Preparation for the Gospel

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1.1–1.4.15 · 1.5.1–1.8.19 · 1.9.1–1.9.30 · 1.10.1–2.0.6 · 2.1.1–2.1.56 · 2.2.1–2.2.64 · 2.3.1–2.6.24 · 2.7.1–3.3.21 · 3.4.1–3.9.15 · 3.10.1–3.11.51 · 3.12.1–4.1.11 · 4.2.1–4.9.7 · 4.10.1–4.15.9 · 4.16.1–4.19.8 · 4.20.1–5.3.10 · 5.4.1–5.13.3 · 5.14.1–5.23.7 · 5.24.1–5.33.17 · 5.34.1–6.6.30 · 6.6.31–6.6.74 · 6.7.1–6.8.39 · 6.9.1–6.9.32 · 6.10.1–6.11.27 · 6.11.28–7.3.3 · 7.4.1–7.9.4 · 7.10.1–7.14.3 · 7.15.1–7.21.5 · 7.22.1–8.2.5 · 8.3.1–8.7.21 · 8.8.1–8.8.57 · 8.9.1–8.12.22 · 8.13.1–8.14.65 · 8.14.66–9.15.1 · 9.16.1–9.26.1 · 9.27.1–9.30.8 · 9.31.1–10.2.16 · 10.3.1–10.6.15 · 10.7.1–10.9.28 · 10.10.1–10.12.31 · 10.13.1–11.5.9 · 11.6.1–11.10.16 · 11.11.1–11.18.26 · 11.19.1–11.26.8 · 11.27.1–11.35.6 · 11.36.1–12.5.4 · 12.6.1–12.17.3 · 12.18.1–12.28.2 · 12.29.1–12.47.1 · 12.48.1–12.50.11 · 12.51.1–12.51.48 · 12.52.1–13.2.2 · 13.3.1–13.6.12 · 13.7.1–13.13.7 · 13.13.8–13.13.51 · 13.13.52–13.16.18 · 13.17.1–13.20.7 · 13.21.1–14.4.16 · 14.5.1–14.9.9 · 14.10.1–14.15.11 · 14.16.1–14.18.32 · 14.19.1–14.24.6 · 14.25.7–15.1.13 · 15.2.1–15.6.17 · 15.7.1–15.14.2 · 15.15.1–15.21.3 · 15.22.1–15.22.69 · 15.23.1–15.61.12 · 15.62.1–15.62.18

1. 1.1.1Eusebius dedicates the work to Bishop Theodotus and states that it will set out Christianity for those who do not know it.
2. 1.1.2The gospel announces the highest goods, which belong to the soul rather than to wealth or bodily life.
3. 1.1.3The chief good is true piety, the turning to the one God, which leads to friendship with him and a blessed end.
4. 1.1.4Nothing is lacking to the one who has God, the source of all life and good, as friend and father.
5. 1.1.5The friend of God fares well in soul, body, and circumstances.
6. 1.1.6The Word of God announces friendship with God to all people of every nation, class, and condition.
7. 1.1.7Because God made all people of one nature, he offers the same gift of knowing him to all who accept it.
8. 1.1.8Christ came to announce reconciliation and peace with God to the whole world.
9. 1.1.9The Hebrew prophets foretold that all nations would turn to the Lord and abandon their gods.
10. 1.1.10Christ's teaching has fulfilled the ancient oracles about the knowledge of God among all nations.
11. 1.1.11Answering the charge that Christians believe without reason, Eusebius proposes first to address the questions of Greeks and Jews as a preparation.
12. 1.1.12The Preparation serves as an introduction for converts from the nations; the Demonstration will follow with deeper doctrine.
13. 1.1.13Eusebius begins the Preparation by setting out the objections of Greeks and Jews.
14. 1.2.1Critics ask what Christians are, since they are neither Greeks nor barbarians in thought or custom.
15. 1.2.2The critic charges that Christians are impious and atheists for abandoning ancestral customs.
16. 1.2.3The critic asks what pardon Christians deserve for abandoning the universally worshipped gods for Jewish myths.
17. 1.2.4The critic charges that Christians follow neither Greek nor Jewish customs but have invented a new path of their own.
18. 1.2.5The Hebrews may object that Christians, as foreigners, appropriate their Scriptures and push them out.
19. 1.2.6The Jewish objection: the prophecies of the Christ and other promises were given to the Jews, not to the nations.
20. 1.2.7The Jewish objection continues: Christians take the rebukes for Israel but claim its promises for themselves.
21. 1.2.8The final Jewish objection: Christians break the law yet claim the rewards promised to those who keep it.
22. 1.3.1Eusebius, invoking God through Christ the high priest, begins by refuting the charge of unreasoning faith.
23. 1.3.2Christian teaching, debate, and preaching themselves refute the charge that Christians give no reasons.
24. 1.3.3The present work itself offers many reasoned demonstrations of the gospel.
25. 1.3.4Earlier Christian writers produced refutations, commentaries, homilies, and defenses of doctrine.
26. 1.3.5Paul himself rejected sophistry and spoke of demonstration of the Spirit and of power.
27. 1.3.6Christians are commanded to give reasons for their hope, and many recent writers have done so.
28. 1.3.7The deeds of Christ's power, still visible, are clearer proof than any arguments.
29. 1.3.8Christ foretold the worldwide preaching of the gospel and the indestructible church, and the fulfillment silences his critics.
30. 1.3.9The fulfillment shows that the prediction came from God's power, not human nature.
31. 1.3.10The gospel has spread through the whole world as Christ said.
32. 1.3.11The church stands unconquered, as Christ promised when he said the gates of Hades would not prevail against it.
33. 1.3.12Christ's many fulfilled predictions prove the truth of Christian belief about him.
34. 1.3.13The Hebrew prophets foretold Christ's coming, his teaching, the Jews' rejection of him, and the fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion.
35. 1.3.14The prophets also foretold the calling of the nations, which Christ's teaching has accomplished.
36. 1.3.15The conversion of the nations from idols fulfills Jeremiah's prophecy that the nations would come to the Lord.
37. 1.4.1The gospel's survival and growth despite demons and persecuting rulers shows that it comes from God.
38. 1.4.2Christ's teaching on the one God freed humanity both from demonic error and from the divided rule of many kings.
39. 1.4.3Before Christ, the many rulers of the nations brought constant war, so that all went armed.
40. 1.4.4At Christ's coming, Augustus became sole ruler and the age of constant wars ended, as the prophets foretold.
41. 1.4.5Wars raged while demons were worshipped, but ceased with Christ's teaching, which Eusebius takes as proof of his divine power.
42. 1.4.6Christ's teaching has reformed barbarous customs such as incest, cannibalism, killing the aged, and human sacrifice.
43. 1.4.7Eusebius lists the cruel customs of various peoples toward the old and the dead.
44. 1.4.8The gospel has put an end to these savage customs.
45. 1.4.9The gospel teaches Greeks and barbarians to worship only the one God and to master even lustful looks and thoughts.
46. 1.4.10Christians, taught not to swear and to account for every idle word, practice the highest philosophy in speech.
47. 1.4.11Multitudes everywhere are taught self-control, patience under insult, generosity to the poor, and brotherhood with all.
48. 1.4.12Taken together, these effects show that Christian teaching brings the greatest goods to human life.
49. 1.4.13The gospel has led all peoples, even the wildest, from savagery to philosophical beliefs.
50. 1.4.14Christian martyrs, even women and children, prove the soul's immortality by deeds and surpass the philosophers' talk about death.
51. 1.4.15Christ's teaching instructs all nations in God's providence and judgment and in a careful life.
52. 1.5.1The greatest benefit of the gospel is deliverance from idolatry into the light of true worship.
53. 1.5.2Those capable of argument are urged to examine the proofs of Christian doctrine and be ready to give a defense.
54. 1.5.3For simple beginners, sound faith serves as a medicine that gives them right beliefs about providence, immortality, and virtue.
55. 1.5.4As patients trust physicians without understanding medicine, so beginners may rightly receive the faith.
56. 1.5.5A patient obeys the physician's orders in the belief that they will help him.
57. 1.5.6Students and philosophers also begin by believing that their teachers or schools will benefit them.
58. 1.5.7Trades, careers, and marriages likewise begin with faith and hope.
59. 1.5.8Sailors, farmers, and travelers all act in faith and hope.
60. 1.5.9Since all life depends on faith and hope, it is no wonder that some receive the truth by faith and others by demonstration.
61. 1.5.10Eusebius admits that Christians have left Greek religion and use the Jewish books without living as Jews.
62. 1.5.11To justify leaving the ancestral religion, Eusebius will first set it out in full.
63. 1.5.12Eusebius will show the excellence of the Hebrew books, why Christians do not live as Jews, and what Christianity is: neither Hellenism nor Judaism.
64. 1.5.13Eusebius begins by examining the ancient Greek theologies and the philosophers' views of the world and the gods.
65. 1.5.14Eusebius will quote the pagans' own writers so that he cannot be suspected of inventing anything.
66. 1.6.1The Phoenicians and Egyptians were said to be the first to deify the heavenly bodies and to introduce stories of the gods' origins.
67. 1.6.2Before polytheism, a few Hebrews worshipped the one Creator, known from his works, and handed this true piety down from father to son.
68. 1.6.3Others fell away and worshipped the heavenly bodies, at first without temples or images.
69. 1.6.4Polytheism grew worse among Phoenicians and Egyptians; Orpheus and Cadmus brought their rites, and letters, to the Greeks.
70. 1.6.5Eusebius sets out his plan: cosmogony, ancient superstition, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Greek religion, oracles, and Greek philosophy.
71. 1.6.6Then he will treat the Hebrews and the Jews, and finally the Christian faith.
72. 1.6.7Comparing all these religions will show what Christians have left and what they have chosen.
73. 1.6.8Eusebius will draw his evidence from Greek philosophers and historians, not from Christian writings.
74. 1.6.9Eusebius introduces Diodorus of Sicily's account of the world's origin.
75. 1.7.1Diodorus says he will treat the myths of the gods separately and give here only what suits his history.
76. 1.7.2Diodorus will record the history of mankind from the earliest times.
77. 1.7.3Diodorus reports two views: an eternal world and human race, or a world and humanity with a beginning.
78. 1.7.4Diodorus describes the separation of heaven and earth and the formation of sky, sea, and land.
79. 1.7.5As the earth dried, swellings covered with membranes formed in its moist places.
80. 1.7.6From these, living creatures of every kind emerged.
81. 1.7.7Birds, land animals, and fish arose according to the element that predominated in them.
82. 1.7.8Once the earth hardened, animals reproduced by mating.
83. 1.7.9Diodorus cites Euripides' Melanippe for the original unity and separation of heaven and earth.
84. 1.7.10Diodorus describes the earliest humans as living like beasts and banding together for protection.
85. 1.7.11Language arose gradually by agreed signs.
86. 1.7.12Different groups formed different languages and became the first nations.
87. 1.7.13The first humans lacked clothes, houses, fire, and stored food, and many died in winter.
88. 1.7.14Experience taught them shelter, storage, fire, and the arts.
89. 1.7.15Need taught humanity everything, aided by hands, speech, and intelligence.
90. 1.7.16Diodorus never mentions God; Eusebius turns to Plutarch's Miscellanies to show the philosophers' conflicting views on first principles.
91. 1.8.1Thales held that water is the first principle of all things.
92. 1.8.2Anaximander held that the infinite is the cause of all, that the world and heavenly bodies arose from it, and that man came from other creatures.
93. 1.8.3Anaximenes made air the first principle and explained the world by its condensation and rarefaction.
94. 1.8.4Xenophanes denied coming into being, distrusted the senses, and held that no god rules over another.
95. 1.8.5Parmenides held that being is eternal, one, and unmoved, and that coming into being is mere opinion.
96. 1.8.6Zeno of Elea only raised difficulties.
97. 1.8.7Democritus held the universe infinite, unmade, and governed by necessity.
98. 1.8.8Epicurus denied the gods' activity, held that everything is body, and made pleasure the highest good.
99. 1.8.9Aristippus made pleasure the good and confined inquiry to practical ethics.
100. 1.8.10Empedocles held four elements moved by Love and Strife and explained the heavens and the soul's seat in the blood.
101. 1.8.11Metrodorus held the universe eternal, infinite, and unmoved, and explained the sun and stars by condensation and rarefaction.
102. 1.8.12Diogenes of Apollonia made air the element and held that there are infinite worlds.
103. 1.8.13Eusebius concludes that the natural philosophers named no creator and ascribed the universe to chance motion.
104. 1.8.14The philosophers contradict each other, and Socrates, according to Xenophon, called them fools.
105. 1.8.15Xenophon: Socrates avoided speculation about nature and called those who pursued it foolish.
106. 1.8.16Socrates compared the natural philosophers, with their contradictory views, to madmen.
107. 1.8.17Plato's Socrates tells Cebes how in youth he pursued the inquiry into nature.
108. 1.8.18Socrates says the inquiry into nature blinded him even to what he had known before.
109. 1.8.19Since even Socrates rejected the natural philosophers, Christians rightly reject them; Eusebius returns to Diodorus on the earliest religion.
110. 1.9.1Diodorus says the early Egyptians worshipped the sun and moon as Osiris and Isis.
111. 1.9.2Osiris is explained as 'many-eyed,' since the sun sees everything.
112. 1.9.3Greek mythographers identified Osiris with Dionysus and Sirius, citing Eumolpus and Orpheus.
113. 1.9.4Isis is explained as 'ancient'; Isis and Osiris were thought to govern the universe.
114. 1.9.5In the Phoenician theology the earliest people worshipped the heavenly bodies and the fruits of the earth that sustained them.
115. 1.9.6Eusebius introduces Porphyry, the critic of Christians, who records the earliest worship in his On Abstinence.
116. 1.9.7Porphyry, citing Theophrastus, says the Egyptians first sacrificed to the heavenly gods long before incense was used.
117. 1.9.8The first sacrifices were of grass and plants burned to the heavenly gods.
118. 1.9.9Porphyry derives the Greek words for sacrifice from the burning of plants, not of animals.
119. 1.9.10The ancients cursed those who changed the old custom, and named incense from those curses.
120. 1.9.11Porphyry says that animal sacrifice was a later cruel departure from the first offerings.
121. 1.9.12Plato's Cratylus says the first Greeks worshipped only the heavenly bodies, called theoi from their running.
122. 1.9.13The earliest people had no temples or images, since the arts needed for them did not yet exist.
123. 1.9.14The Greeks' own testimony shows that the earliest people knew no named gods or demons and offered no animal sacrifices.
124. 1.9.15Scripture also says the nations were given the heavenly bodies to honor, while the Hebrews alone knew the Creator.
125. 1.9.16The earliest people had no theogonies, images, or male and female gods.
126. 1.9.17The names of gods, invocations of spirits, myths, and mysteries were all later inventions.
127. 1.9.18Idolatry was a human invention arising from shameful ways, as Wisdom says.
128. 1.9.19Polytheism appeared later, beginning with Phoenicians and Egyptians and spreading to the Greeks.
129. 1.9.20Eusebius introduces Sanchuniathon's Phoenician history, translated by Philo of Byblos and praised by Porphyry.
130. 1.9.21Porphyry praises Sanchuniathon of Berytus as an ancient and truthful historian, close to the time of Moses.
131. 1.9.22Sanchuniathon's gods turn out to be wicked mortal men and women, still worshipped everywhere.
132. 1.9.23Philo of Byblos divided Sanchuniathon's work into nine books.
133. 1.9.24Philo says Sanchuniathon drew on the writings of Taautus, inventor of letters, known as Thoth or Hermes.
134. 1.9.25Philo criticizes later writers who allegorized the myths.
135. 1.9.26Philo says Sanchuniathon recovered the true history from secret writings, which later priests turned back into myth.
136. 1.9.27Philo says he relied on Phoenician sources, not on the inconsistent Greek ones.
137. 1.9.28Philo mentions his three books on the Greeks' contradictions.
138. 1.9.29Philo explains that the Phoenicians and Egyptians deified their benefactors and kings, besides the heavenly bodies.
139. 1.9.30Philo begins his translation of Sanchuniathon's Phoenician theology.
140. 1.10.1Philo of Byblos reports Sanchuniathon's cosmogony: from dark air and chaos, through Desire, came Mot.
141. 1.10.2From Mot came the seeds of creation, intelligent beings called Zophasemin, and the heavenly bodies.
142. 1.10.3Eusebius calls this cosmogony atheistic and turns to its account of the origin of animals.
143. 1.10.4Thunder and lightning awakened the first living creatures, male and female.
144. 1.10.5Philo attributes this account to the writings of Taautus.
145. 1.10.6The first people deified and worshipped the plants that fed them.
146. 1.10.7Philo traces the first mortals, Aeon and Protogonus, and their descendants who worshipped the sun as Beelsamen, 'lord of heaven.'
147. 1.10.8Philo says the Greeks misunderstood the Phoenician names through faulty translation.
148. 1.10.9Philo names further generations, who discovered fire and gave their names to mountains.
149. 1.10.10Hypsouranius built huts; Usous made clothing from skins, first went to sea, and set up pillars to fire and wind.
150. 1.10.11Later descendants invented hunting, fishing, ironworking, and sailing; Chrysor, identified with Hephaestus, was deified.
151. 1.10.12Later generations invented brick walls, sun-dried bricks, and roofs; Agrotes was honored as the greatest god at Byblos.
152. 1.10.13Further generations established villages and flocks; Misor and Sydyk discovered salt.
153. 1.10.14Taautus invented letters; the Dioscuri invented the ship; Elioun the Most High lived near Byblos.
154. 1.10.15Ouranus and Ge, children of Elioun, gave their names to heaven and earth; Elioun was deified after his death.
155. 1.10.16Ouranus married Ge and had four sons, including Cronus; Ge's jealousy separated them.
156. 1.10.17Ouranus abused Ge and tried to kill their children; Cronus, advised by Hermes, avenged his mother.
157. 1.10.18Cronus, aided by Athena and Hermes, defeated Ouranus and took his kingdom.
158. 1.10.19Demarus was born, and Cronus founded Byblos, the first city.
159. 1.10.20Cronus buried his brother Atlas; seafarers founded a temple at Mount Cassius; Cronus's allies were called Eloeim.
160. 1.10.21Cronus killed his own son and daughter.
161. 1.10.22Ouranus sent Astarte, Rhea, and Dione to kill Cronus, but he married them.
162. 1.10.23Cronus won over Fate and Season; Ouranus invented living stones; Cronus had seven daughters by Astarte.
163. 1.10.24Cronus had further children by Rhea, Dione, and Astarte.
164. 1.10.25Dagon discovered grain and the plow; Asclepius was born to Sydyk.
165. 1.10.26Cronus had three more sons in Peraea; Pontus, Typhon, and Nereus were born.
166. 1.10.27Sidon invented song; Melcathrus (Heracles) was born to Demarus.
167. 1.10.28Ouranus and Demarus fought Pontus, who routed Demarus.
168. 1.10.29Cronus ambushed and mutilated his father Ouranus, who was then deified.
169. 1.10.30Eusebius mocks the Greek praise of the golden age under Cronus.
170. 1.10.31Astarte, Demarus, and Adodus ruled with Cronus's consent; Astarte consecrated a fallen star at Tyre.
171. 1.10.32Astarte is identified with Aphrodite; Cronus gave Attica to Athena.
172. 1.10.33During a plague Cronus sacrificed his only son and circumcised himself and his allies.
173. 1.10.34Cronus deified his dead son Muth, called Death.
174. 1.10.35Cronus gave Byblos to Baaltis and Berytus to Poseidon and the Cabiri.
175. 1.10.36Tauthus designed the sacred letters and the emblem of Cronus with four eyes and four wings.
176. 1.10.37The emblem symbolized Cronus's constant watchfulness and motion.
177. 1.10.38Cronus gave Egypt to Tauthus, and the Cabiri recorded these events at his command.
178. 1.10.39The hierophant Thabion allegorized these stories and passed them to the priests, who increased the mystification.
179. 1.10.40Philo says the Greeks adopted these stories and embellished them into myths of their own.
180. 1.10.41Long familiarity with Greek myths makes the truth seem nonsense and the myths seem true.
181. 1.10.42Eusebius closes the extracts from Sanchuniathon and adds one from Philo's work On the Jews.
182. 1.10.43Tauthus organized religion into a science; later Surmubelus and Thuro revealed his hidden theology.
183. 1.10.44Philo describes the ancient custom of rulers sacrificing a beloved child in times of danger, as Cronus sacrificed his only son.
184. 1.10.45Eusebius introduces Philo's account of the worship of serpents.
185. 1.10.46Tauthus deified the serpent as the most spirit-filled and fiery of creatures.
186. 1.10.47The serpent renews itself by shedding its skin and was therefore used in temples and mysteries.
187. 1.10.48Philo says the serpent was thought immortal and was worshipped as Agathodaemon or Kneph.
188. 1.10.49The Egyptian priest Epeeis described the first divine being as a hawk-formed serpent whose eyes gave light.
189. 1.10.50Pherecydes drew on the Phoenicians for his serpent-god Ophion.
190. 1.10.51The Egyptians depicted the cosmos as a circle with a serpent across it, like the letter theta.
191. 1.10.52Philo cites Zoroaster and Ostanes for a hawk-headed supreme god.
192. 1.10.53All these peoples, following Tauthus, built temples to serpents and worshipped them as the greatest gods.
193. 1.10.54The gospel calls people to flee the Phoenician theology and seek healing from it.
194. 1.10.55These accounts are presented as true history, not allegory, and refute themselves; Eusebius turns to the Egyptians.
195. 2.0.1Eusebius restates that the gospel calls people away from Phoenician theology.
196. 2.0.2The Greeks' own writers admit that the ancient stories of the gods were meant literally, not as allegories.
197. 2.0.3The quoted writers make allegorical explanations unnecessary.
198. 2.0.4Eusebius turns to Egyptian theology to show that leaving it was reasonable and was brought about by the gospel.
199. 2.0.5Manetho wrote on Egyptian history and theology in Greek.
200. 2.0.6Eusebius chooses to quote Diodorus on Egyptian theology because he is better known to Greeks.
201. 2.1.1Diodorus reports the Egyptian claim that the first humans arose in Egypt.
202. 2.1.2The Egyptian gods were mortal men made immortal for their benefits to mankind.
203. 2.1.3Helios, or according to some Hephaestus, was the first king of Egypt.
204. 2.1.4Cronus married Rhea and fathered Osiris and Isis, or Zeus and Hera.
205. 2.1.5Osiris (Dionysus) married Isis (Demeter) and ruled for the common good.
206. 2.1.6Osiris founded Thebes and built temples to the gods.
207. 2.1.7Osiris discovered the vine and taught agriculture.
208. 2.1.8Hermes, honored by Osiris, invented letters, the lyre, and sacrificial rites.
209. 2.1.9Osiris traveled the world, appointing governors, accompanied by Apollo.
210. 2.1.10Anubis, Macedon, and Pan joined Osiris's expedition, and the Satyrs were brought to him.
211. 2.1.11Osiris traveled with musicians, including the nine Muses led by Apollo.
212. 2.1.12Every nation honored Osiris as a god.
213. 2.1.13Osiris founded cities in India.
214. 2.1.14Osiris crossed into Europe, leaving Macedon as king and Triptolemus over Attica's farming.
215. 2.1.15After death Osiris was deified, and Isis and Hermes established his rites.
216. 2.1.16Typhon murdered Osiris and divided his body among his accomplices.
217. 2.1.17Isis and Horus avenged Osiris and Isis became queen.
218. 2.1.18Isis made human figures from each part of Osiris's body for the priests to honor.
219. 2.1.19The sacred bulls Apis and Mnevis were consecrated to Osiris.
220. 2.1.20Isis vowed never to remarry, was deified, and was buried at Memphis.
221. 2.1.21Isis gave divine honors even to the lost private part of Osiris.
222. 2.1.22The phallic rites of the Greek Dionysiac mysteries came from Egypt.
223. 2.1.23Orpheus transferred the Egyptian birth story of Dionysus to Thebes to please the Cadmeans.
224. 2.1.24Semele, daughter of Cadmus, bore a child like Osiris, which gave Orpheus his occasion.
225. 2.1.25Cadmus attributed Semele's child to Zeus, giving rise to the Greek story of Dionysus' birth.
226. 2.1.26Poets spread the story, and the Greeks generally claimed Egyptian gods and heroes as their own.
227. 2.1.27The original Heracles was Egyptian, distinct from the later Greek son of Alcmene.
228. 2.1.28Perseus and Isis were Egyptian; the Greeks made Isis into Io and identified her with various goddesses.
229. 2.1.29Osiris was identified with various gods.
230. 2.1.30Isis discovered medicine and raised her son Horus from the dead with the drug of immortality.
231. 2.1.31Horus, identified with Apollo, was the last god to reign over Egypt.
232. 2.1.32Giants made war on the gods, and the Egyptians permitted marriage with sisters after the example of Isis and Osiris.
233. 2.1.33One explanation of Egyptian animal worship: the gods once escaped danger by taking animal forms.
234. 2.1.34Another explanation: animals worn as battle emblems were deified after victories.
235. 2.1.35A third explanation: animals were honored for their usefulness to people.
236. 2.1.36Dogs were honored for guarding Isis in her search.
237. 2.1.37Cats and ichneumons were honored for destroying snakes and crocodiles.
238. 2.1.38The ibis, hawk, and eagle were honored for their usefulness and dignity.
239. 2.1.39The goat and the phallus were worshipped as symbols of generation.
240. 2.1.40Hereditary priests were initiated to this god, and Pans and Satyrs were honored for the same reason.
241. 2.1.41The bulls Apis and Mnevis were honored for their role in agriculture.
242. 2.1.42Wolves were honored because Osiris was said to have come to help Isis in the form of a wolf.
243. 2.1.43Wolves were honored for repelling invaders; crocodiles for keeping robbers from crossing the Nile.
244. 2.1.44A king was said to have been saved by a crocodile.
245. 2.1.45Another explanation: a king assigned different sacred animals to prevent the Egyptians from uniting against him.
246. 2.1.46Sacred animals were mourned and buried, and killing them was punished by death.
247. 2.1.47A household mourned a dead dog and would not use the food stored in the house.
248. 2.1.48The sacred animals were kept in their own cities and fed with fine foods.
249. 2.1.49The sacred animals were given food and mates.
250. 2.1.50A new Apis bull was sought after the old one died; women were permitted to see him only once.
251. 2.1.51Eusebius calls Egyptian religion shameful atheism, from which the gospel alone has freed Christians.
252. 2.1.52Egyptian and Phoenician mythologies together spread ancient superstition among the nations.
253. 2.1.53Greek religion is a collection of fragments and misunderstandings of Egyptian myth.
254. 2.1.54Greek records about the gods contain nothing original.
255. 2.1.55Diodorus shows that the Greeks used the same images and mysteries, beginning his account with Cadmus.
256. 2.1.56Since Cadmus lived after Moses, Moses is older than the Greek gods; Eusebius quotes Diodorus.
257. 2.2.1Cadmus, seeking Europa, founded Thebes and fathered Semele.
258. 2.2.2Semele died when Zeus came to her in his divine form.
259. 2.2.3Dionysus, raised by nymphs at Nysa, discovered wine and taught viticulture.
260. 2.2.4Dionysus invented beer, led an army of men and women, and campaigned in India.
261. 2.2.5The Greeks held triennial festivals for Dionysus and honored him for wine as Demeter for grain.
262. 2.2.6An earlier Dionysus, Sabazius, son of Zeus and Persephone, was honored in secret night rites.
263. 2.2.7The elder Dionysus first yoked oxen; the younger was delicate, beautiful, and given to pleasure.
264. 2.2.8The Muses and his tutor Silenus accompanied Dionysus; he wore a headband against hangovers.
265. 2.2.9Dionysus was called 'of two mothers' and given the fennel stalk to replace dangerous staffs.
266. 2.2.10The names Bacchius, Lenaeus, and Bromius are explained.
267. 2.2.11Dionysus was accompanied by Satyrs and founded the theater.
268. 2.2.12Priapus, son of Dionysus and Aphrodite, personified sexual arousal.
269. 2.2.13The phallus was honored as the cause of generation, as Isis honored that of Osiris.
270. 2.2.14Priapus was honored in many Greek rites; Hermaphroditus was named from Hermes and Aphrodite.
271. 2.2.15Hermaphrodites were thought to be portents of good or evil.
272. 2.2.16The Muses were daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, named from initiating men into the good.
273. 2.2.17Heracles' descent from Perseus and his conception by Zeus and Alcmene.
274. 2.2.18Jealous Hera delayed Heracles' birth so that Eurystheus would rule.
275. 2.2.19Hera nursed the exposed infant Heracles until he hurt her; Athena returned him to Alcmene.
276. 2.2.20The infant Heracles strangled Hera's serpents; as a man he was ordered to perform twelve labors.
277. 2.2.21Driven mad by Hera, Heracles killed his own children.
278. 2.2.22Heracles performed the labors and killed the Centaurs, including Chiron.
279. 2.2.23Alcmene was the last mortal woman with whom Zeus had relations.
280. 2.2.24Heracles gave his wife to Iolaus, sought Iole, and was told by an oracle to be sold as a slave.
281. 2.2.25Heracles served Omphale as a slave, fathered a son by a slave woman, and then married Omphale.
282. 2.2.26Heracles seduced the daughter of King Aleus.
283. 2.2.27Heracles married Deianeira, fathered Tlepolemus by a captive, and killed a servant in anger.
284. 2.2.28Heracles shot the Centaur Nessus, who as he died promised Deianeira a love charm.
285. 2.2.29Deianeira kept the poisoned 'love charm' Nessus had described.
286. 2.2.30Heracles fathered more sons by captive women.
287. 2.2.31Heracles fathered children by all fifty daughters of Thespius in one night.
288. 2.2.32Deianeira sent Heracles the tunic smeared with Nessus's charm.
289. 2.2.33The poisoned tunic tortured Heracles, who killed the servant and burned himself to death.
290. 2.2.34Asclepius was killed by Zeus for healing too well; Apollo avenged him and was punished.
291. 2.2.35Diodorus says the Greeks borrowed the rest of their theology from other peoples.
292. 2.2.36The Atlantians said Ouranus was their first king; his wife Titaea was deified as Earth.
293. 2.2.37Basileia, daughter of Ouranus, raised her brothers and was called Mother.
294. 2.2.38Basileia bore Helios and Selene to Hyperion.
295. 2.2.39Hyperion and Helios were murdered, Selene killed herself, and their mother wandered mad and vanished.
296. 2.2.40The people made Helios and Selene into heavenly bodies and worshipped their mother.
297. 2.2.41The Phrygians said Cybele invented the pipe and Marsyas the flute.
298. 2.2.42Cybele's father killed her lover Attis, and she went mad.
299. 2.2.43Marsyas lost a musical contest to Apollo and was flayed alive.
300. 2.2.44Apollo ordered Attis buried and Cybele honored, and the Phrygians still mourn Attis.
301. 2.2.45The Phrygians built a great temple to Cybele at Pessinus.
302. 2.2.46Atlas the astronomer had seven daughters, mothers of gods and heroes; Maia bore Hermes to Zeus.
303. 2.2.47Cronus married Rhea and fathered Zeus; an earlier Zeus ruled Crete.
304. 2.2.48The Cretan Zeus fathered the Curetes, and his tomb is shown in Crete.
305. 2.2.49Cronus ruled the west; his son Zeus, unlike him, succeeded to the kingdom.
306. 2.2.50Zeus defeated Cronus and was named Zen for giving humanity the good life.
307. 2.2.51The Greeks share the Atlantian theology.
308. 2.2.52Diodorus confirms this theology in Book 6 from Euhemerus of Messene.
309. 2.2.53Diodorus distinguishes eternal gods (the heavenly bodies) from earthly men deified for their benefits.
310. 2.2.54Diodorus will summarize both Euhemerus and the poets on the earthly gods.
311. 2.2.55Euhemerus claimed to have sailed to the island of Panchaea, whose people were very pious.
312. 2.2.56Panchaea was a sacred island with many ancient wonders.
313. 2.2.57A golden pillar in the temple of Zeus on Panchaea recorded the deeds of Ouranus, Cronus, and Zeus.
314. 2.2.58Euhemerus made Ouranus a just king and astronomer who first sacrificed to the heavenly gods.
315. 2.2.59Ouranus's children included Cronus, who fathered Zeus, Hera, and Poseidon.
316. 2.2.60Zeus married Hera, Demeter, and Themis and had children by each.
317. 2.2.61Zeus traveled widely, was honored everywhere, and was proclaimed a god.
318. 2.2.62Diodorus closes his account of Euhemerus and turns to the poets' myths.
319. 2.2.63Eusebius proposes to examine the secret mysteries of the Greek gods.
320. 2.2.64Eusebius introduces Clement of Alexandria's exposure of the mysteries.
321. 2.3.1Clement urges his readers to abandon the famous oracles of Greece and Egypt.
322. 2.3.2The famous prophetic springs have fallen silent.
323. 2.3.3Clement lists the useless oracles of the Greeks.
324. 2.3.4All kinds of diviners and necromancers should be abandoned as schools of error.
325. 2.3.5Even trained goats and ravens are used for divination.
326. 2.3.6Clement will expose the mysteries and their gods before the spectators of truth.
327. 2.3.7The Bacchic rites, with raw flesh and serpents, invoke Eve, through whom error came.
328. 2.3.8Clement connects Eve's name with the serpent and describes the Eleusinian drama of Demeter and Kore.
329. 2.3.9Clement derives 'orgies' and 'mysteries' from wrath and pollution, or from a dead hunter.
330. 2.3.10Mysteries are only myths that ensnare the foolish and superstitious.
331. 2.3.11Clement curses the founders of the mysteries.
332. 2.3.12Cinyras introduced the lewd rites of Aphrodite to deify a prostitute.
333. 2.3.13Melampus and the founders of the mysteries planted vice and superstition in human life.
334. 2.3.14Clement will openly describe the hidden rites.
335. 2.3.15Clement exposes the shameful origin and rites of Aphrodite.
336. 2.3.16The mysteries of Demeter celebrate Zeus's incest with his mother and her wrath.
337. 2.3.17The Phrygian rites recount Zeus's sham self-castration.
338. 2.3.18Clement quotes the ridiculous passwords of the Phrygian initiation.
339. 2.3.19In the myth, Zeus as a serpent seduced his own daughter Persephone.
340. 2.3.20The Sabazian rite of drawing a serpent through the bosom recalls Zeus's incest.
341. 2.3.21Clement quotes a cryptic verse from the mysteries about the bull and the serpent.
342. 2.3.22Clement recalls the rape of Persephone and the pigs thrown into chasms at the Thesmophoria.
343. 2.3.23In the Dionysiac myth the Titans lured the infant Dionysus with toys and tore him apart.
344. 2.3.24Clement lists the toys used as symbols in the Dionysiac rite.
345. 2.3.25Athena took Dionysus's heart, and the Titans boiled and roasted his limbs.
346. 2.3.26Zeus punished the Titans, and Apollo buried Dionysus's limbs on Parnassus.
347. 2.3.27The Corybantes killed their brother and buried his head at the foot of Olympus.
348. 2.3.28The mysteries consist of murders and burials, with absurd food taboos.
349. 2.3.29The Cabiri carried Dionysus's genitals in a chest to Etruria and taught their worship.
350. 2.3.30Even among the Athenians the myth of Demeter is shameful.
351. 2.3.31Demeter sat grieving by a well at Eleusis, which initiates may not imitate.
352. 2.3.32The earth-born inhabitants of Eleusis were ancestors of the Athenian priestly families.
353. 2.3.33Baubo amused the grieving Demeter by an obscene gesture.
354. 2.3.34Clement quotes Orpheus's verses describing Baubo's gesture.
355. 2.3.35Clement quotes the Eleusinian password and mocks it.
356. 2.3.36The rites suit night and fire and the foolish people who await an unexpected fate after death.
357. 2.3.37Heraclitus threatened initiates with fire after death because the mysteries are unholy.
358. 2.3.38The mysteries are a deceit resting on custom and empty opinion.
359. 2.3.39Clement lists the trivial contents of the mystic chests.
360. 2.3.40The symbols of Themis are obscene, and the torchlit rites expose what night once hid.
361. 2.3.41Clement ironically urges the priests to put out their torches, since the fire exposes their rites.
362. 2.3.42Clement calls the initiates atheists twice over: ignorant of the true God and worshippers of nonexistent gods.
363. 2.4.1Christians have been freed from idolatry by God's grace, the gospel's power, and sound reason.
364. 2.4.2It would be folly for the virtuous to worship the vicious.
365. 2.4.3Applying the name of God to obscene parts and beasts is the utmost impiety.
366. 2.4.4Many pagans have themselves seen through their ancestral error and turned away.
367. 2.4.5Some pagans rejected the myths outright; others reinterpreted them as hidden natural philosophy.
368. 2.4.6Eusebius will examine the allegorical interpretations as well.
369. 2.5.1The review of pagan theology shows from what darkness Christians were freed through Christ's appearing.
370. 2.5.2Christ, like a sun for souls, brought the whole world out of superstition into true worship.
371. 2.5.3The pagans worshipped images of dead men, having forgotten God and his justice.
372. 2.5.4In lawless early times, some lived like cattle, and others deified the heavenly bodies.
373. 2.5.5Others deified wise men, strongmen, tyrants, sorcerers, and benefactors.
374. 2.5.6Clement shows that the gods' temples were originally tombs.
375. 2.6.1Clement says superstition multiplied demons and temples, which were in fact tombs.
376. 2.6.2The tombs of Acrisius and Cecrops are in temples of Athena.
377. 2.6.3Other heroes are buried in temples at Athens and Eleusis.
378. 2.6.4Two Hyperborean women are buried in the temple of Apollo on Delos.
379. 2.6.5More tombs are found in the temples of Apollo and Artemis.
380. 2.6.6Cinyras and his descendants are buried in the temple of Aphrodite at Paphos.
381. 2.6.7Clement says the worshippers of tombs are dead men trusting in the dead.
382. 2.6.8Clement condemns Hadrian's deification of his favorite Antinous.
383. 2.6.9Antinous's tomb became a temple and a city, and tombs are admired like temples.
384. 2.6.10The great Greek games were all originally funeral rites.
385. 2.6.11God implanted in every rational soul the natural notion that God is good and beneficial.
386. 2.6.12A few, recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, knew the Creator; the rest sank into impiety and sensuality.
387. 2.6.13They transferred their natural sense of the divine to human benefactors, rulers, and sorcerers.
388. 2.6.14Blinded, they ignored the crimes of their deified men and admired them for their power.
389. 2.6.15Without laws, they celebrated the adulteries, incest, and murders of their deified leaders as heroic deeds.
390. 2.6.16Later philosophers reinterpreted the myths physically, unable either to reject or to accept them.
391. 2.6.17They explained the myths as symbols of the forces of nature.
392. 2.6.18They deified the elements and the fruits of the earth under the names of the gods.
393. 2.6.19The philosophers invented their own interpretations because none dared to break with ancestral custom.
394. 2.6.20Earlier generations deified animals, sexual organs, and passions.
395. 2.6.21The ancients knew only the myths; Eusebius now turns to the philosophers' natural theology.
396. 2.6.22The philosophers contradict one another: some allegorize at will, others reject the myths, yet outwardly accept them for fear of the laws.
397. 2.6.23Plato sometimes rejects the myths outright and sometimes, out of deference to the laws, requires belief in them.
398. 2.6.24Eusebius introduces Plato's remarks on the traditional gods in the Timaeus.
399. 2.7.1Plato says the genealogies of the gods must be believed on the word of their supposed descendants, as the law requires.
400. 2.7.2Plato repeats the traditional genealogy of the gods.
401. 2.7.3Plato accepts the genealogies only out of deference to law, and finds no hidden physical meaning in them.
402. 2.7.4In the Republic Plato calls the myths of Ouranus and Cronus great lies, not to be told to the young.
403. 2.7.5Plato forbids telling such stories in his city, lest the young imitate the gods' crimes.
404. 2.7.6Plato forbids myths of wars among the gods; poets must tell stories that teach concord.
405. 2.7.7Plato excludes Homer's stories of the gods' quarrels, whether allegorical or not.
406. 2.7.8Plato rejects both the myths and their allegories, so Christians are justified in abandoning them.
407. 2.7.9Eusebius praises the early Romans for excluding the Greek myths and quotes Dionysius of Halicarnassus.
408. 2.8.1Romulus founded his laws on the worship of the gods.
409. 2.8.2Romulus established temples, festivals, and sacrifices like the best Greek customs.
410. 2.8.3Romulus rejected the myths that slandered the gods.
411. 2.8.4The Romans tell no stories of the gods' crimes and sufferings.
412. 2.8.5The Romans have no mourning festivals for dying gods.
413. 2.8.6Roman religion is free of frenzied rites and nightly revels.
414. 2.8.7Rome adopted no foreign rites publicly, and adapted even imported ones such as those of the Idaean Mother.
415. 2.8.8Phrygian priests serve the Great Mother at Rome, while Roman magistrates offer her sacrifices.
416. 2.8.9No native Roman may take part in the Phrygian rites, so cautious is Rome about foreign religion.
417. 2.8.10Dionysius grants that some Greek myths are useful as allegory or consolation.
418. 2.8.11Dionysius prefers Roman theology, since the benefit of Greek myths reaches only a few.
419. 2.8.12The masses take the myths in the worst sense and either despise the gods or imitate their vices.
420. 2.8.13Dionysius ends; Eusebius concludes that the best philosophers and the early Romans rejected the physical allegories, which he will now examine.
421. 3.0.1Eusebius recalls that the best philosophers and the early Romans rejected physical allegories of the myths.
422. 3.0.2Eusebius will examine the allegorical interpretations in their authors' own words.
423. 3.0.3Eusebius will draw on the most famous philosophers.
424. 3.0.4Plutarch's allegories are inconsistent: Hera is now marriage, now the earth, now the same as Leto.
425. 3.0.5Eusebius introduces Plutarch's On the Daedala at Plataea.
426. 3.1.1Plutarch says the ancient natural philosophy was hidden in myths and in the symbolic actions of the rites.
427. 3.1.2Hera and Dionysus are kept apart in cult because marriage is incompatible with drunkenness and anger.
428. 3.1.3Plutarch relates the myth of Hera's secret union with Zeus on Cithaeron and the names Leto Mychia and Hera Teleia.
429. 3.1.4Allegorically, Hera is the earth and Leto night, the earth's shadow.
430. 3.1.5Plutarch argues that Hera and Leto are one goddess, the patroness of marriage and of birth into light.
431. 3.1.6The myth of the wooden bride Daedale explains the Plataean festival of the Daedala.
432. 3.1.7Plutarch interprets the quarrel of Zeus and Hera as a disturbance of the elements, a flood after which the oak first appeared.
433. 3.2.1Eusebius concludes that Plutarch's secret natural philosophy contains nothing divine.
434. 3.2.2Plutarch's allegories turn the gods into marriage, earth, drink, night, sun, and fire.
435. 3.2.3The allegories lead not to spiritual powers but down to matter and human passions.
436. 3.2.4Plato admits that the first Greeks knew only the visible heavenly bodies as gods.
437. 3.2.5Eusebius quotes the Cratylus passage again.
438. 3.2.6In Egyptian allegory Isis and Osiris are sun and moon, and the other gods are elements.
439. 3.2.7The five elemental gods take many forms, and Egyptian kings bore their names; Eusebius quotes Diodorus.
