Roger Pearse

Hi Andrew,

It occurs to me the one thing that we have clear evidence of is that names get swapped around a lot in these collections. So it wouldn't be at all impossible to have Balinus and Bandar(it)us getting swapped, I suppose. Speculation, tho, isn't enough. I'd like to see some of the Apollonius material, I think.

I see that Graf lists sayings by 'Apollo' (also given as Apollonius) in our collections of Arabic Christian sayings. None of them in the 4 collections that we have so far, tho. Looks as if it might be in Gerasimus.

Another motif that comes out of Gutas's book is that a lot of the Arabic gnomologia are pretty accurate versions of material in Greek. However there are sometimes differing versions of them.

Incidentally a Corpus Parisinum of Greek gnomologia, including a long section from the Fathers, has just been edited and published by Denis Searby under that title. Apparently the collection is a crucial one. CUL don't seem to have it, tho.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Book 4 of the 5 book Apology for Christianity by Gerasimus, Abbot of the Monastery of St. Simeon the Wonderworker outside Antioch (see Graf, Geschichte vol. 2), contains a collection of sacro-prophane sayings; philosophers and the like predicting Christian teachings.

Unfortunately I can't get hold of a copy of the Bodleian ms. of Gerasimus (the greedy swine want $2,000 for monochrome images of 113 pages and won't sell a microfilm), but this extract is available in 30 pages in a Beirut ms., of which I have a PDF. A transcription and translation is here:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/gerasimus_excerpt.htm

This material is public domain (not translated by me, but I purchased the copyright), so please feel able to do whatever you like with it.

A few other collections of Arabic Christian gnomologia are also available at

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers

A CDROM of the site is available for $38, if anyone would like to support the process of translating stuff, from here:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/al...hers_on_cd.htm

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman

Eusebius not reliable? That's a first. According to this article entitled Hermes Trismegistus and Apollonius of Tyana in the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh the author Keven Brown finds the following authors making references to the talisman's of Apollonius of Tyana:

1) Eusebius of Caesarea
2) Pseudo-Justin
3) Malalas



Best wishes,


Pete

Roger Pearse

Thank you, MountainMan, for drawing my attention to this.

On Apollonius the maker of talismans, and his extant talismans in the 6th century, I found the following in Google books, which is plainly seriously scholarly.

From: Maria Dzielska, Apollonius of Tyana in legend and history.

Citing among others:

Ps. Justin, Quaestiones et responsiones 24. (PG 6)

Isidore of Pelusium, Epist. I. 398 (PG 78, 405B)

The book of wisdom of Apollonius of Tyana (Dzielska, p.103), but no source seems to be given.

See also F. Nau, Apotelesmata Apollonii Tyanensis in Patrologia Syriaca I, 2, pp.1370, 1383, and notes 2, 3.

Vague reference to John Malalas.

Anastasius Sinaita, Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos 20, PG 89, 524D-525C, says talismans existed in the cities, protecting against snakes etc.

Many other Byzantine authors are quoted.

p.112 discusses Apollonius (=Balinas) in Arabic. On the identity, Leclerc, Journal Asiatique series 6, vol. 14, (1869) pp.111-31. here.

A load of works attributed to him, and he is called sahib al-tilasmat (lord of Talismans), ref. is 'Weisser', p. 28 ff. (perhaps it's Das"buch über das Geheimnis der Schöpfung" von Pseudo-apollonios? But a critical p.29 is missing, so I can't see where the 'lord of talismans' stuff comes from)

andrewcriddle

Hi Roger

pps 22-25 of the Weisser book are relevant of which 22 and 25 are online.
(23-24 annoyingly are not.)

Andrew Criddle

Roger Pearse

Ah, thanks! P.22 quotes al-Ya`qubi Ta'rih (897 AD) as "Then Domitian reigned: in his time lived Abulus, the master of Talismans, who came from Tyana." A reference to Band 1 Seite 165 (evidently a published edition and translation) is given.

I can see pp.22, 23 and 24 OK, so I think the pages displayed vary.

I read Leclerc's article last night, and it mentions that names can get pretty distorted because the Arabic script is so useless. Specifically some consonants include dots, and differ from others only in whether the dots are above or below the letter, etc. So to swap letters would appear very easy. I must go and look at a book on Arabic script that I have and play with them a bit.

I don't think that helps us get from PLNS to BNDRTS, tho (two *more* consonants).

Incidentally my translator is started on al-Majdalus, and has just sent me a first chunk (I've not yet paid him for that, so can't post it here). But he hasn't reached the bit with philosophers yet anyway.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

andrewcriddle

As another speculative guess about Bandaritos it might be worth considering Bundos who was, according to Malalas, a fringe Manichaean missionary in Rome at the time of Diocletian, who later returned to Persia where his brand of Manichaeanism supposedly became a source of the Zoroastrian heresy Mazdakism. Manicheism in the Later Roman Empire...

Andrew Criddle

Roger Pearse

Interesting thought.

The chap working on al-Majdalus is still grinding away -- has done about a third of it. I'm going to have to avoid commissioning more work just at the moment; I'm one of the Icesave victims.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

The translation of al-Majdalus has reached me, although it still needs a few tweaks, and of course I need to pay the translator for it. It does indeed contain references to sayings literature - I can see Hermes, and Aristotle in there - but I can't yet see Zoroaster. Will take it home with me tonight and see.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Update: some months ago I obtained images of two manuscripts from the Oriental Library at St. Joseph University in Beirut, containing a 15th century and 18th century text of the Commentary on the Nicene Creed of the 10th century Arabic Christian writer, al-Majdalus. I then commissioned Dr. Samuel Noble to transcribe and translate this work into English, which he kindly did.

The transcription and translation are now online, and may be downloaded in Word format from here:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/al-majdalus

I place them both in the public domain -- do whatever you like with them. At the weekend I will reformat them into HTML and place that in my collection of additional Fathers.

An article by Dr. Khalil Samir gives background info on the text.

http://www.dacb.org/stories/egypt/abu_yu'annis.html

The translation follows. The links with Ms. Mingana Syr. 481 would appear to be tenuous.

All the best,

Roger Pearse
======================

Al-Majdalus, Commentary on the Nicene Creed.
--------------------------------------------

[Translated by Samuel Noble.]

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God.

We begin with divine help and the assistance of the Holy Spirit to write the commentary on the Orthodox Creed which three hundred and eighteen blessed spiritual fathers set down by the grace of the Holy Spirit, as it was commented upon by the priest father Abu al-Majdalus, God rest his soul. May we benefit from the movement of his knowledge and his prayers, amen. May the copyist and the reader and the hearer be forgiven.

Know, dear brother-- may God aid you with the Spirit of success and write your name in the Book of Life, the registry of the day of reckoning-- that when our three hundred eighteen fathers were aided by Christ and set down this creed according to how Christ deified them, Christ was with them at its setting down and they numbered three hundred nineteen when they sat on their seats. This is according to the words of Christ to them- ‘two of you do not gather in my name without me being the third and not three without me being the fourth.’ There is nothing in it which is not from the Law of Moses and the prophecies of the prophets, their blessings be upon us, amen.

