Letter A

A

Α καὶ Ω — ALPHA, AND OMEGA — is one of the sacred surnames of our lord Jesus Christ ¹, by which indeed he himself calls himself, in the beginning and at the end of the Revelations of Joannes ², saying: Ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ Α, καὶ τὸ Ω, that is, I AM the Alpha itself, and the Omega itself. Tertullian, in the book Of the prescriptions of heretics, relates that Marcus and Colarbasus, heretics, took occasion from this place to devise a new heresy upon the Greek Alphabet: for these men said that no truth at all is found without these letters ³ — nay, that the whole plenitude and perfection of truth is disposed in the numbers which these letters signify; and for this cause also they affirmed that Christ had pronounced I AM α & ω, that by this saying he might provoke us to search out the most hidden mysteries of divine things, which are concluded in the several letters of the Alphabet and in the numbers of the letters. Epiphanius, in the book Anchoratus, judges that by the figures of these letters is signified the twofold nature of Christ — namely, by the A, which is open below, the human nature; but by the Ω, which is open above, the divine Word. ⁴ Origen, in Tome 1 on John, writes many things concerning the mystical signification of each letter, which, consulting brevity, I pass over. The true interpretation of this name is that which Christ himself in the same place gives, saying: I AM α & ω, the beginning and the end. For by these letters he compares or expresses himself ⁵; because, as α is the beginning of all the elements, and ω the end and terminus, so he alone is the beginning whom none precedes, and the end without end whom no end succeeds; the beginning also of all things, from whom are all, and the end for whose sake all things were created; and likewise the terminus to which all things tend and aspire, and in which at last all things rest.

ABACVK [Habakkuk], Apocryphal — Athanasius reviews in the Synopsis, indicating (if I mistake not) a certain hidden prophecy, of which Epiphanius also makes mention in the life of Abakuk; or perhaps a history which Abakuk — not he who is placed among the twelve prophets, but another, of the tribe of Levi, son of Iuda — wrote concerning Daniel the priest, son of Abda. See above, in Book 1, in the Appendix of Daniel the prophet.

THE APOCALYPSE OF ABRAHAM — the Sethian heretics invented, as Epiphanius writes in the first [book] of the Panarion. Origen, in homily 35 on Luke, takes a testimony from a certain apocryphal scripture of Abraham, in which are brought in angels of iniquity and of justice, disputing about the salvation and the destruction of Abraham. In the Synopsis of Athanasius, a book which is called the ASSUMPTION OF ABRAHAM is enumerated among the rejected books. There is reported among the Hebrews a book under the name of Abraham the patriarch, whose title is יצירה Iezirà [Yetzirah], that is, OF CREATION; which not a few learned men assign to Rabbi Akiba.

ACHIAS THE SHILONITE — or אחיה השילוני, Achiiah ha-Shiloni [printed Asceloni], of the tribe of Iuda, sprung from Silo, where once had been the tabernacle and the ark of the Lord — he is that same prophet who, to Jeroboam, prefect of Salomon, going out from Hierusalem, met [him] on the way ⁶; and, his new cloak (in which the prophet himself went clothed) being torn, and ten parts of it given to Jeroboam, prophesied that not long after it would come to pass that the kingdom of Salomon — who, having forsaken his God, had worshipped the idols of his harlots — would be rent into twelve tribes; of which ten, the empire of Roboam son of Salomon being cast off, would attach themselves to Jeroboam as king; whose whole family and entire progeny God, after some years, would utterly overthrow for his sins. This prophet, therefore, wrote of the deeds done by king Salomon one book, of which the second book of the sacred annals makes mention in the ninth chapter [2 Par. 9]. ⁷ He lived in Silo, and there ended his day; and not far from a huge oak which was in that place he obtained a sepulcher, in the year from the founding of the world 2990 [bis millesimo nongentesimo nonagesimo; printed hongentesimo]. The Hebrews hand down that this man was most long-lived, and say that he was one of the seven men who were the continuers of the whole of human life; concerning which matter, see below in [the entry] Helias.

THE GENEALOGY OF ADAM — or ספר תולדת אדם, Sepher Tholdoth Adam, that is, the Book of the generations of Adam; or, as the seventy interpreters rendered it, βίβλος γενέσεως ἀνθρώπων, that is, the Book of the generation of men — the same which is the enumeration, or catalog, of the posterity of Adam, set down by Moses in the fifth chapter of Genesis ⁸; in which thou shalt observe two things. First, that in it the generations which are from Adam through Cain down to Noe are passed over in silence, as reprobate and unworthy to be inscribed in the sacred volumes and preserved in the memory of men. ⁹ But the genealogy from Adam through Seth down to Noe is described entire, because from this holy stock descend Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the progenitors of Christ Jesus, who is the end of all scripture. Secondly, thou shalt note that the translation of the LXX interpreters, in computing the years of those who are contained in this catalog, is opposed to the Hebrew scripture: for whereas Moses, in it, reckons from Adam down to the flood only 1656 years, the seventy interpreters superadd 786 years [so printed — but 1656 + 786 = 2442, whereas the total is next given as 2242, which would require an addition of only 586; the printed figures are inconsistent], so that the sum of years from Adam down to the flood is 2242. From which diversity of computations arose the controversy concerning the reckoning of the years of the world between the Hebrews and the Greeks. ¹⁰ For the Hebrews number, from the founding of the world down to Christ, 3954 years; but the Greeks and Latins, 5199 years. But concerning this we shall speak somewhat more fully in the fifth book of this work, when we shall have come to the annotations on the fifth chapter of the book of Genesis.