440. 3.3.1Diodorus says Osiris and Isis, the sun and moon, govern the world through the seasons.
441. 3.3.2The sun and moon, with the five elements as parts, make up the body of the universe.
442. 3.3.3The Egyptians named spirit Zeus, father of all living things.
443. 3.3.4Fire was named Hephaestus and earth Mother, the Greek Demeter.
444. 3.3.5Earth was called Mother; water was called Oceanus, origin of the gods.
445. 3.3.6The Egyptians identify the Nile with Oceanus and have many cities founded by gods.
446. 3.3.7The air was named Athena, the virgin daughter born from Zeus's head.
447. 3.3.8Athena is 'grey-eyed' because the air is blue; the five gods appear in animal and human forms.
448. 3.3.9Homer learned from the Egyptian priests that the gods visit cities in disguise.
449. 3.3.10Earthly gods, deified kings, bore the names of the heavenly ones; Helios was the first king.
450. 3.3.11Plutarch reports that some Egyptians allegorized Osiris as the Nile, Isis as earth, and Typhon as the sea.
451. 3.3.12Plutarch shifts between allegorical and demonic explanations.
452. 3.3.13Eusebius asks whose likeness the idols actually represent.
453. 3.3.14The images plainly represent dead men, not elements.
454. 3.3.15Plutarch even records what the Egyptian gods looked like.
455. 3.3.16Plutarch says the Egyptians described the bodily features of their gods as men.
456. 3.3.17Eusebius concludes that pagan deification concerns dead men, and the allegories are invented.
457. 3.3.18Eusebius asks whether the names belonged first to elements or to men.
458. 3.3.19The rites and hymns point to mortal men, not to elements.
459. 3.3.20The gods' human vices cannot be ascribed to elements.
460. 3.3.21The allegorical philosophy is false; Eusebius turns to Porphyry's Letter to Anebo.
461. 3.4.1Porphyry reports that Chaeremon and others recognized only the visible heavenly bodies as gods.
462. 3.4.2The Egyptian priests explained everything by the stars and fate and worshipped the gods as deliverers from fate.
463. 3.4.3Egyptian theology recognized no incorporeal creator, only the stars and fate.
464. 3.4.4Egyptian theology deified lifeless matter and knew no creative mind.
465. 3.4.5The Greeks, following the Egyptians, also deify lifeless matter; Eusebius quotes Porphyry's On Abstinence.
466. 3.4.6Porphyry says the Egyptians held that the same soul dwells in all animals and therefore deified them.
467. 3.4.7Composite human-animal images show the kinship of all creatures by divine will.
468. 3.4.8Animals like the lion are worshipped and give their names to districts of Egypt.
469. 3.4.9Water and fire are revered and used in the worship of Sarapis.
470. 3.4.10At Anabis a man is worshipped and receives sacrifices.
471. 3.4.11Porphyry concludes that as we must not eat man, so we must not eat other animals.
472. 3.4.12Some animals, like the hawk, are dear to particular gods.
473. 3.4.13The beetle was revered as a living image of the sun.
474. 3.4.14Porphyry claims animal worship came from Egyptian wisdom.
475. 3.5.1Porphyry's account shows that the Egyptians worshipped water, fire, and animals as sharing one soul with man.
476. 3.5.2If animals had human souls, they should be treated as men, not as gods.
477. 3.5.3The Egyptians gave the name of God to beasts not even worthy of the name of men.
478. 3.5.4Eusebius invites pity rather than laughter for such blindness.
479. 3.5.5Christ's gospel has freed most Egyptians from this long blindness.
480. 3.6.1Neither Greek nor Egyptian physical theology knew any truly divine incorporeal beings.
481. 3.6.2Eusebius grants for argument's sake that the gods' names signify the sun and moon.
482. 3.6.3Even so, the result is worship of the heavenly bodies.
483. 3.6.4Greek philosophy promises much but deifies only fire and the material parts of the world.
484. 3.6.5The gospel teaches all people to worship the Creator of the sun and moon.
485. 3.6.6The gospel teaches the worship of the one incorporeal divine power that pervades and governs all things.
486. 3.6.7Eusebius turns to the Neoplatonists, especially Porphyry, who combine Platonic ideas with the old myths.
487. 3.7.1Porphyry claims that statues express the invisible gods in visible forms, which the ignorant mistake for wood and stone.
488. 3.7.2Porphyry explains that transparent stone and gold represent the light and fire of the divine.
489. 3.7.3Statues' materials, forms, and poses symbolize the gods' qualities.
490. 3.7.4Porphyry assigns colors and shapes symbolically to the gods.
491. 3.7.5Eusebius calls Porphyry's symbolism a modern sophistry and cites Plutarch on the earliest images.
492. 3.8.1Plutarch says the earliest images were of wood, since stone, gold, and silver were thought unfit for gods.
493. 3.8.2Plato too held that gold, silver, ivory, and bronze are unfit offerings for the gods.
494. 3.9.1Porphyry introduces the Orphic hymn presenting Zeus as the mind of the world.
495. 3.9.2The Orphic hymn describes Zeus as the whole universe, with heaven as his head and the ether as his mind.
496. 3.9.3Porphyry interprets Zeus as the world and as the creative mind.
497. 3.9.4No image could adequately portray such a god.
498. 3.9.5Porphyry explains each feature of the statue of Zeus as a symbol.
499. 3.9.6Eusebius argues that the Orphic Zeus is simply the visible world.
500. 3.9.7The hymn's 'parts' of Zeus are parts of the visible world.
501. 3.9.8Eusebius quotes the hymn's own lines to show it means the material world.
502. 3.9.9The hymn's view that Zeus's mind is the ether matches the Stoic doctrine that God is fiery body.
503. 3.9.10The hymn makes the world a living being whose mind is the ether.
504. 3.9.11Porphyry himself admits that the hymn's Zeus is the visible world.
505. 3.9.12Orpheus took from the Egyptians the idea that the world, composed of divine parts, is God.
506. 3.9.13Porphyry then adds that Zeus is the creative mind.
507. 3.9.14The Orphic poet could not have known an incorporeal creative mind, since his sources knew none.
508. 3.9.15Chaeremon confirms that the Egyptians knew only the visible world.
509. 3.10.1Eusebius asks where the poet could have learned of a transcendent, incorporeal Creator.
510. 3.10.2The creative mind has no parts, so the hymn's body of Zeus cannot describe it.
511. 3.10.3Eusebius calls it impious to identify God or his parts with the world.
512. 3.10.4God is the maker of the world, distinct from it, not its soul.
513. 3.10.5Scripture teaches God's presence and providence in the world without making him part of it.
514. 3.10.6Scripture calls heaven God's throne and earth his footstool.
515. 3.10.7Scripture sets God above the world while extending his providence to earth.
516. 3.10.8The Orphic hymn's description reveals ignorance of the true God.
517. 3.10.9A god made of matter could neither create nor be truly god.
518. 3.10.10If Zeus's mind is ether, his mind is a body.
519. 3.10.11True theology holds that the heavens and the world are God's works, inferior to the invisible rational powers.
520. 3.10.12Scripture calls the heavens the work of God's hands.
521. 3.10.13Eusebius turns to Porphyry's explanation of the human-shaped statue of Zeus.
522. 3.10.14If the visible world could not be imaged, still less could the divine mind.
523. 3.10.15A statue cannot resemble even the human mind, much less God's.
524. 3.10.16Only the rational soul bears God's image and likeness.
525. 3.10.17Since the human mind cannot be depicted, no man-shaped image can depict the most high God.
526. 3.10.18The statue of Zeus imitates only the lifeless body of a mortal man.
527. 3.10.19The creative mind cannot be the Zeus of bronze statues or the father of mortal heroes.
528. 3.10.20Phoenicians and Egyptians both recorded Zeus as a mortal man.
529. 3.10.21Cretans, Atlantians, and others likewise recorded Zeus as a mortal of shameful life.
530. 3.10.22The allegorists keep changing what Zeus means.
531. 3.10.23Zeus is the son of Cronus and grandson of Ouranus, as even the Orphic verses say.
532. 3.10.24If Zeus were the creator, his supposed father and grandfather would have to come after him.
533. 3.10.25The creator must precede heaven and time, so he cannot be the grandson of Ouranus.
534. 3.10.26Porphyry's identification of Zeus with the creative mind is exposed as a fabrication.
535. 3.11.1Porphyry makes Hera the ethereal and airy power, consort of Zeus.
536. 3.11.2Eusebius notes that the ether, said to be Zeus's mind, is defined as air, a body.
537. 3.11.3Mind and body cannot be identical.
538. 3.11.4Porphyry contradicts the verses, which made the ether Zeus's mind.
539. 3.11.5Porphyry makes Hera the whole air and Leto the air beneath the moon, mother of the light-bringers.
540. 3.11.6Eusebius objects that air cannot be the mother of the sun and moon, which act upon it.
541. 3.11.7Porphyry makes Hestia, Rhea, and Demeter powers of the earth, and Kore the sprouting seed.
542. 3.11.8Eusebius mocks Porphyry for turning Rhea into rocks and Zeus into plant seeds.
543. 3.11.9Kore is the power in the seed, and Pluto the sun below the earth who carries her off in winter.
544. 3.11.10Dionysus is the power of tree fruits, represented as male and female.
545. 3.11.11Pluto's helmet, scepter, and dog are explained as symbols of the underworld and of germination.
546. 3.11.12Attis stands for spring flowers that fall, and Adonis for the harvest.
547. 3.11.13Silenus symbolizes the movement of air.
548. 3.11.14Themis is the prophetic power.
549. 3.11.15Porphyry sums up the earth's powers as Hestia, Rhea, Demeter, Themis, Priapus, Kore, Dionysus, Attis, and Adonis.
550. 3.11.16Silenus, Bacchantes, and Satyrs represent wind, ecstasy, and sexual impulse.
551. 3.11.17Eusebius summarizes Porphyry's equations of gods with crops.
552. 3.11.18Rational souls should not worship crops made for bodily food.
553. 3.11.19By Porphyry's logic, Silenus, not the crops, should have been the chief god.
554. 3.11.20Shameful passions are given solemn names.
555. 3.11.21Eusebius continues with further extracts.
556. 3.11.22The powers of water are Oceanus, Tethys, Achelous, Poseidon, Amphitrite, the Nymphs, and the Nereids.
557. 3.11.23Hephaestus is fire, lame because earthly fire depends on matter.
558. 3.11.24Apollo is the sun; the nine Muses are the spheres; the laurel represents fire and prophecy.
559. 3.11.25Heracles is the sun, his twelve labors the signs of the zodiac.
560. 3.11.26Asclepius is the sun's saving power, with staff and serpent as symbols of healing.
561. 3.11.27Dionysus and Horus are also named as powers of the sun.
562. 3.11.28Pluto and Sarapis represent the sun's power of increase and destruction.
563. 3.11.29Cerberus's three heads are the sun's three positions.
564. 3.11.30Artemis is the moon, patroness of childbirth.
565. 3.11.31Athena is the moon's wisdom.
566. 3.11.32Hecate is the moon in its three phases.
567. 3.11.33Hecate's laurel, poppy, and bow are symbols of fire, fertility, and childbirth.
568. 3.11.34The three Fates are powers of the moon.
569. 3.11.35Demeter, Kore, and Dionysus are associated with the moon.
570. 3.11.36Cronus is the slow, cold planet and the power of time.
571. 3.11.37The Curetes are the seasons.
572. 3.11.38The Horae are the seasons of heaven and earth.
573. 3.11.39Ares is the fiery planet of war.
574. 3.11.40Aphrodite is the planet Venus, cause of generation and the evening star.
575. 3.11.41Eros accompanies Aphrodite, whose sea birth hints at generation.
576. 3.11.42Hermes represents the creative and interpreting reason.
577. 3.11.43Hermes, Hecate, Hermopan, Hermanubis, and Eros are forms of reason.
578. 3.11.44Pan symbolizes the universe.
579. 3.11.45Porphyry describes the Egyptian creator god Kneph and his symbols.
580. 3.11.46Kneph brings forth the world-egg from which Phtha (Hephaestus) is born.
581. 3.11.47The Egyptian image of the world wears a many-colored robe and a golden sphere.
582. 3.11.48The sun is shown in a ship on a crocodile, traveling through moist air.
583. 3.11.49Isis is the power of the moon and of the fruitful earth.
584. 3.11.50Isis and Osiris correspond to Demeter, Kore, and Dionysus as powers of earth and crops.
585. 3.11.51Osiris is also the Nile, and Isis the land of Egypt that he fertilizes.
586. 3.12.1Porphyry describes the ram-headed image at Elephantine as a symbol of the sun and moon in conjunction.
587. 3.12.2At Apollonopolis the hawk-faced god spearing a hippopotamus symbolizes the moon's second phase.
588. 3.12.3At Eileithyiopolis the vulture image symbolizes the moon's third phase.
589. 3.12.4The Eleusinian priests represent the creator, sun, moon, and Hermes.
590. 3.12.5At Anabis a man is worshipped with sacrifices.
591. 3.12.6Animals are symbols, not gods, since even consecrated oxen are sacrificed.
592. 3.13.1The bull Mnevis at Heliopolis symbolizes the sun.
593. 3.13.2The bull Apis symbolizes the moon and bears signs of both sun and moon.
594. 3.13.3Eusebius ends his extracts from Porphyry, from whose theology Christians have deliberately departed.
595. 3.13.4Those who call such myths theology are the profane, as Paul says of those who worship images of creatures.
596. 3.13.5Even if the gods are invisible powers, there should be one divine power, not many.
597. 3.13.6As one soul moves a body of many parts, so one creative power made it.
598. 3.13.7The unity of the world points to one creative power, the power and wisdom of God.
599. 3.13.8Porphyry contradicts himself by referring Egyptian myths to incorporeal powers.
600. 3.13.9Porphyry wrongly ascribes to the Egyptians a theology of incorporeal powers.
601. 3.13.10The Greek allegories are likewise easily refuted.
602. 3.13.11If Zeus is the supreme mind, his genealogy and marriage make no sense.
603. 3.13.12Forgetfulness cannot be the mother of the sun and moon.
604. 3.13.13Why worship rocky ground, plains, or sprouts?
605. 3.13.14Mankind, for whom crops were made, is more honorable than the crops called gods.
606. 3.13.15The sun cannot be Apollo, Heracles, Dionysus, and Asclepius all at once.
607. 3.13.16The sun cannot be both father and son, or a madman who killed his children.
608. 3.13.17The details of Heracles' life cannot apply to the sun.
609. 3.13.18Dionysus' story too cannot be applied to the sun.
610. 3.13.19Pindar says Asclepius was killed by Zeus for greed, which cannot apply to the sun.
611. 3.13.20The allegorists escape the shameful myths only by retreating to the heavenly bodies.
612. 3.13.21The allegorists worship the creation instead of the Creator.
613. 3.13.22If they worship the one God's powers, they should reject the myths and worship him purely.
614. 3.13.23They should not shut God in temples, honor him with images, or please him with bloody sacrifices.
615. 3.13.24The philosophers should have taught all people to worship the invisible Creator spiritually, through virtue.
616. 3.13.25Only Christ taught all people the true worship of the one God, while the philosophers, as Paul says, became fools.
617. 3.14.1Despite their philosophy, the philosophers joined the crowd in sacrifices and image worship.
618. 3.14.2The philosophers' practice contradicts their words, and their gods confirm the myths.
619. 3.14.3The oracles of Apollo, Asclepius, and Hermes confirm their mythical births.
620. 3.14.4Porphyry quotes an oracular hymn on Apollo's birth.
621. 3.14.5The oracle describes Leto's labor and Apollo's birth on Delos.
622. 3.14.6Asclepius's oracle declares his birth at Tricca from a mortal mother and Phoebus.
623. 3.14.7Hermes' oracle declares him the son of Zeus and Maia.
624. 3.14.8Pan's oracle describes his goatlike form.
625. 3.14.9Pan's oracle shows he is a demon, not a symbol of the universe.
626. 3.14.10Hermes' oracle confirms the myth, not the allegory.
627. 3.14.11Asclepius cannot be both the sun and the sun's son.
628. 3.14.12It is absurd that the sun should be born of a mortal woman on Delos.
629. 3.14.13Eusebius notes that Greek gods themselves claim birth from women, which Greeks should remember before mocking Christ's birth.
630. 3.15.1When gods and philosophers disagree about the gods, reason must side with the gods' own testimony.
631. 3.15.2Either the gods or the philosophers must be lying.
632. 3.15.3An oracle of Apollo identifies him with the sun.
633. 3.15.4The gods support both poets and philosophers, who contradict each other.
634. 3.15.5The sun cannot have been born on Delos or have fathered a mortal.
635. 3.16.1The sun could not descend into a medium to give oracles.
636. 3.16.2If Hecate is the moon, the moon would serve shameful magic as queen of evil demons.
637. 3.16.3Porphyry calls Sarapis the ruler of evil demons, so he cannot be the sun.
638. 3.16.4The allegorical explanations are mere sophistry.
639. 3.17.1The oracles are the work of evil demons who deceive both the masses and the philosophers.
640. 3.17.2Eusebius turns to the third, civic theology, with its oracles and healings.
641. 3.17.3Pagans think Christians impious for neglecting these powers; Eusebius will answer in a new book.
642. 4.1.1Book 4 will refute the third kind of polytheism.
643. 4.1.2Pagan theology has three kinds, mythical, physical, and civic; Eusebius now treats the civic.
644. 4.1.3Pagans claim the civic religion proves itself by oracles and cures, and that Christians deserve death for breaking ancestral law.
645. 4.1.4The pagans insist that the civic religion, unlike myth or philosophy, must not be questioned.
646. 4.1.5Eusebius will justify the gospel, which opposes the laws of the nations.
647. 4.1.6The previous books showed that neither the myths nor their allegories are worthy of God.
648. 4.1.7Eusebius asks whether the powers in the images are good or evil.
649. 4.1.8Some explain the oracles as human trickery and natural causes, not even demons.
650. 4.1.9The skeptic attributes oracular wonders to natural substances, drugs, stage effects, accomplices, and the credulity of worshippers.
651. 4.1.10The credulity of the crowd and the cunning of the oracle-mongers explain much.
652. 4.1.11Incantations and grandiloquent, ambiguous verses add to the deception.
653. 4.2.1Most unambiguous oracles have proved false; the rare successes are chance or guesswork.
654. 4.2.2Oracle-mongers publicize rare successes and hide failures, like marveling at a coincidence in a lottery.
655. 4.2.3Even in their prime, the oracles showed no divine power, but caused many deaths in strife and war.
656. 4.2.4In wartime the oracles proved powerless, deceiving inquirers with ambiguity and even inciting wars.
657. 4.2.5Oracles promised cures, took fees, and were exposed as sorcerers when the sick did not recover.
658. 4.2.6The oracles helped strangers but not their own neighbors, who knew the trickery.
659. 4.2.7Temples and images were destroyed in calamities sent by God.
660. 4.2.8Famous temples and oracles were burned or struck by lightning, unable to protect themselves.
661. 4.2.9Gods who could not save their own temples cannot help others.
662. 4.2.10Pagan priests themselves, under torture in Roman courts, confessed the oracles were trickery.
663. 4.2.11Those convicted included philosophers and magistrates of Antioch who had persecuted Christians, and the prophet at Miletus.
664. 4.2.12One might conclude that oracles are human fraud, not gods or demons.
665. 4.2.13Peripatetics, Cynics, and Epicureans themselves rejected the oracles as false and harmful.
666. 4.2.14Eusebius introduces a philosopher's refutation of Chrysippus's argument for fate from oracles.
667. 4.3.1Diogenianus attacks Chrysippus's claim that true prophecy proves fate, noting that most prophecies fail.
668. 4.3.2Chrysippus argues in a circle, proving fate by divination and divination by fate.
669. 4.3.3Occasional fulfillment shows chance, not a science of divination.
670. 4.3.4A science must succeed usually, not occasionally.
671. 4.3.5Even diviners rely on judgment and advice, not divination, in their own affairs.
672. 4.3.6Even if divination foretold everything, it would prove fate but not usefulness.
673. 4.3.7Foreknowing unavoidable misfortune only brings needless grief.
674. 4.3.8People already expect good things, so foretelling them adds little joy.
675. 4.3.9Predictions of good add little joy, while predictions of evil cause great distress.
676. 4.3.10If foreknowledge lets us avoid misfortune, not everything is fated.
677. 4.3.11If our guarding is also fated, divination is useless.
678. 4.3.12Chrysippus himself admits that the parents of Oedipus and Paris could not avert the prophecies.
679. 4.3.13Diogenianus concludes that divination is both unreal and useless.
680. 4.3.14Greek philosophers raised in the ancestral religion laughed at the oracles.
681. 4.3.15If the oracles were genuine, these well-informed Greeks would have been impressed.
682. 4.3.16Eusebius will grant, for argument's sake, that the oracles are genuine and examine what they reveal.
683. 4.4.1Exposing the demons behind the oracles shows the greatness of the gospel, which freed all nations and replaced pagan sacrifice with prayer and virtue.
684. 4.4.2This shows that Christians left their ancestral religion by sound judgment.
685. 4.5.1Greek theologians divide the divine into the first God, gods, demons, and heroes, with evil demons as the opposing class of darkness.
686. 4.5.2They assign regions to gods, demons, and souls, and order worship accordingly, including propitiation of evil demons.
687. 4.5.3In practice they worship only evil powers; the quotations will show what the powers in the images are.
688. 4.5.4Scripture calls all demons evil, and the good powers angels and ministering spirits; 'demon' derives from fear.
689. 4.5.5Good powers should not share the name of demons, being unlike them in character.
690. 4.6.1Eusebius will examine the oracles using pagan testimony only.
691. 4.6.2Eusebius chooses Porphyry, the friend of demons and critic of Christians, as his witness.
692. 4.6.3Porphyry collected oracles to prove the gods' excellence.
693. 4.6.4Eusebius will judge the oracle-givers by Porphyry's own selection, beginning with his oath.
694. 4.7.1Porphyry swears that he has faithfully preserved the sense of the oracles.
695. 4.7.2Porphyry says his collection teaches the gods' doctrines and purification, and forbids publishing it.
696. 4.8.1Porphyry warns his reader not to publish the oracles to the profane.
697. 4.8.2Porphyry says the oracles must be kept secret, as the gods speak in riddles.
698. 4.8.3Eusebius will judge these powers by their own oracles.
699. 4.8.4Porphyry records oracles of Apollo commanding animal sacrifice even to heavenly gods.
700. 4.8.5Elsewhere Porphyry says that those who receive blood sacrifices are demons, not gods.
701. 4.8.6Eusebius introduces Apollo's oracle on how to worship the gods.
702. 4.9.1Porphyry introduces Apollo's oracle on the ranks of the gods and their sacrifices.
703. 4.9.2Apollo's oracle prescribes different animal sacrifices for gods of the underworld, earth, air, sea, and heaven.
704. 4.9.3Porphyry explains that underworld and earthly gods receive black four-footed victims, slaughtered over pits or on altars.
705. 4.9.4Birds are prescribed for gods of the air and sea, black ones for the sea.
706. 4.9.5White victims go to the heavenly gods, whose sacrifices alone may be eaten.
707. 4.9.6Porphyry explains the symbolism of the victims' kind, color, and number.
708. 4.9.7Porphyry completes his explanation; Eusebius ends the extract.
709. 4.10.1In On Abstinence Porphyry says nothing should be sacrificed to the supreme God or the heavenly powers.
710. 4.10.2Porphyry's condemnation of animal sacrifice contradicts the oracle he himself recorded.
711. 4.10.3By Porphyry's own reasoning, Apollo and all gods receiving sacrifice are demons.
712. 4.10.4Beings who delight in blood and human sacrifice cannot be good.
713. 4.10.5It is impious to give God's name to evil spirits, as it would be wrong to call robbers kings.
714. 4.10.6Christians worship the one God with pure minds, bodies, and doctrines, not with blood, and keep their faith even to death.
715. 4.10.7Eusebius introduces Porphyry's statements against material offerings to God.
716. 4.11.1Porphyry says the supreme God is worshipped only by pure silence and contemplation.
717. 4.12.1Porphyry says the intelligible gods are honored with hymns and good thoughts; Eusebius introduces Apollonius of Tyana.
718. 4.13.1Apollonius of Tyana says the supreme God should receive no sacrifice, only silent prayer of the mind.
719. 4.14.1Porphyry, after Theophrastus, says animal sacrifice arose from famine and war and brought divine punishment.
720. 4.14.2Theophrastus forbade sacrificing living creatures.
721. 4.14.3Porphyry argues that sacrifice must harm no one, and that taking an animal's life is a worse wrong than taking another's fruit.
722. 4.14.4Porphyry concludes that animals, being unholy offerings, must not be sacrificed.
723. 4.14.5Animal sacrifice cannot honor God or repay his benefits, since it is itself a wrong.
724. 4.14.6Animal sacrifice is wrong for any purpose: honor, thanksgiving, or hope of benefit.
725. 4.14.7Porphyry quotes Empedocles on the primitive age without blood sacrifice.
726. 4.14.8Belief that gods want costly sacrifices corrupts, while knowing they seek character produces virtue.
727. 4.14.9The best offering to the gods is a pure mind; other offerings should be modest and sincere.
728. 4.14.10Porphyry's own principles prove that the oracle-giver who demanded animal sacrifice was a lying demon.
729. 4.15.1Porphyry says that living sacrifices are offered to demons, not to gods.
730. 4.15.2Porphyry says the theologians themselves confirm that blood sacrifices go to demons, some of them evil.
731. 4.15.3Eusebius will show that all the pagan gods are bad demons.
732. 4.15.4Gods who delight in human sacrifice do the worst harm and so are evil.
733. 4.15.5If animal sacrifice is unworthy of gods, human sacrifice can please only destructive spirits.
734. 4.15.6Human sacrifice prevailed until Hadrian's time, when Christ's teaching had spread everywhere.
735. 4.15.7Pagan writers themselves testify that people sacrificed even their loved ones to appease the demons.
736. 4.15.8Parents sacrificed their children and cities their citizens to the demons.
737. 4.15.9Eusebius introduces Porphyry's own evidence of human sacrifice.
738. 4.16.1Porphyry reports the human sacrifice to Cronus at Rhodes.
739. 4.16.2At Salamis in Cyprus a man was sacrificed to Agraulus and later to Diomedes.
740. 4.16.3King Diphilus replaced the human sacrifice with an ox.
741. 4.16.4Amosis abolished human sacrifice at Heliopolis, replacing the victims with wax figures.
742. 4.16.5Human sacrifices were offered to Dionysus at Chios and Tenedos and to Ares at Sparta.
743. 4.16.6The Phoenicians sacrificed loved ones to Cronus in times of disaster.
744. 4.16.7The Curetes sacrificed children; human sacrifice was largely abolished under Hadrian.
745. 4.16.8Carthaginians and Arabians also practiced child sacrifice.
746. 4.16.9Greeks, Thracians, Scythians, Athenians, and Romans also offered human sacrifice.
747. 4.16.10Human sacrifice continued in Arcadia and Carthage.
748. 4.16.11Eusebius repeats Philo of Byblos's account of Cronus sacrificing his only son.
749. 4.16.12Clement catalogs human sacrifices among the Greeks and calls them murder.
750. 4.16.13Clement asks why people flee wild beasts but not the destructive demons.
751. 4.16.14Eusebius introduces Dionysius of Halicarnassus on the Pelasgians' failure to sacrifice men.
752. 4.16.15Dionysius tells how the Pelasgians suffered disasters for not paying the tithe of their children vowed to the gods.
753. 4.16.16An elder interpreted the oracle as demanding a tithe of human beings, and the god confirmed it.
754. 4.16.17The human tithe caused strife and mass emigration that scattered the Pelasgians.
755. 4.16.18Dionysius says Heracles replaced human sacrifice to Cronus at Rome with images thrown into the Tiber, the rite of the Argei.
756. 4.16.19Diodorus describes the Carthaginians' mass sacrifice of children to Cronus during Agathocles' siege.
757. 4.16.20Scripture condemns child sacrifice and declares the gods of the nations to be demons.
758. 4.16.21A good divine being would have forbidden human sacrifice, but it was men who abolished it.
759. 4.16.22Ritual prostitution at Heliopolis in Phoenicia shows that these gods are wicked demons.
760. 4.16.23If good demons existed, they would have protected people and warned them against the evil ones.
761. 4.16.24A true god would have denounced the demons demanding human sacrifice at Rhodes and Salamis.
762. 4.16.25Amosis showed himself better than the demon of Heliopolis.
763. 4.16.26The cults of Dionysus and Ares show their demonic nature.
764. 4.16.27The Athena of Laodicea and the gods of Libya and Arabia were wicked demons.
765. 4.17.1Only the God of the Hebrews warned people not to treat these demons as gods.
766. 4.17.2Through Moses God commanded the destruction of the demons' temples and worship.
767. 4.17.3The testimony of human sacrifice among Greeks, Africans, Thracians, Scythians, and Romans shows their demonic bondage.
768. 4.17.4Human sacrifice was everywhere until Christ's teaching flourished, showing universal bondage to demons.
769. 4.17.5Human sacrifices were offered to the greatest gods, not merely to minor evil demons.
770. 4.17.6Gods who delighted in or tolerated human sacrifice are themselves wicked demons.
771. 4.17.7Good gods would drive evil spirits away rather than let men appease them.
772. 4.17.8Fathers, masters, generals, and shepherds protect their own; good gods would do the same.
773. 4.17.9The supposed divine guardians of mankind should have defended people against the evil demons.
774. 4.17.10By demanding human sacrifice, the gods showed themselves to be no different from evil demons.
775. 4.17.11Human reason, unlike the gods, forbids sacrifice even to evil demons, as Porphyry says.
776. 4.18.1Porphyry says the wise man avoids sacrifices that attract demons and instead purifies his soul.
777. 4.19.1Porphyry urges likeness to God through freedom from passion, and unlikeness to demons.
778. 4.19.2The philosopher needs no seers or entrails, since he seeks only God and eternal life within himself.
779. 4.19.3Porphyry attributes oracles and divination to evil demons.
780. 4.19.4Porphyry links divination with the evil craft of demons.
781. 4.19.5By Porphyry's standard no one who offered animal or human sacrifice was wise.
782. 4.19.6All the nations offered human sacrifice before Christ, so none was wise.
783. 4.19.7Human reason commands purity of soul rather than sacrifice to demons.
784. 4.19.8Apollo, unlike human reason, commands sacrifice to an evil demon.
785. 4.20.1Porphyry records Apollo's oracle commanding offerings to a wicked demon before a vision of the divine.
786. 4.20.2Apollo's oracle contradicts natural reason, revealing his character.
787. 4.20.3If human sacrifice were right, all people now would be impious for having abandoned it.
788. 4.21.1The gods who required human sacrifice were neither gods nor good demons.
789. 4.21.2Only Christ freed mankind from the demons, as Isaiah foretold.
790. 4.21.3Enlightened by the gospel, Christians worship only the one true God in the way Christ taught.
791. 4.21.4Christians repel demons by purity of life and need no divination.
792. 4.21.5The Word of God dwells in pure souls and reveals what divination cannot.
793. 4.21.6Eusebius introduces Porphyry's admission that evil demons disguise themselves as the highest gods.
794. 4.22.1Porphyry describes evil-doing demons as souls ruled by their passions.
795. 4.22.2Demons are invisible, without solid bodies, and the worse ones change their shapes.
796. 4.22.3The demons' subtle bodies are passible and not eternal.
797. 4.22.4Evil demons dwell near the earth and attack men violently or by stealth.
798. 4.22.5Demons disguise themselves as gods and inflame human desires, causing strife and war.
799. 4.22.6Demons persuade even philosophers to attribute evils to the highest god.
800. 4.22.7Philosophers and the crowd reinforced each other's false beliefs about the gods.
801. 4.22.8Poetry spread false beliefs, though the good can never harm, as Plato says.
802. 4.22.9Porphyry argues that harming cannot belong to the divine or to beneficent demons.
803. 4.22.10Porphyry says all sorcery is worked through the evil demons and their leader.
804. 4.22.11The evil demons deceive through wonders and inspire love charms and greed.
805. 4.22.12The evil demons wish to be gods and feed on the fumes of sacrifices.
806. 4.22.13Porphyry admits that both poets and philosophers spread the worship of evil demons.
807. 4.22.14The charge comes from pagans themselves, not from Christians.
808. 4.22.15Porphyry names Sarapis and Hecate as rulers of the evil demons; Scripture names Beelzebul.
809. 4.23.1Porphyry says the evil demons are under Sarapis, who is Pluto.
810. 4.23.2Priests drive demons from temples by noise, beating the air, and animal blood.
811. 4.23.3Demons fill houses and bodies, especially at meals, which is why purifications are made.
812. 4.23.4Intense desires and bodily noises come from the demons' presence.
813. 4.23.5Heavy breathing signals the presence of demons, as also when a god enters.
814. 4.23.6Porphyry makes Sarapis and Hecate rulers of the demons, symbolized by the three-headed dog.
815. 4.23.7Hecate's oracle describes her threefold nature and her 'whelps' on earth.
816. 4.23.8Porphyry identifies Hecate's whelps as evil demons; Eusebius will add further proofs.
817. 5.1.1Eusebius will add further proofs that the pagan gods were evil demons.
818. 5.1.2The Greeks admit that their oracles failed after the coming of the gospel.
819. 5.1.3Eusebius will show that demons died and oracles ceased after Christ's appearing.
820. 5.1.4After the gospel both human sacrifice and the division of nations under many rulers ended.
821. 5.1.5Formerly many petty rulers, driven by their demons, waged constant war.
822. 5.1.6Life was then full of confusion and calamity.
823. 5.1.7With Christ's coming, churches and teaching spread everywhere, and the demons' oracles died.
824. 5.1.8Since the gospel, no one dares to offer human sacrifice as the ancients did.
825. 5.1.9Eusebius introduces Porphyry's admission that the gods lost their power after Jesus.
826. 5.1.10Porphyry complains that since Jesus has been honored the gods give no public help.
827. 5.1.11Porphyry's admission undermines belief in the gods.
828. 5.1.12Why would gods flee before a mortal, if Jesus were merely a man?
829. 5.1.13Christ, honored everywhere after his death, shows the reality of life beyond death.
830. 5.1.14Christ alone drives out the many gods, while his honor and the Father's grow everywhere.
831. 5.1.15If the gods were real guardians, they should have overcome the error and helped everyone.
832. 5.1.16The demons tried through persecuting rulers to destroy Christ's teaching, but failed.
833. 5.2.1Earthbound demons, delighting in blood and tombs, fostered the worship of the dead through moving images, oracles, and sham cures.
834. 5.2.2The demons made people take them for gods or deified heroes.
835. 5.2.3The belief in invisible powers in the images strengthened polytheism.
836. 5.2.4The demons and their ruler came to be worshipped as the greatest gods.
837. 5.2.5Images represented the dead while demons pretended to be their souls, and taught sorcery to their priests.
838. 5.3.1Because the demons took many guises, pagans divided their gods into many classes.
839. 5.3.2The first kinds of deification are the heavenly bodies and deified benefactors.
840. 5.3.3The third kind is the mythical, which the philosophers turned into physical allegory.
841. 5.3.4A fourth kind deifies the passions.
842. 5.3.5They deified love and desire, and named speech Hermes and reason Athena; a fifth kind comes from human activities.
843. 5.3.6War and the crafts were assigned to gods.
844. 5.3.7The sixth and seventh kinds are the demonic, which deceive and mock.
845. 5.3.8They divided the demons into good and bad.
846. 5.3.9Eusebius will complete his account of demonic activity.
847. 5.3.10Eusebius introduces Plutarch's On the Failure of the Oracles.
848. 5.4.1Plutarch credits the doctrine of demons, intermediate between gods and men, with solving many problems.
849. 5.4.2Plutarch holds that demons, not gods, preside over oracles, and are subject to passion and change.
850. 5.4.3Plutarch attributes savage rites and human sacrifices to the appeasement of bad demons.
851. 5.4.4Plutarch shows that pagan rites served evil demons; good powers would have driven them off.
852. 5.4.5Those with good protectors need not appease evil powers.
853. 5.4.6Those who served the demons in this way could not be friends of the true God.
854. 5.4.7Pagan worship served only bad demons.
855. 5.4.8Plutarch says myths of giants and Titans are really stories about demons.
856. 5.4.9Eusebius suggests that the Greek myths of giants recall the giants of Genesis 6.
857. 5.4.10The spirits of the giants may be the gods of myth; Eusebius quotes Plutarch.
858. 5.5.1Plutarch says the myths of Osiris and Typhon, and of the Greek gods, describe the sufferings of great demons.
859. 5.5.2Plutarch cites Empedocles on the punishment of sinning demons, and compares Typhon.
860. 5.5.3Plutarch relates that myths of Python, Typhon, and the Titans concern exiled and punished demons, and that demons are called by gods' names.
861. 5.5.4Plutarch also shows that demons die, which Eusebius will discuss later.
862. 5.5.5Eusebius will again use Porphyry's own words against the gods.
863. 5.5.6Testimony from the gods' own devotees makes the proof unanswerable.
864. 5.5.7Porphyry swore to keep his oracles secret.
865. 5.5.8Porphyry says the good demon Pan appeared to farmers; Eusebius asks what good he brought.
866. 5.5.9Porphyry admits that those who saw Pan died suddenly.
867. 5.6.1Apollo's oracle at Branchidae explains that Pan's terrifying appearance killed nine woodcutters.
868. 5.6.2Eusebius turns to the deeds of the other 'good' demons.
869. 5.6.3The demons taught no virtue, as Porphyry reveals.
870. 5.6.4Porphyry's 'good' demons delight in lust, noise, war, hunting, mourning, and divination.
871. 5.7.1An oracle of Hecate claims truth and power and calls for binding rites.
872. 5.7.2Porphyry says Hecate is invoked for love magic.
873. 5.7.3Porphyry is troubled that the gods obey magicians and promote unlawful lusts.
874. 5.7.4Porphyry quotes the Didymaean oracle on the gods' particular concerns.
875. 5.7.5The oracle lists the pursuits dear to each goddess.
876. 5.7.6The goddesses' pursuits contribute nothing to a virtuous life.
877. 5.8.1Porphyry cites Pythagoras of Rhodes: the gods come to sacrifices by compulsion.
878. 5.8.2Some gods come readily; others come intending harm.
879. 5.8.3Porphyry says the oracles confirm that the gods come under compulsion.
880. 5.8.4Hecate says she comes down compelled by the magician's words.
881. 5.8.5Hecate comes in answer to a prayer taught by the gods.
882. 5.8.6Hecate complains that magicians drag gods down against their will.
883. 5.8.7Other oracles say the gods come down unwillingly under compulsion.
884. 5.8.8Porphyry says Apollo even revealed a spell to compel himself.
885. 5.8.9Apollo speaks of a compelling name.
886. 5.8.10Apollo's spell summons the god with sacred figures.
887. 5.8.11Apollo describes the inspiring stream entering the medium and speaking through him.
888. 5.8.12Porphyry explains inspiration as a heavenly emanation speaking through the medium's mouth.
889. 5.8.13Eusebius will show that the gods must ask to be released.
890. 5.9.1The gods ask to be released from the medium.
891. 5.9.2A god complains of being held too long.
892. 5.9.3Another release formula.
893. 5.9.4The god instructs how to release the medium.
894. 5.9.5A further release formula.
895. 5.9.6More instructions for releasing the medium.
896. 5.9.7A hymnic release formula.
897. 5.9.8Apollo tells his attendants how to end the séance.
898. 5.9.9Porphyry explains that the drawn lines and clothing bind the god.
899. 5.9.10Spirits subject to any sorcerer are not divine.
900. 5.9.11Beings compelled by sorcerers are neither gods nor good demons.
901. 5.9.12The divine is free, but these beings are enslaved by spells.
902. 5.9.13Good demons would help freely, not under compulsion.
903. 5.9.14Good beings would offer their benefits willingly.
904. 5.9.15If what they do is not good, they are not good.
905. 5.9.16Gods enslaved to sorcerers deserve no worship; Eusebius quotes Porphyry's questions to Anebo.
906. 5.10.1Porphyry asks why gods obey magicians and promote unlawful lust while demanding purity.
907. 5.10.2The gods forbid what they themselves require.
908. 5.10.3It is absurd that a man should threaten the sun and moon to make them speak truth.
909. 5.10.4The magicians' threats against the gods are mad, and the gods' fear of them abject.
910. 5.10.5Chaeremon records that such threats are considered most effective in Egypt.
911. 5.10.6Porphyry questions Egyptian prayers that describe the god in changing forms.
912. 5.10.7If symbolic, the meaning should be explained; real changes in the sun would be seen by all.
913. 5.10.8Porphyry asks why meaningless barbarous names are used in invocations.
914. 5.10.9Either the rites are sorcerers' tricks, or men misunderstand the divine.
915. 5.10.10Porphyry argues that impassible gods could not be summoned, appeased, or compelled.
916. 5.10.11Gods who answer trivial questions but say nothing reliable about happiness are deceivers.
917. 5.10.12The demons themselves taught men sorcery.
918. 5.10.13Christians neither know nor wish to know magic; Porphyry is cited as witness.
919. 5.11.1Porphyry says the gods themselves taught men their rites, statues, and the means to compel them.
920. 5.12.1Hecate prescribes how to make her image from rue, lizards, and incense.
921. 5.12.2Hecate prescribes the number of lizards and promises to appear in dreams.
922. 5.13.1Sarapis describes his own radiant appearance.
923. 5.13.2Pan's hymn describes his goatlike form.
924. 5.13.3Hecate prescribes her image as Demeter in white robes entwined with serpents.
925. 5.14.1Apollo prescribes planetary invocations devised by the magus Ostanes.
926. 5.14.2Pan's oracle prescribes a wax image of Hecate as a charm against demons.
927. 5.14.3Porphyry's collection reveals the demons' snares, not divine wisdom.
928. 5.14.4Magic and images contribute nothing to a happy life, unlike virtue and philosophy.
929. 5.15.1Hecate says the gods love their symbols as men love money.
930. 5.15.2The gods are bound to the sacred images that bear their symbols.
931. 5.15.3The gods are shown to be earthly, passion-loving demons.
932. 5.15.4The divine would dwell only in a pure and virtuous soul, not in magical figures.
933. 5.15.5A virtuous soul receives the divine Spirit without any sorcery.
934. 5.15.6Eusebius introduces Porphyry's admission that the oracles have failed.
935. 5.16.1Apollo's oracles admit that most oracles have perished and Delphi has fallen silent.
936. 5.16.2Plutarch's dialogue opens with the decline of a famous oracle.
937. 5.16.3Demetrius notes that nearly all oracles have failed.
938. 5.16.4Only Lebadea's oracle remains in Boeotia; Eusebius turns to Plutarch on the death of demons.
939. 5.17.1Heracleon objects to the idea that demons sin and die.
940. 5.17.2Cleombrotus says great questions require bold principles.
941. 5.17.3Demons that are neither bad nor mortal would be indistinguishable from gods.
942. 5.17.4Philip notes that many philosophers believed in bad demons.
943. 5.17.5Philip introduces the story told by Epitherses.
944. 5.17.6A voice from the island of Paxi told the pilot Thamus to announce that the great Pan was dead.
945. 5.17.7Thamus resolved to deliver the message if the sea were calm.
946. 5.17.8When Thamus announced Pan's death, a great lamentation arose.
947. 5.17.9Tiberius investigated the report of Pan's death.
