Pythagoras and the Tabernacle

The Pythagorean symbols were bound up with the foreign philosophy in the most hidden way of all. For instance, the man from Samos advises “not to keep a swallow in the house” — that is, do not take in a chattering, whispering, talkative man who cannot hold on to what he has been told. “For the swallow and the turtledove and the sparrows of the field know the times of their coming in,” says the Scripture; and a man should never share a house with idle talk. The murmuring of the turtledove stands for the ungrateful backbiting of a fault-finder, and it is rightly turned out of the house. [a]

The swallow also calls up the story of Pandion, and the things reported in it deserve to be hated — some of which Tereus suffered and some of which he did himself. Besides, the swallow hunts the musical cicadas; and so a man who hunts down the word ought to be driven off. Poetry says:

And Aeschylus says:

Again, Pythagoras gave orders that when the pot is lifted off the fire you should not leave its print behind in the ashes but scatter them, and that people getting up from bed should shake out the bedding. He was hinting that you must not merely rub out the mark but leave no trace of anger at all; that once the anger has stopped boiling it should be settled, and every memory of the injury wiped away. “Do not let the sun go down on your anger,” says the Scripture. And the one who said, “You shall not crave,” did away with all remembering of a wrong; for anger turns out to be the drive of craving inside a gentle soul, and what it reaches for above all is revenge with no reason in it. In the same way the bed is ordered to be shaken up, so that nothing is left to remember of an emission during sleep, or of sleeping in the daytime, or of pleasure taken in the night. And he was hinting that what is seen in the dark ought to be scattered quickly by the light of truth. “Be angry, and do not sin,” says David, teaching us that we should not give our consent to the impression, and should not follow it up with action and so make the anger stick.

Again, “Do not sail on dry land” is a Pythagorean saying, and it shows that tax contracts and agreements like them, being troublesome and unsteady, ought to be turned down. That is also why the Word says that tax collectors are saved only with difficulty.

And again Pythagoras lays it down: “Do not wear a ring, and do not carve the images of the gods on one.” Moses had ruled the same thing in plain words ages before — that no likeness was to be made, carved or cast or moulded or painted — so that we would not cling to the things the senses reach but pass over to the things the mind reaches. Familiarity through the eyes cheapens the reverence owed to what is divine, and to worship what has no matter by means of matter is to dishonor it through the senses. That is why the wisest of the Egyptian priests decided that the temple of Athena should be left open to the sky, just as the Hebrews built their temple with no image in it. And some people, in worshipping God, make a model of the heavens with the stars in it and worship that — though the Scripture says, “Let us make man in our image and likeness.”

I think it worth quoting what Eurysus the Pythagorean says as well. In his book On Fortune he says that the Maker, in making man, took himself for the pattern, and then adds: “And the body is like the rest of things, since it is made of the same material, and shaped by the best workman, who made it taking himself for the model.” In short, Pythagoras and his school, and Plato with them, and most of the other philosophers, knew the Lawgiver better than anyone — as their teaching lets you conclude. By a lucky stroke of divination, and not without God’s help, they agreed with certain prophetic sayings; and taking hold of the truth in pieces and by glimpses, in words that are not obscure and that do not overreach the explanation of the things themselves, they honored it once they had made out that it looked like a kinsman of theirs. So Greek philosophy is like the wick of a torch that men kindle, stealing the light from the sun by a trick of craft. But when the Word was proclaimed, all that holy light blazed out. In houses at night the stolen light is useful; but by day the fire blazes, and the whole night is lit up by a sun of that kind — the sun of the light the mind sees.

Pythagoras made a summary of what Moses says about righteousness when he said, “Do not step over the balance” — that is, do not overstep equality when you hand things out. That is how justice is honored:

— as it is said, with poetic grace. That is why the Lord says, “Take my yoke, for it is gentle and light.” And when the disciples were struggling over who came first, he laid equality on them along with simplicity, saying that they had to become like little children. In the same way the apostle writes that in Christ no one is slave or free, or Greek or Jew: “For the creation in Christ Jesus is new — it is equality, free of quarreling, not grasping, just.” For envy and jealousy and bitterness stand outside the divine choir.

