Preparation for the Gospel — Book X

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

1.1| We have already set out the arguments by which we gave the philosophy of the Hebrews precedence over that of the Greeks, and the reasoning by which we accepted the sacred books kept among these men; and after that we showed that the Greeks themselves did not fail to know these men, but mentioned them by name, were struck with admiration at their way of life, and gave a great deal of attention to their royal capital and to the rest of their history. Come, then, let us now consider how the Greeks not only thought their memory worth recording in writing, but in some of the doctrines that tend to the betterment of the soul even became zealous followers of the same teaching and learning as theirs.

1.2| That the admired Greeks, one from here and another from there, went round among the barbarians and gathered up the rest of their learning as well — geometry, arithmetic, music, astronomy, medicine, the very first elements of grammar, and countless other skilled and useful pursuits — I shall show very shortly.

1.3| Our discussion has already shown that the belief in many gods, the mysteries and the rites, and besides these the stories and the mythical tales about gods, the allegorical natural philosophy drawn from the myths, and all the rest of the superstitious error were taken by them from barbarians, when we caught the Greeks, who had wandered over much of the earth, building up their own theology entirely — not without toil, but out of a contribution pooled from the learning found among barbarians;

1.4| in the same way it will be shown before long that the teachings on piety toward the one God over all, and the doctrines most sought after for the benefit of the soul — which would be the most essential of all the discourses in philosophy — can have been procured from nowhere else than from the Hebrews alone.

1.5| Or if not that, and someone should say that they agreed with them because they were prompted by natural notions, this too would tell in our favour: that we have chosen to follow teachings which were not only handed down to the Hebrews alone from the beginning, from time immemorial, by prophets who spoke of God, but which were also examined in the schools of philosophers by some — if not by all, then at least by those of great renown in Greece.

1.6| You would find these men few enough to count — since, as they say, all fine things are hard — yet honoured with the first rank among the philosophers of the Greeks, so that through their great esteem they overshadow their peers in reputation.

1.7| And there is no need to wonder if we say that the Hebrew doctrines too may have been pilfered by them, when it is established not only that they plundered the rest of their learning from the Egyptians and Chaldeans and the other barbarian nations, but that even to this day they are caught robbing one another of the credit they seek in their writings.

1.8| Each of them, at any rate, has filched his neighbours' phrasing together with their thoughts and whole arrangements of argument, and prided himself on them as on his own labours. Nor should you suppose that this account is mine: you will hear it, once again, from these all-wise men themselves, as they convict one another of literary theft.

1.9| Since we have once set out on it, this very point must be looked at first of all, to test the character of the men we are describing. Our own Clement, then, set out the case on this matter at length in the sixth book of the Stromateis. Take him up first, then, and read words such as these:

2.1| “Now that we have shown that the image in Greek thought was illuminated from the truth given to us through the scriptures — and we have demonstrated it, taking it in the sense that the theft of the truth reached as far as them, if it is not invidious to say so — come, let us bring forward the Greeks themselves as witnesses to the theft against themselves.

2.2| For those who so openly filch their own literature from one another confirm that they are thieves, and they plainly show that, even against their will, they secretly appropriate the truth that comes from us and pass it on to their own countrymen. For if they will not abstain even from their own, they will hardly refrain from ours.

2.3| The doctrines of philosophy I shall pass over in silence, since those who divided themselves into the schools admit in writing — so as not to be found ungrateful — that they received the chief points of their doctrines from Socrates. But after making use of the testimony of a few men who are widely read and well esteemed among the Greeks, and exposing their thievish character, drawing on different periods, I shall turn to what comes next.”

2.4| Having said this by way of preface, he brings on the proofs one after another, using every kind of demonstration; and first he convicts the poets of having stolen from their fellows, by setting the words of each side by side.

2.5| Then next he adds this: “So that we may not leave philosophy and history, nor rhetoric either, without their share of the same exposure, it is reasonable to set out a few instances from these too.

2.6| Then in order he sets beside one another passages of Orpheus, Heraclitus, Plato, Pythagoras, Herodotus, Theopompus, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Lysias, Isocrates, and countless others, whose words it is superfluous for me to list, since the man's writing lies before us, in which after the refutations of those named he says again:

2.7| “Let these forms of Greek theft, as regards thought, suffice as a plain illustration for anyone able to see. But they have now been caught not only taking thoughts and phrases and changing the wording, as will be shown, but also taking the works of others entire and publishing them as their own, as Eugammon of Cyrene did with the whole book On the Thesprotians from Musaeus.

2.8| Then, after adding to these very many proofs of his thesis, he concludes again by adding this: “Life will fail me if I try to go through every case, exposing the self-loving Greek theft, and how they appropriate the discovery of the finest doctrines they have, which they received from us.

2.9| Indeed they are convicted not only of taking doctrines from the barbarians, but also of imitating what is ours, which was wonderfully wrought from above by divine power through those who lived holy lives for our conversion, and working it up into marvels of Greek mythology.

2.10| Let us then ask them whether what they record is true or false. They would not say false; for they would not willingly condemn themselves of the greatest folly, that of writing falsehoods. They would be obliged to agree that it is true.

2.11| How then do the wonders shown through Moses and the other prophets still seem to them incredible? For God, the Almighty, who cares for all people, turns some to salvation by commandments, others by threats, some by marvelous signs, and some by gentle promises.

2.12| But the Greeks tell this story: when a drought once ravaged Greece for a long time and there was a failure of crops, those who were left, they say, came as suppliants to Delphi because of the famine and asked the Pythia how they could be delivered from the evil. She prescribed one deliverance from the calamity: that they should use the prayer of Aeacus.

2.13| So Aeacus, persuaded by them, went up the Greek mountain, stretched out clean hands toward heaven, called upon God, the common Father, and begged him to pity worn-out Greece.

2.14| As he prayed, an enormous thunderclap sounded, and all the air around was covered with cloud; violent, continuous rains burst down and drenched the whole land. From that there came abundant, rich fruitfulness, cultivated by the prayers of Aeacus.

2.15| But Scripture says that Samuel called on the Lord, and thunder and rain were given by the Lord on the day of harvest. You see that the one who rains on the just and the unjust through the powers set under him is one God?” and so on.

2.16| By adding countless examples to these, Clement caught the Greeks as thieves by undeniable proofs. But if he is not credible to you, since he too, like us, preferred barbarian philosophy to the Greek, then let him be set aside — although he did not make his case in his own words, but in those of the Greeks themselves. What would you say if you learned the same things from your own noble philosophers? Accept, then, their testimonies too. From Porphyry, from the first book of the Lecture on Literature:

3.1| “Longinus, giving a banquet at Athens for the festival of Plato, invited me and many others, among them the sophist Nicagoras and Maior, Apollonius the grammarian, Demetrius the geometer, Prosenes the Peripatetic, and the Stoic Callietes.

3.2| Seventh among them he himself reclined, and as the dinner went on, and among other topics some discussion about Ephorus had arisen, he said, ‘Let us hear what the uproar about Ephorus is.’ Those quarreling were Caustrius and Maximus; the one ranked him even above Theopompus, but Caustrius called him a thief.

3.3| ‘And what is Ephorus's own,’ he said, ‘when he sometimes transfers three thousand whole lines word for word from Daimachus, Callisthenes and Anaximenes?’

3.4| To him the grammarian Apollonius said, ‘Do you not know that this same affliction has seized Theopompus too, whom you prefer? In the eleventh book of his Philippic History he copied out, in the very words, from the Areopagiticus of Isocrates the passage that none of the good or evil things comes to men of itself,’ and so on.

3.5| And yet he looks down on Isocrates and says that he has beaten his teacher in the contest over Mausolus. But he has stolen the substance as well, transferring to other persons what was told of others, so that he is also caught in falsehood in this way.

3.6| For Andron, in his Tripod, had recorded what concerns the predictions of the philosopher Pythagoras, saying that once, when he was thirsty at Metapontum, he drew water from a certain well, drank, and foretold that an earthquake would come on the third day; and adding some other things to this, he says,

3.7| all this, then, which Andron had recorded about Pythagoras, Theopompus stole. If he had been speaking about Pythagoras, perhaps others too might have known of it and told it, saying the same things as he; but as it is, the change of the name makes the theft plain. For he has used the same events, but has swapped in a different name: he has made Pherecydes of Syros the one who foretold these things.

3.8| And he hides the theft not by this name only but also by changing places. For the foretelling of the earthquake, which Andron placed at Metapontum, Theopompus says took place in Syria; and the incident of the ship he says was seen from Samos rather than from Megara in Sicily; and he transferred the capture of Sybaris to Messene.

3.9| And so that he might seem to say something extraordinary, he added the name of the stranger too, saying that he was called Perilaus. And I too, says Nicagoras, reading his Hellenica and Xenophon's, have found that he transfers many things from Xenophon, and, what is worse, for the worse.

3.10| For example, the meeting of Pharnabazus with Agesilaus through Apollophanes of Cyzicus, and the conversations of the two with one another under truce, which Xenophon recorded in the fourth book with great charm and with perfect fitness to both men, Theopompus transferred to the eleventh book of the Hellenica and made sluggish, motionless and ineffectual.

3.11| For in his eagerness to put into his discourse a power of language and show off the working-up that the theft requires, he appears slow, hesitant, and like one putting things off, and he spoils the life and energy of Xenophon.’

3.12| When Nicagoras had said this, Apollonius said, ‘And why are we surprised if the affliction of theft touched Theopompus and Ephorus, men rather lazy, when even Menander was filled with this sickness? Aristophanes the grammarian gently convicted him of it, for loving him too much, in his Parallels of him and the authors from whom he stole; and Latinus, in six books which he entitled On the Things Not Menander's Own, exposed the multitude of his thefts;

3.13| just as Philostratus of Alexandria undertook a treatise On the Plagiarism of Sophocles. Caecilius, too, as though he had caught something great, says that Menander transcribed an entire play from beginning to end, Antiphanes' Augur, into his Superstitious Man.

