Preparation for the Gospel — Book VIII

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

1.1| PREFACE. In the preceding book I went through the lives of the ancient Hebrews, God-beloved men who made their very name come true and who, before Moses appeared, had crowned themselves with the prizes of every virtue; I went through their God-fearing doctrines and teachings as well, and besides these their wholly true and reverent theologies, for which we have confessed that we have come to feel love and longing. Now, keeping to the order that follows, I pass on to the polity of Moses, which occupies the second rung of piety after that first one: the rung, that is, which was laid down as law for the Jewish nation alone.

1.2| For we shall show at the proper time that the ordinances given through Moses were suited to the Jews alone and not to the nations throughout the world as well, and that they could not be kept by all men: I mean by the Greeks and barbarians who live somewhere far from the land of Judea.

1.3| For now I shall set out the character of this way of life too, I mean the life under Moses, not in my own words but once again solely in those of men esteemed among them for their ancestral learning. For I think it fitting for me to proceed as I began, and to furnish the testimonies for my proofs from each people’s own writers.

1.4| Just as I called Phoenicians, Egyptians and Greeks as witnesses, men well known among their own people in their own lands, so the present occasion seems to me a fitting one to bring these men in as well, so that we ourselves may not be thought to be making up things that belong to others.

1.5| But before coming to this, I consider it necessary to make clear to my readers how the oracles held among them passed to the Greeks, and how the translation of the divine Scriptures entrusted to them came about: through how many men, and men of what kind, and with how much royal zeal it was rendered into the Greek tongue. For an account of these matters too will prove not unhelpful to the demonstration of the Preparation now under way.

1.6| The proclamation of our Savior, so beneficial to human life, was on the point of shining out to all men under the rule of the Romans, and reason of no ordinary weight required that the prophecies about him, the life of the Hebrews of old, beloved of God, and the lessons of their pious teaching, kept veiled for a long age in their ancestral tongue, should now at last pass to all the nations to whom some knowledge of God was to be brought. God himself, therefore, the cause of these good things, grasping beforehand what was to come, as God does by his foreknowledge, ordered that the predictions concerning the Savior of all men, who would soon appear and be established for all the nations under the sun as the teacher of piety toward the one God over all, should be unveiled to all and brought to light, accurately translated and placed in public libraries. He did this by putting it in the mind of King Ptolemy to carry it out, in preparation, as it seems, for the share in them that all the nations were so soon to receive.

1.7| For what we could not otherwise have obtained from the Jews, who would have hidden away their oracles out of ill will toward us, we were granted through a translation arranged by God, made by men among them who were esteemed for their understanding and their ancestral learning.

1.8| The account is written by Aristeas, a man of learning in general, but one who also happened to be present at the events in the time of Ptolemy the Second, called Philadelphus, under whom the translation of the Jewish Scriptures, accomplished through the king’s zeal, was given a place in the libraries of Alexandria. It is time to hear him, as he tells it, word for word, in this way:

2.1| “Demetrius of Phalerum, who had been put in charge of the king’s library, was furnished with large sums for the purpose of collecting every book in the world, and by purchasing and having copies made he carried the king’s design to completion, so far as it lay with him.

2.2| Once, then, in our presence, he was asked how many tens of thousands of books there were, and he said: ‘More than two hundred thousand, O king; and I shall make it my business within a short time to fill out the rest to five hundred thousand. Word has been brought to me that the laws of the Jews too are worthy of being transcribed and of a place in your library.’

2.3| What prevents you, then, from doing this? he said. For everything needed has been put at your disposal. Demetrius said: It needs translation. For they use their own characters in Judea, just as the Egyptians use their own arrangement of letters, and they also have a language of their own. They are supposed to use Syriac, but this is not so; it is a different idiom.

2.4| The king, having understood each point, said that a letter should be written to the Jews' high priest, so that the aforesaid might be accomplished.” And after other matters he adds:

2.5| “When this was done, he ordered Demetrius to draw up a report about the transcription of the Jewish books. For everything was managed by these kings through written orders and great exactness, and nothing carelessly or at random. For this reason I have also set down the copy of the report and the copies of the letters, and the quantity of the gifts sent and the workmanship of each, because each of them was outstanding for magnificence and art. This is the copy of the report:

3.1| To the great king, from Demetrius. Since you commanded, O king, that the books still lacking for the completion of the library be collected, and that those that have fallen into disrepair receive the proper restoration, I have taken no casual care in these matters and report to you:

3.2| The books of the Jews' law, along with a few others, are missing. They happen to be written in Hebrew letters and language; but they have been transcribed carelessly and not as they actually are, as is reported by those who know, for they have not received royal attention.

3.3| It is necessary that these too be held by you in accurate form, because this legislation is the more philosophical and untainted, as being divine. For this reason writers and poets and the crowd of historians have kept far from mentioning the aforesaid books and the men who lived by them, because the contemplation in them is pure and august, as Hecataeus of Abdera says.

3.4| If, then, it seems good, O king, a letter will be written to Jerusalem, to the high priest, to send men of the most upright life, elders, experienced in their own law, six from each tribe, so that having examined what agrees from the larger number, and having obtained the exact sense of the translation, we may set it down clearly and in a manner worthy of the matter and of your purpose. May you prosper always.”

3.5| When this report was made, the king ordered that a letter be written to Eleazar about these things, informing him also of the release that had been made of the captives. He also gave, for the making of mixing bowls, bowls, a table, and libation vessels, fifty talents by weight of gold, seventy talents of silver, and a considerable quantity of precious stones.

3.6| He ordered the treasurers to give the craftsmen the choice of whatever they preferred, and about a hundred talents of coin for the sacrifices and the other needs. We shall describe the workmanship for you when we go through the copies of the letters. The letter of the king was of the following form:

4.1| “King Ptolemy to the high priest Eleazar, greetings and good health. Since it has happened that many Jews have settled in our country, having been carried off from Jerusalem by the Persians during their dominion, and that others came into Egypt with our father as captives, of whom he enrolled many in the army on higher pay, and likewise, judging those already there to be trustworthy, he built fortresses and gave them to them, so that the Egyptian nation might have fear because of them; and we, having taken over the kingdom, deal more humanely with all, and much more so with your citizens; we have set free more than a hundred thousand captives, paying their owners the proper price in silver, correcting also whatever was done wrongly through the impulses of the mobs, judging that we do this piously, and offering it in thanks to the most high God, who has kept our kingdom in peace and in the greatest glory throughout the whole world. We have placed those in the prime of life in the army, and those able to be near us and worthy of trust in the court I have appointed after examination.

4.2| Since we wish to do a favor both to you and to every Jew across the whole world, and to those who come after, we have decided that your law be translated into Greek letters from what you call the Hebrew letters, so that these books also may be with us in the library along with the other royal books.

4.3| You will do well, then, and in a manner worthy of our zeal, to choose men of upright life, elders, experienced in the law and able to translate, six from each tribe, so that agreement may be found from the larger number, since the investigation concerns matters of great importance; we believe that when this is accomplished we shall win great glory.

4.4| We have sent about these matters Andreas, one of the chief bodyguards, and Aristeas, men honored among us, to discuss it with you, bringing first-fruits of dedicatory offerings for the temple, and one hundred talents of silver for sacrifices and for other purposes. Write to us also about whatever you wish; for you will be doing us a favor and will do something worthy of friendship, and what you choose will be carried out as quickly as possible. Farewell.” To this Eleazar replied appropriately as follows:

5.1| “Eleazar the high priest to King Ptolemy, true friend, greetings. If you are well, and Queen Arsinoe your sister, and your children, it would be well and as we wish; and we ourselves are in good health. Having received your letter, we rejoiced greatly at your purpose and your good counsel, and gathering the whole multitude we read it to them, so that they might know the piety that you have toward our God.

5.2| We also displayed the bowls you sent: twenty golden and thirty silver ones, five mixing bowls, and a table for dedication, and for the offering of sacrifices and for the repairs the temple may need, a hundred talents of silver, which Andreas, one of those honored by you, and Aristeas brought, men noble and good, outstanding in education, and worthy in every way of your guidance and justice.

5.3| They also communicated to us your message, and from us they heard replies suited to your affairs. For we shall comply with everything that is to your advantage, even if it is contrary to nature. This is a sign of friendship and affection; for you have done our citizens great and unforgettable benefits in many ways.

5.4| We immediately offered sacrifices on behalf of you, your sister, your children, and your friends, and the whole multitude prayed that everything may come to you as you always intend, and that the God who is lord of all may preserve your kingdom for you in peace with glory.

5.5| And so that the transcription of the holy law may be carried out advantageously and safely, with all present, I chose good and noble men, elders, six from each tribe, whom we have sent bearing the law. You will do well, righteous king, to give orders that when the transcription of the books has been made, the men may be restored safely to us. Farewell.”

5.6| After this, having said much in between about the work proposed, after the translation of the Scriptures he adds in these very words: “When these rolls had been read, the priests and the elders of the translators, and those from the community and the leaders of the multitude, stood and said: Since the translation has been made well and piously and accurately in every respect, it is good that these things remain as they are and that no alteration be made. When all had voiced their approval of what was said, they ordered a curse to be pronounced, as is their custom, on anyone who should alter the text by adding or changing anything at all in what was written, or by making any removal, doing well in this so that it might be kept forever, remaining unchanged.

5.7| When this too was reported to the king, he rejoiced greatly; for it seemed that the purpose he had held had been safely accomplished. Everything was read aloud to him, and he was exceedingly amazed at the lawgiver's mind, and spoke to Demetrius: How is it that, with such great matters accomplished, none of the historians or poets has undertaken to mention them? He said: Because the legislation is august and has come from God, and some who tried were struck by God and abandoned their attempt.

5.8| For he said he had learned from Theopompus that, when he was about to include in his history, rather rashly, some of the things already translated from the law, he fell into a disturbance of mind for more than thirty days; and in an interval of relief he propitiated God in order to learn why this was happening to him. It was indicated to him in a dream that he wished to work over divine matters and publish them to common men, and when he desisted he was restored.”

5.9| I also learned from Theodectes, the tragic poet, that when he was about to bring something recorded in the book into a play, his eyes were clouded with cataract; and suspecting that this had befallen him on that account, he appeased God, and after many days was restored.

5.10| When the king, as I said, learned of these things from Demetrius, he bowed in reverence and ordered that the books be treated with great care and be kept pure.”

