CHAPTER XIX.

The antiquity of these writings ensures their trustworthiness, for they are more ancient than your oldest records.

THEIR very high antiquity, then, claims the first authority for these documents. Amongst yourselves, too, it is almost a part of your religion to base the trustworthiness of a statement upon its antiquity.

[⁵⁶ For Moses, the first prophet, who began by setting forth from bygone ages the creation of the world and the birth of the human race, and the subsequent violence of the deluge which avenged the iniquity of that time, related also by the spirit of prophecy events down to his own days, and thence, through contemporary occurrences, the figures of future events. And in his writings the order of events arranged from the beginning exhibits the computation of the world's time. He is found to precede by about three hundred years the oldest hero you have, Danaus, who came into Argos; and he is upwards of one thousand years earlier than the Trojan war, and therefore also earlier than Saturn himself. For according to the history of Thallus, in which is related the war of the Assyrians, and how Saturn, the king of the Titans, fought with Jupiter, it is plain that that war [61] preceded the fall of Troy by three hundred and twenty-two years. By the hand of this Moses, moreover, their own special law was sent to the Jews by God. Thereafter the other prophets, too, all older than your literature, foretold many things. For even he who prophesied last, either preceded by a short time, or was at least contemporaneous with, your sages and lawgivers. For Zacharias lived in the reign of Cyrus and Darius, at which time Thales, the first of natural philosophers, stirred no doubt by the words of the prophets, could give no definite answer about the Deity to the enquiring Croesus. Solon proclaimed to the same king that the end of a long life must be contemplated, in no very different language to that of the prophets ⁵⁷. Yet one can look back and see that he was the originator alike of your laws and of your studies in law and divinity. That which precedes must necessarily be the source. Hence it is that you hold certain tenets in common with us, or closely resembling ours. As regards wisdom, the love of it has been wont to be called philosophy; as regards prophecy, the pretence to it has counted as poetic foresight. Men lusting for fame, having found something that they could appropriate, have corrupted it: it also happens to fruits to degenerate from the seed.

I might in many ways take up a position in defence of the antiquity of the sacred writings, if they did not possess a greater authority for their trustworthiness [62] in the very force of their intrinsic truth than would be at hand in the mere records of their age. For what could furnish a more powerful defence of their testimony than the daily checking off and fulfilment of some prophecy by the events of history, when the disposal of kingdoms, the fall of cities, the destruction of nations, and the state of the times correspond in every particular with what was foretold a thousand years before? And hence also our hope, which you deride, takes its life; and our confidence, which you call presumption, is strengthened. For it is natural that an examination of the past should lead us to place confidence in future fulfilments : the same voices have predicted both, the same writings have noted them. Time is but one with them, which to us seems to be broken up into parts. Thus everything which yet remains unproved is to us proved ⁵⁸, because predicted along with those events which then were future but now have been proved. You also have, as I know, a Sibyl, inasmuch as a true prophetess of the True God has been called by that term everywhere, before all the rest who seemed to prophesy, so that your Sibyls counterfeited their name from the truth, just as your gods in their case did likewise ⁵⁹.] [63] 

Consequently all the subject-matter and historical materials, antiquities, chronicles, and series of each of your ancient compositions, most nations likewise, and distinguished cities, your venerable records and memorials, and in fact hieroglyphics themselves, the witnesses and guardians of events, nay (and I am still within the mark), I say your very gods, temples and oracles and sacred rites,—all these meanwhile the roll of a single prophet surpasses in antiquity by centuries; and it will be found to be a literary store-house in which are brought together all the particulars of the Jewish religion, and thence of ours also.

If you have heard of a certain Moses, he is contemporary with the Argive Inachus; he precedes Danaus, himself also of remotest antiquity amongst you, by four hundred years nearly, for it is seven short of that number; he is earlier than the fall of Troy by about one thousand years, and Homer by, I might say, five hundred more, following some authorities. As regards also the rest of the prophets, although they lived after the time of Moses, yet the very latest of them will be found to be earlier than the first of your sages and law-givers and historians.

For us to explain on what lines these points might be proved is not so much a difficult as it would be a vast task; not so laborious as lengthy. We must betake ourselves to many documents with intricate calculations. We must lay open, too, the archives of the most ancient nations, the Aegyptians, the Chaldaeans, the Phoenicians; we must likewise summon to [64] our aid the fellow-countrymen of those from whom our knowledge is gained, some Egyptian Manetho, some Chaldaean Berosus, some Phoenician Iromus, king of Tyre; their disciples too, Ptolemy of Mendes, and Menander of Ephesus, and Demetrius of Phalerum; and king Juba, and Appion, and Thallus; and their critic, Josephus the Jew, the native defender of Jewish antiquities, who either confirms their accounts or convicts them of error. The Greek censors' lists, too, must be compared, and the dates of occurrences, that the sequences of events may be shewn, by which the reckonings of the annals may be evident. We must thoroughly explore the histories and literature of the world. And yet we have already produced as it were a part of our proof by indicating the sources whence proof is possible. But it is better to postpone doing this, lest we should either in our haste not follow it out far enough, or in following it out digress too far.