3.14| And since, I know not how, it has pleased you,’ he says, ‘to bring the thieves into the open, I too will report that the fine Hypereides stole much from Demosthenes, both in his speech against Diondas and in the one on the gifts of Eubulus.

3.15| That one took from the other is plain; but since they were contemporaries, it would be your task, Apollonius, to track the thief by the dates. For my part, I suspect that the one who took was Hypereides; but since it is unclear which, I admire Demosthenes if he took from Hypereides and corrected it properly, and I blame Hypereides if he took from Demosthenes and twisted it for the worse.’

3.16| And after a few words he says: “And why should I tell you how Hellanicus compiled his Barbarian Customs from Herodotus and Damastes? Or how, in his second book, Herodotus carried over many things from Hecataeus of Miletus's Description of the Earth word for word, with slight alterations: the matters of the phoenix bird, the river horse, and the hunting of crocodiles?

3.17| Or how what is said about tortures in Isaeus, in the speech on the estate of Cylon, is also found in Isocrates in the Trapeziticus, and is said almost in the same terms in Demosthenes, in the speech against Onetor for ejectment? Or how Dinarchus in the first speech against Cleomedon for assault carried over many things in the very words from Demosthenes' speech against Conon for assault?

3.18| Or Hesiod: ‘For a man wins nothing better than a good wife, and nothing more chilling than a bad one.’ Simonides in the eleventh book transferred this thought, taking it thus: ‘A man wins nothing better than a good woman, nor more chilling than a bad one.’ And Euripides in the Melanippe the Captive: ‘Nothing is worse than a bad woman, and nothing is by nature better, beyond all measure, than a good one; but natures differ.’

3.19| And when Euripides said, ‘We women are the most wretched of plants,’ Theodectes in the Alcmaeon says: ‘A plain word is sung among mortals, that no plant is more wretched than a woman.’ This man took not only the conception from there but used the very words; and he wished, cunningly, to have it be a proverb, and to use it as something said by many, rather than seem to have taken it from its originator.

3.20| And Antimachus, in stealing from Homer, also corrects him. For where Homer said, ‘And Idas, who became the mightiest of men upon the earth,’ Antimachus says, ‘And Idas, who was the mightiest of men upon the earth.’ And Lycophron praises the change, on the ground that the verse is steadied by it.

3.21| As for ‘Then in answer to him spoke mighty Diomedes,’ I say nothing, since Homer was mocked by Cratinus for the redundancy in ‘Then in answer’; though it was so well worn, Antimachus did not hesitate to change it.

3.22| And the line ‘Over whom he ruled, and he was gentle as a father’ is Homeric, and elsewhere again it says, ‘And when they had strengthened their ranks on both sides’; Antimachus transposed the half-lines and made of them ‘the peoples over whom they ruled strengthened their ranks.’

3.23| But lest I too, while accusing others of theft, be caught as a thief, I will name those who have worked on these matters. There are two books of Lysimachus On the Plagiarism of Ephorus; Alcaeus, the writer of abusive iambics and epigrams, wrote a parody exposing the thefts of Ephorus; there is a letter of Pollio to Soteridas On the Plagiarism of Ctesias; the same man has also a book On the Plagiarism of Herodotus, and in the work entitled The Trackers much is said about Theopompus; and there is the treatise of Aretades On Coincidence, from which one may learn many such cases.”

3.24| And after other matters: “And Prosenes said, ‘You have caught the other thieves; but that this very hero Plato, whose namesake festival we celebrate today, makes use of many who came before him (for I am ashamed to use the word theft in his case), you have not yet detected.’

3.25| ‘What do you mean?’ said Callietes. ‘I do not only say it,’ he said, ‘but I give proof for my statement. The books of those who lived before Plato are scarce, since otherwise perhaps one would have caught more thefts of the philosopher. But as it happens, I came upon the treatise of Protagoras On Being, and in reading it I find him using such replies against those who introduce being as one; and I took pains to remember what was said in the very words.’” And having said this, he sets out the demonstrations at greater length.

3.26| But what manner the Greek writers have, and that they did not hold back even from accusation against themselves, I think the foregoing, out of countless instances, is enough. Further, as a preparation for the benefit that flowed to the Greeks from the Hebrew writings, it seems to me good and necessary to show in general that the whole celebrated education and philosophy of the Greeks, both their first branches of learning and the august parts of the science of logic, were gathered for them from the barbarians, so that no one of them may any longer reproach us for having preferred the piety and philosophy of the barbarians to what is revered among themselves.

4.1| You may know that it was not without sober reason that we put the philosophy of the Greeks second and preferred the theology among the Hebrews, if you learn that even those Greeks who touched philosophy most rightly, and who thought something more and greater than the common talk about the gods, found no true doctrines other than those already ratified among the Hebrews.

4.2| For some, led astray in various ways by diverse false opinions, were overturned into a depth of idle chatter; others, using a somewhat sound reasoning, are found, in the points where they grasped the truth, to be sharers in the teaching of the Hebrews.

4.3| It is likely, then, that having become very learned and having examined the customs and studies of the nations with great care, they were not ignorant of the philosophy I have described, being themselves, so to speak, younger in time than all, not only than the Hebrews, nor than the Phoenicians and Egyptians, but than the ancient Greeks themselves.

4.4| For these ancient Greeks, Cadmus son of Agenor brought some things from Phoenicia, and others about the gods came from Egypt, or from somewhere else, and the mysteries and rites of initiation, the setting up of wooden images, and hymns, songs and incantations were organized by Thracian Orpheus or some other, even a barbarian, who became the leaders of the error. For the Greeks themselves would admit that they know no one older than these.

4.5| At any rate, they say that Orpheus first of all, then Linus, then Musaeus, flourished around the period of the Trojan War, or a little earlier. But in their time nothing more than the wandering theology of the Phoenicians and Egyptians was in operation among the Greeks.

4.6| And indeed among the other nations as well, in all lands and cities, in temples and mysteries, exactly these things and such as these were observed. Everywhere, then, the account of the gods described above prevailed; exquisitely beautiful temples, adorned with all sorts of statues and offerings, were fitted out among all peoples; and wooden images of every material, shaped to the form of every mortal creature, were wrought with loving care.

4.7| And there was also a very great and unstinting abundance of oracles everywhere. A solemn and great god was then in especial flower among the Greeks: the Pythian, the Clarian and the Dodonaean; then Amphiaraus and Amphilochus, and besides these a countless other crowd of oracle-givers, flowing in, rather than of poets and rhapsodes.

4.8| Long afterward, when philosophy came to the Greeks, having found nothing fitting for itself among their forefathers, it recognized that the solemn and ancient elements of the theology that had come down to them from their fathers, and the very marvels that were proclaimed by all, the divine utterances and oracles, were in fact superfluous and useless.

4.9| So it put these off to second place, as being of no use to it for finding what is necessary and true, and went about searching out what was foreign and barbarian, like one naked and impoverished in words and studies of her own, procuring for herself everywhere what was useful, collecting it and gathering contributions, whatever she found among each of the nations.

4.10| For it was not only the missing elements of true theology that the Greeks learned, but also the most life-serving of the other arts and sciences. The Greeks themselves agree that after Orpheus, Linus and Musaeus, who of all theologians were the very oldest and first to begin for them the error of many gods, the seven men among them were admired for wisdom, whom indeed they also called Sages. These flourished about the time of Cyrus, king of the Persians.

4.11| This was the time in which the last of the prophets among the Hebrews were prophesying, over six hundred years after the Trojan War, yet at least fifteen hundred years after the time of Moses. This will become clear to you a little later when you go through the chronological tables.

4.12| At about this time the Seven, who were young in time, are remembered as Sages for success in a more moral manner of life, of whom nothing more is remembered than their famous sayings. Late indeed, and standing still lower in time, the philosophers among the Greeks are remembered as having shone.

4.13| Of these Pythagoras was first, a pupil of Pherecydes, who discovered the name “philosophy.” According to some he was a Samian, others say a Tyrrhenian, and some say he was a Syrian or a Tyrian; so that you must grant that the first of the philosophers, sung on the lips of all the Greeks, was a barbarian and not a Greek.

4.14| They record Pherecydes also as a Syrian, whose pupil they say Pythagoras was. Nor is Pythagoras said to have associated with him alone, but also to have spent time among the Persian Magi and to have studied under the prophets of the Egyptians, at the time when certain of the Hebrews seem to have migrated into Egypt and others to Babylon.

4.15| But indeed the man in question, searching out the wisdom found in each place, went to Babylon, Egypt and all of Persia, studying under the Magi and the priests; and besides these he is recorded to have heard the Brahmans, who are philosophers of the Indians. From some he collected astronomy, from others geometry, from others arithmetic and music, and other things from others; from the wise Greeks alone he got nothing, since they lived in poverty and want of wisdom.

4.16| Conversely, of what he procured from outside, he himself became the cause of learning for the Greeks.

4.17| Such, then, was Pythagoras. From his succession arose first the philosophy called Italian, which gained its name from his residence in Italy; after it came the one named Ionian, from Thales, who was one of the seven sages; and next the Eleatic, which took Xenophanes of Colophon as its father.

4.18| But Thales too, as some record, was a Phoenician, though others suppose him a Milesian; and he also is said to have met with the prophets of the Egyptians.

4.19| Solon, likewise one of the seven sages, who is also said to have given laws to the Athenians, Plato says similarly attended to the Egyptians, at the time when the Hebrews were again living in Egypt. At any rate, he presents him in the Timaeus being instructed by the barbarian, where the Egyptian speaks to him: “Solon, O Solon, you Greeks are always children, and no Greek is an old man, nor is there among you any learning grey with time.”

4.20| And Plato himself, having spent time with the Pythagoreans in Italy, was not satisfied with his stay among them alone, but is said to have set out for Egypt and to have applied himself for a very long time to their philosophy. He himself bears witness to this about the barbarians in many places in his own writings, and in my view does well, fair-mindedly not denying that he imported the finest things for philosophy from the barbarians.

