Preparation for the Gospel — Book I

Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

1.1| Intending to show those who do not know it what Christianity really is, by means of the present treatise, which promises to contain the demonstration of the gospel, I have addressed this work to you, Theodotus, divine treasure among bishops, a head holy and dear to God, with prayers that I may somehow have your help, as you join me, by the sacred rites you offer to God on our behalf, in the great work of the subject before me, the teaching of the gospel.

1.2| But first of all it is proper to set out clearly what this word we use, "gospel," is meant to signify. It announces as good news to all people the coming of the highest and greatest goods, long ago foretold and lately shining forth upon all. It does not bring wealth, which is blind, nor this little life so full of suffering, nor anything that belongs to the body and to corruption, but the goods that are dear and akin to souls possessed of an intelligent essence, goods to which even the things of the body are attached, following them like a shadow.

1.3| The chief of these would be piety: not the falsely named piety that wanders in many errors, but the piety that bears its name in truth. This is the looking up to the one and only God, who is acknowledged as God and truly is God, and the life lived in accordance with him; from this arises friendship with him, and upon friendship follows the end that is truly dear to God and thrice-blessed, an end suspended from above, from the higher realities, steered toward them, and coming to rest in them once more.

1.4| What, then, could be more blessed than this good and wholly happy friendship with God? Is he not himself the steward and the giver to all of life and light and truth and every good thing? Has he not himself embraced the cause of the existence and the life of all things? What, then, could still be lacking to one who has entered into friendship with him? What could he want who has made the Maker of good things his own? Or in what could he fall short who has enrolled the great Protector and all-ruling King of the universe as his father and guardian?

1.5| No, there is nothing one could name in which a man who draws near in his disposition to God, the King of all, and has been found worthy of his most blessed friendship through a piety grounded in knowledge, would not be well off, in soul and body and in all external things alike.

1.6| This good and saving friendship of human beings with God is what the Word of God, sent down from on high from the all-good God like a beam of light of infinite greatness, announces as good news to all people. He urges them to come to the God of the universe not from here or there only but from every quarter, from all the nations, and to hurry and welcome the gift with all the zeal of their soul: Greeks and barbarians alike, men together with women and infants, poor and rich, wise and unlearned; nor does he disdain even the race of slaves in his call,

1.7| because the Father of them all, having established one essence and nature for all, fittingly granted to all, in turn, one and the same munificence, bestowing knowledge of himself and friendship with him on all who are willing to obey and who gladly embrace the grace.

1.8| This friendship with his Father is what the Word of Christ came to announce as good news to the whole world. For "God was in Christ reconciling the world with himself, not reckoning their trespasses to them," as the divine oracles teach; and "he came," it says, "and proclaimed the good news of peace to those who were far off and peace to those who were near."

1.9| These things the children of the Hebrews, moved by God, foretold to the whole world long ago. One of them cries out: "All the ends of the earth will remember and turn back to the Lord, and every family of the nations shall bow down before him; for the kingdom belongs to the Lord, and he has dominion over the nations"; and again: "Declare among the nations, The Lord has become king; for he has set the world aright, and it shall not be shaken." Another says: "The Lord will be manifest among them and will completely wipe out all the gods of the nations on the earth, and each from his own place shall worship him."

1.10| These things, laid up long ago in divine oracles, have now been made manifest to us ourselves through the teaching of our Savior Jesus Christ; so that it was fitting that the Word, lately come among us from heaven, should announce to us as good news the knowledge of God for all the nations, which had long been proclaimed and looked for by those not unacquainted with these oracles, and should show that the outcomes brought about in deeds agree with the voices of the ancients.

1.11| But why should I hurry on, outrunning in my eagerness the sequence of the arguments that lie between, when I ought to take things up from the beginning and clear every obstacle out of the way? Some have supposed that Christianity can give no account of itself, and that those who wish for the name hold their opinion by an irrational faith and an unexamined assent; they say that no one can furnish, by clear demonstration, any proof of the truth of what is promised, but that those who come over are required to attend to faith alone, and that this is why they are called "the faithful" on account of a faith that is uncritical and untested. It is fitting, then, as I enter on this work of the demonstration of the gospel, that by way of preparation for the whole subject I should first deal briefly with the questions that might reasonably be raised against us by Greeks, by those of the circumcision, and by anyone who searches into our affairs with careful examination.

1.12| For, I think, in this way my argument will advance in good order to the more complete instruction in the demonstration of the gospel, and also to an understanding of the deeper doctrines: if the matters of the preparation come first on our road, serving as elementary instruction and introduction, and suited to those who have lately come over from the nations. What follows will then hand on, to those who have passed beyond this stage and whose disposition is already prepared for receiving higher things, an exact knowledge of the most essential points of God's mystical dispensation concerning our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.

1.13| Let us begin, then, the Preparation, bringing forward what might reasonably be said to us by Greeks as well as by those of the circumcision, and by anyone who searches into our affairs with careful examination.

2.1| First, then, one might reasonably be at a loss to know who we are who have come forward to write: Greeks or barbarians, or something between the two? And who do we say that we are, not as to the name, which is plain to everyone, but as to the manner and the chosen course of our life? For they see us neither thinking as Greeks think nor practicing the ways of barbarians.

2.2| What, then, could be the strange thing about us, and what is this innovation in our way of life? How could they not be in every way impious and godless who have abandoned the ancestral customs by which every nation and every city is held together? Or what good can people reasonably hope for who have set themselves up as enemies and foes of their saviors and have thrust aside their benefactors? What else are they doing but fighting against the gods?

2.3| And what pardon will they deserve who have turned away from the beings that all Greeks and barbarians, from time immemorial, in cities and in the countryside, have honored as gods with every kind of rite and initiation and mystery, kings and lawgivers and philosophers all alike, and have chosen instead what is impious and godless among human things? And to what punishments would they not rightly be subject, who have fled from their ancestral ways and become zealots for the foreign Jewish myths that are slandered among all?

2.4| How can it not be a mark of the utmost depravity and levity to abandon lightly the ways of one's own people and, with irrational and unexamined faith, choose those of the impious, the enemies of all the nations; and not even to hold to the God honored among the Jews according to their customary laws, but to carve out for themselves a new and lonely pathless way, one that observes neither the customs of the Greeks nor the customs of the Jews?

2.5| These, then, are the difficulties that one of the Greeks might reasonably raise against us, understanding nothing true either of his own beliefs or of ours. But the children of the Hebrews too might find fault with us: that, being foreigners and of another race, we use their books, which are no concern of ours at all, and that, shamelessly and impudently, so they would say, we push ourselves in and seek to force out of their ancestral heritage those who are its own and native-born.

2.6| For if some Christ was foretold, it was the prophets of the Jews who proclaimed his coming beforehand, and they announced that he would come as a redeemer and as king of the Jews, not of foreign nations; and if the scriptures contain any other more joyful things, these too were spoken to the Jews, and we, they say, do wrong in misapplying them.

2.7| And it is quite absurd, they say, that we eagerly snatch up the rebukes directed at that nation for its sins, while we keep silent about the promises of good things announced beforehand to them in turn, or rather wrest them by force and transfer them to ourselves, plainly grasping at what is not ours and doing nothing but deceiving ourselves.

2.8| But the most unreasonable thing of all, they say, is that we do not observe their laws as they do, but openly break them, and yet we draw to ourselves the richer rewards promised to those who keep the laws.

3.1| These being the first questions reasonably raised against us, come, let us call upon the God of the universe through our Savior, the very Word, as through a high priest, and clear away the first of the matters proposed, first showing to be slanderers those who declared that we have nothing to set forth by demonstration but cling to an irrational faith.

3.2| This we shall refute straight away and without long delay, from the demonstrations we use toward those who come to be taught our doctrines, from the replies we make to those who oppose us in the more rational inquiries, and from the discussions, unwritten and written, which we take pains to hold, privately with each of those who ask and publicly with the crowds;

3.3| and indeed also from the writings now in hand, which contain the whole treatise of the gospel demonstration, in which the present discourse announces to all men all the grace from God and the heavenly benefaction, confirming rationally, through many clear proofs, the dispensation concerning our Savior and Lord Jesus, the Christ of God.