5.11| So much for us from the excerpt of the writing mentioned. Come, now, let us also view the polity of the legislation under Moses from the distinguished authorities among these men. First I shall set down Philo’s account of the Jews’ journey from Egypt, which they made under the leadership of Moses, from the first treatise of those he entitled Hypothetica, where, making a speech on behalf of the Jews against their accusers, he says this:

6.1| “Their ancient forefather was from the Chaldeans, but this people set out from Egypt, having migrated there long ago from Syria, being full of countless myriads and the land not sufficient, and moreover being greatly reared in youthful pride; and at the same time God made known their departure to them through visions and dreams, and they fell, by some divine impulse, into a longing for their ancestral and ancient land no less than anyone. Hence that forefather of theirs, after coming to Egypt, whether by God’s decision or by some providence, prospered most of all, so that from him down to the present the nation both came to be and remains, and has grown so far in population.”

6.2| And a little later he says: “The man who led them in the departure and the journey was in no way, if you like, different from the many; so they even abused him as a sorcerer and a fox of words. But it was a fine sorcery and cunning, by which he not only brought the whole people through completely safe in waterlessness and hunger and ignorance of the roads and lack of everything, and as if in complete prosperity and under escort from the nations lying between, but also kept them free of faction among themselves and especially obedient to himself.

6.3| And this lasted not a short time, but as long as it is hardly likely even a household would stay together in harmony with complete prosperity. And neither thirst, nor hunger, nor the wasting of bodies, nor fear about the future, nor ignorance of what would happen, drove the deceived and wasting people against that sorcerer.

6.4| And yet, what do you want us to say: that he had so much art, or skill in words, or intelligence, as to prevail over so many such absurdities that were leading all to destruction? Either the natures of the men under him were not ignorant or difficult but easily persuaded and not without foresight of the future; or they were as bad as possible, and God soothed their difficulties and as it were presided over the present and the future. Whichever of these seems to you most true, it plainly tends to praise, honor, and admiration for all of them.

6.5| So much for the departure. But when they came to this land, how they were settled and gained possession of the country is made clear in the sacred records; I do not think it right to go through the probabilities about them rather by way of history than by some reasoning.

6.6| Do you wish to suppose that they, still surviving in the multitude of their persons, although utterly ill-treated, yet strong and with arms in their hands, took the land by force, conquering Syrians and Phoenicians together as they fought in their own country? Or shall we suppose that they were unwarlike, unmanly, and altogether few, lacking the equipment for war, but won respect from these peoples and received the land from willing hands, and then immediately, not long after, built the temple and established the rest for piety and holy observance?

6.7| For this shows, it seems, that they were acknowledged as most beloved by God even among their enemies. For they were necessarily enemies of those to whose land they came suddenly, as if to take it from them.

6.8| Yet obtaining respect and honor from these, how do they not appear to surpass the others in good fortune? What shall we mention second, and third after that? Their good order and obedience, or their holiness, justice, and piety? As for that man, whoever he was who laid down the laws for them, they so greatly admired him that whatever seemed good to him seemed good to them too.

6.9| Whether he reasoned it out himself or spoke what he heard from a divine power, they refer all of it to God; and although a great many years have gone by (I cannot give the exact number, but certainly more than two thousand), they have not changed even a single word of what he wrote, but would endure death ten thousand times sooner than be persuaded to act against his laws and customs.”

6.10| After saying this, he gives a summary of the polity established for the Jewish nation by the laws of Moses, writing as follows:

7.1| “Is there anything like this, or similar to it, among those people, anything that seems mild and tame, with lawsuits brought on, pleas, adjournments, assessments, and counter-assessments? Nothing; everything is simple and plain. If you practice pederasty, if you commit adultery, if you force a child (I say nothing of a boy) or even a girl; likewise if you prostitute yourself, or if you suffer or seem to suffer or intend something shameful beyond your age, the penalty is death.

7.2| If you outrage the body of a slave or of a free man, if you hold someone in chains, if you carry off and sell, if you steal things profane or sacred, if you commit impiety, not only in deed but even in any chance word, against God himself (may God be gracious to us even as to the thought of such matters; it is not even worth mentioning) but against father or mother or your benefactor, the penalty is likewise death, and not an ordinary death or a chance one, but the offender must be stoned for the word alone, as having done nothing less than an act of impiety.

7.3| Other provisions again are such as these: wives are to be subject to husbands, not for any outrage but for obedience in all things; parents are to rule; each person is to be master of his own property for its safety and care, provided he has not pronounced it consecrated to God, nor dedicated it as though to God; if he has merely promised it in words, it is not permitted to touch or lay hand on it, but he is straightway shut out from all of it.

7.4| Do not speak to me of seizing what belongs to the gods or plundering what others have dedicated; even with one’s own goods, as I said, if some chance word slips out in a dedication, the speaker is deprived of everything, and if he repents or corrects what he said, he is deprived of his life besides.

7.5| And in the case of other things of which one is master, the same rule holds: if a husband declares his wife’s food sacred, he must withhold that food from her; the same holds when a father does it to his son, or a ruler to a subject. The release of things so declared is most complete and greatest when the priest pronounces it, for he is master to receive it from God; and after this, the release by those who are always more fully masters is holy, showing God gracious, so that he need not even accept the dedication.

7.6| There are countless other rules besides these, both in unwritten customs and in the laws themselves: what one hates to suffer, he must not do; what he has not laid down, he must not take up, whether from a garden bed, a winepress, or a threshing floor; he must take nothing from a heap, great or small, at all; he must not refuse fire to one who needs it, nor shut off water; but he must also give food devoutly, for God’s sake, to beggars and the disabled who go about collecting.

7.7| Do not shut a corpse out from burial, but even add earth as far as is pious; do not disturb the tombs or monuments of the departed at all; do not add chains or any further evil to one in constraint; do not castrate men’s seed, nor blunt women’s fertility by contraceptives and other devices; do not treat animals contrary to the way God, or some lawgiver, has shown; do not destroy seed; do not enslave offspring;

7.8| do not substitute an unjust balance, nor a wrong measure of grain, nor false coinage; do not expose friends’ secrets in enmity. Where, in God’s name, are those Bouzygia of ours? See other rules besides these: do not separate children from parents, even if you hold them as captives; nor a wife from her husband, even if you are the master who has lawfully bought them.

7.9| These are perhaps more solemn and great matters, but others are small and ordinary. He says: do not ravage a domestic nest, nor kill creatures that take refuge as suppliants, as sometimes happens, nor anything of this kind that is less important. You would say these are worth nothing; yet the law concerning them is great and the cause of all care, and the warnings are great, with curses of destruction, and God is the overseer of such matters and an avenger everywhere.

7.10| And a little later he says: “Are you not amazed that, for a whole day, or rather not one but many, and these not immediately in a row but at intervals (and even these seven apart, the custom concerning profane days always prevailing, as is likely), they would transgress nothing of what is commanded?

7.11| Is this not merely a training of self-control for them, so that they may be able equally to labor and to refrain from works, if need be? Not at all. Rather, the lawgiver thought that for some great and marvelous work they ought not only to be able to do or not do the rest alike, but also to be skilled in their ancestral laws and customs.

7.12| On these seventh days, then, what did he do? He required them to gather in the same place and, seated together with reverence and order, to listen to the laws, so that no one should be ignorant of them.

7.13| And indeed they always come together and sit in session with one another, the many quiet, unless custom calls for them to add some response to the readings; one of the priests present, or one of the elders, reads the sacred laws to them and explains each point until almost late evening; and from there they are dismissed, skilled in the sacred laws and greatly advanced in piety.

7.14| Does this not seem to you more necessary to them than any other pursuit? Accordingly they do not go to expounders of ordinances about what should be done, nor, failing to ask, do they act carelessly on their own out of ignorance of the laws; but whichever of them you stir and question about ancestral matters, he has the answer ready and readily tells it, and the husband seems competent to hand on the laws to his wife, the father to his children, and the master to his slaves.

7.15| And concerning the seventh year, it is likewise easy to speak, though perhaps not in the same way. For they do not themselves refrain from works as on those seventh days, but leave the land fallow for the future, for the sake of fertility. For it makes a great difference for the land to have received a rest and then be cultivated the next year, and not to be worn out by continuous working.

7.16| You may see the same happening to bodies with regard to strength: for physicians prescribe intervals and certain rests from labor not for health only; for what is continuous and always of the same kind, especially in work, seems to do harm.

7.17| And here is a proof: if someone should offer to have the land itself worked far more than before in this seventh year, and to yield all the fruits entirely, they would in no way accept it. For they do not think that they alone ought to refrain from labors (though if they did, it would be no wonder), but that the land too should receive some relaxation and ease, as a beginning for later care and cultivation.

7.18| Otherwise, what, in God’s name, prevented them from letting it out in the preceding year and collecting from the workers their rent for that year? But, as I said, they accept nothing of the kind in any way, out of care, I think, for the land.

7.19| This is also truly a great sign of their humanity. For since they themselves refrain from work in that year, they do not think they should gather or store the fruits that grow, since they do not come from their own labors; but as if God had provided them, the earth yielding of its own accord, they deem that those who wish or need, travelers and others, may use them without restraint.

7.20| Enough of this for you. As for his having fixed the law for them at the sevens, you could not ask this of me, having perhaps often heard from many physicians, natural philosophers, and philosophers before what power the number has with respect to the nature of the universe and indeed of man. So much for the account of the seventh.”

7.21| So much for Philo. Josephus reports similar things in the second book of the work he composed On the Antiquity of the Jews, writing himself in this manner:

8.1| "Who it was that best set the laws in order, and attained the most just belief about God, can be understood by setting the laws themselves side by side for comparison; for we must now speak about these.

8.2| The differences between the customs and laws of individual peoples among all mankind are without number, so one could only go over them in summary.

8.3| Some have entrusted the authority over their constitutions to monarchies, others to the rule of a few, others to the multitude; but our lawgiver looked to none of these at all. Rather, if one may say so with some violence to the expression, he made the constitution a theocracy, by assigning the rule and the sovereignty to God, and by persuading everyone to look to him as the cause of all good things, both those which belong to all men in common and those which they themselves obtained when they prayed in their helplessness; and it is impossible that his mind should be escaped by anything that is done, or anything that one might think within himself.

8.4| He showed him to be unbegotten and unchanging through everlasting time, surpassing every mortal form in beauty, known to us by his power, but unknowable as to what he is in essence.