So too the men who know the mysteries forbid “eating the heart,” teaching that we should not gnaw at and eat away our own soul with idleness and with irritation over things that turn out against our wishes. Miserable, then, was the man Homer speaks of, who wandered alone and “ate his own heart.” But again: the Gospel sets out two ways, and so do the apostles, and all the prophets alike. The one they call “narrow and hemmed in” is the road fenced about by the commands and the prohibitions; the opposite one, which leads to ruin, they call “broad and roomy,” lying open to pleasures and to anger. And they say, “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, and does not stand in the way of sinners.” That is where the story told by Prodicus of Ceos about Virtue and Vice comes from as well. And Pythagoras does not hesitate to forbid walking on the public roads, laying it down that we must not follow the opinions of the crowd, which are raw and inconsistent. Aristocritus, too, in the first book of his Positions against Heracliodorus, mentions a letter that ran like this: “Ateas, king of the Scythians, to the people of Byzantium: do not damage my revenues, or my mares will be drinking your water.” For the foreigner was signalling, in code, that he would make war on them. In the same way the poet Euphorion brings in Nestor saying:

That is also why the Egyptians set sphinxes in front of their temples: to signify that the teaching about God is riddling and obscure — and perhaps also that we ought both to love the divine and to fear it. To love it as gentle and kind to the reverent; to fear it as relentlessly just to the irreverent. For the sphinx shows the shape of a wild animal and of a human being at once.

It would be tiresome to go through all the Prophets and the Law and point out everything that is spoken in riddles, since nearly the whole of Scripture speaks that way. For anyone with sense, I think, a few examples are enough to prove the point in hand. Concealment shows itself in the account of the seven circuits around the temple, which are mentioned among the Hebrews, and in the fittings on the robe, which by their various symbols — symbols pointing to visible things — indicate the agreement that reaches down from heaven to earth. The covering and the veil were woven of many colors: blue and purple and scarlet and linen. The hint was that the nature of the elements holds the revealing of God. For purple comes from water and linen from the earth; blue, being dark, is like the air, as scarlet is like fire. [w]

Between the covering and the veil, in the place the priests were allowed to enter, stood the altar of incense, the symbol of the earth set in the middle of this universe; and from it rose the smoke of the incense. And that middle place — between the inner veil, where the high priest alone could enter, and only on the appointed days, and the outer court that surrounded it, which was open to every Hebrew — was, they say, the midpoint of heaven and earth. Others say it was the symbol of the world the mind knows and the world the senses know. The covering, then, the barrier put up by the unbelief of the crowd, was stretched in front of the five pillars, holding back the people in the space outside.

So, in a deeply hidden way, the five loaves are broken by the Savior and fill the crowd who are listening; for the crowd who keep to the things of the senses, as though those were the only things there are, is a large one. “Look around you and see that none of the uninitiated are listening,” says Plato. Such are the people who think nothing exists except what they can get a firm grip on with their hands, and who will not admit actions, and processes of coming to be, and the whole of the unseen, into the class of things that exist. That is what people are like who stay inside the five senses. But the knowledge of God cannot be reached by the ears of that kind of person, or by any organ like them. That is why the Son is called the Father’s face: he is the one who reveals the Father’s stamp to the five senses, by clothing himself in flesh. “But if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” “For we walk by faith, not by sight,” as the noble apostle says. Inside the veil, then, the priestly service is hidden away, and it keeps those who perform it far from those outside.

Then there is the veil at the entrance into the holy of holies. Four pillars stand there, the sign of the sacred group of four, the four ancient covenants. And the mystic name of four letters, which was attached to those alone who had the right to enter the innermost room, is pronounced Iave, which is interpreted “the one who is and who will be.” The Greek name for God has four letters too. Now the Lord, having come alone into the world the mind knows, enters by way of his sufferings, brought into the knowledge of the One who cannot be spoken, rising above every name that sound can utter. The lampstand was set to the south of the altar of incense, and by it were shown the movements of the seven planets, which make their circuits toward the south. Three branches rose on either side of the lampstand, with lights on them, since the sun too, like the lamp, is set in the middle of all the planets and hands out its light, with a kind of divine music, to those above it and those below.

The golden lampstand carries another riddle as a symbol of Christ — not in its shape only, but in his shedding light “at many times and in many ways” on those who have faith in him and hope in him, and who see by means of the ministry of the Firstborn. And they say that the seven eyes of the Lord “are the seven spirits resting on the shoot that springs from the root of Jesse.” North of the altar of incense stood a table, and on it “the setting out of the loaves,” since the most nourishing of the winds are the north winds. And by this are signified certain seats of churches, breathing together into one body and one gathering. And what is recorded about the sacred ark signifies the properties of the world of thought, which is hidden and shut to most people.

