AUGUSTINUS EUGUBINUS, BOOK I.

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...overflowed from the origin of the human race) but the life of the first man Adam proceeded to a thousand years, minus seventy 930 years: very close to which those six hundred years of Noah before the flood openly reached. And besides others perhaps (whose memory or number of years Theology did not see fit to record: because one single series of the more excellent men was enough to weave the history of the beginning and of all subsequent generations) there was he who was called Methuselah. Ancient traditions of the Hebrews have handed down that he, placed between Adam and Noah, saw both and lived familiarly with both—serving the first with the highest piety and showing obedience, while receiving obedience from the other as from a junior—leading to a consensus of reason. The most true calculation of time proves that he died the year before the flood, having been born when Adam was in the six hundred and eighty-seventh year of his life, so that Methuselah was able to live and dwell with Adam for two hundred and forty-three years, and to see him. Moreover, Noah could have had commerce and intimacy with Methuselah for more than five hundred years before the flood. Therefore, Noah either saw or heard all things before the flood; then, being situated as if in the middle of time, he both witnessed the flood and was able to preach all things to everyone for three hundred years afterward: especially to his sons, from whom, as if from three fountains, the whole human race branched out at birth. And before Noah passed away, Abraham was born, more than fifty years before Noah's death. Indeed, it is not likely that so pious a man and sons so similar to their father suppressed such great and memorable things in silence; nor that they failed to inflame men toward piety and justice by teaching them both their origin from God and commemorating the punishment which had destroyed a wicked age—especially Abraham himself, whom they foresaw would be the most holy leader of a pious nation. From this most true cause, therefore, it is right to conclude that a great knowledge of things divine and human was derived, though in later ages it was greatly weakened by the barbarism and isolation of the first
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men, and made continually worse by antiquity. For since, after the human race was scattered and diffused into all lands, those first few men were both few and had moved further away from one another, and were then intent on inventing the necessities of life, it was inevitable that the memory of past things was neglected and did not remain entirely with the few. And perhaps the use of letters writing had not yet been discovered, or was utterly extinguished by the flood, or was not even discovered then. Therefore, with the elders handing these things down to posterity by mouth rather than in writing, forgetfulness was easier. And while the truth remained among a few, a certain false and obscure image of it, similar to the fabulous rumors of the common people, flowed through everyone. Hence these nations, which are spoken of as the earlier ones, and in whose lands the deeds of the ancients were born and carried out, retained clearer and more numerous monuments of those things than the rest: I mean the Chaldeans, Armenians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians, among whom resided a Theology Theology: here meaning the ancient study or account of divine things of the ancestors—partly open and detected, partly fabulous and hidden in riddles and lurking places, and partly violated by impious fictions. This happened not so much by zeal or industry as by chance, while the truth, receding from its source, became deteriorated as it was dissipated through all people, with each person attaching something new or not remembering what had been handed down. And it is right to believe that the cause of the depravation of truth was the same as it usually is for other things. For there is no rumor or fame that does not become more fabulous the more it is spread and separated from its author. This same chance overturned the most ancient wisdom and doctrine like a rapid torrent, as well as the speech and dialect; for while it was one and was most pure among the ancients, as if at its source, and all posterity used it, once the deduction of all people from one another into all lands was made, they all carried the same speech with them, but in a short interval of time they made it so diverse that it differed greatly from that first and native one...