Counting Back to Adam

And on the matter of decency: the holy word teaches us not only not to sin in what we do, but not even in what we think — not to let the heart entertain any evil at all, and not to look with our eyes at another man’s wife and desire her. Solomon, who was both a king and a prophet, said: “Let your eyes look straight ahead, and let your eyelids give their assent to what is right; make straight paths for your feet.” And the voice of the good news teaches about purity still more insistently. It says: “Anyone who looks at another man’s wife and desires her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” And it says: “The man who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery; and whoever divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.” Solomon says as well: “Can a man tie fire up in his clothes and not burn the clothes? Or walk on live coals and not burn his feet? So it is with the man who goes in to a married woman: he will not go unpunished.” [a]

And it is not only to people of our own stock that we are to be well disposed, as some suppose. Isaiah the prophet said: “Say to those who hate you and detest you: You are our brothers — so that the name of the Lord may be glorified, and be seen in their gladness.” And the good news says: “Love your enemies, and pray for those who mistreat you. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Robbers and tax collectors do the same.” And it teaches those who do good not to boast about it, so that they will not become people-pleasers. For it says: “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” The divine word also orders us to submit to rulers and authorities and to pray for them, so that we may live a calm and quiet life. And it teaches us to give everyone what is owed them — honor to whom honor is owed, fear to whom fear, taxes to whom taxes — and to owe nothing to anyone except to love them all. [e]

So ask yourself whether people who are taught such things can possibly live carelessly, or mix themselves into forbidden couplings, or — most godless of all — lay hands on human flesh. We are forbidden even to watch the gladiator shows, so that we will not become partners and accomplices in murders. And we must not watch the other spectacles either, or our eyes and ears will be defiled by sharing in what is chanted there. If someone wants to talk about eating human beings, it is on that stage that the children of Thyestes and of Tereus are eaten. If someone wants to talk about adultery, it is there that adultery is made into tragedy — not only among human beings but among their gods, whom they announce in fine language, with honors and prizes. Far be it from Christians even to think of doing anything like that. Among them self-restraint is present, self-control is trained, monogamy is kept, purity is guarded, injustice is driven out, sin is torn up by the roots, righteousness is studied, law is lived by, reverence for God is practiced, God is acknowledged; truth presides, grace preserves, peace shelters, the holy word leads the way, wisdom teaches, life presides, God reigns. We have much we could say about our way of life and about the ordinances of God, the maker of all creation, but for now we think we have brought up enough to make you attend to it — above all on the strength of what you have been reading up to this point, so that, having been a lover of learning up to now, you will go on being one. [h]

Now, God granting it, I want to set out for you a more exact demonstration of the dates, so that you may recognize that what we teach is neither recent nor made up, but older and truer than all the poets and writers, who wrote in the dark. Some of them, saying the world was never made, went off into infinity. Others, saying it was made, said that 153,075 years have already gone by. Apollonius the Egyptian is the one who records this. And Plato — the man thought to have been the wisest of the Greeks — what nonsense did he go off into! For in his books entitled the Republic these words stand: “How could anything new ever have been discovered, if everything had gone on being arranged all this time as it is now? Ten thousand times ten thousand years passed unnoticed by the people of that time; and it is a thousand years, or twice that, since some things became known from Daedalus, some from Orpheus, and some from Palamedes.” In saying that these things happened, he shows that ten thousand times ten thousand years passed from the flood to Daedalus. And after saying a great deal about the cities of the world, and settlements, and nations, he admits that he has said all this by guesswork. For he says: “If then, my friend, some god should promise us that, if we undertook an inquiry into lawmaking, the things now said —” and so on. Plainly he was speaking by guess; and if by guess, then what he said is not true. [j]

So he ought rather to have become a student of God’s own lawgiving — as he himself admitted that there was no other way to learn anything exactly, unless God taught him through the law. And what about this: did not the poets Homer and Hesiod and Orpheus claim that they themselves had been taught by divine providence? It is said, further, that there were seers and men who knew the future among your writers, and that those who learned from them wrote accurately. How much more, then, will we know the truth — we who learn from the holy prophets, who had room in them for the Holy Spirit of God? That is why all the prophets spoke in harmony and in agreement with one another, and announced beforehand what was going to happen in all the world. For the very outcome of things foretold and now already completed is able to teach those who love learning — or rather, those who love truth — that what was announced through them is really true: about the periods and dates before the flood, and how the years have run from the founding of the world until now. And that shows up the ridiculous lying of your writers, and that what they said is not true. [m]

