3.1 Letter to Plegwin
APPENDIX 3: BEDE'S LETTERS ON COMPUTUS
APPENDIX 3.1: LETTER TO PLEGWIN
Translator's note: The circumstances surrounding Bede's letter to Plegwin have been sketched in the Introduction, section 2. The main themes ^ chronology and eschatology ^ are dealt with in the commentary to the Preface, and to ch. 66. Nothing is known of Plegwin except what can be inferred from Bede's Letter, namely that he was a cleric in the entourage of Wilfred.
LETTER TO PLEGWIN
/617/ To his dearest brother, worthy of honour in the bowels of Christ,1 Plegwin, Bede sends greeting in the Lord.
1. Two days ago, beloved brother, a messenger from your Sanctity came to me, bearing gladsome words of peaceful salutation from you. But soon thereafter he threw these into disorder by adding something very unfortunate, namely that you had heard it babbled out by lewd rustics in their cups that I was a heretic. I confess I was aghast; blanching, I asked of what heresy I was accused. He replied that it was because I had denied that our Lord and Saviour had come in the £esh in the Sixth Age of the world. So I began to enquire how this had been expressed ^ whether because the Lord had not come in the £esh when it was already the Sixth Age, or because it was not yet the Sixth Age when the Lord came, or that the Seventh Age had indeed already come, although patently the Sixth Age could not have begun save with His Incarnation.
I discovered that whether accused of one thing or the other, I shared on both points the faith and consensus of the Church.
2. For if I had denied that Christ had come, how could I be a priest in Christ's Church? Or how could it follow that I, believing the evangelical and apostolic words, could fail to believe that He was incarnated in the 1 Philippians 1.8.
THE RECKONING OF TIME
Sixth Age, when the evangelist Matthew in his book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ discerns the four ¢nal Ages by very particular distinctions of time through fourteen generations?2 The Apostle Peter, indeed, distinguishes the ¢rst two [Ages]3 by such an arrangement, asserting that the Earth together with the heavens were destroyed by the Flood and replaced by others,4 so that we could call these not so much two Ages of the world as two worlds, were not the Valentinian heresy to be feared.5
3. So when I perceived that I was innocent of denying this very thing, I began very carefully to consider how this calumny could have been launched against me. At length I called to mind that I once showed to one of your number /618/ my short work On Times which I wrote ¢ve years ago.6 In this work, the sequence of the years was given according to the Hebrew Truth;7 this is far shorter than the Septuagint, so that up to the Advent of the Saviour in the £esh, ¢ve thousand years were not completed. And I believe that I advised, in consideration of fraternal charity and truth itself, that credence be given to Holy Scripture as it is translated by our Christian interpreter, rather than to Jewish translators, or the ignorance of chronographers, pointing out how Eusebius in his designation of times followed neither Hebrew Truth nor the version of the Seventy in every [instance]. I will undertake to do this very thing here in writing. To be sure, he, whoever he was to whom I intimated these things, twisted the o⁄ce of brotherly love into the loathing of envy, and the high Judge transformed the light of patent truth into the darkness of blind error, as he deserved.
4. But lest you think, beloved, that now that my heresy has been discovered, I prefer to make my escape under the protection of denial rather
2 Matthew 1.1^18.
3 I.e. the ¢rst two Ages of the world, from Adam to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham. Matthew's genealogy of Christ began with Abraham.
4 II Peter 3.5^12.
5 Both Prosper 634 (425) and Ru¢nus' trans. of Eusebius, HE 4.14, mention the Valentinian heresy, but do not provide details about its content. Bede may have acquired this information from Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, Books 1^2, ed. Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, Sources chre¤ tiennes 263^266 (Paris: Cerf,1979), or from Tertullian's Adversus Valentinianos, ed. Jean-Claude Fredaille, Sources chre¤ tiennes 280^281 (Paris: Cerf,
1980).
