Cornelius a Lapide, S.J.
(Preface and Praise of Sacred Scripture)
Section One
On its origin, dignity, object, necessity, fruit, breadth, difficulty, examples, method, and arrangement.
That famous Egyptian Theologian, nearly contemporary with Moses, Mercury, in the opinion of the Gentiles called Trismegistus, long pondering within himself by what method he might most fittingly describe the universe, at last burst forth with this: "The universe," he said, "is a book of divinity, and this dimly-lit age is a mirror of divine things." Indeed, from this book he had learned his own theology through long meditation. "For the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament announces the works of his hands;" and: "From the greatness of the beauty of creatures, their creator can be seen, and his eternal and invisible power and divinity;" so that in these great tablets of the heavens, in the pages of the elements and the volumes of time, one may, with a discerning eye, read openly, as it were, the doctrine of divine instruction: thus indeed from the very beginnings of the world and from the enterprise of creating it from nothing, we measure the omnipotent power and energy of its Author; from the manifold discordant yet variegated harmony of created things, his beneficent abyss; from that ample encompassing of all other spirits, bodies, motions, and times, the eternity and immensity of the Creator, and to some extent perceive them. Thus from the weight, number, and measure of these same things, one may admire and look up to the most wise providence of this great Architect, and the numerous and wondrously harmonious harmony and pattern of every nature in it, which both originally bound each part of this universe in fixed and entirely unmoved measures, both to itself and to any other comparable part in the most friendly manner, and preserves and protects this friendly bond unbreakably by its continuous influence, so that in steadfast faith they may harmoniously vary their courses. Eternal Wisdom herself, publicly proclaiming this about herself, says in Proverbs 8:22: "When he prepared the heavens, I was there; when he enclosed the depths with a fixed law and circle; when he made firm the sky above and weighed the springs of water; when he surrounded the sea with its boundary and set a law for the waters lest they cross their limits; when he laid the foundations of the earth, I was with him arranging all things," as if signifying that she had inscribed certain marks of herself in this composition.
2. But in truth, although this beautiful microcosm does reveal the archetype from which it was fashioned by its Author, namely the sacred divine power and the uncreated sphere of the most high divinity, and places it before our eyes, yet in many respects this book is imperfect, and supplies only rough elements, traces, I say, rather by which, as if from a claw you might recognize the lion, than a clear and complete description of its writer. Moreover, since it is written in the character of nature alone, it dictates nothing of those things which transcend the boundaries of nature, by which we may be advanced toward the heaven of the Holy Trinity and our eternal good, which we pursue with all our desires through life and death.
3. It therefore seemed good to the divine and boundless goodness — that is, to the most wise scribe, writing swiftly and with wondrous condescension — to employ another pen, to set before us other tablets, to depict far different characters of himself: which would insert not some mute likeness, but distinct voices for the eyes, sounds for the ears, meanings for the minds, and living images of divine things, by which he might describe both himself and the heavenly minds and all created things, and whatever leads us by the hand to living well and blessedly, as clearly as he would benevolently and wisely. This is what Moses, about to dictate the law of God to Israel, marveled at this, Deuteronomy 4:7: "Behold," he exclaims, "a wise and understanding people, a great nation; nor is there another nation so great that has gods drawing near to it: for what other nation is so renowned as to have ceremonies, and just judgments, and the entire law, which I shall set before your eyes today?"
Indeed, how wonderful it is to have always at hand the sacred books of divine Scripture — the very letters, I say, written by God to us, and the indubitable witnesses of the divine will — to read them again and again, to turn and turn them over? How sweet, how pious, how salutary, to be given a domestic oracle which you may consult, where you may hear not Apollo from his tripod, but God himself, speaking far more clearly and certainly than from the ancient ark and the Cherubim?
This is what St. Charles Borromeo was thinking when he used to read Sacred Scripture, as if they were the oracles of God, only with bare head, and bended knee, reverently reading.
For this reason there used to be two shrines in churches, placed on the right and left side of the apse: in one of which the sacred Eucharist was kept, and in the other the sacred volumes of divine Scripture. Whence St. Paulinus (as he himself attests in letter 42 to Severus) in the church at Nola which he had built, ordered these verses to be inscribed on the right:
Here is the place, the venerable storehouse where is kept, and where
Is placed the nourishing pomp of the sacred ministry;
and on the left these:
If anyone is held by a holy desire to meditate on the law,
Here he may sit and attend to the sacred books.
Thus even now the Jews in their synagogues store the law of Moses, as an oracle, magnificently in a tabernacle, just as we do the Sacred Eucharist, and display it publicly; they take care not to touch the Bible with unwashed hands; they kiss it whenever they open and close it; they do not sit on the bench on which the Bible rests; and if it falls to the ground, they fast for an entire day, which makes it all the more astonishing that these things are treated more negligently by some Christians.
St. Gregory, in Book IV, letter 84, rebukes Theodore, even though he was a physician, for negligently reading Sacred Scripture: "The Emperor of heaven, the Lord of angels and men, has sent his letters to you for your life, and you neglect to read them eagerly! For what is Sacred Scripture but a kind of letter from Almighty God to his creature?" Wherefore I shall discuss at somewhat greater length the Sacred Letters: first, their excellence, necessity, and fruit; second, their subject matter and breadth; third, their difficulty; fourth, I shall bring forward the judgments and examples of the Fathers on this matter; fifth, I shall show with what preparation of mind, and with what effort, this study should be undertaken.
Chapter I: On the Excellence, Necessity, and Fruit of Sacred Scripture
I. Philosophers teach that the principles of demonstrations and sciences must be known before those very sciences and demonstrations. For there is in the sciences, as in all other things, an order; and every truth is either primary and obvious to everyone, or flows from a primary truth through certain channels, which if you cut off, as if cutting the channels of a spring, you will have destroyed all the rivulets of truth that arise from it. Now Sacred Scripture contains all the beginnings of Theology. For Theology is nothing other than a science of conclusions drawn from principles certain by faith, and therefore it is the most august of all sciences, as well as the most certain: but the principles of faith and faith itself are contained in Sacred Scripture: whence it evidently follows that Sacred Scripture lays the foundations of Theology, from which the Theologian, by the reasoning of the mind, as a mother begets offspring, generates and brings forth new demonstrations. Therefore whoever thinks he can separate Scholastic theology from Sacred Scripture by serious study, imagines offspring without a mother, a house without foundations, and, like an earth suspended in mid-air,
This was seen by that divine Dionysius, whom all antiquity regarded as the summit of theologians and the "bird of heaven," who everywhere, when disputing about God and heavenly things, professes himself to proceed supported by Sacred Scripture as by a principle and a brilliant torch. Let one example stand for all, from the very opening of his work On the Divine Names, chapter 1, where he prefaces roughly thus: "By no reasoning," he says, "ought it be presumed to say or think anything about the super-substantial and most secret divinity, beyond what the sacred oracles have handed down to us: for the supreme and divine knowledge of that ignorance (of the divine mystery, that is) is to be ascribed to it, and it is lawful to aspire to higher things only insofar as the ray of the divine oracles deigns to insinuate itself, while other things are to be honored with chaste silence as ineffable: as for instance, that the primordial and fontal deity is the Father, and that the Son and the Holy Spirit are, so to speak, shoots planted divinely from the fruitful deity, and as it were flowers and super-substantial lights — this we have received from the sacred Scriptures. For that Mind is inaccessible to all substances, but from it, insofar as it pleases, with outstretched hand, we are carried upward by the sacred Letters to draw in those supreme splendors, and from these we are directed to divine hymns and fashioned for sacred praises." And again in the book On Mystical Theology, he teaches that spiritual and mystical Theology, which reaches the super-substantial hidden mystery and the darkness of God by transcending all created things through negation, without symbols, is narrow and so compressed as to end in silence: but symbolic theology, which, as God descends to our words in Scripture, presents his sensible figures to us, extends to a fitting breadth, and for this reason St. Bartholomew used to say that Theology is both very great and very small, and the Gospel both broad and large, and again concise: mystically, that is, and by ascending, small and concise; symbolically, and by descending, great and ample.
Indeed, if we were deprived of the symbolic, if in the sacred books God had given no images of himself and his attributes, how utterly speechless, how mute would all our Theology be! If Scripture had been silent about the Holy Trinity — one and the same monad and essence — would there not be a deep and perpetual silence among the Scholastics in such a vast subject, about relations, origin, generation, spiration, notions, persons, the Word, the image, love, gift, power, and notional act, and all the rest? If the divine oracles did not place our blessedness in the vision of God, which of the Theologians could, I will not say hope for it, but even catch its scent from afar? If the sacred prophets and the writers of the new testament had passed over in silence faith, hope, religion, martyrdom, virginity, and every other chain of virtues transcending nature and divine — who would have pursued them by ingenuity, who by desires and will? Surely, these things lay hidden from the ancient wise men, though endowed with an almost miraculous and prodigious power of understanding; the academy of Plato knew nothing of these things, here all the school of Pythagoras is silent, here Socrates, Pimander, Anaxagoras, Thales, and Aristotle are children. I pass over how the divine Letters treat more clearly and more certainly than any Ethics the virtues akin to nature, the law and the duties worthy of man insofar as he possesses reason, and the vices opposed to them, and the entire field of moral Philosophy — so that to them alone those praises of Cicero for Philosophy, or Ethics, most aptly apply, and they may rightly be called "the light of life, the teacher of morals, the medicine of the soul, the rule of right living, the nurse of justice, the torch of religion."
St. Justin, Philosopher and Martyr, learned this and experienced it to his great benefit. As he himself testifies at the beginning of his dialogue against Trypho, eager for Philosophy and that true wisdom which leads to God, he wandered in vain through the more illustrious sects of the Philosophers in a remarkable circuit, like an Odyssey of errors, until at last he found rest in the Christian Ethics of the Sacred Letters, as in the only solid ground. First he attached himself as a disciple to a certain Stoic, but since he heard nothing about God from him, he chose a Peripatetic master, whom he despised for hawking wisdom for a price; then he fell to a Pythagorean, but since he was neither an Astrologer nor a Geometer (which arts that teacher demanded as prerequisites for the blessed life), from this one he slipped to a Platonist, deceived by all of them with a vain and fleeting hope of wisdom; until unexpectedly he encountered a certain divine Philosopher, whether man or angel, who immediately persuaded him to renounce all that circular learning and read the books of the Prophets, whose authority was greater than any demonstration and whose wisdom was most wholesome — to sharpen upon these all his desire for knowledge. And that one departed and was not seen by him again, but so ardent a desire for this sacred study and the reading of the divine volumes was cast into him that, immediately bidding farewell to all other learning, he pursued this one alone most eagerly and followed it most constantly, with such abundant fruit that it brought forth for us Justin as both a Christian, and a Philosopher, and a Martyr. It is well worth our while to follow this same counsel of that divine Philosopher, if we desire to drink in and absorb the true sense of God and piety, Christian morals, and the spirit of a holy life.
For that opinion is deceptive which dazzles the mental acuity of many, namely that the Sacred Letters are to be learned not for oneself but only for others, so that you may play the teacher or the preacher — that is, so that you may cheat yourself of the good you seek for others, and like a hired laborer dig up or mine so noble a treasure not for yourself but for others. The divine oracles themselves do not think so: "We have," says Blessed Peter, First Epistle, chapter 1, verse 19, "the more sure prophetic word, to which you do well to attend as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts." It is fitting therefore that you first direct yourself to this torch, that you follow it, so that the morning star which has risen in your heart may then shine forth to others.
The Royal Psalmist calls blessed not the one who pours forth the words of God to others, but the one who meditates on his law day and night; such a one, he says, is like a tree planted beside running waters, which will yield its fruit in due season. For this end above all, God wished the sacred books to be written for us, and set forth his word to be a lamp to our feet and to give light to our paths, so that walking among these gardens of the most radiant delight — more than the gardens of Alcinous — we might be nourished by the most delightful sight of heavenly fruits and enjoy their taste. And indeed, just as in a paradise, among the verdant shoots of trees and flowers, or the gleaming faces of apples, it is inevitable that a passerby be refreshed at least by the fragrance and color; and just as we see that one who walks in the sun, even for pleasure, nevertheless grows warm and takes on a ruddy hue: so the minds, senses, counsels, desires, and character of those who religiously and constantly read, hear, and learn the divine Letters are necessarily tinged, as it were, with a certain color of divinity, and kindled with holy affections.
For who would not clothe himself in chaste purity of soul, when he hears the chaste words of the Lord, like silver tried in the fire, praising it with so many commendations and urging it with such great rewards? What heart is so cold as not to grow warm with charity, when it hears Paul burning with love, hurling fiery flames of divine love everywhere? Whose mind would not leap at the reading of heavenly goods in the Scriptures, so as to scorn and disdain these lowly goods? Who, with this hope of heavenly citizens, would not yearn to emulate their life in a human body, and to live as a man-angel? Who would not strengthen his manly breast for faith and piety against even the mightiest waves of evils, and seek a beautiful death through wounds, when he drinks in and receives with pricked-up ears and hearts these sacred trumpets sounding forth fortitude and constancy so sweetly and powerfully? Thus indeed the Maccabees, 1 Maccabees 12:9, having only the holy books for consolation, glory that they stand firm with unconquered virtue, impenetrable to all enemies. And the Apostle, arming the faithful for every hardship and trial, Romans 15:4: "Whatever things," he says, "were written, were written for our instruction, that through patience and the consolation of the Scriptures, we might have hope." Indeed, I know not what vital spirit the divine words breathe into readers by a hidden influence, so that if you compare them with the writings of the most learned and holiest men, however ardent, you would judge these to be lifeless and those to be living and breathing life.
A single voice of the Gospel was able — "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor" — to set ablaze the great Antony, then a young man renowned for his nobility and wealth, with such love of evangelical poverty that he immediately stripped himself of all those goods after which blind mortals so eagerly gape, and embraced a heavenly life on earth through monastic profession. So St. Athanasius writes in his Life. Divine Scripture was able to turn Victorinus, then a puffed-up Rhetorician of the city, from pagan superstition and pride to Christian faith and humility. The reading of Paul was able not only to join the heretic Augustine to the orthodox, but, having dragged him from the most foul abyss of daily lust, to drive and advance him to continence and chastity — not merely marital, I say, but religious, entirely celibate and untouched. See Confessions VIII, 11; VII, 21. A single reading of the Gospel was able — "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be consoled!" — to convert Simeon the Stylite immediately, and to advance him so far that he stood on one foot atop a pillar for eighty continuous years, that he devoted himself to prayer day and night, living almost without food or sleep, so that he seemed a marvel of the world, and not so much a man as an angel fallen into flesh. Why then, you ask, do we who so often read Sacred Scripture not feel these fervers, these transformations of life? Because we read them carelessly and with yawning, so that we may rightly apply that saying of St. Marcian in Theodoret's Philotheos, who, when asked by the Bishops to speak a word of salvation, said: God speaks to us daily through his creatures and through Sacred Scripture, and yet from these we derive little benefit: how then shall I, speaking to you, profit you, I who lose this benefit along with others?
Once that most mysterious of all prophets, Ezekiel, saw a great river flowing out from beneath the threshold of the house of the Lord, which he could not cross, "because the waters of the deep torrent had swollen," he says, "which cannot be forded: and when I turned, behold on the bank of the torrent on both sides were very many trees." But what were these? Surely all the Saints, both ancient and new, both of the law and of the Gospel, who, sitting beside the streams of the Evangelists, Apostles, and Prophets, like most beautiful trees are ever verdant, and abound in a pleasant and sweet profusion of every kind of fruit. For the same river nourishes and feeds both banks; the same, I say, Holy Spirit, the Author of Scripture, wove one and the same Scripture tending through different ages, and instilled vital sap into all the pious through both the new and old testament, if only we wish to draw it in.