3.4| Much other work has been zealously done by very many before us, at times composing refutations and replies to the arguments opposed to us, at times interpreting the divinely inspired and sacred scriptures in expository commentaries and homilies on particular parts, at times championing our doctrines in a more combative manner.

3.5| Yet the purpose now in hand is our own particular one. For the sacred apostle Paul was the first of all, rejecting deceitful and sophistical plausibilities and using indisputable proofs, to say somewhere: "And our word and our proclamation were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in a demonstration of Spirit and of power." To this he adds: "Yet among the perfect we speak wisdom, though not a wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom." And again he says: "Our sufficiency comes from God, who also has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant."

3.6| Reasonably, then, we have all been charged to be ready with a defense to everyone who asks us for an account of the hope that is in us. Hence one may find, as has been said, countless wise and clear demonstrations with syllogisms written by recent authors on behalf of our doctrine, and no few commentaries labored over the sacred and divinely inspired scriptures, establishing by geometrical demonstrations the truthfulness and unfailing soundness of those who from the beginning proclaimed to us the word of piety.

3.7| But all these words are superfluous, since the facts are clearer and more evident, those which our Savior's divine and heavenly power, proclaiming a divine and heavenly way of life to all men, plainly shows even now.

3.8| At once, for instance, he prophesied that his teaching would be proclaimed throughout the whole inhabited world of men as a testimony to all the nations, and that the church that would later be established by his power out of all the nations, not yet then, in the times when he became man, seen or established, would by divine foreknowledge be undefeated and unterrified, would never be conquered by death, but would stand and remain unshaken, as one standing and rooted by his power on an unshaken and unbroken rock; the fulfillment of the prediction beyond all argument would reasonably stop every mouth of those who are ready to be brazenly shameless.

3.9| For who would fail to acknowledge the truth of the prediction, when the facts so clearly all but cry out that it was the power of God, and not a human nature, that saw these things beforehand, as they would come to pass in this way, and foretold them and brought them to fulfillment in deeds?

3.10| The renown of his gospel has filled the entire world, as far as the sun looks down, and has run through all the nations, and even now the proclamations about him grow and increase in accordance with his own words.

3.11| And his church, foretold by name, stands rooted mightily, lifted up to the heavenly vaults by the prayers of holy and God-loving souls, glorified day by day, flashing out to all the intelligent and divine light of the piety he announced, never beaten or yielding to enemies, nor even giving way before the gates of death, on account of that one saying which he himself uttered: "Upon the rock I shall build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it."

3.12| And we have gathered countless other things spoken and foretold by our Savior in a treatise of their own, and by showing that the outcomes of events agree with his divinely inspired foreknowledge, we demonstrate beyond dispute the truth of what is believed about him.

3.13| Besides all this, no small proof of our truth is also the testimony of the Hebrew Scriptures. In them the prophets among the Hebrews, countless years ago, proclaimed the promise of good things to all mortal life; they mentioned the name of Christ by name, and prophesied in advance his coming among men; they announced the new manner of his teaching, which would run through all the nations; and they foretold the unbelief and contradiction that the nation of the Jews would show toward him, the things they would do against him, and the grim consequences that would soon, and not long afterward, overtake them for it. I mean the last siege of their royal capital, the complete overthrow of their kingdom, their dispersion among all the nations, and their slavery under enemies and foes, all of which, in accord with the predictions, they are plainly seen to have suffered after the coming of our Savior.

3.14| After this, who would not be astonished to hear the same prophets proclaiming, in bright and clear voices, that after Christ's coming and the Jews' fall the nations would be called? And this too has come to pass in plain fact, in accord with the prophecies, by the teaching of our Savior.

3.15| Through him, countless people from every race of men have turned away from the error of idols and accepted the true knowledge and worship of the God over all, which in effect confirms the oracles of the ancients, among them the one spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: "O Lord my God, to you nations shall come from the end of the earth, and they will say: Falsehood is what our fathers possessed, idols, and there was no benefit in them. Will a man make gods for himself? And these are no gods."

4.1| All this confirms the account of our cause: that it was not devised from human impulse, but was foreknown by God, proclaimed beforehand by God through written oracles, and, far more, set before all men by God through our Savior; and that it is in turn empowered and held together by God, so that, though harried through so many years by invisible demons and by the visible rulers of every age, it shines out far more brightly, grows distinguished and increases day by day, and spreads much more widely, since the help from above, from the God of the universe, plainly supplies invincibility and unconquerability, and victory over enemies, to the name and teaching of our Savior.

4.2| And how could the very fact that it was set before all men for the good life, not only through his open words but through a secret power, fail to demonstrate his divine power? For it was the work of a divine and secret power that, together with his word and with his teaching proclaimed on the sole rule of the one God over all, the human race was at the same moment set free from the wandering error of demonic activity and from the many rulers of the nations.

4.3| In ancient times, at any rate, countless kings and local rulers held sway in each nation, and in the cities some were governed by the people, others by many rulers, and so, naturally, wars of every kind arose from this, nations burst upon nations and continually rose against their neighbors, ravaging and being ravaged and mounting sieges against one another; as a result everyone alike, both those who lived in the cities and those who farmed in the fields, was taught the arts of war from boyhood, and went always armed with the sword, on the highways, in the villages and in the fields.

4.4| But when the Christ of God had come, of whom it had long ago been said through the prophets, "Righteousness shall arise in his days, and a multitude of peace. And they shall hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into sickles; no nation shall lift a sword against another nation, nor shall they learn war any longer," deeds followed in accord with the predictions: at once the rule of many in the Roman state was removed, as Augustus came to sole rule at the very time of our Savior's appearing. From that time to this you would not see, as before, city making war on city, nor nation fighting nation, nor life wasting away amid the old turmoil.

4.5| And yet is it not worth marveling, when one stops to consider why in ancient times, when the demons tyrannized over every nation and men paid them great service, men were driven frantic by the gods themselves and set ablaze with wars against one another, so that at one time Greeks fought Greeks, at another Egyptians fought Egyptians, and Syrians fought Syrians, and Syrians fought Romans, enslaving one another and wearing each other down with sieges, as the histories of those old times show; whereas the moment our Savior's most pious and peaceful teaching appeared, the error of many gods was overthrown, and the dissension of the nations immediately found rest from its old evils? This I consider to be the greatest proof of all of the divine and secret power of our Savior.

4.6| You may see a clear sample of the benefit that shows itself from his words if you observe that never at any other time since the beginning of the age, nor under any of the men of old who were famous, but only through his own words and the teaching of his that has spread throughout the whole inhabited world, have the customs of all the nations been set in good order, those very customs which were formerly beastly and barbarous: so that those Persians who have become disciples of his no longer wed their mothers, Scythians no longer eat human flesh because the word of Christ has reached even them, other tribes of barbarians no longer lie unlawfully with daughters and sisters, males no longer rage after males and pursue pleasures against nature, those who once did so no longer expose their own dead to dogs and birds, nor give the aged over to the noose as they did before, nor feast on the flesh of their dearest dead according to the old custom, nor sacrifice men to the demons as to gods in the manner of the ancients, nor slaughter their dearest ones in the belief that this is piety.

4.7| For these practices, and countless others akin to them, used to ruin human life in ancient times. It is recorded that the Massagetae and the Derbices thought those of their kin who died of themselves to be most wretched, and so they slaughtered them beforehand, and feasted on their dearest relatives who had grown old; the Tibareni threw their nearest old men down cliffs alive; the Hyrcanians and Caspians threw people to birds and dogs, the former while still alive, the latter after death; the Scythians buried people alive together with the dead and slaughtered on the pyres those whom the dead had loved most; and the Bactrians threw their aged alive to the dogs.

4.8| But these things belonged to former times; now it is no longer so, since the one saving law, the power of the gospel, has dissolved the beastly and inhuman sickness of all these practices.

4.9| And that men no longer hold as gods either dead and speechless wooden images, or the evil demons that work in them, or the visible world's parts, or the souls of long-dead mortals, or the most harmful of the irrational animals; but that instead of all these, through the one gospel teaching of our Savior, Greeks and barbarians alike, those who attend to his word genuinely and not in pretense, have come to such a height of philosophy that they worship, hymn and speak of as God only the supreme God, that One beyond the universe, the King of all and Lord of heaven and earth, Maker of the sun and stars and the whole world; that they live strictly and learn so that even the very use of their eyes is trained, and they entertain nothing licentious from looking with desire, but cut off by the roots from the mind itself every shameful passion: how would all this not contribute to the good life of everyone?