4.21| One can hear him in many places, but especially in the Epinomis, where he mentions Syrians and Egyptians together somewhere as follows: “The cause of this was the first man who observed these things, being a barbarian. For an ancient region nurtured the first to think of these things, owing to the fineness of the summer season, which Egypt and Syria possess in abundance. Hence it has spread everywhere, even here, having been tested over ten thousand years and an unlimited time.”

4.22| And going on a little further he adds: “Let us take it that whatever the Greeks receive from barbarians, they bring in the end to a finer perfection.”

4.23| So Plato. And Democritus, still earlier, is said to have composed his ethical discourses from those of the Babylonians. And somewhere, boasting of himself, he says: “I of the men of my time have wandered over the most land, inquiring into the farthest things; and I have seen the most climates and countries, and heard the most learned men, and in the composition of lines with proof no one has yet surpassed me, not even the Egyptian so-called Harpedonaptae, with whom I stayed as a guest abroad for eighty years in all.”

4.24| For this man too visited Babylon, Persia and Egypt, studying under the Egyptians and the priests.

4.25| And what if I were to list for you Heraclitus and the other Greeks, by whom it is proved that the Greek polity, through its long age, was poor and left naked of every kind of learning?

4.26| It was adorned, indeed, with temples of the gods, statues and images, oracles and prophecies, and the great vanity of the people-deceiving demons; but of true wisdom and of learning useful to life it was entirely bereft.

4.27| Nor did their useless oracles contribute anything to the discovery of good doctrines; not even the admired Pythian himself helped them at all toward philosophy, nor did any other of the gods work with them toward the pursuit of anything necessary. But wandering here and there and running about through all their lives, they decked themselves in other birds' feathers, as the fable has it, so that all their philosophy was already put together by contributions.

4.28| For taking the impress of different branches of learning from different peoples, they got geometry from the Egyptians and astronomy from the Chaldeans, and again others from others; but from no other people did any of them find a good such as that among the Hebrews.

4.29| This was the knowledge of the universal God together with the condemnation of their own gods, as the argument, in its course, will show in a little while.

4.30| For the present, so much is pointed out to readers: that the ancient Greeks were deprived not only of true theology but of the studies that profit philosophy, and not only of these, but also of the common and political pursuits.

4.31| And I think that this observation will contribute to the proof of the purpose before us, if it is indeed our task to give an account of why we were not unreasonable in preferring the theology of the Hebrews, which they themselves would call barbarian, to Greek philosophy.

4.32| If, then, they should be seen to have long before fabricated everything from barbarians, and to have gained nothing at all for philosophy from their own gods, but even to have justly found fault with their gods, and some on this account to have preferred atheism to the service of the gods, why should we any longer be blamed, and not rather be accepted and praised, because we loved the better, or rather found and received the only true thing, and withdrew from falsehood? We were neither turned to an atheistic reasoning like the wise among the Greeks, nor again, like the admired philosophers, did we mix the error of many gods with the knowledge of the God over all, nor did we confuse falsehood together with truth.

4.33| But let us leave this for now, and first go through those matters by which the Greeks are proved to have plundered the barbarians of everything, not only the philosophical studies, but also the common discoveries useful to life.

5.1| First, then, Cadmus, who brought to the Greeks the common letters, the very first elements of grammar, was by race a Phoenician, which is why some of the ancients have called the letters Phoenician.

5.2| And there are those who say the Syrians were the first to devise letters. The Syrians would include the Hebrews, who inhabited the land neighboring Phoenicia, itself once called Phoenicia, afterwards Judea, and in our day Palestine, and to them above all the sound of the Greek letters appears not foreign.

5.3| For among them each of the letters bears its name from some significant meaning, which cannot be found among the Greeks; and for this reason especially it is agreed that they are not the Greeks' own.

5.4| In all there are twenty-two letters among the Hebrews, of which the first is Alph, which if translated into the Greek tongue would be “learning”; second comes Beth, explained as “of a house”; third, Gimel, which means “fullness”; fourth, Delth, which means “of tablets”; fifth comes He, which stands for “this.” Put together they yield some such meaning as this: learning of a house, fullness of tablets, and this.

5.5| Then after these the sixth letter, called among them Vau, meaning “in it”; then Zai, which is “lives”; after which Heth, which is “the living one,” so that the whole is “in it lives the living one.”

5.6| After these the ninth letter is Teth, which is “good”; then Ioth, which is interpreted “beginning”; together the two are “good beginning.” After these Caph, which is “likewise”; then Labd, which is “learn”; the whole is “likewise learn.”

5.7| After these the thirteenth letter is Mem, meaning “from them”; next Nun, meaning “eternal”; next Samch, explained as “help”; the saying in these is “from them eternal help.”

5.8| After these comes Ain, which, rendered into Greek, signifies “fountain” or “eye”; next Phe, “mouth”; and following that Sade, “righteousness.” Their sense is: a fountain, or an eye, and a mouth of righteousness.

5.9| After these comes the letter Coph, which means “calling”; then Res, which means “head”; and following these Sen, which means “teeth”; and at the end the twenty-second letter is named by them [….], which signifies “signs.” The sense may be: calling of head, and signs of teeth.

5.10| Among the Hebrews, then, such is the translation and interpretation of the letters, completing a meaning of speech that fits the learning and announcement of the letters. The like you could not find among the Greeks; hence, as I said, one must admit that they are not the Greeks' own but have been plainly adapted from the barbarian tongue.

5.11| And this is proved also from the naming of each individual letter. What difference is there between Alpha and Alph? Between Beta and Beth? Gamma and Gimel? Delta and Delth? E and He? Zeta and Zai? Theta and Teth? And likewise for all the rest like these.

5.12| So it is beyond dispute that such names are not the Greeks' own, but the Hebrews', among whom each of them is shown to signify something. Beginning first among these, they passed on to others, and Greeks among them. Let this be said by me about the first letters. And now listen to what Clement, who has touched the same subject, says:

6.1| “They record that Apis the Egyptian invented medicine, and after him Asclepius enlarged the art. Atlas the Libyan was the first to build a ship and to sail the sea.

6.2| The Egyptians were the first to bring astronomy to men, and likewise the Chaldeans. Some say that the Carians devised foreknowledge by the stars. The Phrygians were the first to watch the flights of birds.

6.3| The Etruscans, neighbors of Italy, perfected the art of sacrifice. The Isaurians and Arabs worked out the art of augury, just as the Telmessians did divination by dreams.

6.4| The Tyrrhenians devised the trumpet and the Phrygians the flute; for Olympus and Marsyas were Phrygians. The Egyptians were the first to show how to burn lamps, divided the year into twelve months, forbade intercourse with women in temples, and made it a law that men should not enter temples unwashed from women.

6.5| The same people also became the inventors of geometry. Celmis and Damnameneus, of the Idaean Dactyls, were the first to find iron in Cyprus. Delas, another Idaean, discovered the mixing of bronze, or, as Hesiod says, a Scythian did.

6.6| Indeed the Thracians first found the so-called harpe, a curved sword, and were the first to use shields on horseback. Likewise the Illyrians invented the so-called pelta. They also say the Tuscans devised the art of modelling; and Itanus, who was a Samnite, was the first to make the oblong shield.

6.7| For Cadmus the Phoenician discovered stone-cutting and devised the gold mines around Mount Pangaeum. And another people, the Cappadocians, first found the so-called nabla, just as the Assyrians did the two-stringed instrument.

6.8| The Carthaginians were the first to build a four-banked ship, and Bosporus, a native, built it. Medea, the Colchian, daughter of Aeetes, was the first to devise the dyeing of hair.

6.9| The Noropes too (a Paeonian people, now called Noricans) first worked bronze and refined iron. And Amycus, king of the Bebrycians, invented boxing thongs.

6.10| In music, Olympus the Mysian cultivated the Lydian mode; and the so-called Troglodytes invented the sambuke, a musical instrument.

6.11| They say also that Satyrus the Phrygian invented the transverse pipe; likewise Hyagnis, himself also a Phrygian, the three-stringed instrument and the diatonic mode; Olympus the Phrygian likewise the melodies; Marsyas, of the same country as those named, the Phrygian mode and the mixophrygian and mixolydian; and Thamyris the Thracian is said to have devised the Dorian.

6.12| We have heard that the Persians were the first to make the carriage, the couch and the footstool, and the Sidonians to build the trireme. The Sicilians near Italy first found the phorminx, not much short of the cithara, and devised castanets.

6.13| Under Semiramis, queen of the Assyrians, they record that linen garments were invented. And Atossa, who ruled the Persians, was the first to compose letters, says Hellanicus.

6.14| Scamon of Mytilene, then, and Theophrastus of Eresus, Cydippus of Mantinea, and also Antiphanes, Aristodemus and Aristotle, and besides them Philostephanus, and even Strato the Peripatetic in his work On Inventions, have recorded these things. I have set down a few of them to establish the inventive and life-serving nature of the barbarians, from whom the Greeks have profited in their pursuits.”

6.15| These are Clement's words, in the Stromateis. To what has been said it seems to me good to join also passages from the writing of Josephus the Hebrew, composed by him in two books On the Antiquity of the Jews, showing that the Greeks are young, that they have profited from barbarians, and that they have written inconsistently with one another. These too will contribute to an exact and firm confirmation of what has been said. Hear, then, what he too writes, word for word:

7.1| First, then, I am struck with great amazement at those who think that, concerning the most ancient events, we should attend only to the Greeks and learn the truth from them, while distrusting us and the rest of mankind.

7.2| For I see that the very opposite has happened, if one is not to follow vain opinions but take the justice of the matter from the facts themselves. For among the Greeks one would find everything to be new, and, as one might say, of yesterday and the day before: I mean the foundings of cities, the invention of the arts, and the recording of laws; and almost the newest thing of all among them is their concern for writing histories.

7.3| But as for the Egyptians, Chaldeans and Phoenicians (for I leave aside for now counting ourselves with them), they themselves admit that they have the most ancient and most lasting tradition of memory.