6 In 703; therefore the Letter to Plegwin was composed about 708.
7 I.e. Jerome's Vulgate.
APPENDIX THREE
than receive the grace of truth, listen to what I wrote concerning the Ages in that little book I mentioned. For after I touched upon moments and hours, day and night, weeks and months, the year and what pertains to the year, the nineteen-year cycle and its distinctive points (as far as I believed it su⁄ced for me and my [readers]), it happened that something was also brie£y set down concerning the Ages. I began the sixteenth chapter as follows: I said, Thetimes ofthe world are divided into Six Ages.
The First Age from Adam to Noah contained ten generations and 1,656 years; this all perished in the Flood, just as infancy should be drowned in forgetfulness. The Second, from Noah to Abraham, likewise contains ten generations, and 292years. In it language ^ that is, the Hebrewlanguage ^ was discovered, for in childhood a person learns to speak after infancy, which derives its name from the fact that he cannot 'fari', that is, speak.
The Third, from Abraham to David, contains 14 generations and 942 years, and because man starts to be capable of begetting at adolescence,
Matthew takes up the beginning of the generations [of Christ] from Abraham, who was established as the father of nations. /619/ The Fourth extends from David to the Babylonian exile in 14 generations likewise, according to Matthew, and 473 years, from which the time of kings began, forthedignityofayoungmanisaptforruling.ThentheFifthAgestretches up to the coming of our Saviour in the £esh likewise in 14 generations and 589 years, in which, as if weary from a burdensome old age, the Hebrew folk were crushed by many misfortunes. The Sixth Age, in which we are now, will end, not in a ¢xed sequence of generations and times, but, like extreme old age itself, with the death ofthe whole world.8
5. Considering these matters in a prefatory note on the Ages in the aforementioned short work, I immediately added thereto another chapter in which the course and order of the whole World-Age was to be laid open, beginning as follows: Therefore the First Age contains, according to the Hebrews, 1,656 years, and according to the Seventy Translators 2,242.
Adam at the age of 130 begat Seth, who was born in place of Abel. Seth at the age of 105 begat Enos, and so on, down to the Flood.9 Then I added:
The Second Age contains 292 years according to the Hebrews, and 8 On Times 16 (600^601). The main source for the division of the Ages here is
Isidore, Etym. 5.38^39. On the sources for the parallel between the six ages of man and the six World-Ages, see Commentary on ch. 66.
9 Ibid. 17 (601^602).
THE RECKONING OF TIME
according to the Seventy Translators 942, or with Cainan added in, 1072.
In the Second year after the Flood Shem begat Arfaxat, from whom the Chaldeans [are descended]. Arfaxat at the age of 35 begat Sela.10 Here the Seventy Translators, whom Luke follows, insert Cainan, who had begotten Sela when he was 30 years old. Again, concerning the Third
Age, I say, The Third Age contains 942 years.11 Again, when it came to the Fourth [Age], I say, The Fourth Age contains 473 years according to the Hebrews, and the Seventy Translators add on 12.12 The Fifth Age, I say, contains 589 years.13 When therefore in the course of the work I arrived at the Nativity of our Lord and Saviour, I wrote thus: Octavianus reigned 56 years. In his 42nd year, our Lord was born, 3,952 years after Adam, and according to others 5,199.14
6. These are the things which, according to the faith of Holy Scripture, I was solicitous to summarize for myself, and for those of my circle who asked me, in a concise and simple manner, as I believe and think, o¡ering not the slightest contradiction to such an erudite and praiseworthy chronographer,15 /620/ at least in those things in which he himself did not contradict Holy Scripture. Dreading the rod of Origen's Hexapla, he removed the generation of Cainan. Also he called into doubt [¢dem derogauit] both the Gospel of Luke and the Seventy Translators, and erased 130 years from their translation.16 He corrected the generations according to the Hebrew books, but he did not take care likewise to emend the number of years according to [their reckoning], and so he removed 1,032 years in the sum total of his computation of these years.
