BOOK III

Summary

That the divine scripture is firm, sure and trustworthy, both in the Old and the New Testament, and in accordance with itself in the details which it gives, while it also shows the utility of the figures representing the whole world.

When men at first after the Deluge were high up in the air, building the tower in their warfare with God, they suspected from their constantly observing the heavenly bodies, but erroneously, that the heaven was spherical; for since the city where they were building the tower belonged to the Babylonians, an invention such as this must have originated with the Chaldaeans; whence also the descendants of Abraham who were Chaldaeans elaborated a barbaric sphere, and when they went down to Egypt communicated this notion to the Egyptians. The Egyptians in turn having grasped it as a basis for much active investigation developed it still further, until the Greek philosophers who visited Egypt—Pythagoras, Plato and Eudoxus the Cnidian—became acquainted with it, and basing their study of it on what they had learned from preceding enquirers elaborated it still further.

Note.

After the Deluge, when men had multiplied in the interior parts of the East, where, as has been recorded, the Ark rested, they removed a little way from their first seats and found a plain in the land of Sennaar (Shinar).