Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 21

We will address a little later how the philosophers' doctrines were received among the Hebrews, but first, as proper order requires, we must speak of the times of Moses; through them it will be shown beyond dispute that the philosophy of the Hebrews is the most ancient of all wisdom. Tatian has treated these matters exactly in his work Against the Greeks, and Cassian has done so in the first of his Exegetical books; nevertheless our memorandum also demands that we run through the statements relevant to this place. Apion the grammarian, surnamed Plistonicus, in the fourth book of his Egyptian Histories — though he is hostile toward the Hebrews, being an Egyptian by birth, and has even composed a book against the Jews — mentions Amosis, king of the Egyptians, and the events of his reign, and produces Ptolemy of Mendes as a witness. His words run thus: Amosis, who became king after the Argive Inachus, destroyed Avaris, as Ptolemy of Mendes recorded in his Chronicles. This Ptolemy was a priest who set out the deeds of the Egyptian kings in three whole books, and he says that under Amosis, king of Egypt, the Jews, led by Moses, made their exodus from Egypt, from which it follows that Moses flourished in the time of Inachus. The most ancient of Greek traditions are the Argolic ones, that is, those reckoned from Inachus, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus teaches in his Chronicles. These are forty generations older than the Attic traditions, which begin with Cecrops, whom Tatian quotes verbatim as a double-born and autochthonous man. The Arcadian traditions, which begin with Pelasgus, are nine generations older, and Pelasgus is also said to be autochthonous. The Phthiotic traditions, which begin with Deucalion, are younger than these by two generations. Concerning the time of the Trojan War, twenty generations or a little more are counted from Inachus, and, so to speak, four hundred years. But if the Assyrian traditions are, as Ctesias says, many years older than the Greek ones, it will appear that in the four hundred and second year of the Assyrian empire, and in the thirty-second year of the eighth dynasty of Belochus, the departure of Moses from Egypt took place under Amosis the Egyptian and Inachus the Argive. In Greece, during the time of Phoroneus, who came after Inachus, there occurred the flood of Ogygus, and the kingdom in Sicyon — first of Aegialeus, then of Europs, then of Telchin — and the kingdom of Crete in Crete. For Acusilaus says that Phoroneus was the first man to be born; hence the poet of the Phoronis calls him the father of mortal men. Following Acusilaus, Plato writes in the Timaeus: