City of God 18.35–18.42

Chapter 35. On the prophecy of the three prophets, that is, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

There remain three minor prophets, who prophesied at the end of the captivity: Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. Of these Haggai prophesies Christ and the church quite plainly with this brevity: “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Yet one little while, and I will move heaven and earth and the sea and the dry land, and I will move all nations, and the one desired by all nations shall come.” This prophecy is seen partly fulfilled already, and is partly hoped to be fulfilled at the end. For he moved the heaven by the testimony of angels and stars when Christ became incarnate; he moved the earth by the great miracle of his birth from the virgin; he moved the sea and the dry land when Christ is proclaimed both in the islands and in the whole world: so we see all nations moved to faith. But what follows, “and the one desired by all nations shall come,” is awaited of his last coming. For in order to be desired by those who await him, he had first to be loved by those who believe.

Zechariah says of Christ and the church: “Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion; shout for joy, daughter of Jerusalem; behold, your king comes to you, righteous and a saviour; he is poor and riding upon an ass and upon a colt, the foal of an ass; and his dominion is from sea to sea and from the rivers to the ends of the earth.” When this was done, when the Lord Christ used a beast of this kind on a journey, is read in the gospel, where this prophecy too is recalled in part, as far as seemed sufficient for that place. In another place, speaking to Christ himself in the spirit of prophecy about the forgiveness of sins through his blood, he says: “You also, by the blood of your testament, have sent forth your prisoners from the pit in which there is no water.” What he wishes to be understood by this pit may be variously thought, even in accordance with the right faith. To me, however, it seems that nothing is better signified by it than the depth of human misery, dry and in a way barren, where there are no streams of righteousness but the mire of iniquity. Of this too it is said in the psalm: “And he brought me out of the pit of misery and from the miry clay.”

Malachi, prophesying the church, which we see spread abroad through Christ, says most plainly to the Jews in the person of God: “I have no pleasure in you, and I will not accept an offering from your hand. For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place sacrifice shall be made and a pure offering shall be offered to my name; for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord.” Since we now see this sacrifice offered to God in every place from the rising of the sun to its setting, through the priesthood of Christ after the order of Melchizedek, while they cannot deny that the sacrifice of the Jews has ceased, to whom it was said, “I have no pleasure in you, nor will I accept an offering from your hands,” why do they still wait for another Christ, when what they read prophesied and see fulfilled could not have been fulfilled except through him? For a little after he says of him in the person of God: “My covenant was with him of life and peace, and I gave him to fear me with fear and to stand in awe before my name. The law of truth was in his mouth; directing in peace he walked with me and turned many from iniquity; for the lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law from his mouth; for he is the angel of the Lord almighty.” Nor is it to be wondered at that Christ Jesus was called the angel of the Lord almighty. For as he is called servant because of the form of a servant in which he came to men, so he is called angel because of the gospel which he announced to men. For if we translate these Greek words, “gospel” is good news and “angel” is messenger. Of him again he says: “Behold, I will send my angel, and he shall look out the way before my face; and suddenly the Lord whom you seek shall come to his temple, and the angel of the testament whom you desire. Behold, he comes, says the Lord almighty; and who shall endure the day of his coming? Or who shall stand in his sight?” In this place he foretold both the first and the second coming of Christ: the first, namely, of which he says, “And suddenly he shall come to his temple,” that is, to his flesh, of which he said in the gospel, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”; and the second, where he says, “Behold, he comes, says the Lord almighty, and who shall endure the day of his coming? Or who shall stand in his sight?” And when he said, “the Lord whom you seek, and the angel of the testament whom you desire,” he indicated, surely, that the Jews too, according to the Scriptures which they read, seek and desire Christ. But many of them did not recognize that he whom they sought and desired had come, being blinded in their hearts by their previous deserts. What he here names the testament, whether above, where he says, “My testament was with him,” or here, where he called him the angel of the testament, we must without doubt take as the new testament, in which eternal things are promised, not the old, in which temporal things are promised; and a great many weak people, who count these things great and serve the true God for a reward of such things, are disturbed when they see the ungodly abound in them. Therefore the same prophet, to distinguish the eternal blessedness of the new testament, which will be given only to the good, from the earthly happiness of the old, which is often given to the wicked too, says: “You have made your words heavy against me, says the Lord, and you said: In what have we spoken against you? You said: Everyone who serves God is vain; and what more have we, because we kept his observances and walked as suppliants before the face of the Lord almighty? And now we call strangers blessed, and all who do iniquity are built up; they have opposed God and have been saved. These things those who feared the Lord spoke against him, each to his neighbour; and the Lord took note and heard; and he wrote a book of remembrance before him for those who fear the Lord and revere his name.” By this book the new testament is signified. Finally, let us hear what follows: “And they shall be mine, says the Lord almighty, on the day when I act, for a possession, and I will choose them as a man chooses his son who serves him; and you shall turn and see the difference between the righteous and the unrighteous, and between the one who serves God and the one who does not serve him. For behold, the day comes burning like an oven, and it shall burn them up, and all the aliens and all who do iniquity shall be stubble, and the day that is coming shall set them on fire, says the Lord almighty; and neither root nor branch of them shall be left. And to you who fear my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, and healing in his wings; and you shall go out and leap like calves loosed from their bonds; and you shall tread down the wicked, and they shall be ashes under your feet on the day when I act, says the Lord almighty.” This is what is called the day of judgment; of which, God willing, we shall speak more fully in its place.

Chapter 36. On Ezra and the books of the Maccabees.

After these three prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, in the same period of the people's liberation from the Babylonian slavery, Ezra also wrote, who has been regarded more as a writer of history than as a prophet (as is also the book called Esther, whose events, told to the praise of God, are found to be not far from these times); unless perhaps Ezra is to be understood as having prophesied Christ in the passage where, when a question arose among certain young men as to what had most power in the world, and one had said kings, another wine, and the third women, who for the most part rule over kings, that same third nevertheless showed that truth is victorious over all. But by consulting the gospel we learn that Christ is the truth. From this time, the temple having been restored, there were among the Jews not kings but rulers down to Aristobulus; the reckoning of whose times is found not in the holy Scriptures which are called canonical, but in others, among which are also the books of the Maccabees, which not the Jews but the church holds as canonical, because of the fierce and wonderful sufferings of certain martyrs who, before Christ had come in the flesh, contended for the law of God even to death and endured most grievous and horrible evils.

Chapter 37. That prophetic authority is found to be more ancient than any origin of Gentile philosophy.

It was in the time of our prophets, then, whose writings have now come to the knowledge of almost all nations, and much more after them, that there were philosophers of the nations who were also called by this name, which began with Pythagoras of Samos, who began to excel and be known at the time when the captivity of the Jews was ended. Much more, then, are the other philosophers found to have lived after the prophets. For Socrates of Athens himself, the master of all who were then most renowned, holding the first place in that part which is called moral or active, is found in the chronicles after Ezra. Not much later Plato too was born, who far surpassed the other disciples of Socrates. If we add to these also the earlier ones, who were not yet called philosophers, namely the seven sages and then the natural philosophers who succeeded Thales, imitating his zeal in searching out the nature of things, namely Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and some others, before Pythagoras first professed himself a philosopher, not even they precede all our prophets in antiquity of time, since Thales, after whom the others came, is said to have been eminent in the reign of Romulus, when the river of prophecy burst forth from the springs of Israel in those writings that were to flow through the whole world. Only those theological poets, then, Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, and any other among the Greeks, are found to be earlier in years than these Hebrew prophets whose writings we hold as authoritative. But not even they preceded in time our true theologian Moses, who truthfully proclaimed the one true God, and whose writings are now first in the canon of authority; and therefore, as far as the Greeks are concerned, in whose language the literature of this world has most flourished, they have nothing to boast of in their wisdom by which it might seem, if not superior to our religion, where true wisdom is, at least more ancient.

It must be admitted, however, that not indeed in Greece, but among barbarian nations, as in Egypt, there had already been before Moses some learning which could be called their wisdom; otherwise it would not have been written in the holy books that Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, namely at the time when he was born there and, adopted and nursed by Pharaoh's daughter, was also liberally educated. But not even the wisdom of the Egyptians could precede in time the wisdom of our prophets, since Abraham too was a prophet. And what wisdom could there have been in Egypt before Isis, whom after her death they thought should be worshipped as a great goddess, gave them letters? Isis, moreover, is reported to have been the daughter of Inachus, who first began to reign over the Argives when Abraham's grandsons are found to have been born.

Chapter 38. That the church's canon has not received certain writings of saints because of their excessive antiquity, lest on their pretext false things be inserted among true.

Now if I go back to much more ancient times, even before that great flood there was certainly our patriarch Noah, whom I might not undeservedly call a prophet too; since the very ark which he made and in which he escaped with his family was a prophecy of our times. What of Enoch, the seventh from Adam? Is he not declared in the canonical epistle of the apostle Jude to have prophesied? That their writings should not be authoritative among the Jews and among us was the effect of their excessive antiquity, on account of which they seemed to need to be held suspect, lest false things be put forward as true. For some things are indeed put forward which are said to be theirs by those who, according to their own notion, believe at random whatever they please. But the purity of the canon has not received them, not because the authority of those men who pleased God is rejected, but because these writings are not believed to be theirs. Nor ought it to seem strange that writings put forward under the name of so great antiquity are held suspect, since in the very history of the kings of Judah and the kings of Israel, which contains events concerning which we believe the same canonical Scripture, very many things are mentioned which are not explained there and are said to be found in other books which prophets wrote; and in some places the names of these prophets too are not left unmentioned; and yet these books are not found in the canon which the people of God has received.

The reason for this, I confess, is hidden from me; except that I think that those very men to whom the Holy Spirit certainly revealed what ought to be of religious authority could write some things as men with historical diligence and other things as prophets by divine inspiration; and that these were so distinguished that the former were judged to be attributed to themselves, the latter to God speaking through them; and so the former belonged to the fullness of knowledge, the latter to the authority of religion, in which authority the canon is guarded. Beyond it, if any writings are now put forward even under the name of true prophets, they are of no value even for the abundance of knowledge, since it is uncertain whether they are the work of those whose they are said to be; and for this reason no credit is given them, especially those in which some things are read that are even contrary to the faith of the canonical books, from which it is quite clear that they are not theirs.

Chapter 39. On the Hebrew letters, which were never lacking to that language as its own.

It is not to be believed, then, as some think, that only the Hebrew language was preserved through the man called Heber, from whom the name of the Hebrews comes, and so came down to Abraham, but that the Hebrew letters began with the law given through Moses; rather, that language was kept with its letters through that succession of fathers. Indeed, Moses appointed among the people men to be in charge of teaching letters, before they knew any letters of the divine law. These the Scripture calls grammatoeisagōgeis, who in Latin can be called “inductors” or “introducers” of letters, because they lead them in, that is, introduce them in a way into the hearts of the learners, or rather lead those whom they teach into them. No nation, then, should boast with any vanity of the antiquity of its wisdom over our patriarchs and prophets, in whom there was divine wisdom, since not even Egypt, which is accustomed falsely and emptily to glory in the antiquity of its learning, is found to have preceded in time, by any wisdom of its own, the wisdom of our patriarchs. For no one will dare to say that they were most skilled in wonderful sciences before they knew letters, that is, before Isis came there and taught them there. And that memorable learning of theirs which was called wisdom, what was it but chiefly astronomy and whatever else of such sciences is wont to serve rather to exercise the wits than to enlighten minds with true wisdom? For as regards philosophy, which professes to teach something by which men may become happy, studies of that kind flourished in those lands about the times of Mercury, whom they called Trismegistus, long indeed before the sages or philosophers of Greece, but yet after Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, and certainly after Moses himself. For at the time when Moses was born there is found to have lived that great astrologer Atlas, the brother of Prometheus, maternal grandfather of the elder Mercury, whose grandson was this Mercury Trismegistus.

Chapter 40. On the most lying vanity of the Egyptians, who ascribe a hundred thousand years to the antiquity of their science.

In vain, then, do some chatter with most empty presumption, saying that more than a hundred thousand years are counted since Egypt grasped the reckoning of the stars. For in what books did they collect that number, who learned letters from Isis as their teacher not much more than two thousand years ago? For Varro, no small authority in history, reported this, and it is not out of harmony with the truth of the divine writings too. For since not yet six thousand years are completed from the first man himself, who was called Adam, how are those not rather to be laughed at than refuted who try to persuade us of things about the length of time so different from, and so contrary to, this ascertained truth? For whom do we better believe when he narrates the past than one who also foretold the future, which we now see present? For the very disagreement of the historians among themselves gives us good reason to believe rather the one who does not contradict the divine history which we hold. Moreover, the citizens of the ungodly city, spread everywhere over the earth, when they read most learned men, none of whose authority seems to be despised, disagreeing among themselves about events very remote from the memory of our age, do not find whom they ought rather to believe. But we, supported in the history of our religion by divine authority, do not doubt that whatever opposes it is most false, however other things may stand in secular writings, which, whether true or false, contribute nothing of importance to our living rightly and happily.

Chapter 41. On the disagreements of philosophical opinions and the concord of the canonical Scriptures in the church.

But to leave aside now the knowledge of history, why have the philosophers themselves, from whom we have come on to these matters, who seem to have laboured in their studies for nothing except to find how one should live so as to attain happiness, disagreed, disciples with their masters and fellow disciples among themselves, except because as men they sought these things with human senses and human reasonings? Though there could have been in this also a desire for glory, by which each wishes to seem wiser and sharper than another, and not bound, as it were, to another's opinion, but the discoverer of his own doctrine and view, yet, granting that some or even very many of them were such that the love of truth tore them away from their teachers or fellow learners, so that they might contend for what they thought the truth, whether it was so or not: what does human unhappiness do, or where or by what way does it stretch itself out to reach happiness, if divine authority does not lead it?

Our authors, finally, in whom the canon of the sacred writings is fixed and bounded, not without reason, far be it that they should disagree among themselves in any way. Hence not without reason did not a few talkers in the schools and gymnasia, with contentious disputations, but so many and such great peoples, in fields and cities, learned and unlearned, believe that God spoke to them or through them when they wrote those things. They themselves indeed had to be few, lest what ought to be dear to religion should grow cheap by multitude; and yet not so few that their agreement is not to be wondered at. For among the multitude of philosophers who, even with literary labour, left monuments of their doctrines, one would not easily find any among whom all that they thought agrees; which it would be long to show in this work. And what founder of any sect whatever has been so approved in this demon-worshipping city that the others, who thought differently and contrarily, were disapproved? Were there not renowned at Athens both the Epicureans, who asserted that human affairs do not belong to the care of the gods, and the Stoics, who, thinking the contrary, argued that they are ruled and defended by the gods as helpers and guardians? Hence I wonder why Anaxagoras was put on trial because he said that the sun was a burning stone, thereby, of course, denying that it was a god, when in the same city Epicurus flourished in glory and lived secure, not only not believing that the sun or any of the stars was a god, but contending that neither Jupiter nor any of the gods dwelt in the world at all, for the prayers and supplications of men to reach him. Did not Aristippus there, placing the highest good in the pleasure of the body, and Antisthenes there, asserting rather that man becomes happy by virtue of mind, two noble philosophers and both Socratics, placing the sum of life in ends so different and contrary to each other, of whom the former said the wise man should avoid public affairs and the latter that he should administer them, each gather disciples to follow his own sect? Indeed, openly, in the conspicuous and very well-known Porch, in gymnasia, in gardens, in public and private places, they contended in crowds, each for his own opinion: some asserting one world, others innumerable worlds; of this one world, some that it had a beginning, others that it had none; some that it would perish, others that it would always exist; some that it is governed by the divine mind, others by chance and accident; some that souls are immortal, others that they are mortal; and of those who held them immortal, some that they return into beasts, others by no means; of those who held them mortal, some that they perish immediately after the body, others that they live on afterwards for a little or for longer, but not for ever; some placing the end of the good in the body, others in the mind, others in both, others adding to mind and body external goods as well; some thinking the senses of the body always to be trusted, others not always, others never.

These and other almost innumerable disagreements of the philosophers, what people, what senate, what public power or dignity of the ungodly city ever took care to judge between them, approving and receiving some, disapproving and rejecting others? Did it not rather hold in its bosom, at random, without any judgment and in confusion, so many controversies of men disagreeing, not about fields and houses or any matter of money, but about those things by which one lives either wretchedly or happily? Where, even if some true things were said, false things were said with the same licence, so that it was not for nothing that such a city received the mystical name of Babylon. For Babylon means “confusion,” as we remember having said already. Nor does it matter to the devil, its king, with how contrary errors they quarrel among themselves, since he possesses them all alike, as they deserve, for their many and various impieties.

But that nation, that people, that city, that commonwealth, those Israelites to whom the oracles of God were entrusted, by no means confused false prophets with true ones with equal licence; but the truthful authors of the sacred writings, in agreement among themselves and disagreeing in nothing, were recognized and held by them. These were to them their philosophers, that is, lovers of wisdom; these their sages, these their theologians, these their prophets, these their teachers of uprightness and piety. Whoever was wise and lived according to them was wise and lived not according to men but according to God, who spoke through them. If sacrilege was forbidden there, God forbade it. If it was said, “Honour father and your mother,” God commanded it. If it was said, “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit murder, you shall not steal,” and other things of this kind, these were poured forth not by human mouths but by divine oracles. Whatever truth certain philosophers could see amid the false things they held, and strove to persuade by laborious disputations, that God made this world and himself governs it most providently, about the honourableness of the virtues, the love of country, the faithfulness of friendship, good works, and all things pertaining to upright morals, though they did not know to what end and in what way all these things were to be referred, was commended to the people in that city by prophetic, that is, divine, voices, though through men, not driven home by contests of argument; so that whoever came to know these things feared to despise not the wit of a man but the word of God.

Chapter 42. By what dispensation of God's providence the sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament were translated from Hebrew into the Greek language, so that they might become known to the nations.

These sacred writings one of the Ptolemies, kings of Egypt, was eager to know and to possess. For after the most marvellous and by no means lasting power of Alexander of Macedon, who was also surnamed the Great, by which he had subdued all Asia, indeed almost the whole world, partly by force of arms, partly by terror, when among other parts of the East he also entered and held Judea: after his death, when his companions had divided that very great kingdom among themselves, not to possess it peacefully, but rather had torn it apart to lay everything waste with wars, Egypt began to have the Ptolemies as kings. The first of them, the son of Lagus, carried many captives from Judea into Egypt. But another Ptolemy succeeding him, who was called Philadelphus, allowed all those whom he had brought as subjects to return free; and moreover he sent royal gifts to the temple of God and asked Eleazar, then high priest, that the Scriptures should be given him, which he had certainly heard, as fame proclaimed, were divine, and therefore he had desired to have them in the library which he had made most renowned. When the same high priest had sent them to him in Hebrew, he afterwards asked for translators too; and there were given seventy-two, six men from each of the twelve tribes, most learned in both languages, that is, Hebrew and Greek; and custom has now established that their translation is called the Septuagint. It is related, indeed, that there was so marvellous, astonishing, and plainly divine an agreement in their words that, though each sat separately at this work (for so it pleased Ptolemy to test their faithfulness), they did not differ from one another in any word that meant the same thing and had the same force, or in the order of the words; but as if there were one translator, so what they all translated was one, since in truth the Spirit was one in all. And they had received so marvellous a gift of God so that in this way too the authority of those Scriptures might be commended, not as human but, as they were, as divine, to benefit the nations that would at some time believe, which we now see accomplished.