8.5| That the wisest of the Greeks were taught to think such things about God, since our lawgiver supplied them with the first principles, I leave aside for now; but that these thoughts are fine and fitting to the nature and majesty of God, they have borne very strong witness; for Pythagoras, Anaxagoras and Plato, and the philosophers of the Stoa after him, and almost all of them, evidently held such opinions about the nature of God.

8.6| But they, philosophizing for the few, did not dare to bring the truth of the doctrine out to the multitudes, who were held fast by their own opinions; whereas our lawgiver, since he provided deeds in harmony with his laws, not only persuaded his own contemporaries, but implanted in those who would come from them, for all time, an unshakable belief about God.

8.7| The reason is that in the manner of his legislation he far surpassed all others in serving what is useful. For he did not make piety a part of virtue; rather he saw that the other things are parts of piety, and so established them. I mean justice, temperance, endurance, and harmony among the citizens with one another in all things.

8.8| For all actions and pursuits and every word refer to piety toward our God; he left none of these unexamined or undefined.

8.9| For there are two ways of all education and of the shaping of character, of which one teaches by word and the other trains through the exercise of habits. Now the other lawgivers differed in their judgments, and each chose whichever of the two seemed right to them and neglected the other: for example, the Lacedaemonians and Cretans educated by customs, not by words, while the Athenians, and nearly all other Greeks, commanded by their laws what must be done or not done, but neglected to accustom people to it through practice.

8.10| But our lawgiver joined both of these together with great care. He neither left the training of habits mute nor let the word of the law go without action; rather, beginning at once from the first nourishment and from the daily regimen in each household, he left nothing, not even the smallest matter, to the free choice of those who would follow it. About which foods one must abstain from and which to take, about who shares in the daily regimen, about intensity of work and, conversely, rest, he himself made the law their limit and rule, so that living under it as under a father and master, we might sin neither willingly nor through ignorance.

8.11| He did not leave so much as the excuse of ignorance; he showed the law to be the finest and most necessary instruction, and commanded that people hear it not once only, nor twice, nor several times, but that every week they should set aside their other work and assemble to hear the law and learn it thoroughly; which all other lawgivers seem to have neglected.

8.12| And most people are so far from living by their own laws that they hardly know them; only when they have done wrong do they learn from others that they have violated the law. Even those who administer the greatest and most authoritative offices among them admit their ignorance: they appoint as overseers of the management of affairs men who promise to have experience of the laws.

8.13| But whichever one of us you might choose, he could recite all the laws more easily than his own name. So, learning them from our first awareness, we have them engraved, as it were, in our souls. A transgressor is rare, and escape from punishment is impossible.

8.14| "This above all has produced in us a wonderful concord. For to hold one and the same opinion about God, and to differ from one another in no way in life and customs, produces the finest harmony in the characters of men.

8.15| Among us alone you will not hear accounts of God that contradict one another, as you do in many other places. For it is not only ordinary people who speak according to whatever feeling has befallen each of them; it has been ventured even by some of the philosophers, some of whom have undertaken to do away in their arguments with the whole nature of God, while others take away his providence for human beings. Nor in the pursuits of our lives will you see any difference; among us the works of all are common, and there is one account of God that agrees with the law, saying that he oversees everything.

8.16| And as to the pursuits of life, that piety must be the end of all the rest, one could hear this even from women and servants. Hence too comes the charge brought against us by some, that we have not produced inventors of new works or words.

8.17| For the others think it fine to abide by none of their ancestral customs, and they bear witness to the cleverness of wisdom in those who most boldly transgress them; we, on the contrary, have taken prudence and virtue to be one and the same thing: to do or think nothing at all contrary to what was legislated from the beginning.

8.18| This would reasonably be a proof that the law was laid down in the finest manner. For laws that are not of this kind are exposed by experience as needing correction; but for us, who were persuaded from the beginning that the law was laid down by the will of God, it was no longer even pious not to keep it.

8.19| For what could anyone change in it? Or what finer thing has anyone discovered, or what has he brought in from others as better? The whole order of the constitution, perhaps? And what could be finer or more just than the one that has made God the ruler of the universe, that permits the priests together to administer the greatest matters, and that entrusts the leadership of the other priests in turn to the high priest of all?

8.20| These men the lawgiver did not, at the outset, appoint to honor because of wealth or any other advantages; rather, whoever of his people surpassed the rest in persuasiveness and temperance, to these he entrusted the service of God.

8.21| This meant exact care of the law and of the other practices; for the priests were appointed as overseers of all things, judges of disputed matters, and punishers of the condemned."

8.22| "What government could be holier than this? What honor could fit God better? The whole multitude is organized for piety, the care of it is entrusted to the priests as a special charge, and the whole constitution is managed like a rite of initiation.

8.23| For the things that others cannot keep even for a few days, calling them mysteries and rites of initiation, we keep with great pleasure and unchanging purpose throughout all time.

8.24| What, then, are the prescriptions and prohibitions? They are simple and well known. The first and foremost is the one about God: God holds all things, perfect and blessed, sufficient to himself and to all, the beginning and middle and end of all things; clear in his works and gifts and more manifest than anything whatever, but in form and size most hidden from us.

8.25| All material, however costly, is without honor compared with an image of him; all art, set against the notion of imitation, is artless. We have seen nothing like him, we conceive nothing like him, and it is not holy to make likenesses of him.

8.26| We see his works: light, heaven, earth, sun and moon, waters, the generation of living creatures, the yielding of fruits. God made these not with hands, not with toil, not needing any workers; he simply willed what is good, and it came to be good at once.

8.27| Everyone must follow this God and serve him by practicing virtue; for this is the holiest way of serving God.

8.28| There is one temple of the one God (for like is always dear to like), common to all, as God is common to all. The priests serve him continually, and the one who is first in succession by birth leads them. He, with his fellow priests, will offer sacrifice to God, guard the laws, judge disputed matters, and punish those convicted. Whoever does not obey him will pay the penalty, as one who acts impiously against God himself.

8.29| We offer sacrifices not for filling ourselves or for drunkenness (these things are not desired by God, and would be a pretext for outrage and extravagance), but as sober, orderly, modest people, so that in sacrificing we may above all grow in self-control. And at the sacrifices one must first pray for the common safety, then for oneself (for we have been born for fellowship); and whoever values this above his own private interest would be most pleasing to God.

8.30| Let our appeal to God, through prayer and supplication, not be aimed at his giving good things (for he has already given them willingly and set them out in the open for everyone); rather let it be that we may be capable of receiving them and, once we have received them, of guarding them.

8.31| For sacrifices the law has set apart purifications: from mourning, from childbed, from intercourse with a woman, and from many other things which it would take too long to write out now."

8.32| "Such is our account of God and of his service; and it is at the same time our law. What are the laws about marriage? The law recognizes only intercourse with a woman according to nature, and that only if it is for the sake of children; intercourse of males with males it abhors, and death is the penalty if anyone attempts it.

8.33| It commands us to marry without regard to a dowry, without violent abduction, and without winning anyone by trickery and deceit, but to seek her in betrothal from the one with authority to give her, one suitable by kinship. A woman, it says, is inferior to a man in everything; so let her submit, not for the sake of abuse but so that she may be governed; for God has given the authority to the man.

8.34| The man who has married must lie with her alone; to make an attempt on another man's wife is unholy. If anyone does this, there is no escape from death, whether he violates a virgin pledged to another or persuades a married woman.

8.35| It commanded that all children be raised. It forbade women to abort what has been sown or to destroy it; if she is found out, she would be a killer of her child, wiping out a life and diminishing the race.

8.36| Likewise, if anyone defiles a marriage bed, it is not fitting for him to be clean at that time. And after lawful intercourse of man and woman, they are to wash; the law took this to mean that the soul is divided toward another place. For when it is implanted in bodies it suffers, and then again when it is separated from them by death. This is why it set purifications for all such things.

8.37| Nor did it permit feasting at the births of children, or pretexts for drunkenness; rather it ordained a sober beginning to their upbringing from the first, and commanded that children be taught the writings about the laws and know the deeds of the ancestors, the latter so that they may imitate them, the former so that, brought up with them, they may neither transgress nor have the excuse of ignorance.

8.38| It took thought for the holy rites toward the dead, not in costly burial or the building of conspicuous tombs, but it ordered the funeral to be performed by the nearest kin, and made it customary for all passers-by, when someone is being buried, to approach and join in the lament. It further commands that the house, together with those who live in it, be purified after a death, so that anyone who has committed murder may be as far as possible from seeming to be clean.

8.39| It set honor of parents second only to that toward God, and anyone who does not repay their kindnesses, but falls short in any respect, it hands over to be stoned.

8.40| And it says the young are to honor everyone older, since God is the oldest of all.

8.41| It allows nothing to be hidden from friends, for there is no friendship that does not trust in everything; and if some enmity should arise, it forbids revealing their secrets.

8.42| If a judge takes bribes, the penalty is death. Whoever disregards a suppliant when he could help him is liable. What a man did not deposit, he shall not take up. He shall touch nothing that belongs to others. He who has lent shall not take interest. These and many things like them hold together our fellowship with one another."

8.43| It is worth seeing too how the lawgiver thought about fair dealing toward foreigners; for he will be seen to have provided best of all that we neither corrupt our own ways nor begrudge those who choose to share in ours.

8.44| Those who wish to come under the same laws and live by them he welcomes kindly, reckoning kinship not by birth alone but by the choice of a way of life; but he did not wish those who approach merely in passing to be mingled into our way of living.

8.45| He has laid down besides the other things which must be shared: to provide everyone in need with fire, water, and food; to point out roads; not to overlook an unburied body.

8.46| We are to be fair even toward those adjudged enemies: he does not allow their land to be burned, and he has not permitted the cutting down of cultivated trees; he has also forbidden stripping those who have fallen in battle, and he took thought for prisoners, that outrage be kept from them, above all from the women.

8.47| So earnestly did he strive to teach us, from afar, gentleness and humanity, so that he did not even neglect the irrational animals, but allowed only their customary use and forbade every other. Those that flee to our houses as if in supplication he forbade us to kill; nor did he permit taking the parents together with their young; and even in an enemy's country he bade us spare the working animals and not slay them."