4.10| And that they have no need even of truthful oaths, far less of perjury, because they learn from him not to swear at all, but in everything to speak without falsehood and truthfully, so that "yes" and "no" suffice, making their intention firmer than any oath? And that even in bare phrases and common conversation they are not careless but exact down to these details, so as to let no lie, no abuse, no shameful or unseemly word pass their voice, because of his further exhortation in which he said, "For every idle word you shall give account on the day of judgment": what a height of philosophic life this holds!

4.11| And that whole myriads of men, women, and children, both slave and free, obscure and distinguished, and moreover barbarians and Greeks together, in every place and city and country, among all the nations under the sun, go to be taught such lessons as we have just learned and lend their ears to words that persuade them to master not only licentious acts but even shameful thoughts of the mind, and to master the belly and the parts below the belly; and that the whole race of men is being trained in a divine and pious education, learns to bear nobly and with deep-minded resolve the outrages of those who stand up against them, and not to take vengeance on evildoers in kind, but to become stronger than passion and anger and every frenzied appetite; and indeed to share their possessions with the destitute and needy, to welcome every human being as kin, and to recognize even the one reckoned a stranger as, by the law of nature, most closely kin and a brother.

4.12| Whoever gathers all this together, how could he not agree that our teaching has announced the greatest and truly good tidings to all men, and has supplied to human life what excels at once for the good life?

4.13| And what do you think of the whole race of mankind, not only Greeks but even the most uncivilized barbarians and those who dwell at the ends of the earth, that it has been made to rise up out of irrational beastliness and to take up philosophic doctrines?

4.14| Take, for example, the doctrines about the immortality of the soul and about the life with God that is laid up for the friends of God after departure from here, because of which people have taken care to despise this temporary life, so as to prove that all those who were ever noised abroad for philosophy were children, and that the much-talked-of death sung by the mouths of all philosophers is a plaything; for among us women and mere children, and barbarian men and men who seem of no account, by the power and cooperation of our Savior, have shown in deeds before words the truth of the account of the soul's immortality.

4.15| And consider how in general all men, in all the nations, are taught from our Savior's lessons to think soundly and robustly about God's providence, as overseeing all things; and how every soul learns the account of God's tribunal and judgment, lives thoughtfully, and stays on guard against wicked practices.

5.1| You would recognize the chief point of the first and greatest benefaction of the saving Word if you took into account the superstitious error of the old idolatry, by which the whole race of mankind was in earlier times worn down under the compulsions of demons; from this, as out of the murkiest darkness, he removed Greeks and barbarians alike by divine power and brought them all over to the intelligible and brightest day of the true piety of the King of all, God.

5.2| And why should we draw it out by trying to prove that we have not committed ourselves to irrational faith, but to sober and useful reasonings that contain the way of true piety? Since the present work deals with precisely this in general terms, we urge those who are suited to follow arguments to follow demonstrations, and call on them to care for understanding, to take up the proofs of the doctrines in a more rational way, and to be ready to make a defense to anyone who asks us for an account of the hope that is in us.

5.3| But since not all are of this sort, and the Word is humane, turning away no one at all, healing every person with fitting remedies, and calling even the ignorant and simple to the cure of their ways, we, leading those who are beginning, the simpler folk, women and children and the common crowd, by the hand to the pious life as an introduction, employ sound faith as a kind of medicine, putting into them right opinions about God's providence, about the immortality of the soul, and about the life lived in virtue.

5.4| Do we not see the same thing with those who skillfully heal the ailments of bodies? They themselves have taken up the principles of medicine through long practice and training, and perform every operation by reason; but those who come to them for treatment give themselves over in faith and in hope of better things, understanding nothing exactly of the theories of the science, and hanging only on good hope and faith.

5.5| The best of the physicians steps forward and, like some ruler and lord, with knowledge prescribes what must be guarded against and what ought to be done, and the patient obeys him like a king and lawgiver, trusting that what is ordered will benefit him. In the same way

5.6| students also accept instruction from their teachers, believing the lesson will do them good; indeed no one would lay hold of philosophy before believing that its profession will profit him. One person chooses straight off the doctrines of Epicurus, another emulates the Cynic life, another philosophizes after Plato, another after Aristotle, and yet another prefers the Stoic teachings above all; each welcomes what seems best to him out of a fairly good hope and faith that it will be of benefit.

5.7| In the same way men have entered on the common trades, and others on the soldier's life, others on the merchant's, having believed from the start that the pursuit would provide them a livelihood. And the first unions of marriage, and the partnerships formed in hope of children, began from good faith.

5.8| Again, a man sails into the unknown with no other anchor of safety set before him than faith alone and good hope; again, another farms, and once his seed is cast into the earth he sits and waits for the season to turn, believing that what has perished in the earth and been covered by floods of rain will come back to life, as it were from the dead; and again, a man sent on a long journey from his own country to a foreign land takes hope and faith along as good guides for himself.

5.9| What else do you find, then, but that the whole life of men hangs on these two, hope and faith? Why do you wonder, then, if the better things that concern the soul are handed over to some through faith, since they have no leisure to be taught the details in a more rational way, while others are able to pursue the arguments themselves and learn the proofs of what is professed?

5.10| But now that we have, in brief, exercised ourselves in these matters to some useful purpose, let us go up to the first accusation, and answer those who ask who we are and where we have set out from. That we are Greeks by race and think as Greeks do, and yet, gathered from every kind of nation like the picked troops of a newly raised army, have deserted the superstition of our fathers, not even we ourselves would ever deny; and likewise that, attending to the Jewish books and gathering most of our doctrine from the prophecies found among them, we no longer think it dear to live as those of the circumcision do: this too we would admit at once.

5.11| It is time, then, to give the account of these matters. How else could we seem to have done well in leaving our ancestral customs, unless we first set them out in the middle and bring them under the eyes of those who will read? For so the divine power of the gospel demonstration would become plain, if it were put before everyone's eyes from what kinds of evils it announces the cure.

5.12| And how could the reasonableness of our pursuit of the Jewish way appear unless its excellence too were demonstrated? It will be well to go through on what ground we embrace their Scriptures yet turn away from the like manner of life; and, above all, what is our account of the gospel subject, and what would properly be called Christianity, which is neither Hellenism nor Judaism but a certain new and true divine wisdom, bearing its novelty from the very name.

5.13| Come, then, first of all let us survey the oldest theologies, those of our own fathers, still chanted even now in every city, and the solemn views of the noble philosophers on the constitution of the world and on the gods, so that we may know whether we were right or not to depart from them.

5.14| And I shall set down, in revealing these matters, not words of my own, but those of the very people who made the most zealous business of piety toward those they call gods, so that the account may stand wholly clear of the suspicion that we are making things up.

6.1| The Phoenicians, then, and the Egyptians, the account holds, were the first of all men to proclaim sun, moon and stars as gods, and as the only causes of the generation and destruction of the universe, and then to introduce into life the making of gods and the births of gods that are shouted about among everyone.

6.2| Before them, no one knew anything beyond the things that appear in the sky, except a few men remembered among the Hebrews, who with the purest eyes of the mind looked beyond everything seen, revered the world-maker and Maker of the universe, were filled with wonder at such wisdom and power as they imagined from his works, and, persuaded that he alone is God, rightly spoke of him alone as God, receiving from father to child this true, first and only piety, and guarding it.

6.3| The remainder of humanity, however, having fallen away from this one true piety, were struck with awe, like infants in their souls, by the light-bearing bodies of the heavens as seen by eyes of flesh, proclaimed them gods, and honored them with sacrifices in their amazement; they did not build temples, nor mold images of mortals in statues and wooden figures, but looked up to the upper air and heaven itself and reached with their souls only as far as the things seen here.

6.4| But error of many gods did not stop here for later men; it drove into a depth of evils and brought forth an impiety greater than atheism, with the Phoenicians first and then the Egyptians beginning the error. They say that Orpheus, son of Oeagrus, was the first to carry the Egyptians' mysteries over and hand them on to the Greeks, just as Cadmus brought the Phoenician rites to the same people together with the learning of letters; for the Greeks, they say, did not yet know the use of letters at that time.

