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Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching

St Irenaeus of Lyons, tr. Robinson, 1920

Chapter 43

So then we must believe God in all things, for in all things God is true. Now that there was a Son of God, and that He existed not only before He appeared in the world, but also before the world was made, Moses, who was the first that prophesied,¹ says in Hebrew: Baresith bara² Elowin basan benuam samenthares. And this, translated into our language,³ is: “The Son in the beginning: God established then the heaven and the earth.”⁴ This Jeremiah the prophet also testified, saying thus: Before the morning-star I⁵ begat thee: and before the sun (is) thy name; ⁶ and that is, before the creation of the world; for together with the world the stars were made. And again the same says: Blessed is he who was, before he became man:⁷ Because, for God, the Son was (as) the beginning before the creation of the world;⁸ but for us (He was) then, when He appeared; and before that He was not for us, who knew Him not.⁹ Wherefore also His disciple John, in teaching us who is the Son of God, who was with the Father before the world was made, and that all the things that were made were made by Him, says thus: In the beginning was the Word, and¹⁰ the Word was with God, and the Word was God, The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made: showing with certainty that the Word, who was in the beginning with the Father, and by whom all things were made, this is His Son.

Notes

Cf. Just. M. Ap. I. 32: Μωυσῆς . . . πρῶτος τῶν προφητῶν γενόμενος.
Gen. i. 1.
Lit. “the Armenian language.”
The Hebrew text has been corrupted in transmission: but it is plain that Irenaeus interpreted the first two words (“In the beginning created”) as “In the beginning the Son.” St Hilary, on Ps. ii. § 2, says that bresith has three meanings, “in principio in capite, in filio”; but he prefers the first as the interpretation given by the LXX. See the note of the learned Dom Coustant, the Benedictine editor of St Hilary. See also Dr Harnack’s notes in Texte u. Unters., I, 1. 117 ff. and xxxi, 1. 60. In Clem. Alex. Ecl. Proph. 4 we find as a comment on Gen. i. 1, ὅτι ἀρχὴ ὁ υἱός.
Ps. cx. 3, lxxii. 17.
Ps. cx. 3, lxxii. 17. For this composite quotation from the Psalms, here attributed to Jeremiah, see Introd. p. 19 ff.
For this quotation also see Introd. p. 22 f.
This is probably a reference to Prov. viii. 22: ὁ κύριος ἔκτισέ με ἀρχὴν τῶν ὁδῶν αὐτοῦ.
Justin (Dial. 88) quotes the Voice at the Baptism in the form “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee” (Ps. ii. 7, and Luke iii. 22 in Codex Bezae, etc.). Then he says: τότε γένεσιν αὐτοῦ λέγων γίνεσθαι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, ἐξ ὅτου ἡ γνῶσις αὐτοῦ ἔμελλε γίνεσθαι.
John i. 1 ff.