Plato, as we said above, showed that a flood had happened, but said it did not cover the whole earth — only the plains — and that the people who got away to the highest mountains saved themselves. Others say that Deucalion and Pyrrha existed, that they were saved in a chest, and that when Deucalion came out of the chest he threw stones behind him, and human beings came from the stones — which is why, they say, the mass of humanity is called “people.” Others again said that Clymenus existed at a second flood. From what has already been said it is clear that men who wrote such things and philosophized to so little purpose are pitiable, thoroughly irreverent, and out of their senses. But our prophet Moses, the servant of God, in setting out the history of the world’s beginning, described how the flood came upon the earth, and how the details of the flood came about — telling no tale of Pyrrha or Deucalion or Clymenus, and saying nothing about only the plains being flooded and only those who escaped to the mountains being saved. [n]

Nor does he make out that there was a second flood. On the contrary, he said there would never again be a flood of water on the world — and there has not been one, and there never will be. He says that eight human lives in all were saved in the ark, in the vessel built at God’s command — not by Deucalion, but by Noah, whose Hebrew name means, in Greek, “rest.” We showed elsewhere how Noah, announcing to the people of that time that a flood was coming, prophesied to them, saying: “Come here — God is calling you to repentance.” That is why he was fittingly called Deucalion. This Noah had three sons, as we showed in the second book, whose names are Shem and Ham and Japheth; and they had three wives, one wife for each man; and there were Noah himself and his wife. Some have given this man the surname Eunuchus. So the human lives that came through safely were eight in all, the ones found in the ark. Moses showed that the flood lasted forty days and forty nights, with the floodgates pouring from the sky and all the springs of the deep bursting up, so that the water rose about 22½ feet above every high mountain. That is how the whole race of the people then alive was destroyed; only those kept safe in the ark came through, and, as we have said, they were eight. Remains of that ark are still pointed out today in the mountains of Arabia. That, in summary, is the history of the flood. [o]

Moses led the Jews, as we have already said, when they had been driven out of the land of Egypt by King Pharaoh, whose name was Tethmosis. After the expulsion of the people, they say, he reigned 25 years and 4 months, as Manetho sets it out. After him Chebron, 13 years. After him Amenophis, 20 years and 7 months. After him his sister Amesse, 21 years and 1 month. After her Mephres, 12 years and 9 months. After him Methramuthosis, 20 years and 10 months. After him Tythmoses, 9 years and 8 months. After him Damphenophis, 30 years and 10 months. After him Horus, 36 years and 5 months. Then his daughter, 10 years and 3 months. After her Mercheres, 12 years and 3 months. Then Armais, 4 years and 1 month. After him Rameses, 1 year and 4 months. After him Messes son of Miammus, 6 years and 2 months. After him Amenophis, 19 years and 6 months. Then Thoessus and Rameses, 10 years — men who are said to have had a large cavalry force and a naval fleet in their day. The Hebrews, who at that period had settled as foreigners in Egypt and had been enslaved by the king Tethmosis just named, built strong cities for him: Pithom and Rameses and On, which is Heliopolis. So the Hebrews — our own forefathers, from whom we have the sacred books, which are older than all authors, as we said before — are shown to be older than the cities that were famous among the Egyptians at that time. The country was called Egypt from King Sethos, for the word Sethos, they say, is pronounced “Egypt.” And Sethos had a brother named Armais. This is the man who has been called Danaus, the one who crossed from Egypt to Argos, whom the other writers mention as being extremely ancient. [s]

Manetho, who talked a great deal of nonsense about Egyptian matters, and who even said blasphemous things about Moses and the Hebrews who were with him — claiming they were thrown out of Egypt because of leprosy — could not manage to state the dates accurately. When he said they were shepherds and enemies of the Egyptians, he said “shepherds” unwillingly, forced to it by the truth; for our forefathers who lived in Egypt as foreigners really were shepherds, but they were not lepers. When they came into the land called Jerusalem, where they afterwards settled, it is made plain how their priests, at God’s command, kept steadily at their duties in the temple and cured every disease there, so that they healed lepers and every blemish. Solomon, the king of Judea, built the temple. That Manetho went astray about the dates is clear from his own statements — and so is his error about the king who expelled them, Pharaoh by name; for that king did not go on ruling them, since he chased the Hebrews with his army and was drowned in the Red Sea. He is lying, too, when he says that those shepherds made war on the Egyptians. They went out of Egypt and settled from that time in the country which is still called Judea today, 313 years before Danaus came to Argos; and it is plain that most Greeks consider Danaus older than any of the rest of them. So Manetho, unwilling as he was, has reported two items of the truth to us in his own writings: first, in admitting that they were shepherds; second, in saying that they went out of the land of Egypt. From these records too, then, Moses and those with him are shown to be 900, or even 1,000, years earlier than the Trojan war. [w]

Now about the building of the temple in Judea, which King Solomon built 566 years after the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. There is a record among the Tyrians of how the temple was built, and the documents have been kept in their archives; and in those records the temple is found to have been built 134 years and 8 months before the Tyrians founded Carthage. (The record was written down by Hiram — that is the name of the king of the Tyrians — the son of Abibalus, because Hiram had become Solomon’s friend through their fathers’ friendship, and also because of the extraordinary wisdom Solomon had; for they were forever exercising each other with hard problems. There is evidence of this too: copies of their letters, they say, are kept among the Tyrians to this day, and they used to send documents to each other.) Menander of Ephesus mentions it, in his account of the kingdom of the Tyrians. He puts it like this: “When Abibalus, king of the Tyrians, died, his son Hiram succeeded to the kingdom; he lived 53 years. Bazorus succeeded him, who lived 43 years and reigned 17. After him came Methuastartus, who lived 54 years and reigned 12. After him his brother Atharymus, who lived 58 years and reigned 9. He was killed by his brother, Helles by name, who lived 50 years and reigned 8 months. Helles was killed by Juthobalus, priest of Astarte, who lived 40 years and reigned 12. His son Bazorus succeeded him, who lived 45 years and reigned 7. His son Metten succeeded him, who lived 32 years and reigned 29. Pygmalion succeeded him, who lived 56 years and reigned 7. And in the seventh year of his reign his sister fled to Libya and built the city that is called Carthage to this day.” So the whole time from the reign of Hiram to the founding of Carthage comes to 155 years and 8 months. And the temple in Jerusalem was built in the twelfth year of Hiram’s reign, so that the whole time from the building of the temple to the founding of Carthage was 133 years and 8 months. [y]

So let what has been said be enough for us as the testimony of the Phoenicians and the Egyptians — the accounts of our own dates written by Manetho the Egyptian and Menander of Ephesus, and by Josephus as well, who wrote up the Jewish war that the Romans made against them. From these ancient records it is shown that everyone else’s writings come later than the writings given to us through Moses, and later than the prophets in between. For the last of the prophets, Zechariah by name, flourished in the reign of Darius. And even the lawgivers are all found making their laws in the period since. If someone brings up Solon the Athenian, he lived in the days of the kings Cyrus and Darius, in the time of the prophet Zechariah just mentioned, who came a great many years later. Or if you bring up the lawgivers Lycurgus or Draco or Minos, the sacred books go ahead of them in age; for the writings of the divine law given to us through Moses are shown to go ahead even of Zeus, who was king over the Cretans, and of the Trojan war. And so that we may make a more exact demonstration of the eras and dates, we will now — God granting it to us — give an account not only of what came after the flood but of what came before it as well, so as to state the number of them all as far as we can, running back to the very beginning of the creation of the world, which Moses the servant of God recorded through the Holy Spirit. For after speaking of the creation and beginning of the world, and of the first man God formed, and of the things that followed in order, he also showed the years that passed before the flood. And I ask grace from the only God, that I may state the whole truth exactly, according to his will, so that you and everyone who comes upon this work may be guided by his truth and his grace. So I will begin first from the recorded genealogies — that is, I will make my start from the first man God formed. [ab]

Adam lived 230 years until he fathered a son. His son Seth, 205. His son Enosh, 190. His son Kenan, 170. His son Mahalalel, 165. His son Jared, 162. His son Enoch, 165. His son Methuselah, 167. His son Lamech, 188. And Lamech’s son was the Noah we spoke of above, who fathered Shem when he was 500 years old. The flood came in Noah’s lifetime, when he was 600. So the whole number of years up to the flood is 2,242. And immediately after the flood Shem, at 100 years old, fathered Arphaxad. Arphaxad, at 135, fathered Shelah. Shelah fathered a son at 130. His son Eber, at 134 — and from him their people are called Hebrews. His son Peleg fathered a son at 130. His son Reu, at 132. His son Serug, at 130. His son Nahor, at 75. His son Terah, at 70. His son Abraham, our forefather, fathered Isaac when he was 100 years old. So up to Abraham there are 3,278 years. The Isaac just named lived 60 years until he had a child, and fathered Jacob. Jacob lived 130 years up to the migration into Egypt that we spoke of above. The Hebrews’ stay in Egypt as foreigners lasted 430 years, and after they came out of the land of Egypt they spent 40 years in what is called the wilderness. So all these years come to 3,938. At that point Moses died, and Joshua son of Nun succeeded to the leadership and led them for 27 years. After Joshua, when the people had broken God’s commands, they were slaves to the king of Mesopotamia, Chusarathon by name, for 8 years. Then, when the people repented, they had judges: Othniel, 40 years; Eglon, 18 years; Ehud, 8 years. Then, when they had gone wrong, foreigners had power over them for 20 years. Then Deborah judged them 40 years. Then the Midianites had power over them 7 years. Then Gideon judged them 40 years; Abimelech, 3 years; Tola, 23 years; Jair, 22 years. Then the Philistines and Ammonites had power over them 18 years. Then Jephthah judged them 6 years; Ibzan, 7 years; Elon, 10 years; Abdon, 8 years. Then foreigners had power over them 40 years. Then Samson judged them 20 years. Then there was peace among them for 40 years. Then Samera judged them one year; Eli, 20 years; Samuel, 12 years. [ae]