6.5| We shall therefore first examine the first birth of the world, how the writers in question have taken it; next, what concerns the first and oldest superstition in human life; third, the Phoenician matters, fourth the Egyptian; after these, fifth, the Greek. Dividing these, we shall first look at their old and more fabulous error, then the more dignified and more natural philosophy about the gods, and after that review the account of the marvelous oracles; and after these we shall examine the solemn teachings of the noble philosophy of the Greeks.

6.6| When we have sorted these out, we shall cross over to the Hebrews' affairs, those of the first and truly Hebrews, and of those who later obtained the name of Jews. And upon all this, like a seal on the whole, we shall bring in our own matters.

6.7| We shall of necessity make mention of the history of all these, so that, by setting out the things admired in each place, the test of the truth may be shown, and it may be plain to our readers what kind of things we abandoned and what kind we chose.

6.8| But let us come to the first point. From where shall we draw confirmation for our proofs? Certainly not from our own writings, lest we seem to be doing favors to our argument; rather let the witnesses be the Greeks themselves, both those who boast of philosophy and those who have searched out the rest of the history of the nations.

6.9| Diodorus the Sicilian, then, a man very familiar to the most learned Greeks, since he gathered the whole historical library into a single work, writes from the beginning, explaining the old theology of the Egyptians. From him I shall first set out what he lays down at the start of his account about the birth of the whole cosmos, giving the opinions of the ancient historians in this way.

7.1| "Now concerning the gods, what notions the first men had who showed how to honor the divine, and concerning the mythical tales told of each of the immortals, we shall try to compose most of it separately, because this subject needs a long discussion; but whatever we think fits the histories before us we shall set down in summary, so that nothing worth hearing will be missed.

7.2| But concerning the race of all men and the deeds done in the known parts of the inhabited world, as far as is possible for matters so ancient, we shall record accurately, beginning from the earliest times."

7.3| "Concerning the first origin of men, two declarations have been made among the most authoritative of the natural philosophers and historians. Some of them, supposing the cosmos to be unborn and imperishable, declared that the race of men too exists from eternity, there never having been a beginning of its procreation; others, thinking it to have come into being and to be perishable, said that men, like it, obtained their first origin at fixed times.

7.4| For at the original constitution of the universe, they say, heaven and earth had one form, their nature being mixed together; afterwards, when the bodies stood apart from one another, the cosmos took in the whole visible arrangement in it, and the air received continuous motion; the fiery part of it ran together to the highest regions, since such a nature is carried upward by its lightness; for this reason the sun and the rest of the multitude of stars were caught up in the whole whirl, while the muddy and turbid part, together with the mixture of liquids, settled in one place because of its weight; and as it was rolled about on itself and continuously turned over, it made the sea from the liquids and from the more solid parts the earth, muddy and altogether soft.

7.5| This earth, when the fire around the sun first shone on it, took on firmness; then, as its surface fermented from the heat, some of the moist parts swelled up in many places, and putrefactions formed around them, enclosed in thin membranes, as can still be seen happening now in marshes and stagnant places, whenever the ground has grown cold and the air suddenly becomes fiery without having changed gradually.

7.6| As the moist parts were brought to life by the heat in the way described, by night they at once took nourishment from the mist falling from the surrounding air, and by day were hardened by the burning; finally, when the embryos had reached full growth and the membranes had been scorched and burst around them, there sprang up forms of living creatures of every sort.

7.7| Of these, those that had shared most in heat went off to the high places and became winged; those that clung to an earthy composition were reckoned in the class of reptiles and of the other creatures of the land; and those that had most of a moist nature ran together to the place akin to them and were called swimmers.

7.8| The earth, growing ever harder under the fire around the sun and under the winds, finally could no longer bring to life any of the larger creatures, but each of the living kinds was born from mating with one another.

7.9| Euripides, too, seems not to disagree with what has been said about the nature of the universe, being a pupil of Anaxagoras the natural philosopher. For in the Melanippe he puts it thus: "Heaven and earth were one form; and when they separated from one another, they bear all things and gave to the light trees, winged creatures, beasts, and those the salt sea feeds, and the race of mortals."

7.10| "Such is what we have received about the first birth of the universe. As for those men born in the beginning, they say they lived a disordered, beastlike life and went out scattered to their pastures, and ate the tenderest herb and the fruits that grew of themselves from the trees; when beasts attacked them, they helped one another, taught by their advantage, and gathered together because of fear, and little by little came to know one another's features.

7.11| Their speech being at first meaningless and confused, little by little they articulated words, and by laying down signs among themselves for each thing before them they made the interpretation of everything known to each other.

7.12| Since such groups arose throughout the inhabited world, not all had the same speech, each group having arranged its words as it happened; hence all manner of dialect types arose, and the first groups formed became the original ancestors of all the nations.

7.13| The first men, then, having discovered nothing of what is useful for life, lived laboriously, naked of clothing, unused to dwelling or fire, and wholly ignorant of cultivated food. For not knowing how to store the wild food, they laid up no supply of fruits against times of need; and so many of them died in the winters from the cold and the scarcity of food.

7.14| From this, little by little taught by experience, they took refuge in caves in winter and stored away those fruits that could be kept. And once fire and the other useful things became known, the arts were gradually discovered, and the other things that can benefit common life."

7.15| For in general, need itself became the teacher of everything to men, guiding the learning of each thing suitably to a well-endowed creature that has hands to work with it in all things, and reason, and quickness of mind. As for the first origin of men and their oldest way of life, we shall be content with what has been said, aiming at due proportion."

7.16| So much the aforesaid author, who in his account of the world's origin did not mention even the name of God, but brought in a certain chance and spontaneous arrangement of the universe. With him you would find that most of the philosophers among the Greeks agree. Their opinions on first principles, and their disagreements and discord with one another, which arose from conjecture and not from grasp of the truth, I shall for the present set out for you from Plutarch's Stromateis. Do not look at it casually, but at leisure and with reflection observe the disagreement of those named with one another.

8.1| "They say that Thales was the first to posit water as the first principle of all things; for all things come from it and go back into it."

8.2| "After him Anaximander, an associate of Thales, said that the unlimited holds the whole cause of the coming-to-be and passing-away of the all; from it, he says, the heavens were separated off, and in general all the worlds, which are unlimited in number. He declared that destruction occurs, and generation long before it, as all of them revolve round from an unlimited age. The earth, he says, is in shape cylinder-like, and has a depth that is a third of its breadth. He says that at the generation of this cosmos what was productive of hot and cold out of the eternal was separated off, and from this a sphere of flame grew round the air about the earth, as bark around a tree. When this was broken off and shut up in certain circles, the sun, moon and stars came into being. He says further that in the beginning man was born from animals of other kinds, because the other animals quickly feed themselves, while man alone needs long nursing; so that in the beginning, being such as he is, he could never have survived. So much for Anaximander."

8.3| "Anaximenes, they say, declared the first principle of all things to be air, and that this is unlimited in kind but defined by the qualities around it; all things come to be by a certain thickening of it and again by rarefaction. Motion exists from eternity; and as the air was compressed, the earth, he says, came first, very flat, for which reason it reasonably rides on the air; and the sun, the moon and the remaining stars have the origin of their coming-to-be from earth. At any rate he declares the sun to be earth, which through its swift motion has received a very strong heat."

8.4| "Xenophanes of Colophon, going a way of his own, different from all those mentioned, leaves no coming-to-be or passing-away, but says that the All is always the same. For if it came to be, he says, it must necessarily not have been before; but what is not could not come to be, nor could what is not make anything, nor could anything come to be from what is not. He declares the senses to be false, and with them condemns reason itself in general. He declares also that the earth, sinking steadily over time, gradually passes into the sea. He says too that the sun is gathered together out of many small fires. He declares also, about the gods, that there is no rule among them; for it is not holy that any of the gods be mastered; and that none of them needs anything at all; that they hear and see as a whole and not in part. He declares too that the earth is unlimited and not enclosed by air on every side; that all things come from earth; and that the sun and the other stars come from the clouds."

