Prisca Theologia

An Entry in the Christian Perennialism Series

When Heinrich Bullinger was on his deathbed, he expressed his readiness for heaven, saying, “Socrates was glad when his death approached, because, as he thought, he should go to Homer, Hesiod, and other learned men, whom he thought he should meet with in the other world: how much more do I joy who am sure that I shall see my Savior Christ, the Saints, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, and all the holy men which have lived from the beginning of the world.”¹

In the phrase “all the holy men which have lived from the beginning of the world,” his imagined brethren did not extend only as far back as Abraham, nor only to an exceptional few among the antediluvian world. Rather, he imagined a great multitude spanning all of human history, even as far back as Adam himself, composed of men who possessed genuine faith in Jesus Christ.

This belief in the antiquity of the Christian faith was central to Bullinger's thought, not only making its way into the final remarks of his earthly voyage, but also finding expression in a number of his works. In the first sermon of his Decades, parts of his Brief Exposition, and more extensively in The Old Faith, Bullinger makes the case that the doctrine of the Reformers began neither with Luther, nor in the time of Tiberius (under whose reign Christ’s ministry, death, and resurrection occurred), but with the covenant established with Adam at the beginning of human history. According to Bullinger, there has never been a time in human history in which Christianity has not been believed and proclaimed to the world.

By this, of course, he does not mean that there have always been men calling themselves “Christians”, nor that the New Testament has been circulating since the dawn of man. No history of Christianity, whether beginning with John the Baptist or the Old Testament church, begins with the origin of the label in Acts 11:26, but instead with the time at which the substance of Christianity began to be believed and practiced. Bullinger’s argument is simply that the substance of Christianity, which is faith in Christ, has been the only way of salvation since the beginning of time.

What he is arguing is essentially the same point made in the Westminster Confession of Faith concerning the different administrations of the Covenant of Grace, which is that the same substance has been administered through various means throughout history. Those born before Christ put their faith in the coming Christ, whereas we in the New Covenant put our faith in the Christ who will come again. Regardless of the administration, all who have been saved have been saved by grace through faith in Christ.

While later expressions of the concept are in some ways to be preferred due to their greater precision, the description of Christianity as the primordial religion has certain benefits that do not quite come through in the later articulations. First, Bullinger's emphasis on the antiquity of “Christianity” follows the example of the church fathers, making clear that the Reformed doctrine of the covenant is a product of patristic retrieval. In addition to this, it further aligns with the intent of the fathers in their use of the doctrine—an aim shared by Bullinger in his defense of the Reformed faith against Rome—which was to prove the antiquity of the true religion against pagan charges of novelty. Related to this point, it further highlights the fact that there has never been a time at which God has left the world entirely in darkness, but that the light of Christ through true religion has always been present and active in the world.

For Bullinger then, the aim of the Reformation was not at all to become the first step toward the unbinding of all fetters of traditional society, as the popular post-Enlightenment narrative presents it. Martin Luther did not nail his theses to the Wittenberg door so we could later establish liberal democracy in Kyrgyzstan or legalize sodomy in Uruguay. The aim of the Reformation (for Bullinger, at least) was rather a return, not just of the church but of society as a whole, to the “golden age” of the patriarchal era. In other words, Bullinger’s aim was a return to the Bronze Age. Far from an innovator looking to usher in an unprecedented era of individual license, Bullinger was in fact a Christian perennialist.

Continuing my case for dragging society back to the Bronze Age—and in an effort to recover more than just the doctrines of grace and Thomism of the Reformers—I will describe the concept of prisca theologia, a historic doctrine which posits the preeminent historical influence of divine revelation on all nations from the time of Adam until the coming of Christ. Over the course of the series, I will then build on this idea in making the case for something like the perennialist traditionalism of Evola or Guenon, only grounded in Christian truth rather than their buffet-style syncretism of ancient beliefs.