First, the believer says ‘we believe in one God.’ This expression is taken from the Law of Moses, since God said in it, ‘hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one.’ They began by confirming God’s sole lordship, as in unity He is the God of every thing. No one is His partner, no likeness resembles Him, and no opposite rivals Him. In His eternal essence there is no mass and no breadth because mass is bounded by dimensions and dimension confines it and form touches it. The parts of that which is divided separate and what is described is bounded by its description, but the Absolutely One is not resembled by His works or comparable to His creature. He is not described except by the attributes of His eternity because He was Creator before every attribute and description. His essence is unrestricted and His work is unimpeded. He is veiled from intellects just as He is veiled from vision. He has no bounded description and no numbered time. Shortcomings and defects do not reach Him. Times and seasons do not change Him. Pre-eternal, He remains eternal. His existence has no beginning. Pre-eternal is an expression referring to one before whom there is nothing. The Absolutely One is an expression referring to one who has no second. Just as ‘alif’ is the first letter and nothing precedes it, the Creator—may He be praised—is the first without beginning, eternally existent with nothing before Him. Everything depends upon His will and comes out of His volition. Moses bore witness in his great Law and all the prophets in their prophecies to the oneness of God and the pre-eternity of His being eternal. God, may He be exalted, said in the Law, ‘Hear, O Israel, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Do not worship any god other than Me and do not bow to any god besides Me.’ He also said, ‘Look, look, I am He and there is no god other than Me. I cause death and I bring life. I strike and I heal. No one escapes from My hand.’ The prophet Isaiah said, ‘I am the first and the last. There is no god before Me nor will one come after Me.’ The one is unique in oneness. No one shares in it. The prophet Isaiah said, ‘You are the mighty God, the God of Israel who sits upon the cherubim. You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth.’ The prophet Jeremiah said, ‘Our Lord is one. We do not worship another with Him.’ The Holy Gospel said, ‘Bow to the Lord your God and worship Him alone.’

The believer says: ‘Father almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, what is seen and what is not seen.’ These words are taken from the prophecy of the prophet Zakariah, ‘O children, love truth and goodness, said God almighty.’ Our fathers made known to us that the God whose unity they confirmed and whose lordship they confessed is eternal, everlasting and that the eternal one is the master of all things and holds all in his lofty power and his lordly arrangements. He alone is singular in his creating and fashioning. He is singular in his bringing things into being and originating. Nothing similar resembles Him and no opposite rivals Him. He is the one who reveals and the one who causes to return. He is the master of all of his works through his greatness and their arranger through the loftiness of His word, sensible things of what is seen and intelligibles of what is unseen. Nothing leaves His governance and nothing evades His knowledge. He knows all knowable things and encompasses all created things. Nothing is dependant except on His will and nothing emerges except from His volition. He brought all extant things into being and is self-sufficient in His essence and in the perfection of His attributes. Limits do not confine Him and changes do not change Him. Those sent by Him, the prophets, and the saints, those close to Him, bear witness to this. Zachariah said, ‘God almighty says these things: Lo I shall save My people from the eastern and western ends of the earth. I will lead them into their land and settle them amidst Jerusalem.’ The prophet Nahum said, ‘O Judah, lo I shall come and dwell in you, said God almighty.’ As for their saying ‘father,’ the prophet David said, ‘as a father has mercy on his children, so likewise the Lord has mercy on those who fear Him.’ He also said, ‘I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to Me.’ The prophets called God ‘father’ due to the pre-eternity of his eternity and His having mercy on his creation and they called His Word ‘son’ not because this sonship was a prophetic term but because it is an eternal sonship from an eternal father. Through it the Word of God is above all the attributes of the sonship of created things, like the begetting of power from one powerful and speech from one speaking. The essence is absolutely one, above attainment, division, or dimension.

