Since the angels therefore were produced along with the heaven and the earth, the historian Moses, inspired by the Holy Spirit began his narrative with them, as they contained the angels, saying: In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth . And further the Apostle, knowing well what pertains to man and how he is figured, in his Epistle to the Romans has placed man, as destined in the future for heaven, superior to all, for he says: And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts and creeping things; mentioning man as superior to all, then the birds as inferior to him, then again the four-footed beasts as inferior to the birds, and as inferior to these again the creeping things which lurk underneath the earth, mentioning them according to their rank in the scale of being. But further, of all the quadruped brutes which walk upon all fours and turn their looks earthward, not one is capable of observing the heaven with ease. In like manner with regard to creeping things which with their whole body wriggle along the earth, not one of these is able to observe the heaven. All birds again, being bipeds, and in consonance with this having their legs in the middle of their body, direct their eyes towards the earth when they are high up [172] on the wing; but when they are standing they find it difficult to turn their eyes upwards unto the heaven. Man alone, of all the animals on the earth, being rational and destined for heaven, received from the Creator a figure in congruity with such a destiny. For he is a biped, being destined to fly away and walk in heaven. In figure he is erect, as if he were ready and destined to ascend on high. And it is easy for him to behold with his eyes both the earth and the heaven as if he were hastening to ascend from the earth into heaven, conscious that |109 earthly and heavenly things were bound together through him. Moreover, all the brute animals copulate without seeing each other face to face, and have commerce in a brutal and shameless manner. But man alone as rational proceeds to the act face to face, so that the pair seeing each other may embrace with reason, modesty, and reverence, and may thankfully sing the praises of their Maker for his goodness in giving to their nature help and mutual impulse for the propagation and multiplication of our race. God moreover made the woman from the man's side, because the two sides bind the whole body close together; for he neither made her from the front of man lest the woman should exalt herself above him, nor from his back parts that he might not exalt himself above the woman; but from his side, as being in her nature his equal, although the man, as the cause, is first in point of time, but not, however, in his nature itself. And still further----since the hand always protects and guards the side to which it belongs, so when he had made the female from the male, and the male from the earth, God pronounced the two to be one flesh, both from the constitution of the two sides, and from the fruit that springs from their connection. Wherefore the fornicator sins by estranging his own flesh and sowing illegitimate progeny; nay, he that commits adultery is ranked with the homicide, since he divides what is one flesh, and thus perpetrates murder.
Some one again may perhaps propose a question and say: Why was it that, while all the irrational animals were created by God, male and female at the same time, man alone was not created with the female, but remained quite solitary until the female was made later on? To this enquirer I shall reply that since all the animals were created by God without either the gift of reason, or the capacity of knowing anything, while all the angels, the instant they were created, were rational and knew the Maker of all things from those things which had been produced, one by one, that is, in the six days, it was necessary that man who had been created by God possessed of reason, and as the bond uniting all the creation, should himself be taught to know the Creator of all; but since, as he was not the first but the last of all to be produced, he could neither from the things made before him, nor from himself know God, it was God's pleasure to produce [173] the female not along with him, but afterwards out of him, that he might thereby know that he who had taken out from him a |110 being like himself was his Creator. Wherefore also he threw him into a trance and a deep sleep, in order that by taking his rib from him without trouble and pain as in sleep, he might by the grace of God gain a perception of what had occurred, and celebrate the praises of his Maker, confessing and saying: This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh ---- she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. As then the angels had been created rational, and from the works produced in the six days had been taught to know him who was the cause of them, so of necessity man also was taught through the female, and learned that God was the Maker both of himself and of the universe; but especially as he had beforehand heard God say: Let us make a helpmeet for him.
Text.
Then again on the seventh day, after he had revealed to Moses how the whole world had been made, and had honoured him with such mystic visions, he then held converse with him, and having given him the law written with the finger of God on tables of stone, and instructed him in the knowledge of letters and made his countenance shine with glory, he let him descend from the mountain.
Note.
Here men, having first received the Law from God in writing, were taught letters and communicated them to all the nations.
Text.
He then afterwards directed him to construct the Tabernacle according to the pattern which he had seen in the mountain----being a pattern, so to say, of the whole world. He therefore made the Tabernacle, designing that as far as possible it should be a copy of the figure of the world, and thus he gave it a length of thirty cubits and a breadth of |111 ten. Then, by interposing inside a veil in the middle of the Tabernacle, he divided it into two compartments, of which the first was called the Holy Place, and the second behind the veil the Holy of Holies. Now the outer was a pattern of this visible world which, according to the divine Apostle, extends from the earth to the firmament, and in which at its northern side was a table, on which were twelve loaves, the table thus presenting a symbol of the earth which supplies all manner of fruits, twelve namely, one as it were for each month of the year. The table was all round wreathed with a waved moulding symbolic of the sea which is called the ocean, and all round this again was [174] a border of a palm's breadth emblematic of the earth beyond the ocean, where lies Paradise away in the East, and where also the extremities of the first heaven, which is like a vaulted chamber, are everywhere supported on the extremities of the earth. Then at the south side he placed the candlestick which shines upon the earth from the south to the north. In this candlestick, symbolic of the week of seven days, he set seven lamps, and these lamps are symbolic of all the luminaries. And the second Tabernacle which is behind the veil and called the Holy of Holies, as well as the Ark of Testimony, and the Mercy-seat, and above it the Cherubim of glory shadowing the Mercy-seat, are, according to the Apostle, a type of the things in heaven from the firmament to the upper heaven, just as the space from the veil to the wall of the inner Tabernacle constitutes the inner place.
Note.
That the first historian in the world was Moses, both Eusebius, the son of Pamphilus, and Josephus in their writings testify; for they have clearly shown that of all writers Moses was the most ancient.
Text.
When Moses had accordingly been instructed in letters by God, having with his very eyes perceived the beginning of all things revealed to him, and when his countenance had been glorified so that he could not be beheld by his people without a veil, then as one who could claim belief and who had been glorified by God, he, the first among men, wrote the Book of Genesis in these words: In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth , showing that when the world was created by God heaven and earth were produced at the very beginning, comprising as they did all existing things, while all the other creatures which he made either along with them or after them one by one, were contained within them. Then having ended his account how all things existing within heaven and earth had been successively created from the first day onwards to the sixth, and having then spoken of God as having rested on the seventh day and made nothing more, because the whole creation had been completed, and nothing been left defective in the harmony of the world to mar its supreme beauty, he again adds: This is the book of heaven and earth; thinking these words sufficient to indicate collectively all things within heaven and earth. And again in another place he says: For in six days he finished and rested from all his works which God had begun to make; always speaking to the same effect, namely, that all things are contained within heaven and earth, and that before these seven days [175] he had made nothing whatever, but began on the first day |113 and finished on the sixth, and rested on the seventh without making anything else, and that he made only two heavens, the first along with the earth, while placing the second in the middle and preparing two states----the present and the future----just as in the Tabernacle he had ordered two places to be formed in imitation of the world, for he says: According to the pattern shown to thee in the mount ; for the Apostle in his Epistle to the Hebrews explains with regard to this Tabernacle that the outer was a pattern of this world, and the inner of the heavens.
