Book One: On the Sacred and Apocryphal Books
Chapter Five: About the Heretics who Opposed the books of the Old Testament of the First Order
But although in the Catholic Church, with the consent of all the Orthodox, the authority of the numbered books was always in vigor, there have yet not been lacking heretics who strove to detract all authority whatever from the same books. But since their heresies, which have already long ago been buried by the diligence of our ancestors, have again been pursued in our own age by Sixtus Senensis in his Sacred Library, I will as briefly as possible get rid myself of these ancient shadows of enemies rather than enemies. So eighteen heresies against the books that we have reviewed in the first order have existed at various times.
The first of them is of those who wholly rejected the books of the Old Testament because they reckoned they were dictated by a certain evil God. So thought first the Simonians, the Basilidians, the Marcionites in Irenaeus bk.1 chs.20, 22, 29, then the Manichees in Epiphanius, Heresy 66, the Bogomils in Eutymius Panopliae p.2 tit.23 ch.1, the Albigenses in Antoninurnus part.4 tit.11 ch.7. Also in our age the fifteen preachers of the Anabaptists, in Franckental’s Colloquy, reckoned that the Old Testament was not otherwise to be admitted into disputation of the faith than to the extent it agrees with the New Testament.
This heresy is refuted by Epiphanius in his Heresy of the Manichees, by Augustine in his book Against Faustus the Manichean, and in two other books against the adversaries of the law and Prophets, and Peter of Cluny in his epistle against the Petrobusians.
And it is surely remarkable that heretics who venerated the books of the New Testament could contemn the books of the Old Testament, since the latter have from the former many and very plain testimonies of authority. “It is necessary,” says our Lord Luke last chapter, “that all things be fulfilled that are written in the Law and Prophets and Psalms about me.” The Apostle in Romans 1 says, “Paul an Apostle, separated for the gospel of God which was before promised by the Prophets in the holy Scriptures,” and again Galatians 4: “It is written that Abraham had two sons, one of the maidservant the other of the free woman, which things were said by allegory; for these are two Testaments;” again elsewhere in Hebrews 1, “In many and various ways God who aforetime spoke to the Fathers through the prophets has now spoken through his Son etc.”
A second heresy was that of a certain Ptolemy who, as Epiphanius reports Heresy 33, maker of the world the author, of another Moses, of the third the elders of the Synagogue. Nor was the maker of the world the true God for Ptolemy but a certain spirit between God and the devil. Therefore he thought not only the whole law but even any part of it not to be divine and sacred.
This heresy was refuted by Zachariah in Luke ch.1 where he testifies that the Lord God of Israel spoke through the mouth of the saints who are from old time, that is, of all the Prophets. The same heresy was refuted by the Apostle Paul when he affirmed that all Scripture was inspired by God, Timothy ch.3.
The third heresy is that of Theodore Bishop of Mopsuestia, who does not indeed openly reject all the Prophets but as he impudently affirms that they foretold nothing about Christ (as can be understood from the fragments of his writings) he too much minimizes the utility and authority of the Prophets and makes Christ himself and the Apostles guilty of very public lies. For what else than a lie will be what Truth itself says of himself when, after reading the testimony of Isaiah, he adds Luke ch.4 “Today is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears”? What else than a lie will be what Peter says in Acts ch.10, “To this all the Prophets bear witness.”
I omit the rest of the testimonies of the Prophets, which are everywhere explained by Christ and the Evangelists and the Apologists in the New Testament. For they are so many that they cannot be briefly numbered: Matthew, 1, 2, 3, 12, 21, 27, Mark 12, 15, Luke 11, John 2, 12, 19, Acts 2, 4, 12, Ephesians 4, Hebrews 1, 10.
The fourth heresy repudiates the Psalms of David as human or rather profane hymns written without any divine inspiration. As authors of this error Philasterius in the Catalogue of Heresies ch.127 makes Nicolaitans, Gnostics. Eusebius Histories bk.7 ch.25, preserves a writing that Paul of Samosata removed the Psalms that are about Christ as recently invented by the Church.
But perhaps that Paul did not so much remove the Psalms of David as some Ecclesiastical hymns from the Church. For it is not credible that the Psalms of David after so many centuries could seem to Paul to have been recently invented. Certainly this absurdity is refuted in very clear words by David himself, by Christ, and by the Apostles. “These are the last words,” says the author of the book of II Kings ch.23, “which David spoke to the sons of Isa: the man spoke, for whom was established the Christ of the God of Jacob, the outstanding Psalmist of Israel: the Spirit of the Lord spoke through me, and his words through my tongue;” and the Lord in Matthew ch.22 says: “How then did David in the spirit call him Lord, saying: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit thou on my right hand?’”, which words are found written in Psalm 109. And the Apostles all say with one voice, Acts ch.4: “Thou O Lord, who by the Holy Spirit said through the mouth of our father David, your son, ‘Why do the nations rage?’” Psalm 2. Lastly the Apostle Paul in his epistle to the Hebrews ch.2, says: “As the Holy Spirit says: today if you will hear his voice,” which are the words of Psalm 94.