Ancient Theology

Origin of Religion & Christian Timidity

For the last century and a half, the prevailing accounts of the origin of religion have all been variations of the same narrative, each the result of evolutionary speculation: As we transformed from monkeys to men, we began to worship the creation. Over time, the objects of our worship became abstracted from their respective aspects of the creation and took on anthropomorphic qualities. Eventually this developed into polytheistic religion, which was universal (in its multitude of forms) until Josiah fabricated Deuteronomy and transformed Israel’s tribal deity into the Most High God.

While there are certainly “Christian” scholars that adopt either all or parts of this narrative, most Christians can recognize it as a blatant contradiction of the biblical account. Yet even among those who reject it, its acceptance among academics has largely discouraged confident descriptions of the ancient past through the lens of the biblical narrative. Explorations of the ancient past have largely been limited to apologetic efforts, such as reinterpreting rock layers according to the hypothesis of a cataclysmic flood or pointing out parallels between the Hyksos and the Hebrews to prove the historicity of the exodus.

Due to the self-consciousness of Christians on matters of ancient history, we have spent the last century and a half solely on the defensive. This intellectual insecurity has prevented us from constructing anything positive upon the assumed truthfulness of the biblical account of ancient history. Possibly the most devastating result has been its contribution to the breakdown of traditional societal structures, which had in part been maintained by a premodern understanding of human, societal, and religious origins.

This timidity in the face of opposing accounts of ancient history is a new development among Christians, who have historically been the head and not the tail in determining the prevailing historical narrative. From Orosius to Ussher, Christian historians played a crucial role in discipling the nations by connecting national histories back to the history contained in Scripture. Such efforts allowed various peoples to understand their own national founding myths in the overall context of redemptive history, and thus to see themselves as the inheritors of a primordial tradition that finds its origin in Adam and meaning in Christ.

In order to return to such confidence, and to the undertakings that it fuels, we must abandon our defensive posture and reestablish a positive Christian conception of ancient history. In particular, the relegation of man’s chief duty, religion, to an evolutionary accident must be displaced by a narrative which places not only religion, but true religion, at its proper place in the center of human history. A long-abandoned but once widely-held concept which does just this is the doctrine of prisca theologia.

Prisca theologia in Historical Theology

Prisca theologia is the concept of an ancient religion, usually stemming from Adam, Enoch, Noah, or Moses, which is either the origin of all subsequent religions (in the case of the former three), or at least the source of many parallels to special revelation that are found in pagan philosophy.² In the earliest form of this idea, such parallels in philosophy were attributed to the direct influence of Moses on certain Greek philosophers, which is known as ‘The Theft from Israel Theory.’³ Later on, the theory became a bit more complex, including an original worship of the true God as one of several other sources in addition to the influence of Moses.

The first known reference to the idea comes from Aristobulus of Alexandria (a Hellenistic-Jewish philosopher, and predecessor of Philo of Alexandria, living in the second century B.C.), who argued that the greatest Greek poets and philosophers, including Homer and Plato, were familiar with the writings of Moses and ‘stole’ many of their ideas from him.⁴ The second century A.D. Greek philosopher, Numenius of Apamea, likewise held this view, going so far as to describe Plato as “Moses atticizing.”⁵ A similar view was presented by Philo, who claimed that Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians (cf. Acts 7:22) but excelled them in knowledge, and his law was copied by many significant Greeks, including Heraclitus, Aristotle, and their legislators.⁶ Josephus likewise attributed much of what is true in pagan literature to their familiarity with the Scriptures.⁷

This line of argumentation was especially important to the early church, as antiquity was seen by pagans as essential for establishing the truth and authority of a particular belief or system.⁸ As third century Christian apologist, Arnobius, summarized the position of his pagan opponents, their religion was considered “truer because fortified by the authority of age.”⁹ Early apologists therefore found in prisca theologia a way of defending Christianity against charges of novelty, as Bullinger later would in his defense of the Reformed faith against similar charges from Rome. 