THE REVELATION OF ADAM — which Adam himself saw, when God sent a sleep upon him, the Gnostic heretics first of all devised, as Epiphanius is author in the first [book] of the Panarion. Augustine, against Faustus, writes that the Manichaeans attached [to Adam] a book concerning the Genealogy, or the sons and daughters of Adam; which Gelasius, in the fifteenth distinction — together with another book, which is called the Penitence of Adam — enumerates among the damned scriptures.

THE ADAMANTINE SCRIPTURE — concerning this Jeremias speaks in these words: THE SIN of Iuda is written with a pen of iron, with a point of adamant [diamond], graven upon the table of their heart, and on the horns of their altars ¹¹. The irremissible sin, of which the prophet here speaks, is not only idolatry, but the death of Christ and the putting to flight of the apostles ¹²; which sin [-tum → peccatum] which [sin] is remitted neither in this world nor in the world to come, as concerns certain obstinate pharisees. Now it is said to be “Written” in a threefold manner. ¹³ First, in the heart of the Jews, because that sin of hatred against Christ and his cross sits very deeply in their most tenacious, hard, and impenitent heart. For even unto this present day the cross is a scandal to the Jews, and they curse it, approving the sin of their fathers. Secondly, it is said to be “Written on the horns of the altar,” because the sin of idolatry had so settled in the hearts of the Jews that, as often as they stood by the altars, they exasperated God; for still the love of idols and of the high places sat in their minds, and only from fear did they abstain from worshipping them, and they longed rather to serve vain idols than the true God. So also now, in their synagogues and rites, the sin is “on the horns of the altars,” for this reason: that the memory of the slain Christ is pleasing to them, and their inborn hatred still clings to the mind, and is as it were fresh in the hand; and by recollecting the ancient abominations of their fathers they delight themselves, blaspheming Christ in their prayers, and imprecating dire execrations upon Christians — though vain and without any effect. Thirdly, it is “Written with a point of adamant,” that is, in the eternal memory of God, engraved in an indelible kind of writing; and the punishment of that very sin is incised, in perennial sculpture, in the immovable determination of the divine will.

THE GOSPEL OF THE EGYPTIANS — or According to the Egyptians — was in use among the Valentinian heretics. Clement of Alexandria, in the third [book] of the Stromata, refuted certain testimonies which, out of this work, Julius Cassianus and other followers of Valentinus brought to the confirmation of their dogmas. Epiphanius, in the second book of the Panarion, testifies that the Sabellians attempted, out of this gospel, to build up that the person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one and the same.

THE WISDOM OF THE EGYPTIANS — in Hebrew חכמת מצרים, Chochemath Mizrijm; in Greek Σοφία Αἰγυπτίων. This Stephen the protomartyr, in the Acts of the apostles, attributed to Moses, the leader of the Jews, for great praise, saying: AND MOSES WAS LEARNED in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in works and in words [Acts 7:22]. The Wisdom of the Egyptians, Diodorus, Diogenes Laertius, Iamblichus, Philo the Jew, and Eusebius of Caesarea indicate to have been divided into four parts, namely into the Mathematical, the Natural, the Divine, and the Moral. ¹⁴

Now the Mathematical — which is distinguished into Geometry, Astronomy, Arithmetic, and Music — the ancient Egyptians exercised very greatly. For they cultivated Geometry out of necessity: since they especially had need of it, when, the bounds of the fields being disturbed as the Nile rose, after the river had returned into its own bed, each man’s own [land] had to be restored to him; nor could the measurement of the fields hold good by any other means than by employing that [art] which, grown together out of fixed principles, could not deceive skilled measurers. Geometry, therefore, is so named as though [it were] “the measure of the earth.” ¹⁵ To Astronomy they gave themselves for [this] advantage: that — since they always had serene nights, and beheld the tract of heaven lying widely open, disturbed by no clouds and no mists ¹⁶ — they could easily observe the risings, settings, progressions, and regressions of the stars; which thing was both most delightful for knowledge, and most fruitful for life, and worthy of the exercise of human wit. To these two arts, Geometry and Astronomy, was added Arithmetic, the knowledge of numbers — serving, as it were, both, and by whose ministry these two cannot go without. ¹⁷ But Music they only tasted, so far as seemed to them enough for chanting the praises of the gods, and of kings, and of heroes.

THE SECOND part of Egyptian Wisdom — which handles the principles, causes, elements, and works of natural things, called Physics — differs not much from the Peripatetic philosophy. ¹⁸ For they too lay down that Matter is the principle of all things, and out of it thereafter the four distinct elements, from which all mixed things and living creatures arise; that Heaven is round, after the likeness of a sphere; that all the Stars have a certain fiery heat, by whose tempered commixtures all things upon the earth are born; that the Planets, or wandering stars, have their own souls; that rains come to be from the mutations of the air; and likewise very many other things similar to these.

