Moses Before the Greeks

I will begin, then, with our first prophet and lawgiver, Moses, and I will start by setting out the time in which he lived — on the authority of writers whom you yourselves count entirely trustworthy. I do not intend to prove these things only out of our own sacred histories, which you are still unwilling to believe because of your ancestors’ long-settled error, but out of your own histories as well, and out of histories that have nothing to do with our worship, so that you may see that of all your teachers — wise men, poets, historians, philosophers, lawgivers — by far the oldest, as the Greek histories themselves show, was Moses, who was our first teacher in religion. [a]

For Moses is named as the leader and ruler of the Jewish nation in the days of Ogyges and Inachus, whom some of your own poets take to have been born out of the soil itself. Polemon mentions him this way in the first book of his Greek History, and so does Apion son of Posidonius, both in his book against the Jews and in the fourth book of his history, where he says that while Inachus was reigning over Argos the Jews revolted from Amasis king of Egypt, and that Moses was the man who led them. Ptolemy of Mendes agrees with all of this in his account of Egypt. The writers of Athenian history mention Moses too — Hellanicus, and Philochorus who wrote The History of Attica, and Castor and Thallus and Alexander Polyhistor — and so do Philo and Josephus, who knew Jewish affairs very well: all of them speak of him as a very ancient and long-honored ruler of the Jews. Josephus, in fact, wanted the very title of his book to signal how old the history was, and headed it: “The Jewish Antiquities of Flavius Josephus” — marking the age of what he was about to tell by that one word, antiquities.

And there is your most celebrated historian, Diodorus, who spent thirty whole years making summaries of the libraries and who, as he says himself, traveled across both Asia and Europe for the sake of accuracy and so saw a great many things with his own eyes. He wrote forty complete books of history. In the first book he says he learned from the Egyptian priests that Moses was an ancient lawgiver, and in fact the first of them, and he writes of him in these very words: “After the ancient manner of life in Egypt, which gods and heroes are said in the old stories to have regulated, they say that Moses was the first to persuade the people to use written laws and to live by them; and he is on record as a man both great-souled and highly capable in public affairs.”

Then, going on a little further, and wanting to list the ancient lawgivers, he names Moses first. These are his words: “Among the Jews they say that Moses referred his laws to the God who is called Iao — either because they judged it a marvelous and truly divine idea, one that promised to benefit a whole people, or because they thought the people would be more obedient when they had in view the majesty and power of those said to have devised the laws. And they say that the second Egyptian lawgiver was Sasunchis, a man of excellent understanding; and the third, they say, was Sesonchosis the king, who not only carried out the most brilliant military campaigns of anyone in Egypt but also welded that warlike race together by legislation. The fourth lawgiver, they say, was Bocchoris the king, a wise and exceptionally skillful man. And after him, they say, Amasis the king came to power, who is reported to have put in order everything that has to do with provincial governors and with the general administration of Egypt. And the sixth to legislate for the Egyptians, they say, was Darius, the father of Xerxes.”

Men of Greece, these things about the antiquity of Moses were put in writing by people who did not share our religion, and they say they learned all of it from the Egyptian priests. Moses was not only born among those priests; he was also counted worthy to share in the whole Egyptian education, because the king’s daughter had adopted him as her son, and for the same reason he was thought worthy of great attention. So the wisest of the historians tell us — the ones who chose to set down his life, his deeds, and the rank of his family. I mean Philo and Josephus. In telling the history of the Jews, these two say that Moses came from the stock of the Chaldeans, and that he was born in Egypt after his forefathers had migrated there from Phoenicia because of a famine. God chose to honor him for his outstanding excellence, and judged him fit to become the leader and lawgiver of his own people, when he decided that the people of the Hebrews should come back out of Egypt into their own land. [f]

To Moses first God gave that divine and prophetic gift which in those days came down on holy men; him God first equipped to be our teacher in religion, and after him the rest of the prophets, who received the same gift he did and taught us the same things about the same matters. These are the men we call our teachers: men who taught us nothing out of their own human imagining, but out of the gift given to them by God from above.

But since you see no need to give up your ancestors’ old error and listen to these teachers of ours, which of your own teachers do you claim has lived in a way that makes him worth believing in the matter of religion? As I have said many times, people who have not themselves learned these great and divine things from those who know them cannot know them, and cannot teach them rightly to anyone else. Now the opinions of your philosophers have been shown clearly enough to be full of ignorance and deception. So, having perhaps abandoned the philosophers altogether, as you once abandoned the poets, you will turn to the deception of the oracles — I have heard some of you talking that way. That is why I think it right, at this point in the argument, to tell you what I once heard among you about what those oracles said. When someone asked at your own oracle — and this is your own story — what religious men had ever lived, you say the oracle answered: “Only the Chaldeans have obtained wisdom, and the Hebrews, who worship God himself, the self-begotten King.” [g]

So if you think the truth can be learned from your oracles, then when you read the histories, and what has been written about the life of Moses by people outside our religion, and when you find that Moses and the rest of the prophets came from the stock of the Chaldeans and the Hebrews, do not think that anything unbelievable has happened if a man sprung from a godly line, who lived worthily of his fathers’ godliness, was chosen by God to be honored with this great gift and set forth as the first of all the prophets.