When therefore a describer of the world so great and so divine as Moses had been attested and glorified, in the Old Testament by God and in the New by the Christ, while other divinely inspired prophets and apostles along with him bear witness about all things and about the figure of the whole creation as we have set forth in the preceding book, and they agree with him in every particular concerning the creation itself, who can be so obtuse, so foolish, and so far led astray, especially if he calls himself a Christian, as to disbelieve such truth as this, confirmed by such sacred testimony, and would not rather, bending lowly to earth, reverence the crowd of testimonies, the selection, the revelations, the wisdom, the glory, the predictions, the astonishing signs, the great wonders, the fulfilments of prophecies, the testimony of God himself, who spake with Moses face to face as a friend with a friend, while in the New Testament the Lord Christ frequently bears witness to him? In very truth, to express myself more warmly, I assert that, unless one fights against God, he shall not find it in his power to gainsay these things. For afterwards repenting he shall say: the finger of God is in it; and he will confess his defeat, just as the Egpytian enchanters and sorcerers Jannes and Jambres spoke concerning him. |114 Since therefore according to the great cosmographer Moses, and according to Paul, that most divine teacher of the Church, in whom the Lord Christ speaks, two heavens, and two only, were created by God, and not seven or eight, or nine, how is it possible to listen to the pagans advocating views based on conjecture, sophistries, and arrogant assumptions, and inventing fables, not from the old but chiefly from certain recent writers, who, to meet the difficulties of their own doctrines, have devised apologies more foolish even than the doctrines themselves. And how can those who listen to these pagans maintain and yet be in accordance with scripture, that there are waters above the heaven, or that the first, the second, and the third day passed without the sun, moon and stars running their course? Or how in the deluge of Noah did the waters cover the whole earth and again retire? Or how can they say that there will be a final consummation of the world----that the heavenly bodies falling will cease to run their courses, and no longer cause the succession of day and night; and that the present state will altogether end, and that another state will be exhibited quite strange and far superior to this; and that the righteous will enter into the upper heaven beyond this the visible heaven, where is the kingdom of the heavens----the second Tabernacle called the Holy of Holies, of which the inner place in the Tabernacle was a pattern, into which also the Lord Christ entered, having been taken up into the heaven above the firmament, having become the forerunner on our behalf, and having prepared for us a new and living way? Or how can they say that, after the consummation, the seven or eight or nine heavens, or the heaven again which is by them called the sphere, will revolve? For what useful purpose will this revolution be? let them tell us and not grudge us this information; or how can such persons believe the stupendous miracles of which we have often spoken, that were wrought in the |115 time of the great Moses? And likewise that miracle wrought in the time of Joshua, the son of Nun, when he made the sun and moon stand still, and added greatly to the length of the day, until he put the enemy to rout? And that other miracle performed in the time of Hezekiah, the going back of the sun ten degrees, which struck the Babylonian with consternation and induced him to send an embassy to Hezekiah?
Note.
Some have said that up to the present day a feast is celebrated by the Persians to Mithras, that is, the sun, in commemoration of the sign in the time of Hezekiah.
Text.
Why need I speak of the all-devouring fire in the time of Nebuchodonosor, which burnt the bonds of the three children, but did not consume so much as a hair of their head, or any of their garments? Or of the renowned Elijah, who in a chariot of fire sped his way through heaven, who raised the dead, and who by his word withheld rain for two and forty months? Or of his disciple Elisha, who threw the wood into the water and brought back iron, and whose dust raised up the dead? In like manner why should I speak of the miracles wrought under the Lord Christ: his marvellous birth from a virgin; the attestation of the Star that then appeared; the adoration of the Magi; the good tidings brought with joy to the shepherds by the angels; the doxology of the whole angelic host; the prayer of Simeon conjoined with the giving of thanks; the confession of Anna; the first miracle of Christ himself in Cana of Galilee, who at a marriage miraculously provided a liberal supply of wine for drinking; the giving of sight to the eyes of the man born blind, by clay wrought with spittle; [177] |116 the restoration to life of Lazarus after he had been four days dead and his intestines were stinking; the host of opposing demons trembling at his power and exclaiming: Thou hast come before the time to torment us ; the command and the bridle imposed on the raging sea; the walking upon the surface of the waves, when he invited Peter to walk with him upon them; and when Peter was seized with distrust and began to sink and cried out: Lord, save me! his drawing him up from the deep, and his again going with him and placing him safe and sound in the boat; the eclipse of the sun at the time of the Passion which continued for three hours, and that too in the fourteenth day of the moon: an occurrence quite contrary to worldly philosophy, for according to the adepts therein an eclipse cannot result except at the time of new moon; the quaking of the earth, the rending of the rocks and of the veil of the temple? But passing over all the other miracles which cannot now conveniently be enumerated, I hasten to speak of the resurrection itself, which is the renovation of men and of all the world; the gift of incorruption, immortality and immutability bestowed by God upon the whole world; of the ascent again of men into heaven, into which the first who entered in flesh was the Lord Christ; of the shadows of the Apostles which gave strength to the weak; of the rapture of the Apostle Paul even into the third heaven, that is, to a third of the distance of the height of heaven from the earth----namely, as far as the firmament; then his rapture into Paradise where he was privileged to be the |117 hearer of the unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter. All which things are marvellous and transcend our nature or our state.