948. 5.17.10Demetrius tells of a sacred island near Britain.
949. 5.17.11The islanders explained a storm as caused by the death of a great spirit.
950. 5.17.12Cronus is said to sleep imprisoned on an island near Britain.
951. 5.17.13The death of Pan coincides with the time when Christ drove out demons.
952. 5.17.14The demons' destruction, like the end of human sacrifice, came with the gospel.
953. 5.18.1Eusebius turns to the ancient oracles known to all educated Greeks.
954. 5.18.2Eusebius introduces Apollo's oracle to the plague-stricken Athenians after Androgeos' death.
955. 5.18.3Apollo did not counsel the Athenians to repentance or virtue.
956. 5.18.4The demons prescribed only cruelty.
957. 5.18.5Apollo ordered the yearly tribute of fourteen youths and maidens to Minos.
958. 5.18.6Eusebius introduces Oenomaus's attack on the oracle.
959. 5.19.1Oenomaus asks why Apollo demanded victims instead of repentance.
960. 5.19.2Apollo favored Minos because he was powerful.
961. 5.19.3Oenomaus says the gods deserved punishment rather than the innocent children.
962. 5.19.4Eusebius introduces Oenomaus on the oracles to the Heraclidae.
963. 5.20.1Oenomaus begins the story of the Heraclidae's attempts to invade the Peloponnese.
964. 5.20.2Apollo's oracle about 'the narrows' led Aristomachus to his death.
965. 5.20.3Apollo blamed the failure on the killing of the seer Carnus.
966. 5.20.4Oenomaus accuses Apollo of knowingly misleading Temenus.
967. 5.20.5Apollo's ambiguity gave him an escape whatever happened.
968. 5.20.6Apollo neither protected Carnus nor spared the army a plague.
969. 5.20.7Apollo's tricks are never exposed, because desire blinds his clients.
970. 5.20.8Croesus enriched Apollo's temple at Delphi.
971. 5.20.9Croesus planned war on Persia, trusting Apollo's help.
972. 5.20.10Apollo's ambiguous oracle cost Croesus his own kingdom.
973. 5.21.1Oenomaus mocks Apollo's tortoise oracle to Croesus as worthless knowledge.
974. 5.21.2Apollo encouraged Croesus's ambition with his oracle.
975. 5.21.3Oenomaus ironically 'praises' Apollo for misleading Croesus.
976. 5.21.4The 'mule' oracle about Cyrus shows prophecy that does not prophesy.
977. 5.21.5If all is fated, the oracle is useless.
978. 5.21.6Eusebius names Oenomaus and introduces his own deception by the Clarian oracle.
979. 5.22.1Oenomaus recounts the oracle he received from Clarian Apollo.
980. 5.22.2Oenomaus took the oracle as promising toil and then an easy life.
981. 5.22.3Oenomaus learned that the same oracle had been given to a merchant.
982. 5.22.4The oracle fitted the merchant as well as the philosopher.
983. 5.22.5Oenomaus rejected the oracle once he saw it applied to anyone.
984. 5.22.6The oracle suits every kind of person.
985. 5.22.7Eusebius introduces Oenomaus's further consultations.
986. 5.23.1Oenomaus asked for a teacher and received an unintelligible verse.
987. 5.23.2Such an answer would be useless for any craft.
988. 5.23.3Oenomaus ridicules Apollo's riddling answer about his route.
989. 5.23.4Eusebius turns to Oenomaus on the famous Delphic oracles.
990. 5.23.5The Athenians turned to Apollo against the Persians.
991. 5.23.6Apollo told the Athenians only to flee to the wooden wall.
992. 5.23.7The oracle foretold only what anyone could expect.
993. 5.24.1Oenomaus quotes the first Delphic oracle to Athens before Salamis.
994. 5.24.2Oenomaus quotes the second oracle, of the wooden wall and Salamis.
995. 5.24.3Oenomaus ridicules a Zeus who needs a Persian army to destroy one city.
996. 5.24.4Was Zeus angry with stones and needed Persian fire?
997. 5.24.5The Salamis oracle was deliberately ambiguous.
998. 5.24.6The oracle's phrasing concealed its emptiness.
999. 5.24.7The oracle was constructed to fit any outcome.
1000. 5.24.8The wooden-wall oracle was advice, not prophecy.
1001. 5.24.9Anyone could see that Athens was the Persians' target and advise flight.
1002. 5.24.10Flight by sea was the obvious course for Athens.
1003. 5.24.11The oracle to Sparta offered an obvious either-or.
1004. 5.24.12A god should have helped the Greeks, not equivocated.
1005. 5.25.1Apollo did not know how Sparta's affairs would turn out.
1006. 5.25.2Apollo's oracle to Sparta: the city falls or a king dies.
1007. 5.25.3Oenomaus passes over the 'either-or' again.
1008. 5.25.4Apollo exploited the Greeks' fear and credulity.
1009. 5.25.5The Spartans would naturally prefer losing the king to losing the city.
1010. 5.25.6So the Spartans sent the king to fight while they stayed home.
1011. 5.25.7The oracle could not be refuted whatever happened.
1012. 5.25.8The oracle was safe either way; Eusebius turns to the Cnidians.
1013. 5.26.1The Cnidians tried to cut through their isthmus against Harpagus.
1014. 5.26.2Apollo told the Cnidians not to dig, and they surrendered.
1015. 5.26.3Apollo's advice committed him to nothing.
1016. 5.26.4The oracles contain nothing true or divine.
1017. 5.26.5The oracles stirred Greeks to war against each other.
1018. 5.26.6Apollo encouraged both Spartans and Messenians against each other.
1019. 5.27.1Apollo's oracle to Sparta encouraged deceit against Messene.
1020. 5.27.2Spartan greed contradicted Lycurgus's laws.
1021. 5.27.3True endurance would have made war unnecessary.
1022. 5.27.4Apollo demanded human sacrifice from the Messenians.
1023. 5.27.5Oracles have misled rulers from ancient times to Eusebius's own.
1024. 5.27.6The gods gave no help in war or sickness.
1025. 5.27.7The oracles always fail as in ancient history.
1026. 5.27.8Eusebius introduces the oracle to Lycurgus and Oenomaus's critique.
1027. 5.28.1Oenomaus quotes Apollo's greeting to Lycurgus.
1028. 5.28.2If Lycurgus was a god, why did he need laws from Apollo?
1029. 5.28.3Apollo's 'gift' of law was commonplace advice.
1030. 5.28.4Such advice needed no journey to an oracle.
1031. 5.28.5A nurse or elders could have taught Lycurgus as much.
1032. 5.28.6Apollo's further advice is still trivial.
1033. 5.28.7Apollo's oracle of the two roads.
1034. 5.28.8Exhortations to courage and concord are commonplace.
1035. 5.28.9Such advice is had from ordinary people.
1036. 5.28.10Oenomaus asks Apollo to teach how virtues arise in a city.
1037. 5.29.1Apollo's riddling oracle about marriage.
1038. 5.29.2Apollo's oracle about Eetion's son.
1039. 5.29.3Apollo's oracle about a colony.
1040. 5.29.4Apollo's oracle flattering vanity.
1041. 5.29.5Apollo is no better than paid charlatans.
1042. 5.29.6Socrates gave wiser answers on marriage and children.
1043. 5.29.7Socrates' advice to a man wanting to emigrate.
1044. 5.30.1Apollo's oracle on the heat was mere medical advice.
1045. 5.30.2Apollo's oracle to Erginus was common sense.
1046. 5.31.1Apollo should have given moral counsel instead of trivial oracles.
1047. 5.31.2Apollo's oracle on purification to the Cretans.
1048. 5.31.3Oenomaus rewrites the oracle into moral advice.
1049. 5.32.1Apollo demanded a share of the Spartan kings' plunder.
1050. 5.32.2Eusebius introduces Oenomaus on Apollo's praise of the poets.
1051. 5.33.1Apollo's oracle promising fame to Archilochus.
1052. 5.33.2Apollo's oracle promising fame to Euripides.
1053. 5.33.3Apollo's oracle about Homer's double fate.
1054. 5.33.4Oenomaus asks the god to grant others what he promised the poets.
1055. 5.33.5What did Archilochus do to deserve heaven?
1056. 5.33.6Oenomaus ironically lists Archilochus's 'merits': abusive verse.
1057. 5.33.7Ironical praise of Archilochus's verse.
1058. 5.33.8Apollo barred Archilochus's killer from the temple.
1059. 5.33.9The Pythia expelled Archias, killer of Archilochus.
1060. 5.33.10Oenomaus asks how Euripides' crowns were 'sacred'.
1061. 5.33.11Euripides was admired by crowds and tyrants.
1062. 5.33.12Oenomaus asks what merit the gods saw in Euripides.
1063. 5.33.13Euripides won the gods' favor by dramatizing others' crimes.
1064. 5.33.14Such deeds would seat men on Olympus with the boxers.
1065. 5.33.15Apollo's oracle to Homer about his homeland and death.
1066. 5.33.16Homer's question was as trivial as a beetle's would be.
1067. 5.33.17Oenomaus's beetle parody of Homer's question.
1068. 5.34.1Eusebius introduces Oenomaus on deified athletes.
1069. 5.34.2Apollo deified the boxer Cleomedes.
1070. 5.34.3Cleomedes killed an opponent at Olympia.
1071. 5.34.4Cleomedes pulled down a school roof on the children.
1072. 5.34.5Cleomedes vanished from a chest in a temple.
1073. 5.34.6Ironical comparison of Cleomedes with Ganymede.
1074. 5.34.7Oenomaus parodies the Cleomedes oracle with a wild ass.
1075. 5.34.8The wild ass would contest Cleomedes' claim.
1076. 5.34.9Oenomaus turns to the Thasian boxer's statue.
1077. 5.34.10Ironical conclusion that boxing is divine.
1078. 5.34.11The statue fell on a man who flogged it.
1079. 5.34.12The Thasians sank the statue in the sea.
1080. 5.34.13Famine struck Thasos; Apollo's oracle spoke of bringing back exiles.
1081. 5.34.14The famine ended when the statue was restored.
1082. 5.34.15The Locrians suffered famine for insulting a pentathlete's statue.
1083. 5.34.16Oenomaus mocks the gods' love of fattened athletes.
1084. 5.34.17Apollo should have been an athletic trainer.
1085. 5.35.1Apollo flattered the tyrant Cypselus.
1086. 5.35.2If Cypselus was blessed, so was Phalaris.
1087. 5.35.3Apollo praised the tyrant Phalaris.
1088. 5.36.1Apollo's oracle to Methymna on the wooden head of Dionysus.
1089. 5.36.2Oenomaus parodies Hesiod's 'thirty thousand immortals'.
1090. 5.36.3Oenomaus ridicules the deified olive trunk netted by fishermen.
1091. 5.36.4The trunk became a cult object by Delphi's sanction.
1092. 5.36.5Eusebius turns back to Porphyry's oracles on fate.
1093. 6.0.1Eusebius opens Book 6 by turning from the oracles to the pagan doctrine of fate, to show the demons behind the oracles are powerless.
1094. 6.0.2Eusebius asks the reader to judge the demons by the arguments against fate and by how they divine.
1095. 6.0.3Eusebius introduces Porphyry's admission that the gods foretell only by reading the stars.
1096. 6.1.1Porphyry: the gods' predictions come from the movement of the stars.
1097. 6.1.2Porphyry cites an oracle of Apollo predicting a girl's birth from the stars at conception.
1098. 6.1.3Porphyry explains the astrological reasoning and adds an oracle foretelling disease.
1099. 6.1.4Porphyry quotes an oracle ascribing a disease to the Fates and the course of Saturn.
1100. 6.1.5A further oracle links a death to the planets Mars and Saturn.
1101. 6.1.6The oracles show the gods predict only as astrologers do, with no higher power.
1102. 6.1.7Eusebius notes that these oracles abolish human free will.
1103. 6.2.1Porphyry cites oracles that trace a man's martial zeal and another's misfortune to the planets.
1104. 6.2.2Eusebius mocks gods who cannot even protect their own temples from fate.
1105. 6.3.1Porphyry cites Apollo's oracle that his own temple was fated to be destroyed by lightning.
1106. 6.3.2If even temples cannot escape fate, Eusebius asks what hope humans have from such gods.
1107. 6.3.3Gods unable to help do not deserve sacrifice, nor can they be thought givers of good.
1108. 6.3.4If all is fated, only Necessity should be worshiped, not the gods.
1109. 6.3.5If the supreme God rules the Fates, he alone should be confessed as God, and his worshiper is free from fate.
1110. 6.4.1Porphyry cites an oracle prescribing magic to escape what nature and fate had bound.
1111. 6.4.2Porphyry concludes that the gods gave magic to undo fate.
1112. 6.4.3Eusebius points out that a god who recommends magic could not save his own temple, and that Porphyry admits the gods lie.
1113. 6.5.1Porphyry admits that some daemons do not know the stars exactly and so lie.
1114. 6.5.2Porphyry blames false oracles on the state of the atmosphere and the persistence of inquirers.
1115. 6.5.3Porphyry cites Apollo announcing that he will speak falsely.
1116. 6.5.4Porphyry quotes a god refusing to prophesy because of the stars, explaining oracular falsehood.
1117. 6.6.1Eusebius argues that oracles which lie and depend on the stars cannot be divine.
1118. 6.6.2A virtuous man would not lie even under torture, nor blame fate for lying.
1119. 6.6.3The deceiving demon uses fate as an excuse when its predictions fail.
1120. 6.6.4By making all things depend on fate the demon ruins those who believe him.
1121. 6.6.5If even our decisions are fated, philosophy, piety, and the reward of virtue all vanish.
1122. 6.6.6Fatalism abolishes blame, praise, and the glory of philosophy.
1123. 6.6.7The doctrine of fate drives people to vice and overturns all of life.
1124. 6.6.8Belief that all choices are fated would make people idle in every laborious task.
1125. 6.6.9If outcomes are fated regardless of effort, anyone would choose the easier course.
1126. 6.6.10Popular fatalism says, why trouble myself if it is fated?
1127. 6.6.11If soldiering is fated, so are crime and virtue alike.
1128. 6.6.12A fatalist would not heed moral admonition.
1129. 6.6.13The fatalist replies that changing his choice is not in his power.
1130. 6.6.14The fatalist says teaching is useless, since he will desire only what is fated.
1131. 6.6.15Even fated exhortation is pointless on the fatalist's view.
1132. 6.6.16Anyone who exhorts, rebukes, or praises shows he really believes in free will and only uses the name of fate.
1133. 6.6.17Since we perceive our own choices as unforced, ascribing them to fate is a misnaming that paralyzes moral effort.
1134. 6.6.18Fatalism would make laws, punishments, and honors meaningless.
1135. 6.6.19Fatalism also destroys piety and prayer.
1136. 6.6.20We are not puppets: we perceive ourselves choosing, neglecting, and refusing by our own impulse.
1137. 6.6.21Free will is perceived directly, like sensation, and must be acknowledged.
1138. 6.6.22Things beyond our control are explained by providence, not irrational fate; Eusebius turns to examine this.
1139. 6.6.23True religion teaches that all things exist and are governed by God's providence.
1140. 6.6.24Within providence things are moved variously, by habit, nature, impulse, or reasoned choice.
1141. 6.6.25Eusebius turns to explain free will in particular.
1142. 6.6.26A human being, made of body and soul, is both bound by bodily nature and free in the soul.
1143. 6.6.27Fate cannot be identified with nature, since nature is often impeded and crossed by accidents.
1144. 6.6.28Since things happen against nature, fate and nature are not the same.
1145. 6.6.29Some things come from our choice, some from bodily nature, some from external accident, but none is outside their Maker.
1146. 6.6.30God is the maker of all things, whether free, natural, or accidental, as Scripture says.
1147. 6.6.31When things go against our will, it is because of the union of soul and body, as in infancy or illness.
1148. 6.6.32Old age, natural to the body, dulls the soul's reason against its nature.
1149. 6.6.33Bodily injuries and pains can overpower the soul's freedom.
1150. 6.6.34Yet free choice is strong enough to resist both bodily nature and external circumstance.
1151. 6.6.35Reason masters sexual desire and hunger, as in long fasts freely chosen.
1152. 6.6.36The will can choose a hard life over bodily pleasure.
1153. 6.6.37Others choose the worse, as Paul says of unnatural acts.
1154. 6.6.38Reason sometimes rules nature and sometimes is ruled, even to the point of suicide.
1155. 6.6.39Humans must struggle not only with their bodies but with countless external circumstances.
1156. 6.6.40Food, weather, and other natural forces disturb our free will through the body.
1157. 6.6.41Other people's free choices also affect us in body and soul.
1158. 6.6.42Others' influence can make our will better or worse, as bad company corrupts.
1159. 6.6.43The rational soul shows its divine power by resisting external influences, or is corrupted when careless.
1160. 6.6.44Seasons of fruitfulness and barrenness, good for the whole, also disturb individuals.
1161. 6.6.45One almighty providence of God governs free acts, natural processes, and accidents.
1162. 6.6.46With all things divided into free, natural, and accidental under God's will, fate has no place.
1163. 6.6.47Evil originates only in the soul's free turning aside from the natural, straight way.
1164. 6.6.48God gave the soul freedom and a natural inner law that calls it to keep to the royal road.
1165. 6.6.49God gave a natural law and free will, so that right choice deserves reward and wrong choice punishment.
1166. 6.6.50God is blameless; he made all natures good, including free will, which was given for choosing the good.
1167. 6.6.51Evil is the work of choice, not nature, and the one who chooses it has no excuse.
1168. 6.6.52To blame the stars for human wrongdoing is impious.
1169. 6.6.53Whether the fatalist denies providence or identifies it with fate, he falls into impiety.
1170. 6.6.54Fatalism makes God the cause of blasphemy, unnatural acts, and murder.
1171. 6.6.55If God made the stars to compel sin, he is the cause of sin.
1172. 6.6.56Either way, fatalism makes God, not man, the sinner.
1173. 6.6.57Fate and God's providence exclude each other; they cannot be the same.
1174. 6.6.58If fate comes from the stars, it is a mere consequence of bodily elements.
1175. 6.6.59God, life and wisdom beyond bodies, cannot be the same as fate.
1176. 6.6.60If God is stronger than fate and lets it do evil, he is to blame.
1177. 6.6.61Denying providence is atheism, refuted by the order of the world and the freedom of the soul.
1178. 6.6.62The soul's free virtue holds out against every external obstacle.
1179. 6.6.63The Christian martyrs, Greeks and barbarians alike, show the power of free choice.
1180. 6.6.64The stars never produced such martyrs before Christ's teaching.
1181. 6.6.65No earlier age had a teaching that brought all peoples knowledge of the one God.
1182. 6.6.66No sage was ever 'fated' to have his teaching spread worldwide and be honored as God.
1183. 6.6.67Since nothing like Christianity occurred before, the stars' recurring cycles cannot be its cause.
1184. 6.6.68No fate explains why Christ is proclaimed everywhere and the old gods overthrown.
1185. 6.6.69Fate cannot have forced people to deny fate and to suffer for Christ's teaching.
1186. 6.6.70It is absurd to think all Christians received one and the same fate.
1187. 6.6.71People of every age, sex, nation, and class cannot all have been fated to embrace the faith.
1188. 6.6.72The spread of the faith is plainly due to teaching and free choice.
1189. 6.6.73Eusebius turns to a pagan philosopher who refuted Apollo's oracles on fate.
1190. 6.6.74Eusebius introduces Oenomaus, author of The Detection of Impostors.
1191. 6.7.1Oenomaus mocks Apollo as compelled even in his willing.
1192. 6.7.2Oenomaus complains that Democritus and Chrysippus have made human freedom a slave or half-slave.
1193. 6.7.3Human philosophers' views matter little, but it is worse if the gods deny our freedom.
1194. 6.7.4Oenomaus cites Apollo's oracle to the Argives telling them to stay on guard.
1195. 6.7.5An oracle's command implies the hearer is free to obey or not.
1196. 6.7.6Oenomaus quotes an oracle ordering Carystus to found a city in Euboea.
1197. 6.7.7Oenomaus shows that the oracle's command contradicts the doctrine of fate.
1198. 6.7.8Oenomaus ridicules the oracle to Telesicles about colonizing Thasos.
1199. 6.7.9Oenomaus begins a longer argument with Apollo.
1200. 6.7.10We know we exist by our awareness of ourselves.
1201. 6.7.11Self-perception tells us what we are, whatever our dispute.
1202. 6.7.12Self-perception is the most immediate and trustworthy criterion.
1203. 6.7.13Without trust in self-perception, even the Delphic consultation of Alcmaeon would be meaningless.
1204. 6.7.14Without self-perception Chrysippus could not even teach or debate.
1205. 6.7.15Chrysippus would not know anything, not even himself.
1206. 6.7.16No criterion is more trustworthy than self-perception.
1207. 6.7.17Oenomaus turns the philosophers' indignation back on them.
1208. 6.7.18The philosophers appeal to self-perception when it suits them and to fate when it does not.
1209. 6.7.19We perceive the difference between free and forced action as directly as our own existence.
1210. 6.7.20The prophet cannot know what depends on our will.
1211. 6.7.21Not knowing the will, which begins many events, the prophet cannot know what follows.
1212. 6.7.22The oracle to Laius was shameless, since his son's act depended on his own will.
1213. 6.7.23Oenomaus mocks the attempt to combine free will with a chain of fated causes.
1214. 6.7.24The compromise view: Laius was free to beget, but once he did, his death was necessary.
1215. 6.7.25The son too was free, so the oracle's prediction cannot be necessary.
1216. 6.7.26The Theban story turns on many free decisions, which no chain of fate could bind.
1217. 6.7.27Each turn of the Oedipus story depended on Oedipus's own choices.
1218. 6.7.28Oenomaus lists choices the sons of Oedipus might have made differently.
1219. 6.7.29Every stage of the Seven against Thebes depended on free decisions.
1220. 6.7.30Had Eteocles listened to reason, the brothers would not have fought.
1221. 6.7.31Human power repeatedly interrupts any supposed chain of events.
1222. 6.7.32The outcome cannot be foreknown since the plot is made of free interruptions.
1223. 6.7.33Every free act is a new beginning that redirects the course of events.
1224. 6.7.34Even animals initiate events, which the prophet overlooks.
1225. 6.7.35Oenomaus asks why Apollo rebukes the Locrians if Trachis's fall was fated.
1226. 6.7.36If all is fated, Zeus should punish himself, not the people.
1227. 6.7.37Oenomaus tells Zeus and Apollo that, on their own doctrine, the blame is theirs.
1228. 6.7.38Oenomaus answers another oracle: the people are driven by necessity, not folly.
1229. 6.7.39Praising Lycurgus makes no sense if his virtue was fated.
1230. 6.7.40On the doctrine of fate the wicked are excused and the good deserve no praise.
1231. 6.7.41On Chrysippus's own view Epicurus cannot be blamed.
1232. 6.7.42Oenomaus concludes that the oracles themselves presuppose free will.
1233. 6.7.43Eusebius turns from Oenomaus to other philosophers against fate.
1234. 6.7.44Eusebius introduces Diogenianus's reply to Chrysippus on fate.
1235. 6.8.1Diogenianus reports that Chrysippus cited Homer to prove all things are fated.
1236. 6.8.2Diogenianus notes that Homer also says people suffer through their own recklessness, which Chrysippus himself used.
1237. 6.8.3Homer's verses imply only that some things are fated, not all.
1238. 6.8.4Homer's 'doom' refers only to the fact of death.
1239. 6.8.5Homer's 'whatever' limits fate to certain things.
1240. 6.8.6Homer contradicts rather than supports Chrysippus.
1241. 6.8.7A poet may contradict himself, but a philosopher should not cite poets as witnesses.
1242. 6.8.8Diogenianus reports Chrysippus's etymological arguments for fate.
1243. 6.8.9Chrysippus derives the Fates' names and number from division and the three times.
1244. 6.8.10Chrysippus's etymologies of Lachesis, Atropos, and Clotho, which Diogenianus calls babble.
1245. 6.8.11Even granting the etymologies, they show only what people believed.
1246. 6.8.12Diogenianus asks why Chrysippus trusts popular opinion here.
1247. 6.8.13Chrysippus elsewhere calls all but the sage mad.
1248. 6.8.14Chrysippus's own writings assume most opinions are mistaken.
1249. 6.8.15Agreement with Chrysippus is no test of sanity.
1250. 6.8.16Chrysippus is inconsistent in calling all mad yet citing their opinions.
1251. 6.8.17Popular opinion, though not madness, is far from wisdom and no proof of truth.
1252. 6.8.18The name-givers cannot be trusted as witnesses unless they were sages.
1253. 6.8.19Even granted, the names show only that some things are fated.
1254. 6.8.20The mythic images imply necessity only for some events.
1255. 6.8.21Popular opinion ascribes events to gods, to us, to nature, or to chance, not all to fate.
1256. 6.8.22Fortune on a ball pictures chance's instability.
1257. 6.8.23People, though confused, believe in several kinds of causes, not fate alone.
1258. 6.8.24Neither opinion nor etymology supports Chrysippus.
1259. 6.8.25Diogenianus turns to Chrysippus's second book, which answers the objections to fatalism.
1260. 6.8.26Chrysippus says acts from us are also co-fated.
1261. 6.8.27Chrysippus's examples of co-fated outcomes: the guarded cloak, flight from enemies, begetting children.
1262. 6.8.28Chrysippus's example of the boxer Hegesarchus.
1263. 6.8.29Many fated outcomes require our will and effort.
1264. 6.8.30Diogenianus argues that what is up to us is the opposite of what is fated.
1265. 6.8.31If outcomes result from our efforts, they are not by fate.
1266. 6.8.32Fate and our agency cannot coincide.
1267. 6.8.33If guarding is in my power, so is the outcome; fate does not encompass it.
1268. 6.8.34Chrysippus's conditional language shows our part is free of fate.
1269. 6.8.35Truly fated things, like death, are unconditional.
1270. 6.8.36If outcomes depend on our will, our will is free.
1271. 6.8.37Unless our very willing is fated, the outcome is not fixed from eternity.
1272. 6.8.38If our willing is fated, praise and blame vanish, which Chrysippus did not accept.
1273. 6.8.39Eusebius introduces Alexander of Aphrodisias's On Fate.
1274. 6.9.1Alexander of Aphrodisias sets out Aristotle's four causes.
1275. 6.9.2Every cause falls under one of the four kinds.
1276. 6.9.3The example of a statue: the sculptor as productive cause and the bronze as matter.
1277. 6.9.4The form given by the sculptor is also a cause.
1278. 6.9.5The purpose of the statue is also its cause.
1279. 6.9.6Fate, if anything, is a productive cause.
1280. 6.9.7Alexander proposes to examine productive causes to see whether fate causes everything.
1281. 6.9.8Aristotle divides events into those with a purpose and those without, like idle fidgeting.
1282. 6.9.9Purposeless events admit no further division.
1283. 6.9.10Purposeful events come about either by nature or by reason; nature proceeds in order toward an end.
1284. 6.9.11Rational actions also have an end.
1285. 6.9.12Rational actions include all works of art and choice.
1286. 6.9.13Natural processes have their principle within and do not reason.
1287. 6.9.14Works of art and choice have their principle in an external reasoning maker.
1288. 6.9.15Chance events are by-products of actions aimed at something else.
1289. 6.9.16Alexander asks where fate belongs among the causes.
1290. 6.9.17Fate must belong among purposeful causes.
1291. 6.9.18Eusebius summarizes Alexander: fate is simply natural causation.
1292. 6.9.19Since natural processes can be hindered, things can happen against fate.
1293. 6.9.20Alexander: bodily constitution inclines to disease but can be overcome by care and medicine.
1294. 6.9.21Likewise the soul can be improved beyond its natural constitution.
1295. 6.9.22Alexander cites Socrates and the physiognomist Zopyrus: philosophy overcame his nature.
1296. 6.9.23Alexander explains chance events with examples: a found treasure, a recovered debt, a runaway horse.
1297. 6.9.24Chance events and effects with hidden causes are not by fate either.
1298. 6.9.25Contingent events are not by fate.
1299. 6.9.26Many acts, like moving a finger, could go either way and so are not fated.
1300. 6.9.27Human deliberation, judging impressions by reason, would be pointless if all were necessary.
1301. 6.9.28We deliberate only about what is in our power, and blame thoughtlessness.
1302. 6.9.29The fatalists themselves teach, exhort, and rebuke, contradicting their doctrine.
1303. 6.9.30Their distinction between voluntary and involuntary wrongs assumes free will.
1304. 6.9.31Even the fatalists' practice proves natural free will.
1305. 6.9.32Eusebius turns to Bardesanes' arguments against astrology.
1306. 6.10.1Bardesanes: birth, growth, eating, and death belong to nature in all creatures.
1307. 6.10.2Animals act uniformly by nature, like lions and sheep.
1308. 6.10.3Scorpions and ants likewise act uniformly by nature.
1309. 6.10.4Bees too follow their nature.
1310. 6.10.5Humans alone, having mind and speech, live beyond mere nature in what is special to them.
1311. 6.10.6Human beings differ in diet, dress, customs, and laws by their own will.
1312. 6.10.7Human freedom includes even the freedom to serve willingly.
1313. 6.10.8Peoples differ widely in what they choose to eat and drink.
1314. 6.10.9Humans also differ in character, some vicious, some gentle, some just.
1315. 6.10.10Humans act partly by nature and partly by choice, and are judged only for what they choose.
1316. 6.10.11Bardesanes begins his survey of the differing laws of nations.
1317. 6.10.12The Seres' laws forbid murder, immorality, theft, and idols, and their land is free of these crimes.
1318. 6.10.13The stars do not compel the Seres to murder or adultery, though they are born under every configuration.
1319. 6.10.14The Brahmans live purely by tradition while other Indians do not.
1320. 6.10.15Cannibals and Brahmans in the same region show the stars do not determine conduct.
1321. 6.10.16Persian incestuous marriages persist wherever Persians live, by custom not stars.
1322. 6.10.17They cannot all have been born under the same planetary configuration.
1323. 6.10.18Among the Gelae women do all the work and have free sexual relations.
1324. 6.10.19Gelaean men dress luxuriously yet are warlike, while the women are plain.
1325. 6.10.20Their customs cannot come from all being born under the same signs.
1326. 6.10.21Bactrian women are luxurious and unchaste and nearly rule their husbands.
1327. 6.10.22Bactrian women are not all born under Venus; in Arabia adultery is punished by death.
1328. 6.10.23Laws on murder of kin differ among Parthians, Armenians, Greeks, and Romans.
1329. 6.10.24Punishments for theft differ by nation.
1330. 6.10.25Eastern peoples avenge the charge of male intercourse, while Greek sages with beloveds are not blamed.
1331. 6.10.26In the East those subjected to male intercourse are killed by their kin.
1332. 6.10.27Gallic custom of same-sex marriage cannot be due to all sharing one horoscope.
1333. 6.10.28Marriage customs differ in Britain and Parthia.
1334. 6.10.29The Amazons' customs also show law, not stars, governing life.
1335. 6.10.30Astrologers claim Mercury and Venus make artists and bankers.
1336. 6.10.31Many nations have no artists or bankers at all, so the planets do not make them.
1337. 6.10.32Median burial customs are not due to a shared horoscope.
1338. 6.10.33Indian widow-burning is not due to a shared horoscope.
1339. 6.10.34German deaths by hanging are not due to a shared horoscope.
1340. 6.10.35Law and custom, not nativity, rule each people; each uses freedom, though subject to nature through the flesh.
1341. 6.10.36A companion objects that the seven planets rule seven climes and their laws.
1342. 6.10.37Bardesanes replies that laws are countless, not seven or twelve.
1343. 6.10.38Within one clime laws differ, and customs travel with peoples.
1344. 6.10.39Nations in every clime lack the arts of Mercury.
1345. 6.10.40Laws change by human action without any change in the stars.
1346. 6.10.41The Romans changed Arabian law by conquest.
1347. 6.10.42Jews everywhere circumcise on the eighth day, regardless of stars or land.
1348. 6.10.43Jewish Sabbath observance everywhere shows law, not nativity, governs conduct.
1349. 6.10.44King Abgar ended self-castration in Osrhoene by law.
1350. 6.10.45Christians in every nation share one name and way of life.
1351. 6.10.46Christians everywhere keep their teacher's law against local customs, though still subject to bodily ills.
1352. 6.10.47Freedom and constraint both remain real in human life.
1353. 6.10.48We are neither all-powerful nor mere instruments; God's will prevails, though he allows each nature its freedom.
1354. 6.10.49Eusebius turns from pagan authors to the testimony of the sacred writings.
1355. 6.10.50Eusebius introduces Origen's Commentary on Genesis on fate.
1356. 6.11.1Origen introduces the problem of fate raised by the stars being 'for signs.'
1357. 6.11.2Fatalism abolishes free will, praise, and blame.
1358. 6.11.3Fatalism destroys God's judgment, punishment, and reward.
1359. 6.11.4Fatalism would make faith, Christ's coming, and the apostles' work vain.
1360. 6.11.5Fatalism would subject even Christ and the faith of believers to the stars.
1361. 6.11.6Fatalism makes God the author of a world where men are forced into vice and violence.
1362. 6.11.7Fatalists acquit sinners and blame God for all evil.
1363. 6.11.8Blaming a separate Creator for evil cannot make him just.
1364. 6.11.9If these heretics are subject to the stars, their own doctrine came from the Creator's stars.
1365. 6.11.10If they claim exemption from the stars, they cannot prove it.
1366. 6.11.11Fatalism makes prayer pointless.
1367. 6.11.12Origen ends his case against the impiety of fatalism.
1368. 6.11.13Origen returns to Gen 1:14: people learn of events by seeing or by hearing from those who did not cause them.
1369. 6.11.14Origen sets aside knowledge gained from the agents themselves.
1370. 6.11.15One who reports events is not their cause.
1371. 6.11.16A prophecy about Judas does not cause Judas's betrayal.
1372. 6.11.17God foreknew Judas's betrayal but did not cause it.
1373. 6.11.18Neither God's foreknowledge nor the signs that bear it cause what is foreknown.
1374. 6.11.19God's foreknowledge follows from the very idea of God.
1375. 6.11.20Scripture, including Susanna, shows God's foreknowledge.
1376. 6.11.21The prophecy naming Josiah long beforehand shows God's foreknowledge.
1377. 6.11.22Isaiah's naming of Cyrus long beforehand shows God's foreknowledge.
1378. 6.11.23Origen notes that God gave Cyrus rule for Israel's sake, as Greek historians confirm.
1379. 6.11.24Daniel's image foretells the succession of empires.
1380. 6.11.25Daniel's vision of the ram and goat foretells Alexander and his successors.
1381. 6.11.26Prophecies about Christ's birth, upbringing, and betrayal show God's foreknowledge.
1382. 6.11.27Christ foretold Jerusalem's destruction.
1383. 6.11.28The stars serve as signs read not by humans but by heavenly powers.
1384. 6.11.29Humans, taught partly by fallen angels, mistook signs for causes.
1385. 6.11.30Origen lists four questions on foreknowledge, the stars as signs, and their readers.
1386. 6.11.31Some Greeks denied God's foreknowledge to preserve free will.
1387. 6.11.32The objection: if God foreknows a wrong, it is necessary and so blameless.
1388. 6.11.33The objection extends to all sins and good deeds.
1389. 6.11.34God foresees the whole chain of events without causing each.
1390. 6.11.35As one who foresees a fall does not cause it, so God's foresight does not cause sin.
1391. 6.11.36The future event causes the foreknowledge, not the reverse.
1392. 6.11.37Foreknowledge does not make the foreknown necessary, as with Judas.
1393. 6.11.38Scripture's blame of Judas shows he was free to be like the other apostles.
1394. 6.11.39Psalm 109, read of Judas, blames him for his own choices.
1395. 6.11.40God's foreknowledge is infallible about things that could have gone otherwise.
1396. 6.11.41God's knowledge follows whichever possibility Judas realizes.
1397. 6.11.42God knows which of two real possibilities will occur.
1398. 6.11.43Humans have power for both virtue and vice, unlike the impossible power of flight.
1399. 6.11.44Each chooses the better or worse according to whether he heeds instruction.
1400. 6.11.45One yields to pleasure for lack of struggle; another despises it.
1401. 6.11.46God's calls to repentance through the prophets show foreknowledge imposes no necessity.
1402. 6.11.47God speaks of 'perhaps' so that announced foreknowledge will not discourage repentance.
1403. 6.11.48Knowing one's future goodness could also make one slack.
1404. 6.11.49God mercifully hid the future so that we keep struggling against sin.
1405. 6.11.50Not knowing whether we will be good or bad is for our benefit.
1406. 6.11.51Exodus 4:11: God makes us seeing as to the present and blind as to the future.
1407. 6.11.52External events condition our acts, but we could still act otherwise.
1408. 6.11.53Free will does not mean independence from the world we belong to.
1409. 6.11.54Having dealt with foreknowledge, Origen turns to show the stars are signs, not causes.
1410. 6.11.55A present configuration cannot cause past events, since causes precede effects.
1411. 6.11.56Astrologers claim to read past events from a birth configuration.
1412. 6.11.57Astrologers cast a horoscope from the hour of birth.
1413. 6.11.58Astrologers claim to read even the parents' circumstances from a child's horoscope.
1414. 6.11.59Origen asks how a present configuration could have caused earlier events.
1415. 6.11.60If the stars cannot cause the past, they at most signify, not produce.
1416. 6.11.61Astrologers cannot distinguish stars as causes of the future from stars as signs of the past.
1417. 6.11.62They must admit that the stars only signify, as prophecy does.
1418. 6.11.63The heavens are like God's book, containing the future without compelling it.
1419. 6.11.64The Prayer of Joseph and Isaiah's rolled-up heaven support reading the heavens as God's book.
1420. 6.11.65The stars are signs, but Jeremiah tells us not to fear them.
1421. 6.11.66Origen's second argument: one man's fate is supposedly read from many horoscopes.
1422. 6.11.67Every relative's horoscope would have to contain the same death.
1423. 6.11.68No reason can be given why one horoscope causes and the others only signify.
1424. 6.11.69Circumcision customs of Jews and Ishmaelites cannot come from horoscopes.
1425. 6.11.70Other national customs too cannot be due to the stars.
1426. 6.11.71People inconsistently treat omens as signs but horoscopes as causes.
1427. 6.11.72If signs were causes, birds and entrails would cause events too.
1428. 6.11.73Origen now examines whether humans can read the stars at all.
1429. 6.11.74Astrologers require positions to the minute and second of arc.
1430. 6.11.75The rising point must also be known to the minute.
1431. 6.11.76No one can time a birth precisely enough for such calculations.
1432. 6.11.77Twins born moments apart differ, yet no one can measure such intervals.
1433. 6.11.78The precession of the zodiac makes the true sign nearly impossible to determine.
1434. 6.11.79The 'blending' of planetary influences cannot be computed even by astrologers.
1435. 6.11.80True knowledge of the stars is beyond human reach.
1436. 6.11.81Isaiah mocks the Chaldean astrologers as unable to foretell God's purposes.
1437. 6.11.82Eusebius sums up: the oracle-givers are not gods or good daemons but deceivers.
1438. 6.11.83Only Jesus redeemed humanity from this deception; the gospel alone healed the long work of demons.
1439. 7.1.1Eusebius opens Book 7 by turning to the Hebrews' way of life.
1440. 7.1.2Having justified leaving pagan theology, Eusebius will justify adopting the Hebrew writings.
1441. 7.1.3Eusebius promises to show the Greeks borrowed from barbarians, and that the Hebrews' gift is unique.
1442. 7.2.1Other peoples, knowing only the body, made pleasure their highest good and god.
1443. 7.2.2The pursuit of pleasure led peoples to deify heavenly bodies, nature, passions, rulers, and demons, or to atheism and hedonism.
1444. 7.2.3Enslaved to pleasure, humanity fell into the vices Paul describes in Romans 1.
1445. 7.2.4Greeks and barbarians worshiped pleasure in their rites, which Christianity has abolished.
1446. 7.2.5Pagan theology is a many-headed hydra springing from pleasure.
1447. 7.2.6The worship of pleasure brought the ancient nations into every vice.
1448. 7.3.1The Hebrews alone went the opposite way.
1449. 7.3.2The Hebrews alone reasoned that the heavens are God's works and that a living, rational Maker must exist.
1450. 7.3.3From the order and beauty of creation the Hebrew fathers inferred and worshiped the Creator.
1451. 7.4.1The Hebrews held the soul to be the true self and the body its covering, and cared for the inner man.
1452. 7.4.2Humans rule creation not by strength but by reason and virtue of soul, granted by God.
1453. 7.4.3They valued only the soul's rational part, which bears God's likeness.
1454. 7.4.4The Hebrews made knowledge and friendship of God the goal of happiness.
1455. 7.4.5They dedicated themselves wholly to God.
1456. 7.4.6The Hebrews were called a chosen race, royal priesthood, and holy nation.
1457. 7.4.7Eusebius asks whether it is not reasonable to prefer the Hebrew accounts.
1458. 7.5.1God rewarded the Hebrews with revelations, theophanies, and prophecy.
1459. 7.5.2The Hebrew oracles teach piety, unlike the shameful Greek myths.
1460. 7.6.1Eusebius distinguishes the ancient Hebrews from the later Jews.
1461. 7.6.2Jews are named from Judah, Hebrews from Eber.
1462. 7.6.3Moses gave the Jews their ritual law, but the earlier Hebrews lived a free piety according to nature.
1463. 7.7.1Moses recorded the lives of the Hebrew forefathers as examples to follow and avoid.
1464. 7.7.2Before the law many forefathers were already pious friends of God and prophets.
1465. 7.7.3The descendants should imitate their forefathers' piety.
1466. 7.7.4Moses portrayed each forefather's virtue as an image to imitate.
1467. 7.8.1Eusebius will draw the Hebrews' history from their own writings, as with other peoples.
1468. 7.8.2Before the flood there were righteous men, such as Enosh, who hoped in the Lord.
1469. 7.8.3Enosh recognized the Creator alone as Lord, King, and God of all.
1470. 7.8.4Enosh valued calling on God's name above every possession.
1471. 7.8.5Enosh means 'true man,' since only one who knows and reveres God is truly human.
1472. 7.8.6Scripture calls those who live for pleasure beasts rather than men.
1473. 7.8.7Scripture names the wicked after various beasts.
1474. 7.8.8Scripture uses 'Adam' for humankind generally, meaning 'earth-born.'
1475. 7.8.9Enosh's calling on God shows true knowledge of God and hope in him.
1476. 7.8.10Constantly calling on God as Master and Father is the highest blessedness.
1477. 7.8.11Not Adam, who fell, but Enosh is the first true man.
1478. 7.8.12Christians imitate Enosh in calling on God's name with hope.
1479. 7.8.13Enoch pleased God and was taken away.
1480. 7.8.14Enoch's translation pictures the perfect man withdrawn from worldly life.
1481. 7.8.15Enoch's name means 'grace of God'; his life is a model.
1482. 7.8.16Noah was righteous amid the wickedness of the giants and those who taught sorcery.
1483. 7.8.17Noah and his family were preserved through the flood as the seed of new life.
1484. 7.8.18Noah is a model of a God-loving life for his descendants.
1485. 7.8.19After the flood, Melchizedek was a priest of the Most High.
1486. 7.8.20The patriarchs were neither Jews nor Greeks but Hebrews.
1487. 7.8.21'Hebrews' means 'those who pass over' from the world to God.
