Older Than the Greeks

The Phrygians take the first principles of their heresy from a man named Montanus, and from Priscilla and Maximilla. They treat these miserable women as prophetesses and Montanus as a prophet. On what belongs to the origin and making of the universe the Phrygians are held to speak correctly, and in what they say about Christ their opinions are not wide of the mark. But they are led astray along with the heretics already mentioned, and they give their attention to the discourses of these people above the Gospels, laying down rules about new and strange fasts. [a]

But others among them are attached to the heresy of the Noetians, and hold opinions like the ones held about the foolish women of the Phrygians and about Montanus. About the truth concerning the Father of all existing things they speak blasphemy, because they assert that he is Son and Father, visible and invisible, generated and ungenerated, mortal and immortal. These took their opening from a man named Noetus, and so put their heresy forward. [c]

In the same way Noetus too, a native of Smyrna by birth, a man given to reckless chatter and crafty besides, brought in among us this heresy, which passed from a man named Epigonus to Cleomenes, and in this way has continued to this day among their successors. Noetus asserts that there is one Father and God of the universe; that he made all things; and that he was imperceptible to the things that exist whenever he chose to be. The Father appeared, Noetus maintained, at the moment he wished to; he is invisible when he is not seen, and visible when he is seen. This heretic also alleges that the Father is ungenerated when he is not generated, but generated when he is born of a virgin; and that he is not subject to suffering, and is immortal, when he does not suffer or die. But when his suffering came upon him, Noetus allows that the Father suffers and dies. And the Noetians suppose that this same Father is called Son, and the Son Father, according to the events that befall each of them at their own proper times. [d]

Callistus gave the heresy of these Noetians his backing; we have already set out the details of his life with care. Callistus also produced a heresy of his own, and took its starting points from these Noetians. He acknowledges that there is one Father and God, the Creator of the universe, and that this God is spoken of and called by the name of Son, yet that in substance he is one Spirit. For Spirit, as God, is not (he says) any being different from the Word, nor the Word from God; and so this one person is divided in name, but not in substance. He supposes this one Word to be God, and affirms that the Word took on flesh. And he is inclined to maintain that the one who was seen in the flesh and seized is Son, while it is the Father who dwells in him. So Callistus branches off at one moment into the opinion of Noetus and at another into that of Theodotus, and holds no doctrine securely. These, then, are the opinions of Callistus.

A man named Hermogenes, wanting to have something of his own to say, asserted that God made all things out of matter as old as himself and subject to his design. For Hermogenes held it impossible that God should make the things that were made out of anything but things already there. [h]

Certain others, bringing in what looked like some new doctrine, took over parts of their system from every heresy, and concocted a strange book which carried on its title page the name of one Elchasai. These too acknowledge that the first principles of the universe had their origin from God. They do not, however, confess that there is only one Christ. They say there is one who is superior to the rest, that he is poured over and over into many bodies, and that he was at this time in Jesus. They maintain in the same way that at one time Christ was generated from God, at another became the Spirit, at another was born of a virgin, and at another not so. And they affirm that this Jesus afterwards went on being poured into bodies, and was made visible in many different bodies at different times. They resort to incantations and to baptisms in their confession by the elements. They busy themselves with astrology and mathematics and the arts of sorcery. They also claim to have powers of foreknowledge. [i]

… From Haran, a city of Mesopotamia, Abraham moves at God’s command into the country now called Palestine and Judea, which was then the region of Canaan. About this territory we have given an account in other works — only in part, but not carelessly. From this migration, then, you can trace the beginning of a people’s growth in Judea, which got its name from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob (Jacob, whose name was also called Israel), because a line of kings was to come down from him. [k]

Abraham leaves Mesopotamia at seventy-five years old, and at a hundred he fathered Isaac. Isaac at sixty fathered Jacob. Jacob at eighty-six fathered Levi; Levi at forty fathered Kohath; and Kohath was four years old when he went down with Jacob into Egypt. So the whole period during which Abraham lived as a stranger, and the whole family descended from him through Isaac, in the country then called Canaan, was 215 years. The father of this Abraham is Terah; Terah’s father is Nahor; Nahor’s father is Serug; Serug’s father is Reu; Reu’s father is Peleg; and Peleg’s father is Eber. And that is how the Jews come to be called Hebrews.

In the time of Peleg the scattering of the nations took place. Now these nations were seventy-two, matching the number of Abraham’s children. The names of these nations we have set down in other books as well, not passing over this point in its own proper place either. And the reason we go into such detail is that we want to show studious readers the love we have toward God, and the unmistakable knowledge of the truth we have come to possess in the course of our labors.