Thus observing neither road, he proceeded by [the way] he wished.
7. In the case of the First and Second Age, there is a discrepancy between the codices transmitted to us (that is, from the Hebrew source) and those of the Greeks. As Jerome the translator of sacred history relates in his Hebrew Questions, Before the birth of the aforementioned son, we
¢nd that the age of his father is 100 years less in the Hebrew version; but 10 Ibid. 18 (602.1^3).
11 Ibid. 19 (603.1).
12 Ibid. 20 (604.1^2).
13 Ibid. 22 (607.1^3).
14 Ibid. 22 (607.2^5).
15 I.e. Eusebius.
16 Cf. The Reckoning of Time, ch. 66, s.a. 1693.
APPENDIX THREE
after [the son] is born, we ¢nd that helives100 years less inthe Greek than in the Hebrew [version], and thus the grand total [of years] agrees in both.17 From this corruption of the Greek manuscripts arises that notorious question about Methuselah, who is reckoned to have lived fourteen years after the Flood, although it is certain, according to the Hebrew manuscripts, that he died in the same year as the Flood.18
8. Should anysaythatthe Hebrew books were falsi¢ed lateron bythe Jews and that they, when they begrudge authority to us,19 deprive themselves of the truth, let them listen to Origen, who in the seventh book of his commentary on Isaiah, solves this trivial problem, [saying] that our
Lord and the Apostles, who accuse the scribes and Pharisees of other crimes would never have refused to speak about this crime, which is a very grave one.20 Let him listen to Josephus the historian of the Jews who in the ¢rst book a'rwaio¤ tZtoB [of the Antiquities] against the grammarian
Apion21 openly and lucidly demonstrates that the lesser number of years is correct, and that Holy Scripture was in no way /621/ falsi¢ed by the Jews. He says, Nor are there among us innumerable books which disagree with one another, but there are 22 books which contain the entire sequence of time and which are justly believed to be divinely inspired, of which ¢ve are by Moses containing the laws of life and tracing the lineage of human succession down to the death of Moses himself, encompassing slightly less than 3,000 years.22 And a little later: The great respect with which we treat our Scriptures is evident from this fact. For although so many ages have intervened, no one has ever dared to add or delete or changeanything.But forallthepeopleofournation,thisfaithisimplanted and, as it were, inborn: to believe these [Scriptures] to have been inspired by God, and to remain steadfastly attached to them, and should the occasion demand, willingly to die for them.23
17 This section of the quotation is not from Jerome, but is slightly adapted from Augustine, DCD 15.10 (466.6^10). The father is Adam, the son is Seth.
18 Ibid. 15.11; cf. Jerome, Hebraicae quaestiones in Geneseos 5.25^27 (8.18^9.17).
19 ''. . . when they begrudge authority to us'': cf. Augustine, DCD 15.11 (468.33^
35).
20 Jerome, In Isaiam 3.6.9.10, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 73 (1963):92.49^54.
21 Against Apion is a separate treatise, and not the ¢rst book of the Antiquities.
22 Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.38^39 (11.7^13).
23 Ibid. 1.42 (11.20^12.4).
THE RECKONING OF TIME
9. Let him listen to the blessed Jerome who says that the Greek, and not the Hebrew manuscripts are false. For when he was compelled to translate the Book of Chronicles, he for this very reason wrote the following preface to the book: If the version of the Seventy Translators had remained pure and as it had been translated by them into Greek, O Chromatus, most holy and learned of bishops, it would not have been necessary for you to impel me to translate the Hebrew volumes into Latin for you.
For it was just that [the translation] which once had captured the ears of men and strengthened the faith of the new-born Church should also be con¢rmed by our silence.24 But now that many proofs have appeared from various corners of the world that the genuine and ancient translation is corrupted and violated, you consider our choice [to be] either to judge which of the many [versions] is true, or to hammer out a new work in place of the old work . . .25 and so on, in the same vein.
