Chapter XXVI. The Hebrews and Plato on the Adverse Powers

FURTHER than this Plato follows the doctrines of the Hebrews, when he says that there are not only good incorporeal powers but also those of opposite nature, writing as follows in the tenth Book of the Laws:

[PLATO] [1] ‘As then the soul directs and inhabits all things that move in any direction, must we not say that it also directs the heaven? Of course. One soul, or more? More, I will answer for you. Less than two surely we must not suppose, the one that does good, and the other that has power to work evil.’

Then lower down he says: [2]

‘For since we have agreed that the heaven is full of many good things and also of many evil things, and these the more numerous, a conflict of this kind, we say, is immortal, and requires marvellous watchfulness. But gods and daemons are our allies, and we are their possessions.’

Whence these ideas came to Plato, I cannot explain: but what I can truly say is that thousands of years before Plato was born this doctrine also had been acknowledged by the Hebrews.

Accordingly their Scripture says,[3] ‘And there was, as it were, this day when the angels of God came to stand before God; and the devil came in the midst of them, after going round the earth and walking about in it’; where it calls the adverse power devil,and the good powers angels of God.

And these good powers it also calls divine spirits, and God’s ministers, where it says, ‘Who maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire.’ [4]

Moreover the conflict of the adverse powers is thus represented by him who said, ‘Our wrestling is not against Wood and flesh, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.’ [5]

Also the oracle of Moses which said, ‘When the Most High was dividing the nations, when He was separating the children of Adam, He set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God,’ [6] seems to be directly paraphrased by Plato in the words whereby he defined the whole human race to be ‘the possessions of gods and daemons.’