by Joshua Shaw

Eusebius calls Plato’s philosophy — and this is a fundamental move of the Praeparatio Evangelica (PE) — a “commentary on” or “interpretation of” (ἑρμηνεία) the Pentateuch. Eusebius is a little sloppy here, since the Pentateuch can mean Moses, or the whole Old Testament, or even, by extension, the authors of the New Testament (as he expressly says at the end of Book XII). But given that he believes in the complete coherence or consistency of the Bible – in an apologetic context he wants to emphasize this rather than the historically contingent differences – it is an intelligible move.

But there is one chronological problem to which he paid more attention than most of his predecessors (especially Clement of Alexandria) and that is this: the Septuagint translation (LXX) was begun in the reign of Ptolemy (IV) in the 3rd century before Christ. Plato, however, lived in the middle of the 4th century — how is this difficulty to be overcome?

One obvious solution is to posit a translation which predated the Septuagint and this is how most scholars have understood Eusebius’s argument. This is one of Eusebius’s arguments, resting on the evidence of Aristobule’s Letter of Aristeas. (We have may a chance to look at this in a future post).

There is, however, another possibility, which has been considered less often – namely, that Plato had come into contact not with the Pentateuch directly (via translation) but rather through broader cultural engagement of Greeks and Hellenized Jews. It is this that the ninth book of the PE suggests to an attentive reader.

Through the presentation of this utterly priceless collection of late Hellenistic Jewish writings (from the 4th – 2nd centuries B.C.), Eusebius suggests to the reader — who does not, by the way, know the dates of these works, which could have been a century earlier and thus contemporary with Plato, especially by the easy confusion of certain homonymous figures — the idea of a farspread familiarity with Moses the prophet, priest, and hero.

This argument has one decided advantage over the other argument (viz., that Plato read Genesis through Deuteronomy): it explains Plato’s departures more easily. If he only had before him the popularized and distorted version of the Pentateuch such as was available to a cultivated man of the pre-LXX times, his failures on multiple points regarding sexual and social ethics are more easily intelligible (and fault him less). Yet the main threads of Christian and Platonic agreement (the one true God and the superiority of the human soul) remain discernible. The reader is aware that these versions of Moses are inaccurate because Eusebius has preempted them with correct versions (viz., those of Philo, Aristobulus, and Josephus). Indeed, the fragments from this book are of widely varying quality, ranging from the close reproduction (Ezekiel the Tragedian’s versification of Exodus) to very loose representation and indeed free invention.

To illustrate the latter point we will end this post by giving the reader two of the many tantalizing bits on the Hellenistic Moses whom Plato might have known. The first fragment comes through Alexander Polyhistor out of Artapanus on Moses’s burning bush and the ensuing “war” with Pharaoh (markedly different from the Exodus account):

And so Moses prayed to God to give the people rest from their terrible sufferings. Once he was thus appeased (he says), a fire suddenly arose from the earth and burned bright, though there was no wood nor anything flammable in that place. Moses, terrified by this occurrence, fled; but a divine voice told him to make war on Egypt and, once he had saved the Jews, to lead them back to their ancestral land. Thus exhorted, Moses decided to lead an army against the Egyptians, but he first went to his brother, Aaron. When the king of the Egyptians found out about the coming of Moses, he summoned him and enquired why he had come. Moses answered that the absolute ruler of the universe had commanded him to free the Jews. When Pharaoh heard this, he locked [Moses] up in jail; but when night had come, the doors of the prison were spontaneously opened and among the guards some perished while others were cast into sleep and their weapons shattered. Departing from there Moses went to the royal chambers; upon finding the doors open and the guards asleep, he woke the king. Shocked at what had happened, [Pharaoh] bid Moses to utter the name of the god who had sent him (but only in mock earnestness). Then Moses stooping to his ear said the name, and upon hearing it he collapsed without a sound – and though he had lost consciousness, he was [then] revived by Moses. (PE IX 27, 21 – 25)

The same author variously explains Moses as the Greek god Hermes for his remarkable interpretation of the holy writings (Ἑρμῆς = ἑρμηνεία) or, more convincingly (!), as Musaeus (Μωύσης = Μουσαῖος) who taught Orpheus all that he knew (PE IX 27, 6; 27, 3-4).

Trying to make the Bible “relevant” is apparently of great antiquity and Book IX of the Praeparatio shows that it had a long history prior to Philo of Alexandria and the Church Fathers, yet of this pre-history we have received only fragments. Put more generously, all of Book IX taken together shows that “cultural appropriation” and “synthesis,” “application” and “making relevant” all exist along a fluid spectrum. A fragment of life and thought from the pluralistic Alexandria, it contains many instructive signs for the modern pluralistic West.