10.The sainted Bishop Augustine agrees with this viewpoint. Since he did not wish to ascribe the cause of this discrepancy either to the malice of the Jews or to the erroror jealously oftheSeventy Translators, whowereJews themselves, lest he indiscriminately accuse of falsehood those men whom the spirit of God had ¢lled in their seventy cells, he therefore says: So heis more worthy of credence /622/who said that when these [Scriptures] ¢rst began to be transcribed from the library of Ptolemy, then some [error] of this sort could have happened in one codex, and from that original transcription could have been disseminated at large, where a scribal error could have happened. This could plausibly be the case in the question of [thelength of] Methuselah's life. And later on: Foreven nowadays,whenever numbers contribute nothing to ease of comprehension, or useful knowledge, they are carelessly written down and carelessly corrected.
For who would consider it worth learning how many thousand men were in each of the tribes of Israel, when it is not thought to be of any bene¢t.
And a little later on: But however this is interpreted, I should certainly in no way doubt that when some divergence is found in both codices [i.e.
Septuagint and Hebrew], and when it is impossible for both to be true to the historical facts, greater faith should be placed in [the version] in the 24 The Old Testament of the Vetus latina, the primitive Latin version of the Scriptures, was translated from the Septuagint.
25 Jerome, In libros Paralipomenon praefatio, PL 28.1325B^1326B.
APPENDIX THREE
language from which the translation was made into another language by interpreters.26
11. Read Book 15 of The City of God: We ought not to listen to those who think that in [Old Testament] times, years were computed in a di¡erent way, that is, who believe that they were so short that one of our years equals ten of theirs, or in other words, that they comprised 36 days. They use the argument that it is found in many historians that the Acarnians had a year of six months, the Arcadians of three, and the Egyptians of four months, and that these people sometimes closed their year with the end of the lunation.27 Scripture itself directly refutes any such meaning.
Where the Hebrew [version] reads: And Adam lived 130 years and begot Seth, and the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were 800 years and he begat sons and daughters; and all the days that Adam lived were
930 years, and he died,28 the Seventy say: And Adam lived 230 years and begot Seth, and the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were 700 years; and all his days were 930 years, and so on in the same vein. What then? Is it possible that they posited shorter years in the ¢rst part of each verse, longer ones in the middle, and equal ones at the end? So to [conclude] is both to fall into error and to be suspected of stupidity.
12. Some people wonder why the great and famous translator of Holy Scripture Jerome ^ of whom it is justly said, Jerome, translator most learned in diverse languages, Bethlehem /623/ extols you, the whole world resounds [with] your [praise]29 ^ why, I say, although he translated the book of the Chronicles [of Eusebius], he did not wish to pass on to the Latins the truth he had learned from the Hebrews? Whoever is disturbed by this should know that, just as he himself stated in the preface to the same book on times [i.e. the Chronicle of Eusebius], he wished either to be a translator or the creator of a new work.30 And perhaps [it was] because he did not wish, where there was no pressing
26 Augustine, DCD 15.13 (471.17^22, 37^42).
27 Ibid. 15.12 (468.1^3, 469.37^39, 50). Cf. The Reckoning of Time, ch. 37.
28 Genesis 5.3^5.
29 Isidore, Versus in bibliotheca 7.1^2, ed. C.H. Beeson, Isidorstudien (Munich:
Beck, 1913):160.
30 Bede was unaware of the fact that Jerome translated Eusebius' Chronicle before undertaking the Vulgate. The Chronicle was translated in 380, the Vulgate begun in 383: cf. J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome (London: Duckworth, 1975):32, 86.
THE RECKONING OF TIME
necessity, to provoke the fury of the insane against himself on his own initiative, but to leave this matter to posterity, as he says to Eustochium the virgin in a certain place: To wish to buy shuttles and heddles for oneself, but to leave to others the trouble of weaving.31 Indeed, on account of such a necessary translation of Holy Scripture, he was pelted with stones by both the Latins and the Hebrews, almost at the same time ^ by the Hebrews, because he had robbed them of the opportunity to mock and revile the Christians on account of their fallacious books, but by the Latins because he had introduced new and unfamiliar, albeit better, things in place of old and familiar ones.