Among these apologists was Justin Martyr, who argued that Plato borrowed both his doctrine of creation in Timaeus and his concept of the forms from the writings of Moses.¹⁰ Other early Christian writers who articulated similar positions include Theopolius of Antioch, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, and Ambrose.¹¹ Augustine learned this idea from Ambrose, and while doubting his specific explanation on historical grounds, nonetheless believed Plato’s closeness to the Scriptures to be far too close to deny his familiarity with them.¹² Even after the particular demands of early debates with pagans had subsided, this idea continued to be considered, most notably by Aquinas who states, “Plato is said to have known many things about the divine from reading the books of the Old Law, which he found in Egypt.”¹³

This traditional form of prisca theologia, which focused primarily on Plato’s familiarity with the Torah, began to be modified in various ways during the Renaissance era, especially due to the influence of Marsilio Ficino.¹⁴ Philosophers and theologians at this time began positing a “multilinear” influence of special revelation rather than tracing all influence back to Moses alone, including additional sources such as the original religion of Adam and Noah and unique revelations given directly to various nations.¹⁵

These ideas spread to a number of scholars in France, who used the concept of ancient theology toward syncretistic and unorthodox ends. This trend in French scholarship would significantly have an impact on the heretical teachings of Michael Servetus, who drew from Plato and the Sibylline Oracles as instances of divine revelation to the Gentiles.¹⁶ Calvin appears to have been aware of this particular expression, referring disparagingly in one instance to “men of letters” committed to platonic ideas.¹⁷ The heterodox and sometimes entirely heretical ways that these ideas were being employed likely contributed to his preference for simple innate and acquired knowledge of God as the sole sources of parallels in Greek philosophy, rather than any sort of prisca theologia.

Nonetheless, Calvin’s rejection was not shared among all the Reformers. Bucer, for instance, clearly believed in the traditional form of the idea as expressed in the church fathers.¹⁸ It was actually through Ficino’s translation and commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius’s On the Divine Liturgy that Bucer began his study of the church fathers, which had a significant impact on his thought in many ways, including his theory of ancient religion.¹⁹ He posited a combination of both the older Hebrew influence view and the idea of an original Adamic religion.²⁰ Bullinger, as we have already noted, likewise believed in a primordial religion going back to Adam. Variations of the prisca theologia idea are also present in Martin Luther,²¹ Lambert Daneau,²² Matthew Henry,²³ Jonathan Edwards,²⁴ and the Cambridge Platonists.²⁵

True Religion & Its Influence in the OT

While some historical claims by advocates for this view are difficult to prove, there is certainly scriptural warrant for believing in a number of historical routes through which special revelation made its way into the consciousness of the surrounding nations. To begin with, there was clearly some sort of primitive religion present among the children of Adam (Gen. 4:3-4), and this was carried on by their descendants (4:26). Special revelation was also given to Noah, the father of all of post-flood humanity, and it is difficult to imagine that this would not be shared with his descendents over the course of the next several centuries of his life, especially considering that they were also specified as members of his covenant (Gen. 9:8). It in fact appears that at least one faithful form of this ancient religion was still practiced in Salem during the time of Abraham, who received a blessing from Melchizedek, “priest of the Most High God” (Gen. 14:18). 

Further, some degree of Hebrew influence in Egypt is extremely plausible considering Joseph’s witness to Pharaoh and rise to power (Gen. 41), and the explicit statement of their acknowledgment of the Lord as a result of the exodus (Ex. 7:5). In Exodus 18, Jethro plays a similar role to Melchizedek in Genesis 14, being a non-Israelite who offers Moses sound wisdom (vv. 17-23) and even leads the people in a sacrifice to the Lord (v. 12). While there is clearly a sense in which his acknowledgment of the Lord was influenced by Moses and the exodus (vv. 10-11), these actions still demonstrate a degree of prior knowledge of God that would not be fitting for a man who had until recently been a worshiper of demons.