THE THIRD part of this Wisdom, embracing the divine [matters], which is called Theology, has divers dogmas ¹⁹: namely, that the World is begotten, and by its own nature mortal; that Men, in the first origin of all things, were first produced in Egypt — partly because of the temperateness of the climate, partly because of the Nile (for the region is oppressed neither by wintry colds nor by the ardors of the summer Sun, and the land is so fruitful by the irrigation of the Nile that no land is more fertile for the supply of nourishments); that the Human soul is perennial, and migrates from body into body; that God is one, the father and prince of all the gods, but that from him [come] the other gods, and that the Sun and the Moon are gods — the one called Osiris, the other Isis; that Temples, moreover, and statues are to be fabricated for the divers gods with divers images, because the true image of the gods is unknown; that Many of the gods were at first mortal men, but afterward, on account of their virtues and the outstanding benefits conferred upon men, attained divinity, and were honored by men with divine honors; that Images of animals — engraved by the leaders and emperors of the Egyptians upon their helmets and shields, and wont to be borne in battle against the enemy — [these], victory being thereafter obtained, they referred among the gods: the animals whose effigies the victorious leaders had borne, as though by them they had repelled the onset of war from the enemy.

THE EGYPTIAN THEOLOGIANS ALSO HAD a certain peculiar kind of writing, mystical and secret ²⁰, in which they hid the more sublime mysteries of Theology and of divine worship, which they were above all unwilling to have divulged. Concerning which matter Clement, speaking in the fifth book of the Stromata, distinguishes the whole sum of Egyptian writing by a threefold discrimination: namely, into the Ἐπιστολογραφική, that is, the Epistolary, apt for writing common letters; into the Ἱερογραμματική, that is, the Sacerdotal, which they use who write of sacred things; and into the Ἱερογλυφική, that is, the Sacred, which is engraved. ²¹ Of which last there are indeed two kinds: the one Κυριολογική, that is, Properly-speaking, which is written by the letters themselves and the alphabetic elements, but with mystical and figured words; as, for example, “the Ibis partakes of the beauty of the Hawk from the Scarab” — that is, the Moon partakes of the beauty of God from the Sun, namely light, which is the image of the divine beauty. ²² But the other [kind is] Συμβολική, that is, Symbo-[lic] , that is, Symbo-lic, or signifying by signs: which is threefold — namely, the Imitative, the Tropical, and the Aenigmatic. ²³ Of which the Imitative is that which designates things by characters very like the things themselves: as they who wish to write “the Sun” draw a circle; and, wishing to signify “the Moon,” they paint the image of two lunar horns. The Tropical, or Translative, is that which transfers the various forms and figures of divers things — especially of animals — to signify the dignities, fortunes, manners, virtues, vices, affections, and actions either of gods or of men. According to which signification, among the Egyptian theologians, the image of a Hawk signifies God; the figure of a Scarab, the Sun; the picture of an Ibis, the Moon; the form of a Man, prudence and skill; a Lion, fortitude; a Horse, liberty; a Crocodile, shamelessness; a Fish, hatred. ²⁴ The Aenigmatic is that which results from the conjunction and mutual mingling of these images — in which manner the Sphinx, an image composed of a human head and a lion’s body, is engraved upon temples, altars, and other sacred things, to signify that all divine things are to us aenigmatic and obscure. ²⁵ The Sun stamped upon a Crocodile — which is nourished no less in water than on land — signifies that the Sun, after the likeness of the Crocodile, takes its nourishment for the meteoric things partly from water, partly from earth. The royal Scepter, upon whose top an eye and an ear stand, signifies God moderating, seeing, and hearing all things. They report that with this symbolic kind of writing the Scythians also were delighted ²⁶; whose king Idanthyras — as Pherecydes the Syrian relates — when king Darius, having crossed the river Ister, threatened war by letters and the devastation of the region unless the Scythians should obey him, sent back to him, in place of letters, a symbol: a mouse, a frog, a bird, an arrow [iaculum], a plough. And when, as was fitting, a doubt had arisen concerning these things, Orontopagas, a tribune of the soldiers, said that they [the Scythians] would deliver their empire to Darius — [reading] habitations out of the mouse, waters out of the frog, air out of the bird, arms out of the arrow, and fields out of the plough. But Xyphodres, interpreting to the contrary, said: Unless forthwith, like the birds, we fly away; or, like the mice, go under the earth; or, like the frogs, enter the water — we shall not escape their arrows [iacula]; but their fields, being slain, we shall fatten, or, being taken and sent under the yoke, we shall cleave with the plough. ²⁷

THE FOURTH and last part of Egyptian Wisdom looks to morals and to the political manner of living; whose laws and institutes Laertius refers to Mercurius — whom the Greeks called Trismegistus, that is, Thrice-greatest, because he was both a greatest philosopher, and a greatest priest, and a greatest king. Under whose name there now are extant two Dialogues, the Pimander and the Asclepius; in which he brought forth so many oracles worthy of admiration concerning God, the Trinity, the advent of Christ, and the last judgment, that he seems not a philosopher only, but a prophet foreknowing things to come. ²⁸ Iamblichus, in the book Of the mysteries of the Egyptians, relates that this Mercurius was the author and prince not only of philosophy, but of the whole of Egyptian Wisdom; and he produces the testimony of Seleucus and of Manetho [Menetus], ancient authors, asserting that he wrote, concerning the whole wisdom of the Egyptians, thirty-six thousand five hundred and twenty-five books [36,525]; in which are reviewed, part by part, Of the empyrean gods a hundred books, Of the aethereal gods a hundred books, Of the celestial gods a thousand books. ²⁹ Of which the most part have been translated out of the Egyptian tongue into Greek by men not unskilled in Philosophy; and for this cause they seem written in the Greek style. Of these, Clement, in the sixth [book] of the Stromata, writes that in his own age there were extant among the Egyptians the books written below — that is: Of the whole philosophy of the Egyptians, thirty-three books; Of medicine, six books; Of the sacerdotal [matters], ten; Of astrology, four books.