8.5| "Parmenides of Elea, the associate of Xenophanes, both laid claim to his opinions and at the same time attempted the opposite position. For he declares the all to be eternal and motionless, according to the truth of things: for it alone exists, single in kind, unshaken, and unborn; but he rejects the coming-to-be of things that seem to exist by opinion, and throws the senses out of the truth. He says that if anything exists besides what is, it is not being; and non-being has no place among the whole. Thus he leaves being unborn; and he says that the earth came into being from the air that flowed down when it was thickened."

8.6| "Zeno of Elea set out nothing of his own, but raised many difficulties on these matters."

8.7| "Democritus of Abdera posited the all as unlimited, because it was in no way fashioned by anyone; and he also calls it unchangeable; and in general, such as the all is, he states in plain words that the causes of what now occurs have no beginning, but that from the first, out of unlimited time, all things that have come to be, and are, and will be, are altogether held fast beforehand by necessity. Of the birth of sun and moon, he says that they were carried each on its own, not yet having any hot nature at all, nor in general being very bright, but on the contrary made like the nature around the earth; for each of them came into being earlier still, as a kind of separate substructure of a world, and later, as the circle around the sun grew large, fire was caught up in it."

8.8| "Epicurus, son of Neocles, an Athenian, tries to suppress the vanity about the gods; and he says that nothing comes to be from what is not, because the all was always such and will be such; that nothing strange is accomplished in the all beyond the unlimited time that has already passed; that the all is body, and is not merely unchangeable but also unlimited; that the end of goods is pleasure.

8.9| "Aristippus of Cyrene held pleasure to be the end of goods and pain of evils; the rest of natural philosophy he cuts off, saying that the one useful thing is to inquire 'what evil and good has been wrought in your halls.'"

8.10| "Empedocles of Acragas held four elements, fire, water, aether, earth; and as their cause, love and strife. He says that from the first mixture of the elements the air was separated off and poured around in a circle, and after the air the fire ran out and, having no other place, ran upward under the compacted mass around the air. There are two hemispheres moving in a circle around the earth, one wholly of fire, the other a mixture of air and a little fire, which he thinks is the night. The beginning of motion came about from the chance of the aggregation, when the fire pressed down. The sun is not by nature fire but a reflection of fire, like that which comes from water. The moon, he says, took shape by itself out of the air left behind by the fire; for this was congealed, as hail is; and it has its light from the sun. The ruling part is not in the head or in the chest, but in the blood; hence in whatever part of the body the ruling part is more widely spread, in that he thinks men excel."

8.11| "Metrodorus of Chios states that the all is eternal, since, if it had been generated it would have come from what is not; and unlimited, because eternal, for it has no beginning from which it began, nor limit, nor end; but the all, moreover, does not share in motion. For it is impossible for it to move without changing place; and it must change place either into a full or into a void. The aether, when thickened, makes clouds, then water, which in falling on the sun puts it out; and again, rarefied, it is kindled. In time the sun is solidified by the dryness, and makes the stars out of the bright water, night and day out of the quenching and kindling, and in general produces the eclipses."

8.12| "Diogenes of Apollonia posits air as the element; all things move, and the worlds are unlimited. He makes the world in this way: as the all moves, becoming here rarefied and there dense, where the dense happened to meet it made a whirl, and so the rest in the same manner; the lightest, taking the upper place, produced the sun.

8.13| Such is the view of the all-wise Greeks, the so-called natural philosophers, on the constitution of the universe and the first generation of the cosmos: they posited no maker or craftsman of the universe, indeed made no mention of God at all, and assigned the cause of the all to nothing but irrational motion and spontaneous movement.

8.14| So great, too, is their opposition to one another, having agreed with each other in nothing and filled everything with strife and discord. This is why the admirable Socrates convicted all these men of folly, and said they differ in nothing from madmen, if Xenophon in the Memorabilia is a trustworthy witness to you, when he says as follows:

8.15| "No one ever saw Socrates doing anything impious or unholy, or heard him saying it. For he did not converse about the nature of all things, or about the rest, as most do, examining how what the sophists call the cosmos is made, and by what necessities each of the heavenly things comes to be; but he showed that those who worry about such things are fools." And he adds next:

8.16| "...whether it is not plain to them that these things are impossible for men to find out, since even those who pride themselves most on speaking about them do not hold the same opinions as one another, but are disposed toward one another like madmen. For of madmen, some do not fear even terrible things, while others fear things that are not frightening; and of those who concern themselves with the nature of all things, to some it seems that what exists is only one, to others that it is boundless in multitude; some that all things are always in motion, others that nothing is ever moved; some that all things come to be and perish, others that nothing could ever come to be or perish."

8.17| This is what Socrates said, as Xenophon bears witness. Plato too agrees with this, in the Phaedo recording him as speaking thus: "For I, Cebes, when I was young, had a wonderful desire for that wisdom which they call inquiry into nature. For it seemed to me splendid to know the causes of each thing, why each comes to be, and why it perishes, and why it is. And I often turned myself upside down, considering first questions of this sort: Is it when the hot and the cold take on a kind of putrefaction, as some said, that living creatures are then nourished? And is it the blood with which we think, or the air, or fire? Or is it, rather, none of these, and is it the brain that provides the senses of seeing and hearing and smelling, and from these arises memory and opinion, and when memory and opinion have come to rest, knowledge comes to be by them?

8.18| And again, examining the destructions of these, and the conditions of the heaven and earth, I finally came to seem to myself so unsuited to this inquiry as nothing could be. I will tell you a sufficient proof: the things that I knew clearly before, as it seemed to me and to others, I was then so greatly blinded by this very inquiry that I unlearned even the things I thought I had known before."

8.19| That is Socrates himself, the man celebrated among all Greeks. Since, then, even so great a philosopher thought such of the natural philosophy of the men named, I think it reasonable that we too should have declined the atheism of all these, since the error of many gods among them does not seem alien to what has been said. This will be examined at the fitting time, when we shall show that Anaxagoras is remembered as the first of the Greeks to set Mind over the cause of the all. For now, turn with me to Diodorus, and look at what he relates about the first theology of men:

9.1| "The men of Egypt, born in ancient times, looking up to the cosmos and struck with awe and wonder at the nature of the universe, took there to be two eternal and primary gods, the sun and the moon, of which they named the one Osiris and the other Isis, each name having been given from some etymology.

9.2| For when these are translated into the Greek manner of speech, Osiris is 'many-eyed,' and reasonably so; for casting his rays everywhere he sees all land and sea, as it were with many eyes; and the poet speaks in agreement with this: 'Helios, who oversee all things and overhear all things.'

9.3| Certain of the ancient mythologists among the Greeks call Osiris Dionysus, and Sirius by a derived name. Of these, Eumolpus in his Bacchic verses says: "Dionysus star-shining, fire-eyed in his rays"; and Orpheus: "For that reason they call him Phanes and Dionysus." Some say that the fawnskin fastened on him is taken from the dappled variety of the stars.

9.4| Isis, when translated, means "ancient," the name being given to the moon because of her eternal and ancient generation; they put horns on her both from the appearance she shows during the time she is crescent-shaped, and from the cow dedicated to her among the Egyptians. These gods, they suppose, administer the whole cosmos.

9.5| Such, then, is that account. You have it also in the Phoenician theology, that the first natural philosophers of the Phoenicians recognized only the sun, moon, the other wandering stars, the elements and what is connected with them as gods, and that the earliest of them consecrated to these the fruits of the earth and considered them gods and worshiped them, the things by which they themselves, their descendants and all who came before them lived, and performed libations and offerings; and they dedicated pity and lament and weeping to the fruit of the earth as it passed away, and to the first generation of living things from earth, and their generation from one another, and death, by which they departed from life.

9.6| These were the notions of worship, matching their own weakness and the still timid state of their souls. Such is the writing of the Phoenicians, as will be shown next. But even a man of our own times, the very man who made himself famous by his slanders against us, in the work he entitled On Abstinence from Animal Food, sets down the record of the antiquity of the ancients almost word for word in this way, using Theophrastus as witness:

9.7| "It seems that a countless time has passed since the first men of the most learned race of all, as Theophrastus says, who inhabit the most sacred land founded by the Nile, began to sacrifice at the hearth to the heavenly gods, offering not myrrh or cassia or the first-fruits of frankincense mixed with saffron; for these were devised many generations later, and when man, in his wandering, became a seeker of the necessities of life, with much labor and tears he offered drops of these to the gods.