8.48| "In this way he looked out for fairness from every side, using the teaching laws just described, and setting, in addition, laws of punishment against transgressors, not without reason. For death is the penalty for most offenders: if a man commits adultery, if he rapes a girl, if he dares to make advances to a male, or if the one approached submits to it.

8.49| The law is likewise inexorable for slaves. And as for measures, if someone cheats in them, or in weights, or in an unjust sale made by trickery; and if someone steals what belongs to another, or takes up what he did not deposit, there are punishments for all these, not of the kind found among others, but heavier. For wrongdoing against parents, or impiety toward God, a man is put to death at once, even if he has only intended it.

8.50| Yet for those who do everything according to the laws, the reward is not silver or gold, nor a wreath of wild olive or of celery, nor any such proclamation; rather each man, having his conscience as witness, trusts (the lawgiver having prophesied it, and God having made the assurance strong) that to those who have kept the laws, even if they must die for them, and who die willingly, God has granted that they come into being again and receive a better life in the turning of the cycle."

8.51| "I would be hesitant now to write these things, if it were not clear to all from the facts that many of our people, many times already, have chosen to endure anything rather than utter a single word against the law. And yet, if it had not happened that our nation is known to all men, and that our willing obedience to the laws lies in the open; but if someone claiming to have written it down were reading to the Greeks, or saying he had met somewhere outside the known world people holding so august an opinion of God and having remained firmly in such laws for a long age, I think all would marvel, because of the constant changes among themselves. Indeed, those who have attempted to write something like it about a constitution and laws are accused of having composed marvels, on the ground that they have taken impossible premises.

8.52| I pass over the other philosophers, as many as worked out something of the sort in their writings; but Plato, who is admired among the Greeks as one who excelled in dignity of life, and surpassed all in philosophy by the power and persuasiveness of his words, is still, to this day, all but laughed at and mocked in comedy by those who profess to be clever at politics.

8.53| And yet anyone who examines his proposals would often find them easier, and nearer to the habits of the many. Plato himself admitted that it was not safe to bring the true opinion about God out to the folly of the crowds.

8.54| But some regard Plato's discourses as empty, beautifully written with great license. Of lawgivers they have most admired Lycurgus, and all sing the praises of Sparta, because it persevered longest in his laws.

8.55| "Let it then be agreed that obeying the laws is a proof of virtue. But let those who admire the Lacedaemonians […] the span of their time against our constitution's span of more than two thousand years; and let them reckon besides that the Lacedaemonians, so long as they held their freedom, seemed to guard their laws exactly, but when the changes of fortune came upon them, they almost forgot all their laws; whereas we, though we have fallen into countless misfortunes through the changes among those who ruled Asia, did not betray our laws even in the extremity of evils."

8.56| So much, then, from Josephus on the constitution of the Jews under Moses. As to the veiled and allegorical contemplation in the laws he laid down, I could say much, but I think the expositions of Eleazar and Aristobulus suffice, men Hebrew by ancestry, who flourished in the times of the Ptolemies.

8.57| Of these, Eleazar, who was also honored with the dignity of the high priesthood, was mentioned by us a little earlier. To those who came to him from the king on the embassy concerning the translation of the Hebrew books into Greek, he sketched the manner of the allegorical form in the sacred laws, and gave this kind of teaching in his discourse:

9.1| It is worth recalling briefly the points he indicated in response to the questions we raised; for most people think there is something excessive in certain parts of the legislation, I mean about foods and drinks and the animals considered unclean.

9.2| For when we asked why, since the creation is one, some animals are considered unclean to eat and others even to touch (for, we said, the legislation is superstitious in most things, and in these matters especially superstitious), he began his reply as follows:

9.3| "You observe," he said, "what manner of thing our ways of living and our associations produce: men who keep company with the wicked take on distortions and are wretched all through life; but if they live with the wise and prudent, they find correction for their lives out of ignorance.

9.4| "Our lawgiver, then, having first set out what concerns piety and righteousness, and having taught each point about them, did so not merely by prohibition but by demonstration, making plain both the harms and the visitations sent by God upon those who are guilty.

9.5| For he showed first of all that God alone exists, and that his power is manifest through everything, every place being filled with his sovereignty, and that nothing done secretly by men on earth escapes him, but all that anyone does, and all that is going to happen, is plain to him.

9.6| Working this out exactly and making it evident, he showed that if anyone even conceives of carrying out evil, he will not escape notice, much less if he has done it; throughout the whole legislation he displays the power of God.

9.7| Having made this beginning, and having shown that all other men besides us think there are many gods, though they themselves are far more capable than those they vainly revere (for they make statues of stone or wood and say they are images of those who discovered something useful for life, and these they worship, while insensibility lies at their very feet);

9.8| for if someone should take it that way, on the ground of the discovery, it is wholly senseless. For those men took certain things from creation and put them together and showed a highly serviceable construction of them, but did not make the materials themselves; therefore it is empty and vain to deify those like themselves.

9.9| Even today there are many men who are more inventive and better learned than people of former times, and on that reasoning people would lose no time in worshipping them.

9.10| And those who fashioned these things and made myths of them think themselves the wisest of the Greeks. Why need I speak of the other utterly vain people, the Egyptians and the like, who have rested their trust on wild beasts and most of the reptiles and animals, and worship these, and sacrifice to them both living and dead?

9.11| Our lawgiver, then, being wise and equipped by God for the understanding of all things, surveyed each of these matters and fenced us in with unbroken palisades and iron walls, so that we should not mingle with any of the other nations in any respect, being clean in body and soul, delivered from vain opinions, and worshipping the one God, mighty over the whole creation.

9.12| For this reason the leading priests of the Egyptians, who have looked deeply into many matters and shared in affairs, call us 'men of God'; this does not belong to the rest, unless one worships the God who truly is; the others are men of food and drink and clothing, for their whole disposition takes refuge in these."

9.13| But among our people these things count for nothing; their whole life long, their inquiry is about the sovereignty of God. So that we should not, by mixing with anyone or keeping company with any worthless person, take on distortions, he fenced us in on every side with purifications, concerning foods, drinks, touch, hearing and sight, as the law prescribes.

9.14| For in general all things are alike by natural reckoning, governed by one power, and each one of them, both the things we abstain from using and the things we do use, has a deep reason.

9.15| I will run over one or two points as an example and indicate them to you. Do not fall into the degraded notion that Moses legislated these things out of fussiness about mice and weasels or the like; rather, everything has been set in order solemnly, for the sake of pure inquiry, the equipping of conduct, and righteousness.

9.16| For of the birds we use, all are tame and distinguished by cleanliness, living on wheat and pulses, such as pigeons, turtle-doves, francolins, partridges, and also geese and others of the kind. But the birds that have been forbidden you will find wild and flesh-eating, overpowering the rest by their strength and getting their food by unjustly consuming the tame ones mentioned. And not these only, but they also snatch lambs and kids, and wrong men, both dead and living.

9.17| By calling these 'unclean,' then, he set forth a sign, namely that those for whom the legislation was arranged must practice righteousness in their souls, must overpower no one, trusting in their own strength, nor take anything away, but govern their lives by what is most just, as the tame creatures of the birds mentioned feed on the pulses that grow on the earth and do not overpower and destroy either their inferiors or their own kin.

9.18| Through these things, then, the lawgiver handed down to the understanding the lesson to be just and to carry out nothing by force, nor, trusting in their own strength, to overpower others.

9.19| For where he did not allow us even to touch the animals mentioned, because of the disposition of each, how should we not guard altogether against our characters being broken down to this?

9.20| All that is permitted among these birds and among cattle he has set out in figurative terms. For being cloven-hoofed and dividing the claws of the hoof is a sign of distinguishing each of our actions toward what is good.

9.21| For the strength of the whole body, together with its activity, rests on the shoulders and the legs. He therefore compels us to do everything with discrimination toward righteousness, by marking this through these signs, and also because we have been set apart from all men.

9.22| For most of the rest defile themselves by their intercourse, committing great injustice, and whole countries and cities take pride in such acts. They approach not only males, but even mothers, and they defile daughters too. But we have been set apart from these.

9.23| And he has marked that the manner of distinguishing just mentioned goes with the manner of memory. For all animals that are cloven-hoofed and chew the cud plainly set out memory for those who understand. For chewing the cud is nothing other than a reminder of life and its constitution.

9.24| For he holds that life is held together by nourishment. Hence he exhorts us through the Scripture, saying, 'With remembrance you shall remember the Lord God, who did great and wonderful things in you.'

9.25| For when these are considered they appear glorious: first the compacting of the body, the management of food, and the distinction in each part, and much more the ordering of the senses, the operation of thought, the unseen motion, the quickness of acting toward each thing, and the discovery of the arts, which holds a manner beyond all searching.

9.26| So he exhorts us to keep in memory how what was mentioned is preserved, held together by divine power. For he has fixed every place and time, so that we should ever remember God who rules, preserving the beginnings and the middles and the ends.

9.27| Indeed, with food and drink he commands us to make a first offering, and only then to partake. He has also given us a sign of memory in our garments; and likewise for cities and dwellings, because of their sheltering, and on gates and doors he has commanded us to place the oracles, so that God may be remembered; and on the hands he expressly commands that the sign be bound, plainly showing that every action must be carried out with righteousness, with remembrance of our own making, and above all with the fear of God.

9.28| He also commands us, when lying down and when rising and when walking, to meditate on the works of God's making, observing not by word only but by reflection our own movement and our own taking up of sleep, and the waking, how divine and beyond grasp is their alternation.

9.29| It has also been shown to you how great is the excellence of the teaching about discrimination and memory, as we set forth with the cloven hoof and the cud-chewing. For it was not laid down at random or according to whatever fell into the mind, but for truth and as a sign of right reason.

9.30| For having ordained concerning foods and drinks and things touched, he commands that in each of them we do nothing at random, nor listen to anything at random, nor, making use of the power of speech, turn to injustice.

9.31| And the same can be found in the case of the creeping creatures. The character of the weasel and of mice and of the like, such as were listed, is mischievous. For mice damage and harm everything, not only for their own food, but so as to make wholly useless to man whatever they set upon to harm.

9.32| The race of weasels is peculiar; for apart from what was just said, it has a destructive nature. It conceives through the ears and gives birth through the mouth. For this reason too that kind of character is unclean to men: those who take things in through hearing, then give them bodily form in speech and roll others into evils, produce no ordinary uncleanness, being themselves wholly polluted with the stain of impiety.

