Letter E

E.

EPIMENIDES of Crete, by country a Gnossian, a most ancient philosopher and poet, priest of the temple of Mithra (or of the Sun) in Crete, ¹ wrote a book entitled περὶ τῶν χρησμῶν, that is, Of ORACLES; in which he discoursed of oracles and responses foretelling future things. Out of this the Apostle Paul took a testimony against the false teachers of the Cretans, that he might convince them by the authority of their own teacher — thus writing to Titus, bishop of Crete: ² FOR THIS CAUSE I left thee in Crete, that thou shouldst correct the things that are wanting… For there are many disobedient, vain-talkers, and seducers, especially they who are of the circumcision; whom it behooveth to be rebuked, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for the sake of filthy lucre. One of them, their own prophet, said:

ΚΡΗΤΕΣ ἀεὶ ψεῦσται, κακὰ θηρία, γαστέρες ἀργαί,

that is, CRETANS [are] always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.

This testimony is true. For which cause rebuke them sharply. Thus Paul. Jerome, concerning this hexameter verse, in the commentaries on the epistle to Titus, speaks thus: ³ THERE ARE THOSE who think this verse taken from Callimachus the Cyrenaean poet; and in some part they do not err — since he too, writing in praise of Jove against the Cretans (who gloried that they showed his sepulchre), says, CRETANS always liars, who have even fabricated thy sepulchre with a sacrilegious mind. But, as we said above, the whole verse is taken by the Apostle from the poet Epimenides; and Callimachus used it in the exordium of his own poem. Thus Jerome; to whom Augustine, in the second book Against the adversary of the law and the prophets, subscribes, attributing the same verse to Epimenides. But Chrysostom, expounding more fully the occasion of this song, in the third sermon on the epistle to Titus, writes thus: ⁴ WHO HE was, and whence he was who said this, must of necessity be told to you. Epimenides is he who uttered it, himself also a Cretan; and this is the occasion of the saying. The Cretans have a sepulchre of Jove, thus inscribed:

Ἐνθάδε Κεῖται ὅν Δία ἐπικαλοῦσι, that is: Here lies he whom they call Jove.

On account of this inscription, therefore, the poet, taxing them with lying, says:

ΚΡΗΤΕΣ ἀεὶ ψεῦσται, κακὰ θηρία, γαστέρες ἀργαί,

Τάφον ἄνα σεῖο Κρῆτες ἐτεκτήναντο·

Σὺ δ’ οὐ θάνες, ἐστὶ γὰρ αἰεί.

that is, Cretans [are] always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. For indeed they fabricated thy sepulchre, O king; but thou didst by no means die: for thou ever livest.

CELSUS the Epicurean, in the books of the true discourse which he published against the Christians, said that those things which the Cretans relate concerning the sepulchre of Jove among them contain a mystery, and ought to be understood according to allegory. Contradicting whom, Origen, in the third volume against him — at the same time attributing these verses to Callimachus, with some [others] super-added — writes thus: CALLIMACHUS the Cyrenaean, when he had read through infinite poems, and run over well-nigh the whole Greek history, and understood nothing at all said mystically concerning Jove and his sepulchre, accuses the Cretans in a certain distich which he wrote in praise of Jove, thus saying:

O Jupiter, thee indeed men report to have been born on the Idaean mountains;

thee, I say, most also have said to have been born in Arcadia:

which of these, O father, do they lie?

The Cretans, always liars, built a sepulchre for thee, O king;

but thou hast not yet undergone death: for thou art to abide eternally.

The distich, of which Origen here makes mention, in Callimachus, in the hymn of Apollo [so; the Hymn to Zeus], has thus:

Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται, καὶ γὰρ τάφον, ὦ ἄνα, σεῖο

Κρῆτες ἐτεκτήναντο· σὺ δ’ οὐ θάνες, ἐστὶ γὰρ αἰεί.

The Cretans, always vain, built a sepulchre — thy [sepulchre], O nourishing king; but to succumb to death thou never couldst, who livest through all ages.