The believer says: ‘We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages.’ Their saying ‘the only son of God’ is an expression taken from the prophet David: ‘The Lord said to me, “you are my son and today I have begotten you.”’ By their saying ‘the only son of God,’ they mean that the eternal Word of God is begotten from His eternal essence, as is witnessed by the prophet Micah who said, ‘You, oh Bethlehem of Judah, are not small among the kings of Judah because from you will emerge a leader to shepherd my people Israel, whose begetting is before the ages.’ The sense of this is that Christ is that eternal Word, begotten from God who said ‘be!’ at the beginning of eternity, by whom all came into being. His begetting is from the Father in the same way as when one says ‘My speech is begotten from my intellect and my tongue speaks of what my thought begets. My thought is begotten from my essence and my essence is one with my reason .’ God’s speaking is begotten from His eternal essence and not a letter of it is cut off from it. Rather, it is begotten from the essence which eternally speaks it. It comes forth from an eternal essence and is present and subsistent in it. It is described by the pre-eternity and eternity with which God describes His eternity. Just as His will is pre-eternally present in His eternal essence in order to create His creation, so is the Word pre-eternally in the will and present in it in the essence of its Speaker. It was begotten from Him by the eternal command. The Word of God is a pre-eternal characteristic of His eternal essence and is not an essence other than the essence of God who speaks and not a substance other than His substance and not an attribute other than His attribute. His is not a sonship which He added to Himself, separate from His eternal essence. God has one Word by which He devised worship through the power of His eternity. From His divine nature God does with it what He wills. It is the will of God which surpasses all wills. His will is from His substance and the will is one and the sovereignty of his majesty. Its essence is eternal in His divine eternity. The law established for us that God’s Word is eternal and all the prophets testified to its pre-eternity and existence and that it is eternal from the eternity of God who speaks by it, that it is uncreated, and that the eternal God alone possesses the Word of His eternity and is satisfied with it. It is not cut off broken up into letters. It is established in the law that Christ is the Word of God. God said about Him, “I will be a father to him and he will be a son to me.” Christ, the Word of God, appeared by His lofty will and His lordly economy and his divine volition. He established to the world that He is the Word of God. We found Him to be eternal light from God’s eternal light and we saw Him in the sight of His creation as a limited human. God alone possesses His Word. The evangelists announced his appearance and said, “The one who is from the beginning is the one whom we saw and witnessed with our eyes and touched with our hands.” When the veil of darkness was removed from our vision, we saw that He had shone light and removed from us the darkness of blindness and enlightened us with His eternal light. He taught us that He is God’s eternal Word by whom all things came into being. God’s Word is uncreated and is of an eternal essence. There is not anyone from the beginning and to the ages of ages who has the power of divinity while being in the human form other than Christ, the son of the living God. He alone possesses His signs and the majesty of His lordship without comparison to creatures. He is called ‘Christ’ and ‘lord’ and ‘powerful’ and ‘worker of lordly signs’ and ‘maker of the divine powers.’ He is described in the books of His prophets by eternity of essence and the working of signs. He appeared by His lofty and lordly will as one upon whose divine essence createdness did not enter and as one who by a mystery too subtle to be understood and too lofty for the imagination was not transported from the majesty of lordship by it. His appearance was through the power of one mighty and eternal, who by it is above relation to creatures and the actions of limited beings because He has an eternal essence and the eternity of the Word and He is above any name by which He could be named or any mention of Him that could be made. One who claims that Christ, the Word of God, is created and attributes servanthood to this creating Word is irrational and has no knowledge of God. He will not see the face of God and He has no place in this world or in the world to come. God will keep him in hell unto the ages of ages. The creator bore witness and His witness is true and His prophets whom He sent and the holy ones dear to Him bore witness that Christ is His eternal Word though whom He created all the worlds and that Christ has active power which comes from one active and capable. His is power and majesty and lofty will and the greatness of divine authority. All his actions are heavenly and not earthly. No created being can perform a single one of his wonders such as raising the dead and great signs. God bore witness and his prophets with him that Christ is his son and his word begotten from his eternal essence. Christ went up Mount Tabor along with his pure disciples and they heard God’s testimony and his life-giving voice as he addressed his word, Christ, by saying, “You are my beloved son with whom I am pleased.” God is truthful even if all the people disbelieve. The prophets and the one giving the prophets to prophecy bore witness to the eternity of the Word of God who is Christ. One who disbelieves God and the prophets he sent deserves an eternity in hell as well as one who teaches disbelief in the Word of God and does not believe his testimony on account of his ignorance of the divine books and says that Christ, the hypostasis of the Word of God is created and disbelieves the Law of Moses even though the prophecies of the prophets who went before testified that the unseen God appeared to all the prophets in the human form in which Christ appeared to the Children of Israel, and those who denied the prophecies of the prophets and disbelieved the Law of Moses and the prophecies of the prophets and deny the appearance of the Word of God who will appear on the day of resurrection and all human eyes will see him and testify that he is lord and master and judge. He will appear to one who believes in him in this world in the court of the resurrection in the image in which he was seen in this world. This will be counted as great righteousness and a good work which causes him to merit eternal life as the prophet Moses testified in the Law that God appeared to Abraham by the oak tree and Abraham believed and this was counted for him as righteousness. Out of the greatness of Abraham’s faith in him he stood before him and prostrated to him and called him ‘the judge of the earth.’ The Law testifies that he appeared to Jacob in the form of a very powerful man and said to him, “From now on your name will not be called Jacob, but rather Israel, whose meaning is ‘one looking upon God.’” God said to Moses when the Children of Israel thirsted in the desert, “Lo I go behind you and stand in Horeb upon a rock. When you see me standing on it, strike the staff with which you struck the sea and water will come out of it for you.” God appeared to all the prophets in the form of Christ and they prophesied about his appearance to the world in the human form in which Christ dared to appear to the world and to the Children of Israel just as the prophets saw him in it and confirmed in it the vision of the God of Sabaoth and confirmed through it his presence to them. In it they became certain of his appearing to them openly to them and to the rest of the servants of God. They hope for him and if the people searched the books of the prophets for what they set down relating to the appearance of God the eternal word, they would realize the existence of their creator through the vision of Christ and would behold their creator because God and all the prophets testify to the coming of Christ as his appearing two times: the first time is his appearance in human form from the Virgin Mary and the second time is his coming in human form to sit in judgment and judge the whole world in truth. The book of the Muslims testifies to this when it says, “faces looking to their Lord” and everyone who read the Law of Moses and the prophecies of the prophets and believed in the appearance of Christ the Word of God in human form is called to knowledge of him through it, believing in God and witnessing the truth through the existence of his creator and maker. The prophet David said, “The God of gods will appear in Sion.” He also spoke of the birth of the eternal word from the divine essence and its second birth from the Virgin Mary when he said, “From the womb before the morning star I begat you.” Isaiah said, “A child is born to us and a sign and a son is given to us and he is the mighty God and the king of great council. His authority is on his shoulders.” The prophet Moses said, “This is your father who made you and created you.” Solomon said, “Who is the one who went up to heaven and came down to earth and gathered the winds in his fist and the waters in his robe. What is his name and the name of his father, if you knew?” He also said, “He begat me from the beginning and I was with him when he separated the sky and the earth and set his throne upon the wings of the wind. When he gathered the clouds in their storehouses I was with him and he begat me.”