Chapter II: On the Object and Breadth of Sacred Scripture
II. Now then, to take these matters up from a higher principle, let us see what and how great is the subject of Sacred Scripture, and what its matter. Do you wish me to say in a word that Sacred Scripture has for its object everything knowable, embraces all disciplines and whatever can be known in its bosom: and therefore it is a kind of university of sciences, containing all sciences either formally or eminently. Origen, commenting on chapter 1 of St. John, says: Divine Scripture is an intelligible world, constituted by its four parts, as by four elements; whose earth is, as it were, in the middle like a center, namely history; around which, in the likeness of waters, the abyss of moral understanding is poured; around history and ethics, as around two parts of this world, the air of natural science revolves; but beyond all and above, that ethereal and fiery ardor of the empyrean heaven, that is, the higher contemplation of the divine nature which they call Theology, is encompassed: thus Origen. From which in turn, just as you fit the historical sense to earth and the tropological to water, so rightly you may fit the allegorical to air, and the anagogical to fire and the ether.
But I further contend that Sacred Scripture, in its sense — not only the mystical, but even in the literal sense alone, which holds the first place and which above all must be pursued — embraces all knowledge and everything knowable.
To demonstrate this, I posit a threefold order of things, to which Philosophers and Theologians refer all things: the first is that of nature, or of natural things; the second, of supernatural things and grace; the third, of the divine essence with its attributes, both essential and notional. The first order of nature is investigated by Physics and other disciplines of natural philosophy; the second and third, in this life, by revealed doctrine, which pertains to faith and Theology; in the next life, by the vision of divinity, which blesses the Saints and Angels. Now St. Thomas teaches that Sacred Scripture treats even the first order of natural things, right at the very threshold of the Summa Theologica: for in article 1 of the first question, where he asks whether, besides philosophical disciplines, another doctrine is necessary, he answers with a twofold conclusion. The first is: "A certain doctrine revealed by God is necessary for human salvation beyond the philosophical disciplines," namely for knowing those things which exceed the intellect and natural powers of man; the second: "The same revealed doctrine is also necessary in those things which can be investigated by the natural light through philosophy." He adds the reason: because this truth is acquired through philosophy by few, over a long time, and with an admixture of many errors; therefore revealed doctrine is needed, which may direct, correct, and easily and certainly transmit philosophy to all.
An illustrious example is provided by the princes of the philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, who by remarkable ingenuity attained much indeed, but also left much so ambiguously, so obscurely, that the industry of Greek, Latin, and Arab commentators has labored in explaining them over many centuries. I pass over the errors, and fables, "but not like your law." This true and solid wisdom "has not been heard in Canaan, nor seen in Teman," says Baruch III, 22; "the sons of Hagar also, who seek the prudence that is of the earth, the merchants of Merrha and Teman, and the storytellers, and the seekers of prudence and understanding, have not known the way of wisdom, nor have they remembered its paths; but He who knows all things knows it, He who prepared the earth for all time, who sends forth light and it goes, this is our God, He found out every way of knowledge, and gave it to Jacob His servant, and to Israel His beloved, after this:" that is, so that He might teach this knowledge thoroughly, "He was seen upon the earth, and conversed with men."
You will ask, then, in what place Physics, Ethics, and Metaphysics are taught in Sacred Scripture? I say that Physics, even in its primeval form and from its very origin, is handed down in Genesis, in Ecclesiastes, in Job; Ethics, through the briefest maxims and sentences in Proverbs, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus; Metaphysics, especially in Job and in the Psalms, in which through hymns the power, wisdom, and immensity of God, together with His works — namely, the angels and all other things — are celebrated. History and Chronology from the very beginning of the world to nearly the times of Christ, you could not seek from any other source more certain, more delightful, or more varied than from Genesis, Exodus, the books of Joshua, Judges, Kings, Ezra, and Maccabees. That Sacred Scripture condemns sophistry, and employs solid argumentation and logic, St. Augustine teaches in Book II of On Christian Doctrine, chapter 31. Concerning the mathematical knowledge drawn from numbers, the same author teaches in Book III of On Christian Doctrine, chapter 35. Geometry is evident in the construction of the tabernacle and temple, both that of Solomon and that so wonderfully measured in Ezekiel. Rightly therefore did St. Augustine say at the end of Book II of On Christian Doctrine: "As much as the quantity of gold, silver, and clothing which the Hebrew people carried with them from Egypt is less than the riches they afterwards obtained in Jerusalem, especially under Solomon, so great is all knowledge, even useful knowledge, gathered from the books of the Gentiles, if it be compared with the knowledge of the divine Scriptures: for whatever a man has learned elsewhere, if it is harmful, it is condemned there; and when anyone has found there all the things he has usefully learned elsewhere, he will find far more abundantly there things which are found nowhere else at all, but are learned only in the wonderful height and wonderful humility of those Scriptures."
For all the liberal disciplines, all languages, all sciences and arts — which are each contained within certain limits — serve as handmaids to Sacred Scripture, as to their mistress and queen. But this sacred science encompasses all things, embraces the whole of reality, and claims for itself by right the use of all: so that, being as it were the most perfect of all, the end and goal of all, it should come last in the order of learning.
Thus, then, Sacred Scripture treats the first order of things — that is, the order of nature — especially insofar as it touches upon God and God's attributes, the immortality and freedom of the soul, punishments, rewards, and all created things, more certainly and solidly than the natural sciences pursue them, and leads those sciences back to the right path wherever they stray.
Indeed, the grossest errors of Plato are eight in number: for example, that Plato teaches that God is corporeal; that God is the soul of the world, which mingles itself with His great body; that some gods are younger and lesser; that souls pre-existed the body, and in the body as in a prison expiate the crimes of a former life; that our knowledge is merely recollection; that in the Republic wives ought to be held in common; that falsehood should sometimes be used as a remedy like hellebore; that there will be a revolution of men, animals, ages, and all things, so that after ten thousand years the same people will sit here as students, teachers, and listeners: thus there will be a return and rebirth of souls, as it says:
"When they have turned the wheel through a thousand years,
They begin again to wish to return into bodies."
Moreover, as Pythagoras held from the same source, souls migrate from body to body, now of a man, now of a beast; whence he used to say of himself: I myself, I remember — who would not believe it? He himself said it! — of those admitted as spectators, could you contain your laughter? —
"I myself, I remember, in the time of the Trojan war,
I was Euphorbus son of Panthous, in whose breast once
The heavy spear of the younger son of Atreus lodged."
Is not the well-known Hebrew adage most true here: ascher ric core lemore lo omen lebore, that is, 'He who easily and rashly trusts a teacher, distrusts the Creator'?
But Aristotle — in whose genius nature displayed the utmost extent of her power, as Averroes says — fixes the First Mover to the East; asserts that He moves by fate and natural necessity; that this world is eternal; that there is no determinate truth of future contingents; that God does not know them determinately; and as for the immortality of the soul, God's providence over men and things beneath the moon, future punishments and rewards, he either flatly denies them or so obscures them that, like a cuttlefish wrapped in its own coils, they cannot be recognized or unraveled — and for this reason he was called and regarded by many as the butcher of intellects, on account of his affected obscurity.
Seeing through these shadows of natural light, Democritus and Empedocles straightforwardly confessed that nothing can truly be known by us. Socrates used to say that he knew only this: that he knew nothing; Arcesilas, that not even this could be known; Anaxagoras with his followers held that all our knowledge is mere opinion, that things only seem so to us — indeed, that it cannot be known for certain whether snow is white, but only that it seems so to us — for all the senses can be deceived, just as sight, the most certain of all, is deceived when it sees the neck of a dove, on account of refracted rays of light, variegated with heavenly colors, when in reality no such colors exist in the dove.
In this night, therefore, of our dimmed vision, in this sea and abyss, we need the lantern of revealed doctrine as a lighthouse. "Your word is a lamp to my feet," says the royal Psalmist, Psalm 118:105, "and a light to my paths: the wicked told me fables, but not like your law."
8. As for the second order, that of grace, and the third, that of divinity, everyone sees with St. Thomas that these were unknown to the philosophers (since they transcend the light of nature), and cannot be known without God's revelation, without the Word of God. Do you see, then, how Sacred Scripture encompasses all orders of things, insinuates itself into all, and like a sun of wisdom diffuses from itself the rays of all truth?
Aristotle, or whoever is the author, in his book On the World, asking what God is, says: "God is in the world what the helmsman is in a ship, the charioteer in a chariot, the choirmaster in a choir, the law in a state, the commander in an army" — except that in those cases the authority is laborious, troubled, and anxious; in God it is most easy, most free, and most orderly.
You would say the same of Sacred Scripture, which is the guide, law, ruler, and moderator of all other sciences. Indeed, Empedocles, when asked what God is, replied: God is an incomprehensible sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. Thus, to one asking what Sacred Scripture is, you would rightly say: It is an incomprehensible sphere of learning whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere — for Sacred Scripture is the Word of God. Therefore, just as the word of our mind reflects the mind itself and all its ideas, so Sacred Scripture, being the Word of the divine mind, unique in itself and, as it were, commensurate with the divine intellect and knowledge (by which God sees Himself and all things, natural and supernatural, in a single glance of His mind), expresses many and various things, so as to gradually instill in the narrow confines of our minds — which cannot grasp that single, immeasurably vast reality — the whole, but piecemeal as it were to children, through various sentences, examples, and analogies.
And then from this as from a sea, the Scholastics draw forth the streams of theological conclusions. Take Sacred Scripture away from Scholastic theology, and you will produce not theology, but philosophy; you will be a philosopher, not a theologian. Join the two, intertwined with each other, and you will earn every mark of both theologian and philosopher.
9. Thus those things which are treated in the First Part concerning God's essence and attributes, predestination, the angels, man, and the work of the six days (all of which clearly derives from Genesis chapter 1) by St. Thomas and the Scholastics, have been drawn and derived from what we have learned through the revelation of Sacred Scripture. Therefore St. Dionysius, with finger pointing to the sources, opens his Celestial Hierarchy thus: "Let us proceed with all our strength to understand the Sacred Scriptures, as we have received them from the Fathers, to be contemplated, and let us speculate, insofar as we can, on the distinctions and orders of the heavenly spirits, which they have handed down to us either through signs or through the mysteries of a more sacred understanding." For if the Sacred Scriptures did not portray the angels for us, what Apelles, what eye, what keenness of investigation could have traced their outlines?
The same is the opinion of St. Clement, the companion and disciple of blessed Peter, in Epistle 5.
What is treated in the Third Part concerning the Incarnation has all been drawn from the four Gospels, which narrate the life of Christ; what concerns the old Sacraments, from Leviticus; what concerns the Sacraments of the new law, from the New Testament in various places. What is treated in the Prima Secundae concerning beatitude, human acts, freedom, the voluntary, the passions, original sin, venial and mortal sin, grace, merits, and demerits — from where, I ask, do these derive if not from the revelation of God? What is disputed in the Secunda Secundae concerning faith, hope, and charity rests so entirely on Sacred Scripture that the whole understanding of them is referred to these three, says St. Augustine, Book II of On Christian Doctrine, chapter 40. "For the end of the commandment," says the Apostle, "is charity from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and an unfeigned faith." "Unfeigned faith" — there you have sincere faith; "a good conscience" — there you have hope, for a good conscience hopes and a bad one despairs; "charity from a pure heart" — there you have charity.
What the theologians teach concerning justice, fortitude, prudence, temperance, and the virtues connected with these, Moses too covers in Exodus and Deuteronomy with his judicial precepts, by which he renders justice to each person; as does Solomon in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Wisdom; and Ecclesiasticus embraces these topics as well — whence it was called Panaretos, as if you were to say, 'all virtue.'
For Sacred Scripture has been so harmoniously woven together by the Holy Spirit that it adapts itself to all places, times, persons, difficulties, dangers, diseases, to driving out evils, summoning good things, destroying errors, establishing dogmas, implanting virtues, and repelling vices; so that St. Basil rightly compares it to a most fully stocked workshop, which supplies medicines of every kind for every disease. Thus, from Scripture the Church drew her constancy and fortitude when the times were those of Martyrs; the lights of wisdom and the rivers of eloquence when the times were those of the Doctors; the bulwarks of faith and the overthrow of errors when the times were those of heretics; in prosperity, from it she learned humility and modesty; in adversity, magnanimity; in lukewarmness, fervor and diligence; and finally, whenever over the course of so many passing years she was disfigured by age, stains, and blemishes, from this source she obtained the restoration of her lost morals and a return to her original dignity and state.
Thus St. Bernard, on those words of Christ, 'If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven,' says: "These are the words that persuaded the whole world to contempt of the world and voluntary poverty; these are the words that fill the cloisters for monks and the deserts for hermits."
So too the holy Council of Trent begins the reform of the Church from Sacred Scripture, and in its entire first decree On Reform, prescribes as carefully as it does at length that the reading of Sacred Scripture be either established or restored everywhere.
10. How useful, indeed how necessary, this very discipline of Sacred Scripture is for those who do not live for themselves alone, but share a part of their life for the benefit of others — and especially for those who hold sacred teaching chairs — the fact speaks for itself even without my saying so, and the universal custom of all churchmen confirms it. And this is no recent development: whoever examines the ancients will perceive a far fuller knowledge of the sacred writings in those early times, and so abundant that often their entire discourse seems not so much interspersed with Scripture as woven together by it in a kind of elegant chain; nor will he marvel if he reads that Origens, Anthonys, and Vincents were called oracles, temples, and arks of the testament.
St. Gregory splendidly explains, in the 18th book of the Moralia, chapter 14, that passage from Job, 'Silver has the beginnings of its veins': "Silver," he says, "is the brightness of speech or of wisdom; the veins are Sacred Scripture, as if to say plainly: He who prepares himself for the words of true preaching must draw the origins of his arguments from the sacred pages; so that he may trace back everything he says to the foundation of divine authority, and build the edifice of his speech firmly upon it."
And St. Augustine, writing to Volusian: "Here depraved minds are wholesomely corrected, small minds are nourished, and great minds are delighted; that soul is the enemy of this teaching which either through error does not know it to be most salutary, or, being sick, hates the medicine."
It is therefore rightly to be lamented that even in our own age we see what St. Jerome in the Helmeted Prologue reproaches the men of his century with: that while in all other arts men are accustomed to learn before they teach, in Sacred Scripture most people want to teach what they have never learned. "The art of the Scriptures alone," he says, "is one that everyone everywhere claims for themselves, and when they have soothed the people's ears with polished speech, whatever they have said, they consider it to be the law of God; nor do they deign to know what the Prophets and Apostles meant, but they fit incongruous testimonies to their own meaning — as if it were a great thing, and not the most vicious kind of teaching, to twist the meaning and drag Scripture, resisting, to suit their own will."
Indeed, many are seized by the incurable itch to teach and few by the love of learning, and that love is small: whence it happens that they bend Scripture like wax in every direction, transform it into every shape by a marvelous metamorphosis, and like gamblers with the divine words play with it as the lot falls, often doing it violence, and twisting into alien senses — against the most weighty decrees of the holy Fathers, the Canons, the Councils, and especially the Council of Trent — what in the case of Virgil the poets would not have tolerated. But whence does all this come? I believe, from a certain yawning and all-too-common laziness: they have learned their letters amiss, it pains them to learn diligently what they should teach, and their very sloth spreads darkness over their minds, so that they consider Sacred Scripture easy and accessible to anyone by his own unaided talent, and they think they know what they do not know, and do not know that they do not know. This is the root of all the evil that must be torn out — a contagion that, creeping far and wide, has infected many and spread itself most broadly.
Chapter III: On the Difficulty of Sacred Scripture
21. III. Let us now examine, as was proposed in the third place, how easy the divine books are. And to state briefly at the outset what I think and what I strive to demonstrate: I maintain that Sacred Scripture is far more difficult to understand than all profane writings — Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and any others. Whether this is so, let us see.
Sacred Scripture surpasses all others, by universal consensus, in many respects, but particularly in this: that while other writings express only one meaning in a single phrase, this one expresses at least four meanings. For it has significance not only of words but also of the things signified by them; whence it follows that the literal sense conveys the understanding of the historical event or thing immediately expressed by the sacred words; but this same history or event additionally, in the allegorical sense, portends something prophetic about Christ the Lord; in the tropological sense, recommends something suited to the formation of morals; and rising still higher in a third way, through anagogy proposes the heavenly Mysteries to be contemplated in enigma.