13. St Augustine, in letters transmitted across so great a space of land and sea with friendly brotherly love, took care to insert the following: But I would not wish you to labour at turning the canonical books into the Latin language, save in that manner in which you translated Job, so that what is divergent between your translation and the Septuagint (which is a very weighty authority) might be manifest through editorial marks. I would be extremely surprised if anything were to be found in the Hebrew exemplars which escaped such expert translators from that tongue. But I exempt the Seventy: when it comes to their decisions, and their greater agreement of mind, just as if they had been one man, I dare not pass categorical judgement on any score, save that I think that there can be no doubt that they are the pre-eminent authority in this domain. I am more disturbed by those later translators who, although they stuck more closely to the pattern of Hebrew words and locutions (as it is said), not only did not agree amongst themselves, but also left many things which remained long after to be unearthed and discovered. For if these matters are obscure, you likewise could be mistaken concerning them; if they are evident, it is not to be believed that those men would have been able to make a mistake in this regard.32
14. On the subject of times and years, /624/ I warn your simplicity, dearest brother, lest seduced by vulgar opinion you should expect that this present world will endure 6,000 years, as it were. According to a book of I know not what heretic which I remember seeing as a lad, written in old-fashioned script, though the day and hour of Judgement
31 The source of this quotation has not been traced.
32 Augustine, Ep. 66.2 (to Jerome) CSEL 54.497^498.
APPENDIX THREE
cannot be known, the year can.33 In fact you think that man can foresee this, because the Lord said, But of that day and hour knoweth no man,34 and yet said nothing about the year. And again when he said, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons,35 he did not add the years thereto. And again this heresiarch chronographer exerted himself to add that 5,500 had passed before the Incarnation, and from thence to the Day of Judgement only 500 remained, of which 300 and some had passed at the time when he uttered his ravings.36 Accumulating the sum of this number partly from Genesis, partly from the Book of Judges, but attributing forty years each to Samuel and Saul,37 he used the argument that in the Lord's vineyard, the workers hired last will work one hour,38 and that John had said, Little children, it is the ¢nal hour,39 as if 500 years out of 6,000 ought to be as one hour out of a day, when evening falls after twelve hours of daylight. So when 12 times 500 years had passed, that is 6,000 years, the eternal retribution of the just Judge would come to pass.
15. On this matter I confess I am quite grieved, and often irritated to the limit of what is permissible, or even beyond, when every day I am asked by rustics how many years are left in the ¢nal millenium of the world, or learn from them that they know that the ¢nal millenium is in progress, when our Lord in the Gospel did not testify that the time of His advent was near at hand or far o¡, but commanded us to keep watch with our loins girded and our lamps lit,40 and to wait for Him until He should come. For I notice that when in conversation with the brothers the occasion arises for us to dispute concerning the Ages of the world, certain of 33 Jones (BOT 135, n. 2) identi¢es this text with the Cologne Prologue, ed. Krusch,
Studien I, 227 sq. Cf. Augustine, Ep. 199.6 (256 sq.). Though this idea was not unknown amongst the Fathers, Bede's identi¢cation of the heretic as a chronographer suggests that the book was computistical, not exegetical.
34 Matthew 24.36, Mark 13.32.
35 Acts 1.7.
36 Cologne Prologue 5 (231^232). This is the chronology of Hippolytus and Julius
Africanus: Landes 138.
37 The lengths of Samuel's tenure as judge and of Saul's reign are not given in Scripture. In The Reckoning of Time, ch. 66, s.a. 2870 and 2890 Bede supplies them from Josephus: 12 years for Samuel and 20 for Saul.
