Adversus Judaeos

It happened recently that a debate was held between a Christian and a proselyte who was a Jew. By turns, like men in a tug of war, they dragged the day on into the evening. With certain bystanders on each side raising an uproar, the truth was overshadowed by a kind of cloud. It seemed best, therefore, that what the chorus of debate had been unable to clarify fully should be examined more carefully, and that questions reconsidered through reading should be settled in writing. For the occasion of defending the divine grace as extending even to the nations took its precedence from this very point: that a man from the nations, and not one a Jew by Israelite descent, had set himself to claim God's law as his own. For this is enough to prove that the nations can be admitted to the law of God, so that Israel should no longer be proud, as though the nations were reckoned only as a drop from a bucket or dust from a threshing floor. Yet we have God himself as a worthy promiser and a faithful surety, who promised Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed, and that from the womb of Rebecca two peoples and two nations would come forth — namely the Jews, that is Israel, and the nations, that is our own. Each, then, was called both a people and a nation, so that no one should dare to claim for himself a privilege of grace from the title of the name. For God ordained that two peoples and two nations should come forth from the womb of a single woman, and he made no distinction of grace in the title of the name, but in the bringing forth of the birth: so that the one who was to come forth first from the womb should be made subject to the lesser, that is, to the one born after. For thus God spoke to Rebecca: Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be divided from your belly, and one people shall overcome the other people, and the greater shall serve the lesser. And so, since the people or nation of the Jews is the earlier in time and the greater through the grace of the first dignity bestowed in the law, while our people is understood to be the lesser in the age of time — having attained the knowledge of the divine mercy only in the last span of the world — beyond doubt, by the decree of the divine utterance, the earlier and greater people, that is the Jewish, must of necessity serve the lesser, and the lesser people, that is the Christian, must overcome the greater. For according to the records of the divine Scriptures the Jewish people, that is the older, forsook God and served idols; abandoning the divinity, it gave itself over to images, the people saying to Aaron: Make us gods who shall go before us. And when gold had been melted in the fire from the necklaces of the women and the rings of the men, and the head of an ox had come forth for them, all Israel, forsaking God, gave honour to this image, saying: These are the gods who brought us out of the land of Egypt. So too in later times, when kings ruled over them and with Jeroboam they worshipped golden calves and groves and bound themselves to Baal. From this it is proved that they were always marked out as guilty of the crime of idolatry, by the testimony of the divine Scriptures. But our people, the lesser, that is the later, having abandoned the idols to which it once was enslaved, has turned to the same God from whom Israel, as we have noted above, had departed. For thus the lesser people, that is the later, has overcome the greater people, in that it obtains the grace of the divine dignity from which Israel has been rejected.

Let us then proceed step by step, and mark out the sum of the question itself within fixed lines. For why should God, the founder of the universe, the governor of the whole world, the fashioner of man, the begetter of all the nations, be believed to have given the law through Moses to one people only, and not be said to have assigned it to all the nations? For if he had not given it to all, he would by no means permit even proselytes from the nations to have access to it. But, as befits the goodness of God and his fairness — being the fashioner of the human race — he gave the same law to all the nations, which he commanded to be observed at fixed and appointed times, when he willed, and through whom he willed, and as he willed. For in the beginning of the world he gave a law to Adam and Eve themselves, that they should not eat of the fruit of the tree planted in the middle of paradise; and that, if they did otherwise, they would die the death. This law would have sufficed for them, had it been kept. For in this law given to Adam we recognize all the precepts contained which afterwards sprang up, given through Moses — that is: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul; and, You shall love your neighbour as yourself; and, You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honour your father and your mother; and, You shall not covet what is another's. For the primordial law was given to Adam and Eve in paradise as the womb of all the precepts of God. In short, if they had loved the Lord their God, they would not have acted against his precept; if they had loved their neighbour, that is themselves, they would not have believed the persuasion of the serpent, and so they would not have committed murder against themselves by cutting themselves off from immortality in acting against God's precept; they would also have abstained from theft, had they not tasted secretly of the fruit of the tree, nor longed to hide beneath the tree from the sight of the Lord their God; nor would they have made themselves partakers with the devil as he asserted falsehood, by believing him when he said that they would become like God; and so they would not have offended God as a father, who had fashioned them from the clay of the earth as from a mother's womb; and had they not coveted what was another's, they would not have tasted of the forbidden fruit. Therefore in this general and primordial law of God, which God had ordained to be observed in the fruit of the tree, we recognize that all the precepts of the later law were specifically implanted, which, brought forth in their own times, germinated. For it belongs to the same one to bring in a law afterwards who had earlier sent a precept ahead, since it is also for him to instruct afterwards who had at first set out to form the just. For what wonder is it if he who instituted should increase the discipline, if he who began should carry it forward? In short, I maintain that before the law of Moses, written on tablets of stone, there was a law unwritten, which was understood by nature