And from these you can scarcely attain even one genuine sense; how then will you so easily and rashly promise the other three?
But, you will say, the historical sense predominates; I seek only this one, and I gather and measure it sufficiently from Scholastic principles; as for the symbolic sense, which is uncertain and which anyone could easily fabricate, I do not trouble myself anxiously about it. But beware, lest like that Neoptolemus of Ennius, who "said he wanted to philosophize, but only a little, for on the whole it did not please him," you play the theologian only in name or on the surface.
For in the first place, as regards the mystical sense — that this is the principal sense of Scripture, the entire Old Testament proclaims, which most directly narrates the deeds of that time, or things to be done, but above all signifies Christ everywhere symbolically. The same judgment applies to the other senses.
And just as Jonathan in 1 Kings chapter 20, to consider this matter by a familiar example, was about to secretly give David a signal to flee: by shooting an arrow according to their agreement and ordering the boy who was to collect it to go farther ahead, he signified two things — the first immediately, that the boy should pick up the arrow; the second more remotely, but which he wished far more to convey, namely that David, warned by this signal, should take to flight. Just so it is in this case: the historical sense of Scripture is the prior one, but the mystical is the more important; and from this latter, as from the former, the theologian may draw the strongest argument for establishing his doctrine, provided it is certain that it is the genuine sense, just as Christ the Lord and the Apostles very often draw most effective conclusions from it. But if it is not certain, but ambiguous, whether the mystical sense of a given passage is the true one — what wonder if from a doubtful premise a doubtful conclusion is drawn? For even from the historical sense that clings to the letter, if it is uncertain and doubtful, you will never produce anything certain.
22. Furthermore, to hold that the spiritual senses are mere fabrications, and that anyone can by his own invention adapt them to any passage — as if someone were to imitate Proba Falconia (who was the Latin Sappho) in adapting Virgil's Aeneid, or the Empress Eudocia in adapting Homer's Iliad, to Christ, and were to accommodate Sacred Scripture to his own pious invention — this is a pernicious opinion to hold, and more dangerous still to put into practice.
For if the mystical sense is a true sense of Scripture, if the Holy Spirit most particularly wished to dictate it, by what right will it be free for anyone to interpret it as he pleases? With what effrontery will anyone call the invention of his own brain the mind of the Holy Spirit, and peddle himself and his wares like a fanatic of the Holy Spirit?
Those of the Fathers who were most engaged with allegory saw this and guarded against it carefully; filled with the same Spirit, they did not rashly impose it wherever it seemed to smile upon them, or to bolster their own ideas, nor did they, as the saying goes, clumsily fit a shin-guard to the forehead or a helmet to the leg; but they so bound it to the reality that it agreed fittingly in all respects.
For just as in the historical sense the words denote the events that took place, so in the allegorical sense, the events signify other, more hidden realities: so that unless the allegory corresponds to the history, it is altogether false and empty. For this reason, St. Jerome, writing on Hosea chapter 10, teaches that to apply tropologically to Christ what is commonly said of the king of Assyria — which he himself had once imprudently done — is impious; and in his prologue to Obadiah, he rebukes himself for having once explained that prophet allegorically without yet having grasped his historical meaning.
23. But as for the historical sense, even if that alone were to suffice for you, how many and how great are the aids required? How often is it hidden! How deeply concealed in the Hebrew or Greek manner of expression, in a style of speech that is new and different from all others! How loftily it often soars to the greatest heights!
Nor is this surprising. For if the words of the wise express the thoughts of a wise mind, and speech corresponds to the conception of the mind, then where this conception is heavenly and divine, how necessarily must the expression likewise be heavenly and divine? No one doubts that the sacred books encompass in their words the thoughts of the Holy Spirit and the wisdom of the eternal Word: so that one must not creep along the ground, but raise oneself aloft, if one wishes to soar through these divine utterances to the divine thoughts and the First Truth.
I freely acknowledge that the Scholastic Doctors draw many things subtly from the Scriptures and discuss them at various points; but they set for themselves their own boundaries in theological questions, which abundantly supply them with the matter and work most useful and indeed necessary for a theologian, so that they have no opportunity to pursue anything else professionally — just as one who elucidates Sacred Scripture occasionally unfolds more carefully the theological conclusions wrapped within sacred passages, but, so as not to go beyond his last, immediately retreats to his own domain.
But it is one thing to sample something, quite another to weave together the same material in a certain and continuous order; one thing to examine some particular sentence, another to unfold an entire volume and all its passages with a diligent and exact investigation of what precedes and follows, with research into the Hebrew and Greek sources, and with reading of the holy Fathers, to absorb its idiom and move about in it as in one's own home. Whoever neglects this, content with certain more difficult passages selected and explained here and there, will never penetrate to the sacred inner sanctum — that is, to the hidden meaning of the holy words — but will also easily stray from the truth and the mind of the author.
This can be seen in certain older writers, men not otherwise unlearned, who in theological matters sometimes so carelessly seize upon and misuse some sacred axiom that they provoke laughter from our heretics and bile from Catholics.
24. St. Gregory splendidly advises the reader in his preface to the Books of Kings that he sometimes explains the history differently from the way the Fathers did: for, he says, if they were to expound in sequence everything they touched upon in part, they could by no means have maintained the continuity of expression they appeared to follow. Many things, of course, are inserted, precede, or follow that must be compared with the passage you are treating; the manner of sacred expression must be investigated in other passages as well, and the idiom must be examined. If these do not cohere with the interpretation, by no means is that the genuine meaning of the passage, by no means is that the force, power, and significance of the discourse: so that you may often be in doubt which is the greater — the obscurity of the thing itself or of the expression.
I pass over in silence the varied and, as it were, all-encompassing breadth of the subject matter: for what is there in the entire Old and New Testament that is not treated or touched upon?
25. As an example, in order to understand the books of Kings, Maccabees, Ezra, Daniel, and the other Prophets, how much Gentile history of various kinds must be known! How many monarchies — of the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Greeks, and Romans — must be thoroughly learned! How many customs of nations, rites of treaties, wars, sacrifices, and marriages must be investigated! How many sites of cities, rivers, mountains, and regions from the most ancient universal chorography and cosmography must be explored!
Chapter IV: The Judgments and Examples of the Fathers
IV. But lest any scruple remain on this point, come, let us trace the matter from its very origin and see how in every age, the difficulty no less than the dignity of Sacred Scripture both sharpened reverence for it and kindled the zeal of the Saints.
Among the Hebrews there is a widely received tradition, to which from our own writers St. Hilary on Psalm 2 and Origen in Homily 5 on Numbers lend their support, that Moses received on Mount Sinai from God not only the law but also the explanation of the law, and that he was commanded to write down the law, but to reveal its hidden mysteries and meanings to Joshua, and Joshua to the priests, and they in turn to their successors in office, with the strict seal of secrecy.
Hence Anatolius, cited by Eusebius in Book VII of his History, chapter 28, reports that the Seventy Translators answered the many questions of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, from the traditions of Moses. And Ezra, or whoever is the author of 4 Ezra (which, though not canonical, has its authority confirmed by being appended to the canonical books), in chapter 14, relates the command given to Moses: "These words you shall publish openly, and these you shall keep hidden." To himself likewise — that is, to Ezra — after he had dictated 204 books by the inspiration of God, a similar command was given: "The former writings which you wrote," he says, "put them in the open, and let both the worthy and the unworthy read them; but the last seventy you shall preserve, so that you may hand them over to the wise men of your people; for in them is the spring of understanding, and the fountain of wisdom, and the river of knowledge — and so I did."
For this reason Moses repeatedly — especially in Deuteronomy — directed that every doubtful and difficult question of the people concerning the law should be referred to the priests; for, as Malachi 2:7 says: "The lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law (that is, the doubtful points of the law about which there is question, says St. Bernard) from his mouth." For this reason too, when the Lord in Leviticus enjoined study upon the priests, He addresses them in chapter 10 with these words: "That you may have the knowledge to distinguish between holy and profane, between polluted and clean, and that you may teach the children of Israel all my statutes, which the Lord spoke to them through the hand of Moses." And so that he might remind the high priest of this duty above all, God wished him to wear on the breastplate of his pontifical vestments 'doctrine and truth,' or as it is in Hebrew, urim vetummim — 'illumination and integrity' — the two glories of the priestly life, marked with certain symbols, to be carried and always kept before his eyes. But let us press onward.
26. The royal Prophet, a great part of the sacred writers — that divine instrument of the Holy Spirit, I say — recognizing those sublime and hidden shadows even within those very writings, prays with ever fresh words in Psalm 118: "Unveil my eyes, and I shall contemplate the wonders of your law," where the Hebrew reads, gal enai veabbita — 'roll away from my eyes (the veil of darkness, that is), and I shall clearly behold the wonders of your law.' "If so great a prophet," says St. Jerome to Paulinus, "confesses the darkness of his ignorance, with what night of ignorance do you think we, who are little ones and virtually still infants, are surrounded? And this veil is placed not only on the face of Moses, but also on the Evangelists and Apostles; and unless all the things that are written are opened by Him who has the key of David, who opens and no one shuts, who shuts and no one opens, they will be disclosed by no one else."
Jeremiah hears in chapter 1: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you came forth from the womb, I sanctified you, and I made you a prophet to the nations;" and yet he exclaims: "Ah, ah, ah, Lord God, behold I do not know how to speak, for I am a child."
Isaiah, in chapter 6, beheld a Seraph flying toward him, and with a burning coal opening his mouth for prophesying.
Ezekiel, in chapter 2, having beheld the form of the four-faced creature and the glory of the Lord, falls prostrate on his face, and once raised by the spirit, keeps silent until his mouth is likewise opened.
Daniel, in chapter 7 verse 8, keeps the word of God in his heart, but is troubled in his thoughts, and his countenance is changed, and he is astonished at the vision because there is no interpreter. And shall we promise ourselves an easier understanding of those same prophecies, parables, riddles, and symbols than their very authors possessed, or a more eloquent facility in expounding them, as if it were natural and inborn in us?
27. In a very different spirit, Ecclesiasticus, depicting the wise man, requires of him untiring study joined with devout prayer: "The wise man will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients, and will be occupied in the Prophets (or, as the Greek source has it, 'in the prophecies'); he will preserve the discourse (in Greek diegesis — the narration, the exposition) of famous men, and will enter into the subtleties and keenness of parables; he will search out the hidden meanings of proverbs, and will dwell among the secrets of parables; he will open his mouth in prayer, and will make supplication for his sins. For if the great Lord wills it, He will fill him with the spirit of understanding, and he will pour forth the words of his wisdom like showers of rain, he will make known the discipline of his teaching, and he will glory in the law of the Lord's covenant."
The ancient Rabbis of the Jews were wholly devoted to Sacred Scripture; and from this they were called sopherim, grammateis, and Scribes. After Christ, moreover, no one is unaware that the Rabbis of the Hebrews occupy themselves with nothing other than Sacred Scripture and are ignorant of everything else.
Well known is the story of the Rabbi who, when asked by a grandson eager for knowledge whether he might or would advise him to devote himself also to Greek authors, ironically replied that he might — provided he did so neither by day nor by night: for it is written that one must meditate on the law of the Lord day and night.
28. Let us pass to the new instrument of the new covenant: St. Peter, having mentioned the epistles of St. Paul, adds that in them there are certain things "difficult to understand, which the unlearned and the unstable distort, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction" (2 Peter 3); and earlier in chapter 1: "No prophecy of Scripture is made by private interpretation; for prophecy was not brought at any time by the will of man, but the holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Spirit."
His brother in office and in the laurel of martyrdom, St. Paul, attributes the ability not to natural powers of intellect but to the distributions of graces of the same Spirit, that "to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge, to another faith, to another the grace of healing, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another kinds of tongues, to another finally the interpretation of speeches" (1 Corinthians 12), and that God therefore placed in the Church some as Apostles, others as Prophets, others as Teachers. Elsewhere he boasts of having been taught the law at the feet of Gamaliel; elsewhere he admonishes Pastors and Bishops to show themselves as workers who need not be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth, that they may be able to exhort in sound doctrine and to convict those who contradict. But why do we delay?
29. Let us hear Christ: "Search the Scriptures," He says. Indeed, Christ sealed this gift, along with the power of wonder-working and of miracles of every kind, in His testament to His Church, when, about to ascend into heaven and bidding farewell to the Apostles, He opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures.
With this plan, in that very age, St. Mark instituted this Christian study of the sacred Letters at Alexandria. One may see in Philo the Jew, an eyewitness, in his book On the Contemplative Life, and in Eusebius, book 14 of his History of the Essenes, how diligently the Essenes — the first, I say, of those Alexandrian Christians — from dawn to night spent the entire day in reading, listening to, and searching out the more sublime allegorical senses from the commentaries of their fathers in the sacred volumes. From that time the beginnings of the Alexandrian school were laid, which afterwards grew and marvelously increased by degrees, and in the following centuries produced hosts of Martyrs, a distinguished chorus of Doctors and Prelates, and lights of the world; and that we may measure the rest from one example and see how eagerly and tirelessly they ran the course of divine eloquence, regarding Origen, Eusebius attests that from boyhood he had begun this practice, and was accustomed to render and recite to his father each day several sacred sayings from memory, as a daily lesson, and not content with these, he began also to investigate and inquire into the deepest meanings and senses of them. And when he had grown older and been given a teaching chair, pursuing his undertaking day and night, for this one reason he thoroughly learned the Hebrew language, and collected from across the whole world the versions of various translators, and was the first by a new example to compose with immense labor the Hexapla and Octapla, and to illuminate them with scholia.
Following them in the East was likewise that golden pair of Doctors of Greece, Basil and Gregory the Theologian, who fleeing to the solitude, quiet, and leisure of a monastery, for thirteen full years, setting aside all the books of secular Greeks, devoted themselves solely to divine Scripture, and "the divine volumes," says Rufinus, book XI of his History, chapter IX, "they studied through commentary not from their own presumption, but from the writings and authority of the elders, whom they knew had likewise received from apostolic succession the rule of interpretation." Was it then fitting for such great men, endowed with such wisdom, genius, and eloquence, to spend so many years in the rudiments of sacred Scripture; yet for us sacred Letters are considered so easy that we grow weary of devoting three or four years to them, or if more are needed, we reckon that we have entirely wasted our oil and effort?
A contemporary of St. Basil was St. Ephrem the Syrian, and how studious he was of sacred Scripture his writings attest.
Regarding the schools of sacred Scripture established at Nisibis in the time of the Emperor Justinian, the witness is Junilius Africanus, a bishop, in his book to Primasius. The same schools under the same Emperor, Agapetus the Pontiff endeavored to introduce at Rome, as Cassiodorus narrates in the preface to his book of Divine Readings: "I strove," he says, "together with the most blessed Agapetus of the city of Rome, that, just as the institution is reported to have long existed at Alexandria, and is now said to be diligently practiced at the city of Nisibis among the Syrian Hebrews, so by pooling resources in the city of Rome, accredited Doctors might rather be received into a Christian school, whence the soul might receive eternal salvation, and the tongue of the faithful might be nourished with chaste and most pure eloquence."
Thus St. Dionysius, the disciple of the Apostle Paul, and Clement, the disciple of St. Peter, teach that the Scriptures were handed down to them, so that they too might teach them to their own disciples, and transmit them to posterity in a continuous succession received by hand.
Among the Latins, the first to be rightly reckoned is St. Jerome, the phoenix of his age, who so entirely devoted himself here that in these Letters he grew old to extreme white-haired age, and bequeathed to the Church a Latin version of the Bible from the Hebrew, which therefore designates him as the greatest Doctor in expounding the sacred Scriptures. Famous too is that saying of St. Jerome: "Let us learn on earth those things whose knowledge will abide with us in heaven;" and: "Study as if you will always live; live as if you will always die." For this reason he thoroughly learned Hebrew, just as Cato learned Greek letters in old age; for this reason he went to Bethlehem and the holy places; for this reason he had read all the ancient Greek and Latin commentators, as St. Augustine attests, and he sets forth in the prologues of nearly all his commentaries which of them he intends to follow; and he sternly censures those who, without the grace of God and the teaching of their elders, claim knowledge of the Scriptures for themselves.