The fifth heresy is of the Hebrews who in the Talmud ord.4 tract.3 do not hold the book of Job among the divine volumes, nor think that Job ever lived among men. Later Rabbis, as R. Salomon, R. Levi ben Gerson, and some others seem to accept the book, since they tried to compose commentaries on it; but they blame Job neither once only nor lightly. Indeed R. Salomon boldly affirms that Job, impatient of the calamity that befell him, sinned in his heart, not his words. R. Levi went further and wrote that this blessed man suffered most punishments for denying divine providence and the resurrection of the dead.
Martin Luther, too, in his table talk, about the Patriarchs and Prophets, affirms that he does not believe that everything that is narrated in the book of Job really happened. And again in his writing on the books of the Old and New Testament he says the book of Job is the statement of a fable for purpose of proposing to us an example of patience.
But that indeed the history of Job is not made up and that Job was really a holy and perfect man is richly testified against the Hebrews by Ezekiel, ch.14… to omit what is said of St. Job by Tobit ch.2 and James ch.5, and also what from ch.5 of this book the Apostle adduces as from the rest of divine Scripture, I Corintians ch.3. For the Talmudists do not accept the testimony of these books.
The sixth heresy is of the heretics who, on the evidence of Philastrius and Jacob Christopolitano in the preface to his commentary on the Song of Songs, repudiate the book of Solomon that is called Ecclesiastes because that book Solomon seems to have composed in extreme old age when, depraved by love of women, he placed the supreme good in bodily pleasures and prepared the way for the philosophy of Epicurus and Aristippus.
And Martin Luther in his table talk says the book seems lacking greaves and spurs and seems to advance in socks, as one would while still in the dining room.
But so far is Solomon’s Ecclesiastes from preaching about pleasure that rather as a stern and forceful master of morals he exhorts everyone with most grave speech to despise human things and to fear God. What an opening it has! “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities, everything is vanity,” Eccl.1. With what a peroration does it end! “Let us then hear the end of the whole matter: fear God and observe his commandments, for this is the whole man,” Eccl.12. Nor are the middle parts any different. Eccl.2: “I reputed laughter an error, and said in joy, Why are you deceived in vain?” Eccl.3: “I said in my heart, God will judge the just and the impious.” Eccl.4: “Guard your foot when you enter the house of God, and approach that you may hear. For better is obedience than the offerings of the foolish.” Eccl.5: “Say nothing rashly, nor let your heart be quick to utter a word.” Eccl.7: “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of rejoicing.” Eccl.8: “Because the sentence against the wicked is not quickly given, so the sons of men do evil without any fear.” Eccl.9: “Wisdom is better than the weapons of war, and he who sins in one thing will lose many goods.” Eccl.10: “Woe to you, O land, when thy king is a child and thy princes eat in the morning. Blessed is the land whose king is noble and whose princes eat in their proper time, for restoration and not for luxury.” Lastly Eccl.11: “Know that for all these things god will bring thee to judgment. Take anger from your heart, and remove malice from your flesh. For youth and pleasure are vain.” Do these remarks smack of Aristippus? Have such stern precepts ever proceeded from the workshop of Epicurus?
But if Ecclesiastes sometimes bids the pleasure of eating and drinking not to be despised, he does not do so on the ground that everything is to be measured by pleasure, but in order to restrain certain of the greedy and sordid who prefer to deprive themselves of the necessary and lawful advantages and pleasures of human life than to take away even a little from their piles of money.
Moreover there are not a few things that are said in this book, not by the judgment of Solomon, but in accord with the opinion of the crowd and of foolish and voluptuous men, as St. Gregory fully and elegantly proves Dialogues 4 ch.4.
Next in this very book of which we are treating, Ecclesiastes repeatedly asserts that his wisdom, namely which he had once received by divine gift, remained with him right up to that time: “Wisdom also remained with me,” Eccl.2. It is not likely that the light of heavenly wisdom could live together with that depravity of heart of which Scripture speaks when it say III Kings 11: “And women turned away his heart. And when he was already an old man his heart was depraved by women so as to follow alien gods.”
Then, in the second chapter of this book Solomon enumerates all his delights, his palaces, his pools, his orchards, his servants, his maidservants, his songs, his tunings, his golden and silver vessels, and many other things of that sort, but of so many concubines and wives, for whom he readily despised all his other delights, and who alone were able to soften and corrupt his heart, he does not even make mention. Therefore he had not yet begun to love them at the time he was completing this book.
Lastly, who would believe that from so soft and effeminate a heart as Solomon’s was when he was slave to the loves of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, there could have proceeded such grave judgments of the sort we have just above quoted?