Another Note.
In the days of Joshua, the son of Nun, the sun stood still. In the days of Hezekiah, through the agency of Isaiah, it went back. At the Passion of the Christ, contrary to the law of the pagan philosophers, it was altogether eclipsed. The credentials of the prophets and Apostles and of Christ himself are great and amazing miracles, and the prophecies; while Plato and Aristotle, Ptolemy and the others, challenge our belief on the ground of their knowledge of eclipses of the sun and moon derived from calculations ---- if even thus they speak what is true.
Text.
The occurrence of these marvels prepared the men of those days to place belief in the prophecies also, while the fulfilments of the prophecies prepare ourselves to believe in the signs and in all things of which the prophets spake, as was the case also in the time of the Lord Christ, who in those days when he had come down from the Mount of Olives, and beheld Jerusalem and wept over it as it lay opposite, said: How often would I have gathered thy children even as a hen [178] gathereth her chickens under her wing, and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. Then when he had passed sentence on the temple, his disciples who were still under the influence of Judaic sentiment were sorrow-struck; and scripture afterwards says: When descending from the Mount they showed him the building of the temple, in order no doubt that they might move him to pity, and that he might recall what he had said with regard to the temple, for they knew and believed that everything spoken by him would come to pass. But he knowing [what would be] said to them: Do you see all these things? Verily, I |118 say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone, upon another that shall not be thrown down. Then were they possessed with fear, and remained silent, and said nothing further on this matter. Accordingly thereafter came the Romans, and levelled with the ground the temple and the city, and made it an utter desolation, executing as if by compact what had been commanded by the Lord. And up to this day we see with our very eyes that lo! for more than five hundred years it has lain so desolate that it cannot be renovated. Moreover he said to his disciples: Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. And again: The gates of hell shall not prevail against the church; and again he declares that all the world shall be filled with his doctrine, even as the three measures of meal, in which the woman hid the leaven, were all leavened throughout and made one by that leaven. And again: The Gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world: and along with it shall the woman too be told of who did him a kindness----and we see that all these predictions have been fulfilled. For the Christians who were at one time persecuted by the Greeks and Jews have conquered, and drawn their persecutors over to their own side. In like manner we see that the Church has never been destroyed, but that its adherents have been greatly multiplied, and that similarly the whole earth has been filled with the doctrine of the Lord Christ, and is still being filled, and that the gospel is preached throughout all the world. This I avouch to be the veritable fact, from what I have seen and heard in the many places which I have visited.