AND LET THESE THINGS have been said concerning the Wisdom of the Egyptians; in which Philo, in the first book Of the life of Moses, affirms that Moses was most fully instructed ³⁰, writing thus: MOSES, therefore, took from the Egyptian teachers numbers and geometry, and the whole of music — rhythmic, harmonic, metric, whether contemplative or bringing itself forth in divers manners by voices and instruments; but above all the occult philosophy, described by the letters which they call hieroglyphic, that is, by the marks of animals, which they themselves venerate for deities. And the Chaldaeans, called out from the neighboring regions, taught the science of the stars; and this too he [Moses] learned from the Egyptians. Justin, philosopher and martyr, dissenting somewhat from Philo, in the book of Questions set forth by the Gentiles, asserts that Moses, the study of all the Mathematics (which were then common and cheap in Egypt) ³¹ being laid aside, applied his mind to the Hieroglyphic disciplines alone — which then among the Egyptians alone were in honor and price, and were delivered secretly, in hidden places, not to any whomsoever, but to chief and most approved men. These, when Moses had learned them, nevertheless he never said or did anything according to them which was contrary to the worship of the one true God. For that which Stephen, immediately after those words, MOSES WAS LEARNED IN ALL THE WISDOM OF THE EGYPTIANS, added — AND HE WAS MIGHTY IN WORKS AND IN WORDS ³² — is not so to be understood that we should believe Moses to have worked any miracles by the power of Egyptian wisdom, but to have accomplished wondrous works by the power of the true God alone. Clement, in the fifth [book] of the Stromata, writes that Moses, according to this custom of the hieroglyphic doctrine, delivered many precepts of the moral life hidden under the tropical and mystical symbols of animals, open only to the lovers of the divine law: such as are, NEITHER OF THE SWINE, NOR OF THE EAGLE, NOR OF THE HAWK, NOR OF THE RAVEN IS ONE TO EAT. ³³ For the Swine, because it is an animal given to pleasure and unclean, is a symbol of gluttony and of lust, signifying the greed of foods, and intemperance in the venereal act, and a life defiled, lying in the mire of vices — which is fattened unto slaughter and destruction. ³⁴ But by the interdict of the Eagle, the Hawk, and the Raven, he shows that those are not to be imitated who, by labor and virtue, neither know nor will to provide themselves a living, but live by rapine and iniquity: for the Eagle signifies rapine, the Hawk injustice, the Raven avarice.

AGVR the Jew, son of Iake [Jakeh], at the exhortation of his friends Ithiel and Uchal, put forth a certain parenetic [hortatory] prophecy ³⁵ — Of two things to be sought from God; Of the four kinds of worst men; Of the four difficult things; Of the four smallest living creatures, endowed with exceeding wisdom; Of the four animals that go well — the sum of which is reported in the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs. ³⁶ Aben Ezra thinks this Agur to have been a certain man of upright life and of great wisdom, whose sayings and sentences Salomon translated into the book of his Proverbs. Kubenaki [so printed — a Hebrew authority; the name is uncertain] of the Hebrews thinks this [Agur] to have been Salomon himself. For אגור Agur sounds “the Gatherer”; and Salomon gathered together the words of Wisdom, and drew them forth — which is what יקה Iake [Jakeh] signifies. And he called it a prophecy on account of איתיאל Ithiel, that is, the Wives, of whom he had very many. But אכל Vchal signifies “I shall be able”; for Salomon presumed many things, and was able [to do them]. And to this opinion our vulgate edition seems to favor, which, in place of that which is read in the Hebrew — אבל … המשא נאם הגבר לאיתיאל לאיתיאל ואכל … דברי אגור בן יקה, dibre Agur ben Iake, ha-massa neum ha-gever le-Ithiel, le-Ithiel ve-Vchal — that is, The words of Agur, son of Iake; the Prophecy which that man spoke to Ithiel — to Ithiel, I say, and to Vchal — thus translated [it]: The words of the Gatherer, son of the Vomiter; the vision which the man spoke, with whom is God, and who, God abiding with him, was strengthened. And this sense Jerome, or rather Beda, follows in the commentaries on the Proverbs. Lyranus adds that there are some among the Jews who think this to be a prophecy of the penitent Salomon, after he had returned to his senses from the error into which, now an old man, he had slipped through love of his concubines; whose opinions the same Lyranus confutes with many arguments. ³⁷

ALEXANDER, king of the Macedonians, surnamed the Great — whose deeds are most briefly touched at the beginning of the book of Maccabees ³⁸ — gave pains, no less accurate than pleasing, in writing letters to his friends; in which, however (as Plutarch writes in [the life of] Phocion), after Darius had been conquered by him, and the surname of Great had been taken up, he bade no mortal “health,” except Phocion the Athenian and Antipater the Macedonian ³⁹: whom two, for honor’s sake, he bade to be greeted at the beginning of his letters. Plutarch, in [the life of] Alexander, reviews the letters of Alexander written below:

• TO ANTIPATER the Macedonian, concerning things done by himself in Asia and India, very many letters; which the writers of Alexander’s history used as commentaries.
• TO DARIUS, king of the Persians, whom he invited kindly to himself, two letters.
• TO PHOCION, refusing his gifts, a lamentatory letter.
• TO PHILOXENUS, the prefect of his fleet, studious of a preposterous lust, an upbraiding letter.
• TO LEONIDAS, his pedagogue, a letter.
• TO OLYMPIAS, his mother, concerning the hidden oracles and vaticinations of Hammon, a letter.
• TO THE ATHENIANS, one letter.
• TO PEUCESTES, one letter.
• TO HEPHAESTION, one letter.
• TO MEGABYZUS, that he should offer no violence to one fleeing to the sacred temple, a letter.
• TO ATTALUS and Alcetas, concerning the conspiracy of Hermolaus, a letter.
• TO ALEXIPPUS the physician, a Eucharistic [thanksgiving] letter.
• TO PAUSANIAS the physician, one letter.
• TO ARISTOTLE, his preceptor, concerning the books of the Metaphysics published by him, a letter; of which this is the extant copy:

ALEXANDER TO ARISTOTLE, FELICITY.

Not rightly hast thou done, that thou hast published the speculative disciplines. For in what shall we excel the rest, if those things in which we have been instructed begin to be common to all? For I had rather excel in singular learning than in power. Farewell.

This desire for glory Aristotle so consoled, that he excused the books as being published just as if they had not been published. Cyprian, in the treatise On the vanity of idols, relates that Alexander wrote to his mother a notable volume, in which he signified that it had been revealed to him by a certain priest in what manner the men of the [pagan] gods had been. Augustine, in books 8 and 12 Of the city of God, makes mention of the letter of Alexander to Olympias; in which is recited the narration of a certain high-priest of the Egyptian rites, who, among the other things which he brought forth out of the secret Egyptian letters concerning the hidden mysteries of the gods, laid this also open concerning the times of the kingdoms: namely, that the kingdom of the Assyrians preceded the kingdom of the Persians by five thousand years; but that the empire of the Persians and Macedonians, down to Alexander (to whom the priest was speaking), had lasted more than eight thousand years. Which narration Augustine there shows to be fabulous and false, not only from the sacred letters, but from the histories of the nations also. Alexander dies in the 31st year of his age, before the birth of Christ 323, on the 28th day of the month of June, about sunset. ⁴⁰

ALEXANDER the King, son of Antiochus king of Syria [Alexander Balas], wrote, for entering a league with the Jews, to Jonathan the pontiff of Jerusalem, one letter; whose copy thou hast in 1 Macc. 10. ⁴¹

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLE ANDREW — reproved by Gelasius in distinction 15, as Innocentius writes in the decretal epistle to Exuperius — Nexocharidas and Leonidas the Philosophers forged. ⁴² Philastrius, in the catalog of heresies, chapter 48: THE MANICHAEANS have, he says, the Apocrypha of the blessed Apostle Andrew, that is, the acts which he did coming from Pontus into Greece; which his disciples then wrote down, following the Apostle. Augustine, in the book On faith, against the Manichaeans, narrates that Leucius the Manichaean committed to writing certain Acts of Andrew, in which, concerning Andrew the Apostle and Maximilla the wife of Egeas, many things worthy of laughter are read; which there, if thou be at leisure, thou canst see in chapter 38. Eusebius, in the 3rd [book] of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 25: OF ANDREW, he says, and of the other Apostles, the Acts are nowhere at all mentioned in the writings of the ancients who succeeded the Apostles; in which the very style is found much diverse from the ecclesiastical custom; the sense too, and all the things which are inserted in them, are far dissonant from the apostolic faith. Whence they are proved to be fictions of heretical depravity; wherefore they are not to be placed even among those writings of which we have said there is doubt, but, as utterly alien and discrepant from the rule of piety, to be driven away. Thus Eusebius.

ANTIOCHVS, by surname Epiphanes — that is, illustrious, or noble — the eighth king of Syria and Asia, after he had violated the treaty which he had entered with the Jews, and had despoiled the holy city of its riches and the temple of its votive-gifts and all its ornaments, sent into Judaea books published by himself, Of transferring the Jewish worship into the Greek religion; and compelled all the Jews to live according to the laws prescribed in them. Of which the chief chapters, gathered by us out of the books of Maccabees and of Josephus, were these: ⁴³

1. Let all the JEWS, the worship of their God being abjured, henceforth worship the deities of the Greeks; and, the laws and institutes of their fathers being cast off, let them transfer themselves to the laws, rites, and manners of the Greeks. They who shall have done otherwise, let them be afflicted with the utmost and greatest punishments.
2. Let the VOLUMES of the Jewish law, wheresoever they shall have been found, together with those with whom it shall have happened that they be found, be burnt up with flames.
3. Let the TEMPLE which is in Jerusalem be dedicated to Jupiter Olympius, and be called by his name. But the temple which is situated on the Garizite mount of Samaria [Mount Gerizim], let it receive the dedication and appellation of Jupiter Hospitalis [Ξένιος, the God of guests].
4. Let the HOLOCAUSTS, the propitiations, and the rest of the sacrifices of the Jews — the Sabbaths also, and their other feasts, whether monthly or annual — be utterly abrogated.
5. Let an ALTAR be placed in the midst of the Jerusalem temple; and, the image of Jupiter Olympius being erected upon it, let swine’s sacrifices — most alien from the Jewish superstition — be offered daily upon it.
6. Let there be BUILT, town by town throughout all Judaea, [altars] upon temples and altars sustaining the statues of the Greek deities; and let swine victims be slaughtered upon them on every single day.
7. IF ANY men or women shall, after these things, have dared to circumcise their infants, let them, tortured with most cruel torments, while yet alive and breathing, be affixed to crosses; and their children, strangled, be hung from the necks of the parents.