9.33| "Your king does well, we understand, in destroying such persons." And I said, "I think you mean the informers; for he continually subjects them to tortures and painful deaths." "These are the very ones I mean; for to stay awake at night for the ruin of men is unholy. But our law commands that we do harm to no one, by word or deed."

9.34| I have therefore gone through these matters briefly, having indicated to you beforehand that everything is regulated toward righteousness, and nothing in the Scripture has been ordained at random or fabulously, so that throughout our whole life and in our actions we may practice righteousness toward all men, remembering the God who rules.

9.35| Thus the whole account concerning foods and the unclean reptiles and creeping creatures reaches toward righteousness and the just conduct of men with one another.

9.36| To me he seemed to have given a fine defense on each point; for he also said, concerning the calves and rams and goats that are offered, that they must be taken from the herds and flocks, made tame, and nothing wild, so that those who offer the sacrifices are conscious of nothing arrogant in themselves, using the sign set by the one who ordained it.

9.37| For the one who brings the sacrifice makes an offering of his own soul and of his whole manner of life. I think these points of the discourse are worth reporting, because of the dignity of the law, which I undertook to make clear to you, Philocrates, on account of your love of learning."

9.38| This, then, is what the high priest explained to the Greeks who came to him, about the allegorical form in the sacred laws, since they were about to encounter the translations of the Scriptures that were to be published. Aristobulus, who besides his ancestral learning had a share in the philosophy of Aristotle (it is the right time to hear what he said about the statements in the sacred books that speak of God as having limbs; he is the very man whom the second book of Maccabees mentions at the start of that book), clarifies the matter himself in his work addressed to King Ptolemy, in this manner:

10.1| "However, when enough has been said on the questions set before us, you also remarked, O king, that in our law hands, an arm, a face, feet and walking are attributed to the divine power; these will receive a fitting account, and will contradict nothing of what we have said before.

10.2| I want to urge you to understand the interpretations naturally, to hold a conception of God that is fitting, and not to fall into a fabulous and human-shaped notion of him.

10.3| For our lawgiver Moses, in many ways, when he means to say something, speaks about other things, I mean things in the realm of appearances, and he reports natural conditions and the constitutions of great realities.

10.4| Those who are capable of understanding well admire the wisdom in him and the divine spirit through which he was proclaimed a prophet; among these are the philosophers mentioned and many others, and poets who took great starting points from him, for which they are admired.

10.5| But to those who have no share in power and understanding, and who cling to the written word alone, he does not appear to make clear anything grand.

10.6| I shall begin by taking each term as far as I am able. And if I do not hit on the truth, or fail to persuade, do not charge the lawgiver with unreason, but me, who am unable to distinguish what he had in mind.

10.7| Hands, then, are understood plainly, and quite commonly among ourselves too. For when you, being king, send out forces because you wish to bring something about, we say, "The king has a great hand," the hearers being led to the power you possess.

10.8| Moses also indicates this in our legislation, saying as follows: "With a mighty hand God brought you out of Egypt." And again, "I will send out my hand," says God, "and strike the Egyptians." And Moses, speaking to Pharaoh about the death of the cattle, says, "Behold, the hand of the Lord will be upon your cattle, and upon everything in the fields: a great death." So the hands are understood as the power of God. For one can see that all the strength of men and their activities lie in their hands.

10.9| For this reason the lawgiver has fittingly carried the word over to the grandeur of God, saying that the accomplishments are the hands of God. And "standing" of God may fittingly be said, in view of his majesty, of the framing of the world.

10.10| For God stands over all, and everything is subject to him and has received a standing, so that men find these things unmoving. I mean this: that heaven has never become earth, nor earth heaven; nor has the sun become the shining moon, nor the moon in turn the sun; nor have rivers become sea, nor sea rivers.

10.11| And again the same account holds for living creatures. A man will not become a beast, nor a beast a man. And in the rest, plants and other things, it is the same: they are unchanging, though they undergo within themselves the same turnings and decays.

10.12| So the divine "standing" may be spoken of in these terms, since all things lie beneath God. It is said in the writing of the law that a descent of God onto the mountain occurred at the time of his giving of the law, so that all might see the working of God. This is a clear descent; and one might interpret these matters in this way, if one wishes to preserve the right account of God.

10.13| For it is made plain that the mountain was burning with fire, as the legislation says, because God had come down; and that the sounds of trumpets and the blazing of the fire were irresistible.

10.14| For the whole multitude, not fewer than a million, apart from minors, was assembled in a circle around the mountain; the circuit around it took no fewer than five days; and in every place, wherever they had pitched camp around it, the fire blazing was seen by all of them in their line of sight.

10.15| So the descent was not one of place; for God is everywhere. But the power of fire, which is wonderful above all things because it consumes everything, he would not have shown blazing irresistibly and yet consuming nothing, unless the might from God had been added to it.

10.16| For of the things growing on that mountain, though such things are fiercely consumed by fire, it consumed nothing, but the green of them all remained unscathed by fire; and trumpets' voices were heard more loudly together with the flashing forth of the fire, though no such instruments lay before them, nor anyone who sounded them, but all came about by divine contrivance.

10.17| So it is clear from these things that the divine descent took place, because those who looked on grasped each point plainly: that the fire had burned nothing, as said before, and that the sounds of the trumpets did not come from human working or the construction of instruments, but that God shows his own majesty through all things without any such means."

10.18| So Aristobulus. Since we have gone through the commands of the sacred laws and the manner of the allegorical form among them, it follows that we should note this too: that the whole nation of the Jews is divided into two sections. The multitude he brought under the counsels commanded by the laws in their literal sense; the other order, that of those of settled habit, he released from this, and judged worthy to attend to a more divine philosophy, one that rises above the many, and to the contemplation of what the laws signify in their meaning.

10.19| This was the class of philosophical Jews, whose practice of life struck with amazement countless outsiders, and whom the most distinguished of their own people, Josephus and Philo and several others, judged worthy of undying memory. Passing over most of what they say, I shall be content, merely as a sample, with Philo's testimony on the matter, which he has set down in many of his own treatises. Take from his Apology for the Jews and read this:

11.1| "Our lawgiver trained thousands of his followers for fellowship. They are called Essenes, a name which, I think, they were deemed worthy of because of their holiness. They live in many cities of Judaea, and in many villages, and in large and populous groups.

11.2| Their way of life is not a matter of birth (for birth is not recorded for what is voluntary), but comes from zeal for virtue and a longing for love of humanity.

11.3| Among the Essenes, then, there is no child at all, nor one with the first down of the beard, nor a youth, since the characters of such are unstable and given to change with the immaturity of their age; they are full-grown men, already declining toward old age, no longer swamped by the flood of the body nor led by the passions, enjoying the true freedom, the only one that really is.

11.4| Their life bears witness to their freedom. No one consents to acquire anything of his own at all, neither house, nor slave, nor land, nor herds, nor any of the other provisions and supplies of wealth; but placing everything together into the common store, they enjoy the shared benefit of all.

11.5| They live in the same place, forming themselves into companies, associations, and common meals, and they carry on everything for the common good.

11.6| But different men have different occupations, to which they apply themselves and work tirelessly, making no excuse of cold or heat or any other changes of the air; before the sun has risen they turn to their customary tasks, and they come home, rejoicing, only at its setting, no less than men being tried in the gymnastic contests.

11.7| For they suppose that whatever they practice is more profitable for life and more pleasant to both soul and body, and longer lasting, than the exercises of athletes, which do not stay young along with the bloom of the body.

11.8| Some of them are farmers, skilled in sowing and agriculture; others are herdsmen, leaders of all kinds of livestock; some tend swarms of bees.

11.9| Others are craftsmen in the various trades, so as to suffer nothing that necessity forces on them, putting off nothing that leads to blameless provision.

11.10| Each group, receiving its pay from their different work, gives it to the one treasurer who has been elected; and he, taking it, at once buys what is needed and supplies abundant food and the other things that human life requires.

11.11| They share the same daily life and the same table every day, content with the same things, lovers of frugality, avoiding extravagance as a sickness of soul and body.

11.12| Not the table only is common to them, but also their clothing. For thick cloaks are laid out in winter, and cheap sleeveless tunics in summer, so that anyone who wishes may easily take whichever he likes, since what belongs to one belongs to all, and what belongs to all, in turn, to one.

11.13| And if one of them falls ill, he is nursed from the common funds, tended with the care and concern of all. The elders, even if they happen to be childless, as though they had not merely many children but excellent ones, are accustomed to end their lives in the most fortunate and comfortable old age, thought worthy of privilege and honor by so many, who think fit to tend them by free choice rather than from the compulsion of nature.

11.14| Furthermore, seeing with sharper eye the thing that was the one thing, or the chief thing, likely to break up the fellowship, they renounced marriage, together with exceptional practice of self-control. For no Essene takes a wife, because a woman is self-loving, immoderately jealous, and clever at ensnaring a man's character and leading it astray with continual enchantments.

11.15| For having practiced flattering speeches and the rest of her pretense, as though on a stage, when she has lured eyes and ears, as though they were duped subjects, she deceives the ruling mind.

11.16| And if children are born, she is filled with pride and boldness, and what she formerly hinted at slyly in irony she now speaks out with bolder audacity, and shamelessly forces her husband to do things, each of which is hostile to fellowship.

11.17| For the man who is bound by a woman's charms or concerned for his children by the compulsion of nature is no longer the same toward others, but has become another man without knowing it, a slave instead of a free man.

11.18| Their way of life is therefore so much contended for that not only private persons but even great kings admire these men and are struck with awe, and by their welcome and honors they make their dignity yet more dignified.

11.19| Let this suffice from the work mentioned. From the treatise That Every Good Man Is Free I shall set down what he says on the same subject:

12.1| "Syria in Palestine too is not barren of nobility of character, and no small portion of the Jews, a very populous nation, dwells there.

12.2| Some among them are called Essenes, more than four thousand in number; the name, in my opinion, is derived from their holiness, though not by an exact form of the Greek idiom, since they have become, beyond all others, servants of God, not sacrificing animals but judging it right to make their own minds fit for holy things.

12.3| These people live first of all in villages, avoiding the cities because of the lawlessness of the citizens, which has become habitual, knowing that from their company, as from a pestilential air, an incurable assault befalls souls.

12.4| Some of them are farmers, others follow crafts that serve peace, benefiting themselves and their neighbors; they do not hoard silver and gold, nor acquire great tracts of land out of desire for revenue, but provide only what is needed for the necessities of life.