Even in Taprobanê, an island in Further India, where the Indian sea is, there is a Church of Christians, with clergy |119 and a body of believers, but I know not whether there be any Christians in the parts beyond it. In the country called Malê, where the pepper grows, there is also a church, and at another place called Calliana there is moreover a bishop, who is appointed from Persia. In the island, again, called the Island of Dioscoridês, which is situated in the same Indian sea, and where the inhabitants speak Greek, having been originally colonists sent thither by the Ptolemies who succeeded Alexander the Macedonian, there [179] are clergy who receive their ordination in Persia, and are sent on to the island, and there is also a multitude of Christians. I sailed along the coast of this island, but did not land upon it. I met, however, with some of its Greek-speaking people who had come over into Ethiopia. And |120 so likewise among the Bactrians and Huns and Persians, and the rest of the Indians, Persarmenians, and Medes and Elamites, and throughout the whole land of Persia there is no limit to the number of churches with bishops and very large communities of Christian people, as well as many martyrs, and monks also living as hermits. So too in Ethiopia and Axôm, and in all the country about it; among the people of Happy Arabia----who are now called Homerites----through all Arabia and Palestine, Phoenicia, and all Syria and Antioch as far as Mesopotamia; among the Nubians and the Garamantes, in Egypt, Libya, Pentapolis, Africa and Mauretania, as far as southern Gadeira, there are everywhere churches of the Christians, and bishops, martyrs, monks and recluses, where the Gospel of Christ is proclaimed. So likewise again in Cilicia, Asia, Cappadocia, Lazica and Pontus, and in the northern |121 countries occupied by the Scythians, Hyrcanians, Heruli, Bulgarians, Greeks and Illyrians, Dalmatians, Goths, Spaniards, Romans, Franks, and other nations, as far as Gadeira on the ocean towards the northern parts, there are believers and preachers of the Gospel confessing the resurrection from the dead; and so we see the prophecies being fulfilled over the whole world.
Among the famous philosophers who flourished among the pagans, which of them, Socrates, or Pythagoras, or Plato, or Aristotle, or any other, was held worthy to foretell or announce any thing of such advantage to the world as the resurrection of the dead, and the free gift to men of the Kingdom of Heaven, which cannot be shaken? For they can announce nothing except only that, by means of calculations and secular learning, they declare when eclipses of the sun and the moon will occur, whereby, even if they predict them truly----as in fact they do----no benefit will accrue to the world, but rather the evil of pride; while should they say nothing about them they will do no manner of harm. For what boy who learns arithmetic will be found ignorant of this knowledge? or what old woman or country-bred yokel has not an acquaintance with some of the works and ways of nature? or what nation or what barbarian knows not these things----astronomy I mean, and geometry and the various practical arts, medicine, carpentry, stone-cutting, weaving, smithwork, agriculture, and others of which the Greeks have no conception? or what nation |122 between east and west, between north and south, that believes in Christ, does not by various methodical calculations fix for many years beforehand when the Easter festivals are to be celebrated? In fact, they correctly determine the dates in advance, since they all with one consent, from one end of the earth to the other, on one and the same day, celebrate Easter according to their different calculations and methods of computing the time.
For since God has endowed man with wisdom and reason he has rendered him capable of finding out whatever mind can attain to, and whatever he can acquire from education; for such is the nature of that rational animal----man. For when the men of early times had invented an art, they made many mistakes; but afterwards either they or their successors rectified these mistakes under the teaching of experience, time and practice. In like manner those who received the art from them firmly retained what had been transmitted to them. On the other hand the divine teachings, be they doctrines or be they arts, are not in this manner brought to perfection by human intelligence; but being at first given by God, one receives them with full assurance, even as did those whom God inspired with wisdom for the preparation of the Tabernacle in the time of Moses, namely, Beseleêl himself the son of Urias, the son of Ôr, of the tribe of Judah, and Eliab, the son of Achisamach of the tribe of Dan, and all to whom he gave understanding, and filled with the Spirit of God and knowledge to devise all manner of workmanship, both of carpentry and of working in gold and silver and brass----and blue and purple and scarlet thread, and fine twined linen----and stonework and woodwork, according to all the works which the Lord commanded them to make for the Tabernacle of testimony, both the Ark of the Covenant and the Mercy-seat over it, and the furniture of the Tabernacle, its altar and its table and all its vessels, and the laver and |123 its base, and the official robes of Aaron and his sons when ministering as priests before God, and the anointing oil and the sacred incense composed of sweet aromatics, according to all things which God commanded him to make. And beyond question you will find that up to this very day the most of these arts are most zealously cultivated among the Jews.
Note.