THE SAME Antiochus, when, for the unjustly afflicted nation of the Jews, he was divinely tormented with an intolerable disease ⁴⁴, wrote a little before death a suppliant letter to the Jews; in which, with all submission of words, he besought them that, mindful of the benefits which they had formerly received from the kings of Asia, they would keep inviolate faith and obedience toward Antiochus the king, his son and successor. Which writing, amid horrible torments, worms flowing from his whole body, he miserably perished, in the year before Christ was born 161. ⁴⁵

ANTIOCHVS Eupator, son of Antiochus Epiphanes, the ninth king of Syria and Asia, wrote two letters: one to Lysias, the procurator and overseer of his affairs; the other to the senate of the Jews — by which he magnificently restored to the nation of the Jews the worship of God, the use of the temple, and the observance of the ancestral law, taken away by his father — in the year before Christ was born 161. The copy of each is read in the second book of Maccabees, chapter 11.

ANTIOCHVS Sedetes [Sidetes], the thirteenth king of Syria and Asia, who, adopted as a son by his brother Demetrius, succeeded him in the kingdom, wrote to Simon the high priest, and to the senate of the Jews, one letter, asking in it that it might be lawful for him to lead his army against his enemies through the regions of the Jews without any harm, in the year before Christ was born 137.

THE VARIOUS WRITINGS OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES, as well received as rejected, are cited among the ancient authors ⁴⁶; of which, those that now come to our memory are these:

THE EPISTLE OF THE APOSTLES, written from the third [council] of Jerusalem to the brethren of Antioch of Syria and Cilicia, is had in Luke, Acts chapter 15. See below, letter C, under the word Concilium.

THE SEALING [OR ATTESTATION] OF THE LIVES OF THE APOSTLES, or of all the disciples — a scripture of honorable antiquity, which Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, in the fourth catechesis reviews by name among the canonical Scriptures of the new testament. There are those who think this “sealing” to be nothing else than the Symbol of the Apostles, of which we shall speak soon. ⁴⁷

SOME CANONS OF THE APOSTLES, published through Clement, John Damascene, in the fourth book Of the faith, chapter 18, places in the catalog of the divine Scriptures of the new testament.

THE FIFTY CANONS OF THE APOSTLES, written by Clement — of which the first is, Let a BISHOP be ordained by two or three bishops — Pope Leo IX, against the epistle of Nicetas the Abbot, receives among the writings of orthodox faith; but Isidorus, in the preface of the Councils, rejects among the Apocrypha. See below in [the entry] Clemens.

THE SIXTY CANONS OF THE APOSTLES Pope Zephyrinus approves, in his first epistle, in these words: SIXTY sentences the Apostles prescribed, together with very many other bishops, which they judged ought to be kept.

THE EIGHTY-FIVE CANONS OF THE APOSTLES the third Constantinopolitan council — which is called the Sixth synod — confirms and wills to be ratified, in the second chapter.

THE CONSTITUTIONS AND TRADITIONS OF THE APOSTLES, brought forth in writing, Epiphanius frequently alleges, especially in the 3rd book of the Panarion; where he recites three canons in particular: the First, of Pascha not to be celebrated on the fourteenth Moon; the Second, by which, under penalty of anathema, the fasting of the Lord’s day is forbidden; the Third, by which priests are forbidden to cut off the beard. See in [the entries] Audiani and Massaliani.

THE SYMBOL OF THE APOSTLES [the Creed] — which Erasmus, in the preface of the Paraphrase on Matthew, most openly says he knows not whether it was brought forth by the Apostles — all orthodox fathers affirm to have been founded by the Apostles themselves. ⁴⁸ Among the rest, Rufinus, presbyter of Aquileia, in the preface of the exposition on the Symbol of the Apostles published by him, writes thus about this matter: *OUR ELDERS hand down, that after the ascension of the Lord, when, through the advent of the Holy Spirit, tongues of fire had settled upon each one of the Apostles, that they might speak with divers speeches, this precept was given them by the Lord: to preach the word of God, and to set out each to the several nations. About to depart, therefore, from one another, they first constitute for themselves in common a norm of the future preaching, lest perchance some, led elsewhere, [should teach] a diverse something to those who were being invited to the faith of Christ. All of them, therefore, being set in one place, and filled with the Holy Spirit, by conferring into one that brief token — as we have said — of their future preaching, compose that which each one felt; and they establish that this is to be given to believers as a rule. And they willed this to be called the Symbol, for many and most just causes. Thus Rufinus. ⁴⁹ But the divine Augustine, in the second sermon of Palm Sunday, expounding what part of the Symbol each several Apostle [the print reads quinque, “five” — apparently for quique, “each”; the clauses below are twelve, one per Apostle] contributed, speaks in this manner: That which in Greek is called Symbol, in Latin is named Collation [a bringing-together]. It is therefore called a Collation, because the faith of the whole catholic law, brought together into one, is gathered in the brevity of the Symbol; whose text we shall now tell you, God assenting:

• PETER said: I believe in God the Father almighty.
• JOHN said: Creator of heaven and earth.
• JAMES said: And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
• ANDREW said: Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.
• PHILIP said: Suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead, and buried.
• THOMAS said: He descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead.
• BARTHOLOMEW [said]: He ascended into heaven, sitteth at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
• MATTHEW said: Thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead.
• JAMES [son] of Alphaeus [said]: I believe also in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church.
• SIMON Zelotes said: The communion of Saints; the remission of sins.
• JUDAS [son] of James said: The resurrection of the flesh.
• MATTHIAS completed: Life everlasting. Amen.