1488. 7.8.22Abraham was righteous before and apart from the law of Moses.
1489. 7.8.23Abraham's faith was reckoned as righteousness, and the promise that all nations will be blessed is being fulfilled.
1490. 7.8.24Abraham, already righteous by faith, was later circumcised as a sign for his descendants.
1491. 7.8.25Isaac inherited Abraham's piety and, after fathering twins, lived in continence.
1492. 7.8.26Jacob, the name of his training in virtue, means 'one who practices.'
1493. 7.8.27Jacob's new name rewards his victory and his vision of God.
1494. 7.8.28Jacob is renamed Israel, 'a man who sees God.'
1495. 7.8.29Much more could be said of the patriarchs, literally and allegorically, as Eusebius has done elsewhere.
1496. 7.8.30Job, though not a Jew, is attested as blameless and God-fearing.
1497. 7.8.31Jacob's sons spread the Hebrews' fame, even to ruling Egypt.
1498. 7.8.32Joseph, sold as a slave, showed the Hebrews' God-loving way and rose to govern Egypt.
1499. 7.8.33Joseph was beautiful, but his soul was greater still.
1500. 7.8.34Joseph's soul shone with the virtues and with piety learned from infancy.
1501. 7.8.35Joseph resisted Potiphar's wife and fled.
1502. 7.8.36Joseph refused to sin against God, and God made him ruler of Egypt; he too was a Hebrew, not a Jew.
1503. 7.8.37In Egypt the multiplying Israelites forgot their fathers' virtue and became like Egyptians.
1504. 7.8.38God sent Moses with signs and gave a law suited to the people's condition.
1505. 7.8.39The Mosaic law, suited to a weakened people, gave symbols and shadows rather than the naked truth.
1506. 7.8.40The Mosaic polity lasted until Christ, as the prophets foretold, giving way to the new covenant.
1507. 7.8.41Eusebius turns from the Hebrews' life to their doctrine.
1508. 7.9.1Moses began his laws with theology, not with common preambles.
1509. 7.9.2Moses begins from the one God, not from the many gods of the nations.
1510. 7.9.3Moses presents the Creator as lawgiver and king of the world-city.
1511. 7.9.4God is author of both moral and natural law.
1512. 7.10.1God created all by his power and governs all by his laws.
1513. 7.10.2By God's word and law the heavens, earth, seasons, sea, and living things are ordered.
1514. 7.10.3Nature obeys God's laws; the world is the work of a wise architect, not chance.
1515. 7.10.4Since all nature obeys God, humans too must heed his laws.
1516. 7.10.5The earth has obeyed God's command since creation, and humans should too.
1517. 7.10.6The waters obeyed God's command and still do.
1518. 7.10.7If the heavenly bodies obey God's law, humans have no excuse.
1519. 7.10.8Moses' teaching won Christians over, being unmatched among the nations.
1520. 7.10.9Moses next teaches about human nature: the soul in God's image, the earthy body, and the breath of life joining them.
1521. 7.10.10Man dwelt first in paradise but lost it through transgressing God's command.
1522. 7.10.11Moses teaches not to neglect our likeness to God, the ground of the soul's immortality.
1523. 7.10.12The Word is God's true image; the human mind is an image of that image.
1524. 7.10.13Mindful of their earthly bodies and godlike souls, people should live purely and long to return to paradise.
1525. 7.10.14Moses teaches that an evil demon lies in wait against human salvation.
1526. 7.10.15The serpent, envious of us, deceived our first parents and still tempts us, so we must watch.
1527. 7.10.16Eusebius turns to the texts themselves, beginning with God.
1528. 7.11.1Moses, inspired by the Spirit, began with God as Creator.
1529. 7.11.2Eusebius quotes the creative words of Genesis 1.
1530. 7.11.3'God said' means God's will, not spoken syllables.
1531. 7.11.4The Hebrews teach that God both created the world by his Word and governs it by providence.
1532. 7.11.5The prophets too teach God's presence everywhere.
1533. 7.11.6Isaiah proclaims God as the sole Creator of heaven and earth.
1534. 7.11.7Jeremiah contrasts the Creator with the gods who made nothing.
1535. 7.11.8The Psalm proclaims God's presence everywhere.
1536. 7.11.9Eusebius turns to the theology of Abraham and the earliest Hebrews.
1537. 7.11.10Abraham and Melchizedek confess God Most High as Creator.
1538. 7.11.11Abraham swears his servant by the God of heaven and earth.
1539. 7.11.12God reveals himself to Moses as 'He Who Is.'
1540. 7.11.13The Greek philosophers' theologies are not worth comparing with the Hebrews'.
1541. 7.11.14Eusebius turns to the Hebrews' teaching on the first principle of created things.
1542. 7.12.1Greek philosophers named various first principles; Eusebius turns to the Hebrews.
1543. 7.12.2The Hebrews teach a second divine being, begotten of God, called Word, Wisdom, and Power.
1544. 7.12.3Job teaches that God alone knows the way of Wisdom.
1545. 7.12.4David and Solomon speak of the creating Word and of personified Wisdom.
1546. 7.12.5Proverbs 8: Wisdom was with God before and in creation.
1547. 7.12.6The Wisdom of Solomon describes Wisdom as an only-begotten, holy spirit.
1548. 7.12.7Wisdom is the radiance of eternal light and image of God's goodness.
1549. 7.12.8The Word, sent by the Father, appeared to Abraham, Moses, and the prophets.
1550. 7.12.9The Psalms foretold the Word's saving mission, and John's Gospel renews this teaching.
1551. 7.12.10Moses shows God speaking with his Word at the creation of man.
1552. 7.12.11Psalm 148:5 implies the Father commanding the Son in creation.
1553. 7.12.12Genesis 19:24 speaks of two Lords, Father and Son.
1554. 7.12.13Psalm 110 speaks of the Lord and his Son begotten before the morning star.
1555. 7.12.14Eusebius calls Philo to witness to the Hebrew doctrine of the Word.
1556. 7.13.1Philo: man was made in the image of the second God, the Word.
1557. 7.13.2Philo: the rational soul bears the Word's imprint, since God is beyond all likeness.
1558. 7.13.3Philo calls the Word God's firstborn Son, his viceroy.
1559. 7.13.4Philo: the eternal Word upholds the universe.
1560. 7.13.5Philo: the Word binds the whole cosmos together.
1561. 7.13.6Philo: the Word keeps the elements in harmony like a vowel among consonants.
1562. 7.13.7Eusebius introduces Aristobulus.
1563. 7.14.1Aristobulus: Wisdom is the source of light and, as Solomon says, existed before heaven and earth.
1564. 7.14.2Ascribing creation to God's Word and Wisdom is more fitting than to lifeless elements.
1565. 7.14.3Eusebius turns to the Hebrews' teaching on rational beings.
1566. 7.15.1The Hebrews teach a firstborn beginning begotten of the Father and like him.
1567. 7.15.2This firstborn is called Image, Power, Wisdom, and Word of God, captain of the Lord's host, angel of great counsel.
1568. 7.15.3The spiritual powers below the Word are known only by analogy with the heavenly bodies.
1569. 7.15.4Paul's words on the differing glories of sun, moon, and stars.
1570. 7.15.5In the spiritual world the Word stands second after the Father, like the sun.
1571. 7.15.6The Holy Spirit is third, like the moon, and supplies the beings below.
1572. 7.15.7The Spirit receives from the Word, who receives from the Father and gives light to all below.
1573. 7.15.8The Father shares all his goods with his first offspring alone.
1574. 7.15.9Through the Son the Father gives to the Spirit and to lower beings according to their capacity.
1575. 7.15.10The Hebrew theologians honor the Holy Spirit as divine, who inspired them.
1576. 7.15.11God alone knows the number and names of the stars.
1577. 7.15.12The spiritual powers are countless to us but known to God.
1578. 7.15.13Daniel's myriads of angels show they are numbered by God but countless to us.
1579. 7.15.14Psalm 104 describes God making his angels spirits and flame.
1580. 7.15.15Angels are spiritual beings, called fire and spirit figuratively, ruled by the Sun of righteousness and the Holy Spirit.
1581. 7.15.16All creation, with the Son and Spirit, is bidden to praise the one God over all.
1582. 7.15.17Psalm 148 calls all heavenly beings to praise God.
1583. 7.15.18Christians honor the angels but worship the one God, as the Son himself commands.
1584. 7.16.1The good angels serve God and receive light from the Son and Spirit.
1585. 7.16.2The fallen power is named for its wickedness.
1586. 7.16.3The leader of the fall is called dragon, serpent, lion, and basilisk.
1587. 7.16.4Isaiah 14 describes the morning star's proud fall.
1588. 7.16.5Ezekiel 28 describes a proud being once in God's paradise.
1589. 7.16.6Ezekiel 28 describes his blameless creation and fall through pride.
1590. 7.16.7A multitude of fallen spirits followed him and were consigned to the abyss.
1591. 7.16.8Some demons remain near the earth to test the pious and to promote idolatry.
1592. 7.16.9Scripture names the demons plainly and symbolically.
1593. 7.16.10Demons seek worship through oracles; the Hebrews fled them, teaching that the gods of the nations are demons.
1594. 7.16.11Through the gospel all nations, freed from demons, praise the one God.
1595. 7.17.1Phoenician and Egyptian accounts made all life, human included, arise by chance from the earth.
1596. 7.17.2The Hebrews' account of human origins is preferable.
1597. 7.17.3The Hebrews teach that the soul is divine, made in God's image by God's will, so that earth too might praise him.
1598. 7.17.4Genesis on man's creation in God's image and from dust, with Philo's interpretation to follow.
1599. 7.18.1Philo: Moses says the soul is stamped with God's seal, the eternal Word, by God's breath.
1600. 7.18.2Philo: man is made in God's image, and his upright body looks to heaven.
1601. 7.18.3Man alone, made in God's image, is rational and royal among earthly creatures.
1602. 7.18.4Animals serve man, who rules them by reason though they are stronger.
1603. 7.18.5Made in God's image, man can know God, virtue, and the heavens.
1604. 7.18.6The body, from earth, should be cared for like a servant, the soul honored as master.
1605. 7.18.7God placed the first man in paradise among divine choirs.
1606. 7.18.8Man freely fell from paradise by neglecting God's command.
1607. 7.18.9Man's goal is to return by piety to the paradise from which he fell.
1608. 7.18.10We must recover the soul's godlike purity.
1609. 7.18.11The Hebrews taught this long before the Greeks, who later borrowed from them.
1610. 7.18.12Eusebius will defend the Hebrew doctrine that God made matter itself.
1611. 7.18.13Eusebius introduces Dionysius of Alexandria against Sabellius.
1612. 7.19.1Dionysius: it is impious to make matter unbegotten.
1613. 7.19.2Dionysius: if both God and matter are unbegotten, something superior would be implied.
1614. 7.19.3Dionysius: unbegottenness cannot be shared by God and matter.
1615. 7.19.4Dionysius: their opposite natures rule out coexistence.
1616. 7.19.5Dionysius: why would two unbegotten things have opposite natures?
1617. 7.19.6Dionysius: God is not a human craftsman working given material.
1618. 7.19.7Dionysius: God gave matter its form by his wisdom and is the sole unbegotten source.
1619. 7.19.8Dionysius closes; Eusebius introduces Origen on matter.
1620. 7.20.1Origen: the analogy of human craftsmen does not limit God's power.
1621. 7.20.2Origen: as God creates qualities, so he can create the substance itself.
1622. 7.20.3Origen: on their view God would depend on luckily finding uncreated matter.
1623. 7.20.4Origen: who measured matter for God? It would imply a providence older than God.
1624. 7.20.5Origen: matter's receptivity implies God made it.
1625. 7.20.6Origen: if matter came to fit God by chance, providence would add nothing.
1626. 7.20.7Origen: by the same logic one could deny the world's Maker.
1627. 7.20.8Origen: matter so fitted to God's Word cannot be unbegotten.
1628. 7.20.9Origen: human craftsmen use matter provided by prior art; Gen 1:2 does not prove matter uncreated. Philo follows.
1629. 7.21.1Philo: God measured exactly enough matter for the world.
1630. 7.21.2Philo: the world was made perfect from exactly the right amount of matter.
1631. 7.21.3Philo: humans misjudge materials, but God, the source of knowledge, does not.
1632. 7.21.4Philo: such objections are sophistry, not wisdom.
1633. 7.21.5Eusebius introduces Maximus's treatise On Matter.
1634. 7.22.1Maximus: two unbegotten things cannot coexist; God is either separate from matter or united with it.
1635. 7.22.2If God and matter are united, there is only one unbegotten.
1636. 7.22.3If separate, there must be a third thing between them.
1637. 7.22.4The same argument applies to three unbegotten things.
1638. 7.22.5Either way the hypothesis of several unbegottens fails.
1639. 7.22.6If God is in matter as in a place, he would be contained by it.
1640. 7.22.7God would share matter's disorder and once dwell in chaos.
1641. 7.22.8Whether God fills matter or part of it, absurdities follow.
1642. 7.22.9If matter is in God, God would be divided or a container.
1643. 7.22.10If matter is in God, God becomes the place of evil, the very thing the theory meant to avoid.
1644. 7.22.11Maximus turns to the origin of evil, the real motive for positing eternal matter.
1645. 7.22.12The opponent holds that qualityless matter coexisted with God.
1646. 7.22.13God then made the qualities.
1647. 7.22.14The opponent agrees that qualities did not come from prior qualities and are not substances.
1648. 7.22.15So God made qualities from nothing, contradicting the opponent's principle.
1649. 7.22.16Even human builders make cities not from cities.
1650. 7.22.17The art, not the material, makes the building, and the art comes from nothing in the material.
1651. 7.22.18Art does not exist on its own but only arises in a substance.
1652. 7.22.19If humans produce arts from nothing, God can make substances from nothing.
1653. 7.22.20The opponent agrees evils are qualities of substances.
1654. 7.22.21Then God would be the creator of evils, so positing matter does not help.
1655. 7.22.22The opponent asks to redefine evil; Maximus welcomes the honest inquiry.
1656. 7.22.23The opponent now holds that evils are substances; Maximus examines what substance is.
1657. 7.22.24A substance exists by itself.
1658. 7.22.25Evils are someone's activities.
1659. 7.22.26Activities exist only when an agent acts.
1660. 7.22.27Without an agent there is no activity.
1661. 7.22.28So evils, being activities, are not substances.
1662. 7.22.29Murder is an act of a substance, not itself a substance.
1663. 7.22.30A person is called evil from his acts, as a physician from medicine, without the acts being his substance.
1664. 7.22.31Even the devil is called evil from his acts, which are not his substance.
1665. 7.22.32If an agent were his acts, humans who commit them would cause his existence.
1666. 7.22.33Evil names come from acts, not from substance.
1667. 7.22.34Evil had a beginning, so it is not unbegotten.
1668. 7.22.35A second interlocutor grants the argument against qualityless matter.
1669. 7.22.36The second interlocutor denies that any matter can be without qualities.
1670. 7.22.37He holds matter had qualities eternally and is the source of evil.
1671. 7.22.38Maximus welcomes the new objection and the honest examination of arguments.
1672. 7.22.39If matter had eternal qualities, God made nothing.
1673. 7.22.40Maximus asks whether God changed matter's substances or only its qualities.
1674. 7.22.41The opponent says God changed only the qualities, as stones become a house.
1675. 7.22.42God, the opponent says, made the world by changing matter's qualities.
1676. 7.22.43The opponent agrees evils are qualities.
1677. 7.22.44He says the qualities coexisted with matter eternally.
1678. 7.22.45God changed the qualities.
1679. 7.22.46He changed them for the better.
1680. 7.22.47If God improved matter's qualities, evil is unexplained, or God caused it.
1681. 7.22.48The opponent says God changed only the indifferent qualities.
1682. 7.22.49If God could remove evil but did not, he is its cause.
1683. 7.22.50By fashioning part of matter and leaving part evil, God would be to blame.
1684. 7.22.51Ordered matter now suffers evil it could not perceive before.
1685. 7.22.52Creating man would only have made matter able to suffer evil.
1686. 7.22.53If God cannot remove evil, he is weak or subject to a stronger power.
1687. 7.22.54Either alternative is absurd and impious.
1688. 7.22.55Evils able to overcome God would themselves be gods.
1689. 7.22.56Maximus asks whether matter is simple or composite.
1690. 7.22.57Composite matter must have come from prior simples and so is begotten.
1691. 7.22.58So matter had a beginning and is not unbegotten.
1692. 7.22.59There would then be many unbegotten things; nothing is opposed to itself.
1693. 7.22.60The elements are opposed to one another.
1694. 7.22.61Opposed elements cannot be one matter.
1695. 7.22.62Fire and water, parts of matter, destroy each other.
1696. 7.22.63So the elements are not parts of one matter.
1697. 7.22.64Maximus concludes there is no single eternal matter; Eusebius ends Book 7.
1698. 8.1.1Eusebius opens Book 8, turning from the Hebrew patriarchs to the Mosaic polity given to the Jews.
1699. 8.1.2Eusebius will later show that the Mosaic law suited only the Jews.
1700. 8.1.3Eusebius will describe the Mosaic life through Jewish writers themselves.
1701. 8.1.4As before with other peoples, the Jews will speak for themselves.
1702. 8.1.5Eusebius first recounts how the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek.
1703. 8.1.6God moved Ptolemy to have the Scriptures translated in preparation for the gospel's spread.
1704. 8.1.7The divinely arranged translation gave Christians the Jewish Scriptures.
1705. 8.1.8Eusebius introduces the Letter of Aristeas.
1706. 8.2.1Aristeas: Demetrius of Phalerum collects books for the royal library.
1707. 8.2.2Demetrius reports the library's size and proposes adding the Jewish law.
1708. 8.2.3Demetrius explains the Jewish law needs translation from Hebrew.
1709. 8.2.4The king orders a letter to the Jewish high priest.
1710. 8.2.5Aristeas introduces Demetrius's memorandum to the king.
1711. 8.3.1Demetrius's memorandum opens.
1712. 8.3.2The Jewish law is missing and poorly copied.
1713. 8.3.3The Jewish law is divine and pure; Hecataeus says writers avoided mentioning it.
1714. 8.3.4Demetrius proposes asking the high priest for six elders from each tribe.
1715. 8.3.5Ptolemy orders a letter to Eleazar and gives gold, silver, and gems for temple vessels.
1716. 8.3.6Further gifts; the king's letter follows.
1717. 8.4.1Ptolemy's letter to Eleazar recounts his freeing of over a hundred thousand Jewish captives.
1718. 8.4.2Ptolemy announces his wish to have the Jewish law translated into Greek.
1719. 8.4.3Ptolemy asks for six learned elders from each tribe.
1720. 8.4.4Ptolemy sends Andreas and Aristeas with gifts; Eleazar's reply follows.
1721. 8.5.1Eleazar's reply: the letter was read to the people, who rejoiced.
1722. 8.5.2Eleazar acknowledges Ptolemy's gifts brought by Andreas and Aristeas.
1723. 8.5.3Eleazar promises to comply with Ptolemy's wishes out of gratitude.
1724. 8.5.4Sacrifices and prayers were offered for the king.
1725. 8.5.5Eleazar sends six elders from each tribe with the law.
1726. 8.5.6The Jewish community approves the translation and curses any alteration.
1727. 8.5.7Ptolemy admires the law; Demetrius explains that writers who tried to use it were struck by God.
1728. 8.5.8Theopompus was struck with madness when he tried to use the law, until he desisted.
1729. 8.5.9Theodectes was struck blind for using the law in a drama, until he repented.
1730. 8.5.10The king orders the books to be carefully and reverently kept.
1731. 8.5.11Eusebius introduces Philo's Hypothetica on the Exodus.
1732. 8.6.1Philo: the Hebrews, numerous and divinely prompted, left Egypt for their ancestral land.
1733. 8.6.2Philo: Moses, called an impostor, kept the people alive, united, and obedient.
1734. 8.6.3Philo: despite hardship the people did not turn against Moses.
1735. 8.6.4Philo: either the people were good or God guided them; either way they deserve praise.
1736. 8.6.5Philo turns to their settlement in the land, to be treated by reasoning.
1737. 8.6.6Philo asks whether they conquered the land by force or received it peacefully.
1738. 8.6.7If received peacefully, even enemies acknowledged them as God's beloved.
1739. 8.6.8Philo praises the people's obedience and devotion to their lawgiver.
1740. 8.6.9Philo: for over two thousand years the Jews have kept Moses' laws unchanged.
1741. 8.6.10Eusebius introduces Philo's summary of the Mosaic laws.
1742. 8.7.1Philo: the law punishes pederasty, adultery, rape of children, and prostitution with death.
1743. 8.7.2Philo: kidnapping, theft of sacred things, and cursing God or parents are capital crimes.
1744. 8.7.3Philo: wives serve husbands, parents rule children; property dedicated to God may not be touched.
1745. 8.7.4Philo: even a careless vow binds absolutely.
1746. 8.7.5Philo: vows over dependents bind them, but priests and superiors may release them.
1747. 8.7.6Philo: the Golden Rule, honesty, and charity to the poor are commanded.
1748. 8.7.7Philo: burial of the dead, respect for tombs, and bans on castration and abortion.
1749. 8.7.8Philo: just weights, kept confidences, and keeping captive families together.
1750. 8.7.9Philo: even small laws, like sparing a bird's nest, carry great sanctions.
1751. 8.7.10Philo: the Jews keep every seventh day without transgression.
1752. 8.7.11Philo: the Sabbath is for learning the law, not mere discipline.
1753. 8.7.12On the Sabbath the people assemble to hear the law.
1754. 8.7.13A priest or elder reads and expounds the law until evening.
1755. 8.7.14Every Jew knows the law well enough to teach it to his household.
1756. 8.7.15Philo: the sabbatical year rests the land for future fertility.
1757. 8.7.16As bodies need rest, so does the land.
1758. 8.7.17They refuse even offers to work the land in the seventh year.
1759. 8.7.18They do not even lease the land for that year.
1760. 8.7.19The produce of the seventh year is left free for travelers and the needy.
1761. 8.7.20Philo leaves the significance of the number seven to the philosophers.
1762. 8.7.21Eusebius introduces Josephus, Against Apion 2.
1763. 8.8.1Josephus proposes to compare lawgivers by their laws.
1764. 8.8.2Laws differ endlessly among peoples.
1765. 8.8.3Moses made Israel a theocracy, teaching that God gives all good and sees all.
1766. 8.8.4Moses taught God is unbegotten, unchangeable, and unknowable in essence.
1767. 8.8.5Greek philosophers agreed with Moses about God.
1768. 8.8.6The philosophers taught the few; Moses implanted belief in a whole people.
1769. 8.8.7Moses made the other virtues parts of piety.
1770. 8.8.8All Jewish life refers to piety toward God.
1771. 8.8.9Other lawgivers used either teaching or practice, not both.
1772. 8.8.10Moses joined teaching and practice, regulating even food, company, work, and rest.
1773. 8.8.11Moses required weekly hearing of the law.
1774. 8.8.12Other peoples hardly know their own laws.
1775. 8.8.13Every Jew knows the laws as well as his own name.
1776. 8.8.14Shared belief and practice produce Jewish unanimity.
1777. 8.8.15Jews alone agree about God and share one way of life.
1778. 8.8.16Even women and servants know piety is the goal; hence the charge that Jews invent nothing new.
1779. 8.8.17Jews hold fidelity to the ancestral law to be wisdom and virtue.
1780. 8.8.18Unchanging fidelity proves the law's excellence and divine origin.
1781. 8.8.19No polity is better than one led by God through priests and high priest.
1782. 8.8.20Priests were chosen for virtue, not wealth.
1783. 8.8.21The priests oversaw, judged, and punished.
1784. 8.8.22The whole Jewish polity is ordered like a sacred rite.
1785. 8.8.23What others call mysteries, Jews observe all their lives.
1786. 8.8.24The first precept: God is all-sufficient, beginning and end, evident in works but invisible in form.
1787. 8.8.25No image of God may be made.
1788. 8.8.26God made all by his will, without hands or helpers.
1789. 8.8.27God is served by virtue.
1790. 8.8.28One temple, served by priests under the high priest, who judges and punishes.
1791. 8.8.29Sacrifices are sober, and prayer is first for the common good.
1792. 8.8.30Prayer asks for the capacity to receive and keep God's gifts.
1793. 8.8.31The law prescribes purifications before sacrifice.
1794. 8.8.32Josephus: the law allows only natural union with a wife for children and punishes male intercourse with death.
1795. 8.8.33Josephus: marriage without dowry-hunting or abduction; the wife is to obey her husband.
1796. 8.8.34Adultery and the rape of a betrothed virgin are punished by death.
1797. 8.8.35Children must all be raised; abortion is child-murder.
1798. 8.8.36Purification is required after intercourse and other such occasions.
1799. 8.8.37Children are raised soberly and taught the laws and their ancestors' deeds.
1800. 8.8.38Simple burial, shared mourning, and purification after death.
1801. 8.8.39Honoring parents comes next after God; the ungrateful son is stoned.
1802. 8.8.40The young must honor the old.
1803. 8.8.41Friends share everything and keep secrets even in enmity.
1804. 8.8.42Laws against bribery, theft, and interest bind Jewish society together.
1805. 8.8.43Josephus turns to the law's fairness toward foreigners.
1806. 8.8.44Proselytes are welcomed; casual visitors are not admitted to intimacy.
1807. 8.8.45Basic help must be given to all.
1808. 8.8.46Even enemies, their trees, their dead, and captive women are protected.
1809. 8.8.47The law protects animals, including the parent bird with its young.
1810. 8.8.48Josephus: death is the penalty for adultery, rape, and male intercourse.
1811. 8.8.49Fraud and theft are punished severely; offenses against parents and God, with death.
1812. 8.8.50The reward of the law-keeper is resurrection to a better life.
1813. 8.8.51Josephus: Jews have died rather than break the law; others would think such a people fictional.
1814. 8.8.52Even Plato's ideal laws are mocked by practical politicians.
1815. 8.8.53Plato himself feared to share the truth about God with the masses.
1816. 8.8.54Lycurgus and Sparta are most admired for keeping their laws.
1817. 8.8.55The Jews kept their laws through two thousand years of upheaval, unlike the Spartans.
1818. 8.8.56Eusebius turns to the allegorical meaning of the law in Eleazar and Aristobulus.
1819. 8.8.57Eusebius introduces Eleazar's allegorical explanation of the law.
1820. 8.9.1Aristeas: Eleazar answers questions about the food laws.
1821. 8.9.2The visitors ask why some creatures are unclean to eat or touch.
1822. 8.9.3Eleazar: companionship shapes character for good or ill.
1823. 8.9.4Moses first taught piety and justice by explanation, not mere prohibition.
1824. 8.9.5Moses taught that God is one and sees all, even the future.
1825. 8.9.6Even an evil thought does not escape God.
1826. 8.9.7Other peoples worship lifeless statues of human inventors.
1827. 8.9.8Inventors only rearranged creation, so deifying them is foolish.
1828. 8.9.9Modern inventors would then deserve worship too.
1829. 8.9.10Greek mythmakers and Egyptian animal worshipers are alike foolish.
1830. 8.9.11The law fenced Israel off from other nations to keep it pure.
1831. 8.9.12Egyptian priests call the Jews 'men of God'; others live for food and clothing.
1832. 8.9.13Purity laws guard against defilement in every sense.
1833. 8.9.14All creatures are alike in nature, but each food law has a deep reason.
1834. 8.9.15The food laws are not trivial but aim at justice and character.
1835. 8.9.16Clean birds are gentle; unclean birds are predators.
1836. 8.9.17Unclean birds signify that people must not oppress others by force.
1837. 8.9.18The lesson is justice and non-violence.
1838. 8.9.19If touching such creatures is forbidden, much more imitating them.
1839. 8.9.20The divided hoof signifies discerning right action.
1840. 8.9.21The cloven hoof signifies discernment and Israel's separation.
1841. 8.9.22Other nations practice male intercourse and incest; Israel is set apart.
1842. 8.9.23Chewing the cud signifies memory.
1843. 8.9.24Scripture commands remembrance of God's great works.
1844. 8.9.25The wonders of the human body and mind call for remembrance of God.
1845. 8.9.26Every time and place calls for remembering God.
1846. 8.9.27Fringes, doorposts, and phylacteries remind Israel of God.
1847. 8.9.28Israel is to meditate on God's works when lying down and rising.
1848. 8.9.29The laws are signs of right reason, not arbitrary.
1849. 8.9.30The law forbids careless action and unjust speech.
1850. 8.9.31Mice are unclean because they destroy.
1851. 8.9.32The weasel signifies informers who spread what they hear.
1852. 8.9.33Eleazar praises the king for punishing informers; the law forbids harming anyone.
1853. 8.9.34All the laws aim at justice toward all and remembrance of God.
1854. 8.9.35The food laws all point to justice.
1855. 8.9.36Sacrificial animals must be tame, signifying humility.
1856. 8.9.37The sacrifice offers the whole soul; Aristeas records this for Philocrates.
1857. 8.9.38Eusebius introduces Aristobulus on the anthropomorphisms of Scripture.
1858. 8.10.1Aristobulus addresses the king's question about God's 'hands' and 'feet' in Scripture.
1859. 8.10.2Scripture's descriptions of God must be understood fittingly, not mythically.
1860. 8.10.3Moses often expresses deep truths through visible images.
1861. 8.10.4The wise admire Moses' wisdom, from which philosophers and poets have borrowed.
1862. 8.10.5Literalists miss Moses' greatness.
1863. 8.10.6Aristobulus will explain each image, blaming himself for any failure.
1864. 8.10.7God's 'hand' means his power, as with a king's.
1865. 8.10.8Scripture's 'hand of God' signifies his power.
1866. 8.10.9God's works are his 'hands'; the world's stability is his 'standing.'
1867. 8.10.10God's 'standing' is the fixed order of nature.
1868. 8.10.11Kinds of living things remain fixed.
1869. 8.10.12God's 'descent' on Sinai is explained as a visible display of his working.
1870. 8.10.13The mountain burned and trumpets sounded at God's descent.
1871. 8.10.14The fire was seen by the whole people encamped around the mountain.
1872. 8.10.15The descent was not spatial; the unconsuming fire showed God's power.
1873. 8.10.16The fire burned nothing and the trumpets sounded without instruments.
1874. 8.10.17The 'descent' was the manifestation of God's majesty.
1875. 8.10.18The Jews are divided into the many, who keep the letter, and philosophers, who contemplate its meaning.
1876. 8.10.19Eusebius introduces Philo's account of the Essenes from his Apology for the Jews.
1877. 8.11.1Philo: the Essenes, named for holiness, live in community throughout Judea.
1878. 8.11.2One becomes an Essene by choice, not birth.
1879. 8.11.3Essenes are mature men free from the passions.
1880. 8.11.4Essenes own nothing privately and share all things.
1881. 8.11.5They live in fellowships with common meals.
1882. 8.11.6Each works diligently from dawn to dusk.
1883. 8.11.7They consider their work better exercise than athletics.
1884. 8.11.8Some farm, some herd, some keep bees.
1885. 8.11.9Others are craftsmen.
1886. 8.11.10Wages go to a common treasurer who provides for all.
1887. 8.11.11They eat together and live frugally.
1888. 8.11.12Even clothing is held in common.
1889. 8.11.13The sick and the old are cared for by all.
1890. 8.11.14Philo: the Essenes renounce marriage, which he says would dissolve their community, and disparage women.
1891. 8.11.15Philo describes the wife as beguiling the husband's mind.
1892. 8.11.16Philo: with children, the wife becomes bolder and demands what harms the community.
1893. 8.11.17Family ties make a man unable to give himself to the community.
1894. 8.11.18Even kings admire the Essenes.
1895. 8.11.19Eusebius introduces Philo's second account of the Essenes.
1896. 8.12.1Philo: Palestine too has its men of virtue.
1897. 8.12.2The four thousand Essenes serve God by holiness of mind, not animal sacrifice.
1898. 8.12.3Essenes live in villages to avoid the corruption of cities.
1899. 8.12.4They farm and practice peaceful crafts, without hoarding.
1900. 8.12.5Voluntarily poor, they count contentment as wealth.
1901. 8.12.6They make no weapons and engage in no trade.
1902. 8.12.7They have no slaves, holding slavery unjust and contrary to nature.
1903. 8.12.8Greed has destroyed natural human brotherhood.
1904. 8.12.9The Essenes study ethics above logic and physics, trained by their divinely inspired laws.
1905. 8.12.10On the Sabbath they gather in synagogues to hear the Scriptures read and explained.
1906. 8.12.11They learn piety, justice, and ethics under the rules of love of God, virtue, and humanity.
1907. 8.12.12Their love of God, of virtue, and of humanity are shown in their way of life.
1908. 8.12.13Their houses are open to all members.
1909. 8.12.14Treasury, clothing, and meals are shared.
1910. 8.12.15Wages are pooled; the sick are cared for from the common fund.
1911. 8.12.16They honor the elderly; their philosophy is practiced, not verbal.
1912. 8.12.17Cruel rulers who butchered the people were themselves punished by justice.
1913. 8.12.18Other rulers were treacherous and left lasting misery.
1914. 8.12.19No tyrant could accuse the Essenes; all respected them.
1915. 8.12.20Eusebius closes the account of the Jewish philosophers.
1916. 8.12.21Eusebius will show later Jewish theology agrees with the patriarchs'.
1917. 8.12.22Eusebius introduces Philo's On the Creation.
1918. 8.13.1Philo: some wrongly declared the world eternal, slighting its Maker.
1919. 8.13.2Philo: Moses taught an active divine Mind and passive matter; an eternal world would abolish providence.
1920. 8.13.3A maker cares for what he has made, as a father for his children.
1921. 8.13.4An uncreated world would be an anarchy without a ruler.
1922. 8.13.5Moses ascribed eternity to the intelligible and becoming to the visible.
1923. 8.13.6The visible world must have had a beginning, as Moses recorded.
1924. 8.13.7Eusebius introduces Philo's On Providence.
1925. 8.14.1Philo states the objection: the wicked prosper while the virtuous are poor.
1926. 8.14.2Philo: God is not a tyrant but a just king.
1927. 8.14.3God is king and father of the world, uniting rule with care.
1928. 8.14.4Parents care for wayward children.
1929. 8.14.5Parents often favor the weak child, who depends on them alone.
1930. 8.14.6God likewise provides for sinners, giving them time to amend.
1931. 8.14.7No wicked man is happy, however rich, strong, or beautiful.
1932. 8.14.8A man enslaved to his passions cannot be happy, whatever the crowd thinks.
1933. 8.14.9Seeing God's providence, one laughs at worldly goods.
1934. 8.14.10Gold and silver are the lowest part of the earth, not true goods.
1935. 8.14.11Famine shows that food, not money, is truly necessary.
1936. 8.14.12Plenty breeds greed for gold, mere earth, and endless strife.
1937. 8.14.13Clothes are mere wool; praise from the wicked shows one is wicked.
1938. 8.14.14One should not boast of strength in which beasts surpass us.
1939. 8.14.15Bodily beauty is fleeting and surpassed by works of art.
1940. 8.14.16Neither God nor godly men count such things as goods.
1941. 8.14.17Physicians ignore a king's luxury and examine only his body.
1942. 8.14.18Philosophers should likewise examine the soul's passions, not outward goods.
1943. 8.14.19Such philosophers stop at virtue's gates, admiring external goods.
1944. 8.14.20The wicked are blind judges of true goods.
1945. 8.14.21Socrates and others chose poverty, valuing only virtue.
1946. 8.14.22The sufferings of the good are due to wicked men, not to nature.
1947. 8.14.23As the wise suffer weather, so they suffer in a wicked society.
1948. 8.14.24Polycrates' prosperity ended in punishment, fulfilling a dream.
1949. 8.14.25Polycrates' soul was tormented by fear all his life.
1950. 8.14.26Dionysius of Syracuse suspected even his wife and took absurd precautions.
1951. 8.14.27Dionysius was like a climber stuck on a cliff, unable to go up or down.
1952. 8.14.28The tyrant could neither keep nor abandon his power safely.
1953. 8.14.29Dionysius showed a flatterer the fear of a tyrant's life with an axe hung by a thread.
1954. 8.14.30Dionysius explains that the tyrant's life is constant fear.
1955. 8.14.31The crowd is fooled by appearances, as by painted courtesans.
1956. 8.14.32The powerful live like animals fattened for slaughter.
1957. 8.14.33The three plunderers of Delphi died by the very penalties the law prescribed.
1958. 8.14.34Their simultaneous, lawful punishments show God's judgment, not chance.
1959. 8.14.35Unpunished tyrants are no wonder, for God judges the hidden soul.
1960. 8.14.36God's judgment is truer than ours.
1961. 8.14.37Tyranny can serve as punishment, which is useful.
1962. 8.14.38God raises rulers to purge cities of wickedness.
1963. 8.14.39Tyrants are like public executioners whom God uses to punish evil.
1964. 8.14.40Tyrants are finally destroyed themselves, like fire consuming itself.
1965. 8.14.41God also punishes wickedness directly through famine, plague, and earthquake.
1966. 8.14.42Philo invites further objections to be examined together.
1967. 8.14.43Philo: winds and rains benefit the whole race.
1968. 8.14.44God may harm a few for the good of the whole, as a gymnasiarch does.
1969. 8.14.45Some weather events are by-products, not direct works of providence.
1970. 8.14.46As spilled oil makes mud by accident, some evils are incidental.
1971. 8.14.47Rainbows are by-products but useful for forecasting.
1972. 8.14.48Colonnades built for comfort also serve as sundials.
1973. 8.14.49Even smoke, a by-product, has uses.
1974. 8.14.50Eclipses are by-products of celestial motion that serve as signs.
1975. 8.14.51The Milky Way should be investigated, though hard to explain.
1976. 8.14.52All heavenly bodies exist by providence, though we cannot explain each.
1977. 8.14.53Natural disasters are by-products of the elements, not works of God, who causes no evil.
1978. 8.14.54Providence cares for the whole, and the apparently good may not be truly so.
1979. 8.14.55Innocents perish in plagues, as on a sinking ship, and as a warning to others.
1980. 8.14.56Wild beasts exist to train people for war through hunting.
1981. 8.14.57Peaceful people can live safely; wild beasts keep away from cities.
1982. 8.14.58Those who expose themselves to danger have only themselves to blame.
1983. 8.14.59Venomous creatures arise as by-products, not by providence directly.
1984. 8.14.60One account: venomous creatures provide medicines.
1985. 8.14.61Another account: venomous creatures are God's instruments of punishment.
1986. 8.14.62Snakes avoid people; if found in houses, it is because of rubbish.
1987. 8.14.63Animals we do not hunt, like swallows, live among us.
1988. 8.14.64Philo saw tame doves everywhere at Ascalon, where they may not be caught.
1989. 8.14.65Crocodiles abound where honored and vanish where hunted.
1990. 8.14.66Greece, though less fertile, produces the finest minds because of its fine air.
1991. 8.14.67Heraclitus: the dry soul is wisest; sobriety sharpens the mind.
1992. 8.14.68Damp barbarian lands produce plants and beasts but not minds.
1993. 8.14.69Animals exist for the completeness of creation, not to feed human gluttony.
1994. 8.14.70The self-controlled abstain from meat; lawgivers restrain others' appetites.
1995. 8.14.71Flowers exist for health and medicine.
1996. 8.14.72Philo concludes that God cares for human affairs.
1997. 8.14.73Eusebius closes Book 8 and turns to pagan testimonies.
1998. 9.1.1Eusebius opens Book 9: Greek writers too knew and confirmed Hebrew history and teaching.
1999. 9.1.2Eusebius will cite Greek writers who mention Jews and Hebrews by name.
2000. 9.1.3He begins with the Hebrews' way of life.
2001. 9.1.4Eusebius introduces Theophrastus as quoted by Porphyry.
2002. 9.2.1Theophrastus describes Jewish whole burnt offerings consumed at night.
2003. 9.2.2Theophrastus calls the Jews philosophers who fast, pray, and study the stars.
2004. 9.3.1Porphyry begins his account of the Essenes.
2005. 9.3.2The Essenes shun pleasure, adopt children instead of marrying, and share goods.
2006. 9.3.3New members give their property to the community.
2007. 9.3.4They avoid oil and wear white.
2008. 9.3.5Elected stewards manage common goods; members find hospitality everywhere.
2009. 9.3.6They wear clothes until worn out and share without buying or selling.
2010. 9.3.7Essenes pray at dawn, work until midday, and bathe before eating.
2011. 9.3.8Their meal is a holy rite with prayers before and after.
2012. 9.3.9They return to work and dine again in the evening.
2013. 9.3.10Their meals are silent and sober.
2014. 9.3.11Candidates undergo a year's probation.
2015. 9.3.12Two more years of testing precede full admission.
2016. 9.3.13Members swear oaths of piety, justice, honesty, and secrecy.
2017. 9.3.14They swear to transmit the doctrines faithfully and guard the books and angels' names.
2018. 9.3.15Expelled members starve, bound by their oaths.
2019. 9.3.16Some are taken back after near-death suffering.
2020. 9.3.17They bury their excrement so as not to offend God's light.
2021. 9.3.18They eat so little that they need not relieve themselves on the Sabbath.
2022. 9.3.19Under torture they would neither blaspheme Moses nor eat forbidden food.
2023. 9.3.20In the Roman war the Essenes died cheerfully, believing in the immortality of the soul.
2024. 9.3.21Many Essenes are skilled in prophecy.
2025. 9.3.22Eusebius notes Porphyry's testimony to the Essenes.
2026. 9.4.1Eusebius introduces Hecataeus of Abdera on the Jews.
2027. 9.4.2Hecataeus describes Jerusalem.
2028. 9.4.3Hecataeus describes the temple court and altar of unhewn stones.
2029. 9.4.4The temple has a golden altar and lampstand, an eternal light, and no images.
2030. 9.4.5Priests serve continually and drink no wine in the temple.
2031. 9.4.6Hecataeus tells of Jews serving under Alexander and an incident he witnessed.
2032. 9.4.7Hecataeus introduces the Jewish archer Mosollamus.
2033. 9.4.8Mosollamus shoots the seer's omen-bird.
2034. 9.4.9Mosollamus mocks divination: the bird could not foresee its own death.
2035. 9.5.1Eusebius introduces Clearchus's account of Aristotle meeting a Jew.
2036. 9.5.2Aristotle begins his story to Hyperochides.
2037. 9.5.3Hyperochides asks to hear.
2038. 9.5.4Aristotle will first describe the man's race.
2039. 9.5.5Hyperochides agrees.
2040. 9.5.6Aristotle: the Jews are descendants of Indian philosophers, named from Judea.
2041. 9.5.7The Jew, Greek in speech and soul, conversed with Aristotle in Asia.
2042. 9.6.1Eusebius introduces Clement of Alexandria's references.
2043. 9.6.2Clement cites Clearchus on Aristotle's Jewish companion.
2044. 9.6.3Clement: Numa, taught by Moses' writings, forbade images of God.
2045. 9.6.4For 170 years Rome had no images of the gods.
2046. 9.6.5Clement cites Megasthenes: Brahmans and Jews held the ancient philosophy of nature.
2047. 9.6.6Clement quotes Aristobulus: Plato followed the law of Moses.
2048. 9.6.7Aristobulus claims parts of the law were translated into Greek before Alexander.
2049. 9.6.8Plato and Pythagoras borrowed from the Jewish law.