7.4| For they all inhabit places least exposed to destruction from the surrounding environment, and they took great care that nothing of what was done among them should go unrecorded, but should always be consecrated in public records by the wisest men.

7.5| But the region around Greece has suffered countless destructions, wiping out the memory of what had happened; and each generation, setting up new ways of life, thought that its own era was the beginning of everything.

7.6| Late, and with difficulty, they learned the nature of letters. Indeed, those who wish their use to be the oldest boast that they learned it from the Phoenicians and Cadmus.

7.7| Yet not even from that time could anyone point to a surviving record, whether in temples or in public dedications; seeing that even concerning those who campaigned against Troy so many years later, there has been much doubt and inquiry whether they used letters, and the truth prevails rather that they did not know the present use of letters.

7.8| In general, among the Greeks no acknowledged writing is found older than the poetry of Homer; and he appears to have lived later than the Trojan War. They say that he too left no written record of his poetry; rather, it was kept alive by memory and later put together from writings, and that for this reason it has so many discrepancies.

7.9| Of the Greeks, those who attempted to compose histories (I mean Cadmus of Miletus, Acusilaus of Argos, and any others said to have come after him) preceded the Persian expedition against Greece by only a short time.

7.10| Moreover, those who first philosophized among the Greeks about the heavens and the divine, such as Pherecydes of Syros, Pythagoras and Thales, all unanimously agree that they became pupils of the Egyptians and Chaldeans and wrote little; and these writings seem to the Greeks the most ancient of all, and they scarcely believe that they were written by those men.”

7.11| “How then is it not absurd that the Greeks are puffed up, as though they alone knew the ancient things and handed down the truth about them accurately? Or who would not easily learn from these same writers that they wrote with no firm knowledge, but each as he guessed about the events?

7.12| At any rate, they refute one another more in their books, and do not hesitate to say the most contradictory things about the same matters. I should be officious to instruct those who know better than I how far Hellanicus differs from Acusilaus about genealogies, how many corrections Acusilaus makes to Hesiod, or in what manner Ephorus shows Hellanicus to be false in most things, Timaeus shows Ephorus, those after him show Timaeus, and everyone shows Herodotus.

7.13| Nor did Timaeus see fit to agree with Antiochus, Philistus or Callias about Sicilian matters; nor, again, have the writers of Atthides agreed with one another about Attic matters, or those who record the affairs of Argos about Argive matters.

7.14| And why speak of events in individual cities, which are smaller matters, when even the most esteemed writers disagree about the Persian expedition and what was done in it? Thucydides too is accused by some of many falsehoods, though he is thought to have written the most accurate history of his own day.”

7.15| “Many other causes of such disagreement might perhaps appear to those who wish to inquire; but I assign the greatest force to two causes, which I shall set out.

7.16| And I shall name first the one that seems to me the more decisive. The fact that from the beginning the Greeks took no pains to have public records made of what happened from time to time gave the most room for error, and license to lie, to those who afterward wished to write anything about ancient events.

7.17| The matter of records was neglected not only among the rest of the Greeks, but not even among the Athenians themselves, who say they are native to the soil and devoted to education, is anything of the kind found to have taken place. Rather, they say that the oldest of their public documents are the laws on homicide written for them by Draco, a little before the tyranny of Pisistratus.

7.18| As for the Arcadians, who boast of their antiquity, what need is there to speak? For even afterwards they were barely taught letters.”

7.19| “Since, then, no record was publicly put forward which might teach those who wished to learn and refute those who lied, a great disagreement arose among the writers.

7.20| A second cause must be set beside this one. Those who set about writing did not care for the truth (though this is always their ready claim), but displayed the power of their words; and in whatever way they supposed they would outshine the others in this, they adapted themselves to it: some turned to telling myths, some to flattery, praising cities or kings; others went on to find fault with deeds or with those who had written them, thinking to win repute in this.

7.21| In general they continually do what is most opposed to history. For the mark of true history is that all should say and write the same things about the same matters; but these men thought that, unless they wrote differently from others, they themselves would appear the most truthful of all.”

7.22| So much from Josephus. A seal upon what has been said would be the testimony of Diodorus, which I shall cite from the first book of the Library compiled by him, which reads as follows, word for word:

8.1| “Now that these matters have been sifted for us, we must tell how many of those who were famed among the Greeks for intelligence and education visited Egypt in ancient times, to share in its customs and learning.

8.2| For the priests of the Egyptians record, from the registers in their sacred books, that Orpheus, Musaeus, Melampus and Daedalus came to them, and besides these the poet Homer and Lycurgus the Spartan, and also Solon of Athens and the philosopher Plato; and that Pythagoras the Samian and the mathematician Eudoxus came too, and also Democritus of Abdera and Oenopides of Chios.

8.3| Of all these they show tokens: of some, images; of others, places or buildings bearing their names. And from the learning each of them emulated they offer proofs, establishing that they brought from Egypt all the things for which they were admired among the Greeks.

8.4| For Orpheus, they say, took over from the Egyptians the greater part of the mystic rites, the orgiastic ceremonies of his own wanderings, and the myth-making about the underworld. For the ceremony of Osiris is identical with that of Dionysus, while that of Isis closely resembles that of Demeter, with only the names changed; and the punishments of the impious in Hades, the meadows of the pious, and the fanciful images familiar to the many, he introduced in remodeled form, imitating the Egyptian burial customs.

8.5| For Hermes, who conducts souls, following the ancient Egyptian custom, brings the body of Apis up to a certain point and hands it over to the one who wears the head of Cerberus. When Orpheus had shown this to the Greeks, Homer, following him, put it in his poem: ‘And Cyllenian Hermes called forth the souls of the heroes; and he held a wand in his hands.’”

8.6| Then he goes on again and adds: “Melampus, they say, brought from Egypt the rites that are celebrated for Dionysus among the Greeks, the myths about Cronus, the story of the Titan war, and in short the whole history of the sufferings of the gods.

8.7| They say that Daedalus imitated the windings of the labyrinth, which survives to the present day, built, as some say, by Mendes, but by king Marus according to others, many years before Minos reigned; and that the style of the ancient statues in Egypt is the same as those made by Daedalus among the Greeks.

8.8| They say that Daedalus was the architect of the very beautiful forecourt of the temple of Hephaestus at Memphis, and that, being admired, he obtained a wooden image in that temple made by his own hands; and that in the end, for his natural gifts he was accounted worthy of great fame, and having invented many other things besides, he received honors equal to a god's. For even now there is a temple of Daedalus, honored by the natives, on one of the islands near Memphis.

8.9| As proofs of Homer's presence they offer among others especially the drug Helen gave Telemachus at Menelaus's house, and his forgetting of the evils that had befallen.

8.10| For the sorrow-banishing drug, which the poet says Helen received in Egypt from Polydamna, the wife of Thon, he evidently investigated accurately.

8.11| For even now, they say, the women there use the power just mentioned, and among the women of Diospolis alone, since ancient times, a remedy for anger and grief has been found; and they say that Diospolis and Thebes are one and the same city, that Aphrodite is called golden by the natives from ancient tradition, and that there is a plain called that of Golden Aphrodite near the place named Momemphis.

8.12| The tales about Zeus and Hera, their union and the journey to Ethiopia, he carried over from there. For every year among the Egyptians the shrine of Zeus crosses the river to Libya, and after some days returns again, as if the god were arriving from Ethiopia. And the union of these gods is celebrated at the festivals of the temples, when both are carried up to a mountain wreathed with flowers of every kind by the priests.”

8.13| And Lycurgus, Plato and Solon, they say, set many of the customs of Egypt in order in their own legislations; and Pythagoras learned from the Egyptians the sacred discourse, the theorems of geometry, the doctrines of numbers, and also the transmigration of the soul into every living creature.

8.14| They suppose also that Democritus stayed with them five years and was taught much of astronomy; that Oenopides likewise, living with the priests and astronomers, learned among other things especially the circle of the sun, that its course is oblique and its motion contrary to that of the other stars.

8.15| In like manner, Eudoxus, having studied astronomy among them and published many useful things for the Greeks, gained considerable fame.

8.16| And of all the ancient sculptors, the most renowned stayed among them: Telecles and Theodorus, sons of Rhoecus, who made for the Samians the wooden image of Pythian Apollo.”

8.17| So much from Diodorus as well. But let this argument, demonstrated in this way, end here for me. There is no longer any need to accuse us of irrationality, if for love of true piety we too have gone over to the teachers of the wise Greeks, even of the very philosophers among them, I mean the barbarians, if indeed the Hebrews are barbarians.

8.18| It would be well to go through the times at which Moses and the prophets after Moses flourished, since this too would be one of the points most essential to the present treatise: that those about to touch the oracles of these men should first determine their antiquity, so that if the Greeks who agree with them are found alongside the Hebrew prophets and theologians, you may no longer doubt who was likely to have gathered what from whom: whether the elders took from the younger, the Hebrews from the Greeks, and the barbarians from the philosophers, whose very language they are unlikely to have understood; or, as is far more likely, the younger took from the elders, and the Greeks, who have explored most of the nations, were not ignorant of the Hebrew teachings, which had been rendered into the Greek tongue from the beginning.

9.1| Concerning the antiquity of Moses and of the prophets after him, very many others have eagerly laid down the demonstration in writings of their own, from which I shall presently set down a few small passages.

9.2| I myself, going a newer way than those mentioned, shall use this method. Since it is agreed that the times of Augustus, emperor of the Romans, and the birth of our Savior coincide, and since Christ made the beginning of the gospel teaching in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, if anyone wished to collect the number of years from this point, going back to the earlier times, down to Darius, king of the Persians, and the renewal of the temple at Jerusalem under him, which happened after the Jewish nation's return from Babylon, he would find the sum from Tiberius back to the second year of Darius to be 548 years.

9.3| For the second year of Darius falls in the 65th Olympiad, in its first year, and the fifteenth year of Tiberius's reign over the Romans coincides with the fourth year of the 201st Olympiad.