EPIPHANIUS, in the first book of the Panarion, asserts that all these verses are of Epimenides, but that out of them Callimachus usurped for himself the last two, as an approved testimony against the Cretans. Jerome, meeting certain [persons] who, for the sake of this testimony, were calumniating Paul, in the place already cited adds these things: ⁵ CERTAIN [persons] think the Apostle to be reprehended, because he imprudently slipped; and, while he rebukes the false teachers, he approved that verse — [saying] that on that account the Cretans are said to be deceivers, because they vainly built a sepulchre of Jove. For if (say they) Epimenides, or Callimachus, on that account argue the Cretans [to be] deceivers and evil beasts and slow bellies, because they perceive not divine things, and feign Jove — who reigns in heaven — to be buried in their island; and [if] this which they said is true, the Apostle’s opinion is approved: it follows that Jove is not dead, but living. Unskillfully, therefore, [did] Paul, the destroyer of idolatry, while he acts against perverse teachers, assert the gods whom he was impugning. To which it must be briefly answered, that just as, in that which he says, EVIL COMMUNICATIONS CORRUPT GOOD MANNERS, and in that, FOR WE ARE ALSO HIS OFFSPRING, he did not straightway approve the whole comedy of Menander and the book of Aratus, but used the opportunity of the verse: so also in the present place he did not, by a single verse, confirm the whole work of Callimachus or of Epimenides (whereof the one sings the praises of Jove, the other writes of oracles); but he rebuked only the Cretans as liars, for the vice of the nation — not on account of that opinion for which they are taxed by the poets, but for their inborn facility of lying, and he confuted them out of their nation’s own author. And that we may know that the Apostle spoke, not by chance and in passing, but considerately and circumspectly, and protecting himself on every side against the Cretans, THIS TESTIMONY, he says, THIS IS TRUE — not the whole song from which the testimony is taken, not the entire work, but only this testimony, only this little verse, by which they are called liars.* Thus Jerome.

This verse became celebrated in the schools of the dialecticians, from the syllogism which is called ψευδόμενος, that is, The Liar. ⁶ As an example of which this verse is brought forward by the sophists in this manner: Either the song of Epimenides is true, or false: if true, then the Cretans are not liars, because Epimenides, the author of the song, was a Cretan: if false, then the Cretans are not liars.

DIOGENES Laertius writes that Epimenides, when he was yet a youth, was once sent by his father to bring back a sheep from the country; and when, at the midday hour, he had turned aside from the journey into a cave, he there rested in a perpetual sleep fifty-seven years. ⁷ Then, being awakened — since he thought he had slept but little — he sought again for the sheep; which, when he had not found it, he returned to the field. And there, when he perceived the face of all things changed, astonished with stupor and hesitating, he went back into the town. There, when he wished to enter his own house, he was asked who he might be; and, scarcely recognized by a younger brother, now an old man, he learned from him the whole truth of the matter. Moreover, his fame flying through Greece, he was esteemed most dear to the gods, and always lived in the highest honor among the Athenians, even to the hundred-and-fifty-seventh year of his age; and he departed this life in the fiftieth Olympiad — that is, in the 750th year before the birth of Christ. ⁸

ISAIAH, son of Amoz, the Prophet, wrote a book of the deeds of Uzziah, king of Jerusalem, of which there is mention in the twenty-sixth chapter of the latter book of Paralipomenon. In whose 32nd chapter also is commemorated a certain Vision of Isaiah, containing the discourses and the [acts of] mercy toward Hezekiah, king of Judah; which indeed there is no doubt is that same which, in the book of Isaiah, is described from the thirty-sixth chapter even to the fortieth, in a long discourse.

THE SAME Isaiah ALSO — as Rabbi Moses Kimchi, out of the opinion of the Jews, noted in the book Of the Ways of the holy tongue — is reported to have written the book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Canticle of canticles, which are had, under the name of Solomon, in the divine scriptures. ⁹

HERETICS composed, under the name of Isaiah, a book which is inscribed ΑΝΑΒΑΣΙΣ, that is, The Ascension; of which Epiphanius makes mention in the second [book] of the Panarion, in these words: ¹⁰ HIERAX, trifling much concerning Melchizedek — whom he says to be the Holy Spirit — strives to confirm this out of the Ascension of Isaiah; namely, as in the volume called the ASCENSION he said: THE ANGEL, walking about before me, SHOWED me, and said to me, Who is he at the right hand of God? And I said, Thou knowest, Lord. And he said, This is that only-begotten beloved [one]. And [he said], Who is the other, like to him, at the left? And I said, Thou knowest. This is the Holy Spirit, who speaks in thee and in the prophets. And he was like to the only-begotten. And out of this testimony [Hierax] confirms Melchizedek to be the Holy Spirit — because, as Paul says, being likened to the Son of God, he remains a priest forever. That this same writing was in use among the Archontic heretics, the same Epiphanius testifies in the first book of the Panarion. ¹¹ Jerome, on the 64th chapter of Isaiah, expounding that [verse] of Isaiah, FROM THE AGE THEY HAVE NOT HEARD, NEITHER HAVE THEY [with their ears] RECEIVED, &c., ¹² says: THE ASCENSION of Isaiah and the Apocalypse of Elias have this testimony; and by this occasion silly little women, laden with sins, were deceived. [the primary scan here prints an obscure word, Lusitaniæ*, between “occasion” and “little women”; Jerome’s text has no such word]* Origen, on the 13th chapter of Matthew, cites an Apocryphon of Isaiah, in which it is narrated that Isaiah perished, cruelly cut in pieces by his own people.