Moreover, St. Augustine, who had that sharpness of genius by which he had mastered Aristotle's Categories by himself, and was accustomed to grasp whatever he read immediately upon reading it; yet soon after his conversion, at the urging of St. Ambrose, book IX of the Confessions, chapter 5, taking in hand Isaiah the prophet, immediately frightened by the depth of his utterances, and not understanding his first reading of it, he drew back and deferred him until he should be more practiced in the Lord's words. And indeed much later, writing to Volusian, Epistle 1: "So great," he says, "is the profundity of Christian letters, that I would make progress in them daily, if I were to attempt to learn them alone from the beginning of life (note these words) all the way to decrepit old age, with the greatest leisure, the highest zeal, and a better mind. For beyond faith, so many things, shrouded in such manifold shadows of mysteries, remain to be understood by those advancing, and such a depth of wisdom lies hidden not only in the words but also in the things themselves, that to the most aged, the most acute, and those most burning with desire to learn, this happens which the same Scripture has in a certain place: When a man has finished, then he begins."
The difficulty is increased by the Hebrew and Greek idioms scattered everywhere, for understanding which the knowledge of both languages is necessary, as St. Augustine teaches, book II of On Christian Doctrine, chapter 10. For what is written is not understood for two reasons: if it is covered over by either unknown or ambiguous signs or words. Neither is rare in any translation by which something is transferred from one language into another. Moreover, "against unknown signs," says Augustine, chapters 11 and 13, "a great remedy is the knowledge of languages." For there are certain words which cannot pass into the usage of another language through translation; and however learned the translator may be, lest he stray far from the author's meaning, what the actual thought is does not appear unless it is examined in the language from which it is translated. Among other examples he offers this one: "Bastard slips shall not take deep root" (Wisdom 4:3); for the translator uses a Greek construction, and derives, as it were, from moschos (calf) the word moschevmata, that is, from "calf" the word "calf-slips"; but mischevmata are actually shoots or propagations, new sprigs cut from a tree and planted in the ground. Indeed how much the Latin sacred codices abound in Hebrew and Greek idioms is clearer than light, so that not without reason the same Augustine, II Retractations 5, 54, recalls that he collected in seven booklets, which still survive, the forms of phrases of sacred Scripture. This was later imitated by Eucherius of Lyon in his book On Spiritual Forms, and after him by several others in this very century as well.
St. Chrysostom agrees with St. Augustine, when writing on Genesis, homily 21, he does not hesitate to assert that there is not a syllable, not even a single stroke in the sacred Letters, in whose depths some great treasure does not lie hidden; and therefore that we need divine grace, and that, illumined by the Holy Spirit, we may approach the divine utterances.
Gregory the Great, both Pontiff and Doctor, ventures further: for commenting on Ezekiel, he acknowledges so many and such hidden mysteries in the sacred volumes, that he declares certain things not yet revealed to mortals lie open only to heavenly spirits.
Shall we then marvel that Gregory, Augustine, Ambrose, Eusebius, Origen, Jerome, Cyril, and the whole chorus of holy Fathers, labored so intensely over the sacred books night and day? Shall we marvel that they grew old as leaders and champions in this discipline, and that they made no other end to these studies than the end of their lives? Shall we marvel that Jerome studied under Gregory Nazianzen and Didymus, Ambrose under Basil, Augustine under Ambrose, Chrysostom under Eusebius, and others under their own teachers? Shall we marvel that from the very birth of the Church schools of sacred Letters were established? For regarding the Alexandrian school, the parent of so many Doctors and Prelates, no one doubts; regarding the rest, the writings of the Fathers sufficiently prove it, which, composed over many centuries before Theology was taught in the scholastic method, are occupied almost entirely with this subject, with this one matter.
At Constantinople there was once a celebrated monastery which took the name of Studios from its founder and from its study of sacred Letters and a more perfect life. St. Plato presided over it; after him Theodore the Studite, around the year of the Lord 800, left so many monuments of his genius and piety from the sacred Letters, occupying his disciples in copying them in the manner of the ancient monks; and both absent and present, contending in strong combat and duel with the Iconoclast Emperors Constantine Copronymus and Leo the Isaurian, he slew the heresy and consecrated the palm-bearing trophies of the holy faith to eternal memory.
From England, hear Venerable Bede in his English History: "I," he says, "entered the monastery at the age of seven, and there I devoted all my effort to meditating on the Scriptures for my whole life, and amid the observance of regular discipline and the daily care of singing in the church, I always found it sweet either to learn, or to teach, or to write." Hence Bede's commentaries survive on nearly all the books of sacred Scripture, and indeed not even sickness stopped him; nay rather, in his final illness he labored on the Gospel of St. John, and nearly at the point of death, in order to finish it, he called for a scribe: "Take," he said, "the pen, and write quickly," and at last: "It is well finished," he said; and singing his swan song: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit," he most peacefully breathed forth his spirit, to be blessed with the vision of God in reward for his labor for the faith, in the year from the Virgin's delivery 731.
A contemporary of Venerable Bede was Albinus, or Alcuin Flaccus, who was either the teacher or rather the close companion of Charlemagne. He publicly taught the sacred Letters at York in England; whence St. Ludger came from Frisia to York to hear him, and profited so much that upon returning to his own people, he earned the name of apostle of the Frisians. The Annals of Frisia and the author of the Life of St. Ludger are witnesses to this.
Among the Belgians, St. Boniface together with his companions, spreading the law of Christ, continually carried with him a codex of the holy Gospel, so much so that he did not let it go even in martyrdom; indeed when in the year of the Lord 755 the Frisians swung a sword at his head, he held up this codex as a spiritual shield, and by a remarkable miracle, although the book was cut through the middle by the sharp sword, nevertheless not a single letter was destroyed by that cut.
Among the Franks, King and Emperor Charlemagne, or rather thrice-greatest — in learning, piety, and military glory — established schools of sacred Letters both elsewhere and at Paris (so ancient is this academy, which is the mother of Cologne and the grandmother of Louvain). Indeed Charlemagne himself, as Einhard says in his Life, most diligently corrected the discipline of reading and chanting. So devoted was he to the sacred Letters that he died over them. Teganus in the Life of Louis attests that Charlemagne near death, having crowned his son Louis at Aachen, gave himself entirely to prayers, almsgiving, and the sacred Letters — namely, he splendidly corrected the four Gospels against the Greek and Syriac texts while nearly at the point of death. Rightly therefore Charlemagne's codex is reverently preserved at Aachen, as I myself have seen.
Therefore what was decreed at the Lateran Council under Innocent III concerning the chair of sacred Letters is to be regarded not as a new decree, but as one renewing and confirming an ancient custom. In the same way, the Tridentine Synod took care, lest that custom should waver anywhere, so that in Session V it would thoroughly decree and sanction regarding the reading of sacred Scripture, and ordain that in all assemblies of Canons, of Monks also and Regulars, and in all public academies the same should be established, endowed, and promoted; and that both teachers and students, adorned with ecclesiastical benefices, might enjoy in absence the receipt of revenues granted by common law. And indeed, since all the industry of our sectarian enemies labors at this, that they might proclaim nothing but the Scriptures, let the Christian and orthodox theologian be ashamed to concede even the slightest thing to them, ashamed to be conquered and surpassed by them; nay rather let them not only proclaim the words of sacred Scripture, but also search out its genuine meaning. Thus they will turn the weapons of the heretics back against them, and from Scripture they will refute and destroy all heresies. This the most illustrious Bellarmine, champion of the faith and overthrower of heresies, did solidly and exactly in his Controversies — a work therefore impenetrable and incomparable, nor has the Church from the time of Christ until now seen its like in this genre, so that it may rightly be called the wall and bulwark of Catholic truth.
Chapter V: On the Dispositions Required for This Study
V. And from all these things it is easy to perceive with how burning and constant a diligence one ought to apply oneself, and with what supports one must be fortified. The first preparation, then, for anyone to gather fruit from this study, is frequent reading of sacred Scripture, frequent listening, the living voice of a teacher, and constancy in these things: for divination is on the lips of the teacher, in teaching his mouth will not err. Plutarch, in his book On the Education of Children, teaches that memory is the storehouse of learning. Plato in the Theaetetus asserts that memory is the mother of the Muses, and that wisdom is the daughter of memory and experience. This holds true both elsewhere and especially in sacred Scripture, as St. Augustine attests, book II of On Christian Doctrine, chapter 9, which consists of such great variety of subjects, so many books and maxims. For this reason the Church, to assist our memory in this, has distributed the portions of the Bible in our daily office, both of the Sacrifice of the Mass and of the Canonical Hours, so that we complete the whole each year. To the same end there serves, among other things, that pious custom of clergy and religious, that at supper and dinner at table one chapter from the Bible be read aloud, and that in the ancient manner of the Fathers, food be seasoned with sacred Letters. Thus the Council of Trent at the very beginning of Session II commands that the reading of divine Scriptures be mixed in at the tables of bishops. Moreover, let theologians not omit what is prescribed by the laws of the most learned, that by daily reading they make Scripture familiar to themselves.
So St. Augustine, book II of On Christian Doctrine, chapter 9: "In all these books," he says, "those who fear God and are gentle in piety seek the will of God; the first observation of this work or labor is, as we said, to know these books, and if not yet unto understanding, yet by reading either to commit them to memory, or at least not to have them entirely unknown; then more skillfully and diligently to investigate the meanings of each one." And St. Basil in his prologue to Isaiah: "What is required," he says, "is constant exercise in Scripture, so that the majesty and mystery of the divine words may be imprinted on the mind by perpetual meditation."
Secondly, an outstanding disposition for the same is humble modesty of mind, concerning which St. Augustine, Epistle 56 to Dioscorus: "You should fortify no other road," he says, "to grasping and obtaining truth and sacred wisdom, than that which has been fortified by Him who, as God, sees the weakness of our steps. For the first thing is humility, the second is humility, the third is humility; and as often as you ask me, I would say the same thing. And so, just as Demosthenes gave first, second, and third place in eloquence to pronunciation, so I in Christ's wisdom will give first, second, and third place to humility, which our Lord, in order to teach, humbled Himself" — in being born, in living, and in dying.
The same Augustine, book II of On Christian Doctrine, chapter 41: "Let the student of Scripture consider," he says, "that Apostolic saying: Knowledge puffs up, but charity builds up, and that saying of Christ: Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, so that, rooted and grounded in humble charity, we may be able to comprehend with all the Saints what is the breadth, length, height, and depth — that is, the Cross of the Lord — by which sign of the Cross every Christian action is described: to work well in Christ, and to perseveringly cling to Him and hope for heavenly things. Purified by this action, we shall be able to know also the surpassing knowledge of Christ's charity, by which He is equal to the Father, through whom all things were made, so that we may be filled unto all the fullness of God." For "where there is humility, there is wisdom," says Solomon, Proverbs 11; and Christ Himself: "I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them to little ones: yes, Father, for so it was pleasing before you."
And truly, if you knew yourself, you would know an abyss of ignorance. And what, I ask, compared to the wisdom of God, compared to the wisdom of an angel, is man's knowledge, who has learned little from God and is ignorant of infinite things? Aristotle, and following him Seneca, used to say that no great genius existed without an admixture of madness, nor can anyone, he says, speak anything great and above others unless his mind is stirred; and for this he praises intoxication, though rare. Behold for you the mind made mad, whether of Aristotle or of any distinguished genius, in order to philosophize most profoundly. Therefore St. Bernard beautifully says, sermon 37 on the Canticle: "It is necessary," he says, "that the knowledge of God and of oneself precede our knowledge; sow for yourselves unto justice and reap the hope of life, and then at last the light of knowledge will illuminate you; for this, therefore, it is not rightly brought forth unless the seed of justice first precedes to the soul, from which may be formed the grain of life, not the chaff of glory." And St. Gregory in the preface to his Moralia, chapter 41: "The divine discourse of sacred Scripture," he says, "is a river both shallow and deep, in which the lamb may walk and the elephant may swim."
From this humility follows gentleness and peace of mind, most receptive of all wisdom; for just as waters, if they are stirred by no blast of wind or air, but remain motionless, are most limpid, and clearly receive any image presented to them, and exhibit to the beholder, as it were, a most perfect mirror: so the mind, free from storms and passions, in this tranquil silence of peace, limpidly sees with acuteness, and most plainly conceives every truth, and with keen judgment perceives things undisturbed. St. Augustine, On the Lord's Sermon on the Mount, on the text, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God: "Wisdom," he says, "befits the peaceful, in whom all things are now ordered, and no motion is rebellious against reason, but all things obey the spirit of man, since he himself obeys God."
The companion of peace is purity of mind, which is the third disposition, most suited to this discipline. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!" If God, then why not also the words of God? Conversely, "into a malevolent soul wisdom will not enter, nor will it dwell in a body subject to sins. For the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee from the deceitful, and will withdraw from thoughts that are without understanding, and will be rebuked by the coming of iniquity" (Wisdom 1:4). St. Augustine had said in the Soliloquies: God, who willed that only the pure of heart should know the truth; he retracts this in I Retractations, chapter 4. For many, he says, who are impure of heart know many things truly; but nevertheless if they were pure of heart, they would know them more fully, more clearly, more easily; and none but the pure of heart will attain true wisdom, which flows from a savorous knowledge into affection and practice, which is the knowledge of the Saints.
St. Anthony, as reported by Athanasius: If anyone, he says, is held by a desire of knowing even future things, let him have a pure heart; because I believe that a soul serving God, if it has persevered in that integrity in which it was reborn, can know more than the demons; whence to Anthony himself all things that he wished to know were soon revealed by God.
The same thing that great St. John the Anchorite taught by his word and example, as reported by Palladius in the Lausiac History, chapter 40.
St. Gregory Nazianzen, as Rufinus reports, while he was devoting himself to studies at Athens, saw in a dream that, while he sat reading, two beautiful women had seated themselves on his right and left; gazing at them with a rather stern eye from an instinct of chastity, he asked who they were and what they wanted; but they, embracing him more intimately and eagerly, said: Do not take it ill, young man; we are well known to you and familiar: for one of us is called Wisdom, the other Chastity; and we have been sent by the Lord to dwell with you, because you have prepared a pleasant and clean dwelling for us in your heart. Behold for you twin sisters, chastity and wisdom.
This purity consecrated St. Thomas the Angelic Doctor; he himself hinted at this when, at the point of death, he said to his Reginald: "I die full of consolation, because whatever I asked from the Lord, I obtained: first, that no attachment to carnal or temporal things should infect the purity of my mind, or soften its fortitude; second, that from a state of humility I should not be raised to prelacies or mitres; third, that I might know the state of my brother Reginald, so cruelly slain: for I saw him in glory, and he said to me: Brother, your affairs are in a good place; you will come to us, but a greater glory is being prepared for you."
St. Bonaventure relates that St. Francis, unlettered though he was, yet of a most pure mind, when asked from time to time by Cardinals and others about the most profound difficulties of sacred Scripture and Theology, responded so aptly and sublimely that he far surpassed the theological doctors.
For what is said in the Life of St. Zenobius is most true: "Above all others, the minds of the Saints are strong, and the very purity of the soul, even for conjecturing future things, gathers outcomes from the smallest indications." For, as Philo, though a Jew, rightly says: "The legitimate worshippers of God excel in mind; for the true priest of God is at the same time also a seer; therefore he is ignorant of nothing; for he has within himself the intelligible sun" — namely, as Boethius rightly says, "that splendor by which heaven is governed and thrives, shuns the dark ruins of the soul, and follows the shining mind."
