer comes the Horoscopus, holding in his hand a clock and a palm branch, the symbols of astrology. He must always have on his lips the astrological books of Hermes, four in number: one about the arrangement of the fixed stars that appear, one about the order of the sun and moon and the five planets, one about the conjunctions and illuminations of the sun and moon, and the last about their risings.

Next comes the Sacred Scribe, with feathers on his head and a book and a basket in his hands, in which are the writing ink and the reed with which they write. He must know the so-called hieroglyphic books about cosmography and geography, the order of the sun and moon and the five planets, the topography of Egypt and the description of the Nile, the register of the furnishing of the temples and of the lands consecrated to them, and about measures and the things used in the temples. Then the Stolist follows those already mentioned, holding the cubit of justice and the libation cup. He knows all the books of instruction and those called calf-sealing. There are ten books that concern the honor paid to their gods and contain the Egyptian religion, for example about sacrifices, first fruits, hymns, prayers, processions, feasts, and the like.

Last of all the Prophet comes out, holding the water jar in plain view in his bosom; he is followed by those who carry the loaves set forth. He, as head of the temple, learns thoroughly the ten books called priestly (they contain matters concerning the laws, the gods, and the whole training of the priests); for among the Egyptians the prophet is also overseer of the distribution of the revenues. There are, then, forty-two books of Hermes that are absolutely necessary; of these, the thirty-six that contain the whole philosophy of the Egyptians are learned by those already mentioned, and the remaining six, which are medical, by the Pastophori: about the structure of the body, about diseases, about instruments, about drugs, about diseases of the eyes, and the last about women's conditions.

Such, briefly, are the things of the Egyptians. The philosophy of the Indians too has been noised abroad. Alexander of Macedon, for instance, took ten Indian gymnosophists, those thought to be the best and most concise in speech, and set problems before them, threatening to put to death the one who did not answer aptly, and ordering one of them, the eldest, to judge. The first, asked whether he thought the living or the dead were more numerous, said the living, for the dead do not exist. The second, asked whether the earth or the sea nourishes larger beasts, said the earth, for the sea is part of it. The third, asked which of the animals is the most cunning, said: “The one that has not been found out until now: man.” The fourth, questioned on what reasoning they had made Sabbas, who was their ruler, revolt, answered: “Wishing him either to live well or to die well.” The fifth, asked whether he thought day or night came first, said: “Night, by one day”; for to hard questions the answers too must be hard. The sixth, asked how one might be loved most, said: “If, being most powerful, he is not feared.” The seventh, asked how one might become a god from a man, said: “If he does what it is impossible for a man to do.” The eighth, asked which is stronger, life or death, said: “Life, since it bears so many evils.” The ninth, questioned how long it is good for a man to live, said: “Until he does not think death better than life.” When Alexander told the tenth too to say something (for he was the judge), he said: “Each spoke worse than the other.” When Alexander said, “Then you will die first yourself, for judging so,” he said: “And how, O king, would you be truthful, having said you would first kill the one who answered worst?”

That the Greeks have been caught as thieves of every kind of writing has, I think, been sufficiently shown by many proofs. But that the most esteemed of the Greeks know God not by full knowledge but by roundabout description, Peter says in the Preaching: “Know, then, that there is one God, who made the beginning of all things and has power over their end”; and: “The invisible, who sees all things; uncontainable, who contains all things; needing nothing, whom all things need and through whom they exist; incomprehensible, everlasting, incorruptible, unmade, who made all things by the word of his power,” that is, in the language of knowing Scripture, by the Son. Then he adds: “Worship this God, not as the Greeks do”; as though plainly the esteemed among the Greeks worship the same God as we, but not with perfect knowledge, since they have not learned the tradition given through the Son. “Do not,” then, he says, “worship”: he did not say “the God whom the Greeks worship,” but “not as the Greeks do,” changing the manner of the worship of God, not proclaiming another God.

What “not as the Greeks” means, Peter himself will make clear, adding: “For they, carried along by ignorance and not knowing God” (as we do, by perfect knowledge), “shaping the things over which he gave them authority for use, wood and stones, bronze and iron, gold and silver, forgetting their material and their use, set up as objects of worship the things meant to serve their existence; and the things God gave them for food, the birds of the air and the swimming creatures of the sea and the creeping things of the earth and the wild beasts with the four-footed cattle of the field, weasels and mice, cats and dogs and apes; and they sacrifice their own foods as sacrifices to things that are themselves eaten, and offering dead things to the dead as to gods, they are ungrateful to God, denying by these things that he exists.”

And that he speaks as though we and the Greeks know the same God, though not in the same way, he shows by adding next: “Nor worship as the Jews do …; for they too, thinking that they alone know God, do not know him, serving angels and archangels, the month and the moon. And if the moon does not appear, they do not keep the Sabbath called the first, nor do they keep the new moon, or unleavened bread, or the feast, or the great day.” Then he adds the crowning point of the question: “So you too, learning in holiness and righteousness what we hand on to you, keep it, worshiping God in a new way through Christ. For we have found in the Scriptures, as the Lord says: ‘Behold, I make with you a new covenant, not as I made with your fathers on Mount Horeb.’ He made a new one with us; for the ways of the Greeks and the Jews are old, but we are those who worship him in a new way, as a third race: Christians.” For he clearly showed, I think, that the one and only God is known by the Greeks in a Gentile way, by the Jews in a Jewish way, but by us in a new and spiritual way.

Moreover, he showed that the same God is the provider of both covenants, and is also the giver of Greek philosophy to the Greeks, by which the Almighty is glorified among the Greeks. This is clear from the following as well. From Greek education, and also from the law, those who accept the faith are gathered into the one race of the people being saved: not that the three peoples are divided by time, so that one might suppose three natures, but they are trained by different covenants of the one Lord, being by the word of the one Lord. And that, just as God wished to save the Jews by giving them the prophets, so also he raised up the most esteemed of the Greeks as prophets of their own in their own language, as they were able to receive God's benefaction, and distinguished them from the common run of men, the apostle Paul will show, besides the Preaching of Peter, saying:

“Take also the Greek books; recognize the Sibyl, how she makes known one God and the things that are to come; and take and read Hystaspes, and you will find the Son of God written of far more luminously and clearly, and how many kings will draw up battle lines against Christ, hating him and those who bear his name and his faithful ones, and his endurance, and his coming.” Then in one word he asks us: “The whole world and the things in the world, whose are they? Are they not God's?” That is why Peter says the Lord told the apostles: “If, then, anyone of Israel wishes to repent and to believe in God through my name, his sins will be forgiven him. After twelve years go out into the world, lest anyone say, ‘We did not hear.’”