Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
For this reason the Law is fittingly said to have been given through Moses, being a standard of things just and unjust. And this we might properly call the ordinance handed down by God through Moses. It has, at any rate, its guidance directed toward the divine. Paul too says: the Law was set in place because of transgressions, until the offspring for whom the promise had been made should arrive. Then, as if further explaining his meaning, he adds: before faith came, we were held in custody under the Law, locked up together, plainly in dread on account of sins, awaiting the faith destined to be disclosed. And so the Law turned into our guide toward Christ, so that we could be made righteous through faith. Now the man skilled in legislation is he who assigns to each part of the soul, and to the works of these parts, what is fitting to it; and Moses, to put it concisely, was a law ensouled, governed by the good Word.
He at any rate administered a good commonwealth; and this is a fine nourishment for men, in accordance with fellowship. Straightway he took up the judicial art, being a science that corrects wrongdoings for the sake of justice. Allied with it is the punitive art, being a kind of science of the due measure in punishments. And just punishment is a correction of the soul. Now the whole discipline that belongs, so to speak, to Moses is, on the one hand, educative of such men as are capable of becoming fine and good, and, on the other, a hunting-out of those already like this, which would be the generalship of a kind; while the art that makes proper use, by reason, of those thus hunted out would be wisdom befitting a legislator; for to acquire and to use are the special mark of this art, being most kingly. At any rate the philosophers proclaim the wise man alone to be king, legislator, general, just, holy, beloved of God. And if we should find these qualities in Moses, as is shown from the very Scriptures themselves, we would declare, with full conviction, that Moses was in truth wise.
Just as, then, we say that the shepherd's art is to care for the sheep — for thus the good shepherd lays down his soul for the sheep — so too we shall say that the legislative art is to establish men's virtue, rekindling, as far as possible, the good that is proper to man, being watchful over and solicitous for the flock of men that is dear to him. And if the flock allegorically spoken of by the Lord is nothing other than a certain herd of men, the same one will be both shepherd and good legislator of that one herd of his obedient sheep, the one guardian, the one who seeks out and finds what was lost by law and by reason, if indeed the Law is spiritual and leads to happiness; for he who has come to be by the Holy Spirit is spiritual. This is he who is in truth the legislator, who not only promises what is good and noble but also has the knowledge of it. His also is the Law, the saving command belonging to the one who possesses the knowledge — or rather, the Law is the command of knowledge, for the Word of God is power and wisdom. He himself, moreover, is the interpreter of the laws, he through whom the Law was given, the first interpreter of the divine commands, the only-begotten Son who expounds the bosom of the Father.
Further, those who are persuaded by the Law, in that they have some knowledge of it, are able neither to disbelieve nor to be ignorant of the truth; whereas those who disbelieve, being least of all disposed to be found among its works, if any are so, these too are confessedly ignorant of the truth. So where does the distrust of the Greeks come from? Is it not, in some way, a refusal to be won over by the reality showing that the Law came from God by way of Moses, seeing that they themselves, from what is honored among them, do honor to Moses? For they relate that Minos received his laws from Zeus every ninth year, going up to the cave of Zeus; and that Lycurgus, going continually to Delphi to Apollo, was instructed in matters of legislation, as Plato and Aristotle and Ephorus write; and Chamaeleon of Heraclea, in his work On Drunkenness, and Aristotle in his Constitution of the Locrians, record that Zaleucus the Locrian received his laws from Athena. But those who, as far as lies in their power, exalt the credibility of legislation among the Greeks toward the divine, in imitation of the image of the prophecy given through Moses, are ungrateful, not confessing outright the truth and the archetype of the things related in their own histories.
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