AUGUSTINUS EUGUBINUS, BOOK I.

...spread. For the beginning of the human race was in Armenia, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, and Assyria, and it was there that men lived exclusively before the flood. After the flood, these very same lands which they had held before the flood were inhabited first; and the grandsons of Noah were the founders of the Assyrian, Median, and Armenian nations. From these, colonists were gradually spread and distributed into all lands, which must have occurred over a long span of time. Wisdom also—besides that which the ancient colonists had carried with them—reached the Hebrews from the Chaldeans (I except those things which Moses wrote), from the Hebrews to the Egyptians, from them to the Greeks, and from the Greeks to the Romans. Indeed, Abraham was a Chaldean, in whose house it is right to believe the ancient Theology original: "Theologiam" and the traditions of the fathers remained, of which he was the heir. For both the most exact calculation of time and the Hebrew letters agree that the life of Noah reached even into the times of Abraham. For Noah lived three hundred and fifty years after the flood, and Abraham was born in the two hundred and ninety-third year; wherefore he lived with him for fifty years and more. For the best men rejoice to live with the best. Behold, then, the entire series of wisdom, like that of men, intertwined in succession all the way to Moses.

The first leader of the human race Referring to Adam saw himself created by God; he beheld Him with his own eyes; he saw the beauty of the world as it was being born and after it was born; he gave names to the beasts and perceived all other things. That there was a most certain knowledge in him is demonstrated by manifold and irrefragable reason. Noah saw his grandsons, who had lived for a long time with their aged father Adam's descendants; and, as it is right to believe, he heard them recounting the beautiful body of their parent and his even more beautiful soul. And what is more divine, he heard them reviewing the Theology of their divine parent: how he had been created in Paradise, how he had stayed there, and how he had been driven out. By what reason the heaven, the earth, and the animals were created; what was fashioned first and what last; and what power those trees had—the one of life, the other of the knowledge of good and evil. For it must be believed that every discourse of that great father and great mother Adam and Eve was Theology, so that they spoke perpetually of their affairs before the fall, and of the origin, nature, and forms of Angels and demons; for what else can we suspect?

Abraham saw and heard all these things from those who retained them—Noah and his sons. He told them to his son and grandson; and from Jacob, they flowed down into the whole race. Besides this lineage of the Hebrew nation, however, it must be believed there were many others through which piety and the knowledge of ancient things traveled with equal progress. This lineage of the Hebrews was indeed nobler and more sincere. Nor truly did Noah alone live for many years before the flood with those divine fathers, nor did he alone hear them; nor likewise was Abraham alone pious. He heard ancient things worthy of memory from Noah and from his son, Shem, and he confessed that he had been his servant for fifteen years, if we believe the Hebrew traditions. For from where else did the piety and wisdom of Job flow—a wisdom and piety yielding in no way to that of the Hebrews? Or do you think that he, since he is most ancient (namely, from the time of Abraham), did not see Noah himself and hear him speaking? Since they were not far distant from each other: the one in Armenia, the other in the land of Uz, which is part of desert Arabia adjacent to Mesopotamia or Lesser Armenia. What of the Sibyls, especially Sambethe? She is said to have been born in these very places—that is, Persia or Chaldea—and to have been of the race of Noah; twenty-four of her books existed, where she wrote many things concerning Christ, and many things likewise concerning the origin of her nation and concerning creation. Therefore, out of so many, only the family of the Hebrews is numbered as more excellent, and alone necessary for weaving and continuing history. From the barbarians A term used here for non-Greeks, specifically the ancient Near Eastern peoples, therefore, both lineage and wisdom reached the Greeks—not only at the time when that nation began to philosophize, but many centuries before. Even if this is not written, it can nevertheless become known through conjecture and reason. Since it is necessary that many outstanding men flourished before Homer and Hesiod, from whom they themselves learned the method of poetry and the meter of syllables, along with the melody and so many wonderful things. Nor indeed is it right to believe that Homer was the first author of poetry...