9.4| The Olympiads, then, between Darius the Persian and Tiberius, king of the Romans, number 137, which make a period of 548 years, reckoning four years to the Olympiad.

9.5| Since the second year of Darius was the seventieth year of the temple's desolation at Jerusalem, as the history shows, going back from there, from Darius' second year to the first Olympiad one would reckon 256 years, 64 Olympiads; and you would find the same number counting back from the final year of the said temple's desolation to Uzziah's fiftieth year as king of the Jews, in which Isaiah and Hosea prophesied, with those who were their contemporaries, so that the Greeks' first Olympiad runs together with the prophet Isaiah and his contemporaries.

9.6| Again, going from the first Olympiad to the earlier times as far as the capture of Ilium, you will find the years amounting to 408, as the chronological records of the Greeks contain.

9.7| And by the Hebrew reckoning, going back from Uzziah's fiftieth year as king of the Jews, to the third year of Labdon, who was judge among the Hebrews, you will gather the same number of years, 408; so that the capture of Ilium falls in the time of the judge Labdon, seven years before Samson began to rule the Hebrews, who they say was irresistible in bodily strength, resembling the Heracles celebrated among the Greeks.

9.8| And going back from there to the earlier times, having gathered for yourself a number of 400 years, you would find Moses among the Hebrews, and Cecrops the earth-born among the Greeks.

9.9| The things admired among the Greeks are recorded as later than the time of Cecrops. For after Cecrops come the flood in the time of Deucalion, the conflagration under Phaethon, the birth of Erichthonius, the rape of Kore, the mysteries of Demeter, the settlement of the Eleusinians, the farming of Triptolemus, the rape of Europa by Zeus, Apollo's birth, the coming of Cadmus to Thebes, and later still than all these, Dionysus, Minos, Perseus, Asclepius, the Dioscuri, as well as Heracles.

9.10| Older than all these Moses is established, having flourished at the age of Cecrops. And going back from Moses again to the first year of Abraham's life, you will find 505 years. Counting back the same number from the said year of Cecrops's reign, you will arrive at Ninus the Assyrian, who, they say, was the first to rule all Asia except India; the city named for him, Ninus, is called Nineveh among the Hebrews; in his time Zoroaster the Magus ruled the Bactrians. The wife of Ninus and successor to his kingdom was Semiramis; so Abraham lived about their time.

9.11| These things, then, stand thus as demonstrated in my Chronological Canons. For the present, in addition to what has been said, I will use as witness to the antiquity of Moses the most hostile and warlike enemy of the Hebrews and of us, I mean the philosopher of our day, who, putting forward his plot against us out of excess of hatred, subjected not only us but the Hebrews as well, Moses himself, and the prophets who came after him, to equal slanders. For in this way, through the admission of enemies, I think I confirm my promise beyond dispute.

9.12| In the fourth book of his plot against us, then, Porphyry writes the following, in his own words: “The most truthful account of the Jews, and the most in agreement with their places and names, is given by Sanchuniathon of Berytus, who took his records from Hierombalus, priest of the god Ieuo; he addressed his history to Abelbalus, who was king of Berytus, and it was accepted by him and by those who examined the truth in his day. These men's times fall before the Trojan times and nearly approach those of Moses, as the successions of the kings of Phoenicia show. Sanchuniathon, who out of love for the truth collected and wrote up in the Phoenician dialect all the ancient history from the records of the several cities and from the registers kept in the temples, lived in the days of Semiramis, queen of the Assyrians.”

9.13| So Porphyry. One must reason from this premise in some such way as this. If Sanchuniathon lived in the days of Semiramis, and she is agreed to be long before the Trojan times, then Sanchuniathon too would be older than the Trojan times.

9.14| But he is reported to have received the records from others who were older than himself in time; and these, being themselves more ancient than he, are said to approach nearly to the time of Moses, though they did not live in Moses's time but only came close to his; so that Moses is as much older than Sanchuniathon as Sanchuniathon falls short of his elders, who are agreed to approach Moses.

9.15| By how many years Moses likely preceded those mentioned, it is hard to say; so I think I will let that pass. But granting that Moses lived at the very time of Sanchuniathon, and no earlier, I will conduct the refutation as follows.

9.16| If Sanchuniathon was known in the days of Semiramis, queen of the Assyrians, and Moses be supposed to have flourished then and no earlier, then Moses too would belong to the days of Semiramis.

9.17| But our account showed that Abraham lived in her time, whereas the philosopher's account makes Moses older. Semiramis is shown to have lived a full eight hundred years before the Trojan times. So according to the philosopher Moses will precede the Trojan events by as many.

9.18| The first to rule the Argives is Inachus, when the Athenians as yet had neither city nor name. This first ruler of the Argives comes in the time of the fifth Assyrian king after Semiramis, 150 years after her and Moses, a period in which nothing notable is recorded among the Greeks. In this period among the Hebrews the Judges ruled.

9.19| Then again, three hundred years further down, when more than 400 full years had already been completed from Semiramis, Cecrops, celebrated among them as native born, became the first king of the Athenians, with Triopas ruling Argos, who was the seventh after the first Argive, Inachus.

9.20| Between these is remembered the flood in the time of Ogyges; Apis was first named a god in Egypt; and Io, daughter of Inachus, whom the Egyptians renamed Isis and revere, and Prometheus and Atlas, became known.

9.21| From Cecrops to the capture of Ilium another period is reckoned, a little short of 400 years, in which the marvels of the Greeks are told in myth: the flood under Deucalion, and the conflagration at the time of Phaethon, many destructions of the earth having probably occurred in various places.

9.22| It is said that Cecrops was the first to call God Zeus, who had not before been so named among men; then that he was the first to set up an altar among the Athenians, and again the first to erect a statue of Athena, as if none of these things existed from of old.

9.23| After him all the gods of the Greeks are given genealogies. Among the Hebrews in this period the descendants of David reigned and the prophets after Moses shone forth; so that from Moses to the capture of Ilium the total is more than 800 years, according to the testimony of the philosopher set out above.

9.24| Still much later than the Trojan times are the things remembered of Homer and Hesiod and their like. And of yesterday and the day before, after these, about the fiftieth Olympiad, the circle of Pythagoras and Democritus and the philosophers after them became known, roughly seven hundred years after the Trojan events.

9.25| Thus Moses and the prophets after him among the Hebrews are established as earlier than the philosophers among the Greeks by fifteen hundred years, according to the admission of the said man.

9.26| This is what I have said in brief. It is time to consider the demonstrations offered on the same subject by those before us. There have been among us learned men, second to none in secular education and no mere passers-by in the divine writings, who examined the present subject exactly and established the antiquity of the Hebrews, employing a rich and varied apparatus of proof.

9.27| Some computed the dates from certain agreed histories, others confirmed their testimony by older readings. Some used Greek writers, others also those who recorded the history of the Phoenicians, Chaldeans and Egyptians. All alike, gathering together Greek and barbarian records along with those of the Hebrews themselves, and setting out the histories of all, comparing one with another, examined what had been done among all of them in the same periods of time.

9.28| Then each, having built up the proof of what he demonstrated by his own methods, produced a demonstration that was consistent and agreed. For this reason I thought it best to yield the present discourse to their own voices, so that the fathers of these arguments might not be deprived of their fruits, and so that the establishment of the truth might receive indisputable confirmation through many witnesses and not through one.

10.1| “Down to the Olympiads nothing exact has been recorded by the Greeks; everything is confused, and in nothing do the earlier accounts agree with one another. The Olympiads, however, have been worked out exactly by many, because the Greeks make their records of them not at a long interval but every four years.

10.2| For this reason I will select the most famous and mythical histories and run through them down to the first Olympiad; and the later ones I will join, each according to its date, setting the Hebrew events beside the Greek, narrating the Hebrew affairs while touching on the Greek, and I will fit them together in this way: taking one Hebrew event contemporary with an event recorded by the Greeks, and holding to it, subtracting and adding, and marking which Greek, or Persian, or anyone at all was contemporary with the Hebrew event, I may perhaps hit my target.

10.3| “The most notable event of the Hebrews is the captivity, when they were taken prisoner by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon; it lasted 70 years, as Jeremiah prophesied. Nebuchadnezzar is mentioned by Berossus the Babylonian.

10.4| After the 70 years of captivity Cyrus became king of the Persians, in the year in which the 55th Olympiad was held, as can be found from the Libraries of Diodorus, the histories of Thallus and of Castor, and also of Polybius and Phlegon, and of others who concerned themselves with Olympiads; for the date agrees with all of them.

10.5| In the first year of his rule, which was the first year of the 55th Olympiad, Cyrus, through Zerubbabel and Jesus son of Jozadak, made the first, partial sending away of the people, the seventy years having been fulfilled, as is recorded among the Hebrews in Ezra.

10.6| The histories agree, then, on the reign of Cyrus and the end of the captivity, and the matters concerning the Olympiads will be found to agree for us in this way; following these we shall fit the remaining histories to one another on the same principle.

10.7| As for the periods before these, the Attic chronology is reckoned somewhat as follows: from Ogyges, who was thought among them to have been native born, in whose time occurred the great, first flood in Attica, when Phoroneus was king of the Argives, as Acusilaus records, down to the first Olympiad, from which point onward the Greeks held that the dates became exact, the years total 1,020, which both agrees with what was said before and will be shown by what follows.

10.8| For this is attested by those who record Athenian affairs, Hellanicus and Philochorus, who wrote the Atthides, and by those who wrote Syrian affairs, Castor and Thallus, and by Diodorus, who wrote the Libraries of all peoples, and by Alexander Polyhistor, who made rather precise mention of our affairs as well as of all Attic matters. If, then, any notable history occurs within these 1,020 years, it will be selected as occasion requires.”

10.9| And after a few words he adds: “We say, then, according to this treatise, that Ogyges, after whom the first flood was named, who was saved while many perished, lived in the time of the people's departure from Egypt with Moses, in this way.