I am not ignorant that it was the opinion of the old Jews, as St. Jerome avers on Eccl.1, that this book was composed by Solomon after he had performed penance for his sins; and this opinion Jerome also seems to approve in his commentary on Ezekiel ch.43, but I have always considered St. Augustine’s opinion more probable, who, on Psalm 126 and often elsewhere, writes that Solomon was reprobated by God, because divine Scripture severely blames his old age and does not ever add anything about repentance. But if anyone prefers to follow the former opinion, I do not in any way prevent him, since either opinion serves for what we are now dealing with. And so much about Ecclesiastes.
The seventh heresy is not dissimilar to the previous one, for as was written in the place noted by Philastrius ch.133 and Jacobus Christopolitanus, there were not lacking among the ancient heretics those who reckoned the Song of Songs to have been written, not by the spirit of the true God but by the breath of Cupid, and that nothing else is contained in the Song of Songs than the amatory sayings of King Solomon and of his wife, the daughter of Pharaoh. Wherefore they said it was a profane Song and that for this reason no name of God is found in the whole book, which same view is attributed to Castalio by Beza in his preface on Joshua.
But if the spouse, who is so greatly praised in this Song, were the daughter of Pharaoh, that is, of the most powerful king, how many things would be most stupidly said by the wisest of men? For could this remark from Song of Songs 1 agree with the daughter of the King: “The sons of my mother fought against me, they put a guard on my vineyard: I did not guard my vineyard”? Or could this one in the same place: “Go follow the footsteps of your flocks and feed your kid goats”? And what of that from ch.5: “The guards found me who go round the city, they beat me and wounded me”? What again of that from ch.8: “Who will give you to me, my brother, fleeing the breasts of my mother, so that I might find you outside and kiss you”? Who would believe that the daughter of the King of Egypt was either a country girl or sister of Solomon, or could have been wounded by the guardians of the walls?
But the same woman who in some places is described as a country girl is elsewhere called the daughter of the Prince: “How beautiful,” says ch.7, “are your goings in the Prince’s daughter’s shoes.” And again, she is said in ch.5 to have been wounded by the guardians of the walls, and the same woman is introduced in ch.6 as terrible, like the ordered battle array of armed camps. She is surely the prudence of the Holy Spirit, so that God may explain his benevolence toward the human race and how Christ with ardent charity has, through the mystery of the Incarnation, joined the Church as a spouse to himself, and that long before he wanted the nuptial song to be sung.
But lest any occasion be given for suspecting that the daughter of Pharaoh or any particular woman is praised by this Song, he wanted things to be written about his spouse that could be made to fit no single woman.
For which reason too we believe that, when the beauty of the spouse is commended and depicted as it were in her own colors, those things are said that agree indeed most fitly with the Church, but that could rather defile than adorn a particular woman. For what would be the beauty of a woman whose head was as great as Carmel, her nose as a tower, her eyes as pools, her teeth as flocks of shorn sheep, but she herself all black like a tabernacle of Cedar?
Nor indeed is alien the fact that among the ten names of God, which are everywhere found in the divine books of the Old Testament, and which are briefly explained in Jerome’s letter to Marcella, and which is numbered letter 136, none of them have a place in this spiritual epithalamium. But if indeed in the other books of the Old Testament, because he was dealing with the Synagogue, that is, with the handmaid, God called himself God, Lord, mighty, omnipotent, yet in the Songs of love, where the Son of God speaks with the Church, that is, as spouse to spouse, he rightly omits those names, which were adapted to inspire fear, and calls himself only spouse, father, friend, lover, and beloved; for these names pertain to fostering and exciting love.
The eighth heresy is that of Porphyry, of which Jerome thus writes, in his preface to his commentary on Daniel: “Porphyry writes a twelfth book against the Prophet Daniel, denying the book to have been written by him whose name it bears but by someone who lived in Judea at the time of Antiochus called Epiphanes; and that it was not so much Daniel stating future things but this other stating past things. Finally, that whatever he said up to Antiochus was true history but that whatever he opined about beyond that, because he did not know the future, was lies.”
However, to pass over the divine witness of Christ about the book of Daniel, from Matthew ch.24, which is not accepted by Porphyry, Josephus writes in Antiquities 11 ch.8 that when Alexander the Great came to Jerusalem, the volume of Daniel was offered to him by the priests, and the place in the eighth chapter was shown to him, where Daniel foretold and explained that the ram of a goat, that is the King of the Persians, was going to be overcome and put to flight by the King of the Greeks. But since Alexander preceded Antiochus by more than 150 years, how could that book, which was shown so long before to Alexander, have been written at the time of Antiochus? But as to the prophecies of Daniel that follow the age of Antiochus, that they are not lies, as Porphyry wishes, but most true oracles, will be understood by him who diligently reads over those books that Jerome in the preface to his commentary on Daniel bids should be read.
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