''De mirabilibus Sacrae Scripturae'' (in English: ''On the miraculous things in Sacred Scripture'') is a Latin treatise written around 655 by an anonymous Irish writer and

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

known as Augustinus Hibernicus or the Irish Augustine. The author's nickname is in reference to the philosopher

Augustine of Hippo Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Af ...

. This

pseudo-Augustine Pseudo-Augustine is the name given by scholars to the authors, collectively, of works falsely attributed to Augustine of Hippo. Augustine himself in his ''Retractiones'' lists many of his works, while his disciple Possidius tried to provide a compl ...

was born in Ireland sometime in the first half of the seventh century and is noted especially for his natural philosophy. Around the year 655 he wrote a treatise called ''De mirabilibus Sacrae Scripturae''. It has long been regarded as an exceptional work, in that it demonstrates a strictly scientific approach in the matter of making direct observations of nature and subjecting them to a strictly logical interpretation. His treatise seeks to explain each miracle in the Scriptures as an extreme case of

phenomena A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried W ...

, yet still within the laws of nature. Augustine also gives a list of the terrestrial mammals of Ireland, and solves the problem of how they reached Ireland after the flood of

Noah Noah ''Nukh''; am, ኖህ, ''Noḥ''; ar, نُوح '; grc, Νῶε ''Nôe'' () is the tenth and last of the pre-Flood patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Genesis, chapters 5– ...

by proposing a solution – hundreds of years ahead of its time – that the island had been cut off from continental Europe by marine erosion.

Sources

Further reading