10.10| From Ogyges to the first Olympiad mentioned will be shown to be 1,020 years; and from that first Olympiad up to the first year of the 55th, that is, the first year of Cyrus's reign, which was the end of the captivity, 217 years. From Ogyges, then, to Cyrus, 1,237 years. And if one counts back 1,260 years from the end of the captivity, by resolution the same interval is found to the first year of Israel's exodus from Egypt under Moses as lies between the 55th Olympiad and Ogyges, who founded Eleusis. Hence the Attic chronology can be grasped more distinctly.”

10.11| And after other matters: “So much for the times before Ogyges; and in his time Moses went out of Egypt. That it is not incredible for this to have happened then, we show as follows.

10.12| From Moses' exodus to Cyrus, who reigned after the captivity, 1,260 years. For the remaining years of Moses were forty; of Joshua, who led after him, 25; of the elders who were Judges after Joshua, 30 years; of those contained in the book of Judges, [….] years; of the priests Eli and Samuel, 6 years; of the kings of the Hebrews that followed, 406 years; of the captivity, seventy, the last year of which was the first year of Cyrus's reign, as we said before.

10.13| From Moses to the first Olympiad, 1,020 years, if indeed there are 1,260 years to the first year of the 55th; and in the Greek records too the time runs together.

10.14| After Ogyges, because of the great destruction following the flood, what is now Attica remained without a king for 189 years until Cecrops. For Actaeus, who followed Ogyges, was, Philochorus says, one of the invented names and never existed.”

10.15| And again: “From Ogyges, then, to Cyrus, just as many years as run from Moses to that time: 1,260. And some of the Greeks also record that Moses lived in the same times. Polemon, in the first book of his Greek Histories, says that in the days of Apis, the son of Phoroneus, part of the Egyptian host was driven out of Egypt and settled in the Syria called Palestine, not far from Arabia, and these were clearly the people with Moses.

10.16| Apion, son of Posidonius, the most painstaking of the grammarians, says in his work against the Jews, and in the fourth of his Histories, that in the days of Inachus, king of Argos, while Amosis was king of the Egyptians, the Jews revolted, led by Moses.

10.17| Herodotus too mentions, in his second book, this revolt and Amosis; and in a way he mentions the Jews themselves as well, counting them among the circumcised and calling them Assyrians in Palestine, perhaps because of Abraham.

10.18| And Ptolemy of Mendes, who records Egyptian history from the beginning, agrees with all of these; so that the difference in the dates is not significant.

10.19| It should be noted that whatever the Greeks tell in myth as distinctive on account of its antiquity is found to be after Moses: floods and conflagrations, Prometheus, Io, Europa, the Sown Men, the rape of Kore, the mysteries, the lawgivings, the deeds of Dionysus, Perseus, the labors of Heracles, the Argonauts, the Centaurs, the Minotaur, the affairs of Ilium, the return of the Heraclids, the Ionian colonization, and the Olympiads.

10.20| I decided to set out the aforesaid period of the Attic kingship because I intended to set the Greek histories beside the Hebrew. For anyone who wishes, taking the starting point from me, will be able to calculate the number just as I did.”

10.21| “Therefore, of the 1,020 years set out from Moses and Ogyges to the first Olympiad, in the first year come the Passover and the departure of the Hebrews out of Egypt, and the flood in Attica in the time of Ogyges, and reasonably so.

10.22| For when the Egyptians were being lashed by God's wrath with hail and storms, it was likely that parts of the earth shared the suffering, because the Athenians were likely to have shared the same fortune as the Egyptians, being suspected of being colonists from them, as others say, and Theopompus in the Tricaranus.

10.23| The time in between is omitted, in which nothing distinctive is recorded among the Greeks. After ninety-four years came Prometheus, as some say, who in the myth fashioned men; for being wise, he remodeled them for education from their extreme rawness.” So far Africanus. Let us pass to another.

11.1| “Now I think it fitting to show that our philosophy is older than the pursuits of the Greeks. Our boundary-markers shall be Moses and Homer. For since each of them is most ancient, the one the eldest of poets and historians, the other the founder of all barbarian wisdom, let them now be taken by us for comparison.

11.2| For we shall find that our teachings are older not only than Greek education but even than the discovery of letters. And as witnesses I shall not take our own people, but shall rather use Greek helpers. For the one course would be unreasonable, since it would not be accepted even by you; the other, if it can be shown, is remarkable, when I lean against you with your own weapons and take proofs against you that are beyond suspicion.

11.3| For concerning the poetry of Homer, his birth and the time when he flourished, the oldest inquirers were Theagenes of Rhegium, who lived in the time of Cambyses, Stesimbrotus of Thasos, Antimachus of Colophon, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, and Dionysius of Olynthus; after them Ephorus of Cyme, Philochorus the Athenian, and the Peripatetics Megaclides and Chamaeleon; then the grammarians Zenodotus, Aristophanes, Callimachus, Crates, Eratosthenes, Aristarchus, Apollodorus.

11.4| Of these, Crates and his followers say he flourished before the return of the Heraclids, within eighty years after the Trojan events; Eratosthenes and his followers, a hundred years after the capture of Ilium; Aristarchus and his followers, at the Ionian colonization, which is 140 years after the Trojan events; Philochorus, forty years after the Ionian colonization, in the archonship of Arxippus at Athens, 180 years after the Trojan events; Apollodorus and his followers, a hundred years after the Ionian colonization, which would be 240 years after the Trojan events. Some said he was born before the Olympiads, that is, 400 years after the capture of Ilium; others brought his date lower, saying that Homer lived with Archilochus; and Archilochus flourished about the 23rd Olympiad, in the time of Gyges the Lydian, 500 years after the Trojan events.

11.5| Concerning the date of the aforesaid poet, I mean Homer, the dispute and the disagreement of those who have spoken about him, let this suffice, in summary, for those able to examine it exactly. For anyone can show even the opinions about their discourses to be false. Among those whose record of dates does not hold together, not even the account of history can be true.

11.6| And after a few words: “Still, let Homer be not merely later than the Trojan events, but let him be taken to have lived at the very time of the war, and to have campaigned with Agamemnon's company, and if anyone likes, even before the invention of the letters; for the aforesaid Moses will appear older than the capture of Ilium by very many years, and far more ancient than the founding of Ilium that took place, and than Tros and Dardanus.

11.7| For proof I shall use as witnesses Chaldeans, Phoenicians, Egyptians. And why should I say more? One who professes to persuade must make his narratives of the facts to his hearers rather brief.

11.8| Berossus, a Babylonian man, priest of their Bel, who lived in the time of Alexander, set out the history of the Chaldeans in three books for Antiochus, the third after Seleucus, and in setting out the matters of the kings he narrates one of them named Nebuchadnezzar, who made war on the Phoenicians and the Jews, events that we know to have been proclaimed through the prophets among us; these happened much later than the time of Moses, and seventy years prior to the Persian supremacy.

11.9| Berossus is a most capable man; and the proof of this is Juba, who, writing On the Assyrians, says that he learned the history from Berossus; and Berossus has two books On the Assyrians.”

11.10| “After the Chaldeans, the Phoenician matters stand thus. There were among them three men, Theodotus, Hypsicrates, Mochus. Their books Laetus rendered into the Greek tongue; he is the one who also treated the lives of the philosophers with precision.

11.11| In the histories of these men it is shown that under one of the kings the abduction of Europa took place, together with Menelaus's coming to Phoenicia and the affairs of Hiram, who bestowed his daughter on Solomon, the king of the Jews, for a marriage, and gave him a supply of timber of every sort for building the temple.

11.12| Menander of Pergamum also made a record of the same events. The time of Hiram is by now near the Trojan events; and Solomon, who lived in Hiram's time, is far later than the age of Moses.”

11.13| “Of the Egyptians there are exact chronological records. And the interpreter of their writings is Ptolemy, who was no king but a priest of Mendes; setting out the deeds of the kings, he says that the departure of the Jews from Egypt to the places they wished, with Moses leading, occurred during the time of Amosis, king of Egypt.

11.14| He says it thus: Amosis lived at the time of king Inachus. Following him, Apion the grammarian, a most esteemed man, in book four of his Egyptian History (he has five books), among many other matters, says that Amosis razed Avaris, living in the time of the Argive Inachus, as Ptolemy of Mendes has recorded in his Chronology.

11.15| The period from Inachus until the capture of Ilium fills twenty generations. And the demonstration runs this way.”

11.16| “These were the kings of the Argives: Inachus, Phoroneus, Apis, Argeius, Criasus, Phorbas, Triopas, Crotopus, Sthenelaus, Danaus, Lynceus, Abas, Proetus, Acrisius, Perseus, Eurystheus, Atreus, Thyestes, Agamemnon, during whose eighteenth year as king Ilium was captured.

11.17| And the sensible reader should understand with all exactness that, according to the Greek tradition, there was among them no written record of history. For Cadmus, who gave the letters to the people just mentioned, came to Boeotia after many generations.

11.18| After Inachus, the savage and nomadic way of life was with difficulty bounded by Phoroneus, and men were given a new order. Therefore, if Moses is shown to have lived in the time of Inachus, he is older than the Trojan events by four hundred years.

11.19| That this is so is shown from the succession of the Attic kings, and of the Macedonian, Ptolemaic and Antiochene. Hence, if after Inachus the most notable deeds among the Greeks were written down and are known, it is clear that they came after Moses too.

11.20| For in the time of Phoroneus, who succeeded Inachus, there is remembered among the Athenians Ogyges, in whose time came the first flood; in the time of Phorbas, Actaeus, after whom Attica was called Actaea; in the time of Triopas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, Atlas, the double-natured Cecrops, and Io;

11.21| in the time of Crotopus, the conflagration under Phaethon and the deluge under Deucalion; in the time of Sthenelaus, the reign of Amphictyon, the arrival of Danaus in the Peloponnese, the founding of Dardania by Dardanus, and the bringing of Europa from Phoenicia to Crete;

11.22| in the time of Lynceus, the rape of Kore, the establishment of the sanctuary at Eleusis, the farming of Triptolemus, the coming of Cadmus to Thebes, and the reign of Minos;

11.23| in the time of Proetus, the war of Eumolpus against the Athenians; in the time of Acrisius, the passage of Pelops from Phrygia, the arrival of Ion in Athens, the second Cecrops, and the deeds of Perseus; and under Agamemnon's reign Ilium was taken.”