and was kept by the fathers. For from where was Noah found just, if the righteousness of the natural law did not go before him? from where was Abraham reckoned the friend of God, if not from the fairness and justice of the natural law? from where was Melchizedek named priest of the most high God, if before the priesthood of the Levitical law there were Levites who offered sacrifices to God? For thus the law was given to Moses after the patriarchs written of above, at that time after they had departed from Egypt, after the interval of many times and spans. In short, four hundred and thirty years after Abraham the law was given. From this we understand that God's law existed even before Moses, and not in Horeb only or in Sinai and in the wilderness for the first time, but more ancient still — first in paradise, then to the patriarchs, and so also reshaped for the Jews at fixed times — so that we should no longer attend to the law of Moses as if to the principal law, but as to one that follows after, which at a fixed time God set forth even for the nations and, having promised it through the prophets, reshaped for the better, and forewarned that it would come to pass that, just as the law was given at a fixed time through Moses, so it should be believed to have been observed and kept only for a season. Nor let us take away from God this power of reshaping the precepts of the law according to the condition of the times for man's salvation. In short, let the one who contends that the Sabbath must still be observed, as a remedy of salvation, and circumcision on the eighth day, on account of the threat of death, show that in former times the just kept the Sabbath or were circumcised, and so became the friends of God. For if circumcision cleanses a man, then, since God made Adam uncircumcised, why did he not circumcise him — either then, or afterwards, when he had sinned, if circumcision cleanses? Surely, setting him in paradise uncircumcised, he set him over it as its keeper. Therefore, since God instituted Adam neither circumcised nor keeping the Sabbath, he consequently also praised his offspring Abel, who offered him sacrifices, though uncircumcised and not keeping the Sabbath, accepting graciously what he offered in simplicity of heart, and rejecting the sacrifice of his brother Cain, who did not rightly divide what he offered. Noah too God delivered from the flood uncircumcised, and not keeping the Sabbath. For Enoch also, most just, neither circumcised nor keeping the Sabbath, he removed from this world; and he has not yet tasted death, so that as a candidate for eternity he might already show us that we too, without the burden of the law of Moses, can please God. Melchizedek likewise, priest of the most high God, uncircumcised and not keeping the Sabbath, was chosen to the priesthood of God. And Lot too, the brother of Abraham, proves that he was delivered from the burning of the Sodomites for the merits of his righteousness, without the observance of the law.

But Abraham, you say, was circumcised. Yet he pleased God before he was circumcised, and even so he did not keep the Sabbath. For he had received circumcision, but such as should be a sign for that time, not a prerogative of salvation. In short, the patriarchs who followed were uncircumcised, as was Melchizedek, who, himself uncircumcised, offered bread and wine to Abraham — now already circumcised — as he returned from the battle. But, it is said, the son of Moses would then have been throttled by the angel, had not his mother Zipporah cut away the foreskin of the infant with a stone. Hence, it is said, there is the greatest danger if a man does not circumcise the foreskin of the flesh. But if circumcision conferred salvation in every case, even Moses himself would not have failed to circumcise his own son on the eighth day, whereas it is established that Zipporah was compelled by the angel to do it on the journey. Let us consider, then, that the circumcision of one infant under compulsion could not prescribe a rule for the whole people, nor establish, as it were, a law of this precept. For God, foreseeing that he was about to give this circumcision to the people Israel as a sign, not for salvation, therefore prompted the son of Moses — the future leader — to be circumcised, so that, when he had begun through Moses to give the precept of circumcision to the people, the people should not reject it, seeing this example already enacted in the leader's son. For circumcision was to be given, but as a sign by which Israel would be recognizable in the last time, when, according to its merits, it would be forbidden to enter the holy city, by the words of the prophets saying: Your land is deserted, your cities burned with fire, your region strangers shall devour before your face, and the daughter of Zion shall be left deserted and overthrown by foreign peoples, like a hut in a vineyard, like a watch-post in a cucumber field, and like a city under siege. Why so? Because the prophet's following word reproaches them, saying: I have begotten and raised up sons, but they have rejected me. And again: And if you stretch out your hands, I will turn my face from you; and if you multiply your prayers, I will not hear you; for your hands are full of blood. And again: Woe, sinful nation, people full of sins, wicked sons, you have forsaken God and provoked the Holy One of Israel to indignation. This, then, was the providence of God in giving Israel circumcision as a sign, by which they could be recognized when the time came in which, for the merits mentioned above, they would be forbidden to be admitted to Jerusalem — which, because it was to be, was announced beforehand, and because we see it done, we recognize. For just as the carnal circumcision, which was temporary, was instilled as a sign to a stubborn people, so the spiritual circumcision was given for salvation to an obedient people, the prophet Jeremiah saying: Renew yourselves, and do not sow among thorns; be circumcised to God, and circumcise the foreskin of your heart. And in another place he says: Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will establish for the house of Judah and the house of Jacob a new covenant, not such as I already gave to their fathers in the day when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. From this we understand both that the former circumcision then given would cease, and that a new law, not such as he had already given to the fathers, was announced as about to come forth — just as Isaiah foretold, saying that in the last days the mountain of the Lord and the house of God should be