38 Cf. Matthew 20.1^16.
39 I John 2.18.
40 Cf. Luke 12.35^37.
THE RECKONING OF TIME
the less learned ones allege that we are speaking of 6,000 years, and there are those who think that this world will end at 7,000 years because it unfolded in seven days. /625/ The said doctor Augustine in his explanation of Psalm 6 often openly accused these people of temerity, saying amongst other things: For if this day is to come after 7,000 years, everybody can add these to the computed years of his Advent. How will it be that the Son does not know [the time]? It means, of course, that men cannot know this through the Son, not that He does not know it in himself, according to the saying, ''The Lord your God proveth you, to know'',41and''Arise,OLord'',42 that is,makeusarise.Thereforealthough it is said that the Son does not know the day, [it is] not that He does not know, but that He does not cause them to know, that is, He does not show this to them. What does this strange presumption seek, which hopes [to ¢nd] the most certain day of the Lord by counting 7,000 years?43
16. I send these letters, signs of charitable friendship, dearest brother, as pledges of my innocence, lest you judge me deeply lacking in secular or sacred learning. Rather, [we shall] state openly that our Lord and Saviour took mortal £esh for our sake in the Sixth Age of the world, according to the Scriptures or acknowledging the faithful and catholic voice of the Fathers. But the course of the world is not de¢ned for us in any ¢xed number of years, and is known only to the Judge himself. And if anyone were to say to me, ''Lo, Christ is here'', or ''Lo, He is there'',44 that is, [that Christ is] to come to Judgement at such and such a time, I would not listen to or follow him at all. For I know that as the lightning, that lightneth under heaven shineth on those things which are under heaven; so shall the Son of Man be in his day.45 For you know by what opinion of the multitude it will come in six or seven thousand years, and by what authority I build the assertion of my computation: namely by the Hebrew Truth, recorded by Origen, published by Jerome, praised by Augustine, con¢rmed by Josephus. I have found none more learned in such matters than these. Nor is it to be wondered at that that praiseworthy man Eusebius, although he was able, as they say, to bind iron
41 Deuteronomy 13.3.
42 Psalm 3.7.
43 Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 6.1 (27.15^26).
44 Cf. Luke 17.23.
45 Luke 17.24.
APPENDIX THREE
and brick by his marvellous talent in speaking and thinking, nevertheless could not do what he had not learned to do, that is, to know the Hebrew language. By his justly reverend fear, he himself had no fear of corrupting what he knew, as we showed above. /626/ 17. I beseech you to present this account of my exoneration to our religious and very learned brother David,46 that he may read it before our venerable lord and father Bishop Wilfred, so that, because I was earlier assailed in his presence and hearing by the abusive talk of the foolish, it may now be made plain to him in his hearing, and with him as the ¢nal judge, how unworthily I su¡er this same abuse. Also I ask this same
David, above all others, to follow the example of the boy whose namesake he is, and to exert himself sedulously to expel the madness of spirit from the unreasonable brother by the exhortation of healthful words, as if by the sweet modulation of psalmody.47 In any event, the man who, tipsy with drink, strove to incriminate me in that banquet ^ who ought rather to have made himself blameless by paying heed to his reading ^ was unable to bring it o¡, for he did not realize that he was extolling my own meaning and my very words. For truly it is said that if a serpent will bite in silence, there is no wealth for the enchanter.48 May the almighty
Lord deign to preserve your fraternity in safety.
46 Jones thought that David was the perpetrator of the accusation against Bede, but as the remainder of this section makes plain, David is being asked to clear Bede's name before Wilfred, and to reproach the nameless accusor: see Dieter Schaller, ''Der verleumdete David: zum Schlusskapitel von Bedas Epistola ad Pleguinam'', in Literatur und
Sprache im europa« ischen Mittelalter: Festschrift fu« r Karl Langosch (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973):39^43.
47 The allusion is to the biblical David's capacity to soothe the rage of King Saul through his music: I Samuel 16.14^23.
48 Ecclesiastes 10.11.