11.24| “Moses, then, has been shown from the foregoing to be older than heroes, cities and demons. And one must trust the one who is senior in age rather than the Greeks, who drew from the source without understanding his doctrines.

11.25| For there are many sophists among them given to officiousness, who tried to counterfeit whatever they learned from Moses' contemporaries and those who philosophized like him: first, so as to be thought to say something of their own; second, so that, covering what they did not understand with a made-up manner of speech, they might award the prize to myth over truth.”

11.26| “Concerning our manner of government, the history according to our laws, what has been said by the learned among the Greeks, and how many and who they are who mention us, will be shown in the work against those who have made pronouncements about God.

11.27| For the present, I must hasten to make clear, with all exactness, that Moses is older not only than Homer but also than all who wrote earlier: Linus, Philammon, Thamyris, Amphion, Orpheus, Musaeus, Demodocus, Phemius, the Sibyl, Epimenides the Cretan, who came to Sparta, Aristeas of Proconnesus, and the writer of the Arimaspea, Asbolus the Centaur and Isatis, Drymon and Eucles the Cypriot, and Horus of Samos, and Pronapides the Athenian.

11.28| For Linus was the teacher of Heracles, and Heracles is shown to be a generation earlier than the Trojan events. This is clear from his son Tlepolemus, who campaigned against Ilium.

11.29| Orpheus lived at the same time as Heracles; and besides, they say the writings attributed to him were composed by Onomacritus the Athenian, who lived in the time of the Pisistratids, about the fiftieth Olympiad.

11.30| Musaeus was a pupil of Orpheus. Amphion, who precedes the Trojan events by two generations, keeps us from setting down more for lovers of learning. Demodocus and Phemius lived exactly in the time of the Trojan War, since one stayed with the suitors and the other with the Phaeacians. And Thamyris and Philammon are not much older than these.

11.31| Concerning the work of each subject, then, and its times and record, I have written for you, I think, quite exactly; but so that what has so far been lacking may be completed, I shall also give the demonstration about those considered wise.

11.32| Minos, who was thought to excel in all wisdom, shrewdness and lawgiving, lived at the time of Lynceus, who succeeded Danaus on the throne, in the eleventh generation from Inachus. Lycurgus, born long after the capture of Ilium, gave laws to the Lacedaemonians a hundred years before the Olympiads.

11.33| Draco is found to have lived around the 39th Olympiad; Solon about the 46th; Pythagoras in the 62nd. And we have shown the Olympiads to have come 405 years after the Trojan events.

11.34| And now that these things are so demonstrated, I will record briefly also the age of the seven sages. For Thales, the eldest of those named, lived about the fiftieth Olympiad, what concerns those after him has in effect been stated briefly by us as well.

11.35| “This I, Tatian, who philosophized among the barbarians, have composed for you, men of Greece; I was born in the land of the Assyrians, educated first in your learning, and second in what I now profess to proclaim. Knowing now who God is and what his creation is, I present myself ready for you to examine my doctrines, while my conduct of life in God's way remains beyond denial.” So much from Tatian. Let us go on to Clement.

12.1| “Concerning these matters, then, Tatian has spoken exactly in his Address to the Greeks, and Cassian too in the first book of his Exegetica. Nevertheless, the commentary requires us also to run through what was said on the subject.

12.2| Apion the grammarian, surnamed Plistonices, in Book Four of his Egyptian Histories, though he was malevolently disposed toward the Hebrews, being Egyptian by race, so that he composed a book against the Jews, mentions Amosis, king of the Egyptians, and his deeds, and cites as witness Ptolemy of Mendes.

12.3| His words are as follows: ‘Amosis razed Avaris, living in the time of the Argive Inachus, as Ptolemy of Mendes has recorded in his Chronology.

12.4| This Ptolemy was a priest, and having set out the deeds of the Egyptian kings in three entire books, he says that the departure of the Jews from Egypt, with Moses leading, occurred under Amosis, king of Egypt; from which it appears that Moses flourished at the time of Inachus.’

12.5| Dionysius of Halicarnassus teaches in his Chronology that the Argive history, I mean from Inachus, is older than the other Greek histories.

12.6| The Attic history, from Cecrops, the double-natured and native born, as Tatian says in these words, is forty generations later than this; the Arcadian, from Pelasgus, who is also said to be native born, nine.

12.7| Later than these by two further generations is the Phthiotic history, from Deucalion. From Inachus down to the time of the Trojan events, twenty or twenty-one generations are counted, and the years, one may say, 400 and more.

12.8| And if Ctesias says that Assyrian history is many years older than the Greek, the departure of Moses from Egypt will appear to have taken place in the 402nd year of the Assyrian empire, and the thirty-second of the dynasty of Belochus the eighth, in the time of the Egyptian Amosis and the Argive Inachus.

12.9| In Greece, under Phoroneus, who succeeded Inachus, there were the flood in the time of Ogyges and the kingship at Sicyon, first of Aegialeus, then of Europs, then of Telchin, and that of Cres in Crete.

12.10| Acusilaus says that Phoroneus was the first of men; hence the poet of the Phoronis too called him the father of mortal men.

12.11| Following Acusilaus, Plato writes in the Timaeus: “And once, wishing to draw them on to talk about ancient matters, he tried to tell them the most ancient things of this city: about Phoroneus, who was named the first man, and about Niobe, and what came after the flood.”

12.12| In the time of Phorbas, Actaeus, after whom Attica was called Actaea; in the time of Triopas, Prometheus, Atlas, Epimetheus, the double-natured Cecrops, and Io; and in the time of Crotopus, the conflagration under Phaethon and the deluge under Deucalion; in the time of Sthenelaus, the reign of Amphictyon, the coming of Danaus to the Peloponnese, and the founding of Dardania by Dardanus, whom, Homer says, cloud-gathering Zeus first begot.

12.13| And the bringing back from Crete to Phoenicia; under Lynceus, the rape of Kore, the establishment of the sanctuary at Eleusis, the farming of Triptolemus, the coming of Cadmus to Thebes, and the kingship of Minos; under Proetus, the war of Eumolpus against the Athenians; under Acrisius, the crossing of Pelops from Phrygia, the arrival of Ion at Athens, the second Cecrops, the deeds of Perseus and Dionysus, Orpheus and Musaeus;

12.14| in the eighteenth year of Agamemnon's reign Ilium was taken, in the first year of Demophon son of Theseus as king at Athens, on the twelfth of the month Thargelion, as Dionysius of Argos says;

12.15| Agis and Dercylus in the third book say on the eighth of the waning month Panemus; Hellanicus on the twelfth of Thargelion, and some who wrote Attic history on the eighth from the end, in the last year of Menestheus's reign, with the moon full: ‘It was midnight,’ says the author of the Little Iliad, ‘and the bright moon was rising.’

12.16| Others say on the same day of Scirophorion. Theseus, an emulator of Heracles, is one generation older than the Trojan events; at any rate Homer mentions Tlepolemus, who was a son of Heracles, as having campaigned against Ilium.

12.17| Moses is therefore shown to precede the deification of Dionysus by 604 years, if he is indeed deified in Perseus' thirty-second regnal year, as Apollodorus states in his Chronicles.

12.18| From Dionysus to Heracles and the champions around Jason who sailed in the Argo, 63 years are reckoned. Asclepius and the Dioscuri sailed along with them, according to the testimony of Apollonius of Rhodes in the Argonautica.

12.19| From the reign of Heracles at Argos to the deification of Heracles himself and Asclepius, 38 years are reckoned according to the chronographer Apollodorus. From there to the deification of Castor and Polydeuces, 53 years. About then also falls the capture of Ilium.

12.20| And if one must trust the poet Hesiod too, let us hear him: ‘To Zeus the daughter of Atlas, Maia, bore glorious Hermes, herald of the immortals, having mounted his holy bed. And Cadmus's daughter Semele bore him a splendid son, joined with him in love, Dionysus of many joys.’

12.21| Cadmus, the father of Semele, comes to Thebes in the time of Lynceus and becomes the inventor of the Greek letters. Triopas is a contemporary of Isis, in the seventh generation from Inachus.

12.22| Some say that Isis is Io, because she went wandering through the whole earth. Istrus, in his work On the Colony of the Egyptians, calls her a daughter of Prometheus. Prometheus lived in the time of Triopas, seven generations after Moses; so that Moses is before the begetting of men among the Greeks.

12.23| Leon, who wrote about the gods of Egypt, says that Isis is called Demeter by the Greeks, who lived in the time of Lynceus, eleven generations after Moses.

12.24| And Apis, king of Argos, founds Memphis, according to Aristippus in the first book of his Arcadica; Aristeas of Argos says that he was named Sarapis, and that he is the one whom the Egyptians revere.

12.25| Nymphodorus of Amphipolis says in the third book of his Customs of Asia that the bull Apis, when he died and was embalmed, was put in a coffin inside the temple of the honored deity, and hence was called Soroapis and later Sarapis; Apis was third from Inachus.

12.26| Indeed Leto lives in the time of Tityus: ‘For he laid hold of Leto, the glorious consort of Zeus.’

12.27| Tityus was a contemporary of Tantalus. Naturally, then, the Boeotian Pindar writes: ‘In time Apollo was born.’ And it is no wonder, since Apollo is found serving Admetus as a hired hand, together with Heracles, for a year.

12.28| Zethus and Amphion, who invented music, flourished around the time of Cadmus. And if anyone tells us that Phemonoe was the first to give oracles, to Acrisius, let him know that 27 years after Phemonoe came the circle of Orpheus, Musaeus, and Linus, the teacher of Heracles.