9.8| They did not sacrifice with these at first, but picked up with their hands, as it were, a kind of down of green growth, of generative nature. For the earth gave up trees before living creatures, and long before the trees the grass that is born each year; picking its leaves and roots and all the shoots of its growth, they burned them, and in this way greeted the visible heavenly gods with the sacrifice, and made their honors immortal with fire.

9.9| For to these they also kept the fire undying in the temples, as being most like them. From this burning (thymiasis) of the produce of the earth they named the censers (thymiateria), sacrificing (thyein) and sacrifices (thysiai); and we wrongly understand these words as signifying the later transgression, when we call the supposed worship through animals 'sacrifice.'

9.10| So much did the ancients care not to transgress the custom that they called down curses (arai) on those who abandoned the ancient practice and brought in another, and so named the things burnt as incense 'aromata.'"

9.11| After saying this, he adds, after some other things: "As the transgression in the first-fruits of sacrifices advanced among men, the adoption of the most dreadful victims, full of cruelty, was brought in, so that the curses spoken before against us seem now to have been fulfilled, as men slaughtered and stained the altars with blood."

9.12| So much Porphyry, no more than Theophrastus. A seal on the argument may be Plato in the Cratylus, who, before what he has said about the Greeks, says somewhat in these words: "It seems to me that the first men of those around Greece held to be gods only those which many of the barbarians still hold so now: sun, moon, earth, stars and heaven. Seeing that all these were ever going in their course and running, from this nature of running they named them gods."

9.13| But that the first and oldest of men did not attend to the building of temples or the setting up of wooden images, since the art of painting, modeling, carving or statue-making had not yet been discovered, nor yet building or architecture established, is plain, I think, to anyone who reasons it out.

9.14| And that there was no memory among them then even of the gods and heroes named later, so that they had no Zeus, no Cronus, no Poseidon, no Apollo, no Hera, no Athena, no Dionysus, nor any other male or female god of the countless sort that came afterward among barbarians and Greeks, nor was any good or bad spirit held in awe among men, but only the visible heavenly stars, from "theein," that is, "to run," received the name of gods, as they themselves say, and even these were not worshiped with sacrifices of animals or the honors devised afterward: this account is not ours; rather the testimony comes from the Greeks themselves, offering the proof through the words set out above and those to be set out next.

9.15| Our sacred writings teach this too, holding that at the beginning the honor of the visible luminaries was assigned to all the nations, while the contemplation of God, the Maker and Craftsman of the universe, and true piety toward him, was entrusted to the Hebrew race alone.

9.16| So there was no account of Greek or barbarian birth of gods among the oldest of men, nor setting up of lifeless wooden images, nor the great nonsense that now prevails in the naming of male and female gods.

9.17| If, then, titles and names, which men devised later, were not yet known among men, neither were there invocations of demons and unseen spirits, nor outlandish myths concerning gods and heroes, nor mysteries of secret rites, nor anything at all of the abundant and idle-chattering superstition of later men.

9.18| These, then, were inventions of men and fabrications of mortal nature, or rather contrivances of shameful and licentious ways, as our divine oracle declares: "The devising of an idol is the beginning of fornication."

9.19| At any rate, the many-gods error of all the nations appeared only after long ages, beginning with the Phoenicians and Egyptians and passing from them to the remaining nations and as far as the Greeks themselves, as the history of the earliest times also holds on this point; and it is time to examine that history too, beginning with the Phoenician matters.

9.20| These things are recorded by Sanchuniathon, a man of the highest antiquity, older, they say, even than the Trojan times, whom they testify to have been accepted for accuracy and truth in Phoenician history. The Byblian Philo, not the Hebrew, translated the whole of his writing from the Phoenician tongue into the Greek language and published it. The man of our own time who made the scheme against us mentions these things in book four of the work he wrote against us, bearing witness to the man in these words:

9.21| "The most truthful account of the Jews, and the one most in agreement with their places and names, is given by Sanchuniathon of Berytus, who took his records from Hierombalus, priest of the god Ieuo. His history he dedicated to Abibalus, king of the Berytians, and was accepted by him and by the examiners of the truth in his time. Their times fall even before the Trojan times and come almost close to those of Moses, as the successions of the kings of Phoenicia show. Sanchuniathon, who in the Phoenician dialect gathered and wrote up with a love of truth the whole ancient history from the records kept city by city and the inscriptions in the temples, lived in the days of Semiramis, queen of the Assyrians, who is said, according to the records, to have lived before the Trojan times, or at those very times. Philo of Byblos translated the writings of Sanchuniathon into the Greek language."

9.22| So much from the man named, who bears witness at once to the truth and the antiquity of this theologian. But the writer, going on, theologizes not about the God over all, nor indeed about the gods in heaven, but about mortal men and women, not even of refined character such as it would be worthwhile on account of virtue to accept or emulate in philosophy, but clothed in the wickedness of all baseness and vice. And he testifies that these are the very ones who are still held as gods among all, in cities and countries. Take also the proofs of these from the writings.

9.23| Philo, who divided the entire work of Sanchuniathon into nine books, says in the preface of the first treatise, in his very words, this about Sanchuniathon:

9.24| "Since these things were so, Sanchuniathon, a man of wide learning and curiosity, who longed to know from everyone the things from the beginning, from which all things were formed, searched out with great pains the writings of Taautus, knowing that of all those who have lived under the sun Taautus is the first, who devised the discovery of letters and began the keeping of records; and from him, as it were, he laid the foundation of his account. Him the Egyptians called Thouth, the Alexandrians Thoth, and the Greeks rendered Hermes."

9.25| After saying this, he blames the more recent writers who followed, because they forcibly and untruthfully lead the myths about the gods up to allegories and natural explanations and speculations; and he says, going on:

9.26| "But the latest of the sacred writers rejected the events that had happened from the beginning, and by devising allegories and myths and fashioning a kinship with cosmic happenings, established mysteries, and brought great pretension upon them, so that it was not easy for anyone to discern what had truly happened. But he, comparing the secret writings of the Ammouneis, composed and found in the inner shrines, which were not known to all, applied himself to the learning of everything; and having put an end to his work, he set aside the myth and allegories of the beginning and accomplished his purpose, until the priests who came later wished to conceal it again and restore it to the mythical; and from this the mystical arose, which had not yet reached the Greeks."

9.27| After this he says: "These things we have found, when we longed to know the Phoenician matters carefully and had searched through much material, not that of the Greeks, for that is discordant and was composed by some more out of contentiousness than with regard to truth.

9.28| And after other things: We were persuaded that it is as he wrote, seeing the discord among the Greeks. About this I have taken pains over three books with the title Paradoxical History."

9.29| And again, after other things, he adds: "It is necessary to make a preliminary distinction, for later clarity and the recognition of particulars, that the most ancient of the barbarians, above all the Phoenicians and Egyptians, from whom the remaining human beings took it over, considered the greatest gods to be those who had discovered what is needed for the needs of life, or had in some way benefited the nations; thinking them benefactors and causes of many goods, they worshiped them as gods, and after they had passed away they built temples and dedicated pillars and staves in their names, revering these greatly, and the Phoenicians assigned to them the greatest festivals. In particular, they also gave the names of their own kings to the cosmic elements and to some of the beings held to be gods; and as natural gods they recognized only the sun and moon and the other wandering stars and the elements and what is connected with them, so that for them some gods were mortal and others immortal."

9.30| Having made these distinctions in his preface, Philo next begins the translation of Sanchuniathon, setting out the Phoenician theology somewhat as follows:

10.1| "He supposes the beginning of all things to be a dark and windy air, or a breath of dark air, and a turbid, gloomy chaos. These were unlimited, and for a long age had no limit. But when, he says, the breath fell in love with its own first principles, and a blending took place, that union was called Desire. This was the origin of the creation of all things. But it did not itself know its own creation, and from its embrace with the breath was born Mot.

10.2| Some say this is slime, others the putrefaction of a watery mixture. And from this came every seed of creation and the genesis of all things. There were certain living things without sense-perception, out of which came intelligent living things, and these were called Zophasemin, that is, 'watchers of heaven.' And it was molded in the shape of an egg, and Mot shone forth, and sun and moon, stars and great constellations."