12.5| For they are almost alone of all men in having become without money and without possessions, by choice rather than by lack of good fortune, yet they are counted the richest, judging that having few wants and being easily content is, as it is in fact, abundance.

12.6| You would find among them no maker of arrows or javelins, daggers or helmet, breastplate or shield, nor any armorer or engine-maker or anyone pursuing any business of war, nor even any of the peacetime trades which easily slip into wickedness; for of trade or retailing or shipping they know nothing, not even in a dream, since they banish the starting points of greed.

12.7| Not a single slave is found among them, but all are free, serving one another in turn; and they condemn masters not only as unjust, for destroying equality, but as impious, for abolishing the ordinance of nature, which bore and nurtured all alike, like a mother, and made them true brothers, not in name only but in fact.

12.8| Their kinship, however, scheming greed has overrun and shaken, producing estrangement in place of kinship and hatred in place of friendship.

12.9| Of philosophy they leave the logical part, as not necessary for acquiring virtue, to word-hunters, and the natural part, as too great for human nature, to chatterers about the heavens, except for as much of it as philosophizes about the existence of God and the origin of the universe; the ethical part they work at very diligently, using as their trainers the ancestral laws, which no human soul could have devised without divine inspiration.

12.10| They are instructed in these laws at other times too, but especially on the seventh days. For the seventh day is held sacred, and on it they refrain from other work and come to holy places called synagogues, where they sit in rows by age, the younger below the elders, listening in proper order. One takes up the books and reads, and someone else of the most experienced steps forward and explains what is not familiar; for most of what they philosophize about is through symbols, in the zealous manner of old.

12.11| They are taught piety, holiness, justice, household management, civic life, and knowledge of what is truly good and evil and indifferent, choosing what should be chosen and avoiding the opposite, using a threefold set of rules and standards: love of God, love of virtue, and love of humanity.

12.12| Of love of God they give countless proofs in their continuous and unbroken purity throughout the whole of life, in their refusal of oaths, their truthfulness, and their belief that the divine is the cause of all good things and of nothing evil; of love of virtue, in their freedom from love of money, of reputation, and of pleasure, their self-control, endurance, and also their frugality, simplicity, contentment, lack of pride, observance of the law, steadiness, and whatever is like these; of love of humanity, the proofs are goodwill, equality, and a fellowship beyond all description, about which it is not out of place to say a few words.

12.13| First, then, no one has a house so much his own that it does not belong to all in common. For besides living together in companies, the house is open to those of the same zeal who come from elsewhere.

12.14| Next, there is one treasury for all and common expenses; their clothes are common, and their food is common, since they have common meals. For living under the same roof, in the same way of life, and at the same table, one would find nowhere put into practice more firmly than among them, and not without reason.

12.15| For whatever they earn by working during the day, they do not keep as private property, but put it into the middle and provide, for any who wish to use it, the common benefit that comes from it; and the sick are not overlooked on the ground that they cannot provide for themselves, for they have in readiness from the common funds what is needed for their care, so that they can spend in complete security and from a more plentiful supply.

12.16| There is reverence for the elders and care for them, such as genuine children show their parents, who are looked after in old age by countless hands and minds, in complete abundance. Such athletes of virtue does this philosophy produce, free of fussy Greek terms, setting before them as exercises praiseworthy deeds, by which unenslaved freedom is made firm.

12.17| Here is a proof. Many tyrants have risen against the country at various times, of differing natures and purposes. Some strove to surpass the savagery of wild beasts in untamableness, leaving out nothing of cruelty, slaughtering their subjects like herds, or even cutting them up alive, limb by limb, in the manner of cooks, and did not stop until they underwent the same disasters at the hands of the justice that watches over human affairs.

12.18| Others transformed this frenzy and rabid fury into another form of evil, practicing an unspeakable bitterness, talking quietly, showing a character heavy with wrath under the pretense of a calmer voice, fawning like venomous dogs, and becoming the cause of incurable evils; they left behind in the cities, as monuments of their own impiety and of their hatred of mankind, the unforgettable calamities of their victims.

12.19| But no one, neither of the very savage-hearted nor of the entirely treacherous and sly, was able to bring a charge against the said company of Essenes, or Holy Ones; all, proving weaker than the nobility of these men, treated them as though they were independent and free by nature, singing the praises of their common meals and of their fellowship beyond all description, the plainest proof of a perfect and very happy life."

12.20| Let this, then, stand for the philosophical discipline and conduct among the Jews; the matters of the rest of their life, which the divine laws prescribed for the multitude of the whole nation, have been set forth by the preceding discussion.

12.21| What then remains after these but to show that the theology of their later men agrees with the piety of the forefathers, so that our discourse on this subject too may be given in full?

12.22| Since, then, the oracles of the inspired Scripture have been set before us in the previous work, let us now look at the thought of the wise men among the Jews, so that we may learn what sort of men the sons of the Hebrews were in theology and in excellence of discourse. We must therefore turn again to Philo, from the first of his books On the Law:

13.1| "Some, admiring the world rather than its maker, have declared it unbegotten and eternal, falsely ascribing to God a great idleness, in a most ungodly way; whereas, on the contrary, they should have marvelled at his powers as maker and father, and not exalted the world beyond due measure.

13.2| Moses, who had reached the summit of philosophy and had been taught by oracles the most numerous and most comprehensive truths of nature, knew that it is most necessary that among existing things there be one that is active […] the mind of the universe, most pure and most unmixed, better than knowledge, better than the good itself and the beautiful itself; and one that is passive, lifeless and unmoving of itself, but which, moved and shaped and ensouled by the mind, changed into the most perfect work, this world. Those who say it is unbegotten fail to notice that they cut away the most useful and necessary of the elements of piety, providence.

13.3| For reason requires that the father and maker take care of what has come to be. For a father looks to the survival of his offspring and a craftsman of what he has crafted, and drives off by every device whatever is harmful, and longs to supply in every way what is beneficial and profitable; but toward what has not come to be, the one who has not made it has no tie of kinship.

13.4| It is a contentious and useless doctrine to establish anarchy in this world, just as in a city, a world that has no overseer, or umpire, or judge, by whom it is right that all things be managed and governed.

13.5| But the great Moses, considering the unbegotten to be most alien to the visible (for everything perceptible is in becoming and in changes, never remaining the same), assigned eternity, as a brother and kinsman, to the invisible and intelligible, and gave the perceptible its proper name, becoming.

13.6| Since, then, this world is visible and perceptible, it must of necessity also be begotten; hence it was not without purpose that he also recorded its coming to be, speaking of God most reverently.

13.7| So much, then, on the world's having been begotten. The same man, in his work On Providence, discusses most vigorously the question whether the universe is governed by providence, first placing before us the objections of the godless and then answering them in turn. These too I shall set out as necessary, even if they seem rather long, though I shall cut most of them short. He builds his argument in this way:

14.1| "Do you say there is providence amid so great a disturbance and confusion of affairs? For what in human life has been put in order? What is not full of disorder and tumult? Or are you the only one who does not know that to the very worst and most wicked men good things come streaming in abundance: wealth, good repute, honors among the crowds; then command, health, keenness of the senses, beauty, strength, unhindered enjoyment of pleasures, thanks both to an abundance of means and to the most tranquil good fortune of the body? While all who love and practice prudence and every virtue are, I might almost say, poor, obscure, without reputation, lowly?"

14.2| Having said this by way of refutation, and countless other things besides, he then resolves the objections in these terms: God is not a tyrant, one who has practiced cruelty and violence and all the deeds of a master of savage rule, but a king who has taken up a gentle and lawful sovereignty, and he governs the whole heaven and world with justice.

14.3| For a king no address is more fitting than "father"; for as parents stand to children in families, so a king stands to a city, and God likewise to the world, having joined together the two finest things by the immovable ordinances of nature in an indissoluble union: the power to lead with the power to care.

14.4| Just as parents do not disregard their prodigal sons, but take pity on their misfortune and look after and tend them, reckoning that it is the work of implacable enemies to trample on others' ills, and of friends and kin to lighten their failures;

14.5| and often they bestow more lavishly on these than on the sober ones, knowing well that for the latter self-control is an ample source of resources, whereas for the others the one hope is their parents, and if they are cut off from it, they will lack even the necessities;

14.6| in the same way God also, being father of rational understanding, cares for all who have a share in reason, and provides even for those who live blamably, at once giving them time for amendment and not overstepping his own gracious nature, whose attendants, virtue and love of humanity, are worthy to move about the divine house."

14.7| "Receive this one argument, my soul, for now, as a deposit, and another that accords and harmonizes with it, to this effect: may you never be so deceived about the truth as to think any worthless person happy, even if he be richer than Croesus, sharper-sighted than Lynceus, braver than Milo of Croton, more beautiful than Ganymede, whom the gods snatched up to pour wine for Zeus for the sake of his beauty.

14.8| For if you show his own guardian spirit, I mean his own mind, to be slave to countless masters, to love, desire, pleasure, fear, grief, folly, licentiousness, cowardice, injustice, he could never be happy, even if the many, going astray in judgment, think so, bribed by a wicked pair, vanity and empty reputation, skilled at snaring and leading astray souls without ballast, which are the things the greater part of mankind is anxious about.

14.9| If, however, you were to stretch the eye of your soul and wish to look around at God's providence, as far as human reasoning allows, taking a clearer impression of the good that is truly good, you will laugh at the things among us which until then you admired. For always, in the absence of the better, the worse are honored, inheriting the better's rank; but when the better appear, the worse draw back, content with the second prizes.

14.10| Struck with awe at that good and beautiful, which is godlike, you will surely come to think that with God none of the things mentioned before is deemed worthy in itself of a share in the good; for the mines of silver and gold are the poorest portion of the earth, falling wholly and entirely short of the portion given over to the growing of crops.

14.11| For wealth is not like food, without which it is impossible to live. The one clearest test of these is hunger, by which what is truly necessary and useful is tried; for anyone would gladly exchange all the treasures everywhere for a little food.

14.12| But when an abundance of necessities, flowing in a countless unrestrained multitude, pours out over the cities, we revel in nature's goods and do not think it right to stop at these alone; making surfeit, the insolent, the leader of our lives, and stripping for the acquisition of silver and gold, we strip for the bout against everyone from whom we hope to gain something, like blind men, no longer seeing with the mind, through love of money, that these are lumps of earth, for which out of peace comes continuous and unceasing war.

