Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
HOW THE THINGS FOUND IN SCRIPTURE ARE MADE TO FIT THEIR SYSTEM Having said such things about creation, each one of them daily invents, as best he can, something new to bring forward beyond this. For Moses, they say, beginning the work concerning creation, immediately at the outset shows forth the Mother of all, saying: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth." By naming these four things -- God, the beginning, heaven, and earth -- he depicted, as they themselves say, their own Quaternion. And, manifesting its invisible and hidden character, he says: "And the earth was invisible and without form." And they hold that he thus spoke of the second Quaternion, the offspring of the first, by naming the abyss and darkness, in which are also the waters, and the spirit that was borne over the waters. After this, calling to mind the decad, he speaks of light, and day, and night, and the firmament, and evening, and what is called morning, and the dry land, and the sea, and further, vegetation, and, in the tenth place, the tree -- thus, through these ten names, they say, he manifests the ten Aeons. For he mentions the sun, moon, and stars, seasons and years, sea-monsters, and further fish, creeping things, birds, four-footed beasts, and wild animals too, and, twelfth and above all of these, man. In this way, they teach, the triacontad was uttered by the Spirit speaking through Moses. They further teach that man, formed according to the image of the power above, has in himself that power which derives from the one source. This power, they say, is established as a Monad and resides in the brain, and flows out from there into a tetrad of senses -- for only four senses are counted -- whose organs are situated in the head, corresponding to the four rivers of Paradise. Touch, too, they say, has its seat in that same place in the brain, from which flow the four powers, after the image of the Tetrad above, which are called: sight, the first; hearing, the second; smell, the third; and taste, the fourth. And they say the ogdoad is signified through man in this way: he has two ears, and likewise two eyes, and further two organs of smell, and a double taste, of bitter and of sweet. They teach that man as a whole bears the entire image of the triacontad in this way: in his hands he carries the decad through his fingers, and in his whole body, when it is divided into members, the duodecad. And the rest of the body, as we have already noted, they divide accordingly. The ogdoad, being ineffable and invisible, is understood to be hidden away in the inward parts.
Again, they say that the sun, the great light, was made on the fourth day, on account of the number of the Quaternion. And of the tabernacle too, which was constructed by Moses, they say that its courts of fine linen, blue, purple, and scarlet -- and indeed whatever else of this kind is found set down in the Scriptures wherever the number four can be discerned -- were made on account of their Quaternion. And again the ogdoad, they say, is shown in this way: man came into being on the eighth day. At times, though, they would rather say he was made on the sixth day, at other times the eighth -- unless what they mean is that the earthly man took shape on the sixth day, while the fleshly man came on the eighth; for here they draw a distinction: the man fashioned "in the image and after the likeness of God," male and female, they call the spiritual man, whereas the other is the one molded from the earth.
And they say that the arrangement of the ark in the flood, in which eight persons were saved, most plainly shows forth the ogdoad. And they say David signifies this same thing, since he was the eighth born among his brothers. Further, they say that circumcision, which takes place on the eighth day, manifests the circumcision of the ogdoad above. And, in general, they say that whatever is found in the Scriptures that can be drawn out to the number eight fulfills the mystery of the ogdoad. And they say the decad is signified by the ten nations which God promised to give Abraham for a possession; and that the arrangement concerning Sarah -- how, after ten years, she gave him her handmaid Hagar to have a son by her -- signifies the same thing. And also Abraham's servant, sent to Rebecca, who at the well gave her ten golden bracelets, and her brothers who kept her back for ten days; and further Jeroboam, who received ten scepters; and the tabernacle's ten courts, and its pillars of ten cubits, and the ten sons of Jacob sent the first time into Egypt to buy grain, and the ten apostles before whom the Lord appeared after rising, at the moment Thomas was absent -- all these, they claim, foreshadowed the unseen decad. As for the duodecad, to which they say all this corresponds, it is, in their view, set forth pointedly and quite plainly everywhere: take, for example, the twelve sons of Jacob, source in turn of the twelve tribes; and the varicolored breastplate, having twelve stones, and twelve bells; and the twelve stones set up by Moses under the mountain, and likewise those set up by Joshua in the river, and the others set up on the far side, carried by those who bore the ark of the covenant; and the twelve stones set up by Elijah for the burnt offering of the calf; and the number of the apostles too, and absolutely everything that keeps to the number twelve -- all these, they hold, signify their duodecad. And the unity of all these, which is called the triacontad, they show through the ark, whose height under Noah was thirty cubits; and through Samuel, and Saul, who hid in the field for thirty days, and through those who entered the cave with him; and because the holy tabernacle measured thirty cubits in length. And whatever else is found equal in number to these, they likewise put forward through such assertions to demonstrate their triacontad.