Eber’s father is Shelah; Shelah’s father is Cainan; Cainan’s father is Arphaxad, whose father is Shem; and Shem’s father is Noah. In Noah’s time a flood came over the whole world, which neither Egyptians nor Chaldeans nor Greeks remember; for the floods that came in the age of Ogyges and of Deucalion covered only the districts where those men lived. From Noah down to Eber, then, there are five generations and 495 years.

This Noah, since he was a most religious man and a lover of God, alone escaped the flood that followed, with his wife and his children and their three wives. He owed his preservation to an ark, and both the measurements of this ark and pieces of it are, as we have explained, shown to this day in the mountains called Ararat, which lie toward the country of the Adiabeni. So anyone willing to look into the matter with any diligence can see how clearly it has been shown that a nation of worshippers of the true God existed earlier than all the Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Greeks. And what need is there now to name the men before Noah who were devout and were allowed to speak with the true God, since for the matter in hand this evidence for the antiquity of the people of God is enough?

Since it does not seem unreasonable to prove that the nations taken up with the speculations of philosophy are of more recent date than the nations that habitually worshipped the true God, it is fair that we should say where the family of these last came from, and that when they settled in these countries they did not take a name from the places themselves, but claimed for themselves names from the men who were born first and had lived in them. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. From these the whole family of mankind was multiplied, and every quarter of the earth owes its first inhabitants to them. For God’s word to them held good, when the Lord said, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth.” So great was the power of that one word that from the three sons of Noah seventy-two children were born into the family: twenty-five from Shem, fifteen from Japheth, and thirty-two from Ham. To Ham these thirty-two children are born, as has been said before. Among Ham’s children are Canaan, from whom the Canaanites came; Mizraim, from whom the Egyptians; Cush, from whom the Ethiopians; and Put, from whom the Libyans. In the language current among them these peoples are called by their ancestors’ names to this day; and even in Greek they are called by the names just given. But even supposing that these places had not been lived in before, and that no race of men could be shown to have existed there from the beginning, these sons of Noah, a worshipper of God, are quite enough to prove the point at issue. For it is plain that Noah himself must have been a pupil of devout men, and that is why he escaped the terrible, though passing, threat of the water. [t]

How then should the worshippers of the true God not be older than all Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Greeks? For we must bear in mind that the father of these nations was born from this Japheth, was given the name Javan, and became the ancestor of the Greeks and Ionians. Now if the nations that gave themselves to questions of philosophy are shown to belong to a period altogether later than the race of the worshippers of God, and later than the time of the flood, how would the barbarian nations, and all the tribes in the world that are known and unknown, not appear to belong to a still more recent age than these? Therefore you Greeks, Egyptians, Chaldeans, and the whole race of men: become students of this teaching, and learn from us, who are God’s friends, what the nature of God is and what his well-ordered creation is. And we have pursued this system not by talking in grand language, but by writing our treatises in words that prove our knowledge of the truth and our practice of good sense, our object being to demonstrate his truth.

The first and only God, both Creator and Lord of all, had nothing as old as himself: not boundless chaos, nor measureless water, nor solid earth, nor thick air, nor warm fire, nor fine spirit, nor the blue roof of the vast firmament. He was One, alone by himself. By an act of his will he created the things that are, which before that had no existence, except that he willed to make them. For he knows perfectly whatever is going to happen; foreknowledge too is present with him. The various first principles of what was to come into existence he made first — fire and spirit, water and earth — and out of these different elements he went on to form his own creation. Some things he formed of one substance; others he compounded out of two, others out of three, others out of four. The things formed of one substance were immortal, since in their case no dissolution follows: what is one will never be dissolved. But those made out of two or three or four substances can be dissolved, and that is why they are called mortal. For this is what has been called death: the dissolution of substances that have been joined together. [w]

I think, then, that I have now given a sufficient answer to those of sound mind. If they want further instruction, and are willing to look carefully into the substances of these things and the causes of the whole creation, they will come to know these points by reading a work of ours entitled On the Substance of the Universe. For the present, however, I consider it enough to make plain those causes which the Greeks did not know: not knowing them, they glorified the parts of creation in pompous language while they remained ignorant of the Creator. And the founders of the heresies took their opening from these Greeks, turned the statements those Greeks had already made into doctrines like their own, and so framed their ridiculous heresies.