THERE IS EXTANT a certain Vision, under the title of Isaiah, printed at Venice, whose inscription is this: THE ADMIRABLE VISION of Isaiah the Prophet in a rapture of mind, which contains the arcana of the divine Trinity and the redemption of fallen mankind.

ESDRAS, who in the first volume of the sacred annals is called Josedech the priest, ¹³ and by the Hebrews Malachi, is thought to be the last of the prophets. ¹⁴ He, when he was returned from the captivity of Babylon, by the afflatus of the Spirit of God dictated — concerning those [scriptures] which were contained in the most holy writings burned at the destruction of Jerusalem — two hundred and four books; ¹⁵ which five very swift scribes, taking down from his mouth through forty continuous days, wrote out on boxwood tablets. Of these, Esdras published a hundred and twenty-six abroad; but the rest, elaborated with a more secret wisdom and a more sublime science, he reserved to be read secretly by the wise alone, and by the teachers skilled in the law, with greater care and more diligent study. Esdras himself makes mention of these books in the fourth volume of his visions, chapter fourteen, in these words: ¹⁶ BECAUSE, O LORD, thy law is burnt, and on this account no one knows the things which have been done by thee; if I have found grace with thee, send into me the Holy Spirit, that I may write all that has been done in the world from the beginning, [the things] which were written in thy law. And he answered me, and said, GO, and gather the people, and thou shalt say to them that they seek thee not for forty days. But do thou prepare thee many [tablets of] boxwood, and take with thee Saraias, Dabria, Salemia, Echanus, and Asiel — these five, who are ready to write swiftly; and come hither; and I will kindle in thy heart the lamp of understanding, which shall not be extinguished until the things be finished which thou shalt begin to write. And then, [these] being perfected, some thou shalt make public, some thou shalt deliver secretly to the wise…. And I took the five men, as the Lord had commanded me; and we set out into the field, and remained there. And it came to pass on the morrow; and behold, a voice called me, saying, ESDRAS, open thy mouth, and drink what I shall give thee to drink. And I opened my mouth; and behold, a full cup was reached to me. It was full, as it were of water; and the color as of fire. And I took it, and drank; and when I had drunk, my heart was tormented with understanding, and wisdom grew in my breast. For my spirit was preserved in memory. And my mouth was opened, and was shut no more. The Most High gave understanding to the five men, and they wrote the things that were dictated — the sublimities of the night, which they knew not. By night they ate bread; but I by day spoke, and by night was not silent. And there were written, in the forty days, two hundred and four books. And when the forty days were completed, the Most High said to me: THE FORMER [books], which thou hast written, set in public, that the worthy and the unworthy may read [them]; but the last seventy thou shalt preserve, to deliver them to the wise of thy people. For in these is the vein of understanding, and the fountain of wisdom, and the river of knowledge. And I did so.

PICO, count of Mirandola, in the fifth question of his Apologia, asserts that in these seventy latter books is contained that whole more secret exposition of the divine law, which by the Jews is called קבלה KABBALAH, that is, Reception. ¹⁷ Now the Kabbalah is the more secret exposition of the divine law, received from the mouth of God by Moses, and from the mouth of Moses by the fathers through continual successions — not indeed by writing, but taken up by living voice; which has a likeness to that exposition which we call Anagogical, and is on that account more sublime than the rest, because it leads us upward from earthly things to heavenly, from sensible to intelligible, from temporal to eternal, from corporeal to spiritual, from human to divine. The origin and occasion of these seventy volumes the same Pico reports, out of the opinion of Rabbi Moses the Egyptian [Maimonides], in well-nigh these words: ¹⁸ WHEN MOSES had ascended Mount Sinai, he received from God a twofold law: the one literal, which he himself, engraven in letters, published to all the Jews by God’s precept; the other spiritual, which — God so commanding — he wrote not, but communicated secretly to the seventy wise men only, whom he had chosen for himself for the custody of the law; and he likewise charged them not to publish it in writing, but to reveal it by living voice to their successors; and they in turn to their posterity, the same order being kept in perpetuity. And that God revealed to Moses, besides the written law, another spiritual law, or a mystical exposition of that same written law, separately — witnesses are Esdras, Paul, Origen, and Hilary. Of whom Esdras, in the fourth book, at the beginning of the fourteenth chapter, brings in God thus speaking to him: [margin: 4 Esdras 14:3-6] REVEALING, I was revealed to Moses upon the bush, when my people served in Egypt; and I brought him upon Mount Sinai, and detained him with me many days; and I narrated to him many marvels, and showed him the secrets of the times and the end; and I commanded him, saying, THESE words thou shalt make public, and these thou shalt hide. Subscribing to Esdras, Origen — when he expounded that [place] to the Romans, [margin: Rom. 3:2] BECAUSE TO THEM WERE COMMITTED THE ORACLES OF GOD — says that to the Jews were committed by God not only the letters, but also the oracles of God. From which saying of Origen it is indicated that, besides the literal law, something else was delivered to the Jews, which here Paul calls the Oracles of God. And Hilary too, in the exposition of the second psalm, testifies this same thing more openly, saying: IT WAS already instituted of old by Moses that in every synagogue there should be seventy doctors. For the same Moses, although he had composed the words of the Old Testament in letters, had nevertheless intimated separately certain more secret mysteries, out of the hidden [things] of the law, to the seventy elders, who should thenceforth remain doctors; of which doctrine the Lord also makes mention in the Gospel, saying, UPON the chair of Moses have sat the scribes and Pharisees: [margin: Matt. 23:2-3] all things therefore, whatsoever they shall say to you, keep, and do; but according to their works do ye not. The doctrine, therefore, of these remained unto posterity; which, received from the very writing of the law, was preserved in this number and service of the elders. Thus Hilary. Since therefore, down to the time of the Babylonian captivity, nothing had been written concerning this more secret exposition, Esdras, after the rebuilding of the city and the law restored by him, willed that this Kabbalistic explanation should be committed to the monuments of letters, lest perchance it should be lost on account of the captivities and Jewish dispersions, in which the order and ancient custom of delivering the Kabbalah by hand [i.e., by succession] could not be kept. Having therefore called to him most faithful notaries, he reduced all the mysteries of the Kabbalah into 70 books, according to the number of the seventy elders of the synagogue, to be communicated thereafter to the wise alone. These books, therefore, bought up for me at great expense, when I had diligently read them through, I found in them many things — nay, well-nigh all — consonant with our faith, wherewith Christians may transfix the Jews with their own weapons: among whom the authority of the Kabbalists is in great honor and reverence. This, then, is the Kabbalah of which I believe I first made explicit mention among the Latins. Thus far Pico. ¹⁹