10.3| Such is their cosmogony, introducing plain atheism. Let us see next how he says the birth of living things came about. He says, then:

10.4| "And when the air became bright, through the heating of both sea and land there came winds and clouds and very great downpourings and floods of heavenly waters. And when they had been separated, and removed from their proper place by the burning of the sun, and everything met again in the air, one with another, and collided, thunders and lightnings were produced; and at the crash of the thunders the aforementioned intelligent living creatures awoke, and were frightened at the sound, and male and female stirred, on land and in sea."

10.5| Such is their account of the generation of living things. After this the same author adds: "These matters were discovered written in the cosmogony of Taautus, and among his records, from conjectures and signs that his mind saw, discovered, and shed light on for us."

10.6| Next, having named the winds, Notus and Boreas and the rest, he adds: "But these were the first to consecrate the fruits of the earth and to regard them as gods, and they worshiped them, the things by which they themselves, their descendants and all who came before them lived, and they made libations and offerings."

10.7| And he adds: "These were the notions of worship, matching their weakness and the timidity of their soul. He goes on to say that Aeon and Protogonus, mortal men who were given these names, were born of the wind Colpias and a woman Baau (which he interprets as 'night'); and Aeon discovered food from trees. Those born from these were called Genos and Genea, and they dwelt in Phoenicia; and when droughts came they stretched their hands up to heaven toward the sun. For this, he says, they regarded as the only god, lord of heaven, calling him Beelsamen, which among the Phoenicians is 'lord of heaven,' and among the Greeks Zeus."

10.8| Next he accuses the Greeks of going astray, saying: "For it is not in vain that we have made these distinctions in many ways, of names, which the Greeks, not understanding, took otherwise, misled by the ambiguity of the translation."

10.9| Next he says: "From Genos, the son of Aeon and Protogonus, there were born in turn mortal children, whose names were Phos, Pur and Phlox ('Light,' 'Fire,' 'Flame'). These, he says, found fire by rubbing pieces of wood together and taught its use. They begot sons greater in size and stature, whose names were given to the mountains they held, so that from them Cassius, Lebanon, Antilebanon and Brathy were named. From these, he says, were born Samemroumus, who is also Hypsouranios, and Ousoos; and they took their names, he says, from their mothers, the women of that time mating freely with whomever they met."

10.10| Then he says: "Hypsouranios dwelt in Tyre, and devised huts from reeds and rushes and papyrus, and quarreled with his brother Ousoos, who first devised a covering for the body from the skins of such wild beasts as he was strong enough to catch. When violent rains and winds came, the trees in Tyre, rubbed against one another, took fire and burned up the forest there. Ousoos took a tree, stripped its branches, and first dared to embark on the sea; and he hallowed two pillars to fire and to wind, and worshiped them, and poured out blood to them from the beasts he hunted.

10.11| When these two had died, those left behind, he says, consecrated staves to them, worshiped the pillars, and held festivals to them every year. Many ages later, from the line of Hypsouranios were born Agreus and Halieus, the discoverers of hunting and fishing, from whom hunters and fishermen are named; from them came two brothers, discoverers of iron and of its working, of whom one, Chrysor, practiced words and incantations and divinations. This one is Hephaestus; he also discovered the hook, bait, fishing line and raft, and was the earliest of all men to go to sea; for which reason he was revered as a god after his death.

10.12| He is also named Zeus Meilichios; others say his brothers invented walls made of bricks. After this, from their line two youths were born, one called Technites ('Craftsman'), the other Geinos Autochthon ('Earth-born'). These devised the mixing of rubble into brick clay and the baking of the bricks in the sun, and they also discovered roofs. From these came others, of whom one was called Agros and the other Agrouerus or Agrotes; there is a very venerated wooden image of him and a shrine carried on a yoke in Phoenicia; at Byblos he is called supreme among the gods.

10.13| These devised adding courtyards to houses, and enclosures and caves. From these came farmers and hunters. They are called Aletae too, and Titans. From these came Amynus and Magus, who showed villages and flocks. From these came Misor and Sydyk, that is, 'Easy-to-loose' and 'Just.' These found out the use of salt.

10.14| From Misor came Taautus, who discovered the writing of the first letters; the Egyptians called him Thouth, the Alexandrians Thoth, and the Greeks called him Hermes. From Sydyk came the Dioscuri, who are also Cabeiri, Corybantes or Samothracians. These, he says, first discovered the ship. From them came others, who discovered herbs and the cure of bites, and incantations. In their time there arises one called Elioun, 'Most High,' and a female called Beruth; they dwelt around Byblos.

10.15| From them is born Epigeios Autochthon, whom they later called Ouranos ('Heaven'), so that from him the element above us is also called heaven because of the excess of its beauty. A sister of his is born from the same parents, who was called Ge ('Earth'). And because of her beauty, he says, the earth was given the same name by them. Their father the Most High, who died in an encounter with wild beasts, was deified, and his children performed libations and sacrifices to him.

10.16| Ouranos, taking over his father's rule, takes his sister Ge in marriage, and has by her four children: Ilus, who is also Cronus, and Baetylus, and Dagon, who is Siton ('Grain'), and Atlas. By other wives too Ouranos had many offspring. Ge, therefore, angered and jealous, abused Ouranos, so that they separated from each other.

10.17| Ouranos, having left her, would approach and come close to her by force whenever he wished, and then go away again; he also attempted to destroy the children she had borne him; but Ge often defended herself, having gathered an alliance. When Cronus came to manhood, using Hermes Trismegistus as counselor and helper (for he was his secretary), he took vengeance on his father Ouranos, avenging his mother.

10.18| To Cronus are born children, Persephone and Athena. The first died a virgin; and on the advice of Athena and Hermes Cronus fashioned a sickle and an iron spear. Then Hermes, speaking words of magic to the allies of Cronus, put in them a longing for the fight against Ouranos on behalf of Ge. And so Cronus joined battle with Ouranos, drove him from his rule and succeeded to the kingdom. In the battle the beloved concubine of Ouranos, who was pregnant, was also captured, and Cronus gives her in marriage to Dagon.

10.19| She bears to him what she carried in her womb from Ouranos, which he called Demarous. After this Cronus builds a wall around his own dwelling, and he founds Byblos in Phoenicia, the first city.

10.20| After this, Cronus, suspecting his own brother Atlas, with the consent of Hermes threw him into a deep place in the earth and buried him. During this period the descendants of the Dioscuri built rafts and boats and sailed, and being cast ashore near Mount Cassius they dedicated a temple there. The allies of Ilus, that is Cronus, were named Eloeim, as those who were called after Cronus were Cronians.

10.21| Cronus, having a son Sadidos, put him to death with his own sword, since he held him under suspicion, and with his own hand deprived his child of life; and likewise he cut off the head of his own daughter, so that all the gods were astounded at the mind of Cronus.

10.22| As time went on, Ouranos, being in exile, sends his virgin daughter Astarte, together with two other sisters of hers, Rhea and Dione, to kill Cronus by trickery; but Cronus took them and made them his wedded wives, though they were his sisters.

10.23| When Ouranos learned of it, he sends Heimarmene and Hora against Cronus with other allies, and Cronus won these over too and kept them with himself. And further, he says, the god Ouranos devised baetyls, contriving living stones. To Cronus were born by Astarte seven daughters, the Titanides or Artemises.

10.24| And again to him are born by Rhea seven sons, the youngest of whom was consecrated at birth; and by Dione daughters; and by Astarte again two males, Pothos and Eros.

10.25| Dagon, after he discovered grain and the plow, was called Zeus Arotrios. To Sydyk, the one called the Just, one of the Titanides, joining with him, bears Asclepius.

10.26| Three sons were also born to Cronus in Peraea: Cronus, who bore his father's name, Zeus Belus, and Apollo. In their time Pontus, Typhon, and Nereus, the father of Pontus, were born.

10.27| From Pontus is born Sidon, who by the excess of her sweet voice first discovered the hymn of song, and Poseidon. To Demarous is born Melcarthus, who is also Heracles.

10.28| Then Ouranos again makes war on Pontus, and, withdrawing, attaches himself to Demarous; Demarous attacks Pontus, but Pontus routs him, and Demarous vowed a sacrifice for his escape.