2050. 9.6.9Numenius: Plato is Moses speaking Greek.
2051. 9.7.1Numenius appeals to Brahmans, Jews, Magi, and Egyptians as agreeing with Plato.
2052. 9.8.1Numenius mentions Jannes and Jambres opposing the Jews in Egypt.
2053. 9.8.2Numenius: the Egyptian magicians countered Moses ('Musaeus').
2054. 9.8.3Eusebius: Numenius confirms Moses' miracles.
2055. 9.9.1Josephus cites Choerilus's verses on a people from the Solymian hills in Xerxes' army.
2056. 9.9.2Josephus identifies the Solymian hills with Jerusalem and the lake with the Dead Sea.
2057. 9.10.1Eusebius introduces Porphyry's oracle praising the Hebrews.
2058. 9.10.2Porphyry's Apollo names the Hebrews among peoples who found the way to the gods.
2059. 9.10.3Porphyry: barbarians, including Hebrews, found the way to the gods; Greeks strayed.
2060. 9.10.4Apollo: only Chaldeans and Hebrews have wisdom, worshiping the self-begotten God.
2061. 9.10.5Apollo explains the seven heavens known to Chaldeans and Hebrews.
2062. 9.10.6Eusebius turns to outside witnesses to Hebrew history.
2063. 9.10.7Eusebius introduces Josephus on pagan accounts of the flood.
2064. 9.11.1Josephus: barbarian historians, including Berossus, mention the flood.
2065. 9.11.2Berossus: remains of the ark survive in Armenia.
2066. 9.11.3Hieronymus, Mnaseas, and Nicolaus also mention the flood.
2067. 9.11.4Nicolaus tells of an ark landing on Mount Baris in Armenia.
2068. 9.12.1Eusebius introduces Abydenus on the flood.
2069. 9.12.2Abydenus: Cronus warns Seisithrus of the flood.
2070. 9.12.3Seisithrus sails toward Armenia and sends out birds.
2071. 9.12.4The birds return, finding no land.
2072. 9.12.5The third birds return muddy; Seisithrus is taken away, and the ark's wood is used as amulets.
2073. 9.13.1Eusebius introduces Josephus on the longevity of the first humans.
2074. 9.13.2Josephus: do not doubt the ancients' long lives because ours are short.
2075. 9.13.3God's favor and better food explain their longevity.
2076. 9.13.4God lengthened their lives to complete astronomical discoveries.
2077. 9.13.5Josephus lists pagan historians who agree on the ancients' longevity.
2078. 9.14.1Eusebius introduces Abydenus on the tower of Babel.
2079. 9.14.2Abydenus: giants built a tower at Babylon, overthrown by winds; languages were confused.
2080. 9.14.3Josephus: Babylon is named from 'Babel,' confusion.
2081. 9.15.1Josephus cites the Sibyl and Hestiaeus on the tower and the dispersion.
2082. 9.16.1Eusebius introduces Josephus on pagan witnesses to Abraham.
2083. 9.16.2Berossus alludes to Abraham as a righteous Chaldean astronomer.
2084. 9.16.3Hecataeus wrote a book about Abraham.
2085. 9.16.4Nicolaus: Abraham reigned in Damascus before moving to Canaan.
2086. 9.16.5Josephus: Abraham went to Egypt in a famine, to share its plenty and debate its priests.
2087. 9.16.6Abraham's fame grew among Egyptian scholars.
2088. 9.16.7Abraham refuted the Egyptians' rival religious claims.
2089. 9.16.8Abraham taught the Egyptians arithmetic and astronomy, which passed to the Greeks.
2090. 9.17.1Eusebius introduces Alexander Polyhistor's work On the Jews.
2091. 9.17.2Eupolemus (via Polyhistor): giants saved from the flood founded Babylon and built the tower.
2092. 9.17.3Abraham, born at Ur, discovered astronomy and pleased God.
2093. 9.17.4Abraham taught the Phoenicians astronomy and rescued his nephew from the Armenians.
2094. 9.17.5Abraham released the captives without ransom and was received at Argarizin.
2095. 9.17.6Melchizedek gives Abraham gifts; in Egypt Pharaoh takes Sarah.
2096. 9.17.7Plagued, Pharaoh learns Sarah is Abraham's wife and returns her.
2097. 9.17.8Abraham taught astronomy in Egypt, crediting Enoch as its discoverer.
2098. 9.17.9A genealogy identifying Enoch with Atlas as the inventor of astronomy.
2099. 9.18.1Artapanus (via Polyhistor): Abraham taught astronomy to the Egyptian king.
2100. 9.18.2Anonymous sources (via Polyhistor) trace Abraham to the giants and Belus.
2101. 9.19.1Molon (via Polyhistor): the flood survivor moved from Armenia to Syria.
2102. 9.19.2Molon: Abraham had twelve sons by an Egyptian handmaid, ancestors of Arab kings.
2103. 9.19.3Molon: Isaac ('Laughter') fathered twelve sons; Moses came three generations later.
2104. 9.19.4Polyhistor recounts the binding of Isaac.
2105. 9.20.1Philo the epic poet (via Polyhistor) celebrates the binding of Isaac in obscure verse.
2106. 9.20.2Josephus: Apher, son of Abraham, gave his name to Africa.
2107. 9.20.3Cleodemus Malchus (via Polyhistor): three of Abraham's sons by Keturah.
2108. 9.20.4Cleodemus: Abraham's sons named Assyria and Africa and fought with Heracles.
2109. 9.21.1Demetrius (via Polyhistor): Jacob fled to Haran at seventy-five.
2110. 9.21.2Demetrius dates Jacob's departure.
2111. 9.21.3Demetrius dates the births of Jacob's first sons.
2112. 9.21.4The mandrakes and Issachar's birth.
2113. 9.21.5The births of Zebulun, Dinah, and Joseph.
2114. 9.21.6Jacob stayed twenty years with Laban.
2115. 9.21.7Jacob wrestles with an angel and is renamed Israel.
2116. 9.21.8Demetrius lists the children's ages on arrival at Shechem.
2117. 9.21.9Dinah is violated and Simeon and Levi kill the Shechemites.
2118. 9.21.10At Bethel Jacob is renamed; Benjamin is born and Rachel dies.
2119. 9.21.11Joseph is sold into Egypt; Isaac dies at 180.
2120. 9.21.12Joseph rules Egypt, marries Asenath, and has two sons.
2121. 9.21.13Joseph did not send for his family because Egyptians despised shepherds.
2122. 9.21.14Demetrius explains Benjamin's fivefold portion.
2123. 9.21.15Benjamin's fivefold gifts keep Rachel's house equal to Leah's.
2124. 9.21.16Demetrius totals the years in Canaan: 215.
2125. 9.21.17The ages of Jacob's family on entering Egypt.
2126. 9.21.18Demetrius's world chronology to the descent into Egypt.
2127. 9.21.19Demetrius's chronology from Levi to Moses.
2128. 9.22.1Theodotus (via Polyhistor) describes Shechem's setting in verse.
2129. 9.22.2Theodotus: Jacob comes to Shechem, ruled by Hamor and Shechem.
2130. 9.22.3Theodotus versifies Jacob's flight, marriages, and children.
2131. 9.22.4Theodotus: Jacob settles at Shechem and Dinah is seized.
2132. 9.22.5Jacob requires the Shechemites to be circumcised.
2133. 9.22.6Theodotus: Hebrews may not take foreign sons-in-law.
2134. 9.22.7Theodotus: circumcision as God's command to Abraham.
2135. 9.22.8Simeon and Levi plot against Hamor and Shechem, citing God's promise.
2136. 9.22.9Theodotus: God moved the brothers because Shechem was impious.
2137. 9.22.10Simeon and Levi attack the city.
2138. 9.22.11Theodotus describes the killing of Hamor and Shechem and the sack of the city.
2139. 9.23.1Artapanus (via Polyhistor): Joseph escapes his brothers through the Arabs.
2140. 9.23.2Artapanus: Joseph divides Egypt's land and gives fields to priests.
2141. 9.23.3Artapanus: Joseph marries Asenath; his family settles in Egypt.
2142. 9.23.4Artapanus: Joseph's people build temples; Joseph stores grain.
2143. 9.24.1Philo the epic poet celebrates Joseph.
2144. 9.25.1Aristeas (via Polyhistor): Job was Esau's son and lived in Ausitis.
2145. 9.25.2Job's wealth.
2146. 9.25.3Job's trials.
2147. 9.25.4Job's friends visit; God restores him.
2148. 9.26.1Eupolemus (via Polyhistor): Moses first gave letters and written laws.
2149. 9.27.1Artapanus (via Polyhistor): Palmanothes becomes king of Egypt.
2150. 9.27.2Palmanothes oppresses the Jews and builds temples.
2151. 9.27.3Merris adopts a Jewish child, Moses, called Musaeus by the Greeks.
2152. 9.27.4Artapanus credits Moses with inventions and with organizing Egypt and its cults.
2153. 9.27.5Moses' reforms secured the monarchy.
2154. 9.27.6Moses is called Hermes by the priests.
2155. 9.27.7Chenephres sends Moses against the Ethiopians to be killed.
2156. 9.27.8Moses campaigns from the Hermopolite nome; the war lasts ten years.
2157. 9.27.9Moses founds Hermopolis and consecrates the ibis.
2158. 9.27.10The Ethiopians and priests learn circumcision from Moses.
2159. 9.27.11Chenephres disperses Moses' army.
2160. 9.27.12Chenephres founds the Apis cult to obscure Moses' work.
2161. 9.27.13Chenephres plots Moses' murder.
2162. 9.27.14Chanethothes agrees to kill Moses.
2163. 9.27.15Merris dies; Moses and Chanethothes are sent to bury her.
2164. 9.27.16Moses buries Merris and names Meroe.
2165. 9.27.17Aaron advises Moses to flee.
2166. 9.27.18Moses kills Chanethothes in self-defense.
2167. 9.27.19Moses marries Raguel's daughter; Raguel has the Arabs raid Egypt.
2168. 9.27.20Chenephres dies of elephantiasis.
2169. 9.27.21Artapanus's version of the burning bush and Moses' call.
2170. 9.27.22Moses returns and demands the release of the Jews.
2171. 9.27.23Moses is imprisoned; the prison doors open by themselves.
2172. 9.27.24Moses wakes the king, who asks God's name.
2173. 9.27.25Hearing the divine name, the king falls speechless.
2174. 9.27.26A priest who scorns the written name dies.
2175. 9.27.27The staff becomes a serpent.
2176. 9.27.28Moses strikes the Nile, which floods and putrefies.
2177. 9.27.29The king promises release; Moses restores the river.
2178. 9.27.30The Egyptian priests imitate the signs.
2179. 9.27.31Plagues of flying insects and sores.
2180. 9.27.32Frogs, locusts, gnats; the staff is honored in Egyptian temples.
2181. 9.27.33Hail and earthquakes.
2182. 9.27.34The Jews leave with the Egyptians' goods and reach the Red Sea.
2183. 9.27.35Two Egyptian versions of the crossing.
2184. 9.27.36The sea parts at Moses' staff.
2185. 9.27.37The Egyptians perish; manna in the desert; a description of Moses.
2186. 9.28.1Ezekiel the Tragedian (via Polyhistor) on Moses' birth, upbringing, flight, and marriage.
2187. 9.29.1Demetrius traces Zipporah's descent from Abraham through Keturah.
2188. 9.29.2Demetrius shows Moses and Zipporah fit the same generation.
2189. 9.29.3Demetrius explains why Zipporah is called Ethiopian.
2190. 9.29.4Introduction to Ezekiel's account of Moses' dream.
2191. 9.29.5Ezekiel: Moses' dream of the throne on Sinai.
2192. 9.29.6Raguel interprets the dream: Moses will lead and judge, and foresee.
2193. 9.29.7Ezekiel: Moses sees the burning bush.
2194. 9.29.8Ezekiel: God speaks from the bush and sends Moses.
2195. 9.29.9Moses objects that he is not eloquent.
2196. 9.29.10God appoints Aaron as Moses' spokesman.
2197. 9.29.11Ezekiel: the signs of the staff and the leprous hand.
2198. 9.29.12Ezekiel: God foretells the plagues and institutes the Passover.
2199. 9.29.13Ezekiel: further directions for the Passover.
2200. 9.29.14Ezekiel: a messenger describes the crossing of the Red Sea.
2201. 9.29.15Demetrius on Marah and Elim; introduction to Ezekiel's description.
2202. 9.29.16Ezekiel: the springs and palms of Elim and a wondrous bird; Demetrius on the Israelites' arms.
2203. 9.30.1Eupolemus (via Polyhistor): Moses and Joshua.
2204. 9.30.2Samuel and Saul.
2205. 9.30.3Eupolemus on David's conquests.
2206. 9.30.4David subdues Tyre and allies with Egypt.
2207. 9.30.5An angel forbids David to build the temple.
2208. 9.30.6David prepares materials for the temple.
2209. 9.30.7David sends ships for gold to Ourphe.
2210. 9.30.8David hands the kingdom and materials to Solomon.
2211. 9.31.1Solomon's letter to Vaphres of Egypt.
2212. 9.32.1Vaphres' reply: eighty thousand workers sent.
2213. 9.33.1Solomon's letter to Souron (Hiram) of Tyre.
2214. 9.34.1Souron's reply begins with a blessing.
2215. 9.34.2Souron sends workers and a master builder.
2216. 9.34.3Souron asks for provisions for the workers.
2217. 9.34.4Solomon begins the temple at thirteen.
2218. 9.34.5Construction and gilding of the temple.
2219. 9.34.6The roof and the two bronze pillars.
2220. 9.34.7The pillars and lampstands.
2221. 9.34.8Lamps and gates of the temple.
2222. 9.34.9The portico and the bronze laver.
2223. 9.34.10The king's platform and the altar.
2224. 9.34.11Bell-hung networks keep birds off the temple.
2225. 9.34.12Solomon walls Jerusalem and builds his palace.
2226. 9.34.13Eupolemus's etymology of Jerusalem.
2227. 9.34.14Solomon brings the tabernacle and its vessels to Jerusalem.
2228. 9.34.15The sacred furniture is placed in the temple.
2229. 9.34.16The dedication sacrifice and the cost of the temple.
2230. 9.34.17Solomon dismisses the workers and sends gifts to Vaphres.
2231. 9.34.18Solomon sends a golden column to Tyre.
2232. 9.34.19Theophilus (via Polyhistor) on the fate of Solomon's surplus gold.
2233. 9.34.20Solomon's golden shields and his reign.
2234. 9.35.1Timochares (via Polyhistor) describes Jerusalem and its water.
2235. 9.36.1An anonymous survey of Syria (via Polyhistor) describes Jerusalem.
2236. 9.37.1Philo the epic poet on Jerusalem's fountain.
2237. 9.37.2Philo on the filling of the fountain.
2238. 9.37.3Philo on the high priest's fountain; end of the Polyhistor extracts.
2239. 9.38.1Introduction to the Letter of Aristeas on the temple waters.
2240. 9.38.2The temple floor is sloped for washing away sacrificial blood.
2241. 9.38.3The temple's underground cisterns and pipes.
2242. 9.39.1Eusebius introduces Polyhistor on Jeremiah.
2243. 9.39.2Polyhistor: Jeremiah finds the Jews worshiping Baal.
2244. 9.39.3Jeremiah foretells captivity; the king tries to burn him.
2245. 9.39.4Nebuchadnezzar allies with the Medes.
2246. 9.39.5Jerusalem taken; Jeremiah keeps the ark.
2247. 9.40.1Berossus (via Josephus): Nebuchadnezzar defeats the rebel.
2248. 9.40.2Nabopolassar dies; Nebuchadnezzar returns to Babylon with captives.
2249. 9.40.3Nebuchadnezzar dies; Evil-merodach succeeds.
2250. 9.40.4Evil-merodach is killed by Neriglisar.
2251. 9.40.5Neriglisar and his son.
2252. 9.40.6Nabonidus becomes king.
2253. 9.40.7Cyrus advances on Babylonia.
2254. 9.40.8Nabonidus is defeated and shut up in Borsippa.
2255. 9.40.9Cyrus takes Babylon and moves on Borsippa.
2256. 9.40.10Nabonidus surrenders and is exiled to Carmania.
2257. 9.40.11Josephus: Berossus agrees with the Jewish books on the temple's destruction and rebuilding.
2258. 9.41.1Abydenus (quoting Megasthenes): Nebuchadnezzar's conquests.
2259. 9.41.2Possessed, Nebuchadnezzar prophesies Babylon's fall.
2260. 9.41.3The prophecy of the Persian mule.
2261. 9.41.4The kings after Nebuchadnezzar to Cyrus.
2262. 9.41.5Abydenus: Belus first walled Babylon.
2263. 9.41.6Nebuchadnezzar rebuilds Babylon's wall.
2264. 9.41.7Nebuchadnezzar's walls and waterworks.
2265. 9.41.8Teredon and the hanging gardens.
2266. 9.41.9Eusebius links Abydenus's account to Daniel 4.
2267. 9.42.1Eusebius introduces Josephus's list of witnesses.
2268. 9.42.2Josephus lists Greek writers who mention the Jews.
2269. 9.42.3Josephus: even the best Greek writers erred for lack of the sacred books.
2270. 9.42.4Eusebius closes Book 9.
2271. 10.1.1Eusebius introduces Book 10: the Greeks not only knew of the Hebrews but imitated their teaching.
2272. 10.1.2The Greeks gathered the arts and sciences from the barbarians.
2273. 10.1.3Earlier books showed that Greek religion was borrowed from the barbarians.
2274. 10.1.4Eusebius promises to show that the Greeks took their teaching about the one God from the Hebrews.
2275. 10.1.5Even if the Greeks reached these views by natural reason, that supports the Christian choice.
2276. 10.1.6Those Greeks who taught such doctrines were few but most renowned.
2277. 10.1.7The Greeks stole from barbarians and even from one another.
2278. 10.1.8Greek writers plagiarized one another, as they themselves admit.
2279. 10.1.9Eusebius introduces Clement’s evidence of Greek plagiarism.
2280. 10.2.1Clement: the Greeks themselves will witness to their theft.
2281. 10.2.2Those who steal from one another will steal from Scripture.
2282. 10.2.3Clement will expose Greek plagiarism with a few examples.
2283. 10.2.4Eusebius summarizes Clement’s comparison of the poets.
2284. 10.2.5Clement extends the charge to philosophy, history, and rhetoric.
2285. 10.2.6Eusebius lists the authors Clement compared.
2286. 10.2.7Clement: some Greeks stole whole books, as Eugammon did from Musaeus.
2287. 10.2.8Clement: there are too many Greek thefts to list.
2288. 10.2.9The Greeks also copied the biblical miracles into their myths.
2289. 10.2.10The Greeks must hold their own wonder stories to be true.
2290. 10.2.11If Greek marvels are true, the biblical miracles are credible; God turns people to salvation in many ways.
2291. 10.2.12Delphi told the starving Greeks to seek the prayer of Aeacus.
2292. 10.2.13Aeacus prayed for Greece on the mountain.
2293. 10.2.14Rain and harvest followed Aeacus’s prayer.
2294. 10.2.15Clement compares Samuel’s prayer for rain and concludes there is one God.
2295. 10.2.16Eusebius turns from Clement to Porphyry’s own witness to Greek plagiarism.
2296. 10.3.1Porphyry: Longinus’s guests at the feast for Plato’s birthday.
2297. 10.3.2A dispute arises at dinner over whether Ephorus was a plagiarist.
2298. 10.3.3Ephorus copied thousands of lines from others.
2299. 10.3.4Theopompus copied Isocrates.
2300. 10.3.5Theopompus despised Isocrates yet stole from him, and moved stories from one person to another.
2301. 10.3.6Andron told of Pythagoras predicting an earthquake.
2302. 10.3.7Theopompus stole Andron’s Pythagoras story and gave it to Pherecydes.
2303. 10.3.8Theopompus also changed the places in the stories.
2304. 10.3.9Nicagoras: Theopompus copied Xenophon, and spoiled him.
2305. 10.3.10Theopompus spoiled Xenophon’s account of Pharnabazus and Agesilaus.
2306. 10.3.11Theopompus’s elaboration destroyed Xenophon’s vigour.
2307. 10.3.12Even Menander was exposed as a plagiarist by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Latinus.
2308. 10.3.13Others exposed Sophocles and Menander.
2309. 10.3.14Hyperides borrowed much from Demosthenes.
2310. 10.3.15Who borrowed from whom, Hyperides or Demosthenes, is uncertain.
2311. 10.3.16Hellanicus copied Herodotus; Herodotus copied Hecataeus.
2312. 10.3.17Orators repeated one another’s arguments and words.
2313. 10.3.18Simonides and Euripides took over Hesiod’s saying about good and bad wives.
2314. 10.3.19Theodectes borrowed a line of Euripides and passed it off as a proverb.
2315. 10.3.20Antimachus stole and altered Homer’s lines.
2316. 10.3.21Antimachus even took Homer’s overused formulas.
2317. 10.3.22Antimachus stitched together half-lines of Homer.
2318. 10.3.23Porphyry names earlier writers who exposed plagiarism.
2319. 10.3.24Prosenes charges that even Plato borrowed from his predecessors.
2320. 10.3.25Prosenes claims Plato used Protagoras’s arguments against those who held being is one.
2321. 10.3.26Eusebius concludes that Greek learning as a whole came from barbarians.
2322. 10.4.1The best Greek philosophers found no truths not already held by the Hebrews.
2323. 10.4.2Where Greek philosophers reached the truth, they shared Hebrew teaching.
2324. 10.4.3The Greek philosophers were later than the Hebrews and other ancient peoples and likely knew their philosophy.
2325. 10.4.4The earliest Greek religion was brought from Phoenicia and Egypt by Cadmus, Orpheus, and others.
2326. 10.4.5Orpheus, Linus, and Musaeus brought only Phoenician and Egyptian theology.
2327. 10.4.6Polytheistic worship with temples and images prevailed everywhere.
2328. 10.4.7Oracles abounded among the Greeks.
2329. 10.4.8Later Greek philosophy found the ancestral religion and oracles useless.
2330. 10.4.9Philosophy, poor at home, gathered its learning from the barbarian nations.
2331. 10.4.10The Seven Sages, after Orpheus and his followers, flourished in the time of Cyrus.
2332. 10.4.11The Seven Sages lived in the time of the last Hebrew prophets, long after Moses.
2333. 10.4.12The Seven Sages left only sayings; the philosophers came later still.
2334. 10.4.13Pythagoras, first of the philosophers, was by some accounts a barbarian.
2335. 10.4.14Pythagoras studied with Persian Magi and Egyptian prophets during the Hebrew exile.
2336. 10.4.15Pythagoras learned from every people except the Greeks.
2337. 10.4.16Pythagoras taught the Greeks what he had learned abroad.
2338. 10.4.17The Italian, Ionian, and Eleatic schools arose in turn.
2339. 10.4.18Thales was by some accounts a Phoenician and learned from Egyptians.
2340. 10.4.19Plato shows Solon being taught by an Egyptian priest.
2341. 10.4.20Plato studied in Egypt and acknowledges his debt to the barbarians.
2342. 10.4.21Plato’s Epinomis credits Egypt and Syria with first observing the heavens.
2343. 10.4.22Plato: the Greeks improve what they receive from barbarians.
2344. 10.4.23Democritus boasts of his travels and learning from Babylonians and Egyptians.
2345. 10.4.24Democritus studied in Babylon, Persia, and Egypt.
2346. 10.4.25Other Greek thinkers confirm the poverty of Greek learning.
2347. 10.4.26Greece had temples and oracles but no true wisdom.
2348. 10.4.27The gods gave the Greeks nothing; their philosophy was borrowed feathers.
2349. 10.4.28The Greeks borrowed sciences from many peoples, but the greatest good from the Hebrews.
2350. 10.4.29From the Hebrews they learned of the one God and against their own gods.
2351. 10.4.30The ancient Greeks lacked theology, learning, and even common arts.
2352. 10.4.31This supports the defence of preferring Hebrew theology.
2353. 10.4.32Christians should be praised for leaving falsehood without falling into atheism or mixing truth with polytheism.
2354. 10.4.33Eusebius turns to proofs that the Greeks took even the common arts from barbarians.
2355. 10.5.1Cadmus the Phoenician brought the alphabet to the Greeks.
2356. 10.5.2The Hebrews, as Syrians, may be the inventors of letters.
2357. 10.5.3Hebrew letter names have meanings; Greek ones do not.
2358. 10.5.4The first five Hebrew letter names form a sentence.
2359. 10.5.5The next letters read “in it lives the living one.”
2360. 10.5.6The next letters read “a good beginning; nevertheless learn.”
2361. 10.5.7The next letters read “from them everlasting help.”
2362. 10.5.8The next letters read “fountain, or eye, and mouth of righteousness.”
2363. 10.5.9The last letters read “the calling of the head, and signs of the teeth.”
2364. 10.5.10The Greek letters are adapted from the Hebrew.
2365. 10.5.11The Greek letter names are plainly the Hebrew ones.
2366. 10.5.12The letters began with the Hebrews and passed to the Greeks; Clement is introduced.
2367. 10.6.1Clement: medicine came from Egypt; Atlas built the first ship.
2368. 10.6.2Astrology and augury came from barbarians.
2369. 10.6.3Sacrificial and dream divination came from barbarians.
2370. 10.6.4Musical instruments, lamps, the calendar, and temple purity came from barbarians.
2371. 10.6.5Geometry and metalworking came from barbarians.
2372. 10.6.6Weapons and modelling were barbarian inventions.
2373. 10.6.7Stone-cutting, mining, and instruments came from barbarians.
2374. 10.6.8The quadrireme and hair dye were barbarian inventions.
2375. 10.6.9Metal refining and boxing gloves came from barbarians.
2376. 10.6.10Musical modes and instruments came from barbarians.
2377. 10.6.11Phrygians and Thracians invented instruments and modes.
2378. 10.6.12Furniture, ships, and instruments were barbarian inventions.
2379. 10.6.13Fine linen and letter-writing came from Assyria and Persia.
2380. 10.6.14Clement names his sources on inventions.
2381. 10.6.15Eusebius introduces Josephus, Against Apion.
2382. 10.7.1Josephus: it is strange to trust only the Greeks about antiquity.
2383. 10.7.2Everything Greek is recent, and their history-writing most of all.
2384. 10.7.3Egyptian, Chaldean, and Phoenician records are the most ancient.
2385. 10.7.4These peoples kept public records in safe lands.
2386. 10.7.5Greece suffered destructions that erased its memory.
2387. 10.7.6The Greeks learned writing late, from the Phoenicians.
2388. 10.7.7No Greek records survive from that time; even the Trojan War heroes may not have written.
2389. 10.7.8Homer is the oldest Greek writing, and even his poems were first kept by memory.
2390. 10.7.9The first Greek historians lived just before the Persian Wars.
2391. 10.7.10The first Greek philosophers learned from Egyptians and Chaldeans.
2392. 10.7.11The Greek historians wrote by guesswork.
2393. 10.7.12Greek historians contradict and correct one another.
2394. 10.7.13Local historians of Sicily, Attica, and Argos disagree.
2395. 10.7.14Even on the Persian Wars and Thucydides there is disagreement.
2396. 10.7.15Josephus will give two causes of Greek disagreement.
2397. 10.7.16First cause: the Greeks kept no public records.
2398. 10.7.17Even Athens’ oldest records are Draco’s laws.
2399. 10.7.18The Arcadians learned letters still later.
2400. 10.7.19Without records, historians disagreed.
2401. 10.7.20Second cause: historians sought eloquence and favour, not truth.
2402. 10.7.21True history agrees; Greek historians sought difference.
2403. 10.7.22Eusebius introduces Diodorus’s testimony.
2404. 10.8.1Diodorus: Greek sages who visited Egypt.
2405. 10.8.2The Egyptian priests list famous Greek visitors.
2406. 10.8.3The Egyptians show evidence of these visits.
2407. 10.8.4Orpheus took his mysteries and his picture of Hades from Egypt.
2408. 10.8.5Homer’s Hermes guiding souls comes from Egyptian funeral practice.
2409. 10.8.6Melampus brought Dionysian rites and myths from Egypt.
2410. 10.8.7Daedalus copied the Egyptian labyrinth and statues.
2411. 10.8.8Daedalus worked in Memphis and was honoured there.
2412. 10.8.9Helen’s drug in Homer shows Homer knew Egypt.
2413. 10.8.10Homer knew the Egyptian origin of the drug.
2414. 10.8.11Egyptian women still use the drug; “golden Aphrodite” is Egyptian too.
2415. 10.8.12Homer’s stories of Zeus and Hera come from Egyptian rites.
2416. 10.8.13Lawgivers and Pythagoras took their teachings from Egypt.
2417. 10.8.14Democritus and Oenopides learned astronomy in Egypt.
2418. 10.8.15Eudoxus gained fame from Egyptian astronomy.
2419. 10.8.16The famous sculptors also studied in Egypt.
2420. 10.8.17Christians follow the barbarians who taught the Greeks; the Hebrews are such barbarians.
2421. 10.8.18Eusebius turns to the antiquity of Moses and the prophets to show who borrowed from whom.
2422. 10.9.1Others have proved the antiquity of Moses; Eusebius will quote them.
2423. 10.9.2From the fifteenth year of Tiberius back to the second year of Darius is 548 years.
2424. 10.9.3The dates in Olympiads.
2425. 10.9.4137 Olympiads make 548 years.
2426. 10.9.5The first Olympiad coincides with Isaiah and Hosea in the reign of Uzziah.
2427. 10.9.6From the fall of Troy to the first Olympiad is 408 years.
2428. 10.9.7The fall of Troy falls in the time of the judge Abdon, shortly before Samson.
2429. 10.9.8Four hundred years earlier, Moses and Cecrops are contemporaries.
2430. 10.9.9The famous events of Greek myth all come after Cecrops.
2431. 10.9.10Abraham was contemporary with Ninus and Semiramis, 505 years before Moses.
2432. 10.9.11Eusebius will use Porphyry, the enemy of Christians, as witness to Moses’ antiquity.
2433. 10.9.12Porphyry: Sanchuniathon, who wrote truthfully about the Jews, lived near Moses’ time.
2434. 10.9.13Sanchuniathon is older than the Trojan War.
2435. 10.9.14Moses is older than Sanchuniathon’s own sources.
2436. 10.9.15Eusebius concedes, for argument, that Moses was Sanchuniathon’s contemporary.
2437. 10.9.16Then Moses too belongs to Semiramis’s time.
2438. 10.9.17On Porphyry’s own terms Moses precedes Troy by eight hundred years.
2439. 10.9.18Inachus, first king of Argos, came 150 years after Semiramis and Moses.
2440. 10.9.19Cecrops, first king of Athens, came more than four hundred years after Semiramis.
2441. 10.9.20Other mythical events of this interval.
2442. 10.9.21Deucalion’s flood and Phaethon’s fire fall between Cecrops and Troy.
2443. 10.9.22Cecrops first named Zeus and set up altar and statue.
2444. 10.9.23From Moses to Troy is more than 800 years on Porphyry’s testimony.
2445. 10.9.24Homer and Hesiod were later, the philosophers later still.
2446. 10.9.25Moses and the prophets precede the Greek philosophers by 1,500 years.
2447. 10.9.26Christian scholars before Eusebius proved Hebrew antiquity.
2448. 10.9.27They compared Greek, barbarian, and Hebrew histories.
2449. 10.9.28Eusebius will quote these writers in their own words.
2450. 10.10.1Africanus: Greek chronology is reliable only from the Olympiads.
2451. 10.10.2Africanus explains his method of synchronizing Hebrew and Greek events.
2452. 10.10.3The Babylonian exile lasted seventy years, as Jeremiah foretold.
2453. 10.10.4Cyrus began to reign in the 55th Olympiad.
2454. 10.10.5Cyrus released the people through Zerubbabel and Joshua.
2455. 10.10.6This fixed point allows other histories to be fitted together.
2456. 10.10.7From Ogyges’ flood to the first Olympiad is 1,020 years.
2457. 10.10.8Africanus names his sources for the 1,020 years.
2458. 10.10.9Africanus: Ogyges was contemporary with the exodus.
2459. 10.10.10From Ogyges to Cyrus is 1,237 years, the same as from the exodus to Cyrus.
2460. 10.10.11Moses’ exodus falls in Ogyges’ time.
2461. 10.10.12Africanus sums the years from the exodus to Cyrus.
2462. 10.10.13From Moses to the first Olympiad is 1,020 years.
2463. 10.10.14Attica had no king for 189 years after Ogyges’ flood.
2464. 10.10.15Polemon records an Egyptian group expelled in the time of Apis, evidently Moses’ people.
2465. 10.10.16Apion dates the Jews’ revolt under Moses to the reign of Amosis.
2466. 10.10.17Herodotus mentions Amosis and alludes to the Jews among the circumcised.
2467. 10.10.18Ptolemy of Mendes agrees.
2468. 10.10.19Every ancient Greek legend is later than Moses.
2469. 10.10.20Africanus gives the Attic date as a starting point.
2470. 10.10.21The exodus and Ogyges’ flood fall in the same year.
2471. 10.10.22Africanus links the Egyptian plagues with the Attic flood.
2472. 10.10.23Prometheus came ninety-four years after the exodus; Eusebius moves on.
2473. 10.11.1Tatian: Moses and Homer will be compared to show Christian philosophy is older.
2474. 10.11.2Tatian will prove it from Greek witnesses.
2475. 10.11.3Tatian lists those who have inquired into Homer’s date.
2476. 10.11.4The dates proposed for Homer vary widely.
2477. 10.11.5Disagreement about Homer’s date undermines Greek history.
2478. 10.11.6Even granting Homer an early date, Moses is far older.
2479. 10.11.7Tatian will use Chaldean, Phoenician, and Egyptian witnesses.
2480. 10.11.8Berossus records Nebuchadnezzar, long after Moses.
2481. 10.11.9Juba relied on Berossus.
2482. 10.11.10Tatian: three Phoenician historians, translated by Laetus.
2483. 10.11.11The Phoenician histories record Hiram and Solomon.
2484. 10.11.12Solomon and Hiram, near the Trojan War, are far later than Moses.
2485. 10.11.13Ptolemy of Mendes dates the exodus to Amosis.
2486. 10.11.14Apion confirms that Amosis was contemporary with Inachus.
2487. 10.11.15From Inachus to Troy is twenty generations.
2488. 10.11.16Tatian lists the kings of Argos down to Agamemnon.
2489. 10.11.17The Greeks had no written history; Cadmus came later.
2490. 10.11.18Moses, contemporary with Inachus, is four hundred years older than Troy.
2491. 10.11.19Greek history is later than Inachus, so later than Moses.
2492. 10.11.20Ogyges, Prometheus, Cecrops, and Io fit into the Argive king list.
2493. 10.11.21Phaethon, Deucalion, Danaus, and Europa in the king list.
2494. 10.11.22Kore, Eleusis, Cadmus, and Minos in the king list.
2495. 10.11.23Pelops, Perseus, and the fall of Troy close the list.
2496. 10.11.24Moses is older than heroes and gods and deserves more belief than the Greeks.
2497. 10.11.25Greek sophists counterfeited Moses’ teaching.
2498. 10.11.26Tatian refers to another work of his.
2499. 10.11.27Moses is older than all the legendary early poets.
2500. 10.11.28Linus was a generation before Troy.
2501. 10.11.29Orpheus was contemporary with Heracles; his works were written by Onomacritus.
2502. 10.11.30The other early poets are near the Trojan War.
2503. 10.11.31Tatian turns to the dates of the wise men.
2504. 10.11.32Minos and Lycurgus are dated.
2505. 10.11.33Draco, Solon, and Pythagoras are dated by Olympiads.
2506. 10.11.34The Seven Sages lived after the fiftieth Olympiad.
2507. 10.11.35Tatian’s closing self-introduction; Eusebius turns to Clement.
2508. 10.12.1Clement: Tatian and Cassian have treated this; he will summarize.
2509. 10.12.2Apion, though hostile to the Jews, cites Ptolemy of Mendes.
2510. 10.12.3Apion: Amosis was contemporary with Inachus.
2511. 10.12.4So Moses flourished in the time of Inachus.
2512. 10.12.5Argive history from Inachus is the oldest Greek history.
2513. 10.12.6Attic and Arcadian history are later than Argive.
2514. 10.12.7From Inachus to Troy is twenty generations, over four hundred years.
2515. 10.12.8The exodus falls in the 402nd year of the Assyrian empire.
2516. 10.12.9Ogyges’ flood and early kingdoms in Greece.
2517. 10.12.10Phoroneus was called the first man.
2518. 10.12.11Plato’s Timaeus names Phoroneus as the first man.
2519. 10.12.12Events of Greek legend fitted to the Argive kings.
2520. 10.12.13Further legends fitted to the king list.
2521. 10.12.14The date of Troy’s capture according to Dionysius of Argos.
2522. 10.12.15Other dates for Troy’s capture, with a line from the Little Iliad.
2523. 10.12.16Theseus and Heracles were a generation before Troy.
2524. 10.12.17Moses is 604 years before Dionysus’s deification.
2525. 10.12.18From Dionysus to the Argonauts is 63 years.
2526. 10.12.19Intervals to the deifications of Heracles, Asclepius, and the Dioscuri.
2527. 10.12.20Hesiod makes Dionysus Cadmus’s grandson.
2528. 10.12.21Cadmus and Isis are dated.
2529. 10.12.22Moses is earlier than Prometheus, whom the Greeks made the maker of men.
2530. 10.12.23Isis, called Demeter, lived eleven generations after Moses.
2531. 10.12.24Apis of Argos was later worshipped as Sarapis.
2532. 10.12.25Another explanation of the name Sarapis.
2533. 10.12.26Leto was contemporary with Tityus.
2534. 10.12.27Apollo too was born within history.
2535. 10.12.28Early musicians and oracle-givers are dated.
2536. 10.12.29Homer, Hesiod, lawgivers, and philosophers are much later.
2537. 10.12.30Moses is older even than most Greek gods.
2538. 10.12.31Eusebius introduces Josephus.
2539. 10.13.1Josephus introduces Manetho as an Egyptian witness.
2540. 10.13.2Manetho: eastern invaders took Egypt without a battle.
2541. 10.13.3Manetho explains the name Hyksos as “shepherd kings.”
2542. 10.13.4Another explanation: “captive shepherds.”
2543. 10.13.5The shepherd kings ruled Egypt for 511 years.
2544. 10.13.6The shepherds were defeated and shut up in Avaris.
2545. 10.13.7The shepherds walled Avaris.
2546. 10.13.8After a failed siege the shepherds were allowed to leave.
2547. 10.13.9240,000 left Egypt for Syria.
2548. 10.13.10They founded Jerusalem in Judea.
2549. 10.13.11Josephus: the Jews’ ancestors left Egypt 393 years before Danaus.
2550. 10.13.12Manetho attests the arrival and departure of Israel’s ancestors, a thousand years before Troy.
2551. 10.13.13Eusebius summarizes Josephus’s further Phoenician and Chaldean evidence.
2552. 10.14.1Enough proofs have been given of the antiquity of Moses and the prophets.
2553. 10.14.2Moses came after the earlier Hebrews, Heber and Abraham.
2554. 10.14.3Eusebius lists the leaders and judges of Israel from Joshua to Samuel.
2555. 10.14.4The kings of Judah from Saul to Athaliah.
2556. 10.14.5The kings from Joash to Ahaz; the first Olympiad falls under Ahaz.
2557. 10.14.6The kings from Hezekiah to Josiah; Rome founded under Hezekiah.
2558. 10.14.7The last kings of Judah and the exile to Babylon.
2559. 10.14.8Cyrus ended the exile; the last prophets were Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
2560. 10.14.9Solon and the Seven Sages lived under Cyrus.
2561. 10.14.10Thales was the first Greek natural philosopher.
2562. 10.14.11Anaximander, Thales’ pupil, invented the sundial.
2563. 10.14.12Anaxagoras first taught that Mind ordered the universe.
2564. 10.14.13Pericles, Euripides, and Archelaus studied with Anaxagoras; Socrates with Archelaus.
2565. 10.14.14Xenophanes and Pythagoras were contemporaries of Anaxagoras.
2566. 10.14.15The successions of philosophers; Zeno of Elea died under torture rather than betray his comrades.
2567. 10.14.16All Greek philosophy, Plato’s above all, is much later than Moses and the prophets.
2568. 10.14.17Plato lived shortly before Alexander.
2569. 10.14.18Plato’s agreement with the Hebrews must be weighed against his late date.
2570. 10.14.19Eusebius will next show Greek sages imitating Hebrew doctrines.
2571. 11.0.1Eusebius recalls Book 10: the Greeks borrowed everything, even from the Hebrews.
2572. 11.0.2The Greeks are far younger than the Hebrews.
2573. 11.0.3Book 11 will show Plato’s agreement with the Hebrews.
2574. 11.0.4Platonists will be quoted to clarify Plato.
2575. 11.0.5Plato was not right in everything; this will be shown later.
2576. 11.1.1Plato’s threefold division of philosophy is found earlier among the Hebrews.
2577. 11.1.2Eusebius introduces Atticus the Platonist.
2578. 11.2.1Atticus: the three parts of philosophy, ethics and physics.
2579. 11.2.2Plato first united the scattered parts of philosophy.
2580. 11.2.3Earlier thinkers each pursued only one part of philosophy.
2581. 11.2.4Plato perfected every part of philosophy.
2582. 11.2.5Atticus will examine each part.
2583. 11.2.6Eusebius introduces Aristocles the Peripatetic.
2584. 11.3.1Aristocles: before Plato, philosophers were partial or obscure.
2585. 11.3.2Socrates raised every question but died before completing them.
2586. 11.3.3Others pursued only one branch of learning.
2587. 11.3.4Socrates’ successors contradicted one another.
2588. 11.3.5Some philosophers were public, others aloof.
2589. 11.3.6Plato divided knowledge into physics, ethics, and logic.
2590. 11.3.7Divine things must be known before human things.
2591. 11.3.8Aristoxenus: an Indian sage taught Socrates that divine things come first.
2592. 11.3.9Plato divided philosophy into three.
2593. 11.3.10The Hebrews had the same threefold philosophy long before Plato.
2594. 11.4.1The Hebrews’ ethics made piety and friendship with God the highest good.
2595. 11.4.2Not scepticism or mere virtue, but hope in God makes one blessed.
2596. 11.4.3God alone suffices for the blessed life.
2597. 11.4.4Moses taught ethics through history, beginning with God and creation.
2598. 11.4.5Moses’ histories and laws aimed at a God-loving life.
2599. 11.4.6The prophets and Solomon’s Proverbs carry on Hebrew ethics.
2600. 11.4.7The Hebrews were taught ethics long before the Greeks learned to read.
2601. 11.5.1Hebrew logic sought truth by divine light, not sophistry.
2602. 11.5.2Hebrew children were trained in sacred texts, songs, and riddles.
2603. 11.5.3The deuterotai interpreted the hidden meanings of Scripture.
2604. 11.5.4Solomon’s Proverbs begins by teaching how to understand riddles and sayings.
2605. 11.5.5The prophetic books are full of logical treatment for those who read them.
2606. 11.5.6In their own tongue the Hebrews equal the Greek orators.
2607. 11.5.7Hebrew Scripture contains metrical poetry.
2608. 11.5.8The content of the Hebrew writings is divine.
2609. 11.5.9Plato agrees with the Hebrews on the correctness of names.
2610. 11.6.1Moses taught that names belong to things by nature; Plato follows him.