made manifest above the peaks of the mountains: and it shall be exalted, he says, above the hills, and all the nations shall come to it, and many shall walk and shall say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob — not of Esau, the elder son, but of Jacob, the later, that is, of our people, whose mountain is Christ, cut out without the hands of those who hew, filling all the earth, as shown in Daniel. In short, from this house of the God of Jacob Isaiah announces in the following words that a new law also will come forth, saying: For out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem, and he shall judge among the nations — that is, among us who have been called from the nations — and they shall beat, he says, their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, and nation shall not take up the sword against nation, and they shall no longer learn to fight. Who, then, are understood but we, who, taught by the new law, observe these things, the old law being effaced — whose abolition to come the very act demonstrates? For the old law avenged itself by the punishment of the sword, and plucked out eye for eye, and repaid injury with vengeance; but the new law signified mercy, and turned the former ferocity of swords and spears into tranquillity, and reshaped the former waging of war against the enemies and foes of the law into the peaceful acts of ploughing and tilling the earth. Therefore, as we have shown above, that the old law and the carnal circumcision were proclaimed as about to cease, so too the observance of the new law and of the spiritual circumcision shone forth in the duties of peace. For a people, he says, whom I had not known, served me; in the hearing of the ear it obeyed me. The prophets announced it. But what people that did not know God, except ours, who once knew not God? and who in the hearing of the ear heard him, except we who, leaving the idols, turned to God? For Israel, which had been known to God, and which had been exalted by him in Egypt, and was carried across the Red Sea, and which was fed in the wilderness with manna for forty years — brought to the likeness of eternity, neither defiled with human sufferings nor fed on the foods of this world, but fed on manna, the bread of angels, and bound to God by enough of his benefits — forgot the Lord and its God, saying to Aaron: Make us gods who shall go before us; for that Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt has abandoned us, and we do not know what has become of him. And so we, who once were not the people of God, have become his people by receiving the new law mentioned above, and the new circumcision foretold before.

It follows, then, that, just as the abolition of carnal circumcision and of the old law is shown to have been struck out in its own times, so too the observance of the Sabbath is shown to have been for a season. For the Jews say that from the beginning God sanctified the seventh day, resting on it from all his works which he made; and that thence too Moses said to the people: Remember the day of the Sabbaths, to sanctify it; you shall do no servile work on it, except what pertains to the soul. Hence we understand rather that we ought always to keep Sabbath from all servile work, and not only on every seventh day, but through all time. And through this it must be asked which Sabbath God would have us keep. For the Scriptures designate an eternal Sabbath and a temporal Sabbath. For the prophet Isaiah says: Your Sabbaths my soul hates; and in another place he says: My Sabbaths you have profaned. Hence we discern that the temporal Sabbath is human, and the eternal Sabbath is reckoned divine, of which he proclaims through Isaiah: And it shall be, he says, month after month and day after day and Sabbath after Sabbath, and all flesh shall come to worship in Jerusalem, says the Lord. This we understand to have been fulfilled in the times of Christ, when all flesh — that is, every nation — came to worship in Jerusalem the Father God, through Jesus Christ his Son, as was foretold through the prophet: Behold, proselytes shall come through me to you. So, then, before this, the temporal Sabbath existed and the eternal Sabbath was shown and foretold beforehand, just as before the carnal circumcision the spiritual circumcision too was shown beforehand. In short, let them show, as we have already said before, that Adam kept the Sabbath, or that Abel, offering to God a holy victim, pleased him by the religion of the Sabbath, or that Enoch, translated, was a keeper of the Sabbath, or that Noah, the builder of the ark, observed the Sabbath on account of the immense flood, or that Abraham offered his son Isaac in observance of the Sabbath, or that Melchizedek received the law of the Sabbath in his priesthood. But the Jews will say that from the time this precept was given through Moses, from then it was to be observed. It is plain, then, that it was a precept not eternal nor spiritual, but temporal, which one day would cease. In short, so far is this solemnity from being celebrated in the cessation of the Sabbath — that is, of the seventh day — that Joshua son of Nun, at the time when he was warring down the city of Jericho, said that a command had been given him by God to charge the people that the priests should carry the ark of God's covenant around the circuit of the city for seven days, and that thus, when the circuit of the seventh day was completed, the walls of the city should fall of themselves. And so it was done; and when the span of the seventh day was finished, as had been foretold, the walls of the city fell. From this it is plainly shown that within the number of these seven days the day of the Sabbath fell. For seven days, from wherever they take their beginning, must of necessity enclose the day of the Sabbath within them — a day on which not only did the priests work, but the city was made spoil at the edge of the sword by all the people of Israel. Nor is there any doubt that they did servile work, since they took the spoils of war by God's command. For in the times of the Maccabees too they acted bravely in fighting on the Sabbaths, and overcame their alien enemies, and by fighting on the Sabbaths recalled the ancestral law to its former state of life. Nor would I think that they were defending any other law than that in which they remembered there was a prescription concerning the day of the Sabbaths. From this it is plain that precepts of this kind held good for a season and for the necessity of the present cause, and that God had not given them such a law before for an observance of perpetual time.

