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| Chapter XII
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Chapter XII.
Whether, then, there are cycles of time, and
floods, or conflagrations which occur periodically or not, and whether
the Scripture is aware of this, not only in many passages, but
especially where Solomon3719
| 3719 [Note this testimony
to the authorship of Koheleth, and that it is Scripture.] | says, “What
is the thing which hath been? Even that which shall be. And
what is the thing which hath been done? Even that which shall be
done,”3720
etc., etc., belongs
not to the present occasion to discuss. For it is sufficient only
to observe, that Moses and certain of the prophets, being men of very
great antiquity, did not receive from others the statements relating to
the (future) conflagration of the world; but, on the contrary (if we
must attend to the matter of time3721
| 3721 εἰ χρν
ἐπιστήσαντα
τοῖς χρόνοις
εἰπεῖν. | ), others
rather misunderstanding them, and not inquiring accurately into their
statements, invented the fiction of the same events recurring at
certain intervals, and differing neither in their essential nor
accidental qualities.3722
| 3722 ἀνέτλασαν
κατὰ
περιόδους
ταυτότητας,
καὶ
ἀπαραλλάκτους
τοῖς ἰδίοις
ποιοῖς καὶ
τοῖς
συμβεβηκόσιν
αὐτοῖς. | But we do not
refer either the deluge or the conflagration to cycles and planetary
periods; but the cause of them we declare to be the extensive
prevalence of wickedness,3723
| 3723 κακίαν ἐτὶ
πλεῖον
χεομένην. | and its
(consequent) removal by a deluge or a conflagration. And if the
voices of the prophets say that God “comes down,” who has
said, “Do I not fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord,”3724
the term
is used in a figurative
sense. For God “comes down” from His own height and
greatness when He arranges the affairs of men, and especially those of
the wicked. And as custom leads men to say that teachers
“condescend”3725
to children, and
wise men to those youths who have just betaken themselves to
philosophy, not by “descending” in a bodily manner;
so, if God is said anywhere in the holy Scriptures to “come
down,” it is understood as spoken in conformity with the usage
which so employs the word, and, in like manner also with the expression
“go up.”3726
| 3726 [On this figure
(anthropopathy) see vol. ii. p. 363, this series.] | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
