Chapter I. How the Serious Branches of Learning Passed From Barbarians to Greeks: Also Concerning the Antiquity of the Hebrews

WE have previously explained for what reasons we (Christians) have preferred the philosophy of the Hebrews to that of the Greeks, and on what kind of considerations we accepted the sacred Books current among the former people; and then afterwards we proved that the Greeks themselves were not ignorant of that people, but mentioned them by name, and greatly admired their mode of life, and have given a long account both of their royal capital, and other matters of their history. Now then let us go on to observe how they not only deemed the record of these things worthy to be written, but also became zealous imitators of the like teaching and instruction in some of the doctrines pertaining to the improvement of the soul.

I shall show then almost immediately how, from various sources, one and another of these wonderful Greeks, by going about among the Barbarians, collected the other branches of learning, geometry, arithmetic, music, astronomy, medicine, and the very first elements of grammar, and numberless other artistic and profitable studies.

In the previous part of my discourse I proved that they had received from Barbarians their opinion concerning a multitude of gods, and their mysteries and initiations, and moreover their histories, and their fabulous stories about gods, and their physical explanations of the fables as expressed in allegory, and the rest of their superstitious error. This, I say, was proved at the time when we convicted the Greeks of having wandered over much of the earth, and then set up their own. theology on all points, not indeed without labour and care, but by contributions from the learning current among Barbarians: and soon it shall be proved that from no other source than from Hebrews only could they have procured the knowledge of the worship of the One Supreme God, and of the doctrines most in request for the benefit of the soul, which of course would also be most conclusive of their discussions on philosophy.

Or otherwise, if any one should say that they were moved to the same conclusions by innate conceptions, even this would be in our favour, that we preferred to be zealous followers of the doctrines delivered not only to Hebrews from the earliest ages by prophets who spake of God, but also, if not to all, yet to some, and those certainly the very men who were greatly renowned in Greece, doctrines carefully examined also in the discussions of the philosophers.

Now these men you would find to be few in number, because all excellence is proverbially difficult to attain; but nevertheless they have been honoured with the first place among the philosophers of Greece, so that through their great fame they overshadow the reputation of their fellows.

But you must not be surprised if we say that possibly the doctrines of the Hebrews have been plagiarised by them, since they are not only proved to have stolen the other branches of learning from Egyptians and Chaldees and the rest of the barbarous nations, but even to the present day are detected in robbing one another of the honours gained in their own writings.

At all events one after another they surreptitiously steal the phrases of their neighbours together with the thoughts and whole arrangement of treatises, and pride themselves as if upon their own labours. And do not suppose that this is my statement, for you shall again hear the very wisest of them convicting one another of theft in their writings.

And this very fact, since we have once mentioned it, we must consider as evidence before all else of the character of the said persons. Our Clement then, in his sixth Miscellany,has arranged the proof of this point at full length: so take and read me his words first, such as the following: