Chapter 28.—To What Extent History is an Aid.

 42.  Anything, then, that we learn from history about the chronology of past times assists us very much in understanding the Scriptures, even if it be learnt without the pale of the Church as a matter of childish instruction.  For we frequently seek information about a variety of matters by use of the Olympiads, and the names of the consuls; and ignorance of the consulship in which our Lord was born, and that in which He suffered, has led some into the error of supposing that He was forty-six years of age when He suffered, that being the number of years He was told by the Jews the temple (which He took as a symbol of His body) was in building.108    John. ii. 19.  Now we know on the authority of the evangelist that He was about thirty years of age when He was baptized;109    Luke iii. 23. but the number of years He lived afterwards, although by putting His actions together we can make it out, yet that no shadow of doubt might arise from another source, can be ascertained more clearly and more certainly from a comparison of profane history with the gospel.  It will still be evident, however, that it was not without a purpose it was said that the temple was forty and six years in building; so that, as more secret formation of the body which, for our sakes, the only-begotten Son of God, by whom all things were made, condescended to put on.110    See above, chap. xvi.

 43.  As to the utility of history, moreover, passing over the Greeks, what a great question our own Ambrose has set at rest!  For, when the readers and admirers of Plato dared calumniously to assert that our Lord Jesus Christ learnt all those sayings of His, which they are compelled to admire and praise, from the books of Plato—because (they urged) it cannot be denied that Plato lived long before the coming of our Lord!—did not the illustrious bishop, when by his investigations into profane history he had discovered that Plato made a journey into Egypt at the time when Jeremiah the prophet was there,111    Augustin himself corrected this mistake.  Retractations, ii. 4. show that it is much more likely that Plato was through Jeremiah’s means initiated into our literature, so as to be able to teach and write those views of his which are so justly praised?  For not even Pythagoras himself, from whose successors these men assert Plato learnt theology, lived at a date prior to the books of that Hebrew race, among whom the worship of one God sprang up, and of whom as concerning the flesh our Lord came.  And thus, when we reflect upon the dates, it becomes much more probable that those philosophers learnt whatever they said that was good and true from our literature, than that the Lord Jesus Christ learnt from the writings of Plato,—a thing which it is the height of folly to believe.

44.  And even when in the course of an historical narrative former institutions of men are described, the history itself is not to be reckoned among human institutions; because things that are past and gone and cannot be undone are to be reckoned as belonging to the course of time, of which God is the author and governor.  For it is one thing to tell what has been done, another to show what ought to be done.  History narrates what has been done, faithfully and with advantage; but the books of the haruspices, and all writings of the same kind, aim at teaching what ought to be done or observed, using the boldness of an adviser, not the fidelity of a narrator.

CAPUT XXVIII. Historia quatenus juvet.

42. Quidquid igitur de ordine temporum transactorum indicat ea quae appellatur historia, plurimum nos adjuvat ad sanctos Libros intelligendos, etiamsi praeter Ecclesiam puerili eruditione discatur. Nam et per Olympiadas, et per Consulum nomina multa saepe quaeruntur a nobis; et ignorantia consulatus, quo natus est Dominus, et quo passus est, nonnullos coegit errare, ut putarent quadraginta sex annorum aetate passum esse Dominum, quia per tot annos aedificatum templum esse dictum est a Judaeis, quod imaginem Dominici corporis habebat. Et annorum quidem fere triginta baptizatum esse retinemus auctoritate evangelica (Luc. III, 23): sed postea quot annos in hac vita egerit, quanquam textu ipso actionum ejus animadverti possit; tamen ne aliunde caligo dubitationis oriatur, de historia gentium collata cum Evangelio, liquidius 0056 certiusque colligitur. Tunc enim videbitur non frustra esse dictum, quod quadraginta sex annis templum aedificatum sit, ut cum referri iste numerus ad aetatem Domini non potuerit, ad secretiorem instructionem humani corporis referatur, quo indui propter nos non dedignatus est unicus Dei Filius, per quem facta sunt omnia.

43. De utilitate autem historiae, ut omittam Graecos, quantam noster Ambrosius quaestionem solvit, calumniantibus Platonis lectoribus et dilectoribus; qui dicere ausi sunt omnes Domini nostri Jesu Christi sententias, quas mirari et praedicare coguntur, de Platonis libris eum didicisse, quoniam longe ante humanum adventum Domini Platonem fuisse, negari non potest! Nonne memoratus episcopus, considerata historia gentium, cum reperisset Platonem Jeremiae temporibus profectum fuisse in Aegyptum, ubi propheta ille tunc erat , probabilius esse ostendit quod Plato potius nostris Litteris per Jeremiam fuerit imbutus, ut illa posset docere vel scribere quae jure laudantur? Ante Litteras enim gentis Hebraeorum, in qua unius Dei cultus emicuit, ex qua secundum carnem venit Dominus noster, nec ipse quidem Pythagoras fuit, a cujus posteris Platonem theologiam didicisse isti asserunt. Ita consideratis temporibus fit multo credibilius istos potius de Litteris nostris habuisse quaecumque bona et vera dixerunt, quam de Platonis Dominum Jesum Christum, quod dementissimum est credere.

44. Narratione autem historica cum praeterita etiam hominum instituta narrantur, non inter humana instituta ipsa historia numeranda est; quia jam quae transierunt, nec infecta fieri possunt, in ordine temporum habenda sunt, quorum est conditor et administrator Deus. Aliud est enim facta narrare, aliud docere facienda. Historia facta narrat fideliter atque utiliter; libri autem aruspicum, et quaeque similes litterae, facienda vel observanda intendunt docere, monitoris audacia, non indicis fide.