The believer says: “Light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not created, equal to the Father in essence.” This expression is taken from the prophecy of the prophet Isaiah who says, “A light will shine in the darkness,” though human vision cannot see that light and it is not a light that lights space and does not accept accident. It is not a light from the heaven of createdness or one of the similar accidents. Rather, it is a light which is above all light, present in the beginning and above being specified with dimensions, a light above all light to which can be attributed spatialiality and movement and rest. Christ is from this light which is above all light because his essence is from the essence of God his father. From his divine light he shown that light from God the eternal father because his essence is from the essence of the greatness of God and his light is begotten from the unattainable uncircumscribable eternal light. That light is not sensed and is not compound. It is a light from the light of God’s greatness and his power. Anyone who does not believe that that light is from God walks in darkness all the days of his life and he will not behold the truth, neither in this world nor in the world to come because the light of God did not shine in his intellect. Christ is an eternal light and that light abolishes all darkness since his essence is eternal and subsistent in the eternity of the eternal creator. That light appeared ineffably because he is not bounded by dimension and he is not encompassed by any kind of vision into his essence because he is a light beyond human capability and too holy for dimensions and space. When Christ appeared with his light from the divine light of God’s essence, this light was not divided though his divine light is from the substance of the true God.
The fathers said, “light from light true God from true God equal to God his father in substance and essence and greatness,” just as Christ said from his pure mouth, “I am the light of the world and one who follows me does not walk in darkness.” He said to the Children of Israel, “The light is with you for a short time so walk in the light as long as you have the light.” When they realized that light, they called it the light of truth. The Law said, “Moses looked at a fire in a tree and its branches were not burning and he said, ‘let me see this strange and wondrous sight.’ He went forward to see and God called out to him from that fire which is the light of truth, “I am God, the God of your fathers,” and taught us that that fire is from the light of truth because the tree did not burn. The Muslims said that God is a light and is like the light which is like a lamp in a niche. The creator, may he be praised, is robed and veiled with light. Human vision cannot see that light nor can it see its eternal divine essence. As the prophet David said, “With you, O lord, is the spring of life and in your light we see the light.” He also said, “Your light is great in the eternal mountains.” The Prophet Isaiah said, “Shine O Jerusalem! He is present and the grace of the lord has shone upon you. The lord will see in you and his grace will rest upon you and the nations will walk with you in your radiance and the kings by your light. Jeremiah said, “Thus says the lord, ‘I will raise up for David the light of light and he will rule over the domain and set up justice in the midst of the earth and on that day I will save Jerusalem from those who combat her. The name of the one who will save her is God.’ Thus said the lord, ‘A son of David will not cease to sit on his throne until eternity.’”
The believer says: “who for the sake of us men and for the sake of our salvation came down from heaven.” They took this expression from the prophet David who says, “O lord, incline in your heaven and come down.” As for their saying, “came down from heaven,” they intend the closeness of the lord to them, the connection of their intellects to knowledge of him and their witnessing his human appearance which all the prophets going before had desired to see with their eyes as the Children of Israel saw him with their eyes because God appeared to all the prophets and He favored them over all mankind. So they prophesied of his coming in the appearance with which they saw him with their eyes, just as the apostle Paul said, “in every way and every form God spoke to our fathers on the tongues of the prophets of old and in these days he spoke to us in his only son whom he made an inheritor of all, the one through whom he made the ages who is the light of his glory and the image of his eternity and he held all in the power of his Word.” The expression “descent” is a connection of the soul to the maker of its life and the witnessing of the light of truth without a movement in the divine essence and its descent from the heaven of its dread throne to the passing, decaying material world. By “descent,” they intended the creator’s drawing near to his servants through his fellowship with them and his appearing to them in human form, since he was high on his heavenly throne above their appearing to him and loftier than them in the high of his heaven, above their seeing his divine essence. When the prophets brought tidings of his coming in human form, this necessitated vision in terms of the human eye achieving vision of the divine essence which is holy beyond dimensions and space. All the books of God that have been sent down testify that he will come down and appear to his servants openly, and it is an expression used in the books of God, even though no one in heaven or on earth can see the light of the greatness of his divine essence because of its loftiness. Just as God said to Moses when he asked to see the divine essence, “No one sees me and lives,” this indicates that human vision does not attain his light. When the prophets saw him, as they testified, in his appearance they only saw him in the appearance of the form in which he announced to them him appearing to them as Christ in his material world, just as he will appear in it on the day of resurrection to judge them and pass judgment over them in it. One who understands God’s having written his name on the tablets of Moses without the divine essence becoming present in those tablets or being encompassed by them has understood when we point to it with this meaning that the writing was engraved in the tablets and was not God but rather just as God, may he be praised, willed that the writing be engraved it was as he willed, may he be exalted, and the words are subsistent in the essence and preserved in the heart and written on the tablets for Moses without leaving his divine essence. The Lordly Judge has a lofty will which appears by his will a he wishes and how he wishes by his divine will which is connected to his lordly wisdom. The powerful one is powerful and those over whom he has power do not reach him and his lofty will. The thing which is made does not reach the work of its maker. When Moses saw him in the veil of light in the bush though the wonder of sight and God assured him of his presence in it and called out to him from it, “I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,” Moses realized that that light was calling out to him, “I am God,” and that he appeared to him through a veil of fire and made it a veil for his power. Moses did not doubt and did not think that the fire was other than the eternal essence and he believed that the one addressing him by sound was God and that it was his will in his appearance through the veil of fire.
We will follow with some of what the prophets testified regarding his descent in human form. The prophet David said, “He will come down like rain upon wool and like the drop of water upon the earth.” He also said, “The heavens leaned down and descended and the fog is under his legs. He rides upon the cherubim and flies upon the wings of the wind.” He also said in the 143rd Psalm, “O lord, incline in your heaven and come down!” He said about his birth in Zion, “O mother of man, a man is born in her and he is the exalted one who established her forever.” He also said, “The God of gods will appear in Zion and in his entering into the city of Zion.” The prophet Zachariah said, “Say to the daughter of Zion, behold your king will come to you humbly, riding upon a foal, the son of an ass.”
The believer says: “and became incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.” The fathers took this expression from the prophet Isaiah who says, “Behold the virgin will conceive and bear a son and his name will be called ‘Immanuel,’” the interpretation of which is, “our God is with us.” As for the fathers’ saying, “became incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,” they mention two incarnations and this statement is exalted beyond human understanding or material ideas. The fathers said with the help of the Holy Spirit that when the Spirit of God rested upon the prophets, they learned of the appearance of the Eternal Word and that it took its substance from its eternal essence without being divided into parts and without separation from this essence of its ineffable majesty and it took from the Virgin Mary a sensible body in a manner which human intellects cannot understand, just as the prophet Samuel said when they asked him what form the speech of God takes when it speaks to him in the temple, ‘God appears to me in the form of a man like me. In this way he will appear in Sion at the end of days.’ The form in which he appeared from the Virgin Mary was not a temple or a veil or a place existent before the union. Rather, he appeared as Lord and Christ and Savior, and as the worker of divine wonders and the receiver of bodily acts, except that the union is beyond human resemblance and psychological notions. The Gospel of God says, ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ and we saw his glory insofar as he became incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. The word appeared in human form without descending from the seat of his majesty or coming down from its throne, from his dread throne and from his heavenly glory. We learned that the Creator, may he be exalted, is capable of everything and is great in his power. He is able to appear to whom he wishes how he wishes. He decrees as he wishes and his is the lofty will and the divine, lordly power. He appeared from the Virgin Mary as He willed and as his will preceded in his appearing. The prophets prophesied it and the form in which He appeared was a human form to which was united the Eternal Word. His is the lordly authority and his is the will which is above all wills. He is the Lord of the Judgment and He will appear in this form on Judgment Day. He will appear with great and indescribable glory and He will be more majestic than the creatures as He is the judge of those in heaven and on earth. The Gospel of God says that when the angel Gabriel was sent by God to the Virgin Mary, he said to her, ‘Rejoice O full of grace! The Lord is with you!’ He did not say to her, ‘You will bear a son’ or ‘an apostle’ or ‘a human’. Rather, he said, ‘You will conceive and bear a son and he will be called the Son of the Most High and his kingdom will have no end.’ The holy Gospel says in the Gospel of Matthew, ‘And Mary was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit’ and the ineffable divine seed whose way of being is unknowable took its place in her and he revealed to her the mystery of God who sent him to bring tidings of it, saying to her when she asked how there could be seed in violation of what is usual, ‘The Holy Spirit will dwell within you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you because the one to be born of you is holy and will be called the Son of God.’ When he said this to her, the Spirit of God dwelt in her and purified her with its divine gift through the dwelling of the Eternal Word within her. The indwelling of the Word was without its being split or divided. That light surpasses all light and the light shone in the inner darkness and wisdom built a house for the light by its eternal will and from the Virgin Mary, as Solomon said, ‘Wisdom built itself a house and established it upon six pillars,’ meaning that that house became incarnate in six dimensions. The book of the pagans bears witness that the Virgin Mary bore the Word of God and that He cast his eternal Word into her and He came from her as a man, just as the Gospel of God says, ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’ The book of the pagans honors the Pure Virgin Mary by saying, ‘Mary, the daughter of Imran who guarded her virtue, we breathed into her from our spirit and she believed the words of her Lord and was among the obedient.’ This agrees with the Gospel of God’s saying that in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to the city of Galilee which is called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph of the house of David. When the angel announced to her the dwelling of the Word of God within her, she asked him how there could be conception without human seed because there had not been a sign like this. The angel revealed the mystery of God which He had entrusted to him and he informed her that the conception would not be from seed but rather that the one to be born from her would be from the Holy Spirit. All the prophets sent forth prophesied this birth, that it is the Eternal Word of God born from God the Father and from his eternal essence. Many of the ancient wise men and philosophers spoke of this and afterwards the prophecies of the prophets were transmitted. In the book of the wise Hermes on the science of astrology known as the book of the nine stones, he addresses his son saying, ‘O my son, the great and uncontainable cause, the rays of the perfect cause, subsistent in itself, not needing anything outside itself, must descend and walk on earth in a veil which it will make for itself and it will return to its heights and the seat of its throne. This is not movement from place to place. He also said, ‘A star will go from east to west for two and a half years and will return to its center. It is the star of the good tidings. It will go unto the wise men coming from the east to the eternal king in order to worship him and give their offerings. For his sake the children of Bethlehem and its surroundings will be killed. This is after 183 rotations of Saturn, the ancient Zuhal, because its rotation crosses the sky every thirty years. Plato said in the book of mysteries that the most high would appear on the earth and would raise the dead and would exhibit lordly signs. He would be lifted up to his throne and would not be seen until the day when He judges the world. The wise Jovatian said, ‘He is the great one of old, the pre-eternal who sits above the highest of the heavens, the lofty one dressed in flames of fire, whose kingdom does not pass away. He will appear upon the earth and raise the dead and heal the sick and he will exhibit lordly signs and return to his lofty throne. When he appears upon the earth wise men will come to him from the land of Persia and will present their offerings to him for he is the king of kings and his kingdom does not pass away. Augustus, the wise in astrology, said that a Hebrew youth whose name is Christ and who is eternal in his essence will appear openly and bear lordly authority. He will raise the dead and cleanse the lepers and unbind the tongues of the mute. The wise Aristotle said in his book known as the Lofty Sciences, ‘You do not behold your God except through the veil in which he appears. He hides his light from your vision lest your eyes become fixed upon looking at Him. If He appeared and you saw Him, his signs would demonstrate the majesty of his authority and by this you would know that He is the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings.’ He said in his letter to Alexander when he went off to search for the water of life, ‘You will not find the water of life except in one who will appear in the world wearing the clothing of the world. If you find him, you will gain the water of life from him. He will redeem you with the tree of life by tasting him and the water of eternal life flows from him. He said in his book known as the Book of Treasures that the treasure of life is with the god Adonai who will appear in the world and the dead will hear his voice from the graves and they will rise. The prophets whom he gave to prophecy in truth spoke in veiled terms about the appearance of Christ and his incarnation from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. The prophet Nahum said, ‘God will come in my image and his dress like my dress and his name will be engraved in the books of the name. His vineyard is twelve branches from the Children of Israel. He will have mercy on the nations and provide bread in the wildernesses. He will walk upon the sea and the waves will bow to him. By his hand He wrote the tablets for Moses. The prophet Zephaniah said, ‘O daughter of Zion, do not let your hand slacken for our God will come and live in you and will save you.’ The prophet Isaiah said, ‘Rejoice O daughter of Zion for the one within you is the Holy One of Israel.’ He also said, ‘A rod will come from the back of Jesse and will sprout a branch from his root. The Spirit of God will dwell in him, the spirit of wisdom and intellect. The evil will retreat from his land and he will smite the earth with the rod of his mouth and he will kill the hypocrite with the speech of his lips.’ God said in the Law of Moses, ‘Judah, the lion’s cub. There will not cease to be in Judah a king ruling and a prophet sent until the one who has authority comes and the peoples will hope in him.’ The prophet Daniel said, ‘I saw a mountain uncut by a hand and it struck the foot of the idol which Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream and it broke the clay, the brass, the iron, and the silver and they were like the short-lived dust and. A strong wind blew and no trace of them was seen. The great stone filled all the earth.’
The believer says: He suffered and was buried. The fathers took this expression from the prophet Isaiah’s saying ‘the one in whom was found no lie came to death.’ Know my son that Christ, glory to Him, fulfilled the prophecies of the prophets about his receiving passions and death. When the Laws which the Hebrews possess and the prophecies of the prophets prophesied about the coming of Christ, they prophesied about his receiving passions and death, as Isaiah said that Christ would come and be killed because Christ appeared in a sensible body susceptible to passions and death. The body in which he appeared was coarse and he did not want to return that coarse body to heaven. He decided to strip away from it from the corruptible, decaying form and to clothe it in the dress of lastingness and eternity and to glorify it with the eternal resurrection to which no one was magnified except Him and to exalt it with the robe of glory in the resurrection of glory and eternity and to magnify this form with eternal glory. If it was raised to its lofty throne, the form rested in the light of its divine majesty and the form became visible in the light of its eternal essence just as David said, ‘The Lord has put on glory and is exalted in loftiness. When he willed by his heavenly will the body, He kept it free from the clothing of being and decay by death and He clothed it in the clothing of eternal kingship in his resurrection from the dead and raised it to his dread throne in the form of everlasting eternity. It will no longer be subject to change. Death and decay do not change it, like the grain of wheat that became through its death a fruitful ear. Its death was the cause of its becoming the fruit of life. Likewise, the death of Christ in the form of Adam which God had condemned to death he raised in the divine form of eternal kingship and lordly majesty. He sat upon his dread throne in his lofty place in which his righteous angels praise Him, just as the prophet Daniel said about Him, ‘I saw in the cloud of heaven one resembling the Son of Man go down to the Ancient of Days and He gave him kingship and authority. Thousands of thousands of angels serve him and myriads of myriads stand before him. His rule will not end and will not cease unto the ages of ages.’ Death spares his essence; it is only a movement from abode to abode, from the abode of passing away to the abode of eternity. Christ willed by his accepting passions to rise up to his heavenly throne. We have compared the passions of Christ which He accepted by his will and the wonders He worked by his power and we see that one of his signs among all his signs suffices for a thousand of the passions which He accepted in human form. The Children of Israel imagined that the passions of Christ are due to weakness on his part because of their unbelief. The wise looked at the passions of Christ as heavenly and lordly wisdom that is not understood except by those who have been helped, those to whom God has revealed the hidden things of his divine wisdom. The death of Christ which He revealed openly distinguished between the spirit and its body. The word of God is united to the spirit always and eternally from the time of the union and forever because the Word is light from God’s eternal essence and the light rests in him eternally, united with him and one with him existing eternally. One in whom is God and whom He has made one with his eternal essence is in the body in which Christ accepted death and in the soul which left its body. They both have eternal life since the union and forever, just as the prophet Isaiah said when he saw with the eye of prophecy, ‘God truly rests within you and God is none other and you are the hidden God, the God of Israel and its savior.’ The Holy Gospel said, ‘The Word became flesh’ and the Word is light that does not suffer and is not subject to passions because it is beyond the intellect of humans and it is not a sensible body that suffers. The light of truth does not suffer and is not subject to passions in his lordly essence and the light of truth is the maker who is not attained by creatures. The Maker is present in the form in which he appeared as Christ and the form received passions and the Word does not receive what coarse things receive except that the form is the form of the eternal essence and became one with him in the union and it rose as Christ and lord and judge. If the Wise Maker made a garment and was robed in it while his essence is one and eternal, what does the maker cause to suffer or in what is he ignorant of his creation? He did not enter into it in a garment added to his essence nor with a lacking since his unity is always more majestic than created attributes and corporeal actions. God caused all his prophets whom He sent to prophesy Christ’s accepting passions and death, which is a decree of divine wisdom. That which God caused his prophets to prophesy is the passions which the Children of Israel wrought upon him, just as the prophet Moses said that God commanded him when the snakes in their multitude bit the Children of Israel, ‘Make a snake of copper and hang it on a piece of wood before them. Let all of those whom the snake bit lift their gaze up to the copper snake and they will be healed.’ Then Moses prophesied saying, ‘Truly I say to you that you will see the one who gave you life suspended before your eyes and you will not believe.’ The prophet David said, ‘Why were the peoples disturbed and the nations guided in falsehood? The kings and chiefs of the earth rose up and make orphans of all against the Lord and his Christ. May He break their chains and throw off their fetters. The One who dwells in heaven laughs at them. The Lord despises them. Then He will speak to them in his anger wrath and will forget them.’ The prophet Nathan said, ‘The Lord will appear in Jerusalem with a rod of three kinds and with it he will save the nations. Their kings will be honored by that wood and He will purify them in the water of the Jordan.’ The prophet Isaiah said, ‘In difficult straights they think of you and in necessity they seek you.’ He also said, ‘God gave me the tongue of knowledge because I wore away my cheeks with the flow of tears and I did not turn my face from the contempt of those who spit.’ He also said, ‘Every man among us has gone astray in his path. The Lord was given up for our sins. Humble, not opening his mouth, like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before the slaughterer. Who can speak of his stories?’ The prophet Jeremiah said, ‘The Lord will come with great glory and the sign of his coming is that the nations will bow to the wood of the tree and the ark.’ The prophet Amos said, ‘When three pieces of wood are nailed together outside of Jerusalem and the sign of salvation is planted upon it, then the Children of Israel will return to hunger and famine and shame.’ He also said, ‘The Lord will come with his saints. There will not be light on that day, but rather there will be hail and ice. It is a single day known to the Lord. There will not be in it day or night and at evening there will be light.’ The prophet Obadiah said, ‘God will come down from the heaven of his holiness to the earth and will scatter the Children of Israel to the ends of the earth and make them a curse in the mouths of the nations. They will kill him but he will rise on the third day and raise the dead by his tree.’ The prophet Jothan said, ‘When you see the stone cry out with a voice then the end has drawn near and the hope of the hopeful has drawn near. When you see the nations with their loins girded then fear will come forever to Israel.’ The prophet Habakkuk said, ‘God will come from the south and the Holy One from Mount Pharan, which is the shaggy mountain, and they will know him among wild beasts.’ The prophet Amos said, ‘God will appear veiled and will renew Adam by rising upon a tree. He will cause the life of the world to appear and He will cause bread to be tasted in the desert and make a new creation. The dead will hear his voice and come to life. He is the Holy One who will appear from the tribe of Judah.’ The prophet Zachariah said, ‘God will save Adam by the tree and the feet of the ark when he rides upon it in the middle of the earth and there will be fear upon Zion.’ The prophet Malachi said, ‘The Lord will appear from Judah and mix with the house of David and manifest his glory to the ends of the earth. His food from the people of Israel will be will be vinegar and myrrh and they will stab him with a spear though he is their God.’ The prophet Daniel said, ‘After seven weeks the Christ will come and will be killed. Jerusalem has no savior but him.’ David said, ‘Many dogs surrounded me and a group of evil people enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. They counted all my bones. They divided my robes among them and drew cast lots over my clothes.’ He also said, ‘They all took council against me and plotted to take my soul.’ He also said, ‘They put myrrh in my food and gave me vinegar to me when I was thirsty.’ He also said, ‘They hated me unjustly.’ He also said, ‘They rewarded me with evil rather than good and cast me away, the beloved one, as one rejected and nailed my flesh with nails.’ The prophet Zachariah said, ‘The ones who pierced him will know their recompense from the Lord.’
The believer says, ‘and rose on the third day’. The fathers took this expression from the prophet David who said, ‘The Lord rose like one sleeping, like the mighty one drunk with wine.’ Know, my son, that Christ put his body to death by his will and brought it to life by the power of his majesty. He cast off of it the robe of passing away and dressed it in the robe of eternity and the majesty of his lordliness. He raised it to the seat of majesty and the pure angels bowed to him, just as the prophet Daniel said with the true eye of prophecy, ‘I saw in the cloud of heaven one resembling the Son of Man go down to the Ancient of Days and he gave him kingship and authority and all tongues worship him and his authority is forever.’ Christ said to his pure disciples after his resurrection from the dead, ‘I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth.’ He aided them after his resurrection with the greatness of his authority and said to them, ‘Raise the dead’ and they raised them and ‘cleanse the lepers’ and they cleansed them and ‘heal the sick’ and they healed them. They worked great signs by his power with which He aided them after his resurrection. He lived among them for forty days after his resurrection, teaching them his life-giving law. He granted them his heavenly help and they subjugated the demons beneath their feet. Their shadow raised the dead and their speech put the spirits of devils to death. Then He rose to the seat of majesty and sat on the right hand of the lordly power. ‘The right hand’ is an expression referring to the power which is beyond all majesty and all authority. The Creator, may He be exalted, is not in his eternal essence a compound body and He has no right or left. The right and left hands of power are not sensible and are not compound because God, may He be exalted, is exalted above the attributes of created beings and the actions of limited beings. His saying to us, ‘He sat at the right hand of the father in the heights’ is like the Book’s saying ‘he sat upon the throne’. If our saying this was not an expression then we would not be able to distinguish God’s right hand from his left. Christ rose up to the essence of majesty which is an unattainable place and cannot enter into the human intellect. Its essence is unattainable. Human bodies are created from dust and will return to their first element, as God says to Adam, ‘You are created from dust and to the dust you will return.’ For this reason Christ put to death that in which He appeared to the world and raised it and did not let the dust corrupt it, as the prophet David prophesied about him, ‘O Lord do no let your pure one see corruption.’ The bodies of Moses, Abraham, David and all the prophets decayed in the soil while Christ is in heaven above the highest of the heights of honor. The soil did not corrupt his body and the changes that God previously decreed to Adam when He said, ‘You are created from dust and to the dust you will return’ did not change him. There has been no one in the world from Adam until eternity who died by his own will and rose by the power of his own authority other than Christ. For this reason we realized that He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Only He lifted up his body as an offering to God his father for the sin of Adam and his seed. This pure and holy sacrifice is for the forgiveness of sins and their redemption from the prison of hell and for returning them to the paradise of blessedness. When He accepted the passions—which are his economy and divine wisdom—He manifested with them things that dazzle the minds of the philosophers: earthquakes and the disturbance of the inhabited world and the distress and sadness which befell the people upon his rising up on the cross, the covering of the world with darkness. The mountains shook and the sun hid its light. The rocks split and the graves opened. The dead rose from their graves and left their graves and cried out weeping in the streets of Jerusalem. When the Children of Israel did all this to their creator, if He had not been the Lord of the sun it would not have veiled its light at his passions and if He were not Lord of the temple then the temple’s veil would not have split on account of Him. At his resurrection from the tomb it shined upon the entire inhabited world with the light of his resurrection. The sun multiplied its light seven times. The light of his resurrection shone with it upon the believers. This is because the light shone to those sitting in darkness and the shadows of death. He released those imprisoned in the prison of hell and took them out of the darkness, just as Hannah, the mother of Samuel, said, ‘The Lord will go down to hell and release those who are bound from its mouth.’ We follow with some of what the holy prophets have said about his resurrection. The prophet David said, ‘”Now I rise” said the Lord, “and I work salvation openly.”’ He also said, ‘Rise up O Lord and destroy your enemies.’ He said, ‘The Lord will rise and scatter all his enemies.’ He also said, ‘The Lord rose in the assembly of the gods and in the midst of their assemblies He judges them.’ He also said, ‘The Lord rose with the decree and saves the humble of the earth.’ Isaiah said, ‘The Lord said, “Now I will rise and go up.”’ He also said, ‘If the Lord rises the earth will indicate it and they will cast away the idols of gold and silver which they adopted for worship.’ He also said, ‘The Lord of Sabaoth will arise and raise in righteousness his paths.’ He said, ‘Those who think evilly of the Most High will know. The body will give forth drops of water and blood and the voice of the servant will be heard from the wood of the tree. He will be buried and will rise from the dead and from the earth, ascending to heaven. He will be eternal and rise to the right hand of the Most High and will be above the cherubim where he was in the beginning. The holy ones in him will be proud.’ The prophet David said, ‘The Lord went up with praise. The Lord went up with the sound of the horn. Sing to our Lord! Sing, sing to our king!’ He also said, ‘The Lord went up with the sound of triumph.’ He also said, ‘I looked at the Lord in front of me at all times. For this reason my heart is joyous and my tongue gives praise.’ He also said, ‘The Lord went up to the heavens and thundered and He will judge the ends of the earth.’ The prophet Hosea said, ‘We will return to the Lord whom we smote and He will heal us. After two days, on the third day He will rise alive and He will give us life.’
The believer says, ‘He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father in the heights.’ The fathers took this expression from the prophet David who said, ‘He sits upon the wings of the winds.’ He ascended into heaven as the gospel of God said, ‘no one ascends to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is still in heaven.’ There has not been anyone who came down from heaven and ascended to heaven except Christ alone. All the prophets and the friends of God remain in the earth until the day of resurrection. When it is the day of resurrection Christ will come, the one who ascended to heaven in the greatness of his dread glory with all his holy angels. Then he will call to the dead with his voice and all the dead will arise and stand before his throne. He will judge them in truth. He will judge them because when Christ ascended to heaven He ascended to the unlimited space, to the seat of his ineffable majesty. ‘The right hand’ is an expression referring to the unlimited right hand of the majesty of the Creator because the right hand is lordly power without bodily sensation because if we raise or hands to heaven we gesture towards the height of his majesty and intend an unlimited essence that is not lacking in anything. The one who ascended to this majesty is the eternal Word of God and the Word of God does not cease to be with God and God is the Word. Its ascent is to its eternal essence and it sits upon its throne in the place which is unattainable. The light that does not dawn is begotten from the light of the eternal essence of God who dawned on us with his lordly light as Lord and Christ with the meaning which He desired. It happened in his lordly knowledge and He appeared by his lordly will which is incomprehensible to the human mind. That light appeared in the world and shone in the darkness. He guided the world to knowledge of his lordship and He ascended to his throne unto the completion of divine will. He sat at the majesty of the right hand of his father ineffably and without delimited dimensions. His sitting in his lofty place is in the form in which he appeared as Christ but it subsists in the divine light which vision does not apprehend. This is the form in which he will appear on the day of resurrection. On that day their faces will gaze and just as I cannot explain how He sat upon his throne likewise I cannot explain his place at the right hand of the majesty of the ineffable lordship other than that we indicate his majesty and the place of the indescribable divine power. No one defines the creator or delimits his ineffable essence. If we said that the king unsheathed a sword and killed his enemies with it, then the essence of the king is not defined and sight does not attain it. The king returned the sword to its scabbard in the majesty of his glory and his original glory shines forth. Who can comprehend the direction to which the king raised his sword when the king’s light is above all things? The pagans say that God raised Christ and cannot discern the direction to which God raised him. Our minds cannot reach knowledge of Christ’s ascension to his lofty place and his sitting at the right hand of the divine majesty except what we have read and we do not attain any knowledge of his appearing in the bodily world except what we have explained and what the prophets who have been sent said to us. If we went far into uncovering the depths of this mystery then no man’s intellect will attain it. The good disciple and evangelist John said, ‘The one who is from the beginning is himself the one whom we saw with our eyes and touched with our hands on account of the word of life.’ The prophets spoke openly about Christ’s ascent. The prophet Jeremiah said, ‘The Lord will go up from Sinai and will come with great glory.’ Also, the prophet David said, ‘The Lord went up with praise. The Lord went up with the sound of the trumpet. Sing, sing to our king, sing for the Lord has gone up to the seat of his glory.’ He also said, ‘Rise up, you eternal gates to let the King of Glory enter in. Who is the King of Glory? The mighty Lord, He is the King of Glory.’ The prophet Zachariah said, ‘From the Mount of Olives the feet of the Lord arise towards the east and from the Holy House He ascends to heaven.’ The prophet David said, ‘The Lord said to my lord, “Sit at my right hand so that I put your enemies under your feet.”’ The prophet Daniel said, ‘I saw one resembling the Son of Man go up to heaven and draw near to the Ancient of Days and He gave him eternal dominion.’
The believer says, ‘and He will also come in glory to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom has no passing away or end.’ The fathers took this expression from the Law of Moses because God said, ‘I will come and judge and recompense in truth.’ Know, my son, that no one at all has seen God, as the gospel of God says his light enlightens all light. If He appeared to creation with his divine light then the creatures would not have been able to see him and their vision would be rent by the light of his awesomeness, as He said to Moses when he asked to see Him, ‘No one will see me and live.’ The creator’s essence, may He be exalted, is unattainable and far above resting in space. The vision by which Moses and Abraham and Jacob saw him in bodily form as Christ is a kind of divine wisdom. That in which He appeared to them was not fantasia and was not imaginary. His appearance affirmed his existence and the necessity of his wisdom and if He relied on an unseen judge and perfect wisdom in his appearance on the day of resurrection in the bodily form of Christ in which they denied his lordship, He will chastise those who opposed him for their denial of his lordship in it. He will judge him for their works and for how they opposed his words and commandments. When they see him on the day of resurrection in that form of Christ, He will appear in it as Lord and Christ and Judge. He will judge them as the judge who fashions his judgment’s acceptance. They will realize that that form is the vision of God and the image of his eternity and the mirror of his eternal essence and they will realize that it is the vision of the judge who judges righteousness, just as the prophet David said, ‘He will judge the inhabited world with true judgment.’ He also said, ‘Out of Zion comes the law and the Word of God from Jerusalem and he will judge the peoples.’ He also said, ‘The Lord reigned and the earth gives praise. The islands rejoice, the fog and clouds around him. A just judgment is before his face.’ He said, ‘They said on the earth, “the Lord has reigned and established the inhabited world.”’ The prophet Isaiah said, ‘The Lord will arise and judge his people. He is the Lord who judges the elders of his people.’ Solomon said, ‘The Lord said, “vengeance is mine and I will repay.” The prophet Malachi said, ‘Lo the Lord comes ruling all and those who endure to the end, to the day of his coming. His appearing is like fire and he will sit in judgment, to purify mankind like silver.’ He also said, ‘Our God, God is the judge and blessed are those who rejoice with Him.’