2611. 11.6.2Plato: names have a natural correctness for Greeks and barbarians alike.
2612. 11.6.3Plato: the namegiver among barbarians is as good as the Greek one.
2613. 11.6.4Plato: as the helmsman directs the rudder-maker, the dialectician directs the namegiver.
2614. 11.6.5Plato: names belong to things by nature, and only the wise can give them.
2615. 11.6.6Plato admits that many Greek names came from barbarians.
2616. 11.6.7Plato: borrowed names must be explained from their original language.
2617. 11.6.8Moses anticipated Plato in the naming of the animals by Adam.
2618. 11.6.9Adam’s names expressed what was already in the nature of things.
2619. 11.6.10Adam is named from the earth.
2620. 11.6.11Adam may also mean “red”; it signifies the bodily man.
2621. 11.6.12Enos, another Hebrew word for man, means the rational but forgetful part.
2622. 11.6.13The embodied mind is forgetful, hence called Enos.
2623. 11.6.14Psalm 8 uses Enos: God remembers the forgetful one.
2624. 11.6.15Adam and Enos name the fleshly and rational sides of the same man.
2625. 11.6.16Plato derives anthrōpos from “looking up at what he has seen.”
2626. 11.6.17The Hebrew word for man is linked with fire.
2627. 11.6.18The woman is named from the man; Plato derives the Greek words differently.
2628. 11.6.19Moses calls heaven the firmament; Plato derives ouranos from looking upward.
2629. 11.6.20The Hebrews name God from his power; Plato derives theos from “running.”
2630. 11.6.21Plato’s etymologies of heroes’ names.
2631. 11.6.22Plato’s etymologies aim to show that names are natural.
2632. 11.6.23Cain means “jealousy.”
2633. 11.6.24Abel means “mourning.”
2634. 11.6.25Abram, the Chaldean star-gazer, means “lofty father.”
2635. 11.6.26God renamed Abram Abraham.
2636. 11.6.27Plato too says some names come from a divine power.
2637. 11.6.28Plato: some names were given by a divine power.
2638. 11.6.29Isaac means “laughter,” the joy promised to the godly.
2639. 11.6.30Jacob was renamed Israel.
2640. 11.6.31Jacob means “supplanter,” Israel “seeing God.”
2641. 11.6.32Many more examples could be given.
2642. 11.6.33The Greeks cannot explain their letter names.
2643. 11.6.34The Hebrew letters Aleph and Beth mean “learning of a house.”
2644. 11.6.35Gimel and Daleth mean “fullness of tablets.”
2645. 11.6.36The seven vowels together express the unspeakable four-letter name of God.
2646. 11.6.37A Greek verse makes the seven vowels praise the one God.
2647. 11.6.38The other letter meanings were given earlier.
2648. 11.6.39The Hebrews are named from Heber, “one who crosses over.”
2649. 11.6.40The name Hebrew signifies crossing over from the visible to God.
2650. 11.6.41Hebrew logic is proved by their correct names; Eusebius turns to physics.
2651. 11.7.1The prophets knew natural philosophy by divine inspiration.
2652. 11.7.2The prophets spoke of the future, the cosmos, animals, and plants.
2653. 11.7.3Moses knew the stones of the high priest’s breastplate; Solomon knew nature.
2654. 11.7.4Solomon spoke of trees, beasts, birds, and fish.
2655. 11.7.5The Wisdom of Solomon credits Solomon with knowledge of all nature.
2656. 11.7.6Ecclesiastes teaches the transience of the bodily world.
2657. 11.7.7Other Hebrew sages also wrote about nature.
2658. 11.7.8The Hebrew writings mention the constellations.
2659. 11.7.9The Hebrews treated cosmology, the soul, providence, the first Cause, and the second.
2660. 11.7.10The many were taught only that the universe is guided by God’s Word.
2661. 11.7.11The essentials about intelligible things were taught to all.
2662. 11.7.12The deeper teaching was reserved; Eusebius will compare it with Plato.
2663. 11.8.1Plato followed Moses on intelligible things, whether by hearsay, by reason, or by God’s gift.
2664. 11.9.1Moses: God is “He who is.”
2665. 11.9.2Solomon on the transience of the sensible world.
2666. 11.9.3Christians divide reality into intelligible and sensible, under one uncreated cause.
2667. 11.9.4Plato’s Timaeus distinguishes eternal being from becoming.
2668. 11.9.5Plato reworks Moses’ “I am He who is.”
2669. 11.9.6Plato’s account of becoming echoes Ecclesiastes.
2670. 11.9.7Plato: only “is” belongs to eternal being; “was” and “will be” belong to time.
2671. 11.9.8Eusebius introduces Numenius, On the Good.
2672. 11.10.1Numenius: Being exists only in the present.
2673. 11.10.2Past and future are not, only the present.
2674. 11.10.3Being cannot be said not to be.
2675. 11.10.4Being is eternal, unchanging, and unmoved.
2676. 11.10.5Being is entirely motionless.
2677. 11.10.6Numenius will name the incorporeal.
2678. 11.10.7The incorporeal is named being because it does not change.
2679. 11.10.8Being is incorporeal.
2680. 11.10.9Numenius: these views are Platonic or Pythagorean.
2681. 11.10.10Numenius quotes the Timaeus.
2682. 11.10.11Being is unbegotten and unchanging.
2683. 11.10.12The eternal is what thought grasps.
2684. 11.10.13Body, always changing, never truly is.
2685. 11.10.14Numenius: “What is Plato but Moses speaking Attic?”
2686. 11.10.15Plutarch agrees with Scripture that God does not change.
2687. 11.10.16Plutarch’s On the E at Delphi seems to interpret these sayings.
2688. 11.11.1Plutarch: the E at Delphi is an address to the god.
2689. 11.11.2To the god’s “Know yourself” we answer “You are.”
2690. 11.11.3Mortal nature has no true being.
2691. 11.11.4Changeable things slip from the mind’s grasp.
2692. 11.11.5Like Heraclitus’s river, mortal being is ever changing.
2693. 11.11.6Human life is a constant passing from one stage to another.
2694. 11.11.7We die many deaths as we change; no one remains the same.
2695. 11.11.8Our changing tastes show we do not remain the same.
2696. 11.11.9What changes is not truly; sensation mistakes appearance for being.
2697. 11.11.10Only the eternal truly is; time itself confesses not-being.
2698. 11.11.11Even the “now” of time dissolves under reason.
2699. 11.11.12What is measured by time shares time’s instability.
2700. 11.11.13“Was” and “will be” do not apply to true being.
2701. 11.11.14God alone truly is, in a timeless eternal now.
2702. 11.11.15God is to be addressed as “You are One.”
2703. 11.12.1The Hebrews teach God is ineffable; Plato agrees.
2704. 11.12.2Plato: knowledge of God comes like a kindled light; the Psalms said it first.
2705. 11.13.1Moses teaches one God; Plato agrees.
2706. 11.13.2Plato: there is one heaven made after one pattern.
2707. 11.13.3Plato’s letter to Dionysius shows he believed in one God.
2708. 11.13.4Plato: “God” heads his serious letters, “gods” the others.
2709. 11.13.5Plato’s Laws: God holds beginning, middle, and end; Justice follows him, punishing the proud.
2710. 11.13.6Isaiah and the Psalms parallel Plato’s Laws.
2711. 11.13.7Scripture parallels Plato on divine justice and following God.
2712. 11.13.8Scripture parallels Plato on the downfall of the proud; Eusebius turns to the second cause.
2713. 11.14.1Eusebius turns to the second cause, the Word, God from God.
2714. 11.14.2Gen 19:24 speaks of two Lords, both named with the Tetragrammaton.
2715. 11.14.3Ps 110:1 speaks of the supreme God and the second Lord at his right hand.
2716. 11.14.4Ps 33:6 shows the Word as Creator.
2717. 11.14.5Ps 107:20 shows the Word as Saviour.
2718. 11.14.6Solomon calls the Word Wisdom.
2719. 11.14.7Proverbs 8: Wisdom was with God before creation.
2720. 11.14.8Proverbs and Wisdom present Wisdom as maker of all.
2721. 11.14.9Wisdom promises to reveal her origin.
2722. 11.14.10The Wisdom of Solomon describes Wisdom as radiance and image of God; Philo is introduced.
2723. 11.15.1Philo: those who cannot see God should seek his image, the Word.
2724. 11.15.2Philo: the Word is God’s firstborn, eldest of the angels.
2725. 11.15.3Philo lists the names of the Word.
2726. 11.15.4The eldest Word is God’s image.
2727. 11.15.5Philo: Zechariah’s “man named Dawn” is the incorporeal Word.
2728. 11.15.6The Word, God’s eldest son, shaped the forms after the Father’s patterns.
2729. 11.15.7Eusebius closes the Philo extracts and turns to Plato’s Epinomis.
2730. 11.16.1Plato’s Epinomis speaks of the cosmos ordered by the most divine Word.
2731. 11.16.2Plato’s Sixth Letter names the God of all and the Father of the leader and cause.
2732. 11.16.3Plato’s Father and Lord of the cause can only come from the Hebrews.
2733. 11.16.4Eusebius introduces Plotinus on the three hypostases.
2734. 11.17.1Plotinus: rise from the sensible world to its archetype and Mind.
2735. 11.17.2Plotinus: the One begot Mind.
2736. 11.17.3Mind comes from the One like light from the sun.
2737. 11.17.4Every being gives out an image of itself.
2738. 11.17.5Fire, snow, and fragrance illustrate emanation.
2739. 11.17.6The perfect begets something eternal but lesser.
2740. 11.17.7Mind is the greatest thing after the One.
2741. 11.17.8Mind is with the One, separated only by otherness, its image.
2742. 11.17.9Plotinus finds three principles in Plato’s letters.
2743. 11.17.10Plotinus: Plato taught the Good, Mind, and Soul; Plotinus only interprets.
2744. 11.17.11Eusebius introduces Numenius on the second cause.
2745. 11.18.1Numenius: one must proceed in order to understand the first and second God.
2746. 11.18.2Numenius begins with prayer.
2747. 11.18.3The first God is simple; the second, in contact with matter, is divided by it.
2748. 11.18.4Caring for matter, the second God neglects himself.
2749. 11.18.5He raises the sensible world toward himself.
2750. 11.18.6Numenius: the first God does not create but is father of the Creator.
2751. 11.18.7Numenius turns to inquire about the First, not the Creator.
2752. 11.18.8Numenius: the first God rests; the creative God governs through heaven.
2753. 11.18.9Through the second God Mind comes down to us.
2754. 11.18.10Bodies live when God looks on them and die when he turns away.
2755. 11.18.11Psalm 104 says the same: creatures live when God gives and die when he turns his face away.
2756. 11.18.12Numenius’s thought matches the Psalm.
2757. 11.18.13Christ’s vine saying introduces Numenius’s farmer image.
2758. 11.18.14Numenius: the first God sows, the Demiurge plants.
2759. 11.18.15Numenius: divine gifts are given without loss to the giver.
2760. 11.18.16Knowledge is shared like flame from lamp to lamp.
2761. 11.18.17Knowledge remains with the giver.
2762. 11.18.18Knowledge is the same in God and in us.
2763. 11.18.19Plato’s Prometheus brought wisdom like fire.
2764. 11.18.20Numenius: the first God is at rest, the second in motion.
2765. 11.18.21The first God’s rest is the source of the world’s order.
2766. 11.18.22Numenius: men know only the Demiurge, not the first Mind.
2767. 11.18.23There is a Mind older and more divine than the one men suppose.
2768. 11.18.24Numenius: the Demiurge steers matter like a helmsman looking to the God above.
2769. 11.18.25Christ’s saying parallels Numenius; Numenius expounds Plato.
2770. 11.18.26Amelius the Platonist bears witness to John’s Gospel.
2771. 11.19.1Amelius paraphrases John’s prologue on the Word.
2772. 11.19.2The barbarian is John the evangelist.
2773. 11.19.3John’s prologue on the Word.
2774. 11.19.4Paul in Colossians on the Son as image and firstborn.
2775. 11.19.5The Greeks agree with the Hebrews on the second cause.
2776. 11.20.1Scripture places the Holy Spirit third; Plato hints at a triad.
2777. 11.20.2Plato’s Second Letter speaks in riddles of a first, second, and third.
2778. 11.20.3Platonists read Plato’s triad as God, Mind, and World-Soul; Scripture teaches the Trinity.
2779. 11.21.1Scripture teaches that God alone is the Good.
2780. 11.21.2Plato: the good Maker made the world like himself.
2781. 11.21.3Plato: the sun is the offspring of the Good.
2782. 11.21.4Plato: the Idea of the Good gives truth and knowledge.
2783. 11.21.5Plato: the Good gives being and substance, and is itself beyond substance.
2784. 11.21.6The Ideas receive their being from God and are neither consubstantial with him nor unbegotten.
2785. 11.21.7Only the Good, beyond substance, is God; Numenius is introduced.
2786. 11.22.1Numenius: the Good is seen only in solitude, far from the senses, like a lone boat at sea.
2787. 11.22.2The Good is reached by a divine method, through mathematics to Being.
2788. 11.22.3Numenius: the Good is the principle of substance, the Creator of becoming.
2789. 11.22.4The Creator of substance is the Good itself; the second God is twofold.
2790. 11.22.5Numenius’s four: the Good, the Creator, and their two substances.
2791. 11.22.6Others become good only by thinking, which belongs first to the first God.
2792. 11.22.7The source of the second’s goodness must itself be good.
2793. 11.22.8Plato showed that the Good is one.
2794. 11.22.9Plato distinguishes the good Creator from the Idea of the Good.
2795. 11.22.10The first Mind is the Idea of the Good in which the Creator participates.
2796. 11.23.1Plato: the cosmos is an image of an intelligible pattern.
2797. 11.23.2Eusebius introduces Didymus on Plato’s doctrines.
2798. 11.23.3Didymus: the Ideas are eternal patterns of natural kinds.
2799. 11.23.4Many things come from one Idea, like impressions from a seal.
2800. 11.23.5The Idea is an eternal substance and cause.
2801. 11.23.6The all-embracing Idea is the pattern of the cosmos.
2802. 11.23.7Moses taught a light, day, and night made before the visible sun.
2803. 11.23.8Malachi speaks of an incorporeal “sun of righteousness.”
2804. 11.23.9Isaiah speaks of righteousness itself.
2805. 11.23.10The incorporeal Word is called wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption.
2806. 11.23.11Scripture teaches incorporeal powers whose images are in sensible things.
2807. 11.23.12Scripture calls man an image; Philo is introduced.
2808. 11.24.1Philo: the intelligible world is the Word of God creating.
2809. 11.24.2Philo grounds this in Gen 1:27.
2810. 11.24.3The Word of God is the archetypal Idea of Ideas.
2811. 11.24.4Philo: “beginning” in Genesis is not temporal.
2812. 11.24.5Time cannot be older than the cosmos.
2813. 11.24.6“In the beginning” means “first.”
2814. 11.24.7Philo: first came the incorporeal heaven, earth, air, and void.
2815. 11.24.8Then incorporeal water, spirit, and light.
2816. 11.24.9Spirit and light are given honour for life and beauty.
2817. 11.24.10The intelligible light is an image of the Word, source of the stars’ light.
2818. 11.24.11“One day,” not “first day,” reflects the unity of the intelligible world.
2819. 11.24.12Philo: the sensible heaven is called firmament because it is solid; Clement is introduced.
2820. 11.25.1Clement: Scripture distinguishes intelligible and sensible worlds.
2821. 11.25.2Genesis 1 describes first an invisible and then a visible creation.
2822. 11.25.3Plato took his doctrine of Ideas from Genesis.
2823. 11.25.4Moses: body from earth, soul breathed by God.
2824. 11.25.5Clement: the Word is God’s image; the human mind is the image of the image.
2825. 11.26.1Plato speaks of good and evil powers.
2826. 11.26.2Plato’s Laws: at least two souls, one good and one evil.
2827. 11.26.3Plato: an undying battle; we are possessions of gods and daemons.
2828. 11.26.4The Hebrews held this doctrine long before Plato.
2829. 11.26.5Job speaks of angels of God and the devil.
2830. 11.26.6The good powers are God’s spirits and ministers.
2831. 11.26.7Paul speaks of the struggle against evil spiritual powers.
2832. 11.26.8Plato’s “possessions of the gods” paraphrases Deut 32:8.
2833. 11.27.1Moses taught the soul is immortal, made in God’s image.
2834. 11.27.2Gen 2:7 distinguishes body and soul.
2835. 11.27.3Man was made in God’s image to rule the earth.
2836. 11.27.4Plato’s Alcibiades follows Moses on the divine image.
2837. 11.27.5Plato’s Alcibiades: the soul knows itself by looking at God as a mirror.
2838. 11.27.6Plato’s Phaedo: two kinds of things, visible and invisible.
2839. 11.27.7The body is akin to the visible; the soul is not visible.
2840. 11.27.8The soul is like the invisible.
2841. 11.27.9Through the senses the soul is dragged into confusion.
2842. 11.27.10By itself the soul reaches the pure and unchanging, and this is wisdom.
2843. 11.27.11The soul is more like what is always the same.
2844. 11.27.12The soul rules like the divine; the body serves like the mortal.
2845. 11.27.13The soul is like the divine and immortal; the body like the mortal.
2846. 11.27.14The body dissolves quickly; the soul is indissoluble.
2847. 11.27.15Even the body lasts some time after death.
2848. 11.27.16Does the soul perish when it leaves the body?
2849. 11.27.17The pure soul, practised in philosophy, departs free of the body.
2850. 11.27.18The pure soul goes to the divine and lives happily with the gods.
2851. 11.27.19The soul devoted to the body departs impure.
2852. 11.27.20Eusebius introduces Porphyry, Against Boethus.
2853. 11.28.1Porphyry: Plato’s argument from likeness for immortality.
2854. 11.28.2Kinds are judged by likeness, as mankind is judged rational.
2855. 11.28.3Plato judged the soul by its likeness to divine or earthly.
2856. 11.28.4If the soul is like God in other respects, it is like him in substance.
2857. 11.28.5Like activities imply like substance.
2858. 11.28.6Porphyry quotes Boethus’s objection.
2859. 11.28.7Boethus: immortality needs many arguments.
2860. 11.28.8The soul is most like God.
2861. 11.28.9Alcmaeon of Croton held the soul immortal and ever moving.
2862. 11.28.10The mind’s works show great likeness to God.
2863. 11.28.11Likeness to the divine is enough to prove immortality.
2864. 11.28.12The soul, even in the body, shows a divine nature that cannot perish.
2865. 11.28.13The soul is both divine and mortal in appearance.
2866. 11.28.14Man ranges from beast-like gluttony to godlike invention.
2867. 11.28.15Man’s planetarium shows his divine mind.
2868. 11.28.16Most men, seeing only appearances, think all men equally mortal.
2869. 11.28.17Moses taught the soul’s immortality through its likeness to God.
2870. 11.28.18Eusebius turns to the rest of Plato’s philosophy.
2871. 11.28.19Plato is right where he agrees with Moses; Eusebius turns to physics.
2872. 11.29.1Moses taught that the universe was made by God; Plato agrees.
2873. 11.29.2Plato: everything that comes to be has a cause.
2874. 11.29.3Plato asks whether the cosmos always was or came to be.
2875. 11.29.4Plato: the cosmos came to be; its Maker is hard to find and impossible to declare to all.
2876. 11.29.5Plato: the cosmos is a living being made by God’s providence.
2877. 11.30.1Moses: God made the sun, moon, and stars and set them in the firmament.
2878. 11.30.2Plato: God made the sun, moon, and planets and set them in their orbits.
2879. 11.30.3Plato’s wording echoes Psalm 33 and Genesis 1.
2880. 11.31.1Genesis calls creation good; Plato calls the cosmos most beautiful and its maker best.
2881. 11.32.1Scripture teaches that the world will pass away and be renewed.
2882. 11.32.2Plato: the cosmos can be dissolved only by its maker.
2883. 11.32.3Plato: time and heaven began together and may end together.
2884. 11.32.4Plato: created beings are dissoluble by nature but preserved by God’s will.
2885. 11.32.5Plato’s Statesman: God alternately guides the universe and lets it go.
2886. 11.32.6The cosmos, being bodily, cannot be wholly unchanging; it reverses its motion.
2887. 11.32.7God guides the cosmos at times; at others it moves backward by itself.
2888. 11.32.8This reversal explains the marvels of myth.
2889. 11.32.9The reversal is the greatest change in the heavens.
2890. 11.32.10Such changes are hard on living things.
2891. 11.32.11At the reversal, great destructions befall living things; Plato then speaks of the dead returning to life.
2892. 11.33.1How were living things born in that age?
2893. 11.33.2In that age the earth-born race returned from the earth.
2894. 11.33.3The dead rise from the earth, except those God has taken to another lot.
2895. 11.33.4Plato on the end of the world.
2896. 11.34.1Plato: at the end of the age the divine helmsman lets go of the cosmos.
2897. 11.34.2The cosmos reverses with great upheaval and destruction.
2898. 11.34.3Then the cosmos settles into order again.
2899. 11.34.4God takes the helm again and makes the cosmos immortal and ageless.
2900. 11.35.1Plato’s Republic: greater things await the just and unjust after death.
2901. 11.35.2The story of Er, who returned to life and told of the afterlife.
2902. 11.35.3Er saw two openings in the earth and two in heaven.
2903. 11.35.4Judges send the just up to the right and the unjust down to the left.
2904. 11.35.5Er was told to report what he saw.
2905. 11.35.6Eusebius introduces Plutarch, On the Soul.
2906. 11.36.1Plutarch: Antyllus, taken by mistake, returned to life, while Nicandas died.
2907. 11.36.2Scripture promises a heavenly land of precious stones; Plato’s Phaedo describes the like.
2908. 11.37.1Socrates will describe the true earth as he believes it to be.
2909. 11.37.2The earth rests in the middle of the heaven by its own equilibrium.
2910. 11.37.3The earth is vast; we live in a small hollow of it.
2911. 11.37.4Our air and water are the sediment of the pure ether around the true earth.
2912. 11.37.5We are like creatures at the bottom of the sea who mistake it for the sky.
2913. 11.37.6If we could rise above the air, we would see the true heaven, light, and earth.
2914. 11.37.7Our world is corrupted like the sea floor compared with ours.
2915. 11.37.8Socrates offers to tell the myth of the true earth.
2916. 11.37.9The true earth seen from above is many-coloured.
2917. 11.37.10Its colours surpass all we know.
2918. 11.37.11Even its hollows gleam with colour.
2919. 11.37.12Its stones are like jewels, of which ours are fragments.
2920. 11.37.13The true earth is adorned with pure stones and metals, a sight for the blessed.
2921. 11.38.1Daniel foretells God’s judgment with a river of fire; Plato agrees.
2922. 11.38.2Plato’s third river of the underworld flows through fire.
2923. 11.38.3Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus, the rivers of fire and lament.
2924. 11.38.4The dead are judged: the middling purified, the incurable cast forever into Tartarus.
2925. 11.38.5Curable sinners are punished until those they wronged forgive them.
2926. 11.38.6The holy rise to a pure dwelling, the philosophers to still fairer ones.
2927. 11.38.7Plato’s indescribable dwellings echo 1 Cor 2:9.
2928. 11.38.8Scripture’s many mansions and eternal fire parallel Plato.
2929. 11.38.9Plato’s eternal punishment and blessedness match Scripture.
2930. 11.38.10Plato’s vessels may mean bodies, raised with souls for judgment; Book 11 ends.
2931. 12.1.1Book 12 begins: more of Plato’s agreement with the Hebrews, starting with a defence of faith.
2932. 12.1.2Plato’s Laws: the young should accept the laws without question.
2933. 12.1.3Scripture puts faith before understanding.
2934. 12.1.4Beginners receive Scripture simply in faith; the mature probe its meaning.
2935. 12.2.1Plato’s Laws: Tyrtaeus praised courage in foreign war.
2936. 12.2.2Theognis praises the man faithful in civil strife.
2937. 12.2.3Faithfulness requires all virtue; mere courage is common even among mercenaries.
2938. 12.2.4The lawgiver aims at the greatest virtue, faithfulness, which is perfect justice.
2939. 12.2.5Christ commends faith joined with wisdom and goodness.
2940. 12.3.1Plato’s Laws: the souls of the dead care for human affairs.
2941. 12.3.22 Maccabees shows Jeremiah praying for the people after death.
2942. 12.4.1Plato’s Republic: children are first taught by stories.
2943. 12.4.2The Hebrews teach the simple the stories and the trained the deeper meaning.
2944. 12.5.1Plato’s Republic: the young are easily moulded.
2945. 12.5.2Children should not hear harmful stories.
2946. 12.5.3Story-makers must be supervised and only good stories told.
2947. 12.5.4The Hebrews discerned true inspiration and raised children on Scripture stories.
2948. 12.6.1Plato’s Gorgias: Socrates tells a true account of judgment.
2949. 12.6.2The just go to the Islands of the Blessed, the unjust to Tartarus.
2950. 12.6.3The dead are judged stripped of everything, by a judge who sees the soul itself.
2951. 12.6.4Death is the separation of soul and body.
2952. 12.6.5The body after death keeps the marks of life.
2953. 12.6.6Scars and injuries remain on the dead body.
2954. 12.6.7So too the soul after death bears the marks of its life.
2955. 12.6.8Rhadamanthys sees the scars of injustice on a king’s soul and sends it to punishment.
2956. 12.6.9Punishment either reforms or serves as an example.
2957. 12.6.10Curable sinners are healed through suffering.
2958. 12.6.11The incurable suffer forever as examples to others.
2959. 12.6.12Most of the incurable are tyrants and rulers.
2960. 12.6.13Homer’s eternally punished are kings, not commoners.
2961. 12.6.14Good rulers are rare and admirable.
2962. 12.6.15Rhadamanthys sends the wicked to Tartarus, marked curable or incurable.
2963. 12.6.16The pious philosopher’s soul is sent to the Islands of the Blessed.
2964. 12.6.17Aeacus, Rhadamanthys, and Minos judge the dead.
2965. 12.6.18Socrates resolves to present a healthy soul to the judge.
2966. 12.6.19Socrates calls all to this contest.
2967. 12.6.20Callicles will be helpless before the judge.
2968. 12.6.21This may seem an old wives’ tale, but nothing better has been found.
2969. 12.6.22One must fear doing wrong more than suffering it, and be good rather than seem so.
2970. 12.6.23Scripture: all will stand before God’s judgment seat.
2971. 12.6.24Paul on God’s impartial judgment of all.
2972. 12.7.1Plato: high teachings must be kept from the uneducated.
2973. 12.8.1Christ and Paul on keeping holy things from the unworthy; Plato on ignorance that disobeys reason.
2974. 12.8.2Only those whose reason governs them should rule, whatever their learning.
2975. 12.8.3Wisdom is the harmony of reason and life.
2976. 12.8.4Plato’s Statesman: do not fuss over names.
2977. 12.9.1Moses, Saul, and Jeremiah declined office; Plato explains why.
2978. 12.9.2Plato’s Republic: true rule serves the ruled.
2979. 12.9.3No one willingly rules; rulers need reward or the threat of penalty.
2980. 12.10.1Hebrew righteous men endured suffering; Plato describes the same.
2981. 12.10.2Plato’s just man must be good without seeming so.
2982. 12.10.3The just man must be thought unjust all his life yet remain just.
2983. 12.10.4The just man will be scourged, bound, blinded, and impaled.
2984. 12.10.5The Hebrew righteous suffered all this in fact, as Hebrews 11 records.
2985. 12.10.6The apostles suffered as Paul describes.
2986. 12.10.7Christian martyrs fulfilled Plato’s description of the suffering just man.
2987. 12.11.1Plato’s myth of Resource and Poverty reworks the story of Eden.
2988. 12.11.2Plato’s myth of Resource, Poverty, and the garden of Zeus.
2989. 12.12.1Plato knew the story of Eve’s creation and put a parody of it in Aristophanes’ mouth.
2990. 12.12.2Aristophanes’ myth of the original androgynous humans.
2991. 12.12.3In the myth Zeus cut the original humans in two.
2992. 12.13.1Plato’s age of Cronus echoes Moses’ paradise.
2993. 12.13.2Plato: in the age of Cronus God shepherded men, who lived naked amid plenty.
2994. 12.14.1Moses records the serpent speaking; Plato speaks of talking with beasts.
2995. 12.14.2Plato: the men of Cronus could converse with beasts.
2996. 12.14.3Whether they used this gift wisely is uncertain.
2997. 12.15.1Moses prefaced his laws with the history of the flood and the patriarchs.
2998. 12.15.2Plato’s Laws too begins its history with floods.
2999. 12.15.3Survivors of the flood were mountain shepherds.
3000. 12.15.4The flood destroyed the cities and the arts.
3001. 12.15.5After the flood the earth was desolate but abundant.
3002. 12.15.6Plato follows Moses’ order: flood, early history, then laws.
3003. 12.16.1Like Moses, Plato makes divine goods the source of human goods.
3004. 12.16.2Plato’s Laws: good laws provide all goods.
3005. 12.16.3Human goods (health, beauty, strength, wealth) depend on divine goods.
3006. 12.16.4The divine goods are wisdom, temperance, justice, and courage.
3007. 12.16.5All must look to the divine, and the divine to the ruling Mind.
3008. 12.16.6The lawgiver must guide marriage, child-rearing, and desires by praise and blame.
3009. 12.16.7Guardians ensure all follows temperance and justice.
3010. 12.16.8Plato asks how the laws of Minos and Lycurgus embody this order.
3011. 12.16.9Christ said to seek the kingdom first; Moses set righteous men as guardians.
3012. 12.17.1Plato: children learn their future work through play.
3013. 12.17.2Education is right nurture leading the child to love excellence.
3014. 12.17.3Moses commanded teaching the law to children, as the Jews still do.
3015. 12.18.1Plato: true education is training in virtue for citizenship.
3016. 12.18.2Training for money or strength without justice is not education.
3017. 12.18.3Right education makes men good and must be pursued through life.
3018. 12.18.4Education trains children to love and hate rightly.
3019. 12.18.5David taught children the fear of the Lord.
3020. 12.18.6Solomon’s Proverbs instruct children in wisdom.
3021. 12.19.1The tabernacle copied heavenly patterns; Plato says the like.
3022. 12.19.2Plato: the philosopher becomes divine by communion with the divine.
3023. 12.19.3The philosopher will shape others after the divine pattern.
3024. 12.19.4A city is happy only if drawn after the divine pattern.
3025. 12.19.5First the tablet must be wiped clean.
3026. 12.19.6They will not legislate until the city is clean.
3027. 12.19.7Then they sketch the constitution.
3028. 12.19.8They paint the human character after the divine, the “godlike” in Homer’s word.
3029. 12.19.9They work until human characters are dear to God.
3030. 12.20.1Plato: education draws children toward the right principle of the law.
3031. 12.20.2Songs are charms that train children’s feelings, like medicine in pleasant food.
3032. 12.20.3Poets must be made to praise good men; Christian children learn the Psalms.
3033. 12.21.1Plato: the just man is happy whatever his fortune; the unjust miserable however rich.
3034. 12.21.2Plato reworks Tyrtaeus: without justice no good avails.
3035. 12.21.3The many count health, beauty, wealth, and power as goods.
3036. 12.21.4Goods are good only for the just; for the unjust they are evils.
3037. 12.21.5Poets must teach that true good belongs only to the good.
3038. 12.21.6The Psalms already taught what Plato says of true blessedness.
3039. 12.22.1Plato: fixing good music by law is the work of a god or divine man.
3040. 12.22.2The Hebrews used only inspired songs in worship.
3041. 12.23.1Plato: music is judged by the pleasure of the best men.
3042. 12.23.2Judges of music need wisdom and courage.
3043. 12.23.3The judge must teach the audience, not follow it.
3044. 12.23.4Among the Hebrews a few inspired men judged which prophetic books were canonical.
3045. 12.24.1Plato’s Laws on drinking parties.
3046. 12.24.2Drink makes men boastful and unruly.
3047. 12.24.3Wine softens the soul like iron in fire.
3048. 12.24.4Laws and sober guardians must control drinking parties.
3049. 12.24.5Christians sing hymns at meals under the care of their overseers.
3050. 12.25.1Plato’s Laws severely restrict the drinking of wine.
3051. 12.25.2Moses, Solomon, and Paul restrict wine as Plato does.
3052. 12.26.1Plato: the ideal city has existed, perhaps in some barbarian land, and can exist.
3053. 12.27.1Plato’s Laws: each man is at war with himself.
3054. 12.27.2Self-mastery is the first of victories.
3055. 12.27.3Pleasure and pain are inner counsellors; reasoning judges between them.
3056. 12.27.4Plato’s image of the soul as a puppet pulled by cords; the golden cord of reason must be followed.
3057. 12.27.5A city must make reason its law.
3058. 12.27.6Paul too describes the inner war.
3059. 12.28.1Plato: soul and its states are older than body.
3060. 12.28.2Soul is the cause of good and evil; Moses too speaks of the soul sinning.
3061. 12.29.1Scripture praises the solitary life of the wise; Plato describes the true philosopher.
3062. 12.29.2Plato’s Theaetetus: the true philosopher ignores civic affairs.
3063. 12.29.3The philosopher’s mind roams the universe while his body stays in the city.
3064. 12.29.4Thales fell into a well while stargazing.
3065. 12.29.5The philosopher studies what man is, not what his neighbour does.
3066. 12.29.6In public life the philosopher seems ridiculous.
3067. 12.29.7He cannot slander and laughs at boasting.
3068. 12.29.8He sees kings as herdsmen of a difficult flock.
3069. 12.29.9Great estates seem small to one who contemplates the whole earth.
3070. 12.29.10Pride in ancestry seems petty to the philosopher.
3071. 12.29.11The many laugh at the philosopher.
3072. 12.29.12When the petty man must discuss justice and happiness, he in turn becomes ridiculous.
3073. 12.29.13The free philosopher versus the servile man of affairs.
3074. 12.29.14Evil cannot be destroyed; it haunts mortal nature.
3075. 12.29.15Plato: escape is becoming like God, just and holy with wisdom.
3076. 12.29.16God is perfectly just; the most just man is most like him.
3077. 12.29.17Knowing God’s justice is true wisdom; all else is vulgar.
3078. 12.29.18The wicked are ignorant of the inescapable penalty of injustice.
3079. 12.29.19The unjust become like the godless pattern and live its life as their penalty.
3080. 12.29.20The unjust will not be received in the pure place after death.
3081. 12.29.21Pressed in argument, the clever unjust collapse like children.
3082. 12.30.1Paul: the world’s wisdom is foolishness with God.
3083. 12.30.2Look to the unseen and eternal.
3084. 12.30.3Scripture too says evil belongs to this earthly life.
3085. 12.30.4Moses teaches following and imitating God.
3086. 12.30.5David taught God’s justice and contempt for wealth.
3087. 12.30.6Trust not in princes.
3088. 12.31.1Plato: a lawgiver may tell the young a beneficial falsehood.
3089. 12.31.2Scripture uses human images of God for the benefit of the simple.
3090. 12.32.1Plato: the whole city, slave and free, men and women, should sing its hymns.
3091. 12.32.2Plato’s Republic: men generally excel women.
3092. 12.32.3Natural gifts are distributed in both sexes; women can share all pursuits.
3093. 12.32.4Women differ in aptitude as men do.
3094. 12.32.5Some women are fit to be guardians.
3095. 12.32.6Capable women should share guardianship with men.
3096. 12.32.7The Christian teaching admits all, men and women, slave and free, barbarian and Greek.
3097. 12.33.1Plato: an institution cannot be judged from instances without a good ruler.
3098. 12.33.2Judges of institutions must see them under good rulers.
3099. 12.33.3Christianity should be judged by those who live it rightly, not by the disorderly.
3100. 12.34.1Proverbs on praising the righteous after death; Plato agrees.
3101. 12.34.2Plato: the good should be praised after death.
3102. 12.34.3The living should not be praised until life’s end.
3103. 12.35.1Proverbs and Plato both warn against wealth and poverty.
3104. 12.36.1Moses and Plato both command honour and fear toward parents and elders.
3105. 12.37.1Moses forbade enslaving Hebrews; Plato forbade enslaving Greeks.
3106. 12.38.1Plato forbids moving boundary-stones, as the Law does.
3107. 12.39.1Plato: children do not bear their father’s guilt, except after three generations.
3108. 12.40.1Moses and Plato both require double restitution for theft.
3109. 12.41.1Moses and Plato both acquit one who kills a night thief.
3110. 12.42.1Moses and Plato both punish an animal that kills a person.
3111. 12.43.1Ezekiel speaks of Israel as mixed metals; Plato has a myth of metals.
3112. 12.43.2Plato’s myth of the metals in the citizens.
3113. 12.43.3Children may be of a different metal from their parents.
3114. 12.43.4Rulers must sort children by their metal, whatever their birth.
3115. 12.44.1Ezekiel and Christ on true and false shepherds; Plato agrees.
3116. 12.44.2Plato: the true shepherd and ruler seeks the good of the flock.
3117. 12.45.1Isaiah’s image of spiritual labour; Socrates as midwife.
3118. 12.46.1Ezekiel’s four-faced creatures; Plato has a composite image of the soul.
3119. 12.46.2Plato’s image of the soul as a composite creature.
3120. 12.46.3The soul’s lowest part is a many-headed beast.
3121. 12.46.4Beast, lion, and man are joined within the outward form of a man.
3122. 12.46.5Injustice feeds the beast and starves the man within.
3123. 12.46.6Justice lets the inner man rule and tame the beast.
3124. 12.47.1Plato, like Israel, divides his citizens into twelve tribes.
3125. 12.48.1Jerusalem’s site resembles Plato’s ideal city site.
3126. 12.48.2Plato’s city is eighty stades from the sea.
3127. 12.48.3The land is fertile, rugged, and without neighbours.
3128. 12.48.4Distance from the sea protects the city’s virtue.
3129. 12.48.5The sea breeds faithlessness and wealth corrupts; Eusebius turns to Plato’s rejection of Greek poetry.
3130. 12.49.1Plato: imitative poetry corrupts the mind; even Homer must be judged.
3131. 12.49.2Truth must come before honour to Homer.
3132. 12.49.3Poets are not judged on medicine or the arts.
3133. 12.49.4Which city did Homer improve?
3134. 12.49.5Homer neither gave laws nor led wars.
3135. 12.49.6Homer invented nothing practical.
3136. 12.49.7Homer founded no school as Pythagoras did.
3137. 12.49.8Homer’s disciple Creophylus was a nonentity.
3138. 12.49.9If Homer could truly educate, he would have had many disciples.
3139. 12.49.10Sophists were adored for their teaching.
3140. 12.49.11Homer would not have been left to wander if he could teach virtue.
3141. 12.49.12Poets imitate images of virtue, like painters of shoemakers.
3142. 12.49.13Poetry colours ignorance with metre.
3143. 12.49.14Without music, poetry’s emptiness appears.
3144. 12.49.15Eusebius turns to Plato on God and providence, beginning with the atheists’ views.
3145. 12.50.1Plato’s Laws: some ascribe all things to nature, art, and chance.
3146. 12.50.2They say nature and chance make the greatest things, art the lesser.
3147. 12.50.3The atheists derive the cosmos from soulless elements by chance.
3148. 12.50.4Art is later and mortal; law, they say, is mere art.
3149. 12.50.5They say gods, morality, and justice exist only by convention.
3150. 12.50.6Such teaching corrupts the young and breeds impiety and faction.
3151. 12.50.7The atheists make the elements first and soul later.
3152. 12.50.8This is the spring of all foolish opinions about nature.
3153. 12.50.9Soul is older than all bodies and governs their changes.
3154. 12.50.10Mind and art are prior to what is called nature.
3155. 12.50.11Soul, being first, is most truly “by nature.”
3156. 12.51.1Plato invokes God before proving the gods’ existence.
3157. 12.51.2Some things move and some rest, in one place or several.
3158. 12.51.3Rotation in place is one kind of motion.
3159. 12.51.4If all stood still, which motion would come first?
3160. 12.51.5Self-motion must come first.
3161. 12.51.6Self-motion is the oldest and mightiest change.
3162. 12.51.7What do we call self-motion in a body?
3163. 12.51.8Self-motion is life, and life is soul.
3164. 12.51.9Each thing has substance, definition, and name.
3165. 12.51.10Example: “even” and its definition.
3166. 12.51.11Name and definition indicate the same thing.
3167. 12.51.12Soul is defined as self-moving motion.
3168. 12.51.13Soul is the first motion and the oldest of all.
3169. 12.51.14Motion caused by another is secondary, belonging to soulless body.
3170. 12.51.15Soul rules; body is ruled.
3171. 12.51.16The states of soul are older than those of body.
3172. 12.51.17Mental states precede bodily properties.
3173. 12.51.18Soul is the cause of good and evil.
3174. 12.51.19At least two souls govern the heaven, good and evil.
3175. 12.51.20Soul moves all things; with mind it leads to good, with folly to the opposite.
3176. 12.51.21Which soul rules the heavens, the wise or the foolish?
3177. 12.51.22The orderly heavens show that the best soul governs them.
3178. 12.51.23The nature of mind’s motion is hard to state.
3179. 12.51.24Mind must be seen in an image, as the sun cannot be gazed at.
3180. 12.51.25Mind is like one of the ten kinds of motion.
3181. 12.51.26Rotation in one place is most like mind.
3182. 12.51.27Mind moves like a perfect rotating sphere.
3183. 12.51.28Disorderly motion is akin to folly.
3184. 12.51.29Either the best soul or its opposite drives the heavens.
3185. 12.51.30Virtuous soul drives the heavens.
3186. 12.51.31Each star too is driven by soul.
3187. 12.51.32The sun’s soul is seen only by the mind.
3188. 12.51.33Three ways soul could move the sun.
3189. 12.51.34Soul moves the sun from within, by a body, or by bodiless power.
3190. 12.51.35Plato’s Philebus: the wise agree that mind is king of heaven and earth.
3191. 12.51.36Is the universe governed by chance or by mind?
3192. 12.51.37It is impious to deny that mind orders the cosmos.
3193. 12.51.38Socrates and Protarchus accept the risk of affirming providence.
3194. 12.51.39Living bodies are made of the elements.
3195. 12.51.40The elements in us are small and impure compared with those in the universe.
3196. 12.51.41Our fire derives from the fire of the universe, not the reverse.
3197. 12.51.42The same holds for earth and the other elements.
3198. 12.51.43The cosmos too is a body made of the elements.
3199. 12.51.44Our body derives from the body of the cosmos.
3200. 12.51.45Our soul must come from the soul of the universe.
3201. 12.51.46The cause that is wisdom in us must be wisdom in the universe.
3202. 12.51.47A cause called wisdom and mind orders the seasons.
3203. 12.51.48A royal soul and mind are in Zeus.
3204. 12.52.1Plato’s Laws: answer to those who think the gods do not care for men.
3205. 12.52.2The prosperity of the wicked makes some think the gods do not care.
3206. 12.52.3Plato will extend the argument against atheism.
3207. 12.52.4The interlocutors will answer for the young man.
3208. 12.52.5The good gods care for small things as well as great.
3209. 12.52.6Virtue includes temperance, mind, and courage.
3210. 12.52.7The gods have no share in vice.
3211. 12.52.8Idleness and neglect are vices, as of drones.
3212. 12.52.9God cannot have the vice of neglect.