So too we have shown that the sacrifices both of earthly offerings and of spiritual ones were foretold; and indeed that from the beginning the earthly sacrifices were shown beforehand in Cain, the elder son, that is, of Israel, and the diverse sacrifices of the younger son Abel, that is, of our people, were demonstrated. For the elder-born Cain offered to God gifts from the fruit of the earth, but the younger son Abel from the fruit of his sheep. God looked upon Abel and upon his gifts, but upon Cain and upon his gifts he did not look. And God said to Cain: Why has your countenance fallen? If you offer rightly, but do not divide rightly, have you not sinned? Be still. To you shall be his turning, and you shall rule over him. And then Cain said to his brother Abel: Let us go into the field; and he went with him there and killed him. And then God said to Cain: Where is your brother Abel? And he said: I do not know; am I my brother's keeper? To him God said: The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the earth. Therefore cursed is the earth, which opened its mouth to receive the blood of your brother. Groaning and trembling you shall be upon the earth, and everyone who finds you shall kill you. From this act, then, we observe that the double sacrifices of the two peoples were shown beforehand from the very beginning. In short, when through Moses the priestly law was being written down in Leviticus, we find it prescribed to the people of Israel that sacrifices should be offered to God in no other place than in the land of promise, which the Lord God was about to give to the people of Israel and to their brothers — so that, Israel having been brought in, the sacrifices and burnt offerings might be celebrated there, both for sins and for souls, and nowhere else but in the holy land. Why, then, does the Spirit afterwards proclaim through the prophets that it would come to pass that in every place and in every land sacrifices should be offered to God — as through Malachi, the angel, one of the twelve prophets, he says: I will not receive a sacrifice from your hands, for from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is glorified among all the nations, says the Lord almighty; and in every place they offer pure sacrifices to my name? Likewise in the psalms David says: Bring to God, you families of the nations — beyond doubt because the preaching of the apostles was to go forth into all the earth — bring to God glory and honour, bring to God the sacrifices of his name: Take up victims and enter into his courts. For that God is to be propitiated not with earthly sacrifices but with spiritual ones, we read thus, as it is written: A bruised and humbled heart is a sacrifice to God. And elsewhere: Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise, and render your vows to the Most High. So, then, the spiritual sacrifices of praise are designated, and a bruised heart is shown to be an acceptable sacrifice to God. Therefore, just as the carnal sacrifices are understood to be rejected, of which Isaiah too speaks, saying: Why to me the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord — so the spiritual sacrifices are proclaimed as accepted, as the prophets announce. For even if you bring me fine flour, he says, it is a vain offering; an abomination is it to me. And further he says: Your whole burnt offerings and your sacrifices and the fat of goats and the blood of bulls I do not want, nor that you come to be seen by me; for who has required these things from your hands? Since from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is glorified among all the nations, says the Lord. But of the spiritual sacrifices he adds, saying: And in every place they offer pure sacrifices to my name, says the Lord.

Therefore, since it is plain both that the temporal Sabbath was shown and the eternal Sabbath foretold, that the carnal circumcision too was foretold and the spiritual circumcision indicated beforehand, the temporal law too and the eternal law announced, the carnal sacrifices and the spiritual sacrifices shown beforehand — it follows that, all these precepts having been given carnally in the preceding time to the people of Israel, there should come a time in which the precepts of the old law and of the old ceremonies would cease, and the promise of the new law and the recognition of spiritual sacrifices and the pledge of the new covenant would arrive — a light shining upon us from on high, who were sitting in darkness and were held in the shadow of death. And so the necessity lies upon us that, since we have said above that the new law was foretold by the prophets, and that it was not such as had already been given to their fathers at the time when he led them out of the land of Egypt, we must show and prove both that the old law has ceased and that the new law promised is now at work. And first it must be asked whether a giver of the new law is awaited, and an heir of the new covenant, and a priest of the new sacrifices, and a purifier of the new circumcision, and a keeper of the eternal Sabbath, who would restrain the old law and establish the new covenant, and offer the new sacrifices, and check the old ceremonies, and restrain the old circumcision with its own Sabbath, and announce a new kingdom that shall not be corrupted. He, I say — this giver of the new law, this keeper of the spiritual Sabbath, this high priest of the eternal sacrifices, this eternal ruler of the eternal kingdom — it must be asked whether he has now come or not, so that, if he has now come, he must be served; if he has not yet come, he must be awaited — provided only it be plain that at his coming the precepts of the old law are restrained, and the beginnings of the new law ought to arise. And first of all it must be settled that the old law and the prophets could not cease unless he had come who, through the same law and through the same prophets, was announced as about to come.