So Cardinal Hosius, president of the Council of Trent, a man of the utmost integrity and a distinguished scourge of Luther, among other things, when Andreas Dudecius, Bishop of Tinnin, was acting as legate of the Hungarian clergy at the Council of Trent, and was the object of veneration and admiration to others for his eloquence, he alone was suspect to Hosius; for Hosius kept saying that the danger of apostasy from the faith was threatening him, and that he would become a heretic. And so it happened: that apostate fled to the camp of Calvin. When Hosius was asked whence he had foreseen this, he replied: From the man's pride alone; for his mind, perceiving him tenacious of his own judgment, foresaw that he would fall into this pit.
Fourthly, prayer is needed here, as a heavenly conduit and instrument by which we may draw the meaning of the word of God from God Himself. St. Augustine wrote a book On the Teacher, in which he teaches that this saying of Christ is most true: "One is your teacher, Christ," and in I Retractations, chapter 4, he retracts what he had said elsewhere, that there are many roads to truth, since there is only one, namely Christ, the way, the truth, and the life. The knowledge and prediction of the Prophets was therefore divine; and because divine, hence most certain, most sublime, most ample, most provident.
St. Gregory reports, II Dialogues, chapter 35, that the Blessed Benedict, praying one evening at a window, saw a light so great that it surpassed the day and put all darkness to flight, and in this light, he says, the whole world, as if gathered under a single ray of sunlight, was brought before his eyes; and among other things, in the splendor of this flashing light, he saw the soul of Germanus, Bishop of Capua, being carried to heaven by angels in a fiery sphere. Peter then asks how the whole world could have been seen by his eyes.
That the Holy Spirit sat upon St. Gregory the Great in the form of a dove — whose first praise is in tropology — as he was commenting and writing, the eyewitness Peter the Deacon attests.
Wherefore that divine catechist of Justin Martyr, recommending to him the reading of the Prophets, gave him likewise this method: "But you, with prayers and entreaties above all, desire that the gates of light be opened to you: for these things are not perceived and understood by anyone, unless God and Christ have granted him understanding." So it is not without reason that St. Thomas, the prince of Scholastic Theology and most versed in the Scriptures, when expounding the sacred books, was accustomed to place so much hope in propitiating the Deity, that for understanding any more difficult passage of Scripture, besides prayer, he is reported to have been accustomed also to employ fasting. Therefore we must rely above all on prayers and on God, that He Himself may lead us into this sanctuary of His, and lay open the sacred oracles.
And from this will follow the last thing most opportune for this discipline: that our mind, purged of earthly dregs, and the clouds of passions dispersed, being made holy and sublime, may be rendered apt and fit to drink in these heavenly teachings. For, as Nyssen beautifully says, no one can behold the divine and that kindred light which is discerned by the mind itself, with a free and unoccupied sense, when one directs one's gaze, through some perverse and unlearned prejudice, at lowly and muddy things. Therefore, in order that one may penetrate the veins and marrow of heavenly sayings, and limpidly contemplate their profound and hidden mysteries, the eye of the heart must be elevated and holy.
St. Bernard does not hesitate to assert (in his letter to the Brothers of Mont-Dieu) that no one will enter into the meaning of Paul unless he has first imbibed his spirit, nor will anyone understand the songs of David unless he has first put on the holy affections of the Psalms; and that altogether the Sacred Letters must be understood by the same spirit in which they were written. And admirably in his commentary on the Song of Songs: "This true and genuine wisdom," he says, "is not taught by reading, but by anointing; not by the letter, but by the spirit; not by erudition, but by practice in the commandments of the Lord. You are mistaken, you are mistaken, if you think to find among the masters of the world what only the disciples of Christ, that is, the despisers of the world, attain by the gift of God."
Cassian records that Theodore, a holy monk, so unlettered that he did not even know the alphabet, yet so skilled in the divine volumes that he was consulted by the most learned men, was accustomed to say: More effort must be put into uprooting vices than into perusing books; because once these are expelled, the eyes of the heart, admitting the heavenly light, with the veil of passions removed, the mysteries of Scripture naturally begin to contemplate them. Indeed, this holiness of life taught Francises, Anthonies, and Pauls — unlettered men — the loftiest mysteries and secrets of the words of God above all.
In a similar way St. Bernard, by meditating, attained an understanding of the Sacred Letters, and thence that wisdom and honeyed eloquence; and so he himself used to say repeatedly that in the study of Sacred Scripture he had no other masters than beeches and oaks, among which, of course, by praying and meditating, he seemed to see all of Sacred Scripture laid out and displayed before him, as the author of his Life says, book III, chapter 3, and book I, chapter 4.
The same plainly happened to the Prophets. There is that well-known saying of Iamblichus: that the doctrine of Pythagoras, because it was divinely handed down (as he himself had deceitfully persuaded his followers), could not be understood except with some god interpreting it; and therefore the pupil must seek the help of God, which he so greatly needs.
The Jews, banished from God, creep on the ground, and cling so firmly to the dry bark of the sacred books that they taste none of the sweetness of the marrow — mere peddlers of trifles and fabricators of fables. The heretics, because they traverse so vast and uncertain a sea, relying on the oars and sails of their own wit, with no gaze fixed upon the Cynosure or any heavenly star, never reach the harbor, and are always tossed about in the midst of the waves; and the things they read to the point of nausea they do not understand, except what — as slaves of the belly — they seize and indeed snatch regarding the freedom of the stomach and sub-ventral pleasures. Therefore it is not a Delian swimmer that is needed here, but the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the heavenly hosts, and we must enter upon this voyage with our eyes fixed on Mary, the Star of the Sea who illumines it: she will carry the torch before us.
Daniel, that man of desires, attained the dreams of the Chaldean king, and the number of the 70 years of Israel's exile recorded by Jeremiah, by prayer, and was taught by Gabriel.
Ezekiel, with open mouth (directed, of course, to God), was fed by God from a book in which lamentations, a song, and woe were written inside and out.
Gregory, surnamed Thaumaturgus, a client of the Blessed Virgin, at her admonition and command in a dream, received from St. John an explanation of the beginning of his Gospel, in a divinely issued creed which he might set against the Origenists; the authority for this is Nyssen in his Life, who also reports this creed.
To St. Chrysostom, whose devotion to St. Paul was so great, as he dictated commentaries on his epistles, someone appearing in the likeness of St. Paul was seen standing beside him, whispering into his ear what he should write.
Ambrose, if we believe St. Paulinus in his account of his deeds, when he was treating the Scriptures in a sermon, was seen assisted by an angel.
Therefore, if with a holy soul, if relying on prayers and trusting in God you approach this task, and if diligent labor be present so that no day passes on which (as St. Jerome records of Cyprian reading Tertullian daily) you do not ask: "Give me the Master!" — you will overcome with swift ease whatever difficulty there is here, and what shines on the bark of wisdom will refresh you, but what is in the marrow of heavenly richness will nourish you more sweetly. Nor will you finally fear even the most sluggish heretic, even if he knows the entire Biblical work by heart: for this is virtually their whole study, with which they attack us. It is fitting that we meet them with the same weapons, and reclaim our possessions from these unjust holders; so that boldly engaging in hand-to-hand combat with them in this manner, we may disable them with their own weapons. Nor again will you dread the professorial chair, however learned and celebrated, but secure and confident, abundantly furnished with learned ideas and solidly and genuinely equipped with sacred teachings, you will play the Preacher. Furthermore, Scholastic theology will by no means count this a harm to itself, but willingly, as if receiving a helper for its sister, will extend its right hand and divide the labors to the benefit of both.
Peroration and Conclusion of Section One
Happy the hearer and reader who enjoys all this labor in the compendium of the teacher. Let the teacher desire martyrdom, and for blood consecrate and pour out to God his noblest faculties, and with them his eyes, brain, mouth, bones, fingers, hands, blood, every drop of vitality, and life itself, and by a slow martyrdom return it to Him who first gave His own, God, for us poor mortals. "My strength I will keep for you": I will not chase after gain, nor applause, nor the smoke of glory; let them blame, praise, applaud, or hiss — I will not be detained. I am not so foolish, nor of so small a spirit, as to sell my labors and life for so cheap a vanity. Who, if like St. Thomas he has sent a farewell to the world, and from Christ on the cross hears: "You have written well of me, Thomas; what then shall be your reward?" would not immediately respond with him: "No other than You, Lord" — my reward exceedingly great? The world is crucified to me, and I to the world; my works are not mine, but your gifts; I return to you what is yours; you taught my infancy, showed the way where there was no way, strengthened the weakness of mind as well as of body, dispelled the darkness with your light: because the weak things of the world you choose, to confound the strong; and the ignoble things of the world, and the contemptible, and the things that are not, to destroy the things that are, so that no flesh may glory in your sight, but he who glories may glory in you alone. What then? All fruits, new and old, my beloved, I have kept for you: I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine, who feeds among the lilies; set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is hard as hell; a bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me, between my breasts he shall abide; and after this myrrh, a cluster of Cyprus is my beloved to me, in the vineyards of Engedi. That He may grant this abundantly, I will ceaselessly entreat all the Saints, and especially my patrons, the Virgin Mother of eternal Wisdom, St. Jerome, and Moses whom we have in hand, that just as St. Paul assisted St. Chrysostom, so he himself may stand by me as an angelic master, and be for me in writing, for others in reading, for both in understanding, and in having the same wisdom, willing, accomplishing, and teaching and persuading others in these things, a guide and teacher, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, that we may grow up in Him in all things, until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to the perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ — who is our love, our end, our goal, and the aim of all our course, study, life, and eternity.
Amen.
Section Two: On the Use and Fruit of the Pentateuch and the Old Testament
There are some who hold that the Old Testament is, as it were, proper to the Jews and not equally useful or necessary for Christians; and that it suffices for a theologian if he knows the Gospels, if he reads and understands the Epistles, persuade themselves. This persuasion, because it is practical, is a practical error; for if it were speculative, it would be heresy; both are harmful, both must be eliminated.
Heresies Proscribing the Old Testament
51. It was the heresy of Simon Magus and his followers, then of Marcion, and of Curbicus the Persian (whom his own people called Manes and Manichaeus, as if a pourer-out of manna, by way of honor), and of the Albigensians, and recently of the Libertines, and also of certain Anabaptists, who proscribed the Old Testament together with Moses — but on different grounds. Simon, the Manichaeans, and the Marcionites taught that the Old Testament was produced by a sinister power and evil angels: for this Testament, they say, describes a certain God who dwelt in darkness from eternity before light, who forbade man to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, who hid in a corner of paradise, who needed guardian angels for paradise, who was troubled by anger, zeal, and indeed jealousy — wrathful, vengeful, ignorant, and asking: "Adam, where are you?" The Libertines set up not the letter, but their own reason and inclination, as the guide of faith and morals. The Anabaptists boast that they are moved and taught by the enthusiasm of the spirit. Our age — which has seen every kind of monstrosity — has seen a fanatic who brought to light a triumvirate of blasphemy concerning the three impostors of the world: Moses, Christ, and Mohammed (I shudder to continue).
The persuasion of those among our own who plead either lack of time, or labor, or uselessness, as an excuse to neglect the Old Testament, is more tolerable; yet in reality they err, and the error of all comes back to the same thing in the end — an error, I say, because it conflicts with Moses, with the Prophets, with the Apostles, with the sense of the Church, with the Fathers, with reason, with Christ, with God the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Arguments for the Old Testament
With Moses, Deuteronomy 17:8: "If," he says, "you perceive that a difficult and ambiguous judgment has arisen among you, etc., you shall do whatever those who preside in the place the Lord has chosen shall say, and what they teach you according to his law." Who does not see here that controversies about faith, morals, and rites, both new and old, must be judged by the law of God, and that priests and theologians, to settle them, must use the law as a Lydian touchstone? Therefore they must apply themselves to the law, both old and new.
With the Prophets. For Isaiah, chapter 8, verse 20, cries out: "To the law rather, and to the testimony." And Malachi, chapter 2, verse 7: "The lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law from his mouth." And David, Psalm 118:2: "Blessed are they who search his testimonies." And verse 18: "Open my eyes, and I will consider the wondrous things of your law."
With the Apostles. "We have," says St. Peter, Second Epistle, chapter 1, verse 19, "the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to attend, as to a lamp shining in a dark place." And Paul praises Timothy, Second Epistle, chapter 3, verse 14, because from infancy he had learned the Sacred Letters (the old ones, of course, which alone existed at that time), "which can," he says, "instruct you unto salvation, through the faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture divinely inspired is profitable for teaching, for reproving, for correcting, for instructing in justice, that the man of God may be perfect, equipped for every good work."
With Christ. "Search the Scriptures," He says, John 5:39. He did not say, comments Chrysostom, "Read the Scriptures," but "Search" — that is, with labor and diligence dig out the hidden treasures of the Scriptures, just as those who diligently search for gold and silver in metallic veins.
53. With the sense of the Church. For she, in sacred rites, at table, in libraries, in professorial chairs, sets forth and proposes the Old Testament equally with the New, as their most faithful guardian. She, in the Council of Trent, in the entire first chapter On Reform, commands that the perpetual reading of Sacred Scripture be everywhere restored and established. She compels Bishops, as future bishops of the Church, before consecration, to pledge that they know both the Old and the New Testament — which response and pledge, although Sylvester and others soften with a milder interpretation, yet from this a scruple was injected into some wiser men, carefully weighing the very words, so that on this account they refused the episcopate, lest they bind themselves with a false pledge.
With the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For to what end did the Holy Trinity preserve the Old Testament for four thousand years, so sound and intact, through so many storms of wars and kingdoms — unless because He willed it to be read by us, as in Joshua chapter 1, verse 8: "The book of this law," He says, "shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night." To what end did He punish those who profaned it with so sharp a vengeance?
Josephus and Aristeas relate, in the book On the Seventy Interpreters, that the illustrious Theopompus, when he wished to embellish something from the divine Hebrew volumes in Greek speech, was struck with agitation and disturbance of mind, and was compelled to desist from his undertaking. And when, praying to God, he sought to know why this had happened to him, he received a divine response: that it was because he had polluted the divine Letters. And that Theodectes, a writer of tragedies, when he wished to transfer some things from the Jewish Scriptures to a theatrical piece, paid for this rashness with blindness: for he was immediately struck, and deprived and robbed of his sight — until, recognizing the fault of his audacity, both repented of what they had done and obtained pardon from God, and the one was restored to his eyes, the other to his mind.
The Septuagint Translation and Greek Translators
To what end, 250 years before Christ, did He put it into the mind of Ptolemy Philadelphus, son of Ptolemy Lagus (who succeeded his brother Alexander the Great in the kingdom of Egypt), to choose, through Eleazar the high priest, six of the most learned men from each tribe of the Hebrews — that is, 72 interpreters — to translate the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, and He assisted them so that in 70 days, with the complete agreement of all, they accomplished the work, and agreed not only on the same meanings but even on the same words — and this, if we believe Justin, Cyril, Clement of Alexandria, and Augustine, when each was forging his own version separately in a different cell? To what end did Philadelphus arrange for this Septuagint version to be deposited, through Demetrius the prefect of the Alexandrian library, together with the Hebrew manuscripts, in his library, and to be carefully preserved? Indeed, Tertullian in his Apologeticus testifies that it was preserved there down to his own times. Clearly God willed that these things be entrusted to the Greek nations, and through them to the Latins — to us, I say, and to our theologians — and distributed throughout all parts of the world, to academies and cities.
54. To what end, after Christ, did He give or provide so many other interpreters, witnesses, and guardians of the same Old Scripture? The second interpreter of Sacred Scripture from Hebrew after the Seventy, according to Epiphanius, was Aquila of Pontus, who in the 12th year of the Emperor Hadrian translated the Hebrew Scripture into Greek; but because he defected from the Christians to the Jews, his fidelity is not sufficiently trustworthy.
After him, with greater fidelity, came Theodotion, a proselyte Jew though formerly a Marcionite, under the Emperor Commodus, whose version in Daniel the Church received and follows. Fourth, under the Emperor Severus, was Symmachus, first an Ebionite, then a Jew. Fifth was an anonymous translator, whose version was found in certain jars in the city of Jericho, in the 7th year of Caracalla, who succeeded his father Severus. Sixth was likewise an anonymous translator, found similarly in jars at Nicopolis, under the Emperor Alexander, son of Mammaea. These two are commonly designated as the fifth and sixth editions.
