Hortatory Address to the Greeks

Contents

Reading pages: 1–13 · 14–27 · 28–38

1. 1The author proposes to compare the teachers of Greek religion with those of the Christians, to free the Greeks from ancestral error.
2. 2The poets cannot be teachers of religion, for Homer portrays the gods as lustful, wounded, weeping, and warring with one another.
3. 3The early Greek philosophers disagree about the first principle of things: water, the infinite, air, fire, or like parts.
4. 4Pythagoras, Epicurus, and Empedocles add more conflicting principles; such quarrelsome teachers cannot teach true religion.
5. 5Plato and Aristotle contradict each other about where God dwells, and Aristotle appeals to Homer, who also supports Thales against him.
6. 6Plato and Aristotle disagree about the principles, about the heavens, and about the nature and immortality of the soul.
7. 7Plato contradicts himself, and the philosophers disagree endlessly about the soul, because they relied on human cleverness.
8. 8The Hebrew prophets, older than the Greek teachers, received their knowledge from God and taught in perfect agreement.
9. 9Greek, Egyptian, and Jewish historians, including Diodorus, show that Moses was older than any Greek sage or lawgiver.
10. 10Moses, raised in all the learning of Egypt, was the first to receive the prophetic gift and the first teacher of the Christians' religion.
11. 11Even the Greek oracle says that only the Chaldeans and Hebrews had wisdom; so it is no wonder Moses, of that race, was the first prophet.
12. 12The Greek philosophers are recent, while Moses' writings are older than Greek letters; the Seventy translated them into Greek with miraculous agreement.
13. 13The Jewish scriptures, preserved in the synagogues, belong to the Christians' teaching, and their Jewish custody guards against charges of forgery.
14. 14The Greeks should examine their own teachers, for Orpheus, Homer, Solon, Pythagoras, and Plato learned from Moses in Egypt and changed their views.
15. 15Orpheus, the first teacher of polytheism, later proclaimed one self-begotten God and spoke of the Father's voice, that is, his Word.
16. 16The Sibyl too teaches one invisible God and blesses those who renounce temples and sacrifices.
17. 17Homer, though he names many gods, shows his belief in one God through the words of Phoenix and Odysseus.
18. 18Sophocles is quoted as confessing one God and condemning images made by mortals.
19. 19Pythagoras, having been in Egypt, taught through the monad that God is one, the mind and soul of the whole.
20. 20Plato learned of the one God in Egypt but, fearing Socrates' fate, spoke ambiguously about the gods.
21. 21God has no proper name; his self-designation "He Who Is" distinguishes him from the non-existent gods that the devil taught men to believe in.
22. 22Plato, fearing the Areopagus, borrowed Moses' "He Who Is" as "that which always is", and called God the craftsman, not the maker, of the gods.
23. 23Plato's craftsman contradicts Plato by promising immortality to created gods, though Plato held that matter is unbegotten and cannot be forced.
24. 24Homer, like Plato, learned of one God in Egypt and pointed to him with the word "himself", as the oracle also does.
25. 25Plato blamed Homer for changeable gods yet made his own craftsman changeable; he learned God's eternity from Moses' "He Who Is" and called Moses' law "the ancient word".
26. 26Plato attributes true knowledge to "men dear to God", meaning the prophets, and from them learned of judgment after death.
27. 27Plato's myth of Er, with Ardiaeus punished in body, shows he learned judgment and even bodily resurrection from the prophets.
28. 28Homer too learned in Egypt and borrowed from Moses: bodily punishment of Tityus, creation on Achilles' shield, paradise in Alcinous's garden, Babel in Otus and Ephialtes, and the devil's fall in Ate.
29. 29Plato took his doctrine of forms from God's command to make the tabernacle after the pattern shown on the mountain, misunderstanding it.
30. 30Plato misread Genesis to posit ideas of earth, heaven, and man; Homer echoes Genesis in calling the dead body "earth".
31. 31Plato's Zeus in his winged chariot comes from Ezekiel's cherubim, and his God in fire from the vision of Elijah.
32. 32Plato's virtue given "by divine allotment" is the Holy Spirit of the prophets under another name.
33. 33Plato's claim that time began with heaven comes from Moses' first day, and his dissolution of heaven from the prophets.
34. 34Even the human shape of Greek statues of gods comes from a misreading of "Let us make man in our image".
35. 35The Greeks should abandon ancestral error and read the plain-spoken prophets, who teach the way to eternal life.
36. 36Socrates confessed he knew nothing, yet his successors claim knowledge of heaven; the Greeks should flee their eloquence and read the prophets.
37. 37The author describes the Sibyl's cave at Cumae and argues that Plato's praise of inspired prophets refers to her.
38. 38The Sibyl foretold Christ, the Word who restored the ancient religion; true knowledge of God comes only from the prophets.