Therefore in this let us join battle step by step: whether the Christ who was announced as about to come has now come, or whether he is still hoped for as about to come. That this very thing may be proved, we must also seek out the times when the prophets announced that Christ would come, so that, if within those times we recognize that he has come, we may without doubt believe him to be the very one whom the prophets sang as about to come — in whom we, the nations, were announced as about to believe; and when it has been established that he has come, we may indubitably believe also that the new law was given by him, and not deny that the new covenant was arranged for us in him and through him. For we know that even the Jews do not deny that Christ will come, inasmuch as they extend their hope to his coming. Nor need this be inquired into at length, since all the prophets in the past have proclaimed concerning him — as Isaiah: Thus says the Lord God to my Christ the Lord, whose right hand I have held, that the nations may obey him: I will break in pieces the strength of kings; I will open the gates before him, and the cities shall not be shut to him. This very thing we see fulfilled. For whose right hand does God the Father hold, except Christ his Son? whom all the nations have obeyed — that is, in whom all the nations have believed — whose preachers, the apostles, are shown in the psalms of David: Into all the earth, he says, has gone out their sound, and to the ends of the earth their words. In whom else have all the nations believed, except in Christ, who has now come? In whom have the nations believed — the Parthians, the Medes, the Elamites, and those who dwell in Mesopotamia, Armenia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, and those who inhabit Pontus and Asia and Pamphylia, those who reside in Egypt, and those who inhabit the region of Africa beyond Cyrene, Romans and resident foreigners, and then the Jews in Jerusalem, and the other nations — as now the various tribes of the Gaetuli, and the many borders of the Moors, all the limits of the Spains, and the diverse nations of the Gauls, and the haunts of the Britons inaccessible to the Romans but made subject to Christ, and of the Sarmatians, and the Dacians, and the Germans, and the Scythians, and of many hidden nations and provinces and many islands unknown to us, which we are scarcely able to enumerate? In all these places the name of Christ, who has now come, reigns — inasmuch as before him the gates of all cities have been opened, and to him none are shut; before him the iron bars have been broken in pieces, and the bronze doors opened. Although these things are also to be understood spiritually — that the hearts of individuals, besieged in various ways by the devil, have been unbarred by faith in Christ — yet they have plainly been fulfilled, inasmuch as in all these places the people of Christ's name dwells. For who could have reigned over all the nations, except Christ, the Son of God, who was announced as about to reign over all forever? For if Solomon reigned, it was within the borders of Judah alone; from Beersheba to Dan the limits of his kingdom are marked. And if Darius reigned over the Babylonians and the Parthians, he did not have power over all the nations; if Pharaoh ruled the Egyptians, or whoever succeeded him in his hereditary kingdom, there only did he obtain the dominion of his kingdom; if Nebuchadnezzar with his petty kings, from India to Ethiopia he held the bounds of his kingdom; if Alexander the Macedonian, he held no more than all Asia and the other regions after he had conquered them; if the Germans, even now they are not permitted to cross their own frontiers; the Britons are shut within the circuit of their own ocean; the nations of the Moors and the barbarian Gaetuli are beset by the Romans, lest they pass the bounds of their own regions. And what shall I say of the Romans themselves, who fortify their empire with the garrisons of their legions, and cannot extend the strength of their kingdom beyond these nations? But the name of Christ is extended everywhere, everywhere believed, worshipped by all the nations enumerated above, everywhere reigns, everywhere adored, granted equally to all everywhere; with him there is no greater favour for a king, no lesser gladness for any barbarian, no distinct merits of dignities or birth for anyone; to all he is equal, to all king, to all judge, to all God and Lord. And do not doubt to believe what we assert, when you see it come to pass.