Origen collected all of these and from them arranged his Tetrapla, Hexapla, and Octapla; he also corrected the corrupt Septuagint, and so well that his edition was received by all and considered and called the "common" one. Seventh was St. Lucian, a priest and martyr, under Diocletian, who undertook a new edition from Hebrew into Greek.
Finally, St. Jerome, the sun of the Latin Church, at the command of Blessed Damasus, translated the Old Scripture from Hebrew into Latin, whose version, now called the Vulgate for a thousand years, the Church publicly follows and approves, with few exceptions. To what end, I ask, did God provide all these things so laboriously, so studiously, unless to hand down to us this sacred treasure of the ancient books, unsullied, to be perused, taught, and studied?
The Fathers' Defense of the Old Testament
55. This persuasion conflicts with the Fathers; for St. Augustine wrote, in defense of the truth and usefulness of the Pentateuch and the Old Testament, no fewer than 33 books Against Faustus, and again two books Against the Adversary of the Law and the Prophets. Tertullian wrote for the same cause four books Against Marcion. All without exception labored in unrolling and explaining its books. Basil and his follower or interpreter St. Ambrose wrote Hexaemeron books on Genesis, on the Psalms, and on Isaiah. Origen wrote 46 books on Genesis, Chrysostom 32 homilies.
On the Pentateuch Cyril wrote 17 books On Adoration in Spirit and Truth; from the same, St. Augustine, Theodoret, Bede, Procopius, and Jerome published questions and phrases. And rightly so: for, as St. Ambrose says in Epistle 44, the divine Scripture is a sea, having within it profound meanings, and the depth of prophetic enigmas, that is, of the Old Testament.
St. Jerome, in the Preface to the Epistle to the Ephesians, On the Study of Sacred Scripture: "Never," he says, "from my youth did I cease to read, or to question learned men about what I did not know; never did I make myself (as most do) my own teacher. Finally, very recently, for this above all other reasons, I went to Alexandria, to see Didymus and to consult him about all the doubts I had in the Scriptures." St. Augustine, in book II of On Christian Doctrine, chapter 6, teaches that it was divinely provided that the study of so complex and difficult a Sacred Scripture should recall man both from pride and from boredom. "Wondrous," says the same, book XII of the Confessions, chapter 14, "is the depth of Your words, Lord, whose surface, behold, is before us, charming to little ones, but wondrous is the depth, my God, wondrous depth; it is dreadful to gaze into it: a dread of honor, and a trembling of love." Whence also in Epistle 119: "I," he says, "in the Sacred Scriptures themselves, know far less than I do not know."
And to conclude this topic, St. Thomas, the prince of the Scholastics, gave us an illustrious example, that we should inseparably join Scholastic theology with Sacred Scripture, as though they were sisters. You all know what was his love for Scripture, what his study, what his prayers, what his fasting, what his commentaries on the Prophets, on the Canticles, on Job, and on other books of the Old Testament: among which those on our Genesis (if indeed they are his, about which I shall speak later) are notable and learned.
Saintly Examples of Scripture Study
And the first from his family, St. Anthony of Padua, while St. Francis himself was still living and watching, taught these letters, a man so versed in Scripture both old and new, that when he preached before the Supreme Pontiff, he was greeted by him as the Ark of the Testament. I pass over St. Bernard, who whatever he says, speaks in the words of Scripture; I pass over Blessed Alfonso Tostado, Bishop of Avila, who on this Decateuch and on the individual books of the Old Testament history, composed individual volumes, truly great ones, with keen judgment and diligence, so that for me, who once pored over him and now reread him more carefully, he brings no less labor than help.
St. Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the year of salvation 1247, spent his days and nights in sacred Letters, passing the very nights sleepless, with such reverence that whenever he opened the Holy Bible, he first honored it with a kiss. Of him there is this memorable account: while on an embassy, reading the Holy Bible at night as was his custom, he was overcome by sleep; the candle fell onto the book and the flame seized it. Waking up, he sighed, thinking the book burned, blew off the ashes clinging to the book, and behold, he marveled at the codex completely intact and unharmed.
St. Charles Borromeo dwelt continually in Sacred Scripture as if in a paradise of delights, and used to say that a Bishop had no need of a garden, but that his garden was the Holy Bible.
56. Nor was this the sentiment only of the ancient age of the Fathers, but also of these centuries, when Scholastic Theology was already flourishing and thriving. St. Dominic, Doctor of Sacred Theology, frequently studied both the Old and New Testaments: at Rome and elsewhere he publicly taught many of its books: from this he was created the first Master of the Sacred Palace; and from that time this dignity adhered to the Order of Preachers. Hear the author of his Life, book IV, chapter IV, in simple but earnest style: "Because," he says, "without knowledge of the Scriptures no one can be a perfect preacher, he urged the Brothers always to study the Old and New Testaments: for he held the fictions of the philosophers in low regard; hence the Brothers sent to preach carried only the Bible with them, and converted many to penance."
That St. Vincent Ferrer, who in the memory of our great-grandfathers, traveling through Italy, France, Germany, England, and Spain, converted at least a hundred thousand people, carried around only one Breviary and the Bible for preaching.
St. Jordan, indeed, a doctor, the second Master General of his Order after St. Dominic, when asked by his preachers "whether it would be better to devote oneself to prayer or to the study of Sacred Scripture," wittily replied in his usual manner: "Is it better always to drink, or always to eat? Surely, just as both are needed in alternation, so it is fitting to pray and study Sacred Scripture in turn;" and, as St. Basil says: "Let reading follow prayer, and prayer follow reading."
57. In like manner St. Francis, when asked by his followers, granted them the study of sacred Letters, on the condition that they should not extinguish the spirit of prayer and devotion.
Sacred Writers as Pens of the Holy Spirit
58. Finally, reason persuades us of the usefulness and necessity of the Old Testament. Moses, David, Isaiah, just like Peter, Paul, and John, admitted as it were into the assembly of angels, drew wisdom from the very fountain of truth; and, as Blessed Gregory and Theodoret rightly say, the tongues and hands of these sacred Writers were nothing other than the pens of the same Holy Spirit, so much so that they seem not so much to have been different writers, as different pens of one writer: therefore the same truth, authority, reverence, zeal, and diligence must be attributed to Moses as to Paul, or rather to the Holy Spirit speaking through Moses and through Paul; for whatever things were written by Him, were written for our instruction. Indeed, He enclosed all His wisdom that was necessary or useful for mankind, which He wished to communicate to us from the abyss of His divinity, in both the Old and New Testaments. This book is God's book, the book of the Word, the book of the Holy Spirit, in which nothing is superfluous, nothing excess, but just as in the variety of the writers, so also in the variety of subjects, and in the most beautiful harmony of all its parts, all things agree with one another, and complete and perfect this entire work of God; so that, if you should remove one part, you dismember the whole. Therefore, just as the philosopher must turn over all of Aristotle, the physician Galen, the orator Cicero, the jurist all of Justinian, so much more must the Theologian turn, examine, and wear out this entire book of God; and, just as one who would mutilate Metaphysics would mutilate Philosophy: so one who mutilates Sacred Scripture mutilates Theology: for just as Metaphysics gives Philosophy its principles, so Sacred Scripture gives Theology its principles. This indeed is what Christ meant when He said: "Every scribe," that is, every Doctor, every Theologian, "instructed in the kingdom of heaven, brings forth from his treasure things new and old."
The Six Utilities of the Old Testament
I. The Old Testament Establishes Faith
59. But, to lay the matter plainly before your eyes, and to enumerate some of the more illustrious fruits of the Old Testament: first of all, the Old Testament, just like the New, establishes faith. Whence, I ask, do we know the world's beginning, creation, and Creator, unless because by faith we believe that the ages were fashioned by the word of God? By what word? Surely by that of Genesis chapter one: "Let there be light, let there be luminaries, let us make man," etc. Whence did we learn of the immortal soul, man's fall, original sin, the Cherubim, paradise, unless from the same Genesis narrating these things? Eusebius in his entire book XI of the Preparation for the Gospel teaches that Plato, whom St. Augustine and all the Fathers before him followed as divine above Aristotle and all others — Plato, I say, drew his teachings about God, about the Word of God, about the world's beginning, the immortality of the soul, the future resurrection and judgment, punishments and rewards, from Moses. Whence did we acknowledge God's providence, unless from the succession of so many ages? Whence did we draw the propagation of peoples, kings, and kingdoms, the universal flood of the world, the resurrection and hope of eternal life, unless from the ancient history, and from the patience of Job and the ancients, from the perpetual pilgrimage of the patriarchs? "By faith," says the Apostle, "Abraham dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, co-heirs of the same promise: for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God." And from this our hope is sharpened, our spirit rises, so that, recalling that one is here a guest and an exile, one may aspire to the heavenly homeland, covet nothing in this world, marvel at nothing, but trample all things underfoot, and count them as dung, and with St. Jerome ever sing to oneself that Socratic saying: "I walk on air and look down upon the sun." I ascend to the heavens; I despise this earth, nay heaven itself and the sun. I am enrolled as heir and lord not of earth, but of heaven; thither do I tend in mind, in hope, in every thought, and I soar above the stars; I am a citizen of the Saints, a member of God's household, an inhabitant of paradise: all other things, as lowly, unworthy of me, base, and mean, I trample underfoot.
Who in all of Scripture more clearly establishes the nature, office, guardianship, and invocation of angels than the book of Tobit? Who more expressly establishes Purgatory and prayers for the dead than the books of Maccabees? So much so that our Innovators, seeing no other escape, despairing of victory, and certain of being conquered rather than conquering, driven to fury by necessity, struck them from the sacred canon.
But conversely, how many heresies shelter themselves in these books? The Jews, from that passage Deuteronomy 23:19, "You shall not lend at interest to your brother, but to a foreigner," stubbornly maintain that they may lawfully practice usury against Christians. Magicians, in defense of magic, cite and praise as witnesses Pharaoh's magicians, who by the sudden power of magic transformed serpents into rods and rods into serpents, just as Moses did. In defense of necromancy they cite the sorceress who raised Samuel from the dead, who struck Saul with a true oracle of coming death and disaster. In defense of chiromancy they adduce that passage of Job 37: "He sets a seal on the hand of every man, that all may know His works."
Calvin, from that saying of David: "The Lord commanded him (Shimei) to curse David," 2 Kings 16:10, proves (as he thinks) that God is the author, indeed the commander, of evil deeds; from that passage of Exodus: "I will harden the heart of Pharaoh, and: For this purpose I have raised you up, that I might show My power in you," he constructs the inevitable fate of his reprobation; he establishes the bondage of the will from the fact that Jeremiah places us like clay in the hand of God, as if of a potter (Jeremiah 18:6).
A few years ago, the Saxon Lutherologists and babblers, in the Regensburg disputation, placed the entire weight of their case — for proscribing traditions and establishing the sole word of God as the ultimate judge of controversies of faith — on that passage of Deuteronomy 4:2: "You shall not add to the word which I speak to you, nor take away from it;" and chapter 12:32: "What I command you, this alone shall you do for the Lord; you shall add nothing, nor diminish anything."
What will you do here, if you are not at home here? How will you make yourself a laughingstock to them, to the scandal of the Church, if you stumble here, if you do not read these things, hear them, learn them, if you do not often consult the very sources? For St. Augustine teaches that this is necessary. Indeed, whoever does not know what the Hebrew tsava means, that is, "God commanded Shimei," etc., will not escape Calvin's clutches; but whoever knows the Hebraism, namely that tsava means to ordain, to provide, to dispose, and signifies all of God's providence, both positive and negative and permissive, will blow away this weapon like a spider's web. I will point out similar Hebraisms often in individual chapters, which you will never understand except from the Hebrew language.
II. The Richness of the Old Testament
60. This first utility of the Old Scripture is twofold: the second is no less, namely that the Old is far richer than the New. You may see abundant ethics in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Ecclesiasticus: admirable politics in the deeds and judicial and ceremonial laws of Moses, from which the Church has borrowed much, as have the authors of Canon Law; and also some matters of Civil Law: oracles in the Prophets; sermons in Deuteronomy and the Prophets; and, what is of present concern, history from the founding of the world down to the times of the Judges, the Kings, and Christ — most certain, most orderly, most varied, and most delightful — you may see in the Decateuch.
There is a fourfold law: of innocence, of nature, the Mosaic, and the Evangelical: the first three and their histories are encompassed by the Pentateuch. "Genesis," says St. Jerome in the Helmeted Prologue, "is the book in which we read of the creation of the world, the origin of the human race, the division of the earth, the confusion of languages and peoples, down to the departure of the Hebrews."
The Latin and Greek historians of the pagans spin tales about the flood of Deucalion, about Prometheus, about Hercules; and in all profane history, everything before the Olympiads is full of the darkness of ignorance and fables. But the Olympiads began either at the beginning of the reign of Jotham, or at the end of the reign of Uzziah, that is, after the three thousandth year from the creation of the world and more: so that for three thousand years, you have no certain history of the world except this one of Moses and the Hebrews. History is truly the teacher, guide, and light of human life, in which you may discern as in a mirror the rise, fall, and decline of kingdoms, states, and human life, virtues and vices, and may learn all prudence and the path to happiness by another's example, whether of good or ill fortune.
To this may be added that in no history, indeed not even in the New Testament, do there exist so many, so varied, and so heroic examples of every kind of virtue, as in the Pentateuch and the Old Testament.
61. The Romans praise their famous merchants of glory, whose waxen shadows — I mean their portrait-masks — are entwined by clinging ivy, while their bodies and souls are licked and consumed by eternal fire. They praise the Manlii Torquati, who struck down with the sword their sons who fought the enemy contrary to the commander's and father's orders, though they had won the victory, in order to enforce military discipline. But who would love Manlian commands? They praise Junius Brutus, the avenger of Roman liberty, the first Consul, who had his own sons and his brother's sons, because they had conspired with the Aquilii and Vitellii to receive the Tarquins back into the city, beaten with rods and then beheaded with the axe: an unhappy and infamous father with such offspring. Who would not rather praise Abraham and Isaac, those innocents, who resolved to seal the obedience owed to God with a father's slaying and sacrifice, and the Maccabean mother, offering herself with her seven children to God for her country's laws?
They praise the triple brothers, the Horatii, who conquered the triple Curiatii of Alba in single combat, by cunning more than strength, and transferred the rule of Alba to Rome. Who would not rather praise the courage and strength of David, who in single combat struck down with a sling that tower of flesh and bone, Goliath, and secured Israel's dominion over the Philistines?
They praise the continence of Alexander, who after defeating Darius, refused to look upon his captive wife and most beautiful daughters, saying repeatedly that Persian women were a pain to the eyes. Who would not rather praise Joseph, already seized in private by the soliciting mistress, fleeing and leaving his cloak behind, and willingly throwing himself into every danger of prison, reputation, and life, to preserve his chastity?
62. They praise Lucretia, chaste after the violation, yet the late avenger of the crime — and a self-slayer: we celebrate Susanna, a far braver champion of chastity as well as of life and reputation.
They marvel at Virginius the centurion, who, when he could not rescue his daughter Claudia Virginia from the power and lust of Appius Claudius the decemvir, requesting a last word with her, secretly killed her, preferring a dead daughter to a violated one. They marvel at the Decii, father and son, who for the Roman army, with solemn prayer through the pontiffs Valerius and Liberius, devoted the Latin and Samnite enemies together with themselves to the gods of the underworld, and sealed the victory with their own death. Who would not rather marvel at Jephthah the prince, who for the victory of his people, devoted his only virgin daughter and her virginity to the true God, and sacrificed her whom he had vowed? Who would not marvel at Moses, devoting himself to not temporal but eternal destruction for the sake of the people?