I think it is necessary to look also at the times in which your philosophers lived, so that you can see how recent — and how short — the stretch of time was that produced them for you. That will make it easy for you to recognize how old Moses is. But I do not want to seem long-winded by surveying every period and piling up proofs, so I think the following will be enough. Socrates was Plato’s teacher, and Plato was Aristotle’s. These men were at their height in the days of Philip and Alexander of Macedon, and so were the Athenian orators, as Demosthenes’ Philippics plainly show us; and those who have written up Alexander’s deeds prove well enough that Aristotle kept company with him during his reign. From every kind of proof, then, it is easy to see that the history of Moses is far older than every history outside our own. [h]

Besides, you ought to recognize this too: nothing was accurately recorded by Greeks before the age of the Olympiads, and there is no ancient work that makes known any action of the Greeks or of the foreigners. Before that time there was only the history of the prophet Moses, which he wrote in Hebrew characters by divine inspiration; for Greek characters were not yet in use. The teachers of language themselves prove this when they tell us that Cadmus first brought the letters over from Phoenicia and passed them on to the Greeks. And Plato, your first philosopher, testifies that they were a recent discovery. In the Timaeus he wrote that Solon, the wisest of the wise men, said to Critias on his return from Egypt that he had heard this from a very aged Egyptian priest: “Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children; there is no such thing as an old Greek.” And again the priest said: “You are all young in soul. You hold no ancient opinion handed down from far back, and no body of teaching gray with age. All of this escapes you, because for many generations the descendants of those ancient times died without a voice, having no use of letters.”

So you ought to understand that in plain fact every history has been written in these newly discovered Greek letters; and if anyone wants to bring up an old poet, or lawgiver, or historian, or philosopher, or orator, he will find that the man wrote his own works in Greek characters.

But suppose someone says that the writings of Moses and of the rest of the prophets were also written in Greek characters. Then let him read the histories outside our own and learn what happened. Ptolemy, king of Egypt, built the library in Alexandria and filled it by gathering books from every quarter. Then he learned that very ancient histories written in Hebrew were being carefully preserved, and he wanted to know what was in them. So he sent to Jerusalem for seventy wise men who knew both the Greek and the Hebrew language, and appointed them to translate the books. And so that they might finish the translation more quickly, free from all disturbance, he ordered small huts to be built — not in the city itself, but about four-fifths of a mile away, where the Pharos stood — as many huts as there were translators, so that each man might complete his own translation by himself. He instructed the officials appointed to this duty to give the men every service, but to keep them from communicating with one another, so that the accuracy of the translation could be judged even by their agreement. [k]

And when he found that the seventy men had not only given the same meaning but had used the same words, and had failed to agree with one another not even to the extent of a single word, but had written the same things about the same things, he was struck with amazement. He believed the translation had been written by divine power; he saw that the men were worthy of every honor, as men loved by God; and he sent them home to their own country with many gifts. And having marveled at the books, as was only natural, and concluded that they were divine, he dedicated them in that library.

Men of Greece, this is no fable, and we are not telling you stories. We were in Alexandria ourselves and saw the remains of the little huts at the Pharos, still preserved; and we heard these things from the people who live there, who had received them as part of their own country’s tradition. We are telling you now what you can also learn from others, and especially from those wise and respected men who have written about these things — Philo and Josephus and many more.

But if any of those who like to be quick with a contradiction should say that these books do not belong to us but to the Jews, and should claim that we profess in vain to have learned our religion from them, let him learn from the very things written in these books that their teaching refers not to them but to us. That the books belonging to our religion are preserved among the Jews to this day has been the work of God’s providence on our behalf. Otherwise, by producing them out of the church, we would give people who want to slander us an occasion to charge us with fraud. Instead we demand that they be produced from the synagogue of the Jews, so that from the very books still kept among them it may clearly and plainly appear that the laws written by holy men for instruction belong to us.

So it is necessary, men of Greece, that you look hard at what is coming, and consider the judgment that everyone predicts — not only the godly, but the irreligious as well. Do not commit yourselves without inquiry to your fathers’ error, and do not suppose that what they taught you is true merely because they were in it themselves and handed it on to you. Look at the danger of so terrible a mistake, and ask and investigate carefully into the things that even your own teachers, as you say, speak about. For God’s regard for the human race forced them, unwilling as they were, to say many things for your sake — above all those of them who were in Egypt and profited from the godliness of Moses and his forefathers. I think that some of you, reading even carelessly in the history of Diodorus and in the others who wrote about these matters, cannot fail to see that Orpheus and Homer, and Solon who wrote the laws of the Athenians, and Pythagoras and Plato and some others, after they had been in Egypt and had made use of the history of Moses, went on to publish teachings about the gods quite the opposite of what they had wrongly put out before.

At any rate, we must remind you what Orpheus — who was, you might say, your first teacher of many gods — said at the last to his son Musaeus, and to the other hearers who had the right to hear, about the one and only God. He spoke this way: [n]

And again, somewhere else, he says:

And when he swears an oath he says:

What does he mean by “I call to witness the Father’s voice, the first thing he ever uttered”? It is the Word of God that he is here naming “the voice” — the Word by whom heaven and earth and the whole creation were made, as the divine prophecies of the holy men teach us. Orpheus himself gave some attention to those prophecies while he was in Egypt, and understood that all creation was made by the Word of God. That is why, after saying “I call to witness the Father’s voice, the first thing he ever uttered,” he adds this as well: “when by his own counsel he established the whole world.” Here he calls the Word “voice” for the sake of the poetic meter. And that this is so is plain from the fact that a little further on, where the meter allows him, he names it “Word.” For he said:

We must also mention what the ancient and exceedingly remote Sibyl — whom Plato and Aristophanes and others besides mention as a prophetess — taught you in her oracular verses about the one and only God. She speaks this way: [q]

Then elsewhere, this:

And again, somewhere else:

These are the Sibyl’s words.