Moving on to the kingdom era, the report of Solomon’s wisdom had spread to the surrounding nations, to the extent that the Queen of Sheba was compelled to question him and witness it firsthand and “all the earth was seeking the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom which God had put in his heart” (1 Kgs. 10:1, 6, 24). Naaman, who was “captain of the army of the king of Aram… a great man with his master, and highly respected,” likewise came to seek the power of Elijah, resulting in his return to Aram with exclusive devotion to the Lord (2 Kgs. 5:1, 17).

After the exile, Israelite witness to pagans of great influence continued, with Daniel’s witness to Nebuchadnezzar resulting in his confession of the Lord as the Most High God to “all the peoples, nations, and men of every language that live in all the earth” (Dan. 4:1). Darius the Mede, who is identified as Cyrus the Great in Bel and the Dragon (and likely in Daniel 6:28 as well),²⁶ likewise converts at the witness of Daniel and addresses all nations, commanding them to fear the true and living God (Daniel 6:25-26). Cyrus further, potentially influenced also by his familiarity with the prophecy of Isaiah concerning his reign, acknowledges the Lord as the source of his authority over the nations in his edict (2 Chr. 36:22; Ezra 1:1-4).²⁷

Even during the New Testament period, while the influence of the Jews had become the production of “child[ren] of hell,” they were nonetheless evidently active in making proselytes throughout the world (Mt. 23:15). The Scriptural witness therefore clearly testifies to a consistent light of revelation to the whole world throughout all of human history, beginning with an ancient religion passed down from Adam and Noah to their posterity, and continuing through God’s chosen people.

Historical Witness

The Ancient Religion

The testimony of Scripture is certainly sufficient to establish the matter, but it is not the case that it is the sole witness to these things. Scattered through the historical record are plenty of hints that the nations have not always been divorced from the true God, and that they truly did continually say of Israel, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people” (Dt. 4:6).

In my previous essay, I discussed the testimony to the “consent of the nations” that is present in the considerable uniformity, maturity, and stability of ancient legal principles as soon as legal documents appear in the historical record. Raymond Westbrook points out that our earliest legal documents betray a long-established tradition of significant complexity, which experiences little change or innovation for millennia. This is, of course, the sort of uniformity which one would expect from a world descending from a common ancestor (Noah) who had inherited a developed tradition from the antediluvian world and lived 350 more years to oversee its implementation among his multitude of progeny.

Potential evidence for the preservation of the tradition of Noah can be found in parallels to the Noahic covenant in early law codes. In the covenant made with Noah and his offspring, the Lord states, “Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man” (Gen. 9:6). And as one would expect from a world carefully keeping the tradition passed down to them, the earliest law code that appears in the historical record, the Code of Ur-Nammu, begins with this very law: “If a man commits a homicide, they shall kill that man.” While parallels of this sort could certainly be explained by natural law, it is at least a curious thing to find the same principle, stated in a similar manner, and topping the list.

Further, the general covenantal structure utilized throughout the Ancient Near East likewise attests to Noahic influence. While it is commonly pointed out that the Mosaic covenant bears similarities to preceding treaties and law codes, the scriptural account of the origin of the covenantal tradition in God’s covenants with Adam and Noah is rarely taken seriously. But since the scriptural account is true, we must therefore assume that the use of the same covenantal structure (Preamble, Prologue, Stipulations, Sanctions) in ancient treaties and law codes is not due to Moses’ copying, but rather to the preservation in such cultures of the tradition handed down from Noah.

Beyond legal and covenantal aspects of the Noahic tradition, there is also a religious influence that can be observed in cultures all over the world. It can be seen in the recurring figure in polytheistic religions of a “King of the gods” or “sky father” (Zeus, Jupiter, Anu, Ra, Tengri, Shangdi, etc.). Even among these polytheistic religions, there is one god that is the father and king of all the others, who is often distant from the nations, indicating memory of their rejection at Babel.

The Table of Nations presented in Genesis 10, listing the nations that were divided at Babel, lists seventy nations. In Deuteronomy 32:8, this number is connected to the number of “the sons of God,” i.e., the lower-case “g” gods in God’s divine council (cf. Ps. 82). What is significant about this is that this number of “sons” in God’s divine council also appears in not only other Ancient Near Eastern religions, such as the 70 sons of the Ugartic god El, but also in as remote a region as Polynesia, where the Maori god Ranginui was commonly said to have fathered seventy gods.

Winfried Corduan, in his book In the Beginning God, calls for a reconsideration of the work of Catholic linguist Wilhelm Schmidt (1868-1954), who argued for original monotheism, or “primitive monotheism.” Corduan provides examples from across the world of a preserved monotheism among the most primitive tribes, whose isolation from the developments of surrounding cultures can be discerned in other cultural elements like authority structure and means of sustenance (i.e., “food gatherers” rather than “food producers”).²⁸ Among these the tribes that were most primitive culturally, there was a common thread of monotheism and cosmological myths with remarkable parallels to the biblical account.

The memory of the rejection at Babel is clearly present among these peoples. Mircea Eliade writes,

Everywhere in these primitive religions the celestial supreme being appears to have lost religious currency; he has no place in the cult, and in the myths he draws farther and farther away from man until he becomes a deus otiosus [the remote god]. Yet he is always remembered and entreated as the last resort, when all ways of appealing to other gods and goddesses, the ancestors, and the demons, have failed. As the Oraons [a South-Asian tribal people] express it, "Now we have tried everything, but we still have you to help us." And they sacrifice a white cock to him, crying, "God, thou art our creator, have mercy on us."²⁹

One such example is the North American Lenape people, whose supreme god, The Great Manitou, created the world ex nihilo:

First, there was nothing except for fog occupying what we might call the space-time continuum. The Great Manitou dwelt in this amorphous medium. He was everywhere, and then, if one wanted to settle for a brief summary, he made everything. If one wished to be more specific, a common recitation gives a more specific list. It enumerates the land, the sky, the moon, and the stars. After pausing for a moment to coordinate the movement of these heavenly bodies, Gitche Manitou went on to cause a strong wind to bring islands to the surface of the water. He then created the other manitous and human beings, to whom he also gave a Great Mother. He made fishes, turtles, animals, and birds. One of the lower manitous tried his hand at creation but was only able to produce some evil beings such as mosquitoes, flies, and gnats. All (other) beings, including the manitous, were helpful and kind. They made sure the newly created men had wives. Everyone was content. Unfortunately, the harmony of the world was eventually disrupted by the appearance of an evil magician who brought strife, natural disasters, sickness, and death to all people. The recitation ends with a note to the effect that all of this happened prior to the flood, referring to this inundation as though it were an event with which everyone was familiar.³⁰

The common elements of a void and primordial waters, to which the world returns after a great flood, are present throughout ancient cultures in various forms. Most frequently in creation accounts, from the Mediterranean to America, what was there in the beginning is a great deep, out of which the earth was drawn.³¹

Hebrew Influence

Not only do we see the traces of Noahic religion throughout ancient cultures, but also the footprints of the Hebrews as they acted as a light to Gentiles. In Egypt, there is evidence of Semitic rulers called the “Hyksos” (“foreign rulers”) who had gradually gained influence to the point of domination, and “driven” out after about a century of power. Josephus identifies the Hyksos as the Hebrews in his Contra Apion, though this identification is of course disputed.

If the Hebrews were at least among those referred to as “Hyksos,” it may be the case that the new king who “knew not Joseph” refers to a king from the Eighteenth Dynasty, which was established in place of the Hyksos. Interestingly, the fourth king of this dynasty, Thutmose II, died an early death and his mummy is frail and covered in scabs and scars, possibly making him a decent candidate for the Pharaoh of the exodus.³²

Assuming this period was the period of the exodus, that would mean that two supposed Egyptian influences on Israelite religion should actually be identified as Israelite influences on Egyptian religion. First, there is the tenth ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Akhenaten, who abandoned the polytheistic religion of Egypt and established the monotheistic religion of Atenism. This has been identified by some scholars as the origin of monotheism, and especially of the “later” monotheism of Israel.³³

It is not the mere fact that Akhenaten was a monotheist that draws the comparisons to the true religion, but also the remarkably similar way in which he spoke of Aten. In fact, many scholars have identified Akhenaten’s “Great Hymn to the Aten” as the source of Psalm 104, and also of the language used of the sun in Psalm 19.³⁴ The ‘Great Hymn’ and Psalm 104 certainly bear great similarities, but it is yet again simply assumed that the pagan source must be the original rather than the other way around.

Yet considering the Lord’s express purpose of the exodus, “that the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord,” should we not assume that He was indeed able to accomplish this? In that case, should not an unprecedented and sudden conversion to monotheism, with hymns echoing the theology of Israel, be seen as the fulfillment of that aim? In fact, when one compares the similar passages of Psalm 104 and the Hymn, the latter appears to be a more detailed commentary on the former:

Psalm 104:20-21: You bring darkness, it becomes night and all the beasts of the forest prowl. The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God.

Hymn to the Aten 3-4: Whenever you set on the western horizon, the land is in darkness in the manner of death. They sleep in a bedroom with heads under their covers, and one eye does not see another; If all their possessions which are under their heads were stolen, they would not know it. Every lion comes out of his cave and all the serpents bite, for darkness is a blanket. The land is silent now because he who made them is at rest on the horizon.

Psalm 104:22-23: The sun rises, and they steal away; they return and lie down in their dens. Then people go out to their work, to their labour until evening.

Hymn to the Aten 4-5: But when the day breaks you are risen on the horizon, and you shine like the Aten in the daytime. When you dispel darkness and you give forth your rays, the two lands are in festival, alert and standing on their feet, now that you have raised them up. Their arms are lifted in praise of your rising. The entire land performs its work.

It seems more likely to me then that Akhenaten represents those in Egypt who still possess memory of the devastation of the exodus, and who got the right message from it, despite not joining the “mixed multitude” (Ex. 12:38). His establishment of Atenism can thus be understood as an attempt to return Egypt to the ancient worship of the one true God in response to the Lord’s defeat of their many gods (Ex. 12:12-13).

The second significant parallel to Hebrew religion in Egypt is the use of the divine name in an Egyptian text. In the Book of the Heavenly Cow, the god Re declares against rebellious mankind, “I am that I am. I will not let them take action.” John D. Currid entertains the idea of Egyptian influence on the Hebrews concerning the divine name, but concludes that it is more likely to be the other way around.³⁵ This text, declaring Re, the King of the Gods, to be Yahweh, has been discovered in the tombs of Seti I, Tutankhamen, several pharaohs in the Valley of Kings, and three kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty.³⁶

Skipping ahead—so as not to extend the length of this essay too much further beyond anyone’s willingness to read—let us consider also the Greek philosophers, whose copying from the Hebrews has always had a central place in articulations of the prisca theologia doctrine. Greek philosophers have commonly been treated as a self-contained tradition that came into being ex nihilo in the 6th century “B.C.E (sic).” But scholarship has slowly moved toward the discovery, though of course falling short of admitting, that the church has been right all along.

Augustine’s identification of Genesis as the source of Plato’s creation account in his Timaeus has been followed by similar identifications throughout Greek literature in recent scholarship. It only makes sense after all that such borrowings from surrounding cultures should be found, considering that the Greeks adopted the script of the Phoenicians, with writing appearing at a time in which trade connections (and the cultural exchanges that come along with travel and the exchange of goods) with the Middle East are evident.³⁷ In order to learn the script, one would have had to have taken at least one school lesson under someone from the Syro-Palestinian region, along with which, one would assume, would come a certain degree of familiarity with the texts written in that script.³⁸

Walter Burkert writes:

Note that any school of writing needs convenient texts for exercise; and what makes the contents of a primer? Sayings and simple narratives—that is, wisdom literature and mythology… both types appear, not by coincidence—and not without appeal to kings—in Hesiod’s two works Theogony, including the catalogues, and Works and Days. These two works seem to be close to the date when Greeks first borrowed the alphabet and learned about the function and layout of book scrolls. This does not mean that Hesiod was the only gate of access. There is the cosmogonical passage in the Iliad that is close to Enuma Elish. And the theogony of Orpheus, as it is now known from the Derveni Papyrus, seems to be a meeting-place of oriental motifs; much must have been there that we cannot identify. But we also see how a body of astronomical knowledge and mathematical techniques had been accumulating especially in the temple schools of Babylonia; it made significant progress right in the crucial epoch of the sixth to fifth centuries. It clearly affected the Greeks. See our names for the planets, or the laborious sexagesimal system we still use to measure circles and angles.³⁹

The formation of Greek philosophy, then, did not happen in a vacuum, but developed out of the wisdom literature and mythology they had received along with the script with which their philosophy was written. We know, in fact, that Aristotle himself had his students study barbaros philosophia, which included “Egyptians, Chaldeans, Iranian magoi including Zoroaster, Indian gurus, and also the Jews.”⁴⁰

In addition to this familiarity with eastern texts, likely including the Old Testament, we have also an account from Aristotle’s disciple Clearchus of Soli of a meeting between his master and a Jew. The Jew had reportedly come to learn from the Philosopher, but in the end, wound up “imparting to us something of his own.” Aristotle said that this Jew “not only spoke Greek, but had the soul of a Greek.”⁴¹

While it would take many more words to identify the various individual passages, from the presocratics to Aristotle, where the influence of Scripture appears to be evident, this at least makes it clear that the description of Plato as “Moses atticizing” is not so far fetched as it might sound. I do not, of course, wish to diminish the roles which the sensus divinitatis and acquired knowledge of natural revelation played in illuminating the minds of the philosophers. But we should likewise not diminish the role of the mixed tradition they received from the east, which included both the echoes of the ancient religion and its accurate description in the Hebrew scriptures.

Conclusion

There are a number of applications of this through-line of historical illumination of the true religion, which I will elaborate on further in future essays. But for an overall description of my interest in this concept, I believe that we are due for a sort of new humanist movement, by which I mean that which occurred during the renaissance rather than the 20th century. Their aim was to return to the sources (ad fontes), and their interests were not merely literary but instead a pursuit of forgotten truth contained in the documents of the past. The truths which were unearthed were not merely facts about ancient cultures which never left the domain of historical interests, but principles with the authority of antiquity that were brought to bear on society. Without such a return to the sources, there would have been no reformation.

An advantage we have in our own return to the sources, and especially in our return to the ultimate source of Scripture, is the relatively recent recovery of an even greater wealth of sources that give us a clearer picture of the wisdom of ages before Moses and Plato. We can study, for instance, the nature of things which the Bible mostly assumes we already know—kingship, ethnicity, family, the city, spirit, matter, feasts, ritual—in texts written by those living in the same cultural milieu.

In our current moment, not only the unbelieving world, but also much of the church, has lost nearly all inherited knowledge of the nature of the world. Obvious examples include sex and gender and the existence of spiritual realities, but there are many more of which even those who draw clear lines on these issues virtually lack all knowledge, and even more, fiercely oppose all who contend for traditional understandings of things like the nature of politics or ethnicity.

It is therefore imperative, in the midst of the modern blindness to the nature of reality, that we recognize that we modern men are not the enlightened peak of humanity, but rather the true neanderthals, groping around in the darkness of ignorance and worshiping the work of our own hands. The truly “enlightened” are the ones who possess the glory of a silver crown (Prov. 16:31), and the true enlightenment is an ancient past from which man has fallen, the age of the fathers of the whole world, whom we have failed to honor. We must repent of our modern hubris, hold in doubt all we have received from the modern zeitgeist, and identify with Bullinger the true “golden age” that lies in our distant past. We must return to the ancient sources in order to return to ourselves.