12.29| Homer and Hesiod are much later than the Trojan events, and much later still are the lawgivers among the Greeks, Lycurgus, Solon and the seven sages, together with the circle of Pherecydes of Syros and Pythagoras the great, who flourished down around the Olympiads, as we have shown.

12.30| Thus Moses has been demonstrated by us to be older than the majority of the Greeks' gods, and not only than those called wise men and poets.”

12.31| So Clement says. But since the present subject was pursued before our own writers by the children of the Hebrews themselves, it is well to look at their work too. I shall use, in place of all the others, the words of Flavius Josephus:

13.1| “First I shall begin with the Egyptians' writings. Their own records cannot be cited; but Manetho, an Egyptian by race, a man who, as is clear, shared in Greek learning (for he wrote the history of his country in the Greek language, translating from the sacred records, as he himself says, and he convicts Herodotus of many falsehoods about Egyptian affairs through ignorance), this Manetho, then, in his Egyptian History, in the second book, writes these things about us. I will set down his wording, bringing him forward as a witness in person.

13.2| . . . ‘whose name was Timaeus. In his reign, I know not how, God blew adversely, and unexpectedly men of obscure race from the eastern parts, boldly confident, marched against the country and took it easily by force, without a battle.’ And after a few words he adds:

13.3| "Their whole nation was called Hyk[us]sos, which means 'shepherd kings.' For Hyk in the sacred language signifies a king, and [Us]sos means a shepherd, and in the common dialect 'shepherds'; and so, put together, it becomes Hyk[us]sos.

13.4| Some say they were Arabs. But in another copy the name Hykussos is said not to signify kings; on the contrary, it is shown to mean captive shepherds. For Hyk, in Egyptian, and with the aspirate Hak, explicitly denotes captives.

13.5| And this seems to me the more plausible, and closer to ancient history. These kings named above, he says, those of the shepherds so called, along with their descendants, ruled Egypt for five hundred and eleven years.

13.6| He says that after this the kings of the Thebaid and the rest of Egypt rose against the shepherds, and a great and protracted war arose. Under a king named Misphragmuthosis, he says, the shepherds were defeated; they were driven out of the rest of Egypt and shut up in a place of ten thousand arourae in circuit, whose name was Avaris.

13.7| Manetho says that the shepherds surrounded this whole place with a great and strong wall, so that they might hold all their property and their plunder in a stronghold.

13.8| But Thmuthosis, the son of Misphragmuthosis, tried to take them by siege and force, sitting down before the walls with an army of four hundred and eighty thousand; when he despaired of the siege, he made an agreement, that they should leave Egypt and go wherever they wished, unharmed.

13.9| And they, on these terms, with their whole households and their possessions, no fewer than two hundred and forty thousand in number, made their way from Egypt through the desert into Syria;

13.10| and fearing the power of the Assyrians, for the Assyrians then ruled Asia, they built a city in the country now called Judaea, large enough for so many tens of thousands of people, and named it Jerusalem."

13.11| After this, having listed the succession of the kings of Egypt along with the time of their rule, he adds: "So much for Manetho. It is clear, if the time is reckoned from the years stated, that the so-called shepherds, who are our ancestors, left Egypt and settled this country, and this was three hundred and ninety-three years before the coming of Danaus to Argos; and yet the Argives hold him to be of the greatest antiquity.

13.12| Manetho, then, has given us testimony on two points of the greatest importance, from the Egyptians' own records: first, the arrival in Egypt from elsewhere; and then the departure from it, so ancient in date that it precedes the Trojan War by about a thousand years."

13.13| Such, more or less, is Josephus' full account from the Egyptian history. From the Phoenician, using as witnesses those who wrote Phoenician histories, he establishes that King Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem a hundred and forty-three years, with eight months besides, before the Tyrians founded Carthage; then, passing on to the history of the Chaldeans, he sets out the testimonies there to the antiquity of the Hebrews.

14.1| But why should I pile up a multitude of proofs, when a lover of truth, and not a lover of quarrels, would be content with what has been said, which contains varied confirmation of the matter before us? Our purpose was to show that the writings of Moses and the prophets are older than those of the Greeks.

14.2| Since, then, it has been shown that Moses lived long before the Trojan War, we must look at all those after him. That Moses appeared in life last in time among those before him who were truly Hebrews, Eber and Abraham (from whom the men received their name), and the other ancient men beloved of God, is clear from the history concerning him.

14.3| After Moses, then, Joshua led the nation of the Jews, thirty years according to some. Then, as the Scripture says, foreigners held power for eight years. Then Gothoniel for fifty years. After him Eglon, king of Moab, eighteen years. After him Aod, eighty years. After him again foreigners, twenty years. Next Debbora and Barak, forty years. Then the Midianites, seven years. Then Gedeon, forty years. Abimelech, three years. Thola, twenty-three; Jair, twenty-two; the Ammonites, eighteen; Jephthah, six years; Esbon, seven; Aialon, ten; Labdon, eight; foreigners, forty years; Samson, twenty years; next Eli the priest, according to the Hebrew, forty years, in whose time it happened that Ilium fell. After Eli the priest, Samuel led the people.

14.4| After him Saul was the first of them to be king, for forty years; then David for forty years; then Solomon for forty years, who was also the first to erect the temple in Jerusalem. After Solomon, Rehoboam reigns seventeen years; Abia, three; Asa, forty-one; Jehoshaphat, twenty-five; Joram, eight; Ochozias, one year; Gotholia, six;

14.5| Joas, forty; Amasias, forty-nine; Ozias, fifty-two, in whose time Hosea, Amos, Isaiah and Jonah prophesy; after Ozias [….] reigns fifteen years, and after him [….] fifteen years. In his time the first Olympiad was held, which Coroebus of Elis won in the foot race.

14.6| Ezekias succeeds Achaz, for twenty-nine years; in his time Romulus founded Rome and became its king. After Ezekias, Manasses reigns fifty-five years; then Amon, two years; then Josias, [….] years, in whose time Jeremiah, Baruch, Olda and other prophets prophesy.

14.7| Then Joachaz, three months; after him Joakim, eleven years; and after them all, last, Sedekias, twelve years. In his time Jerusalem was besieged by the Assyrians and the temple suffered burning, and the whole nation of the Jews was led away to Babylon, and Daniel and Ezekiel prophesy there.

14.8| After a span of [….] years Cyrus becomes king of the Persians, who released the captivity of the Jews, permitting those of them who wished to return to their own land and rebuild the temple. It was then that Jesus son of Josedek went up, and Zorobabel son of Salathiel; they laid the foundations, while Aggai, Zacharias and Malachi were the last of all to prophesy, and after them no prophet arose among them any more.

14.9| In the time of Cyrus, Solon the Athenian became known, and those called the seven sages among the Greeks, than whom no older philosopher is remembered among them.

14.10| Of these seven, Thales of Miletus, the first of the Greeks to be a natural philosopher, discussed the solstices of the sun, eclipses, the moon's phases, and the equinox; and the man became the most distinguished among the Greeks.

14.11| Thales had as his pupil Anaximander, the son of Praxiades, who was also a Milesian by birth. This man was the first to construct sundials for determining the solstices, the times and seasons, and the equinox.

14.12| Anaximander's associate was Anaximenes, the son of Eurystratus, from Miletus; and Anaximenes' associate was Anaxagoras, the son of Hegesibulus, from Clazomenae, who was the first to articulate the account of first principles. For he declared not only about the substance of all things, as those before him did, but also about the cause that moves it. "In the beginning," he says, "things were all mixed together in confusion; then Mind came in and led them from disorder into order."

14.13| Anaxagoras had three associates: Pericles, Archelaus, Euripides. Pericles became Athens’ foremost man, surpassing his contemporaries in wealth and birth; Euripides, turning to poetry, was called the philosopher of the stage by some; and Archelaus succeeded to Anaxagoras' school in Lampsacus, and moving to Athens taught there, and had many Athenians as pupils, among them Socrates.

14.14| At the same time as Anaxagoras, the natural philosophers Xenophanes and Pythagoras were at their height. Theano his wife and his sons Telauges and Mnesarchus took Pythagoras's place.

14.15| Empedocles became a pupil of Telauges, and in his time Heraclitus the Obscure was known. Parmenides is said to have succeeded Xenophanes, Melissus succeeded Parmenides, and Zeno of Elea succeeded Melissus. They say that Zeno, having formed a plot against the tyrant of the day, was caught, and when the tyrant tortured him to make him name the men who had joined him, he made no account of the tyrant's punishments, bit through his tongue and spat it in his face, and so held out under the tortures and died.

14.16| Zeno's pupil was Leucippus, Leucippus' was Democritus, his Protagoras, in whose time Socrates flourished. One can find other natural philosophers here and there who lived before Socrates; but all of them, starting with Thales, seem to have flourished after Cyrus, king of the Persians; and Cyrus is clearly later by a great interval than the captivity of the Jewish nation in Babylon, when the prophets among the Hebrews had already ceased and their sacred mother city had been besieged. So you must agree that the philosophy of the Greeks is far younger than Moses and the prophets after him, and above all that of Plato, who, first a pupil of Socrates and afterward associating with the Pythagoreans, outstripped all before him in eloquence, intelligence, and the doctrines of philosophy.

14.17| Plato lived toward the last days of the Persian kingdom, a little earlier than Alexander the Macedonian, and some four hundred years, not much more, before Augustus.

14.18| If, then, Plato and those after him should be shown to you to have philosophized in agreement with the Hebrews, it is time to consider the period in which he lived, and to set the antiquity of the theologians and prophets of the Hebrews against the age of all the Greek philosophers.

14.19| But now that this has been demonstrated, it is time to return and see how the sages of the Greeks became zealous followers of the Hebrew doctrines, so that the slanderers may no longer have any reasonable ground to reproach us if we, for our part, loving the same things as their own philosophers, have resolved to honor the oracles of the Hebrews.

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