10.29| In the thirty-second year of his own power and kingship, Ilus, that is Cronus, set an ambush for his father Ouranos in a certain inland place, and, getting him in his hands, cuts off his genitals, close to springs and rivers. There Ouranos was deified, his spirit was taken away, and the blood from his genitals dripped into the springs and the waters of the rivers, and to this day the place is pointed out."

10.30| So much, then, concerning Cronus, and such is the august life, famed among the Greeks, of those in the age of Cronus, who they also say were the first, a golden race of speech-endowed men, in that blessed happiness of the ancients. Again, after other things, the writer adds to this, saying:

10.31| "Astarte the greatest, and Zeus Demarous and Adodos, king of the gods, reigned over the country by the will of Cronus. Astarte put on her own head, as the mark of kingship, the head of a bull; and as she traveled around the inhabited world she found a star fallen from the sky, which she picked up and consecrated in the holy island of Tyre.

10.32| The Phoenicians say that Astarte is Aphrodite. And Cronus, traveling around the inhabited world, gives to Athena, his daughter, the kingdom of Attica.

10.33| When a plague and destruction came, Cronus offered his only-begotten son to his father Ouranos as a whole burnt offering, and circumcised himself, forcing his allies with him to do the same,

10.34| and not long after he consecrates another son of his by Rhea, named Muth, who had died. The Phoenicians call him Death and Pluto.

10.35| And after this Cronus gives the city of Byblos to the goddess Baaltis, who is Dione as well, and Berytus to Poseidon and the Cabeiri, the Farmers and Fishermen, who dedicated the remains of Pontus at Berytus.

10.36| Before this, the god Taautus, imitating the appearances of the gods who were with him, Cronus and Dagon and the rest, formed the sacred characters of the elements. He also devised for Cronus, as insignia of kingship, four eyes, in front and behind, * * * two of them quietly closing, and four wings on the shoulders, two as if flying, two as if lowered.

10.37| The symbol was that Cronus saw while sleeping and slept while awake; and likewise with the wings, that he flew while resting and rested while flying. For the rest of the gods, each had two wings on his shoulders, signifying that they flew with Cronus. And on his own head again there were two wings, one on the most ruling mind and one on the sense-perception.

10.38| Cronus, coming into the southern country, gave all of Egypt to the god Taautus, to be his kingdom. These things, he says, were first of all recorded by the seven sons, the Cabeiri, and their own brother Asclepius, as the god Taautus commanded them.

10.39| All this Thabion, the very first of the hierophants among the Phoenicians since the beginning of the age, allegorized, mixing it with natural and cosmic happenings, and handed it down to the orgiasts and presiding prophets of the rites; and they, intending to increase the pretension by every means, handed it on to their successors and to those brought in from outside, of whom one was Isiris, the discoverer of the three letters, brother of Chna, who was first renamed Phoenix."

10.40| Then next he adds again: "The Greeks, surpassing all in natural talent, appropriated most of the earliest matters for themselves, and then dressed them up in varied tragic ornament, and, intending to charm with the pleasures of myths, embroidered them in every way. Hence Hesiod and the cyclic poets, resounding with theogonies and battles of giants and battles of Titans, fashioned their own castrations, and by carrying these about they overcame the truth.

10.41| Our ears, having grown up with their fabrications and being preoccupied for many ages, guard as a deposit the mythmaking that they received, as I said at the outset, and this, with time's help, has made its hold hard to escape, so that the truth seems nonsense, and the spurious tale of the narrative seems truth."

10.42| Let this stand from the writing of Sanchuniathon, interpreted by Philo of Byblos and judged genuine on the evidence of Porphyry the philosopher. In his treatise On the Jews, that same author writes these further things about Cronus.

10.43| "Taautus, whom the Egyptians call Thouth, who excelled in wisdom among the Phoenicians, was the first to take matters of the worship of the gods out of the inexperience of the common crowd and arrange them in scientific order. After many generations, the god Surmubelus and Thuro, who was renamed Eusarthis, following in his steps, brought to light the theology of Taautus that had been hidden and overshadowed by allegories."

10.44| And after a few words he says: "It was the custom among the ancients, in great calamities of danger, for those presiding over a city or a nation, as a substitute for the destruction of all, to give the most beloved of their children for slaughter as a ransom to the avenging demons; and those given were slaughtered in secret rites. Cronus, then, whom the Phoenicians call Ilus, king of the country, and afterwards, after the end of his life, consecrated to the star of Cronus, had by a native nymph called Anobret an only son, whom for that reason they called Ieoud (the only-begotten being so called even now among the Phoenicians); and when extreme dangers of war had come upon the country, he dressed his son in royal attire, built an altar, and sacrificed him."

10.45| The same writer again, translating from Sanchuniathon on the Phoenician letters, look what he says about creeping and venomous beasts, which bring no good use to men, but destruction and ruin to those on whom they inject their incurable and grievous venom. He writes this too in these very words, saying something like this:

10.46| "The nature of the dragon and of snakes Taautus himself deified, and after him in turn the Phoenicians and Egyptians; for he handed down that this animal is the most spiritual of all reptiles and fiery. For this reason it also shows unsurpassable speed through its breath, without feet or hands or any other external part by means of which the other animals perform their movements; it makes forms of varied shapes, and in its course its motions are spiral, at whatever speed it wishes.

10.47| It is also very long-lived, and not only does it grow young again by shedding its old age, but it is naturally disposed to receive greater growth; and when it has completed its appointed measure, it is consumed into itself, as Taautus himself likewise set down in the sacred writings. For this reason this animal is also included in temples and in mysteries.

10.48| We have spoken about it at greater length in the records entitled Ethothia, in which we establish that it is immortal and dissolves into itself, as stated; for this animal does not die of its own death, unless struck by some violence. The Phoenicians call it Good Demon; likewise the Egyptians name it Cneph; and to it they add a hawk's head, because of the hawk's activity.

10.49| And Epeis, speaking allegorically (who was named among them the greatest hierophant and sacred scribe, and whom Areios of Heracleopolis translated), says in these words: 'The foremost and most divine being is a serpent, hawk-formed, exceedingly graceful; if it looked up, it filled everything with light in its original place; if it closed its eyes, there was darkness.'

10.50| Epeis shows by saying 'it shone through' that it is also fiery; for to shine through is proper to light. Pherecydes also, taking his starting points from the Phoenicians, theologized about the god he calls Ophion, and the Ophionids, about whom we shall speak again.

10.51| Moreover the Egyptians, from the same idea, in depicting the cosmos draw a round circle, airy and fire-colored, and in the middle a hawk-formed serpent stretched across; and the whole figure is like our theta; signifying the circle as the cosmos, and the serpent in the middle, holding it together, as the Good Demon.

10.52| Zoroaster the Magus too, in the Sacred Collection of the Persians, says in these words: 'The god has a hawk's head. He is the first, incorruptible, eternal, unborn, without parts, most unlike anything, charioteer of every good, unbribable, the best of good things, the wisest of the wise; he is also father of good order and justice, self-taught, natural, perfect, and wise, and sole discoverer of the sacred natural.' Ostanes too says the same about him in the work entitled Octateuch."

10.53| All of them took their starting points from Taautus and so produced their accounts of nature, as set out above. They built temples and consecrated in their inner shrines the first elements, those signified through the serpents; and in their honor they held festivals, sacrifices and orgiastic rites, treating them as the greatest gods, and as rulers of the universe. So much, then, about serpents.

10.54| Such, then, is the shape of the Phoenician theology. The saving Word brings the good news that we are to flee from it without turning back, and to seek out the cure for the derangement of the ancients.

10.55| That these things are not myths, nor poets' fictions holding some meaning concealed beneath the surface, but true testimonies of wise and ancient theologians, as they themselves would put it, testimonies that contain matters older than all the poets and prose-writers, and that draw the credibility of their accounts from the names and histories of the gods which still prevail in the cities and villages of Phoenicia, as well as from the mysteries celebrated in each, should be plain. There is therefore no longer any need to hunt out forced physical explanations of them, since the facts themselves carry a clear proof. This, then, is the Phoenicians' theology; it is time to pass on and examine that of the Egyptians as well.

Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/075-preparation-for-the-gospel-book-i#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.

← All of Eusebius of Caesarea: The Works of Eusebius of Caesarea