Thrasybulus by night, the sky being moonless and stormy, a fire appeared leading the way, which, having conducted them safely, left them near Munychia, where is now the altar of the light-bringer (Phosphorus).
From such an instance, therefore, let our accounts become credible to the Greeks, namely, that it was possible for the omnipotent God to make the pillar of fire, which was their guide on their march, go before the Hebrews by night. It is said also in a certain oracle,
"A pillar to the Thebans is joy-inspiring Bacchus,"
from the history of the Hebrews. Also Euripides says, in Antiope,
"In the chambers within, the herdsman,
With chaplet of ivy, pillar of the Evœan god."
The pillar indicates that God cannot be portrayed. The pillar of light, too, in addition to its pointing out that God cannot be represented, shows also the stability and the permanent duration of the Deity, and His unchangeable and inexpressible light. Before, then, the invention of the forms of images, the ancients erected pillars, and reverenced them as statues of th-e Deity. Accordingly, he who composed the Phoronis writes,
"Callithoe, key-bearer of the Olympian queen:
Argive Hera, who first with fillets and with fringes
The queen's tall column all around adorned."
Further, the author of Europia relates that the statue of Apollo at Delphi was a pillar in these words:
"That to the god first-fruits and tithes we may
On sacred pillars and on lofty column hang."
Apollo, interpreted mystically by "privation of many,"[1] means the one God. Well, then, that fire like a pillar, and the fire in the desert, is the symbol of the holy light which passed through from earth and returned again to heaven, by the wood [of the cross], by which also the gift of intellectual vision was bestowed on us.
- ↑ ἀ privative, and πολλοι, many.