1. Henry Bullinger, The Old Faith. Sacra Press. XVI-XVII.

2. Steven Studebaker, Jonathan Edwards’ Social Augustinian Trinitarianism in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. 220-221.

3. Iain McGee. John Calvin: Logos-Centric Theologian of Religions. 12.

4. Eusebius, Praep. Evang. XI.10.

5. Ibid. XI.10.

6. Norman Roth. “The Theft of Philosophy.” 64-65.

7. Jaroslav Pelikan. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600). 33.

8. Pelikan. The Catholic Tradition, Vol. 1. 34.

9. Ibid. 34.

10. Justin Martyr. First Apology. 59-60; Horatory Address to the Greeks. 29.

11. Pelikan. 33.

12. Ibid. 33.

13. Thomas Aquinas. Sent. Petr. Lomb. 1.3.1.4.

14. Moshe Idel, “Prisca Theologia in Marsilio Ficino and in Some Jewish Treatments.” 137.

15. Iain McGee. John Calvin: Logos-Centric Theologian of Religions. 13.

16. McGee, John Calvin. 16; Walker, The Ancient Religion. 119.

17. McGee. 15.

18. George Huntston Williams, “Erasmus And the Reformers On Non-Christian Religions,” Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe. 355.

19. Eric M. Parker. “‘Saint Dionysius’: Martin Bucer’s Transformation of the Pseudo-Areopagite.” 124. https://www.academia.edu/37017087/_Saint_Dionysius_Martin_Bucers_Transformation_of_the_Pseudo-Areopagite

20. Williams. “Erasmus and the Reformers.” 355.

21. Ibid. 338.

22. Lambert Daneau. Physica christiana. 42.

23. Matthew Henry. Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible, Vol. 4: Isaiah to Malachi. 587.

24. Studebaker, Jonathan Edwards’ Social Augustinian Trinitarianism. 223-226.

25. Walker. The Ancient Theology. 14.

26. James B. Jordan, Handwriting on the Wall. 301-8.

27. Josephus writes in Ant. XI.1.2 concerning Cyrus’ familiarity with Isaiah’s prophecy: “This was known to Cyrus by his reading the book which Isaiah left behind him of his prophecies… Accordingly, when Cyrus read this, and admired the Divine power, an earnest desire and ambition seized upon him to fulfill what was so written.” The same claim is made by Juan Luis Vives in his commentary on Augustine’s City of God.

Since Daniel was a trusted advisor under Cyrus (Dan. 6:28), it is not unlikely that he could have been familiar with Isaiah’s prophecy. My speculative opinion, based on parallels often noted between Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity, which are often used to argue for influence of the former on the latter, is that Zoroastrianism is actually the result of Daniel’s influence. There is no record of Zoroastrianism until this time, and considering the fact that Cyrus’ whole kingdom had been commanded to worship the Lord, it seems to me to be the most likely explanation for the appearance of a new religion with parallels to the true religion in the very place the Jews were present at that point in history.

28. Winfried Corduan, In the Beginning God: A Fresh Look at the Case for Original Monotheism. 179.

29. Corduan, In the Beginning God. 89.

30. Ibid. 207.

31. Walter Burkert, “Presocratic Philosophy in an Orientalizing Context” in The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy. 69.

32. Gaston Maspero. History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12).

33. See James K. Hoffmeier, Akhenaten and the Origins of Monotheism.

34. Stephen Smoot, “Psalm 19 and the Hymn to the Aten: A Comparative Analysis.” https://www.academia.edu/94286870

35. John D. Currid, Against the Gods. 144.

36. Currid. Against the Gods. 130.

37. Walter Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution. 26.

38. Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution. 29.

39. Burkert, “Presocratic Philosophy in an Orientalizing Context.” 59.

40. Ibid. 60.

41. Josephus, Against Apion I.176-181