THE BOOK OF THE APOSTLES, which they, gathered together at once in Jerusalem, wrote, the Christian Ethiopians — translated into the Ethiopic tongue — venerate with equal honor as the divine volumes. Witness is Francisco Alvarez, in the Ethiopic itinerary, chapter 81.

THE EIGHT BOOKS OF THE APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTIONS, written in Greek, Carolus Capellus the Venetian lately found in Crete, and translated their Greek epitome into Latin; which is inserted in the first tome of the councils. But the whole and entire books Joannes, bishop of Osma [Ostuniensis], a man notable for piety and erudition, translated.

SOME CANONS OF THE APOSTLES, published by heretics, Gelasius reproves in the Decretals, distinction 15; and Isidorus, in the decretals, distinction 16.

CERTAIN ACTIONS OF THE APOSTLES Clement is testified to have written, by the eighty-fourth canon — which is had under the name of Clement at the beginning of the first tome of the councils.

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES ACCORDING TO EBION, stuffed with error and impiety, Epiphanius reviews among the writings of the Ebionites, book 1 against the heresies.

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, devised by Leucius the Manichaean, Augustine refutes in the book Of faith, against the Manichaeans.

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES under the name of Luke, full of fables, a certain Asian presbyter, studious of Paul, forged; whom Jerome, in the book Of illustrious men, reports to have been convicted of the fraud. See below in [the entry] Paulus.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE APOSTLES is rejected by Athanasius in the Synopsis, and by Eusebius in the 3rd [book] of the ecclesiastical history, chapter 25.

THE GOSPEL OF THE APOSTLES, or the gospel which is entitled According to the Twelve Apostles, Origen, in the 1st homily on Luke, enumerates among the Apocrypha. Jerome, in the 3rd book against the Pelagians, indicates that the Gospel According to the Apostles is the same as that of the Nazarenes, or the Gospel of the Hebrews.

THE ITINERARY OF THE APOSTLES is repudiated in the fifth Action of the second Nicene council.

THE MEMORIAL OF THE APOSTLES was a work very familiar to the Priscillianist heretics; which Orosius mentions in the epistle to Augustine, concerning the errors of the Priscillianists.

THE LOTS OF THE APOSTLES are reproved in the Decretals, distinction 15, and in cause 26, question 7, chapter NON OBSERVETIS [Ye shall not observe].

WRITINGS OF THE APOSTLES counterfeited by Dictinnius the heretic, are condemned in the council of Braga [Bracarense], canon seventeen.

THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. These — as James, Archbishop of Genoa [Jacobus de Voragine], in the book of the annual solemnities, and Peter, bishop of Equilium [Petrus de Natalibus], in the 9th book of the catalog of Saints, report — Abdias, first bishop of Babylon, ordained by the Apostles themselves, wrote in Hebrew; which Eutropius, disciple of Abdias, translated from Hebrew into Greek, and Julius Africanus into Latin — but, as I think, Julius wrote not in Latin, but in Greek. Lately, out of Germany, under the title of this Abdias, came forth ten books Of the history of the Apostolic contest, printed by the types of Oporinus; which Pope Paul IV, as unworthy of credit, rejected among the writings condemned by him. ⁵⁰

THE REVELATIONS OF THE GREAT APOSTLE. Of this work Gaius, disciple of Origen, in the dialogue of his disputations, writes thus: CERINTHUS, by certain revelations, which he would have to be thought written as by the Great Apostle and revealed to him through angels, introduces to us such portents [as these]: that after the resurrection the kingdom of Christ shall be earthly, in Jerusalem, and that men shall again have, in the flesh, a manner of life subject to lusts and vices. Against the faith of the scriptures also he designates a thousand years, in which he says there shall be many works of corruption, and festivities of marriages, for the deceiving of those who are given to lust.

THE APOSTOLIC BOOK is a volume gathered by Marcion the heretic out of the testimonies of the epistles of Paul, many of them adulterated and mutilated. Its copy is inserted by Epiphanius in the 1st book against the heresies, in the confutation of Marcion. Epiphanius and Theodoret have recorded that Manes — or Manichaeus the Persian, who said he was the Paraclete ⁵¹ — took to himself twelve disciples, whom he called Apostles, each

singular one, imposing on each of them one name out of the names of the Apostles of Christ. These, when they had published many volumes of their doctrine with the names of those [Apostles] prefixed, easily obtained that their writings should be believed to be [the writings] of the holy Apostles.

THE INSCRIPTION OF THE ATHENIAN ALTAR. There was once at Athens a certain Altar with an inscription — as Oecumenius reports — of this kind: Θεοῖς Ἀσίας, καὶ Εὐρώπης, καὶ Λιβύης, θεῷ ἀγνώστῳ, καὶ ξένῳ. That is, To the gods of Asia and Europe and Libya, to an unknown and foreign God. From this, Paul the Apostle — when he was about to speak before the assembly to the Athenians in the court of Mars [the Areopagus] — most artfully drew the argument of his speech, in these words (as Luke writes in the Apostolic Acts), beginning: MEN of Athens, in all things I see you as it were superstitious. For passing by, and seeing your simulacra, I found also an altar on which was written, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I announce to you: God, who made the world, and all things which are in it, &c. ⁵² By which words Paul, with a certain color and rhetorical craft, ⁵³ shows that he persuades them nothing else than that they should do what they were already doing of their own accord — that is, that they worship God, whom they already worshipped, and had marked beforehand on an altar under the name of the unknown.