3213. 12.52.10Neglect arises from indifference or laziness, not from impossibility.
3214. 12.52.11The gods know, see, and hear all things.
3215. 12.52.12The gods are all-powerful and good, and cannot be lazy.
3216. 12.52.13Gods do not neglect through idleness.
3217. 12.52.14Do the gods neglect through ignorance or weakness of will?
3218. 12.52.15Men are the most god-fearing creatures and possessions of the gods.
3219. 12.52.16Whether men are small or great, the gods would not neglect them.
3220. 12.52.17A physician must care for small parts too.
3221. 12.52.18Great things depend on small, as large stones on small.
3222. 12.52.19God is not worse than a human craftsman who perfects small and great alike.
3223. 12.52.20God’s neglect is refuted; a myth must now persuade.
3224. 12.52.21All things are arranged for the good of the whole.
3225. 12.52.22The part exists for the whole, not the whole for the part.
3226. 12.52.23God, like a draughts-player, moves better souls to better places and worse to worse.
3227. 12.52.24The gods’ care of all is easy.
3228. 12.52.25God arranged all so that virtue would prevail in the universe.
3229. 12.52.26God left our character to our own wills.
3230. 12.52.27Souls rise or sink by their own choices to fitting places.
3231. 12.52.28Divine justice: like goes to like, in life and after death.
3232. 12.52.29No one escapes divine justice, in earth, heaven, or Hades.
3233. 12.52.30The prosperity of the wicked does not prove the gods’ neglect.
3234. 12.52.31May God help the young man; the third argument follows.
3235. 12.52.32Psalm 139 anticipated Plato on the inescapability of God.
3236. 12.52.33Scripture anticipated all of Plato’s argument; Eusebius counts prophets and apostles alike as Hebrews.
3237. 13.0.1Eusebius explains why he follows Moses rather than Plato, and first shows Plato’s rejection of the Greek theologians.
3238. 13.1.1Plato (Timaeus): we must believe the old poets about the gods’ origin, since they claim to be the gods’ offspring.
3239. 13.1.2Plato’s summary of the poets’ genealogy of the gods.
3240. 13.1.3Eusebius: Plato mocks the poets by calling them children of gods.
3241. 13.1.4Plato’s irony shows he speaks against his own judgment, out of deference to the law.
3242. 13.1.5Eusebius introduces Plato’s Epinomis.
3243. 13.2.1Plato (Epinomis) resolves to give a better account of the origin of the gods than earlier writers.
3244. 13.2.2Eusebius introduces Plato, Republic 2.
3245. 13.3.1Socrates begins his critique of the poets’ myths about the gods.
3246. 13.3.2The chief fault of the poets is portraying the gods falsely.
3247. 13.3.3The tales of Heaven and Cronus should not be told to the young.
3248. 13.3.4Such stories would excuse crime among the young.
3249. 13.3.5Tales of wars among the gods must not be told; the poets must teach harmony.
3250. 13.3.6Homer’s battles of the gods are excluded, allegorized or not.
3251. 13.3.7The young cannot discern allegory, so their first stories must teach virtue.
3252. 13.3.8The founders of the city set the patterns for the poets.
3253. 13.3.9The first pattern: God must be represented as he is, that is, good.
3254. 13.3.10The good cannot harm and so cannot cause evil.
3255. 13.3.11God, being good, is not the cause of evils.
3256. 13.3.12Homer’s two jars of Zeus are rejected.
3257. 13.3.13Further lines of Homer on Zeus’ gifts are rejected.
3258. 13.3.14Poets who make the gods causes of evil are rejected, including Aeschylus.
3259. 13.3.15If misfortunes are ascribed to God, they must be presented as just and beneficial punishment.
3260. 13.3.16Punishment from God may be described as beneficial.
3261. 13.3.17The claim that God causes evil must be resisted in every way.
3262. 13.3.18First law: God is the cause only of good.
3263. 13.3.19Second question: does God change his form or deceive?
3264. 13.3.20What is best is least changed by external causes.
3265. 13.3.21The best soul and the best-made things are least altered.
3266. 13.3.22God, being in the best condition, is not changed by others.
3267. 13.3.23God could only change for the worse, which no one would choose.
3268. 13.3.24God remains forever in his own form; Homer’s disguised gods are rejected.
3269. 13.3.25Tales of shape-changing gods in tragedy are rejected.
3270. 13.3.26Mothers must not frighten children with tales of gods roaming in disguise.
3271. 13.3.27Could God deceive by false appearances?
3272. 13.3.28All gods and men hate the “true lie” in the soul.
3273. 13.3.29Ignorance in the soul about reality is the falsehood men hate most.
3274. 13.3.30The lie in words is only an image of the true lie, ignorance in the soul.
3275. 13.3.31A lie in words can be useful as medicine against enemies or deranged friends.
3276. 13.3.32None of the uses of falsehood applies to God, who knows ancient things.
3277. 13.3.33God has no reason to lie and is wholly free of falsehood.
3278. 13.3.34Second law: God is simple and true and neither changes nor deceives.
3279. 13.3.35Homer’s lying dream and Aeschylus’ lying Apollo are rejected.
3280. 13.3.36Poets who speak so of the gods are excluded from education.
3281. 13.3.37Hebrew Scripture has no shameful myths and teaches, like Plato, that God and his works are good.
3282. 13.3.38Moses calls all God’s works good; Scripture teaches that God is not the cause of evils.
3283. 13.3.39The vine passage shows evil comes from free choice; God’s punishments are remedies like a physician’s.
3284. 13.3.40Scripture’s “evils from God” are beneficial discipline, as both Plato and Proverbs teach.
3285. 13.3.41Eusebius repeats Plato’s rule on divine punishment and applies it to Scripture.
3286. 13.3.42Malachi and the Psalms teach God’s unchangeableness.
3287. 13.3.43The Word’s appearances in human form are not deceptive transformations but a healing medicine.
3288. 13.3.44The Word came to heal humankind, which had fallen into a madness that forgot God and itself.
3289. 13.3.45The incarnate Word was truly man and truly the Word of God, without deception.
3290. 13.3.46The Word acted truly, not in mere appearance, through the man he assumed, to reconcile all to the Father.
3291. 13.3.47Eusebius applies Plato’s rule of exclusion to those who teach otherwise.
3292. 13.4.1Socrates (Euthyphro): people accept the crimes of Zeus and Cronus yet blame Euthyphro.
3293. 13.4.2Socrates suggests that his doubts about such myths are why he is prosecuted.
3294. 13.4.3Socrates asks whether the battles of the gods painted and woven at Athens are true.
3295. 13.4.4Euthyphro offers more tales; Eusebius introduces Numenius.
3296. 13.5.1Numenius: Plato criticized Athenian theology safely by putting it in Euthyphro’s mouth.
3297. 13.6.1Socrates (Crito): he follows only the best reasoning.
3298. 13.6.2Socrates will not abandon his principles for fear of the many.
3299. 13.6.3Socrates asks whether his principle about opinions still holds now that he faces death.
3300. 13.6.4The principle: some opinions are to be valued and others not.
3301. 13.6.5Crito agrees that not all opinions or all men’s opinions are to be honored.
3302. 13.6.6A man in training heeds only his trainer or physician.
3303. 13.6.7Disobeying the expert and following the many harms the body.
3304. 13.6.8In matters of justice too, one must follow the one who understands, not the many.
3305. 13.6.9Life is not worth living with a ruined body.
3306. 13.6.10The part of us concerned with justice is far more precious than the body.
3307. 13.6.11We must heed the one who knows and the truth itself, not the many.
3308. 13.6.12Christians in persecution, like the Hebrew martyrs, heed the Word of God, not the many.
3309. 13.7.1Socrates (Crito): doing wrong is always evil and shameful.
3310. 13.7.2One must not return wrong or evil for wrong.
3311. 13.7.3Socrates asks Crito to agree that retaliation is never right.
3312. 13.7.4One must keep just agreements.
3313. 13.7.5Scripture, like Plato, forbids returning evil for evil.
3314. 13.8.1The Laws rebuke Socrates for wishing to escape against his agreements.
3315. 13.8.2The Laws: Socrates freely agreed to them over seventy years.
3316. 13.8.3Socrates’ lifelong residence in Athens shows his consent to its laws.
3317. 13.9.1The Laws: as a lawbreaker in exile Socrates could no longer teach virtue honorably.
3318. 13.9.2In Thessaly men would laugh at his disguised escape.
3319. 13.9.3The Laws: escape would make Socrates a fawning parasite and betray his teaching.
3320. 13.9.4His children would be cared for without his escape.
3321. 13.9.5His friends will care for his children if he dies.
3322. 13.9.6The Laws: put nothing before justice, so as to give account in Hades.
3323. 13.9.7If he escapes, the Laws here and in Hades will be against him.
3324. 13.10.1Socrates (Apology): a good man considers only whether he acts justly, not the risk of death.
3325. 13.10.2Achilles chose death rather than dishonor.
3326. 13.10.3One must hold one’s post whatever the danger.
3327. 13.10.4Socrates will not desert the post the god gave him.
3328. 13.10.5Fearing death is pretending to know what one does not know.
3329. 13.10.6Socrates knows that wrongdoing is evil; he will not fear death, which may be good.
3330. 13.10.7Suppose the court acquitted Socrates on condition that he stop philosophizing.
3331. 13.10.8Socrates would obey the god rather than the Athenians.
3332. 13.10.9Death is either dreamless sleep or a migration; either is good.
3333. 13.10.10Dreamless sleep is better than most days and nights, so such a death is gain.
3334. 13.10.11If death is a journey, one will meet the true judges of the dead.
3335. 13.10.12Socrates would gladly die to converse with the great men of old.
3336. 13.10.13Scripture too teaches obedience to God over men and the blessed life of the righteous after death.
3337. 13.11.1Plato (Republic): those who die nobly are to be honored as daimones, and their tombs revered.
3338. 13.11.2Eusebius applies Plato’s honors for the noble dead to Christian veneration of the martyrs’ tombs.
3339. 13.11.3Eusebius turns to earlier writers who traced Greek borrowings, beginning with Aristobulus.
3340. 13.12.1Aristobulus: Plato and Pythagoras borrowed from an early Greek translation of the Law.
3341. 13.12.2The full translation of the Law was made under Ptolemy Philadelphus.
3342. 13.12.3Aristobulus: God’s “voice” means his creative works.
3343. 13.12.4Aristobulus: Greek philosophers and Orpheus echo Moses on God’s rule over creation.
3344. 13.12.5An Orphic poem proclaims one invisible creator God, seen only by a Chaldean (Abraham) and by the one born of the water (Moses).
3345. 13.12.6Aratus’ Phaenomena opens with God’s presence everywhere and his care for men.
3346. 13.12.7Aristobulus: the poets’ “Zeus” really refers to God.
3347. 13.12.8The Jewish law aims at piety, justice, self-control, and the other true goods.
3348. 13.12.9Aristobulus: God gave the seventh day as rest; it is also the first day, the birth of light.
3349. 13.12.10Wisdom is the source of all light, like a lamp.
3350. 13.12.11Solomon says wisdom existed before creation; God’s rest means he fixed the order of things, not that he stopped acting.
3351. 13.12.12The six days show the order of creation; the Sabbath is a sign of reason, our seventh faculty.
3352. 13.12.13The cosmos moves in sevens; Hesiod calls the seventh day holy.
3353. 13.12.14Lines ascribed to Homer on the seventh day.
3354. 13.12.15The seventh day signifies leaving forgetfulness and vice behind and gaining knowledge of truth.
3355. 13.12.16Aristobulus cites Linus on the seventh day; Eusebius turns to Clement.
3356. 13.13.1Clement: the Stoics drew from Scripture their notion of God as spirit, though Christians call God Maker only.
3357. 13.13.2Clement: the Stoics misread Wisdom of Solomon; Plato hints that there is one true principle.
3358. 13.13.3Plato (Timaeus) declines to state the first principle.
3359. 13.13.4Clement: Greek errors about matter, chance, and providence arose from misreading Scripture.
3360. 13.13.5Clement: Plato’s fiery punishers in the Myth of Er are Scripture’s angels.
3361. 13.13.6Clement: Plato knew of hell’s fires and of guardian angels.
3362. 13.13.7Clement: Plato taught that the world came into being from one maker out of nothing.
3363. 13.13.8Clement: Plato’s evil-working soul in the Laws is the devil of Scripture.
3364. 13.13.9Clement: Plato’s Phaedrus and Laws echo Paul on the struggle against spiritual powers.
3365. 13.13.10Plato (Laws): the battle between good and evil in heaven is unending.
3366. 13.13.11Clement: Moses distinguishes the intelligible world (the first day) from the sensible.
3367. 13.13.12Clement: Plato’s ideas and sensible copies derive from Genesis.
3368. 13.13.13Clement: Moses’ body from earth and soul breathed from God is echoed by Plato.
3369. 13.13.14Clement: the Word is God’s image, the human mind the image of the image; likeness means following God.
3370. 13.13.15Clement: Stoic and Platonic ideals of the goal of life and of friendship come from Scripture.
3371. 13.13.16Plato: like is dear to like, and God is the measure of all things.
3372. 13.13.17Plato: the good man is a friend of God; likeness to the divine is the goal of life.
3373. 13.13.18Clement: Plato’s myth of the metals shows that men are brothers under one God.
3374. 13.13.19Clement: some read Plato’s three metals as Jews, Greeks, and Christians, with the Holy Spirit as the royal gold.
3375. 13.13.20Clement: Plato’s philosopher in the Theaetetus pictures the Christian life.
3376. 13.13.21Clement: Plato echoes Christ on truthfulness and oaths; the philosophers learned God’s creative word from Moses.
3377. 13.13.22Clement: Greek writers echo the creation of man from dust.
3378. 13.13.23Callimachus and Hesiod speak of man formed from clay.
3379. 13.13.24Clement: Stoic “craftsmanlike fire” and Homer’s separation of Oceanus and Tethys echo Scripture.
3380. 13.13.25Clement: Greek poets confess God’s omnipotence.
3381. 13.13.26Clement: Aratus and Homer describe God’s ordering of the world in Mosaic terms.
3382. 13.13.27Clement: Democritus and Pindar speak of one supreme God and creator.
3383. 13.13.28Clement: Plato’s Sixth Letter and Timaeus hint at the Father and the Son.
3384. 13.13.29Clement reads Plato’s Second Letter as indicating the Trinity.
3385. 13.13.30Clement: Plato’s Er is Zoroaster; his return on the twelfth day and Heracles’ labors allegorize the soul’s ascent; Empedocles foresees a final conflagration.
3386. 13.13.31Clement: Heraclitus taught an everlasting fire and a world generated and destroyed by fire.
3387. 13.13.32Clement: Plato’s “nightly day” and David’s sleep and waking point to the incarnation and resurrection.
3388. 13.13.33Clement: Plato’s eighth day in the Myth of Er prefigures the Lord’s day.
3389. 13.13.34Clement: Greek poets too honor the seventh day.
3390. 13.13.35Clement: Plato’s scourged just man foretells Christ; Antisthenes, Xenophon, and the Sibyl teach that God is invisible.
3391. 13.13.36Xenophanes: God is one and unlike mortals; men make gods in their own image.
3392. 13.13.37Bacchylides and Cleanthes describe the divine and the good.
3393. 13.13.38Clement: Cleanthes rejects the opinion of the many; the tragedians expose Zeus’ adulteries.
3394. 13.13.39Heraclitus, Melanippides, Parmenides, and Hesiod speak of the one eternal Word or God.
3395. 13.13.40Lines ascribed to Sophocles proclaim one God and condemn idols.
3396. 13.13.41Euripides and Aeschylus speak of the supreme God in exalted terms.
3397. 13.13.42Clement: Heraclitus and Timaeus of Locri speak of one principle, as Moses and the Sibyl do.
3398. 13.13.43Clement: Xenocrates hints at Father and Son; Homer and Isaiah show that God cannot be grasped by the body.
3399. 13.13.44Epicharmus speaks of a divine Word from which human reason springs.
3400. 13.13.45Menander, like Isaiah, teaches that God wants righteousness rather than sacrifices.
3401. 13.13.46Jeremiah and the Psalms are echoed in Menander’s call to just living.
3402. 13.13.47Diphilus, like Scripture, teaches that God sees all and judges after death.
3403. 13.13.48A tragic poet foretells a final conflagration and renewal.
3404. 13.13.49Orphic verses and Empedocles speak of renewal and of eternal blessedness for the just.
3405. 13.13.50Orpheus: the invisible God was known only to a Chaldean, Abraham or his son.
3406. 13.13.51Orpheus’ throne and footstool echo Isaiah.
3407. 13.13.52An Orphic hymn praises God as lord of all creation, served by angels.
3408. 13.13.53The Orphic hymn echoes Hosea and Moses on God’s sole sovereignty.
3409. 13.13.54Archilochus, Orpheus, and Phocylides echo Scripture on God’s power and on good and evil angels.
3410. 13.13.55Philemon, Sophocles, and Orpheus teach one ruling power over all.
3411. 13.13.56Pindar, like Scripture, says God’s counsels are unsearchable.
3412. 13.13.57Hesiod and Solon say God’s mind is hidden from men.
3413. 13.13.58Hesiod echoes the curse of Genesis on toil.
3414. 13.13.59Homer shows God is just; Menander that he is good.
3415. 13.13.60Verses ascribed to Aeschylus describe the Most High God’s power, echoing the Psalms.
3416. 13.13.61The Delphic oracle concedes that Athena could not sway Zeus.
3417. 13.13.62Thearidas, Orpheus, and Diphilus confess one principle and Father of all.
3418. 13.13.63Clement: Plato’s ascent of the soul to the good is true philosophy, the mark of the golden race.
3419. 13.13.64Clement: all creatures and all nations have an innate notion of the one Creator.
3420. 13.13.65Clement: the Greek philosophers, starting from Scripture, honored one supreme cause but knew God only indirectly.
3421. 13.13.66Eusebius turns to the points on which he departs from Plato.
3422. 13.14.1The Hebrew oracles, being from God and confirmed by fulfilled prophecy, are free from error.
3423. 13.14.2Human philosophers, Plato included, mixed falsehood with truth.
3424. 13.14.3Even Plato fell back into the idolatry of the Athenians.
3425. 13.14.4Eusebius returns to Plato’s legislation on the traditional gods.
3426. 13.14.5Plato’s injunction (Timaeus) to believe the poets’ genealogy of the gods.
3427. 13.14.6Plato contradicts himself by both accepting and condemning the poets’ myths.
3428. 13.14.7Plato would strike out Homer’s verses about Hades.
3429. 13.14.8Plato would forbid portraying Achilles’ unmanly grief.
3430. 13.14.9Plato rejects Homer’s tales of Zeus’ lust and of Ares and Aphrodite.
3431. 13.14.10Eusebius asks how Plato can call the poets children of gods after condemning them.
3432. 13.14.11Plato’s irrational faith from fear of the law contradicts his rejection of the myths.
3433. 13.14.12Plato himself condemned the poets’ lies about Heaven and Cronus.
3434. 13.14.13Plato must be set aside for his pretense; Moses and the Hebrew oracles hold to true godliness.
3435. 13.15.1The Hebrews teach that angels are created, and that demons came from their fall.
3436. 13.15.2Created spirits, depending on God for being and virtue, are not gods.
3437. 13.15.3Plato errs in calling rational beings ungenerated emanations.
3438. 13.15.4Plato makes these emanations gods.
3439. 13.15.5Plato does not explain where the daimones come from.
3440. 13.15.6If daimones are emanations of good beings, they could not be evil.
3441. 13.15.7Evil daimones cannot be emanations of the divine.
3442. 13.15.8Either the daimones are ungenerated rivals of God, or God creates from nothing, as the Hebrews teach.
3443. 13.15.9The Hebrews: rational beings were created from nothing by God’s power.
3444. 13.15.10Created spirits are not gods; they can fall through free neglect of the good.
3445. 13.16.1Plato, unlike the Hebrews, makes the soul composite.
3446. 13.16.2Plato (Timaeus) on the composition of the soul.
3447. 13.16.3Plato also teaches that the soul passes into animals, without proof.
3448. 13.16.4Plato (Phaedo): souls are bound again into bodies according to their habits.
3449. 13.16.5The gluttonous become asses.
3450. 13.16.6The unjust become wolves and birds of prey.
3451. 13.16.7Those with civic virtue become bees, ants, or men again.
3452. 13.16.8Plato (Phaedrus) on judgment and the cycles of reincarnation.
3453. 13.16.9In the Myth of Er, Orpheus chooses to be a swan, Thamyras a nightingale.
3454. 13.16.10Ajax becomes a lion, Agamemnon an eagle, Thersites an ape.
3455. 13.16.11Odysseus chooses a quiet private life; animals pass into men and other animals.
3456. 13.16.12Eusebius: Plato’s transmigration is Egyptian, and contradicts his teaching on eternal punishment.
3457. 13.16.13Plato makes rebirth a matter of choice, not of justice.
3458. 13.16.14Plato (Phaedo) describes judgment, purification, and eternal punishment in Tartarus.
3459. 13.16.15Plato: those purified by philosophy live forever without bodies in fairer dwellings.
3460. 13.16.16Plato (Gorgias): the just go to the islands of the blessed, the incurably wicked suffer forever as examples.
3461. 13.16.17Eusebius: eternal punishment and free choice of new lives are incompatible.
3462. 13.16.18Even Plato’s followers rejected his division of the soul into rational and irrational parts.
3463. 13.17.1Severus: a soul mixed of passible and impassible being would dissolve like a mixed color.
3464. 13.17.2Mixed opposites separate in time; so would a composite soul.
3465. 13.17.3Composite opposites cannot remain together without a third binding principle.
3466. 13.17.4The soul is simple and incorporeal, and so immortal.
3467. 13.17.5Many conclude from the soul’s affections that it is mortal and bodily.
3468. 13.17.6Severus will show that the soul is neither passible nor compounded.
3469. 13.17.7Eusebius ends the quotation from Severus and turns to Plato on the heavens.
3470. 13.18.1Plato agrees that the heavens were made, but unlike the Hebrews he calls them gods.
3471. 13.18.2Plato (Epinomis) calls heaven a god to be worshipped.
3472. 13.18.3Plato names the stars as the chief visible gods, with the airy daimones below them.
3473. 13.18.4Plato (Timaeus) on the world-body bound together from the four elements.
3474. 13.18.5Plato: the world-soul is stretched through the heaven.
3475. 13.18.6Plato: sun, moon, and planets were made to mark time.
3476. 13.18.7The heavenly bodies became living beings.
3477. 13.18.8Plato (Laws): everything with a soul is subject to change.
3478. 13.18.9Eusebius: if the heavens have souls, by Plato’s own argument they change, so they cannot be eternal gods.
3479. 13.18.10Plato (Timaeus): the created gods are not immortal by nature, but are preserved by the Creator’s will.
3480. 13.18.11Moses forbids worship of the heavenly bodies and directs worship to God alone.
3481. 13.18.12Philo: Moses saw the cosmos as a city whose heavenly rulers are subjects of God.
3482. 13.18.13Philo: the stars are God’s lieutenants; Moses corrects those who worship them.
3483. 13.18.14Philo: men wrongly took the sun, moon, and stars for gods because of their benefits.
3484. 13.18.15Philo: sensible things serve the intelligible as sense serves mind.
3485. 13.18.16Philo: worship belongs only to the invisible Creator; worship of a creature is the greatest impiety.
3486. 13.18.17Eusebius admires Plato, but shows his deficiencies beside Moses and the prophets.
3487. 13.18.18Eusebius introduces Plato’s laws on women and his teaching on love.
3488. 13.19.1Plato (Republic): women would exercise naked with men.
3489. 13.19.2Plato defends women’s naked exercise against ridicule.
3490. 13.19.3Plato (Laws): boys and girls alike are to be trained in dancing, even in armor.
3491. 13.19.4Plato (Laws): education in war and music is compulsory for all, as children of the city.
3492. 13.19.5Plato would train women equally with men in riding and gymnastics.
3493. 13.19.6Plato would have girls and women trained for war.
3494. 13.19.7Scripture ascribes victory to God, not to the strength of men or women.
3495. 13.19.8Plato (Laws) has girls race naked and older girls race clothed.
3496. 13.19.9Contests of strength are to be fights in armor.
3497. 13.19.10The same rules for armed combat apply to women until marriage.
3498. 13.19.11Plato permits women to take part in equestrian contests if their nature allows.
3499. 13.19.12Plato’s law on heiresses has the judge view the candidates naked; women are to dance naked at festivals.
3500. 13.19.13Plato (Laws): young men and women are to dance naked so far as modesty allows.
3501. 13.19.14Plato (Republic): wives and children are to be held in common.
3502. 13.19.15Plato: men and women living in common will be drawn to union by erotic necessity.
3503. 13.19.16Some interpret Plato’s community of wives as distribution by the rulers, not license.
3504. 13.19.17Plato sets the ages for bearing and begetting children for the city.
3505. 13.19.18Plato orders that children conceived outside the set ages not be reared.
3506. 13.20.1Plato (Phaedrus) describes the stream of beauty passing between lover and beloved.
3507. 13.20.2Plato describes the beloved’s response and the temptation of the unruly horse.
3508. 13.20.3If reason prevails, the lovers live in self-control and concord.
3509. 13.20.4If the lovers give way to passion, they sometimes indulge it.
3510. 13.20.5Such lovers remain friends, bound by mutual pledges.
3511. 13.20.6Plato promises the lovers a bright life and a common return to heaven.
3512. 13.20.7Moses punishes pederasty with death; Plato does not, but would put to death a slave who failed to report found treasure.
3513. 13.21.1Plato (Laws): a slave who fails to report found treasure is to be put to death.
3514. 13.21.2Plato lets a master who kills his own slave go with purification.
3515. 13.21.3Plato: manslaughter in anger is punished with two years’ exile.
3516. 13.21.4Killing in anger with premeditation brings three years’ exile.
3517. 13.21.5A repeat offender is exiled for life.
3518. 13.21.6Parents who kill a child in anger are exiled, and on return are separated from each other.
3519. 13.21.7Spouses who kill each other in anger are exiled and excluded from their children’s rites.
3520. 13.21.8Fratricide in anger brings the same exile and exclusion.
3521. 13.21.9Killing in self-defense leaves one pure, except a slave who kills a free man.
3522. 13.21.10Plato’s laws on premeditated murder and on spouses who wound each other.
3523. 13.21.11Moses’ laws on homicide and injury, including protection of slaves.
3524. 13.21.12Plato would flog a slave one lash for every grape or fig taken.
3525. 13.21.13Moses’ harvest laws show generosity to the neighbor and the poor.
3526. 13.21.14Eusebius accepts Plato’s best teachings, rejects the rest, and turns to the other Greek schools.
3527. 14.1.1Eusebius turns from Plato to the other Greek schools.
3528. 14.1.2Eusebius will expose the philosophers’ errors from their own writings, without hatred.
3529. 14.1.3Compared with the Hebrew prophets and with God, the philosophers must take second place.
3530. 14.1.4The whole Preparation answers why Christians prefer the barbarian writings to Greek philosophy.
3531. 14.2.1Eusebius outlines his plan: the natural philosophers, Plato’s successors, and the strife of the schools.
3532. 14.2.2The schools mocked and refuted one another.
3533. 14.2.3The Stoics too are mocked; the philosophers wage a war of words.
3534. 14.2.4The skeptics, Cyrenaics, and sensationalists will also be examined.
3535. 14.2.5Xenophanes and Parmenides, who rejected the senses, will be examined.
3536. 14.2.6Epicurus too will be refuted with the philosophers’ own arguments.
3537. 14.2.7Eusebius will show the natural philosophers’ disagreements, not from hatred of Greek learning but in self-defense.
3538. 14.3.1The Hebrews preserved their true philosophy unchanged from the beginning.
3539. 14.3.2Moses changed nothing in the forefathers’ theology, only giving a law for his people.
3540. 14.3.3The prophets never contradicted one another or Moses.
3541. 14.3.4Christianity agrees with what came before and restores the life of the pre-Mosaic Hebrews.
3542. 14.3.5Christian teaching is consistent from first to last and flourishes despite persecution.
3543. 14.3.6Eusebius begins with the natural philosophers, using Plato’s own account of their quarrels.
3544. 14.3.7Protagoras doubted the gods; Democritus made the void and the full the principles of all.
3545. 14.3.8Heraclitus made fire the principle of all things.
3546. 14.3.9Parmenides and Melissus taught that all is one and unmoved.
3547. 14.4.1Plato (Theaetetus): all the wise except Parmenides say that everything is in flux.
3548. 14.4.2No one can oppose so great an army without ridicule.
3549. 14.4.3Socrates proposes to examine the Heraclitean doctrine of flux.
3550. 14.4.4Theodorus: the Heracliteans cannot be argued with, since they allow nothing to be stable.
3551. 14.4.5The Heracliteans have no pupils; the question must be examined as a problem.
3552. 14.4.6The flux doctrine is opposed by Parmenides and Melissus, who say all is one and at rest.
3553. 14.4.7Socrates finds himself caught between the two camps.
3554. 14.4.8Plato (Sophist): each early philosopher told a myth about how many things there are.
3555. 14.4.9Plato: a battle of gods and giants rages over the nature of being.
3556. 14.4.10The materialists say only bodies exist.
3557. 14.4.11The friends of the forms say only intelligible forms are true being; the battle is endless.
3558. 14.4.12Plato discredited his predecessors; his own view, as shown, agreed with Moses.
3559. 14.4.13Plato’s successors in the Academy: Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo.
3560. 14.4.14Plato’s successors at once corrupted his teaching, and strife never ceased.
3561. 14.4.15Arcesilaus founded the Second Academy, teaching suspension of judgment.
3562. 14.4.16The later Academies; Eusebius introduces Numenius on the Academics.
3563. 14.5.1Numenius: Plato’s first successors kept much of his teaching but already diverged.
3564. 14.5.2Numenius regrets that Plato’s disciples did not keep his teaching as Pythagoras’ did his.
3565. 14.5.3Numenius: the Epicureans never departed from their master, and their school is free of faction.
3566. 14.5.4Numenius: the Stoics have been divided from the beginning.
3567. 14.5.5The Socratics too split into separate schools.
3568. 14.5.6Numenius: the Socratics misunderstood Socrates’ teaching on three gods.
3569. 14.5.7Numenius: Plato wrote obscurely, and so gave occasion for later divisions.
3570. 14.5.8Numenius will separate Plato from the Academy and show him a Pythagorean.
3571. 14.5.9Numenius: Plato combined Pythagorean solemnity with Socratic humanity.
3572. 14.5.10Numenius returns to his subject.
3573. 14.5.11Numenius: Zeno studied under Xenocrates, Polemo, Crates, Stilpo, and the Heracliteans.
3574. 14.5.12Arcesilaus drew on Crantor, Diodorus, and Pyrrho, and became a skeptic.
3575. 14.5.13Mocking verses describe Arcesilaus as a compound of Plato, Pyrrho, and Diodorus.
3576. 14.5.14Numenius: Arcesilaus mixed Pyrrho and Diodorus with Plato’s eloquence into inconsistent chatter.
3577. 14.6.1Numenius: Arcesilaus never held one position, like Diomedes whose side was unknown.
3578. 14.6.2Numenius: Arcesilaus bewitched hearers with phantom arguments and overturned whatever he said.
3579. 14.6.3Numenius: his good looks and charm made Arcesilaus pleasing despite his contradictions.
3580. 14.6.4Numenius: Arcesilaus, shaped by Crantor, Diodorus, and Pyrrho, was a Pyrrhonist in all but name.
3581. 14.6.5The skeptics claimed Arcesilaus as one of them.
3582. 14.6.6Numenius: Arcesilaus was a Pyrrhonist in all but name; Numenius rejects the claim that he feigned skepticism from fear.
3583. 14.6.7Numenius: Arcesilaus and Zeno, former fellow pupils, fell into a Homeric battle.
3584. 14.6.8The Academics could be attacked only by showing they were not Platonic.
3585. 14.6.9Arcesilaus attacked Zeno; Zeno, like Cephisodorus, struck at Plato instead.
3586. 14.6.10Zeno attacked Plato, whom he did not understand, instead of Arcesilaus.
3587. 14.6.11Zeno turned his attack from Arcesilaus to Plato.
3588. 14.6.12Arcesilaus tore down Zeno’s arguments.
3589. 14.6.13Arcesilaus attacked Zeno’s “apprehensive impression”; Zeno attacked the dead Plato instead.
3590. 14.6.14Arcesilaus’ eloquence overwhelmed the Stoics; for him nothing was certain.
3591. 14.7.1Numenius’ story of Lacydes, the stingy head of the Academy, who kept his own storeroom.
3592. 14.7.2Lacydes sealed his key in a tablet and threw the signet ring inside the storeroom.
3593. 14.7.3The slaves used the ring to plunder the storeroom and reseal it.
3594. 14.7.4Lacydes concluded that nothing can be apprehended from the mystery of his storeroom.
3595. 14.7.5Lacydes presents his storeroom as proof against the Stoics.
3596. 14.7.6A friend laughed at Lacydes and exposed the theft.
3597. 14.7.7The slaves, learning sophisms, broke the seal and replaced it.
3598. 14.7.8Lacydes argued with his slaves about whether he had sealed the store.
3599. 14.7.9The slaves turned Lacydes’ doctrine against him: a skeptic has no memory.
3600. 14.7.10The slaves learned Stoic arguments and beat Lacydes with his own skepticism.
3601. 14.7.11The household disputations left nothing in the storeroom.
3602. 14.7.12Lacydes, helpless, cried out to gods and neighbors.
3603. 14.7.13Lacydes finally admitted that skeptics teach one thing and live another.
3604. 14.7.14Lacydes’ successors: Evander and others.
3605. 14.7.15Carneades founded the Third Academy, distinguishing the inapprehensible from the unclear.
3606. 14.8.1Numenius: Carneades renewed Arcesilaus’ battle.
3607. 14.8.2Carneades swept his hearers away like a flooding river.
3608. 14.8.3Carneades, unlike Arcesilaus, was not deceived by his own arguments.
3609. 14.8.4Carneades allowed probable impressions so that life could be lived.
3610. 14.8.5Carneades gave ground only to attack more strongly.
3611. 14.8.6Carneades conceded true and false but denied either could be firmly grasped.
3612. 14.8.7He made true and false, apprehensible and inapprehensible, indistinguishable.
3613. 14.8.8False impressions are like true ones as a wax egg is like a real egg.
3614. 14.8.9Carneades captivated and enslaved his hearers.
3615. 14.8.10Carneades always won, his opponents being weaker speakers.
3616. 14.8.11The Stoic Antipater never dared answer Carneades openly, only in books.
3617. 14.8.12In private Carneades admitted the plain truth.
3618. 14.8.13Carneades expelled Mentor for adultery, trusting his own eyes against his doctrine.
3619. 14.8.14Carneades hid the truth under falsehoods, like good beans sinking beneath the empty ones.
3620. 14.8.15Clitomachus and then Philo succeeded Carneades.
3621. 14.9.1Numenius: Philo of Larissa at first championed Clitomachus’ views against the Stoics.
3622. 14.9.2Philo later abandoned suspension of judgment under the evidence of experience.
3623. 14.9.3Antiochus, influenced by the Stoics, founded yet another Academy.
3624. 14.9.4Eusebius turns to the natural philosophers, to see whether they learned anything worthy of God from the ancient theologies.
3625. 14.9.5If the ancestral religion had been true, philosophy would have been unnecessary.
3626. 14.9.6The philosophers’ wanderings and quarrels show that the ancestral religion did not give them truth.
3627. 14.9.7The philosophers’ innovation shows the mysteries held no sure knowledge of God.
3628. 14.9.8If the philosophers learned nothing true from the ancients, the old theology was only what Eusebius described before.
3629. 14.9.9Eusebius introduces Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo.
3630. 14.10.1Porphyry (Letter to Anebo): Greek philosophy on the gods rests mostly on conjecture.
3631. 14.10.2Porphyry: among the Greeks there is endless wrangling about the good.
3632. 14.10.3Porphyry admits that the philosophers’ proofs of the soul’s immortality are easily overturned.
3633. 14.10.4Porphyry’s Philosophy from Oracles admits that Apollo credited barbarians, including Hebrews, with the truth.
3634. 14.10.5Porphyry: the oracle credits barbarians, including the Hebrews, with finding the way to the gods.
3635. 14.10.6Even Porphyry’s god justifies preferring the Hebrews to the Greeks.
3636. 14.10.7By their own admission the philosophers offer only conjecture and endless disputes.
3637. 14.10.8Christians prefer the Hebrew writings not because of Apollo’s witness but because of their divine power.
3638. 14.10.9Eusebius promises to show the philosophers’ disagreements in their own words.
3639. 14.10.10Eusebius will correct the philosophers’ claim that the mathematical sciences are needed to know God.
3640. 14.10.11Many learned men knew nothing of God, and many unlearned were godly; Socrates is a witness.
3641. 14.11.1Xenophon: Socrates taught geometry only so far as land surveying requires.
3642. 14.11.2Socrates disapproved of advanced geometry as useless.
3643. 14.11.3Socrates allowed astronomy only for practical timekeeping.
3644. 14.11.4Socrates discouraged theoretical astronomy.
3645. 14.11.5Socrates held that the workings of the heavens are not for men to discover.
3646. 14.11.6Socrates refuted Anaxagoras’ view that the sun is a fiery stone.
3647. 14.11.7Socrates allowed arithmetic as far as useful; Eusebius introduces a letter of Xenophon.
3648. 14.12.1A letter ascribed to Xenophon says Socrates taught only human goods, and hints at Plato’s Sicilian ventures.
3649. 14.13.1Plato (Republic): what study draws the soul from becoming to being?
3650. 14.13.2Gymnastics concerns the perishable body and is not the study sought.
3651. 14.13.3Music trains by habit, not knowledge, and so is not the study sought either.
3652. 14.13.4The practical arts are also excluded.
3653. 14.13.5Plato: musicians, like astronomers, labor in vain measuring audible sounds.
3654. 14.13.6Glaucon mocks the empirical musicians.
3655. 14.13.7Socrates means not the string-twisters but the Pythagorean theorists.
3656. 14.13.8The harmonic theorists, too, stop at audible numbers and do not rise to problems.
3657. 14.13.9Eusebius introduces Plutarch’s collection of the philosophers’ opinions (the Placita).
3658. 14.14.1Plutarch: Thales made water the principle of all things.
3659. 14.14.2Anaximander made the infinite the principle but omitted the efficient cause.
3660. 14.14.3Anaximenes made air the principle but omitted the efficient cause.
3661. 14.14.4Heraclitus and Hippasus made fire the principle and end of all things.
3662. 14.14.5Democritus and Epicurus: the principles are indivisible atoms moving in the infinite void.
3663. 14.14.6Empedocles: four elements, with Love and Strife as moving powers.
3664. 14.14.7The early natural philosophers posited no God or Creator among the first principles.
3665. 14.14.8Anaxagoras was the first Greek to make mind the cause of all things.
3666. 14.14.9Anaxagoras, who said mind ordered all things, was nearly stoned as an atheist.
3667. 14.14.10Anaxagoras failed to explain nature by mind, as Socrates complains in the Phaedo.
3668. 14.15.1Socrates (Phaedo) was delighted to hear that mind orders all things.
3669. 14.15.2If mind orders all, the cause of each thing is what is best for it.
3670. 14.15.3Socrates hoped Anaxagoras would explain everything by what is best.
3671. 14.15.4He expected the same kind of explanation of the heavenly bodies.
3672. 14.15.5Socrates was disappointed: Anaxagoras explained everything by physical causes, not by mind.
3673. 14.15.6Anaxagoras’ method is like explaining Socrates’ sitting by bones and sinews.
3674. 14.15.7The true cause of Socrates’ staying is his judgment of what is best, not his bones.
3675. 14.15.8Socrates would have fled if he had not judged it more just to stay.
3676. 14.15.9Bodily conditions are necessary conditions, not causes; the cause is the choice of the best.
3677. 14.15.10The natural philosophers ignore the good that truly holds all things together.
3678. 14.15.11Anaxagoras’ successors; Eusebius introduces Plutarch on the philosophers’ views of the gods.
3679. 14.16.1Plutarch: some philosophers denied the gods altogether; Euripides hinted at it through Sisyphus.
3680. 14.16.2Plutarch: Anaxagoras and Plato both made God the orderer of matter.
3681. 14.16.3Plutarch’s source (Epicurean) objects that a blessed God would not care for human affairs.
3682. 14.16.4The argument: God could not have existed idle or asleep before ordering the world.
3683. 14.16.5The Epicurean argument concludes with the suffering of the good, as Agamemnon and Heracles.
3684. 14.16.6Plutarch summarizes the views of Thales, Anaximander, Democritus, and Pythagoras about God.
3685. 14.16.7Socrates and Plato: God is the One and the Good, pure mind.
3686. 14.16.8Aristotle: the highest God is a separate form above the ethereal spheres.
3687. 14.16.9The Stoics: God is craftsmanlike fire and spirit pervading the world.
3688. 14.16.10Epicurus: the gods are human in form and made of fine particles.
3689. 14.16.11The first Greeks to set mind over the world were late compared with the Hebrew history.
3690. 14.16.12The knowledge of the one God came late to the Greeks; polytheism was the older Egyptian and Phoenician error.
3691. 14.16.13Polytheism deified dead men; Eusebius now turns to those who rejected the senses.
3692. 14.17.1Aristocles: the Eleatics and Megarians rejected the senses and held that being is one and unmoved.
3693. 14.17.2Aristocles: reason is most divine, but sense is also a kind of knowledge.
3694. 14.17.3Perception implies a difference between agent and patient, so being is not one and unmoved.
3695. 14.17.4Everyone values healthy senses and would not give one up.
3696. 14.17.5Those who despise the senses should destroy them, as Pandarus vowed to burn his bow.
3697. 14.17.6The deniers of the senses use them constantly.
3698. 14.17.7Melissus argues from appearances that appearances are not real.
3699. 14.17.8Melissus refutes the senses by relying on them.
3700. 14.17.9Aristocles: right philosophy uses both the senses and reason.
3701. 14.17.10The succession from Xenophanes to Pyrrho; Eusebius introduces Aristocles against the Skeptics.
3702. 14.18.1Aristocles: we must first examine whether we can know anything.
3703. 14.18.2Timon gives Pyrrho’s three questions for happiness.
3704. 14.18.3Pyrrho: things are indifferent and undecidable, so we must hold no opinions.
3705. 14.18.4The result of suspending judgment: speechlessness and tranquillity.
3706. 14.18.5If others are wrong, there is truth and falsehood; if not, the skeptics are wrong.
3707. 14.18.6If all is indifferent, the skeptics are no wiser than anyone else.
3708. 14.18.7The skeptics contradict themselves in teaching and refuting.
3709. 14.18.8The skeptic must either be silent or assert something.
3710. 14.18.9Any meaningful statement by the skeptic defines and judges something.
3711. 14.18.10To call all things unclear, one must know what “clear” is.
3712. 14.18.11Aenesidemus’ modes of skepticism.
3713. 14.18.12If Aenesidemus knew his modes were true, he contradicted himself.
3714. 14.18.13The skeptics’ arguments are inductions; if they believe them, they hold opinions.
3715. 14.18.14Timon’s narrative of meeting Pyrrho contradicts his own skepticism.
3716. 14.18.15Pyrrho and Timon acted as if they knew and believed.
3717. 14.18.16The skeptics write to improve us, which assumes that truth can be known.