We must therefore seek out the times foretold both of the future birth of Christ and of his passion, and of the destruction of the city of Jerusalem — that is, of its devastation. For Daniel says that both the holy city and the holy place shall be destroyed together with a leader to come, and that the pinnacle shall be cast down even to ruin. The times, then, of the coming Christ the leader must be sought, which we will investigate in Daniel; and when these are reckoned, we will prove that he has come, both from the times prescribed and from the fitting signs and from his works. These we prove also from the things that follow, which were announced as about to come to pass after his coming, so that we may believe them all fulfilled as well as foreseen. Thus, then, Daniel foretold concerning him, so as to show both when and at what time he was to set the nations free, and that after the passion of Christ this city would be destroyed. For he says thus: In the first year of Darius son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, who reigned over the kingdom of the Chaldeans, I, Daniel, understood in the books the number of the years. And while I was still speaking in prayer, behold the man Gabriel, whom I saw in a vision at the beginning, flying, and he touched me, about the hour of the evening sacrifice, and made me understand, and spoke with me, and said: Daniel, now I have come forth to imbue you with understanding; at the beginning of your supplication the word went forth. And I have come to announce to you, for you are a man of desires; so consider the word and understand the vision. Seventy weeks have been cut short upon your people and upon the holy city, until transgression grow old, and sins be sealed, and acts of justice be prayed for, and eternal justice be brought in, and that the vision and the prophet be sealed, and the holy of holies be anointed. And you shall know and perceive and understand: from the going forth of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Christ the leader, seven weeks and a half and sixty-two and a half; and it shall turn and be built up in height and rampart, and the times shall be renewed; and after these sixty-two weeks the anointing shall be destroyed, and shall be no more; and he shall destroy the city and the holy place with a leader who is coming, and they shall be cut down as in a deluge, even to the end of the war, which shall be cut down even to destruction. And he shall confirm the covenant among many. In one week and a half of weeks my sacrifice and libation shall be taken away, and in the holy place the abomination of desolation, and even to the end of the time the consummation shall be given over this desolation. Let us mark, then, how he truly foretells the term — the seventy weeks to come, in which, if they receive him, it shall be built in height and in length, and the times shall be renewed. But God, foreseeing what was to come — that they would not only not receive him, but would even persecute him and hand him over to death — gathered it up again and said that in sixty-two and a half weeks he would be born and the holy of holies anointed; but that, when the seven and a half weeks were fulfilled, he would suffer, and the city would be destroyed after one and a half weeks — by which, of course, the seven and a half weeks are completed. For he says thus: And he shall destroy the city and the holy place with a leader who comes, and they shall be cut down as in a deluge, and he shall destroy the pinnacle even to ruin. From where, then, do we show that Christ came within the sixty-two and a half weeks? We will reckon from the first year of Darius, since in that very time this vision was shown to Daniel. For he says: And understand and conjecture, that I answer you these things to the perfection of the word. Hence we must compute from the first year of Darius, when Daniel saw this vision. Let us see, then, how the years are fulfilled up to the coming of Christ. For Darius reigned nineteen years. Artaxerxes reigned forty-one years. Then king Ochus, who was also called Cyrus, reigned twenty-four years. Argus, one year. Another Darius, who was also named Melas, twenty-one years. Alexander the Macedonian, twelve years. Then after Alexander — who had reigned over both the Medes and the Persians, whom he had reconquered, and had established his kingdom in Alexandria, when he also called it by his own name — after him there reigned there in Alexandria Soter thirty-five years, whom Philadelphus succeeded, reigning thirty-eight years. Him Euergetes succeeded, twenty-five years. Then Philopator, seventeen years. After him Epiphanes, twenty-four years. Likewise another Euergetes, twenty-nine years. Likewise another Soter, thirty-eight years. Ptolemy, thirty-seven years. Cleopatra, twenty years and five months. Likewise Cleopatra further reigned together with Augustus thirteen years. After Cleopatra, Augustus reigned forty-three further years; for all the years of the reign of Augustus were fifty-six years. Let us see, then, that in the forty-first year of the reign of Augustus, when he had reigned twenty-eight years after the death of Cleopatra, Christ is born. And the same Augustus lived on, from the birth of Christ, fifteen years; and the remaining times of the years up to the day of Christ's birth come to the forty-first year, which after the death of Cleopatra is the twenty-eighth for Augustus: there are made up four hundred and thirty-seven years and five months. Hence are fulfilled the sixty-two and a half weeks, which make four hundred and thirty-seven years, six months, at the day of Christ's birth. And the eternal justice was made manifest, and the holy of holies was anointed — that is, Christ — and the vision and the prophet were sealed, and sins were forgiven, which through faith in the name of Christ are washed away for all who believe in him. But what is it that he says, that the vision and the prophecy are sealed? Because all the prophets announced concerning him that he was to come and to suffer. Therefore, since the prophecy was fulfilled by his coming, he said for that reason that the vision and the prophecy were