"Is
there anything whereof it may be said, see this is new? It has already been for
ages, which were before us. "Symmachus translated this more clearly:
"Do you think there is a man who is able to say: look this is new, it has
already been done before because it was before us." But he agrees with his predecessors that
there is nothing new in the world, and that there is none that is able to live
and say: 'look this is new', since everything that he thought he had shown to
be new, already existed in former times.
But we ought not to think that the signs, prodigies and the many deeds
which are done for the first time by God's judgement in the world today, have
already been done before in former ages, or that it was Epicurus who found
this, asserting that these same things were done in innumerable periods and in
these places and by these same men.
Besides, both Judas betrayed "repeatedly"
and Christ "often" suffered for us; and
other things which have been done and will be done, are continually repeated in
these times. But it could be said too,
that those things, which will be done have already been done, decided out of
foreknowledge and the predestination of God.
For those who have been chosen in Christ before the constitution of the
world existed already in previous times.
[AD 420] Jerome on Ecclesiastes 1:10
there anything whereof it may be said, see this is new? It has already been for
ages, which were before us. "Symmachus translated this more clearly:
"Do you think there is a man who is able to say: look this is new, it has
already been done before because it was before us." But he agrees with his predecessors that
there is nothing new in the world, and that there is none that is able to live
and say: 'look this is new', since everything that he thought he had shown to
be new, already existed in former times.
But we ought not to think that the signs, prodigies and the many deeds
which are done for the first time by God's judgement in the world today, have
already been done before in former ages, or that it was Epicurus who found
this, asserting that these same things were done in innumerable periods and in
these places and by these same men.
Besides, both Judas betrayed "repeatedly"
and Christ "often" suffered for us; and
other things which have been done and will be done, are continually repeated in
these times. But it could be said too,
that those things, which will be done have already been done, decided out of
foreknowledge and the predestination of God.
For those who have been chosen in Christ before the constitution of the
world existed already in previous times.