Now Oecumenius reports two causes why that inscription was had, ΑΓΝΩΣΤΩ ΘΕΩ, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. ⁵⁴ The one: that when the Athenians had sent messengers to the Lacedaemonians, to pray that they might come to their aid against the army of the Persians invading Greece, a spectre of Pan appeared to the messengers near the Parthenium, accusing the Athenians that, neglecting him, they worshipped other gods; and he promised that he would be a help to them for the future, out of his good will toward them. When therefore the Athenians had obtained the victory, they erected a temple to him, and built an altar; and — as it were taking heed lest the same, or something like it, should befall them, if they should pass over any god unknown to them — they erected that altar, inscribing, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD: as if to say, If any other God is yet unknown to us, in his honor we erect this altar, that he may be propitious to us — although, since he is unknown, he is not [now] worshipped. But the other cause he brings is this: The Athenians once labored under a most grievous plague; and when they had implored the aid of all the gods whom they worshipped, with many vows, prayers, and sacrifices, they felt no help. Understanding therefore that there was perhaps some strong God whom they had left without honor, who, being angry, was sending the plague, they built a new altar, and inscribed it, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD; which done, at once the plague ceased. This inscription, therefore, Paul, having by chance descried it, twisted into an argument of the evangelical preaching — using the artifice of that place which the rhetoricians call from Chance-occurrences [a Fortuitis], when, that is, they turn certain chance events into an argument for the things whereof they are about to speak: as Philostratus writes, in the Sophists, concerning Leo of Byzantium the sophist. ⁵⁵ Who, when he had come forth to the Athenian people (as he was of a fat and very corpulent body) to persuade concord, and the people, at the sight of the man’s enormous bulk, straightway began to laugh, he, nothing moved, said: Ye laugh? — my wife is fatter than I; and yet one little bed holds us, when we agree; but when we disagree, not even the whole house. And when at these words the people had raised a greater laugh, he presently added [the moral]; and thus he turned the chance laughter into [an argument] for persuading concord.

ARATVS, a most learned poet, and physician of Antigonus the Macedonian king, of Soli, a city of Cilicia (which took its name from Solon, son of Lindus, and was afterward called Pompeiopolis), was born of Athenodorus — or, as some prefer, of Mnaseas his father, and Leonodora his mother; and under Dionysius Heracleotes, Aristoteres [Ariston?] the mathematician, and Persius the poet, he gave himself to liberal studies in the city of Athens. He had also three brothers, Myris, Calondas, and Athenodorus; the first of whom is said to have contradicted Zoilus, who wrote against the poesy of Homer. He himself, among the various works of his studies, published an astronomical book, Φαινόμενα — that is, “APPEARANCES foreknown” — in which he most elegantly sang, in heroic verses, the constitution of the whole celestial sphere, and the images, figures, risings, and settings of all the fixed stars. This, into the Latin tongue and hexameter verse, ⁵⁶ translated M. T. Cicero, Germanicus Caesar (son of Octavius Augustus), Sextus Avienus Rufus (contemporary with the divine Jerome), and very many others, whom it would be long to enumerate. From this [Aratus] Paul the Apostle — as is read in the 17th chapter of the Apostolic Acts, when in the Areopagus, which is the court of the Athenians, he was preaching to the people — took a testimony that we are all of God, saying: IN HIM we live, and are moved, and are; as also certain of your poets have said: ⁵⁷

Τοῦ γὰρ γένος ἐσμέν — that is, For we are also his offspring.

Which hemistich the Phaenomenon poet brought forth, in his preface, concerning Jove; for when he had begun the work from that verse, ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα [Let us begin from Jove], a little after he inserted, We are also his offspring. Which [saying] Paul, having observed to have been attributed to Jove perversely and altogether unjustly, restored most justly to God. Aratus flourished in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and lived illustrious in the court of Antigonus, son of Demetrius, who took the empire of the Macedonians in the hundred and fifth olympiad. ⁵⁸

ARISTOBVLVS, a priest and philosopher, by race a Jew — to whom is extant the letter of the senate of Jerusalem, which is read at the beginning of the second book of Maccabees — wrote to Ptolemy Philometor, his disciple, most learned commentaries on Moses (which Eusebius records in the Chronicles), and a book, to the same, Of the members of God; from which Eusebius produces a testimony, in the 8th book of the evangelical Preparation. See this same thing more fully in the fourth book, in the entry Aristobulus the Younger.

ASSVERVS [Ahasuerus], whom the Greeks [call] Artaxerxes, [and] Josephus hands down [to be] Cyrus, son of Xerxes, wrote various things, of which [some] are cited in the sacred volumes:

• THE COMMENTARIES OF THE DIVINE ACTIONS [Divinarum Actionum commentarij]. Esther 12.
• TO THE PREFECTS of the hundred and twenty-seven provinces of his empire, concerning the utterly destroying of the nation of the Jews, one letter. Esther 8 & 13. Josephus, book 11 of the Antiquities, chapter 6.
• TO THE SAME, for the safety and security of the whole Jewish nation, another letter, revocatory of the former. 1 Esdras 8 & 16. Josephus in the same place.

[BA- → (catchword; signature D 3)]