Chapter X. Oracles of Apollo Concerning the Hebrews, From the Works of Our Contemporary Porphyry

BUT Porphyry, in the first book of his Philosophy from Oracles,introduces his own god as himself bearing witness to the wisdom of the Hebrew race as well as of the other nations renowned for intelligence.

It is his Apollo who speaks as follows in an oracle which he is uttering; and while still explaining the subject of sacrifices, he adds words which are well worthy of attention, as being full of all divine knowledge:

[PORPHYRY] ‘Steep is the road and rough that leads to heaven, Entered at first through portals bound with brass. Within are found innumerable paths, Which for the endless good of all mankind They first revealed, who Nile’s sweet waters drink. From them the heavenward paths Phoenicia learned, Assyria, Lydia, and the Hebrew race:’ [1]

and so forth: on which the author further remarks:

‘For the road to the gods is bound with brass, and both steep and rough; the barbarians discovered many paths thereof, but the Greeks went astray, and those who already held it even perverted it. The discovery was ascribed by the god to Egyptians, Phoenicians, Chaldeans (for these are the Assyrians), Lydians, and Hebrews.

‘In addition to this Apollo also says in another oracle:

“Only Chaldees and Hebrews wisdom found In the pure worship of a self-born God.” [2]

‘And being asked again, for what reason men speak of many heavens, he gave the following response:

“One circle girds the world on every side, In seven zones rising to the starlit paths: These, in their sevenfold orbits as they roll, Chaldees and far-famed Hebrews ‘heavens’ surnamed.”’

“With regard then to the name Jews and Hebrews, and their religion and philosophy of old renown, let these extracts suffice: but concerning their ancestral history observe how many writers have agreed.

Moses, in his ancient history of the whole world, had given an account of a deluge, and how he whom the Hebrews call Noe was preserved with his family in an ark made of wood; and Josephus, in the first book of his Antiquities,sets forth in the following manner how the historical writers. Berossus the Chaldee, and Hieronymus the Egyptian, and Nicolaus of Damascus, make mention of the same things.