And the golden figures, each of them with six wings, signify either the two Bears, as some will have it, or rather the two hemispheres. The name cherubim meant “much knowledge.” The two of them together have twelve wings, and by the zodiac and by time, which moves along it, they point to the world of the senses. It is of them, I think, that Tragedy speaks when it discusses Nature:

And Atlas, the pole that does not suffer, may mean the fixed sphere, or better perhaps, an eternity that does not move. But I think it better to take the ark — so called from the Hebrew word thebotha — as signifying something else. It is interpreted “one instead of one in all places.” Whether what is indicated is the eighth region and the world of thought, or God himself, who contains all things and has no shape and cannot be seen, we may put off saying for now. What it does signify is the rest that dwells with the worshipping spirits, which are what the cherubim mean. For the one who forbade the making of a carved image would never have made an image himself in the likeness of holy things. And there is nothing at all of that sort in heaven — nothing put together out of parts, no creature equipped with senses. But the face is a symbol of the reasoning soul; the wings are the lofty servants and the workings of powers on the right hand and on the left; and the voice is glad glory in contemplation that never stops. Let it be enough that the hidden interpretation has gone this far.

The high priest’s robe is the symbol of the world the senses know. The seven planets are represented by the five stones and the two carbuncles, the carbuncles standing for Saturn and the Moon. Saturn is southern, and moist, and earthy, and heavy; the Moon is airy, which is why some call her Artemis, as though the name meant “cutting the air”; and the air is cloudy. And since they worked together in producing the things down here, those who by God’s providence are set over the planets are rightly shown as placed on the breast and on the shoulders; and by them came the work of creation, the first week. The breast is the seat of the heart and the soul.

Taken another way, the stones might be the different stages of salvation, some holding the upper and some the lower parts of the whole body that is saved. The three hundred and sixty bells hung from the robe are the length of a year, “the acceptable year of the Lord,” announcing and ringing out the astonishing appearing of the Savior. Further, the broad gold turban indicates the royal power of the Lord, since “the head of the church” is the Savior. The turban on it — that is, on the head — is a sign of the most princely rule; and, put another way, we have heard it said, “The head of Christ is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Then there was the breastpiece, made up of the ephod, which is the symbol of work, and the oracle-piece. This pointed to the Word by which it was framed, and is the symbol of heaven, made by the Word and put under Christ, the head of all things, since it moves in the same way and after the same fashion. So the shining emerald stones on the ephod signify the sun and the moon, the helpers of nature. The shoulder, I take it, is where the arm begins.

The twelve stones, set in four rows on the breast, describe for us the circle of the zodiac in the four turnings of the year. It was fitting, in another way, that the law and the prophets should be placed beneath the Lord’s head, because in both covenants the righteous are spoken of. And if we were to say that the apostles were at once prophets and righteous men, we would be saying it well, “since one and the same Holy Spirit works in all.” And as the Lord is above the whole world — above even the world of thought — so the name engraved on the gold plate has been taken to signify what is above every rule and authority; and it was inscribed with reference both to the written commands and to his appearing to the senses. And it is the name of God that is set out there; for as the Son sees the goodness of the Father, God the Savior works, being called the first principle of all things, the one imaged out from the invisible God first of all and before the ages, and the one who shaped everything that came into being after him. More than that: the oracle-piece displays the prophecy that cries out and preaches by the Word, and the judgment that is coming; since it is the same Word that prophesies and judges and sorts out all things.

And they say that the robe was a prophecy of the ministry in the flesh, by which he was seen in closer relation to the world. So the high priest takes off his consecrated robe — and the universe, and the creation in the universe, were consecrated by him when he agreed that what had been made was good — washes himself, and puts on the other tunic, a holy-of-holies tunic, so to speak, the one that goes with him into the innermost room. He is showing, as it seems to me, the Levite, the man who truly knows, as chief over the other priests — the ones bathed in water, and clothed in faith alone, and expecting their own separate dwelling — while he himself tells apart the things the mind knows from the things the senses know, rising above the other priests, hurrying to the entrance of the world of ideas, to wash himself clean of the things down here, and not in water, as a man was once cleansed when he was enrolled in the tribe of Levi. He has already been purified in his whole heart by the Word that gives knowledge, and thoroughly set in order; he has carried the way of life he received from the priest up to its highest pitch; he has been made holy in speech and in life alike, has put on the bright dress of glory, and has received the inheritance that cannot be spoken, belonging to that spiritual and complete man, “which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which has not come up into the heart of man.” Having become a son and a friend, he is filled now with a contemplation face to face that he never has enough of. For there is nothing like hearing the Word himself, who by means of the Scripture breathes fuller understanding into a man. As it is written: “And he shall take off the linen robe, which he had put on when he entered the holy place, and shall lay it aside there, and wash his body in water in the holy place, and put on his robe.” But the Lord, I think, takes off and puts on in one way, by coming down into the region of the senses; and the man who has come to faith through him takes off and puts on in another way — the consecrated robe, as the apostle hinted. From there, after the image of the Lord, the worthiest men were chosen out of the sacred tribes to be high priests, and those picked for the office of king and for prophecy were anointed.