To Autolycus 2.5–2.15

So the opinions of the philosophers and writers do not agree. While they declared these views, the poet Homer is found introducing, on another theory, the origin not only of the world but also of the gods. He says somewhere: “Ocean, origin of the gods, and mother Tethys, from whom come all the rivers and every sea.” In saying this he no longer establishes a god; for who does not know that Ocean is water? And if water, then not a god. God, if he is the Maker of all things, as indeed he is, is also the Creator of water and of the seas. Hesiod too told of the origin not only of the gods but also of the world itself. And though he said the world was created, he lacked the strength to say by whom it was made. Moreover he said that the gods were Kronos, and Zeus his son, and Poseidon and Pluto; and we find that these are later than the world. He also relates that Kronos was warred upon by Zeus, his own son. For he says: “Having conquered by might his father Kronos; and he ordered all things well for the immortals alike and appointed their honors.” Then he goes on to tell of the daughters of Zeus, whom he calls the Muses, and he is found as their suppliant, wishing to learn from them how all things came into being. For he says: “Hail, children of Zeus, and grant me lovely song; celebrate the holy race of the immortals who are forever, who were born of Earth and starry Heaven and dark Night, and whom the salt Sea nourished. Tell how at first the gods and earth came to be, and the rivers and the boundless sea raging with its swell, and the shining stars and the wide heaven above; how they divided their wealth and shared out their honors, and how at first they took possession of Olympus with its many folds. Tell me these things, you Muses who have your homes on Olympus, from the beginning, and say which of them first came to be.” But how did the Muses know these things, since they were later than the world? Or how could they tell them to Hesiod, when their father had not yet been born?

In a way Hesiod supposes both matter and the making of the world, when he says: “First of all Chaos came to be, and then broad-breasted Earth, a secure seat forever for all the immortals who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and misty Tartarus in a recess of the wide-wayed earth, and Eros, fairest among the immortal gods, who loosens the limbs and overpowers the mind and wise counsel in the breasts of all gods and all men. From Chaos came Erebus and black Night. And Earth first bore, equal to herself, starry Heaven, to cover her all around and to be a secure seat forever for the blessed gods; and she bore the tall Mountains, pleasant haunts of the goddess Nymphs who dwell in the wooded mountains. She also bore the barren sea raging with its swell, Pontus, without the union of love; and then, lying with Heaven, she bore deep-eddying Ocean.” Yet in saying this he did not show by whom these things came to be. If in the beginning there was chaos, and some matter already lay there, uncreated, who was it that refashioned, reordered, and transformed it? Did matter reshape and adorn itself? For Zeus came into being long afterward, not only after matter but after the world and a multitude of human beings, and so did his father Kronos. Or was there rather some sovereign power that made matter, I mean God, who also set it in order? Moreover, Hesiod is found talking nonsense in every way and contradicting himself. Having spoken of earth, heaven, and sea, he would have the gods come from them, and from these he proclaims certain most terrible beings, kinsmen of the gods: the race of the Titans and the Cyclopes and a multitude of Giants, and the Egyptian demons, or rather vain men, as Apollonides, also called Horapius, records in his book entitled Semenouthi and in his other histories of the Egyptian religion and of their kings.

Why should I tell of the Greek myths and the futile labor in them: Pluto reigning over darkness, and Poseidon plunging under the sea, embracing Melanippe and begetting a man-eating son; or all the tragedies the writers have composed about the children of Zeus? That these were born men and not gods, they themselves show by listing their genealogies. Aristophanes the comic poet, in the play entitled The Birds, undertaking to describe the making of the world, said that in the beginning an egg came into being, the first form of the world, in these words: “First the black-winged one bore an egg.” Satyrus too, in his history of the demes of the Alexandrians, beginning from Philopator, also called Ptolemy, shows that Dionysus was the founder of his line; which is why Ptolemy established the first tribe named after him. Satyrus speaks thus: “Of Dionysus and Althaea daughter of Thestius was born Deianira; of her and Heracles son of Zeus, Hyllus; of him, Cleodemus; of him, Aristomachus; of him, Temenus; of him, Ceisus; of him, Maron; of him, Thestius; of him, Acous; of him, Aristomidas; of him, Caranus; of him, Coenus; of him, Tyrimmas; of him, Perdiccas; of him, Philip; of him, Aeropus; of him, Alcetas; of him, Amyntas; of him, Bocrus; of him, Meleager; of him, Arsinoe; of her and Lagus, Ptolemy also called Soter; of him and Berenice, Ptolemy Philadelphus; of him and Arsinoe, Ptolemy Euergetes; of him and Berenice, daughter of Magas, king of Cyrene, Ptolemy Philopator.” Such, then, is the kinship of the kings of Alexandria with Dionysus. And so in the Dionysian tribe there are demes assigned: Althaeis, from Althaea, the wife of Dionysus and daughter of Thestius; Deianeiris, from the daughter of Dionysus and Althaea, the wife of Heracles. This is where the demes among them get their names: Ariadnis, from the daughter of Minos, the wife of Dionysus, a girl who loved her father, who lay with Dionysus in the form of a steersman; Thestis, from Thestius, the father of Althaea; Thoantis, from Thoas, son of Dionysus; Staphylis, from Staphylus, son of Dionysus; Euaenis, from Eunous, son of Dionysus; Maronis, from Maron, son of Ariadne and Dionysus. All these are sons of Dionysus. And many other names have arisen and exist to this day: from Heracles, those called Heraclidae; from Apollo, Apollonidae and Apollonii; from Poseidon, Posidonii; and from Zeus, Dii and Diogenae.

And why should I go on listing the multitude of such names and genealogies? In every way, then, all the writers and the so-called poets and philosophers are deluded, and so are those who pay attention to them. For they composed myths and follies about their gods: they showed them to be not gods but men, some drunkards, others fornicators and murderers. And about the origin of the world, too, they said things that are base and contradict one another. First, some declared that the world is uncreated, as we showed above; and those who said it is uncreated and an eternal nature spoke inconsistently with those who taught that it was created. For they spoke by guesswork and human thinking, not according to the truth. Others again said that there is providence, and so undid the teachings of the former. Aratus says: “Let us begin from Zeus, whom we men never leave unnamed. Full of Zeus are all the streets, all the marketplaces of men; full are the sea and the harbors; everywhere we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring; and he, kindly to men, gives favorable signs, and rouses the peoples to work, reminding them of their livelihood. He tells when the soil is best for oxen and mattocks, and tells when the seasons are right both for digging around the plants and for sowing all kinds of seed.” Whom, then, shall we believe, Aratus, or Sophocles, who says, “There is no [clear] providence of anything; it is best to live at random, as best one can”? Homer, again, does not agree with him, for he says, “Zeus increases and diminishes men's valor.” And Simonides: “No one without the gods has won valor, neither city nor mortal. God is all-wise; nothing among them is free of woe.” Likewise Euripides: “Nothing comes to men apart from God.” And Menander: “No one cares for us, then, but God alone.” And again Euripides: “For when God wills to save, he gives many occasions for rescue.” And [Thestius]: “If God wills, you are saved, even if you sail on a mat.” They said ten thousand such things, and contradicted themselves. Sophocles, for one, who elsewhere speaks of there being no providence, says: “No mortal escapes the stroke of God.” They also brought in a multitude of gods, or else spoke of one sovereign God; and to those who said there is no providence they said the opposite. So Euripides admits it, saying: “We strive after many things in hope, laboring in vain, knowing nothing.” Against their will they confess that they do not know the truth. Inspired by demons and puffed up by them, what they said they said through the demons. For the poets, Homer and Hesiod, inspired, as they say, by the Muses, spoke by fantasy and error, not by a pure spirit but by a deceiving one. This is clearly shown from the fact that even to this day those possessed by demons are sometimes exorcised in the name of the true God, and the deceiving spirits themselves confess that they are demons, the same ones who worked in those poets then. Yet sometimes some of the poets, coming to their senses in soul and departing from the demons, said things that agree with the prophets, as a testimony both to themselves and to all people, about the sole sovereignty of God, the judgment, and the other things they spoke of.

But the men of God, bearers of the Holy Spirit who became prophets, inspired and made wise by God himself, became taught by God, holy and righteous. That is why they were thought worthy to receive this reward: they became instruments of God and received the wisdom that comes from him, and through this wisdom they spoke about the creation of the world and about everything else. They also foretold plagues and famines and wars. And there were not one or two of them but many, at various times and seasons, among the Hebrews, and among the Greeks also the Sibyl; and they all spoke in harmony and agreement with one another, both about what happened before them and about what happened in their own time, and about what is being fulfilled now in ours. So we are convinced that what is to come will also happen as they said, just as the earlier things have been accomplished.

First, then, they taught us with one voice that God made all things out of nothing. For nothing was coeval with God; but he, being his own place, lacking nothing, and existing before the ages, willed to make the human being, by whom he might be known; for him, then, he prepared the world beforehand. For what is created is also in need, but what is uncreated needs nothing. God, then, having his own Word within him, in his own heart, begot him, uttering him together with his own Wisdom before all things. This Word he had as his helper in the things made by him, and through him he made all things. He is called “Beginning” because he rules and is lord of all things made through him. He, then, being the Spirit of God, and Beginning, and Wisdom, and Power of the Most High, came down upon the prophets and through them spoke about the making of the world and about everything else. For the prophets did not exist when the world was made; but the Wisdom of God that was in him existed, and his holy Word, who is always present with him. That is why he speaks thus through Solomon the prophet: “When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him, and when he made the foundations of the earth strong, I was beside him, setting things in order.” And Moses, who lived many years before Solomon, or rather the Word of God speaking through him as through an instrument, says: “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.” First he named “beginning” and “making,” and only then did he bring in God; for one must not name God idly and to no purpose. For the divine Wisdom foreknew that some would talk nonsense and name a multitude of gods that do not exist. So, that the true God might be known through his works, and that God made the heaven and the earth and all that is in them by his Word, he said: “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.” Then, having spoken of their making, he explains to us: “And the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of God was moving over the water.” This is what the divine Scripture teaches first: in a sense, a created matter, made by God, from which God made and fashioned the world.

The beginning of creation is light, since light reveals the things that are being set in order. That is why it says: “And God said, Let there be light. [And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good,]” that is, good for the human being, for whom it was made. “And God divided between the light and the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between water and water. And it was so. And God made the firmament, and God divided between the water that was under the firmament and the water above the firmament. And God called the firmament heaven; and God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. And God said, Let the water that is under the heaven be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear. And it was so. And the water was gathered into its gatherings, and the dry land appeared. And God called the dry land earth, and the gatherings of the waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their kind and likeness, and fruit trees bearing fruit whose seed is in them, according to their likeness. And it was so. And the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their kind, and fruit trees bearing fruit whose seed is in them, according to their kind, upon the earth. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth and to divide between the day and the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years; and let them be for light in the firmament of heaven, to shine upon the earth. And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars; and God set them in the firmament of heaven to shine upon the earth, and to rule over the day and the night, and to divide between the light and the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. And God said, Let the waters bring forth creeping things with living souls, and birds flying over the earth across the firmament of heaven. And it was so. And God made the great sea creatures and every living soul of creeping things, which the waters brought forth according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that they were good. And God blessed them, saying, Increase and multiply, and fill the waters of the sea, and let the birds multiply upon the earth. And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth living souls according to their kind, four-footed creatures and creeping things and wild beasts of the earth according to their kind. And it was so. And God made the wild beasts of the earth according to their kind, and the cattle according to their kind, and all the creeping things of the earth. And God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make the human being according to our image and likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven and the cattle and all the earth and all the creeping things that creep upon the earth. And God made the human being; according to the image of God he made him; male and female he made them. And God blessed them, saying, Increase and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven and all the cattle and all the earth and all the creeping things that creep upon the earth. And God said, See, I have given you every seed-bearing plant that yields seed, which is upon all the earth, and every tree that has in it the fruit of seed that is sown; it shall be food for you, and for all the wild beasts of the earth and all the birds of heaven and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth, which has in it the breath of life, every green plant for food. And it was so. And God saw all that he had made, and see, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day. And the heaven and the earth were finished, and all their array. And on the sixth day God finished his works that he had made, and on the seventh day he rested from all his works that he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it he rested from all his works that God had begun to make.”

No human being can worthily set out the explanation and the whole design of the six days' work, not even if he had ten thousand mouths and ten thousand tongues. Nor, if someone lived ten thousand years, sojourning in this life, would he even so be able to say anything worthy about it, because of the surpassing greatness and the riches of the wisdom of God contained in the six days' work written above. Many writers have imitated it and tried to give an account of these things, taking their starting points from here, whether about the creation of the world or about the nature of the human being; yet they did not utter even the smallest spark of truth worthy of it. What the philosophers, historians, and poets have said seems credible because it is adorned with fine phrasing; but their teaching is shown to be foolish and empty, because the mass of their nonsense is great and not the smallest part of the truth is found in them. And if something true seems to have been said by them, it is mixed with error. Just as a deadly poison mixed with honey or wine or something else makes the whole harmful and useless, so their long-windedness turns out to be futile labor, and rather harmful to those who believe it. Again, about the seventh day, which all people name but most do not understand: what the Hebrews call the sabbath is rendered in Greek hebdomas (“the seventh”); every race of human beings names it, but they do not know why they call it so. And as for the poet Hesiod's saying that from Chaos came Erebus and Earth and Eros, lord over his gods and men, his words are shown to be vain, frigid, and foreign to all truth. For God must not be overcome by pleasure, since even temperate human beings abstain from every shameful pleasure and evil desire.

To begin from below, from earthly things, and so to tell of the making of what came into being, is a human, lowly, and very feeble way of thinking, as far as God is concerned. A man, being below, begins to build from the ground, and cannot make the roof in its proper order unless he first lays the foundation. But God's power is shown in this, that first he makes what comes into being out of nothing, and as he wills. For what is impossible with human beings is possible with God. That is why the prophet said first that the heaven was made, in the manner of a roof, saying, “In the beginning God made the heaven,” that is, the heaven was made through the Beginning, as we have already shown. By “earth” he means the ground and foundation, as it was in potential; by “abyss,” the mass of the waters; and “darkness,” because the heaven made by God covered the waters together with the earth like a lid. And the Spirit moving over the water is the one God gave to bring life to the creation, as he gave a soul to the human being, mixing the fine with the fine (for the spirit is fine and the water is fine), so that the spirit might nourish the water, and the water with the spirit might nourish the creation, penetrating everywhere. The Spirit, being one and holding the place of light, stood between the water and the heaven, so that the darkness might in a way have no fellowship with the heaven, which is nearer to God, before God said, “Let there be light.” The heaven, then, being like a vault, held matter together, which was like a clod. For another prophet, called Isaiah, has spoken of the heaven thus: “This is God, who made the heaven like a vault and stretched it out like a tent to dwell in.” The command of God, that is, his Word, shining like a lamp in a closed room, lit up the region under heaven, making light apart from the world's luminaries. And God called the light day and the darkness night; for man would not have known to call the light day or the darkness night, nor the other things either, unless he had received their names from God who made them. At the very start of the history and of the genesis of the world, then, holy Scripture spoke not of this firmament but of another heaven, which is invisible to us; after it this heaven, which is visible to us, was called the firmament, on which half of the water was taken up, to serve humankind for rains, showers, and dews. The other half of the water was left on the earth for rivers, springs, and seas. Since the water still covered the earth, especially the hollow places, God through his Word made the water gather into one gathering, and made the dry land visible, which before had been invisible. The earth, then, having become visible, was still unformed; so God formed and adorned it with all kinds of herbs, seeds, and plants.

Consider, then, the variety in these things, their different beauty and their abundance, and how through them the resurrection is shown, as a sign of the resurrection of all human beings that is to come. Who, if he thinks about it, will not marvel that a fig tree grows from a fig seed, or that enormous trees grow from the other tiniest seeds? We say that the world is like the sea. For just as the sea, if it did not have the inflow and supply of rivers and springs to feed it, would long ago have dried up because of its saltiness, so the world, if it had not had the law of God and the prophets flowing and welling up with sweetness, compassion, righteousness, and the teaching of God's holy commandments, would already have perished because of the wickedness and sin that abound in it. And just as in the sea there are islands, some inhabited, well watered, and fruitful, with anchorages and harbors, so that those caught in storms may find refuge in them, so God has given to the world, tossed and battered by the storms of sin, the assemblies called holy churches. In them, as in islands with good harbors, are the teachings of the truth, and to them flee those who wish to be saved, who become lovers of the truth and wish to escape the wrath and judgment of God. And just as there are other islands, rocky, waterless, barren, full of wild beasts, and uninhabited, to the harm of those who sail and are caught in storms, on which ships are wrecked and those who put in there are destroyed, so there are the teachings of error, I mean the heresies, which destroy those who come to them. For they are not guided by the word of truth; but just as pirates, when they have filled their ships, run them onto such places in order to destroy them, so it happens to those who stray from the truth: they are destroyed by error.

On the fourth day the lights came into being. For God, knowing things beforehand, knew the nonsense of the foolish philosophers, who were going to say that the things that grow on the earth come from the heavenly bodies, so as to set God aside. So, that the truth might be shown, the plants and seeds were made before the heavenly bodies; for what comes later cannot produce what is earlier than itself. These things contain a pattern and type of a great mystery. The sun is a type of God, and the moon of the human being. And as the sun far surpasses the moon in power and glory, so God far surpasses humankind; and as the sun always remains full, never growing less, so God always remains perfect, full of all power, understanding, wisdom, immortality, and every good thing. But the moon wanes every month and in effect dies, being a type of the human being; then it is born again and waxes, as a pattern of the resurrection that is to come. Likewise the three days that came before the lights are types of the Triad: of God, and of his Word, and of his Wisdom. And the fourth type is the human being, who needs the light, so that there are God, Word, Wisdom, human being. That is why the lights came into being on the fourth day. The arrangement of the stars represents the order and rank of the righteous and godly, who keep the law and the commandments of God. The conspicuous and bright stars are an image of the prophets; that is why they stay fixed, not moving from place to place. Those of a lesser degree of brightness are types of the people of the righteous. And those that move and flee from place to place, which are called planets (“wanderers”), are a type of the people who depart from God, abandoning his law and his commandments.