The believer says, ‘We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds, whom we worship and glorify with the Father and the Son, who speaks in the prophets.’ The fathers took this expression from the Law which says, ‘the Spirit of God hovers upon the waters’ and ‘the Spirit of God created me.’ David said, ‘Your mighty Spirit established me.’ Know, my son, that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God by which He gives life to every living thing because it is the Spirit of corporeal and spiritual beings. When the fathers confirmed the unity of the Creator, they showed that He is above having human attributes, and attested to his unity in the attributes of his subsistence and established his existence with eternal essential attributes. He has two essential attributes by which his essence is described, may He be exalted. He exists in silences except for these two attributes which, if they did not exist, H e would not exist. They established that He is subsistent in himself, living. Since nothing is alive without the Spirit of God, it is an eternal essential attribute of God who is subsistent in himself. Then they said that his one living, rational hand is a living Lord and a rational God and when the one Creator is described by these two attributes by which they established his existence they said, ‘We believe in the Holy Spirit,’ meaning that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the true God who comes out of Him, who causes the prophets to prophesy. When Isaiah gazed upon Christ with the eye of prophecy he said, ‘the Spirit of the Lord is upon me for the sake of the one who anointed me and sent me to bring good tidings to the poor and to heal the broken-hearted and to warn those imprisoned in annihilation and those blinded in vision and I will bring good tidings in the year received by the Lord.’ The prophet Joel said, ‘In those days I will pour out my Spirit upon all those who have bodies and your sons and will prophesy and your old men will dream dreams and your youths will see visions.’ The prophet David said, ‘You established me by your mighty Spirit.’ He also said, ‘Send your Spirit and they are created and renew the face of the earth.’ The prophet Ezekiel said, ‘The Spirit of God has reached me and the Spirit of God has removed me.’
The believer says, ‘we confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.’ The fathers took this expression from the prophet Isaiah who said, ‘They were given to drink with joy from the fountain of salvation.’ Know, my son, that the water of holy baptism is the water of life upon which the Holy Spirit blows just as God said in the Law, ‘the Sprit of the Lord blows upon the waters.’ It blows upon the baptized and gives light to their darkness and enlightens their essences. The universal soul rests upon the particular soul and the Holy Sprit rests upon everyone who is baptized and by this they merit entrance into God’s heaven and rise from the world of darkness to the world of light. Those who are not baptized do not rise to heaven and do not enter into the kingdom of God and God does not count them among his righteous or write their name in the Book of Life, as Christ said by his truthful mouth, ‘anyone who is not born of water and the Spirit will not enter the kingdom of God and he will not count him with his righteous or write his name with the righteous.’ The pure gospel said, ‘one born from flesh is flesh and one born of the Spirit is spirit.’ Christ has given us two births: a birth from the flesh from mothers and fathers and a birth from the Spirit. The birth from the flesh decays and changes while the birth from the Spirit does not decay and does not change because it is the birth of life, the birth from God to perfect the human form by this second birth because the Spirit of perfection is in baptism and brings the salvation of the soul from the darkness of the body. The Spirit of God rests in the temple of God and if the Spirit of God rests in it, then it opens its eyes so that it might witness the truth. Just as the soul of the body gives it the life of acting in the corporeal world, so too the Spirit of God gives those baptized the eternal life of action in the eternal heavenly world because the birth of the flesh is susceptible to corruption and change, just as God said to Moses, ‘my Spirit will not rest upon them because they are flesh.’ The apostle Paul said, ‘flesh and blood will not enter into the kingdom of God’ because the unbaptized soul must be in the world of darkness. Baptism washes the soul from the effects of sin and enlightens the essence of the soul so that it may be worthy to rise to eternal bliss, as David said, ‘sprinkle me with hyssop and I will be cleansed. Wash me with it and I will be white like snow.’ The prophet Ezekiel said, ‘I will take you out from the worldly and put you into your land. I will sprinkle you with pure water which will purify you from your sins and your transgressions. I will take out of you the heart of stone and give you a merciful heart.’
The believer says, ‘We hope for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come, amen.’ The fathers took this expression from the prophet Isaiah who said, ‘The dead will rise from the graves.’ Know, my son, that God created two abodes: the abode of this world and the abode of the world to come. This world is the abode of change and decay but the world to come is the abode of eternity and lastingness. He created the body coarse, temporary and susceptible to destruction through death. He compounded within it a rational intelligent soul, abstract and indestructible. It uses the body in obedience to its Creator and intends its elevation within its own spiritual world after its purification from the filth of corporeal nature so that it might rise with it in the resurrection of life because the rational soul is bounded within the body. Death is the perfection of the human form- and the resurrection its second existence unto eternity- because when the wise builder destroys a house he builds one better than it and when the planter wants plants to grow, he sows it in the earth and rejoices at its death in the earth so that pure fruit might come out. God created the element of earth and created his creation from that element and decreed that it will return to its element. The elements are in his mastery and they obey his command to return what they absorbed for He alone is unique in creating out of nothing by generosity. The rational soul of man which He compounded within the body will only receive the gift of God in the beatitude of paradise through its good works in the abode of this world. He caused its temple which was taken from the elements to live with the soul but it is the house of its darkness and quick to decay. Just as it was in the darkness of the belly, turning about in the enclosure of vileness, so the soul turns about in the body, in the darkness of the elements in which it grew. However, it does not know what will become of it in its turning about in the corporeal world. So too, the when the soul leaves the house of its darkness, it leaves to a spacious world of light and looks upon the spiritual world and the heavenly nations with their lofty ranks and spiritual levels. At that hour, it will see that which it deserved on account of its actions. If it was good in the obedience of its Creator, then it will go among the enlightened spiritual ones. He will raise it on the day of resurrection and the light of its works will shine upon it if they were righteous. Likewise, the gospel of God says, ‘the righteous will shine in the kingdom of their Father’ because the resurrection of the dead is eternal life for the happiness of those in whose righteousness He is pleased while the one who is proud of his ignorance sin will be tormented. The scriptures of God and the scriptures of his prophets bear witness to the resurrection of the dead and the recompense of each soul for what it did, just as the priest Ezra said, ‘God will resurrect those in the grave all at once after death unto the judgment. He will announce that truth and justice will know the people’s works and He will chastise them for their evil works.’ The prophet David said, ‘O Lord of Mercy who recompenses each one according to his works.’ Solomon said, ‘God will recompense everything you do in the abode of the world to come, what you have done secretly and what you have done openly, if they were good and if they were evil.’ Isaiah said, ‘The day of the Lord is near. He comes without forgiveness because He comes in anger and wrath and will destroy the sinners. The stars of the sky will not give their light and the sun will go dark at its rising.’ Ezekiel said, ‘God said to me, “O son of man, will you say how the dead will arise? Come to the place of worn-out bones and prophesy upon them so that you might see their resurrection.” Thus spoke the Lord of Lords that each muscle may join to its sinew. I did as the Lord said to me and I saw at those bones move and come together with an earthquake of motion. The Lord said, “Prophesy, so that they put on flesh and veins and nerves” and I saw them as complete bodies. Then the Lord said to me, “O son of man, prophesy that the living spirit might enter into them” so I did as He said and I saw them rise up and stand on their feet alive. He said, “O son of man, these bones are from the Children of Israel and lo I open their graves and raise them up to judgment.” Thus said the Lord of Lords.’

© Roger Pearse, 2009. Released into the public domain.

Translated from Ms. Beirut, St. Joseph University, Oriental Library, 569a, ff. 183-231 (1425 AD) and Ms. Beirut 569b ff. 124-158 (1897 AD). See also http://www.dacb.org/stories/egypt/abu_yu'annis.html for more information.