63. They praise the military fortitude and success of Julius Caesar, Pompey, Publius Cornelius Scipio, Hannibal, and Alexander. But how much greater were Samson, Gideon, David, Saul, the Maccabees, and Joshua, who, endowed not with human but heavenly strength, and with divine success, routed with few against many, even the most powerful; for whom the sun, moon, and stars obeyed as soldiers, and fought against the enemy? To whom, I ask, except perhaps to Theodosius, but rather to Judas Maccabeus and Joshua, would you sing that verse?
O too much beloved of God, for whom from his caves Aeolus marshals his armed storms, for whom the sky fights, and the conspiring winds come at the trumpet's call.
64. And these are for us constant spurs to every height of virtue, to all holiness and innocence, that as their rivals, like earthly angels and heavenly men, we may walk in the Evangelical light before the eyes of the divine majesty, who continually watches us, and serve Him in holiness and justice. Then, so that in our own and public misfortunes, in these Belgian and European storms, having the Holy Books for consolation together with the Maccabees, through the patience and consolation of Scripture we may have hope, and lift up our spirits, knowing that God cares for us, and strengthened by His love and the love of heavenly things, may we fear nothing, despise even death and torments, and though the world should shatter and fall, may the ruins strike us unafraid.
Thus the Apostle in the entire chapter 11 of Hebrews, by the example of the fathers, kindles them with a remarkable sermon to endurance and martyrdom, that with a pint of blood they may purchase blessed eternity: "They were stoned," he says — Moses surely, Jeremiah, and other Saints of the Old Testament — "they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they died by the edge of the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts, in mountains and caves, and in the hollows of the earth;" and this, "that they might find a better resurrection; and therefore we also, having so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with patience the race set before us."
III. The New Testament Cannot Be Understood Without the Old
65. The third utility is that without the Old Testament, the New cannot be understood: the Apostles and Christ frequently cite it, and still more frequently allude to it, even when bidding His final farewell to His followers. "These are," He says, Luke final chapter, verse 44, "the words which I spoke to you: that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms about Me; then He opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures."
Indeed, the Epistle to the Hebrews is for this one reason most weighty and most obscure, because it is entirely woven from the Old Testament and its allegories.
IV. The Old Testament Surpasses the New in Allegorical Richness
66. The fourth utility is this: since Christ is the end of the law, all things said in the Old Testament pertain to Christ and Christians, either in the literal or allegorical sense; and in this the Old Testament surpasses the New, because the Old everywhere has, besides the literal sense, an allegorical sense, and often also an anagogical and tropological one: the New almost lacks the allegorical. "Our fathers," says the Apostle, 1 Corinthians 10:1, "were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized in Moses, in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, etc. Now these things happened as figures of us: and they were written for our sake, upon whom the ends of the ages have come." Hence again the same Apostle teaches that the understanding of the Old Testament was taken from the Jews and has passed to us. "Until this present day," he says, "the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, which veil is taken away in Christ; but until this present day, when Moses is read, the veil is placed upon their heart," 2 Corinthians 3:14.
For the Holy Spirit, who is conscious and prescient of all ages, so arranged Sacred Scripture that it might serve not the Jews alone, but Christians of every age. Indeed, Tertullian in his book On the Apparel of Women, chapter 22, holds that there is no pronouncement of the Holy Spirit which can be directed and received only for the present matter, and not for every occasion of usefulness.
Truly St. Augustine, Against Faustus, book XIII, at the end: "We," he says, "read the Prophetic and Apostolic books for the commemoration of our faith, the consolation of our hope, and the exhortation of our charity, harmonizing with each other's voices; and with that harmony, as with a heavenly trumpet, both rousing us from the torpor of mortal life and stretching us toward the prize of the heavenly calling."
For this reason the Church in the Sacred Liturgy everywhere selects readings from the Old Testament, and during the sacred season of fasting always pairs an Epistle from the Old Testament fittingly with the Gospel, as shadow responding to body, image to prototype. I myself once saw celebrated preachers, in their sermons, expounding in the first part a history or something similar from the Old Testament, and in the second part something from the New, to great crowds, applause, and fruit among the people.
Finally, not only heretics, but also orthodox men of gravity, who are engaged in councils, cases, and judgments, turn over and wear out the sacred Letters, both ancient and new, following the ancient example.
Francis Petrarch relates that 250 years ago, Robert, King of Sicily, was so delighted with letters, especially sacred ones, that he said to him under oath: "I swear to you, Petrarch, that letters are far dearer to me than my kingdom, and if I had to be deprived of one or the other, I would more calmly part with the crown than with letters."
Panormitanus relates that Alfonso, King of Aragon, used to boast that, even in the midst of his kingdom's business, he had read through the entire Bible with glosses and commentaries fourteen times. It is therefore nothing new if now princes, counselors, and other leading men everywhere at table, at banquets, and in conversation raise questions from the Old and New Testaments; where the Theologian, if he is silent, will be considered a child: if he answers ineptly, he will be judged ignorant or stupid.
V. Figures, Examples, and Maxims from the Old Testament
67. Fifth, for the abundance of readings, disputations, and sermons, God provided that from the Old Testament one might draw so great a variety of figures, examples, maxims, and oracles, not only for faith, but for every instruction of an honorable life. Thus Christ rouses the sluggish to vigilance by the example of Noah and the wife of Lot, Luke 17:32: "Remember," He says, "Lot's wife;" again He terrifies and strikes the obstinate minds of the Jews by recalling Sodom, the Ninevites, and the Queen of the South. Thus He calls back to repentance the imitators of that rich man buried in hell, from the words of Abraham, saying, Luke 16:27: "They have Moses and the Prophets, let them hear them." And Paul says, 1 Corinthians 10:6 and 11: "All things happened to them as figures, that is as examples for us; that we should not be covetous of evil things, nor idolaters," nor fornicators, nor gluttons, nor murmurers, nor tempters of God, lest we perish as those who perished under the old law for such crimes.
VI. The Old Testament as Forerunner to the New
68. And from this arises the sixth utility: for the Old Testament was a prelude to the New, and bore testimony to it, just as St. John the Baptist did to Christ the Lord: for he, just like Moses and the other prophets, "went before the face of the Lord, to prepare His ways, to give knowledge of salvation to His people; to enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to direct our feet into the way of peace." As a symbol of this, at the Transfiguration of Christ, Moses and Elijah appeared, both to bear testimony to Him, and to speak of the departure which He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. For who would have believed in Christ, who in the Gospel, unless it had been confirmed, predicted, and foreshadowed by so many testimonies of the Fathers, so many oracles, so many figures? How will you convince the Jews, how bring them to Christ, except from the prophecies of Moses and the Prophets? Among politicians, pagans, Saracens, and all men whatsoever, a great demonstration of the truth of the Gospel is, says Eusebius, that throughout the entire Old Testament, through so many ages, it was promised and prefigured.
For this reason Christ so often appeals to Moses, John 1:17: "The law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." John 5:46: "There is one who accuses you, Moses: for if you believed Moses, you would perhaps also believe Me: for he wrote about Me; but if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?" Luke 24:27: "Beginning from Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." Hence also Philip to Nathanael, John 1:45: "Him whom Moses wrote of in the law, and the prophets, we have found — Jesus." For the agreement of both Testaments — that is, the agreement of Moses and Christ, of the Prophets and the Apostles, of the Synagogue and the Church — bears great testimony to Christ and to the truth, as Tertullian teaches everywhere against Marcion. And to conclude, learn from Moses himself how great and how manifold is the wisdom found here.
Section Three: Who, and How Great, Was Moses?
Moses's Three Periods of Forty Years
71. Truly I say, for many thousands of years the sun has not looked upon a greater man; he from his tenderest years was raised in the royal court, as a king's son and destined heir, educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, for a full 40 years: then denying that he was the son of Pharaoh's daughter, preferring to suffer affliction with the people of God rather than to have the pleasure of a temporal kingdom and of sin, he fled to Midian; here, pasturing sheep, having spoken with God in the burning bush, he drew all divine wisdom by contemplation for a full 40 years; finally, chosen as leader of the people, he presided over them for a third period of 40 years as supreme pontiff, supreme commander, lawgiver, teacher, prophet, most like Christ and His antitype. "A prophet," says the Lord, Deuteronomy 18:15, "I will raise up for them from among their brethren, one like you;" and "A prophet from your nation and from your brethren, like me, the Lord your God will raise up for you: Him you shall hear," namely Christ.
Here the office showed the man, when he led three million people — that is, thirty times a hundred thousand — of such stiff neck, through arid deserts for 40 years, fed them with heavenly food, instructed them in the fear and worship of God, maintained them in peace and justice, stood as arbiter and mediator of all disputes, and protected them against all enemies.
The Virtues of Moses
72. You would marvel at the innumerable virtues of Moses; he was a musician and psalmist: St. Jerome testifies, volume III, epistle to Cyprian, that Moses composed eleven psalms, namely from Psalm 89, whose title is "Prayer of Moses, servant of God," up to Psalm 100, which is prefaced "In confession."
Moses was deemed worthy to receive from God the tablets of the law. Moses had as his guide on the journey a pillar of cloud, indeed an archangel presiding over the pillar. In prayer, Moses seemed to be nourished and to live like an angel. About to receive the tablets of the law on Sinai, he stood twice for 40 days and nights fasting and conversing with God: where also horns of light were affixed to him; at the door of the tabernacle he daily discussed all the people's affairs familiarly with God. "My servant Moses," says the Lord, Numbers 12:7, "is the most faithful in all My house: for I speak to him mouth to mouth, and openly, and not through enigmas and figures does he see the Lord." For the Lord showed him all good, Exodus chapter 33, verse 17. You might call Moses God's secretary of secrets, the secretary, I say, of divine wisdom, and what wonder if Amalek was routed not by the arms of Joshua but by the prayers of Moses? And what wonder "if there arose no more a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face?" Deuteronomy 34:10. What wonder if, by the help and power of God, as a wonder-worker, he nearly overthrew Egypt with plagues and portents, and the Red Sea, called down meat and manna from heaven, hurled Korah, Dathan, and Abiram alive into hell, and surpassed every single wonder-worker with his mighty deeds?
73. Who does not see the excellent political and domestic prudence of the best prince, in such great skill in governing so great a people, of brazen, nay adamantine, front? His remarkable charity and care for the people shone forth, both in the zeal by which he devoted himself as an anathema, an expiatory offering and atonement for his Israel; and in that fervent oration of the entire Deuteronomy, by which, calling heaven and earth, the powers above and below, to witness, he drove the people to observe God's law; so that he rightly said: "Why, Lord, have You laid the burden of this entire people upon me? Did I conceive this whole multitude, or beget them, that You should say to me: Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse is accustomed to carry an infant, and bring them to the land which You swore to their fathers?" Numbers chapter 11, verse 11. Truly St. Chrysostom said, homily 40 on the First Epistle to Timothy: "A bishop must be an angel, subject to no human disturbance or vice;" and elsewhere: "It befits him who undertakes the governance of others to excel in such glory of virtue that, like the sun, he may obscure all others, like the sparks of the stars, in his own splendor." If therefore a Bishop, a Prelate, a Prince must be among the people like a man among brutes, like an angel among men, like the sun among the stars: consider what manner and how great a man Moses was, who among so many men more than abundantly fulfilled this role — who was found worthy by God's judgment, or rather was made worthy by God's calling and grace, who was set not over Christians, but over obstinate and stiff-necked Jews, not merely as a Bishop, but as Pontiff and Prince combined.
Moses's Humility and Meekness
And to pass over the rest in silence, at such a great and divine summit of authority, I marvel most of all at his profound humility and meekness: often assailed by the murmuring of the people, by slanders, insults, apostasy, and stones, he stood with an unmoved and gentle countenance, avenging himself not with threats but with prayers to God poured out for the people. Rightly therefore does God celebrate him with this praise, Numbers 12:3: "For Moses was the meekest man upon the face of the earth." Whence so meek? Because, dwelling magnanimously in heaven, he despised all the reproaches and injuries of men as earthly and trifling things. "The wise man," says Seneca in his work On the Wise Man, "has been removed by a greater distance from contact with inferiors than that any harmful force should carry its power to him: just as a weapon hurled at the sky and the sun by some fool falls back before reaching the sun. Do you think Neptune could be touched by chains let down into the deep? Just as heavenly things escape human hands, and from those who melt down temples or images no harm is done to the divinity: so whatever is done against the wise man insolently, impudently, or proudly, is attempted in vain."
Moses and the Beatific Vision
74. On account of this meekness, many hold that Moses was granted in this life the vision of the divine essence; on which matter and other things pertaining to Moses, more will be said at Exodus chapters 2, 32, and following.
It is certain that Moses, having died, was buried by angels on Mount Abarim; whence "no man knew his sepulchre," Deuteronomy 34:6. And this was the reason why Michael the archangel disputed with the devil about the body of Moses, as Saint Jude says in his epistle.
Praises of Moses from Scripture and the Fathers
Finally, do you want to know Moses? Hear Sirach, Ecclesiasticus chapter 45: "Beloved of God and men was Moses, whose memory is in blessing. He made him like unto the glory of the saints; He magnified him in the fear of his enemies, and by his words he calmed portents; He glorified him in the sight of kings," namely of King Pharaoh (of whom the Lord said to him, Exodus chapter 7, verse 1: "Behold, I have made thee a God to Pharaoh"), "and gave him commandments before his people, and showed him His glory; in his faith and meekness He sanctified him, and chose him out of all flesh. For He heard his voice, and brought him into the cloud, and gave him commandments face to face, and the law of life and knowledge, to teach Jacob His covenant and Israel His judgments."
75. Hear Saint Stephen, Acts chapter 7, verses 22 and 30: "Moses was mighty in his words and in his deeds; there appeared to him in the desert of Mount Sinai an angel, in a flame of fire in a bush; this man God sent as ruler and redeemer, with the hand of the angel who appeared to him; this man led them out, performing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt; this is he who was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, who received the words of life to give to us."
Hear Saint Ambrose, book 1 of On Cain and Abel, chapter 11: "In Moses," he says, "there was the figure of the teacher to come, who would preach the Gospel, fulfill the Old Testament, establish the New, and give heavenly nourishment to the peoples: hence Moses surpassed the dignity of the human condition to such an extent that he was called by the name of God: 'I have made thee,' He says, 'a God to Pharaoh.' For he was the conqueror of all passions, nor was he captured by any allurements of the world, who had covered over all this dwelling according to the flesh with the purity of a heavenly manner of life, governing his mind, subjecting his flesh, and chastising it with a kind of royal authority; he was called by the name of God, to whose likeness he had formed himself by the abundance of perfect virtue; and therefore we do not read of him, as of others, that he died of failing, but he died by the word of God: for God suffers neither failing nor diminishment; whence it is also added: 'Because no one knows his burial,' who was translated rather than abandoned, so that his flesh received rest rather than a funeral pyre." Ambrose seems here to suggest that Moses did not die, but was translated like Elijah and Enoch; on which matter I shall speak at the last chapter of Deuteronomy.
Hear the Apostle, Hebrews 11:24: "By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be afflicted with the people of God than to have the pleasure of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasure of the Egyptians: for he looked unto the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the fierceness of the king: for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible; by faith he celebrated the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest he who destroyed the firstborn should touch them; by faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land, which the Egyptians attempting were devoured."
Hear Saint Justin in his Exhortation, or Paranaesis to the Greeks, in which he teaches throughout that the Greeks drew their wisdom and knowledge of God from the Egyptians, and these from Moses. Especially: "When a certain man," he says, "as you yourselves confess, consulted the oracle of the gods, what men dedicated to religion there had ever happened to be, you say this was the response given: 'Wisdom has yielded only to the Chaldeans: the Hebrews worship with their minds the Unbegotten King and God.'"
