Tertullian, Apology 19

The highest antiquity claims the first authority for these writings. Among you, too, asserting faith from the records of time is a kind of religious standard.

Consider Moses, the first prophet. He began with the creation of the world, the multiplication of the human race, and the avenging force of the flood that punished the wickedness of that age. Through prophecy he sketched images of future events up to his own day, and through his own actions thereafter. He also arranged the chronological order from the beginning, providing a calculation of the world's age that predates your earliest records by about three hundred years — earlier than Danaus who sailed to Argos in the Argo, and roughly a thousand years before the Trojan War, from which you even trace Saturn himself. Thallus' history corroborates this: it records the war of the Assyrians and the battle of Saturn, king of the Titans, against Jupiter, showing that this war preceded the fall of Ilium by 302 years. Through Moses, God also gave the Law proper to the Jews.

After him came many other prophets, older than your literature. Even the last of them, Zechariah — who either slightly anticipated or at least coincided with your sages and lawgivers — prophesied under Cyrus and Darius. In that era, Thales, the prince of physicists, could give Croesus no certain answer about the Divine, clearly unsettled by the prophets' voices. Solon likewise warned that same king to look to the end of a long life, in terms no different from the prophets'. Thus it is evident that both your laws and your philosophical studies have drawn their conception from the Law and divine teaching. What comes first must be the seed; from it you hold certain things in common with us, or at least near us. The love of wisdom was named philosophy; the emulation of prophecy refined poetic prophecy into something purer. Famous men, when they discovered something, adulterated it to claim it as their own, and the fruits degenerated from the seed. I could press many more arguments for the antiquity of the divine writings, but a greater authority supports faith in their truth than mere annals: the daily testimony of the whole age. The dispositions of kingdoms, the falls of cities, the exits of nations, the conditions of the times — all answer to what was predicted thousands of years ago. From this our hope — which you mock — is encouraged, and our confidence — which you call presumption — is strengthened. Knowledge of the past is the proper basis for confidence in the future: the same voices foretold both, the same writings recorded them. There is a single timeline in Scripture that appears divided to us. Therefore we reject everything that remains unfulfilled, because those things were predicted as future alongside the ones already verified.

You also possess, as far as I know, the Sibyl — insofar as the title of the true prophet of the true God has been usurped by her above all others who seemed to prophesy, just as your Sibyl's name is a lie from the truth, and so are your gods. Therefore the archive of a single prophet — Moses — surpasses all substances, all materials, origins, orders, and veins of every ancient style of yours, most nations and notable cities, the hoary records of histories and memories, the very images of writings, the indices and guardians of facts, and (I think we understate it) even your gods themselves, their temples, oracles, and sacred rites. In that archive lies the treasure of the entire Jewish sacrament, and from it, ours as well. If you have heard of Moses, know that he is coeval with Argive Inachus; he precedes Danaus by nearly four hundred years — seven years short — and the fall of Priam by about a thousand. I could even say he predates Homer by more than five hundred years, and I have authorities to follow. The other prophets, though later than Moses, are still not more recent than your earliest sages, lawgivers, and historians. Demonstrating the chronological orders that prove this is not so much difficult as enormous — not arduous, but long. It requires many instruments, with finger-reckoning and calculations. The archives of the most ancient nations — Egyptians, Chaldeans, Phoenicians — must be opened; their own citizens must be summoned, through whom knowledge was transmitted: Manetho the Egyptian, Berosus the Chaldean, and Iromus the Phoenician king of Tyre; also their followers — Ptolemy Mendesius, Menander of Ephesus, Demetrius of Phalerum, King Juba, Apion, Thallus, and the Jew Josephus, native defender of Jewish antiquities, who either confirms or refutes them. Greek censuses must be compared, and the dates of events correlated, so that the concatenations of time are revealed and the numbers of annals clarified. One must traverse the histories and writings of the world. And yet we have already introduced a portion of the proof, by merely touching on the means by which it can be proven. But it is better to defer the rest, lest in haste we pursue it insufficiently, or in thoroughness we wander too long.