14.13| Garments, as the poets somewhere say, are the flower of sheep, and the praise of weavers lies in their craft as makers. And if anyone is proud of reputation, welcoming the approval of worthless men, let him know that he too is worthless; for like rejoices in like.

14.14| Let him pray, taking his share of purifications, that his ears be healed, the ears through which the great diseases of the soul descend. And let those who are puffed up over bodily vigor learn not to hold their necks high, looking at the countless herds of tame and untamed animals, with whom strength and might are born. For it is among the most absurd things for one who is a man to take pride in the excellences of beasts, and that […] by them.

14.15| Why should anyone of sound mind exult in the beauty of the body, which a short season puts out before it has bloomed to its longest, dimming its deceitful prime; and this when he sees contended for, among lifeless things, the works of painters and modelers and other craftsmen, in pictures and statues and the variegated work of fabrics, which win esteem in each city, in Greece and among barbarians?

14.16| Of these things, then, as I said, none is deemed worthy of a share in the good in God's sight. And why wonder if not in God's sight? For they are not so deemed even among men dear to God, among whom the things truly good and beautiful are honored, men who received a favorable nature and added to nature study with discipline, of which genuine philosophy is the maker.

14.17| But those who have pursued a counterfeit education, while claiming to heal the mistress, did not even imitate the physicians who treat the body, the slave of the soul. For when someone prosperous falls ill, even the great king, those physicians pass through all the porticoes, the men's quarters, the women's quarters, the paintings, silver, gold, uncoined and coined, the mass of cups or fabrics, the other celebrated adornment of kings, and the crowd of household servants, and the attendance of friends or kin and of subject officials, of the bodyguards; coming as far as the bed, they disregard all that surrounds the body itself, neither admiring the couches inlaid with stones and all of gold, nor the linen-stitched or finely woven coverlets, nor the various kinds of clothing. Rather, stripping off the cloaks around him, they grasp his hands and, pressing upon the veins, ascertain whether the pulsations are favorable; and often, drawing back the tunics, they examine whether the belly is swollen, whether the chest is on fire, and whether the heart leaps irregularly; and then they apply their proper treatment.

14.18| Philosophers, too, who profess the healer's art, ought to practice it upon the soul, queen by nature: to despise all that empty opinions fashion in their blindness, and going inside, to take hold of the mind itself, to see whether its pulsations are uneven under anger and moved against nature; to take hold of the tongue, whether it is rough and abusive, whether it has played the harlot and is unrestrained; to take hold of the belly, whether it is swollen in an insatiable shape of desire; and in general to search out each of the passions and sicknesses and infirmities, as they seem to be mixed together, so that they may not miss what is suitable for saving it.

14.19| As it is, dazzled by the brightness of externals, being unable to see intelligible light, they have wandered through all time, unable to reach the royal reasoning, scarcely arriving at the forecourts, and wondering at those at the doors of virtue, wealth and reputation and health and the like, they bowed down to them.

14.20| But as it is the extreme of madness to employ blind men as judges of colors, or deaf men as judges of musical sounds, so it is to use worthless men to judge what is truly good. For these are maimed in the most authoritative part of themselves, the mind, over which folly has poured deep darkness.

14.21| Then do we now wonder if Socrates and this or that good man lived in poverty, men who never practiced any of the trades for gain, and who did not think it right even to accept what was available from wealthy friends or the great gifts offered by kings, because they held that the possession of virtue is the only good and beautiful thing, and in laboring for it disregarded all other goods?

14.22| Who would not disregard the counterfeit goods for the sake of caring for the genuine? And if, sharing in a mortal body and full of human banes, and living among so great a multitude of unjust persons, whose number it is not even easy to find, they were plotted against, why do we blame nature, when we ought to condemn the cruelty of those who attacked them?

14.23| For if they had been born in a plague-bearing air, they would certainly have had to fall ill; and wickedness is more destructive than a pestilential condition, or at least no less so. As when it rains, the wise man, if he is out of doors, must get soaked, and when a cold north wind blows, must be pinched with chill, and at the height of summer be warmed (for it is a law of nature that bodies share in the yearly turnings of the seasons), so, in the same way, one who dwells in such places, where murders are committed "and tribes of other banes," must necessarily have his share in the […] that come from such things.

14.24| As for Polycrates, for the terrible wrongs and impieties he committed there met him […]; worse was the heavy misery of his life; and add that he was punished and nailed up by a great king, fulfilling an oracle. He said, "I know that not long ago I seemed to myself to be raised aloft, anointed by the sun and bathed by Zeus." These enigmatic sayings given through symbols, obscure of old, received from the events the clearest confirmation.

14.25| Not merely at the end, but from the beginning throughout his whole life, he had been, unnoticed, hanging in his soul before his body. For always fearing and trembling, he was alarmed at the multitude of those who plotted against him, clearly aware that no one was well disposed to him, and that all were enemies, implacable in his misfortune."

14.26| "The witnesses of the endless and continual wariness of Dionysius are the writers of Sicilian history, who say that he suspected even the wife who was most agreeable to him. A sign of this: he ordered the entrance to the chamber through which she was to come to him to be paved with boards, so that she should never creep in unnoticed, but announce her arrival by the noise and clatter of her step; then she was to come in not merely lightly clad, but naked in every part, even those which it is not right for men to see; and besides this, the ground in the road was cut through, continuously, to the breadth and depth of a farmer's ditch, for fear that something might be hidden for a plot, which could be exposed only by leaps or long strides.

14.27| Of how many evils, then, was he full, who watched and contrived all this against a woman whom, before all others, he ought to have trusted! He resembled those who climb a precipice on a steep mountain to understand more clearly the natures in the sky, who just reach the overhanging neck and can neither retreat, being exhausted by the height that remains, nor dare to descend, dizzy at the sight of the chasms.

14.28| For he had fallen in love with tyranny, as with a divine and contested thing, and he supposed it was safe neither to stay nor to run away. If he stayed, countless evils flowed upon him one after another; if he wished to flee, the danger to his life hung over him, since men were armed against him, if not in body, at least in mind.

14.29| The deed that they say Dionysius used against the man who called the life of tyrants blessed shows it too. For inviting him to a most splendid and costly dinner, he ordered a sharpened axe to be hung above him by a very thin thread. When the man, having reclined, suddenly saw it, he dared neither to get up, because of the tyrant, nor to enjoy any of the provisions, through fear, disregarding abundant and rich pleasures; stretching out his neck and his eyes, he waited for his own destruction.

14.30| Dionysius, understanding, said: "Do you now see our famous and contested life? For it is just such, if one does not wish to deceive himself, since it contains very abundant supplies, but no enjoyment of anything good, only repeated fears and incurable dangers, and a disease worse than creeping ulcer or consumption, which always carries untreatable destruction.

14.31| The many, who do not examine and are deceived by brilliant appearance, have suffered the same as those hooked by ugly courtesans, who shade their ugliness with clothing and gold and the pencilings of the face, and, for want of genuine beauty, produce a counterfeit one as an ambush for those who look."

14.32| Of such misery are those full who are exceedingly fortunate; having themselves judged its excess within themselves, they cannot contain it, but like the sick who speak out under compulsion, they let slip the most truthful utterances wrung from suffering, living in the company of punishments both present and expected, like the victims fattened for sacrifice. For these too receive the greatest care for the sake of being slaughtered, for a feast of abundant meat.

14.33| There are also some who have paid openly and visibly, not obscurely, the penalty for impiety concerning property; to list the multitudes of them would be useless labor, and one deed suffices to stand as an example for all. It is said, then, by those who recorded the Sacred War in Phocis, that when the law prescribed that a temple-robber be hurled from a cliff, or drowned, or burned, the three who plundered the temple at Delphi, Philomelus, Onomarchus and Phayllus, divided the punishments among themselves. One, when the rock broke away, was hurled down a rough and stony hill and stoned; another, when the horse carrying him bolted and ran down to the sea, and the water rushed over him, sank into the boundless depth along with the animal; and Phayllus wasted away with a consuming disease (for there are two accounts of him), or was burned to death in the temple at Abae.

14.34| For it would be most contentious to say that these things came about by chance. If some had been punished at different times, or by different punishments, it would be reasonable to plead the instability of fortune; but when all were punished together, at one time, and by no other punishments than those laid down in the laws, it is reasonable to say that they were caught because God had judged them."

14.35| "If any of the violent men who were left, those who rose up against the multitudes and enslaved not only other peoples but even their own native lands, went unpunished to the end, there is nothing surprising in it. First, man does not judge as God does: we investigate what is visible, but he, entering noiselessly to the recesses of the soul, as in the sun brings the mind to bright light, stripping off the coverings in which it has been enclosed, looks around at the bare wishes, and at once distinguishes the counterfeit from the approved.

14.36| Never, then, preferring our own tribunal to the divine, should we say that it is the more truthful or the better advised; for that is not holy. In the one there are many things that cause error: deceptive senses, treacherous passions, the heaviest fortification of vices; in the other there is nothing of deception, but justice and truth, by which each matter, when adjudicated, is naturally set right in a way that deserves praise.

14.37| Then, my good friend, do not suppose that a timely tyranny is unprofitable. Nor is punishment unprofitable; rather, paying the penalty is either more beneficial than the things counted good or not inferior to them. For this reason it has been included in all rightly written laws, and the writers of them are praised by all. What a tyrant is in a people, that punishment is in a law.

14.38| When, therefore, a dire want and scarcity of virtue overtakes the cities, and an abundance of folly floats on top, then God, wishing to drain off the flood of wickedness as one does a winter torrent, so as to cleanse our race, grants strength and power to those whose natures are fit to rule.

14.39| For without a savage soul, wickedness is not purged. And just as cities keep executioners for murderers and traitors and temple-robbers, not approving the character of these men but weighing how useful their service is, so too he who cares for this great city of the world sets up tyrants over the cities, like public executioners, wherever he perceives violence, injustice, impiety, and other evils overflowing, so that at last they may be checked and subside.

14.40| Then he thinks it right that the culprits too, as having served from a hard-to-cleanse and pitiless soul, be pursued after all the rest, like ringleaders. For as the force of fire, when it has consumed the material thrown to it, in the end feeds on itself, so too those who have received power over the multitudes, when they have used up the cities and made them empty of men, are destroyed in turn, paying the penalty on behalf of all.

14.41| And why wonder if God, through tyrants, drains off the wickedness poured out in cities and countries and nations? Often, not using other servants, he does this himself, bringing famine or plague or earthquake and whatever else is sent by God, by which great crowds of many people perish every day, and a large part of the inhabited world is laid waste out of forethought for virtue."

14.42| "Enough has now been said, for the present purpose, I think, to show that none of the worthless is happy, and by this above all providence is established. But if you are not yet persuaded, speak out boldly about the doubt that still lurks within you; for by working through the difficulty together we shall both come to know how the truth stands."

14.43| And after other matters he says again: "The gusts of winds and rains God brings about not for the ruin of sailors, as you supposed, or of farmers, but for the good of our whole race. With waters he cleanses the earth, and with winds all the region beneath the moon; and by both he nourishes and increases and brings to maturity animals and plants.

14.44| If it sometimes harms those who sail or farm out of season, there is nothing surprising in that; for they are a small part, whereas his concern is for the entire race of men. Just as the oil rubbed on in the gymnasium is applied for benefit, yet the gymnasiarch often shifts the customary order of the hour on account of civic needs, because of which some of those being anointed come late, so also God, as one caring for the whole world as a city, is accustomed to make summers stormy and winters spring-like for the benefit of the whole, even if some shipowners or farmers are about to be harmed by these irregularities.

14.45| The changes of the elements into one another, from which the world was fitted together and stands, he knows to be a most necessary work, and he provides that they be unhindered; frosts and snows and whatever is of the same kind follow on the cooling of the air, and again the collision and friction of clouds, lightning and thunder. None of these perhaps is by providence, but rains and winds are causes of life and nourishment and growth for things on earth, and these others are their consequences.

14.46| Consider how, when a gymnasiarch in his ambition often makes lavish expenditures, some of the unrefined, drenched with oil instead of water, let drops fall to the floor, and at once it becomes the most slippery mud; yet no one of sound mind would say that the mud and slipperiness came about by the gymnasiarch's forethought, but that they followed otherwise on the abundance of his provision.

14.47| The rainbow and the halo and the like, again, are consequences of rays mingling with clouds; they are not works of nature in the leading sense, but follow upon natural works. Nevertheless these too afford some necessary use to the more prudent: from them they foretell calms and winds, fair weather and storms.

14.48| Do you not notice the porticoes in the city? Most of them face south, so that those who walk in them can be warmed in winter and cooled by breezes in summer. But something else accompanies this, which was not in the mind of the builder. What is that? The shadows cast from the feet mark out the measures of the hours.

14.49| Fire too is a most necessary work of nature, and smoke is its consequence; yet even smoke sometimes provides some benefit. In daytime beacon signals, for example, when the fire is dimmed by the sun's rays, the approach of enemies is signaled by smoke.

14.50| What holds for the rainbow holds for eclipses as well; for eclipses attend the divine natures of sun and moon, and they signify either the death of kings or the destruction of cities; Pindar hinted at this, when an eclipse occurred, in the verses mentioned earlier.

14.51| The circle of the Milky Way shares the same substance as the other stars, and if it is hard to account for, let those accustomed to investigate nature not shrink from it. For the discovery would be most useful, and the inquiry itself most pleasant to lovers of learning.

14.52| Just as the sun and moon came to be by providence, so also did everything in the heavens, even if we, unable to trace out the natures and powers of each, keep quiet.

14.53| Earthquakes and plagues and thunderbolts, and whatever is of this kind, are said to be sent by God, but in truth they are not (for God is the cause of no evil whatsoever); rather the changes of the elements generate them, not as works of nature in the leading sense, but as consequences following the necessary and primary things."

14.54| If some of the better sort share in the harm from these things, the governance is not to be blamed. First, those who are considered good among us are not therefore good in truth, since God's judgments are more exact than all that belong to the human mind. Second, forethought is content to look to the most essential parts of the world, as in kingdoms and commands of armies the care is for cities and camps, not for some one neglected and obscure person who happens to turn up.

14.55| Some say that just as, in the killing of tyrants, it is lawful to destroy their kinsmen too, so that wrongdoing may be held back by the greatness of the punishment, in the same way in pestilential diseases some who are not guilty perish, so that the others, from afar, may be brought to their senses; apart from the necessity that those carried about in a diseased air fall ill, just as those caught in a storm at sea are equally in danger.

14.56| The fierce wild beasts came to be, for it must not be passed over in silence (even if, being clever at speaking, you anticipated the defense and disparaged it), for the sake of training for the contests of war. For exercises and continual hunts toughen and strengthen the bodies well, and before the bodies, they accustom the souls to disregard sudden attacks of enemies through the steadiness of their strength.

14.57| For those peaceful by nature it is possible to live without being plotted against, not only within walls but even shut in behind folding doors, having for their enjoyment the most abundant herds of tame animals; since boars and lions and the like, following their own natural inclination, have withdrawn far from the town, content to suffer nothing from the plotting of men.

14.58| If some, through carelessness, unarmed and unprepared, dwell unafraid in the lairs of the beasts, let them blame themselves for what befalls, and not nature, because they neglected to guard themselves when they could. Indeed I have seen at the horse races some who gave way to thoughtlessness: when they ought to have sat down and watched in order, they stood in the middle, were thrust aside by the rush of the four-horse teams, and were trampled by feet and wheels, earning folly's wages."

14.59| "On these matters what has been said is enough. Of reptiles, the venomous ones came into being not by providence but by consequence, as I said earlier. For they are generated when the moisture present changes toward greater heat. Some are made alive by putrefaction, as intestinal worms by that around food, and lice by that from sweat. But those which have their origin from their own matter according to a seminal and primary nature are rightly ascribed to providence.

14.60| I have also heard two accounts about those creatures, as having come to be for man's benefit, which I would not conceal. One was of this kind: some said that venomous creatures are helpful in many medical respects, and that those who practice the art, using them knowledgeably where needed, are well supplied with antidotes, so that those in the most dangerous condition are unexpectedly saved; and to this day one can see those who undertake to heal not carelessly or negligently making use of each of them, in the compounding of drugs, with care.

14.61| The other account, as it seems, was not medical but philosophical. For it said that these instruments of punishment have been made ready by God against wrongdoers, as whips or the sword for generals and rulers; and for this reason, quiet at other times, they are roused to attack those who have been condemned, whom Nature has sentenced to death in her own incorruptible court.

14.62| The claim that they lurk in houses by preference is false; for they are seen outside the town, in the fields and wilderness, fleeing man as a master. Yet even if it were true, there is some reason for it. For in the corners heaps of rubbish and quantities of refuse are piled up, into which they like to creep, apart from the savor of the food that also has power to draw them.

14.63| If swallows live with us, there is nothing surprising; for we abstain from hunting them. The longing for safety is settled in souls not only rational but irrational, but of creatures meant for enjoyment none lives with us, because of our plots against them, except among those for whom the use of such creatures is forbidden by law."

14.64| There is a city of Syria on the sea called Ascalon. I was there at the time when I was on my way to our ancestral temple to pray and to offer sacrifice, and I saw an extraordinary number of doves at the crossroads and at every house. When I asked the reason, they told me it was not lawful to catch them, because from of old the inhabitants had been forbidden to make use of them. So tame has the creature grown through freedom from fear that it is always not only under the roof but at the table too, and it takes its fill of the truce.

14.65| In Egypt there is something still more wonderful to see. The crocodile, a man-eater and the most dangerous of beasts, born and reared in the most holy Nile, is aware of the benefit it receives, although it lives in the depths. Among those who honor it, it multiplies greatly; among those who do it harm, it does not appear even in a dream. So, among those who sail the river, in some places even the very bold do not dare to dip the tip of a finger in, since the crocodiles come in herds, while in others even the very timid leap overboard and swim for sport.

14.66| As for the land of the Cyclopes: because their race is a mythical fiction, cultivated fruit does not grow without sowing and men to farm the land, just as nothing is born out of what is not. Nor should Greece be accused of being poor and barren, for there is much deep soil in it as well. And if the barbarian lands excel in fruitfulness, they have the advantage in food but fall short in those who are fed, for whose sake the food exists. For Greece alone truly brings forth human beings, a heavenly plant and a divine shoot brought to perfection, giving birth to reasoning that is at home with knowledge. The cause is this: the mind is naturally sharpened by the thinness of the air.

14.67| That is why Heraclitus says, not wide of the mark, "A dry gleam: the wisest and best soul." One could also find proof of this in the fact that the sober and those of few wants are more sensible, while those who are forever gorged with drink and food are the least wise, since their reasoning is drowned by what comes in upon it.

14.68| So in barbarian lands, thanks to rich nourishment, saplings and trunks grow very tall, and the irrational animals are extremely prolific; but mind is what they produce least. For the exhalations of earth and water, continuous and one upon another, have overpowered the lifting up [of the mind] out of the air itself.

14.69| Nor are the kinds of fish and birds and land animals a charge against nature, as though she were inviting us to pleasure; they are rather a grave reproach of our own lack of self-control. For the completion of the whole, so that there might be an ordered world in every part, it was necessary that the forms of all living creatures should come into being; but there was no necessity for man, the creature most akin to wisdom, to rush to enjoy them and change into the savagery of beasts.

14.70| That is why, even to this day, those who hold to a rule of self-control abstain from them all entirely, taking green herbs and the fruits of trees as relishes and finding in them the sweetest enjoyment. And over those who think that feasting on the creatures mentioned is in accordance with nature, teachers, correctors and lawgivers have been set in the cities, whose concern has been to check the excess of the desires by not permitting everyone the unrestricted use of everything.

14.71| Roses, too, and saffron and the rest of the varied flowers came to be for health, not for pleasure. Their powers are boundless: they help on their own through their scents, filling everyone with fragrance, and far more in the compounding of medicines. For some of them, when mixed, display their own powers more clearly, just as the union of male and female does for the generation of a living creature, since neither by itself is able by nature to do what both do when they come together.

14.72| These things have necessarily been said in answer to the rest of the difficulties you raised, and they are able to produce sufficient conviction, in those who are not contentious, that God takes care of human affairs."

14.73| These are the extracts I have made from the man named, showing at once what kind of men the sons of the Hebrews proved to be even in later generations, and making plain both their pious conception of God and their agreement with their forefathers. It is now time to pass from here to the testimonies of those outside on the same matters.

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