3718. 14.18.17If nothing is decidable, Pyrrho is no more admirable than a fool.
3719. 14.18.18A skeptic who recognizes no good or evil would be a dangerous member of society.
3720. 14.18.19Timon praises Pyrrho as unconquered by passion and opinion.
3721. 14.18.20Following nature and custom without assent is self-contradictory.
3722. 14.18.21The skeptics’ purgative analogy only shows their argument is nonsense.
3723. 14.18.22The skeptical argument must remain believed, unlike a purgative.
3724. 14.18.23Even skeptics trust their senses in practice.
3725. 14.18.24Aristocles: pleasure, pain, memory, and the arts all require opinion.
3726. 14.18.25Skepticism would make life a random sleep; only the skeptics are mad.
3727. 14.18.26Anecdotes from Antigonus of Carystus show Pyrrho could not live his skepticism.
3728. 14.18.27Aristocles: Pyrrho, a failed painter, became a vain critic of all.
3729. 14.18.28Timon, Pyrrho’s pupil, mocked all philosophers in his Silloi.
3730. 14.18.29Aenesidemus revived skepticism in Alexandria.
3731. 14.18.30Aristocles: skepticism is not even philosophy.
3732. 14.18.31Aristippus of Cyrene, founder of the Cyrenaics, implied that pleasure is the end.
3733. 14.18.32The younger Aristippus defined the end as pleasure and taught three states of feeling.
3734. 14.19.1Aristocles: the Cyrenaics said only feelings are known, not their causes.
3735. 14.19.2Knowing that one feels is already more than a feeling.
3736. 14.19.3To grasp a feeling is to know the one who feels it.
3737. 14.19.4Men and even dogs know the causes of their experiences.
3738. 14.19.5Without knowing more than feelings, the Cyrenaics could not choose, act, or even speak.
3739. 14.19.6The Cyrenaics could not even count their fingers.
3740. 14.19.7Such men would be no better than flies.
3741. 14.19.8Eusebius turns to Metrodorus and Protagoras, who trusted only the senses.
3742. 14.19.9Metrodorus began his book by saying no one knows anything.
3743. 14.19.10Protagoras doubted the gods; the Athenians exiled him and burned his books.
3744. 14.20.1Aristocles: some, notably Protagoras, trusted only the senses.
3745. 14.20.2Protagoras: man is the measure of all things.
3746. 14.20.3Aristocles, following Plato, refutes Protagoras: why not a pig as the measure?
3747. 14.20.4Memory and partial sight show that knowledge is not perception.
3748. 14.20.5Protagoras’ doctrine refutes itself.
3749. 14.20.6Experts know better than non-experts, so not all appearances are equal.
3750. 14.20.7Protagoras’ view abolishes all distinctions.
3751. 14.20.8Protagoreanism would make virtue and vice the same.
3752. 14.20.9Aristocles turns to those (Epicureans) who say all impressions are true.
3753. 14.20.10No criterion is infallible, and perceptions differ greatly.
3754. 14.20.11The bent oar shows that perception deceives; the claim that all impressions are true refutes itself.
3755. 14.20.12Things appear as they are, not as we imagine them.
3756. 14.20.13The Epicureans, heirs of Aristippus, made pleasure the end.
3757. 14.20.14Epicurus’ teachers; Eusebius introduces Aristocles’ critique.
3758. 14.21.1Aristocles: Epicureans make pleasure and pain the criterion of choice.
3759. 14.21.2Feeling needs reason to judge whether it is to be chosen.
3760. 14.21.3Even Epicureans weigh pleasures by quantity, which requires reason.
3761. 14.21.4Reason, not feeling, judges between pleasures and pains.
3762. 14.21.5Perceptions reflect the world; feelings reflect only ourselves.
3763. 14.21.6The best philosophers use both senses and mind.
3764. 14.21.7Sense is the hunter’s net, reason the hound; mind, not pleasure, must judge.
3765. 14.22.1Plato (Philebus): Socrates asks whether pleasure or mind is more akin to truth, measure, and beauty.
3766. 14.22.2Mind is akin to truth; pleasure is the greatest impostor.
3767. 14.22.3Mind is more measured than pleasure.
3768. 14.22.4No one ever thought wisdom ugly.
3769. 14.22.5The greatest pleasures shame us and are hidden in the night.
3770. 14.22.6Measure ranks first among goods; pleasure is neither first nor second.
3771. 14.22.7Proportion and beauty rank second.
3772. 14.22.8Mind and wisdom rank third.
3773. 14.22.9Sciences, arts, and right opinions rank fourth.
3774. 14.22.10Pure painless pleasures rank fifth.
3775. 14.22.11The ranking ends with a line of Orpheus.
3776. 14.22.12Socrates recalls Philebus’ claim that pleasure is the good.
3777. 14.22.13Socrates had held mind far better than pleasure.
3778. 14.22.14Neither mind nor pleasure alone is sufficient.
3779. 14.22.15Mind is far nearer than pleasure to the good.
3780. 14.22.16Pleasure is fifth, whatever the beasts and the many say.
3781. 14.22.17Eusebius introduces Dionysius of Alexandria’s On Nature against Epicurus.
3782. 14.23.1Dionysius: is the universe one, or many and infinite as some suppose?
3783. 14.23.2The atomists say atoms colliding at random produce worlds.
3784. 14.23.3Epicurus and Democritus differed only on the size of atoms.
3785. 14.23.4Others called atoms partless bodies or masses.
3786. 14.24.1Dionysius: the world’s beautiful works are not chance; God saw they were very good.
3787. 14.24.2Useful works are made by design, and fall apart when design is gone.
3788. 14.24.3Cloaks and houses require makers; ruins fall at random.
3789. 14.24.4Ships and wagons are built by design and broken up at random.
3790. 14.24.5The atomists claim to see the invisible, unlike the psalmist who confessed God’s knowledge of him.
3791. 14.24.6The atoms are less wise than a spider.
3792. 14.25.7The ordered cosmos cannot come from disordered atoms.
3793. 14.25.8Order and harmony cannot come from disorder.
3794. 14.25.9If all atoms are alike, how are some bodies eternal and others short-lived?
3795. 14.25.10Living things differ greatly in length of life; man is short-lived.
3796. 14.25.11The atomists explain differences of duration by different bonds of atoms.
3797. 14.25.12Who sorts the atoms into sun, moon, and stars? Paul distinguishes their glories.
3798. 14.25.13Whether atoms are senseless, irrational, or willing, they require a craftsman, a herdsman, or a general.
3799. 14.25.14Dionysius will turn to the smallest examples.
3800. 14.25.15Dionysius mocks the “democracy of atoms” that would have built the heavens by itself.
3801. 14.25.16The atomists ignore the ordered courses of the sun that give day for work and night for rest.
3802. 14.25.17The sun’s yearly course is set by its Maker, as Sirach says.
3803. 14.25.18Dionysius mocks the atomists for not worshipping the atoms that supposedly feed them.
3804. 14.25.19Dionysius mocks the idea that the stars keep their places by mutual agreement.
3805. 14.25.20The stars’ order comes from God’s judgment, as Sirach says.
3806. 14.25.21The stars march in perfect order like a disciplined army.
3807. 14.25.22The harmonious motion of the stars cannot come from random atoms; even two strangers do not walk together by chance.
3808. 14.25.23Eusebius summarizes Dionysius’ further arguments and adds a final excerpt.
3809. 14.26.1Dionysius: a man reflecting on his own making would confess God with Job.
3810. 14.26.2How could atoms alone form Epicurus in his mother’s womb?
3811. 14.26.3Every part of the body, even hair and nails, serves use or beauty.
3812. 14.26.4Providence cares for beauty as well as use in the body.
3813. 14.26.5The head rules like a king in a citadel, guarded by the senses.
3814. 14.26.6Dionysius promises a fuller treatment later.
3815. 14.26.7Hands, feet, and belly show the design of the human body.
3816. 14.26.8Some ascribe the design of the body to chance atoms rather than divine wisdom.
3817. 14.26.9Physicians, amazed at the body’s inner structure, deified nature.
3818. 14.26.10Atoms could not make even a statue, much less the human body.
3819. 14.26.11If statues need art, how could the originals arise by chance?
3820. 14.26.12The philosopher’s mind cannot come from mindless atoms.
3821. 14.26.13Dionysius mocks the atomists: the atoms would be the Muses.
3822. 14.26.14Epicurus’ atomic gods are exiled into disorder.
3823. 14.27.1Dionysius: to the wise, and much more to the gods, doing good is a delight, not a burden.
3824. 14.27.2Jeremiah curses the one who does the Lord’s work carelessly.
3825. 14.27.3The skilled delight in their work.
3826. 14.27.4Democritus made chance queen of the universe while denying it in human life.
3827. 14.27.5Democritus: men invented chance as an excuse for their folly.
3828. 14.27.6Useful workers and philosophers take pride in serving others.
3829. 14.27.7Even Epicurus and Democritus enjoyed the work of philosophy.
3830. 14.27.8The Epicureans’ idle gods have no reason to be called gods or worshipped.
3831. 14.27.9Dionysius mocks Epicurus’ gods feasting in the void on atomic ambrosia.
3832. 14.27.10Epicurus’ oaths by gods he did not believe in were empty habits.
3833. 14.27.11Epicurus feigned belief in gods; he never learned from the heavens and earth what Scripture proclaims.
3834. 14.27.12The variety of living things confirms God’s judgment that all is good.
3835. 14.27.13Eusebius ends Book 14 and announces Aristotle and the Stoics.
3836. 15.1.1Eusebius reviews Books 1–3: the refutation of the myths and their physical allegories.
3837. 15.1.2The ancient rites still celebrate the myths of the gods.
3838. 15.1.3Books 4–6 refuted the oracles and fate from the Greeks’ own words.
3839. 15.1.4Books 7–9 presented the Hebrew theology and history.
3840. 15.1.5Books 10–13 showed Greek dependence on the barbarians and Plato’s agreement with the Hebrews.
3841. 15.1.6Book 14 showed the philosophers refuting one another; the choice of Hebrew philosophy is reasoned.
3842. 15.1.7Book 15 will complete the work by showing the uselessness of Greek physical philosophy.
3843. 15.1.8After this book Eusebius will begin the Demonstration of the Gospel.
3844. 15.1.9The Demonstration will answer why Christians accept the Hebrew oracles but not the Jewish way of life.
3845. 15.1.10Eusebius summarizes his treatment of Plato and the other philosophers.
3846. 15.1.11Eusebius turns to the Aristotelians and Stoics.
3847. 15.1.12The Christian choice rests on examined judgment.
3848. 15.1.13Eusebius introduces Aristocles’ defense of Aristotle’s character.
3849. 15.2.1Aristocles: Epicurus’ slanders on Aristotle’s youth are incredible.
3850. 15.2.2Timaeus’ slander that Aristotle kept a surgery is likewise false.
3851. 15.2.3Aristoxenus’ story of rivals building a school against Plato does not concern Aristotle.
3852. 15.2.4Alexinus’ fiction about the young Alexander is absurd.
3853. 15.2.5Eubulides’ charges against Aristotle are lies.
3854. 15.2.6Demochares’ accusations against Aristotle are nonsense.
3855. 15.2.7Cephisodorus called Aristotle a glutton.
3856. 15.2.8Lycon’s tales of Aristotle are the most foolish of all.
3857. 15.2.9The slanderers were sophists whose works have perished; later repetitions are worthless.
3858. 15.2.10The slanderers’ disagreement shows their charges are false.
3859. 15.2.11Aristotle was envied for his royal friendships and his eloquence.
3860. 15.2.12Two charges against Aristotle: his marriage to Hermias’ sister and ingratitude to Plato.
3861. 15.2.13Apellicon’s books vindicate Aristotle’s friendship with Hermias.
3862. 15.2.14Aristotle married Pythias out of loyalty to the dead Hermias.
3863. 15.2.15Aristotle’s second marriage to Herpyllis and his son Nicomachus.
3864. 15.2.16Eusebius turns to Aristotle’s doctrines.
3865. 15.3.1Against Moses and Plato, Aristotle held that happiness requires bodily and external goods.
3866. 15.4.1Atticus: Aristotle is the most opposed of all philosophers to Plato.
3867. 15.4.2Aristotle denies that virtue alone suffices for happiness.
3868. 15.4.3Plato and Aristotle differ on the end, so their philosophies differ.
3869. 15.4.4The low road of Aristotle cannot reach Plato’s heights.
3870. 15.4.5As fox and eagle have no fellowship, so Aristotle and Plato.
3871. 15.4.6Atticus challenges the Peripatetic to lead souls upward as Plato does.
3872. 15.4.7Aristotle offers no ascent to heaven like Plato’s.
3873. 15.4.8Aristotle’s school offers nothing to help the young toward virtue.
3874. 15.4.9Aristotle’s ethics rob virtue of its royal self-sufficiency.
3875. 15.4.10Aristotle puts virtue on a level with wealth and beauty.
3876. 15.4.11Saying virtue exceeds other goods does not restore its sufficiency.
3877. 15.4.12Aristotle denies that the tortured or Priam could be happy.
3878. 15.4.13For Aristotle happiness comes and goes like leaves.
3879. 15.4.14Aristotle’s happiness is even more fleeting than leaves.
3880. 15.4.15For Aristotle virtue cannot protect happiness from fortune.
3881. 15.4.16Plato teaches that the just man is happy even under torture and the cross.
3882. 15.4.17Plato proclaims the just man happiest; Aristotle’s divisions of goods are irrelevant.
3883. 15.4.18Aristotle’s classifications of goods do not touch Plato’s point.
3884. 15.4.19Even the ten categories do not bring Aristotle to Plato.
3885. 15.4.20Since Aristotle denies virtue’s sufficiency, he and Plato have nothing in common here.
3886. 15.4.21Plato and Aristotle are as opposed as lions and men on happiness.
3887. 15.5.1Aristotle limits providence to the region above the moon; Atticus refutes him.
3888. 15.5.2Atticus: Plato attaches all things to God, who is good and cares for men.
3889. 15.5.3Aristotle, denying providence and the soul’s hope, has nothing in common with Plato.
3890. 15.5.4Denial of providence encourages wrongdoing.
3891. 15.5.5Without providence only men need be evaded, and the powerful need not even hide.
3892. 15.5.6Epicurus, offering pleasure and freedom from divine fear, cannot restrain wrongdoing.
3893. 15.5.7Atticus puts Aristotle with Epicurus on providence.
3894. 15.5.8Excluding the gods from the world and confining them to heaven come to the same.
3895. 15.5.9Neither Epicurus nor Aristotle can be counted as teaching providence.
3896. 15.5.10Providence that concerns us requires surviving souls and higher beings.
3897. 15.5.11Epicurus at least removed the gods from the world to excuse their indifference.
3898. 15.5.12Aristotle left human affairs under the gods’ eyes yet uncared for, perhaps admitting gods only from fear.
3899. 15.5.13Like Epicurus, Aristotle removed the gods’ activity toward us and left them only to sight.
3900. 15.5.14Aristotle’s gods are a decent cover for unbelief; Eusebius introduces Atticus on the creation of the world.
3901. 15.6.1Against Moses and Plato, Aristotle held the world uncreated; Atticus refutes him.
3902. 15.6.2Atticus: Plato made the world generated so as not to deprive it of providence.
3903. 15.6.3Atticus rejects Platonists who read Plato as teaching an uncreated world.
3904. 15.6.4Plato’s Timaeus plainly says God brought the world into order, and so teaches its generation.
3905. 15.6.5The Creator tells the generated gods they endure only by his will.
3906. 15.6.6Some Platonists, swayed by Aristotle, denied that Plato taught a generated world.
3907. 15.6.7Plato’s world is generated yet imperishable by God’s will; no Peripatetic supports this.
3908. 15.6.8What comes to be need not perish, nor need the imperishable be unborn.
3909. 15.6.9Aristotle denies God the power to create anything new.
3910. 15.6.10Aristotle’s arguments led some Platonists astray; only God’s will makes the generated imperishable.
3911. 15.6.11It is absurd to make God’s will weaker than the mere fact of being unborn.
3912. 15.6.12If human craftsmen can make what did not exist, so can God.
3913. 15.6.13God can preserve what he made, as craftsmen repair theirs.
3914. 15.6.14The good Maker both creates and preserves.
3915. 15.6.15If human works outlast their makers, God’s works endure by his presence.
3916. 15.6.16Nothing can force God to let his work perish.
3917. 15.6.17Aristotle cannot teach the world’s creation; Eusebius turns to his fifth element.
3918. 15.7.1Atticus: Aristotle added a fifth element to make himself appear original.
3919. 15.7.2Aristotle’s fifth body, lacking all bodily qualities, is a body that is not a body.
3920. 15.7.3Aristotle’s fifth element is incompatible with Plato.
3921. 15.7.4Aristotle transferred Plato’s ideas to the wrong subject, like a sculptor patching statues.
3922. 15.7.5Such sculptors combined borrowed parts into an ill-proportioned whole.
3923. 15.7.6Aristotle combined Plato’s incorporeal being and divine heavenly bodies into an “impassible body.”
3924. 15.7.7An impassible body is impossible; what is impassible must be incorporeal.
3925. 15.8.1Atticus: Plato makes the heavens fiery and the sun a kindled light; Aristotle denies both.
3926. 15.8.2Plato allows exchanges of matter in the heavenly bodies.
3927. 15.8.3Aristotle makes the heavenly bodies unchanging in substance.
3928. 15.8.4Plato gives the stars their own rotation as living beings; Aristotle denies it.
3929. 15.8.5Plato bases the stars’ motion on reason, not on the eye.
3930. 15.8.6Aristotle could not deny the circular motion of the universe, but explained it by his fifth body.
3931. 15.8.7Plato attributes circular motion to soul; Aristotle to a fifth body.
3932. 15.8.8A body without weight or lightness would have no reason to move.
3933. 15.8.9Shape cannot cause motion; a body without inclination would not move at all.
3934. 15.8.10The fifth body, never displaced, would have no reason to move.
3935. 15.8.11Plato defined up, down, heavy, and light relative to each body’s proper place.
3936. 15.8.12Aristotle insisted on absolute up and down, merely to oppose Plato.
3937. 15.8.13Moses did not concern himself with such cosmological questions, which do not profit life.
3938. 15.9.1Atticus: Plato taught and argued for the soul’s immortality.
3939. 15.9.2The soul’s immortality holds Plato’s system together.
3940. 15.9.3Plato’s ethics and physics depend on the immortal soul.
3941. 15.9.4For Plato soul governs the world, and learning is recollection.
3942. 15.9.5Denying the soul’s immortality overturns Plato’s entire philosophy.
3943. 15.9.6Aristotle was the first to deny the soul’s immortality and powers.
3944. 15.9.7Aristotle belittled the soul as much as Plato exalted it.
3945. 15.9.8Aristotle denied the soul even its primary motions of thought and memory.
3946. 15.9.9Aristotle says the man, not the soul, thinks, the soul being unmoved.
3947. 15.9.10Dicaearchus, following Aristotle, abolished the soul altogether.
3948. 15.9.11We infer the soul from activities that are not bodily.
3949. 15.9.12Aristotle’s teaching cannot support the soul’s immortality or self-motion.
3950. 15.9.13Aristotle’s immortal mind is obscure, and he hides behind his obscurity.
3951. 15.9.14Aristotle separates mind from soul in deliberate opposition to Plato; Eusebius introduces Plotinus.
3952. 15.10.1Plotinus examines Aristotle’s definition of the soul as entelechy of an organic body.
3953. 15.10.2If the soul were like a statue’s shape, it would be divided with the body.
3954. 15.10.3The entelechy theory cannot explain inner conflict or thought.
3955. 15.10.4Neither reasoning nor perceiving soul is an inseparable entelechy.
3956. 15.10.5The desiring soul too is separable; only the vegetative soul is in doubt.
3957. 15.10.6In plants the soul withdraws to the root, so it is separable.
3958. 15.10.7Transmigration and growth show the soul is not the entelechy of one body.
3959. 15.10.8The soul is a substance prior to the body, not its form.
3960. 15.10.9Plotinus: the soul is true being, unlike bodies, which only become; Eusebius introduces Porphyry.
3961. 15.11.1Porphyry: inspiration and deliberation show the soul is moved, against Aristotle.
3962. 15.11.2The soul gives life as fire gives heat and the sun light.
3963. 15.11.3The body’s life is distinct from the soul that gives it.
3964. 15.11.4Porphyry: Aristotle’s, the Stoics’, and the Epicureans’ accounts of the soul are shameful; Plato’s self-moved soul is not.
3965. 15.12.1Atticus: Plato makes soul govern all things by providence; Aristotle denies it.
3966. 15.12.2Aristotle divides causes among fate, nature, and providence.
3967. 15.12.3Without one soul pervading the whole, the universe could not be well governed.
3968. 15.12.4Aristotle gives nature the work of soul but denies it the name.
3969. 15.13.1Atticus: Aristotle mocked Plato’s Ideas, the summit of his philosophy.
3970. 15.13.2The vision of the Ideas is the goal of Plato’s philosophy and the condition of happiness.
3971. 15.13.3For Plato all knowledge depends on the Ideas.
3972. 15.13.4Without the Ideas nothing Platonic remains.
3973. 15.13.5Atticus: the Ideas are God’s thoughts, the patterns of creation, and knowing them is man’s end.
3974. 15.13.6Eusebius ends Atticus and turns to the Stoics.
3975. 15.13.7Antisthenes, Socrates’ pupil, scorned pleasure.
3976. 15.13.8The succession from Antisthenes through Diogenes and Crates to Zeno.
3977. 15.13.9The Stoic succession after Zeno; Eusebius introduces their doctrines.
3978. 15.14.1Aristocles: for the Stoics, fire is the element, and God and matter, both bodies, are principles.
3979. 15.14.2The Stoics: periodic conflagration, the seminal fire, and fate as the law of all.
3980. 15.15.1The Stoics call the whole world God, one and living.
3981. 15.15.2The world is eternal in substance but generated in its ordering.
3982. 15.15.3Three senses of “world” in Stoic teaching.
3983. 15.15.4The world is a city of gods and men.
3984. 15.15.5The Stoic God, governing the world-city, cares for men.
3985. 15.15.6The Stoic etymologies of Zeus, Fate, Adrasteia, and Providence.
3986. 15.15.7Cleanthes made the sun the ruling part of the world.
3987. 15.15.8Others made the earth the ruling part; Chrysippus the pure ether.
3988. 15.15.9Eusebius introduces Porphyry against the Stoic view of God.
3989. 15.16.1Porphyry: the Stoics make God a consuming fire yet call him everlasting.
3990. 15.16.2The Stoics’ account of eternal divine fire is irrational.
3991. 15.17.1Numenius: true being is not the four elements, which are generated and changing.
3992. 15.17.2Matter, a flowing river, cannot be being either.
3993. 15.17.3Infinite matter is indefinite, unknowable, disordered, and so not being.
3994. 15.17.4Neither matter nor bodies are being.
3995. 15.17.5There is something else besides matter and bodies.
3996. 15.17.6Bodies, lifeless and unstable, need something to hold them together.
3997. 15.17.7What holds bodies together cannot itself be a body.
3998. 15.17.8Numenius: only the incorporeal is stable being and holds bodies together.
3999. 15.18.1Arius Didymus: the oldest Stoics held that all things periodically dissolve into ethereal fire.
4000. 15.18.2For the Stoics the world’s “destruction” in the conflagration is a natural change, not annihilation.
4001. 15.18.3Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus taught the conflagration; the later Zeno doubted it.
4002. 15.19.1The Stoic Great Year: nature absorbs all into itself and is restored.
4003. 15.19.2The cycles of conflagration and renewal go on eternally.
4004. 15.19.3The underlying substance and the fashioning nature are ungenerated and indestructible.
4005. 15.20.1Zeno on human seed as a fragment of soul that grows in the womb.
4006. 15.20.2Zeno, like Heraclitus, called the soul an exhalation, likened to the flowing river.
4007. 15.20.3The soul’s ruling part receives impressions through the senses.
4008. 15.20.4The Stoics held a world-soul to which other souls are joined, and that the souls of the dead survive.
4009. 15.20.5Some held only the world-soul eternal; each soul has a ruling part.
4010. 15.20.6The Stoics: souls survive for a time, the good until the conflagration.
4011. 15.20.7Souls of the foolish and of animals perish with the body.
4012. 15.20.8Eusebius introduces Longinus against the Stoic view of the soul.
4013. 15.21.1Longinus: no bodily element or mixture can account for the soul.
4014. 15.21.2Atoms or breath could no more produce thought than Hephaestus’ automata.
4015. 15.21.3Longinus: calling the soul an exhalation is insulting; even the poets speak more worthily of the gods.
4016. 15.22.1Plotinus raises the question whether the self is immortal.
4017. 15.22.2Plotinus: man consists of soul and body, which must be examined separately.
4018. 15.22.3The body, being composite, dissolves, especially without the soul.
4019. 15.22.4Even simple bodies are divisible and perishable.
4020. 15.22.5The soul, whether as form or as user of the body, is the true self.
4021. 15.22.6If the soul is a body, it must be analyzed into its components.
4022. 15.22.7If the soul is composed of bodies, life must belong to one of them.
4023. 15.22.8None of the elements has life of itself; their combination cannot produce it.
4024. 15.22.9The ordering cause of the mixture holds the rank of soul.
4025. 15.22.10Without soul there would be no bodies at all, since form comes from soul.
4026. 15.22.11Atoms cannot form the unified, self-sympathetic soul.
4027. 15.22.12If the form gives life, the soul is form, not body.
4028. 15.22.13Something beyond bodies must supply life to matter.
4029. 15.22.14If all were body, all would perish or never be formed.
4030. 15.22.15A bodily world-soul would leave the universe mindless and random.
4031. 15.22.16Breath needs soul to order it; soul uses bodies, not the reverse.
4032. 15.22.17The Stoics themselves admit something higher in calling breath intelligent.
4033. 15.22.18The Stoic “breath in a certain state” is either something real or nothing.
4034. 15.22.19If the “state” is real, it is an immaterial principle, not body.
4035. 15.22.20A bodily soul would have one quality and produce only that.
4036. 15.22.21The soul produces opposite effects, so it is not a body.
4037. 15.22.22The soul’s varied motions and choices cannot belong to a simple body.
4038. 15.22.23If the soul were a body, it would have to grow by addition.
4039. 15.22.24Added soul-stuff would be a stranger to the first and nothing would remain the same.
4040. 15.22.25Memory requires a constant soul; a divisible soul would cease to be soul.
4041. 15.22.26Only quality, not quantity, can remain the same through reduction.
4042. 15.22.27Is each part of a bodily soul itself a soul?
4043. 15.22.28If every part is soul, the soul is whole in many places, which no body can be.
4044. 15.22.29If parts are not soul, soul comes from soulless parts.
4045. 15.22.30Twins from one seed show the soul is not a quantity.
4046. 15.22.31Perception requires a single, unified perceiver.
4047. 15.22.32The perceiver is like the center where all lines of sense meet.
4048. 15.22.33An extended perceiver would split perception between parts.
4049. 15.22.34Perception is gathered into the partless ruling part.
4050. 15.22.35The ruling part cannot be divided to match the perceived object.
4051. 15.22.36A divisible soul would multiply perceptions to infinity.
4052. 15.22.37Impressions on a bodily soul would be blurred, leaving no memory.
4053. 15.22.38Memory and new perception together prove the soul is not a body.
4054. 15.22.39Pain in the finger is perceived by the ruling part.
4055. 15.22.40The Stoics explain this by transmission through the breath.
4056. 15.22.41Transmission would create many perceptions of one pain.
4057. 15.22.42The ruling part would know only the pain next to it, not the finger’s.
4058. 15.22.43The perceiver must be everywhere identical with itself, which no body is.
4059. 15.22.44If the soul were a body, thinking would be the same as perceiving.
4060. 15.22.45Thinking without the body requires an incorporeal thinker.
4061. 15.22.46The magnitudeless can be thought only by something partless.
4062. 15.22.47Even forms in matter are thought by being separated from bodies.
4063. 15.22.48Thinking geometrical figures and justice requires an incorporeal soul.
4064. 15.22.49Virtues cannot be states of breath or blood.
4065. 15.22.50Breath would seek pleasure, not temperance or justice.
4066. 15.22.51Virtue concerns eternal things and must reside in something incorporeal.
4067. 15.22.52Bodies act by incorporeal powers; the soul’s powers require another substance.
4068. 15.22.53Quality, being distinct from quantity, is distinct from body.
4069. 15.22.54Qualities remain whole in every part, so they are not bodies.
4070. 15.22.55Power does not follow bulk, so it is incorporeal.
4071. 15.22.56The qualities that diversify matter are incorporeal principles; the soul pervades all, as blood and breath do not.
4072. 15.22.57A bodily soul mixed through the body would cease to be soul.
4073. 15.22.58Total mixture of bodies would require cutting at every point.
4074. 15.22.59Total mixture is impossible for bodies; the soul, pervading all, is incorporeal.
4075. 15.22.60The Stoic notion that soul is cooled nature is absurd.
4076. 15.22.61The Stoics put the worse before the better, mind last.
4077. 15.22.62If mind and God come last, nothing could bring potentiality into actuality.
4078. 15.22.63The actual is prior to the potential; mind and soul are prior to nature and are not body.
4079. 15.22.64Plotinus examines the view that the soul is a harmony of the body.
4080. 15.22.65The harmony theory makes the soul an affection of bodily mixture.
4081. 15.22.66The soul rules the body, is a substance, and requires a prior soul to tune it, so it is not a harmony.
4082. 15.22.67Strings do not tune themselves; the soul is not a harmony.
4083. 15.22.68Eusebius ends with Plotinus and turns to the physical theories of all the philosophers about the heavenly bodies.
4084. 15.22.69Eusebius introduces Plutarch’s collection of opinions on the heavenly bodies.
4085. 15.23.1Plutarch: Anaximander’s account of the sun as a fiery wheel.
4086. 15.23.2Xenophanes: the sun is formed from sparks and fiery clouds.
4087. 15.23.3The Stoics: the sun is an intelligent fire from the sea.
4088. 15.23.4Plato: the sun is mostly fire.
4089. 15.23.5Anaxagoras and others: the sun is a fiery stone.
4090. 15.23.6Aristotle: the sun is a sphere of the fifth element.
4091. 15.23.7Philolaus: the sun is a glassy disk reflecting the cosmic fire.
4092. 15.23.8Empedocles: two suns, one archetypal fire and one its reflection.
4093. 15.23.9Epicurus: the sun is a porous earthy mass set on fire.
4094. 15.24.1Anaximander on the size of the sun.
4095. 15.24.2Anaxagoras: the sun is larger than the Peloponnese.
4096. 15.24.3Heraclitus: the sun is the width of a foot.
4097. 15.24.4Epicurus: any of these sizes is possible.
4098. 15.25.1Anaximenes: the sun is flat like a leaf.
4099. 15.25.2Heraclitus: the sun is bowl-shaped.
4100. 15.25.3The Stoics: the sun is spherical.
4101. 15.25.4Such is the sun, the philosophers’ great god; Moses does not bother with these speculations.
4102. 15.26.1Anaximander: the moon is a fiery wheel.
4103. 15.26.2Xenophanes: the moon is a compressed cloud.
4104. 15.26.3The Stoics: the moon is fire and air.
4105. 15.26.4Plato: the moon is mostly earthy.
4106. 15.26.5Anaxagoras and Democritus: the moon has plains and mountains.
4107. 15.26.6Heraclitus: the moon is earth surrounded by mist.
4108. 15.26.7Pythagoras: the moon is of a fiery body.
4109. 15.27.1The Stoics: the moon is larger than the earth.
4110. 15.27.2Parmenides: the moon equals the sun.
4111. 15.28.1Opinions on the moon’s shape.
4112. 15.29.1Anaximander: the moon has its own faint light.
4113. 15.29.2Antiphon: the moon’s own light is dimmed by the sun.
4114. 15.29.3Thales: the moon is lit by the sun.
4115. 15.29.4Heraclitus: sun and moon are bowls catching exhalations; the moon is dimmer in turbid air.
4116. 15.30.1Thales: the stars are earthy and fiery.
4117. 15.30.2Empedocles: the stars are fiery.
4118. 15.30.3Anaxagoras: the stars are stones snatched from the earth and set on fire.
4119. 15.30.4Diogenes: the stars are pumice-like; meteorites fall to earth.
4120. 15.30.5Empedocles: fixed stars are attached to the crystal sphere.
4121. 15.30.6Plato: the stars are mostly fire.
4122. 15.30.7Xenophanes: stars are burning clouds rekindled each night.
4123. 15.30.8Heraclides and the Pythagoreans: each star is a world.
4124. 15.30.9Epicurus allows all these as possible.
4125. 15.31.1The Stoics: the stars are spherical.
4126. 15.31.2Cleanthes: the stars are cone-shaped.
4127. 15.31.3Anaximenes and others on the stars; Eusebius turns to cosmogony.
4128. 15.32.1Plutarch: the atomists’ account of how the world was formed.
4129. 15.32.2Heavy atoms settled, light ones rose.
4130. 15.32.3The light atoms were pressed to the outer regions.
4131. 15.32.4The heavens and stars were formed from the outer atoms.
4132. 15.32.5Air carried the stars round; earth formed below and heaven above.
4133. 15.32.6Water was squeezed out of the earth.
4134. 15.32.7Water gathered in the hollows of the earth.
4135. 15.32.8Eusebius lists the many questions on which the philosophers wrangled.
4136. 15.32.9The philosophers’ contradictions justify Christians in suspending judgment on such questions.
4137. 15.32.10Eusebius will add the philosophers’ disputes on earth, sea, and soul.
4138. 15.33.1The Stoics: there is one world, which is the universe.
4139. 15.33.2Empedocles: the world is a small part of the universe.
4140. 15.33.3Plato’s three arguments that the world is one.
4141. 15.33.4An objection to Plato’s arguments (from an unnamed critic).
4142. 15.33.5Metrodorus: infinite causes produce infinite worlds.
4143. 15.34.1Heading: whether the world is ensouled and governed by providence.
4144. 15.34.2Democritus and Epicurus: the world is soulless and governed by irrational nature.
4145. 15.34.3Aristotle: providence governs the heavens, not the sublunary world.
4146. 15.35.1Pythagoras, Plato, and the Stoics: the world was made by God and is preserved by his providence.
4147. 15.35.2Epicurus: the world is perishable.
4148. 15.35.3Xenophanes: the world is ungenerated and eternal.
4149. 15.35.4Aristotle: the sublunary world is subject to change and decay.
4150. 15.36.1Aristotle: the world needs no nourishment and is eternal.
4151. 15.36.2Plato: the world nourishes itself from its own waste.
4152. 15.36.3Philolaus: the world is destroyed by fire or water and nourished by their exhalations.
4153. 15.37.1The natural philosophers: creation began from the earth.
4154. 15.37.2Pythagoras: creation began from fire and the fifth element.
4155. 15.37.3Empedocles on the order in which the elements were separated.
4156. 15.37.4Plato: soul came first, then the body of the world from the elements.
4157. 15.37.5Pythagoras: the elements come from the five regular solids.
4158. 15.37.6Plato follows Pythagoras here.
4159. 15.38.1Parmenides: the world is made of intertwined crowns.
4160. 15.38.2Leucippus and Democritus: a membrane surrounds the world.
4161. 15.38.3Epicurus: worlds have rare or dense boundaries.
4162. 15.38.4Plato on the order of the elements.
4163. 15.38.5Aristotle: ether first, then the four elements with their natural motions.
4164. 15.38.6Empedocles: the elements’ places are not fixed.
4165. 15.39.1Diogenes and Anaxagoras on the tilt of the world.
4166. 15.39.2Empedocles on the tilt of the world.
4167. 15.40.1The Pythagoreans: a void outside the world, which the world breathes.
4168. 15.40.2The Stoics: an infinite void receives the world at the conflagration.
4169. 15.40.3Posidonius: the void is only as large as needed.
4170. 15.40.4Plato and Aristotle: no void anywhere.
4171. 15.41.1Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle: the east is the right side of the world.
4172. 15.41.2Empedocles: right and left by the tropics.
4173. 15.42.1Anaximenes on the substance of heaven.
4174. 15.42.2Empedocles: heaven is crystalline compacted air.
4175. 15.42.3Aristotle: heaven is of the fifth body.
4176. 15.43.1Plutarch turns to daimones and heroes.
4177. 15.43.2Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and the Stoics: daimones are souls; heroes are disembodied souls.
4178. 15.43.3Epicurus rejects daimones and heroes.
4179. 15.44.1Definition of matter.
4180. 15.44.2Thales, Pythagoras, Stoics: matter is wholly changeable.
4181. 15.44.3The atomists: the first principles are impassible.
4182. 15.44.4Plato and Aristotle: matter is formless receptacle; others make it a body.
4183. 15.45.1Definition of the idea.
4184. 15.45.2Socrates and Plato: the ideas are God’s thoughts, separate from matter.
4185. 15.45.3Aristotle: forms are not separate from matter.
4186. 15.45.4The Stoics: ideas are our concepts.
4187. 15.46.1Xenocrates: the stars move on one surface.
4188. 15.46.2The Stoics: the stars lie at different depths.
4189. 15.46.3Democritus’ order of the heavenly bodies.
4190. 15.46.4Plato’s order of the planets.
4191. 15.46.5Some mathematicians put the sun in the middle.
4192. 15.46.6Anaximander and others put the sun highest.
4193. 15.47.1All the stars move east to west.
4194. 15.47.2The planets move opposite to the fixed stars.
4195. 15.47.3Anaximander and Anaximenes on the motion of the stars.
4196. 15.47.4Sun, Venus, and Mercury move at equal speed.
4197. 15.48.1Metrodorus: the stars are lit by the sun.
4198. 15.48.2Heraclitus and the Stoics: the stars feed on earth’s exhalations.
4199. 15.48.3Aristotle: the heavenly bodies need no nourishment.
4200. 15.48.4Plato: the world and stars nourish themselves.
4201. 15.49.1Xenophanes: St. Elmo’s fire is glowing cloud.
4202. 15.49.2Metrodorus: they are flashes of frightened eyes.
4203. 15.50.1Thales: solar eclipses are caused by the moon.
4204. 15.50.2Anaximander: eclipses occur when the sun’s vent is blocked.
4205. 15.50.3Heraclitus: eclipses are the turning of the sun’s bowl.
4206. 15.50.4Xenophanes: the sun is quenched and a new one kindled.
4207. 15.50.5Some: invisible clouds cause eclipses.
4208. 15.50.6Aristarchus places the sun among the fixed stars.
4209. 15.50.7Xenophanes: many suns and moons; the sun goes on forever.
4210. 15.51.1Anaximander on lunar eclipses.
4211. 15.51.2Berossus: the moon turns its dark side toward us.
4212. 15.51.3Heraclitus: the moon’s bowl turns.
4213. 15.51.4The Pythagoreans’ explanations of the moon’s phases and eclipses.
4214. 15.51.5Plato and others: the moon is eclipsed by the earth’s shadow.
4215. 15.52.1The Pythagoreans: the moon is inhabited by larger creatures.
4216. 15.52.2Anaxagoras: the moon’s mixed composition makes it look earthy.
4217. 15.52.3The Stoics: the moon’s substance is mixed with air.
4218. 15.53.1Empedocles on the moon’s distance.
4219. 15.53.2The mathematicians: eighteen times.
4220. 15.53.3Eratosthenes on the distances of sun and moon.
4221. 15.54.1The periods of the planets, sun, and moon.
4222. 15.54.2Opinions on the length of the great year.
4223. 15.54.3Eusebius turns from the heavens to the earth.
4224. 15.55.1Thales: the earth is one.
4225. 15.55.2Hicetas: two earths.
4226. 15.55.3The Stoics: one finite earth.
4227. 15.55.4Xenophanes on the roots of the earth.
4228. 15.55.5Metrodorus: the earth as the sediment of water.
4229. 15.56.1Thales and the Stoics: a spherical earth.
4230. 15.56.2Anaximander: an earth like a column.
4231. 15.56.3Anaximenes: a table-shaped earth.
4232. 15.56.4Leucippus: a drum-shaped earth.
4233. 15.56.5Democritus: a disk hollow in the middle.
4234. 15.57.1Thales' school: the earth at the centre.
4235. 15.57.2Xenophanes: the earth first, rooted in the infinite.
4236. 15.57.3Philolaus: the central fire, the counter-earth, and our earth.
4237. 15.57.4Parmenides on the inhabited zones.
4238. 15.58.1Most hold that the earth is at rest.
4239. 15.58.2Philolaus: the earth circles the central fire.
4240. 15.58.3Heraclides and Ecphantus: the earth turns on its axis.
4241. 15.58.4Democritus on the earth coming to rest; Eusebius turns to the sea.
4242. 15.59.1Anaximander: the sea as the remnant of the first moisture.
4243. 15.59.2Anaxagoras on why the sea is salt.
4244. 15.59.3Empedocles: the sea as the earth's sweat.
4245. 15.59.4Antiphon: the sea as sweat of the hot.
4246. 15.59.5Metrodorus: the sea made salt by filtering through earth.
4247. 15.59.6The Platonists on sweet and salt water.
4248. 15.59.7Eusebius turns to their views about the soul.
4249. 15.60.1Pythagoras and Plato on the parts of the soul.
4250. 15.60.2The Stoics: eight parts of the soul.
4251. 15.60.3Democritus and Epicurus: two parts of the soul.
4252. 15.60.4Democritus: even dead bodies share in soul.
4253. 15.61.1Plato and Democritus: the ruling part in the head.
4254. 15.61.2Strato: between the eyebrows.
4255. 15.61.3Erasistratus: in the brain's membrane.
4256. 15.61.4Herophilus: in the cavity of the brain.
4257. 15.61.5Parmenides: in the chest.
4258. 15.61.6Epicurus and the Stoics: in the heart.
4259. 15.61.7Diogenes: in the heart's arterial cavity.
4260. 15.61.8Empedocles: in the blood.
4261. 15.61.9Other views on where the ruling part lies.
4262. 15.61.10Pythagoras: life in the heart, reason in the head.
4263. 15.61.11Eusebius: Christians rightly leave these useless questions and hold to piety toward the Creator.
4264. 15.61.12Socrates as a witness against the natural philosophers.
4265. 15.62.1Socrates did not speculate about the cosmos.
4266. 15.62.2Socrates questioned the motives of the natural philosophers.
4267. 15.62.3The philosophers' disagreements show these matters are beyond human discovery.
4268. 15.62.4The natural philosophers contradict one another as madmen do.
4269. 15.62.5Knowledge of nature gives no power over it.
4270. 15.62.6Socrates discussed only human and moral questions.
4271. 15.62.7Aristippus and Ariston: philosophy should be ethics alone.
4272. 15.62.8Seeing the whole cosmos would not make us better.
4273. 15.62.9Natural knowledge does not bring virtue or happiness.
4274. 15.62.10Socrates: only human things concern us.
4275. 15.62.11Socrates left natural philosophy for moral inquiry.
4276. 15.62.12Natural philosophy is also impious.
4277. 15.62.13The natural philosophers disagree about everything.
4278. 15.62.14Timon of Phlius mocks the philosophers' wrangling.
4279. 15.62.15Timon on Strife among the philosophers.
4280. 15.62.16Eusebius concludes the Preparation for the Gospel.
4281. 15.62.17The Demonstration of the Gospel is to follow.
4282. 15.62.18The question the Demonstration will answer: why Gentiles use the Jewish Scriptures but not the law.