He adds: "Moses wrote his history in Hebrew, when the letters of the Greeks had not yet been invented. For Cadmus was the first to bring these later from Phoenicia and hand them on to the Greeks. Hence Plato also wrote in the Timaeus that Solon, the wisest of the wise, when he had returned from Egypt, said to Critias that he had heard an Egyptian priest who told him: 'O Solon, you Greeks are always children; there is no old man among the Greeks.' And again: 'You are all young in your minds; for you hold in them no ancient opinion handed down by ancient tradition, nor any discipline hoary with age.'" And a little further on, from Diodorus he teaches that Orpheus, Homer, Solon, Pythagoras, Plato, the Sibyl, and others, when they had been in Egypt, changed their opinion about many gods, because indeed from Moses through the Egyptians they learned that there is one God, who in the beginning created heaven and earth. Hence Orpheus sang:
Jupiter is one, Pluto, Sun, Bacchus are one,
There is one God in all things: why do I tell you this twice?
The same again: I call you to witness, O heaven, origin of the great Wise One,
And you, the Word of the Father, the first thing He uttered from His mouth,
When He created the fabric of the world by His own design.
Finally he adds that Plato learned about God from Moses, whence he likewise called Him "to on," that is, "that which is," just as Moses calls Him "ehyeh," that is, "who is," or "I am who I am." Again, from the same source he learned about the creation of things, the divine Word, the resurrection of bodies, judgment, the punishments of the impious, and the rewards of the just, and the Holy Spirit, whom Plato supposed to be the soul of the world; for he did not sufficiently understand Moses, but twisted him to suit his own fancies; whence he fell into errors.
And in like manner Saint Cyril, in book 1 Against Julian, shows that Moses was more ancient than the earliest heroes of the Gentiles, whom they themselves considered the most ancient.
Hear his learned chronology of Moses and the Gentiles: "Therefore descending from the times of Abraham to Moses, let us begin again with new starting points of years, setting the birth of Moses first in the reckoning. In the seventh year of Moses they say Prometheus and Epimetheus were born, and Atlas, the brother of Prometheus, and moreover Argus the all-seeing. In the thirty-fifth year of Moses, Cecrops first reigned at Athens, who was surnamed Diphyes: they say he was the first among men to sacrifice an ox, and named Jupiter the supreme god among the Greeks. In the sixty-seventh year of Moses they say there was the flood of Deucalion in Thessaly; and moreover in Ethiopia the son of the Sun, as they say, Phaethon, was consumed by fire. In the seventieth fourth year of Moses a certain man called Hellen, the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, gave the Greeks the appellation of his own name, whereas previously they were called Greeks. In the one hundred and twentieth year of Moses, Dardanus founded the city of Dardania, when Amyntas ruled among the Assyrians, Sthenelus among the Argives, and Ramesses among the Egyptians; he himself was also called Egypt, the brother of Danaus. In the one hundred and sixtieth year after Moses, Cadmus reigned at Thebes, whose daughter was Semele, from whom Bacchus was born, as they say, from Jupiter. There were also at that time Linus of Thebes and Amphion, musicians. At that time also Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, assumed the priesthood among the Hebrews, Aaron having died. In the 195th year after Moses they say that the virgin Proserpina was seized by Aidoneus, that is Orcus, king of the Molossians; he is said to have raised a very large dog named Cerberus, which seized Pirithous and Theseus when they came for the abduction of his wife: but when Pirithous had perished, Hercules arrived and freed Theseus from the danger of death in the underworld, as they fable. In the 290th year Perseus killed Dionysius, that is Liber, whose tomb they say is at Delphi near the golden Apollo. In the 410th year after Moses, Ilium was conquered, when Esebon was judge among the Hebrews, Agamemnon among the Argives, Vaphres among the Egyptians, and Teutamus among the Assyrians."
"Therefore from the birth of Moses to the destruction of Troy, 410 years are reckoned."
76. Hear Saint Augustine, book 22 Against Faustus, chapter 69: "Moses," he says, "the most faithful servant of God, humble in declining so great a ministry, obedient in undertaking it, faithful in preserving it, vigorous in carrying it out, watchful in governing the people, severe in correcting, ardent in loving, patient in enduring; who on behalf of those over whom he was placed, interposed himself before God when He consulted, and set himself against Him when He was angry: far be it from us to judge such and so great a man by the slanderous mouth of Faustus, but rather by the truly truthful mouth of God."
Hear Saint Gregory, Part 2 of the Pastoral Rule, chapter 5: "Hence Moses frequently enters and leaves the tabernacle, and he who inside is caught up in contemplation, outside is pressed by the affairs of the infirm; inside he considers the secrets of God, outside he bears the burdens of carnal men, providing an example to rulers, that when they are uncertain outside about what to arrange, they should consult the Lord through prayer."
The same author, in book 6 on 1 Kings chapter 3, says that Moses was so full of the spirit that the Lord took from his spirit and shared it with the seventy elders of the people. The same, in homily 16 on Ezekiel, places Moses above Abraham in the knowledge of God. Nor is this surprising. For to Moses God says: "I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and my name Adonai (Jehovah) I did not make known to them," which to you, O Moses, I make known and reveal.
Moses and Christ: Nineteen Parallels
Moreover Moses was an express sign and type of Christ; and therefore just as the sun illuminates the day, and the moon the night, so Christ illuminated Christians in the new law, and Moses the Jews in the old. Wherefore Ascanius beautifully compares Christ to the sun and Moses to the moon (Martinengus on Genesis, volume 1, page 5). For first, Moses was the legislator of the Pentateuch, Christ of the Gospel; second, Moses had two singular encounters with God: the first when he received the first tablets of the law from God on Sinai, the second when he received the second tablets, and then he returned with a radiant and as it were horned face. These testimonies God gave to him. Two similar ones He gave to Christ: the first at His baptism, when the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove, and a voice was heard from heaven; the second, when He was transfigured on Tabor, and Moses and Elijah bore witness to Him, that is, the law and the prophets. Third, Moses performed astonishing plagues and miracles in Egypt: Christ performed greater ones. Fourth, Moses spoke to God, but in darkness, and saw Him from behind; but Christ face to face. Fifth, Moses heard from God: "You have found favor with me, and I have known you by name;" Christ heard from the Father: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear Him."
78. Hear Eusebius, book 3 of the Demonstration of the Gospel, who from the deeds of Moses and Christ constructs a wonderful antithesis, whose lengthy words I shall condense into a few:
1. Moses was the legislator of the Jewish nation, Christ of the whole universe. 2. Moses took away idols from the Hebrews, Christ cast them out from almost every region of the world. 3. Moses established the law with wondrous portents, Christ founded the Gospel with even greater ones. 4. Moses freed his people into liberty, Christ shook off the yoke of the human race. 5. Moses opened a land flowing with milk and honey, Christ unlocked the most excellent land of the living. 6. As a tiny infant Moses, scarcely born, underwent mortal danger from the cruelty of Pharaoh, who had condemned the males of the Jewish people to death; Christ as an infant, adored by the Magi, was compelled to withdraw into Egypt because of the savagery of Herod who was slaughtering children. 7. Moses as a youth was renowned for his learning in all disciplines; Christ at twelve years of age struck the most learned doctors of the law with astonishment. 8. Moses, fasting for forty days, was nourished by the divine word; for forty days likewise Christ, neither eating nor drinking, devoted himself to divine contemplation. 9. Moses provided manna and quails to the hungry in the desert; Christ in the desert satisfied five thousand men with five loaves. 10. Moses passed unharmed through the waters of the Arabian gulf; Christ walked upon the waves of the sea. 11. Moses with outstretched rod divided the sea; Christ rebuked the wind and the sea, and there was a great calm. 12. Moses appeared radiant on the mountain with a glowing face; Christ was transfigured on the mountain with a most brilliant appearance, and His face shone like the sun.
13. The children of Israel could not fix the gaze of their eyes upon Moses; before Christ the disciples fell terrified on their faces. 14. Moses restored the leprous Miriam to her former health; Christ washed Mary Magdalene, overwhelmed with the stains of sins, with heavenly grace. 15. The Egyptians called Moses the finger of God; Christ said of Himself: "But if I cast out demons by the finger of God," etc.
16. Moses chose 12 scouts; Christ also chose 12 Apostles. 17. Moses appointed 70 Elders; Christ 70 Disciples. 18. Moses designated Joshua son of Nun as his successor; Christ elevated Peter to the supreme pontificate after himself. 19. Of Moses it is written: "No man knew his sepulchre to the present day;" of Christ the angels testified: "You seek Jesus the crucified? He is risen, He is not here."
Hear Saint Basil, homily 1 on the Hexaemeron: "Moses even while hanging at his mother's breast was beloved and pleasing to God; he himself chose to experience calamities and hardships with the people of God, rather than to enjoy temporary pleasure with sin. He was a most ardent lover and observer of justice and equity, the fiercest enemy of wickedness and injustice; in Ethiopia (in Midian) he devoted forty years to contemplation; at eighty years of age he saw God, insofar as a man can see Him; hence God says of him: 'Mouth to mouth I shall speak to him in a vision, and not through enigmas.'"
Hear Saint Gregory Nazianzen, oration 22, in which he compares Saint Basil and his brother Gregory of Nyssa to Moses and Aaron: "Who was the most illustrious of legislators? Moses. Who was the holiest of priests? Aaron. Brothers no less in piety than in body: or rather, the one was the God of Pharaoh, and the ruler and legislator of the Israelites, and the one who entered the cloud, and the inspector and judge of divine mysteries, and the builder of that true tabernacle which was constructed by God, not by man; he was the prince of princes, and the priest of priests, using Aaron as his tongue, etc. Both afflicting Egypt, dividing the sea, governing Israel, drowning enemies, drawing bread from above, treading upon the waters, pointing out the way to the promised land. Moses therefore was the prince of princes, and the priest of priests," etc.
Hear Saint Jerome, who at the beginning of his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians teaches that Moses was not only a Prophet but also an Apostle, and this from the common opinion of the Hebrews.
Hear Philo, the most learned of the Hebrews: "This is the life, this is the death of Moses, king, legislator, pontiff, prophet," book 3 of The Life of Moses, at the end.
Hear the Gentiles. Numenius, as cited by Eusebius in book 9 of the Preparation for the Gospel, chapter 3, asserts that Plato and Pythagoras followed the teachings of Moses, and so what is Plato, he says, but Moses speaking Attic?
Moses as the Most Ancient Theologian, Philosopher, Poet, and Historian
To these add Eupolemus and Artapanus, who (as cited by Eusebius in the same place, chapter 4) say that Moses transmitted letters to the Egyptians, and established many other things for the common good, and on account of his interpretation of the Sacred Writings was called Mercury, and hence it came about that he was worshipped by them as a god.
Ptolemy Philadelphus (as Aristeas testifies in his work on the 72 Translators), having heard the law of Moses, said to Demetrius: "Why has no historian or poet made mention of so great a work?" To which Demetrius replied: "Because that law is of sacred things, divinely given; and because some who attempted it, terrified by a divine plague, desisted from their undertaking." And he immediately adds the examples of Theopompus the historian and of Theodectes the tragic poet, which I mentioned above.
Diodorus, the most esteemed of all historians, says Saint Justin in his Exhortation to the Greeks, lists six ancient legislators, and first of all Moses, whom he says was a man of great spirit, and celebrated for his most upright life, of whom he further states: "Among the Jews indeed Moses, whom they call God, either on account of the wonderful and divine knowledge which he judges will benefit the multitude of men, or on account of the excellence and power by which the common people more willingly obey the law they have received. They record that the second among the lawgivers was an Egyptian named Sauchnis, a man of remarkable prudence. The third they say was King Sesonchusis, who not only excelled among the Egyptians in military affairs, but also restrained a warlike people by establishing laws. The fourth they designate as Bachoris, also a king, whom they record as having given precepts to the Egyptians about the manner of ruling and domestic administration. The fifth was King Amasis. The sixth is said to be Darius, the father of Xerxes, who added to the Egyptian laws."
Finally, Josephus, Eusebius, and others record that Moses was the first of all those whose writings now survive, or whose name has been recorded in the writings of the Gentiles, to be a theologian, philosopher, poet, and historian. Therefore the veneration of Moses was remarkable not only among the Jews but also among the Gentiles. Josephus relates, in book 12, chapter 4, that a certain Roman soldier tore apart the books of Moses, and immediately the Jews ran to the Roman governor Cumanus, demanding that he avenge not their own injury, but the injury done to the offended Divinity. Wherefore Cumanus struck the soldier who had violated the law with the axe.
Moreover Moses was more ancient, and preceded by a great span of time all the sages of Greece and of the Gentiles, namely Homer, Hesiod, Thales, Pythagoras, Socrates, and those older than them -- Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, Hercules, Aesculapius, Apollo, and even Mercury Trismegistus himself, who was the most ancient of all. For this Mercury Trismegistus, says Saint Augustine, in book 18 of The City of God, chapter 39, was the grandson of the elder Mercury, whose maternal grandfather was Atlas the astrologer, and a contemporary of Prometheus, and he flourished at the time when Moses lived. Here note that Moses wrote the Pentateuch simply, in the manner of a diary or annals; Joshua, however, or someone like him, arranged these same annals of Moses in order, organized them, and added and wove in certain statements. For thus at the end of Deuteronomy the death of Moses, since he was certainly dead, was added and described by Joshua or some other person. Likewise, not by Moses but by some other person, as it seems, the praise of Moses' meekness was interwoven at Numbers 12:3. Likewise, at Genesis 14:15, the city of Laish is called Dan, although it was called Dan long after the times of Moses, and therefore the name Dan was substituted there for Laish, not by Joshua, but by another who lived later. Likewise at Numbers 21, verses 14, 15, and 27 were similarly added by another. In the same way the death of Joshua was added by another, at the last chapter of Joshua, verse 29. In the same way the prophecy of Jeremiah was arranged and put in order by Baruch, as I shall show in the preface to Jeremiah. Likewise the proverbs of Solomon were not collected and arranged by him, but by others from his writings, as is clear from Proverbs 25:1.
Moreover Moses learned and received these things partly by tradition, partly by divine revelation, partly by eyewitness observation: for the things he relates in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, he himself was present and saw and carried out.
Moreover this veneration was illustrated both by martyrdoms and by miracles. When Maximian and Diocletian ordered by edict that the books of Moses and the other books of Sacred Scripture be handed over to them for burning, the faithful resisted, preferring to die rather than surrender them. Therefore many underwent a glorious contest for the sacred books, and obtained the triumphant laurel of martyrdom.
But when Fundanus, formerly Bishop of Alutina, out of fear of death had surrendered the sacred books, and the sacrilegious magistrate was consigning them to the fire, suddenly a shower poured down from a clear sky, the fire that had been brought to the sacred books was extinguished, hail followed, and the entire region itself was devastated by raging elements on behalf of the sacred books, as the acts of Saint Saturninus record, which are found in Surius under February 11.
Prayer to Moses
Look upon us, we beseech you, holy Moses, you who from afar on Sinai were once a spectator of the glory of God, and up close on Tabor of the glory of Christ, but now enjoy both face to face. Extend your hand from on high, channel the rivers of your wisdom upon us, and by your help, prayers, and merits bestow upon us even a spark of that eternal light. Obtain from the Father of lights that He may lead us, His little worms, to these sacred precincts of the Pentateuch; grant that in His Scriptures we may recognize Him; grant that we may love Him as much as we know Him: for we do not desire to know Him except to love Him, and that, set on fire with love of Him, like torches, we may set ablaze both others and the whole world. For this is the knowledge of the saints; for He Himself is our love and our fear, to Him alone all our concerns look, to Him we devote ourselves and all that is ours. Finally, lead us to Christ, who is the end of your law; that He Himself may guide, prosper, and bring to completion all our studies and endeavors, to the glory of Him to whom every creature gives praise -- glory that is to be proclaimed in the kingdom of His Church now militant, and one day to be sung together most sweetly and most happily in the triumphant choir of the blessed in heaven, by all of us who are devoted to you, with you, for all eternity, as I hope. There we shall stand upon the sea of glass, all of us who have conquered the beast, "singing the canticle of Moses and the canticle of the Lamb, saying: Great and wonderful are your works, O Lord God Almighty; just and true are your ways, O King of ages; who shall not fear you, O Lord, and magnify your name? For you alone are holy," Apocalypse 15:3; because you have chosen us, because you have made us kings and priests, and we shall reign forever and ever.
Amen.