Moreover, because by decree of the holy Roman Inquisition all the books pertaining to the Kabbalah were lately condemned, it is to be known that there is a twofold Kabbalah — the one true, the other false. ²⁰ True and pious is that which, as we already said, elucidates the arcane mysteries of the sacred law according to anagogy; which indeed, in the third volume of this work, we shall show to be necessary for the interpretation of the divine scripture, bringing forward some of the illustrious expositors, as well Greek as Latin, who use it in their explanations. This, therefore, the Church has never condemned. ²¹ False and impious is that Kabbalah [which is] a certain counterfeit kind of Jewish tradition, which certain wicked Jews say has flowed down from Moses through the fathers even to themselves — stuffed with innumerable vanities and falsities, differing nothing, or little, from Necromancy. For it unfolds certain secret names of God, and their occult virtues; by which some Necromancers among the Jews use, for the binding of demons and the working of illusions, asserting that our Christ wrought all his miracles by the help of this art. This kind of superstition, therefore, improperly called Kabbalah, the Church in recent years has deservedly condemned. ²²

ESDRAS’s Pentateuch — a single and oblong membrane [scroll] of his, written (as the Hebrews believe) by the hand of Esdras, without any vowel points — is preserved with the highest veneration in our monastery of the Preachers at Bologna.

ESDRAS’s Dream and prophecy of the fates of the Roman monarchy is a book fabricated by the heretics of our times; which the Senate of the holy Roman Inquisition willed to be held, by name, among the condemned writings.

ESTHER, wife of Artaxerxes (or Ahasuerus), king of the Persians, wrote to the Jews living under her husband’s empire two epistles concerning the solemnity of Purim — that is, of Lots — to be celebrated forever. These Lysimachus, son of Ptolemy, turned out of the Persian tongue into Greek. Esther, chapters 9 and 11.

THE WRITING OF HEZEKIAH, king of Judah, for which in the Hebrew is had מכתב Michtav, that is, a writing; among the Seventy interpreters προσευχὴ Ἐζεκίου, i.e., the Prayer of Hezekiah; but among others, a Congratulation, or Thanksgiving in writing. This king Hezekiah, when he was recovering after health divinely restored, wrote — a thing worthy of memory — transmitting to posterity the benefit of his prolonged life. He describes first the bitterness of the sickness, then the benefit of health restored by God. See Isaiah, chapter thirty-eight. The same [Hezekiah] wrote Of the feast of the Passover kept outside the time appointed in the law — that is, on the fourteenth day of the second month, in celebrating [the Passover] — one epistle, of which mention is made in 2 Paralipomenon, chapter 30. He wrote also, as some think, the history of the book of Judges. ²³

EZEKIEL the Prophet’s Apocryphal book is cited by Athanasius in the Synopsis; which perhaps is one of the two books of prophecies and oracles which Josephus, in the fifth chapter of the tenth book of the Antiquities, reports to have been written by Ezekiel.