sealed, since he himself is the seal of all the prophets, fulfilling all the things they had announced about him beforehand. For after the coming of Christ and his passion, there is no longer any vision or prophet to announce that Christ is to come. In short, if this is not so, let the Jews show some volumes of prophets after Christ, some visible miracles of angels such as the patriarchs of old saw, up to the coming of Christ, who has now come — from which the vision and the prophecy have been sealed, that is, ended. And rightly the evangelist: The law and the prophets were until John the Baptist. For when Christ was baptized — that is, when he sanctified the waters in his own baptism — all the fullness of the spiritual gifts of old ceased in Christ, sealing the vision and all the prophecies which he fulfilled by his coming. Hence he most firmly says that his coming seals the vision and the prophecy. And so, having shown both the number of the years and the time of the sixty-two and a half weeks fulfilled — at the completion of which Christ came, that is, was born — let us see in what act the other seven and a half weeks, which are subdivided in the cutting off of the former weeks, are fulfilled. For after Augustus, who lived on after the birth of Christ, fifteen years are made up. Him succeeded Tiberius Caesar, and he held the empire twenty years, seven months, twenty-eight days. In the fifteenth year of his reign Christ suffered, being about thirty years old when he suffered. Likewise Caius Caesar, also called Caligula, three years, eight months, twelve days. Nero Caesar, eleven years, nine months, thirteen days. Galba, seven months, six days. Otho, three days. Vitellius, eight months, twenty-seven days. Vespasian, in the first year of his reign, warred down the Jews, and there are made forty-two years, six months. For he reigned eleven years. And so, on the day of his subjugation, the Jews fulfilled the seventy weeks foretold in Daniel. Therefore, these times too being fulfilled and the Jews warred down, thereafter the libations and sacrifices ceased there, which from then could not be celebrated there; for the anointing too was destroyed there after the passion of Christ. For it had been foretold that the anointing would be destroyed there, as is prophesied in the psalms: They have destroyed my hands and my feet. This suffering of this destruction was accomplished within the times of the seventy weeks, under Tiberius Caesar, in the consulship of Rubellius Geminus and Fufius Geminus, in the month of March, at the time of the Passover, on the eighth day before the Kalends of April, on the first day of the unleavened bread, on which they killed the lamb at evening, as had been commanded by Moses. And so the whole synagogue of Israel killed him, saying to Pilate, when he wished to release him: His blood be upon us and upon our sons; and, If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend — so that all things which had been written of him might be fulfilled.

Let us begin, then, to prove that the birth of Christ was announced by the prophets. As Isaiah foretells: Hear, O house of David: it is no small contest for you with men, since God offers the struggle; therefore God himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us. Butter and honey shall he eat; for before the child knows to call father or mother, he shall receive the power of Damascus, and the spoils of Samaria, against the king of the Assyrians. And so the Jews say: Let us challenge this prophecy of Isaiah and make a comparison, whether the name which Isaiah foretold, and his signs which he announced concerning him, fit that Christ who has now come. To be sure, Isaiah foretells that he ought to be called Emmanuel, and then that he should take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians. But, they say, this man who has come was neither called by such a name nor performed any deed of war. Yet we, on the contrary, have thought that they ought to be reminded to recognize also the coherence of this very chapter. For there is added the interpretation of Emmanuel — God with us — so that you should regard not only the sound of the name, but also its sense. For the Hebrew sound, which is Emmanuel, has its interpretation, which is, God with us. Ask, then, whether this utterance — God with us, which is Emmanuel — has from the moment Christ shone forth been on the lips of Christians. And I think you will not deny it. For those who from Judaism believe in Christ, from the time they believe in him, when they wish to say Emmanuel, signify that God is with us; and so it is established that he has now come who was foretold as Emmanuel, because that which Emmanuel signifies has come, that is, God with us. Equally they are misled by the sound of the name, when they take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria and the kingdom of the Assyrians in such a way as to portend Christ a warrior, not noticing that Scripture puts first: For before the child knows to call father or mother, he shall receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians. For you must first regard the indication of age — whether such an age can present Christ already a man, let alone a commander. As though by his wailing the infant would summon men to arms, and would give the signal of war not by a trumpet but by a rattle, and would mark out his enemy not from horseback or from a wall, but from the back or neck of his nurse and bearer, and would so subdue Damascus and Samaria for breasts! It would be another matter if among you infants burst into battle — anointed first, I suppose, in the sun, then armed with their swaddling bands and paid with butter, who would know how to wield the lance before they could be lanced. But truly, if nature nowhere grants this — to serve as a soldier before becoming a man, to take the power of Damascus before knowing one's father — it follows that this is to be regarded as spoken figuratively. But also, they say, nature does not allow a virgin to bear, and yet the prophet must be believed. And rightly. For he made faith ready for the incredible thing by saying that it would be a sign. Therefore, he says, a sign shall be given to you. Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son. But a sign from God, unless it had been some monstrous novelty, would not seem a sign. In short, if, whenever you long to cast some down from this divine preaching, or to turn aside the simpler folk, you dare to lie, alleging that Scripture does not contain a virgin but a young woman about to conceive and bear, even here you are refuted, because nothing could seem a sign in an everyday matter — namely, the pregnancy and childbirth of a young woman. And so a virgin mother set before us as a sign is rightly believed, but an infant warrior not so. For here too the reason of a sign would not be present; but, the sign of a new birth having been assigned, after the sign another order of the infant is announced — that he is to eat honey and butter. Nor is this surely a sign. It belongs to infancy. But that he is to receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians — this is the marvellous sign. Observe the limit of age, and seek the sense of the prophecy; rather, render to the truth what you do not wish to believe, and the prophecy by which it is announced is understood to be struck out. Let it be believed that those eastern Magi honoured the infancy of Christ as king with gold and frankincense, and the infant received the power of Damascus without battle and arms. For, besides that it is known to all that the power of the East — its strength, that is — was wont to abound in gold and perfumes, it is certain that the divine Scriptures too establish gold as the power of the other nations. As he says through Zechariah: And Judah shall be arrayed against Jerusalem, and shall gather all the wealth of the peoples round about, gold and silver. For of this gift of gold David too said: And there shall be given to him of the gold of Arabia. And again: The kings of the Arabs and of Saba shall bring him gifts. For the East had Magi too as something like kings, and Damascus was once reckoned to Arabia, before it was transcribed into Syrophoenicia by the division of the Syrias, whose power Christ then received in receiving its insignia — namely gold and perfumes — but the spoils of Samaria are the very Magi, who, when they had recognized him and honoured him with gifts and adored him on bended knee as Lord and king, under the testimony of the leader and the indication of the star, were made spoils of Samaria — that is, of idolatry — by believing, of course, in Christ. For he marked idolatry by the name of Samaria, as a city dishonourable for idolatry, which had then revolted from God under king Jeroboam. Nor indeed is this new to the divine Scriptures, to use figuratively a transference of names from the comparison of crimes. For he calls your rulers the rulers of Sodom, and your people he calls the people of Gomorrah, though those cities had long since been extinguished. And elsewhere through the prophet to the people of Israel he says: Your father an Amorite and your mother a Hittite — they who were not begotten of their stock, but on account of a like impiety, whom at another time he had even called his own sons through the prophet Isaiah: I have begotten sons and raised them up. So too Egypt is sometimes understood by him as the whole world, under the byword of superstition and cursing. So too Babylon in our John is a figure of the city of Rome, inasmuch as it too is great and proud in its kingdom and a vanquisher of the saints. In this way, then, he gave the Magi too the title of Samaritans, despoiled of what they had had with the Samaritans, as we have said — idolatry against the Lord. But against the king of the Assyrians — against the devil, who thinks he reigns to this end, if he casts the saints down from the religion of God. And this our interpretation will be aided, since elsewhere too the Scriptures designate Christ a warrior, by certain names of weapons and words of this kind. But from the comparison of the remaining senses the Jews will be refuted. Gird, says David, your sword upon your thigh. But what do you read above concerning Christ? Fair in beauty beyond the sons of men, grace is poured upon your lips. But it would be very absurd if, having girded with a sword for war the one to whom he was paying compliment for the fairness of his beauty and the grace of his lips, of whom he went on to say: Stretch forth and prosper, advance and reign. And he added: Because of your gentleness and your justice. Who works with a sword, and does not practise things contrary to gentleness and justice — that is, deceit and harshness and injustice, proper of course to the business of battles? Let us see, then, whether this is another sword whose owner is another — that is, the divine word of God, twice sharpened by the two covenants of the old law and the new law, sharpened by the fairness of his wisdom, rendering to each according to his deed. It was permitted, then, to Christ also, the Christ of God, in the psalms to be girded figuratively, without warlike affairs, with the sword of the word of God — Christ, to whom the foretold fairness fits, with the grace of his lips, who was then being girt upon the thigh in David, at the time when he was announced as about to come into the lands by the decree of God the Father. The greatness of your right hand shall lead you forth, he says — that is, the power of spiritual grace, from which the recognition of Christ is led forth. Your arrows, he says, are sharp — the precepts of God flying everywhere, threatening the exposure of every heart, and pricking and piercing each conscience. The peoples shall fall under you — those, of course, who adore. So is Christ mighty in war and an armour-bearer; so he shall receive the spoils not of Samaria alone, but of all the nations. Recognize also the figurative spoils, whose allegorical arms you have learned. And so, to such a degree was Christ, who has come, not a warrior, because no such one was foretold by Isaiah. But, they say, if the Christ who is believed to be coming is not called Jesus, why is the one who has come called Jesus Christ? Yet both names will hold good in the Christ of God, in whom he is found called Jesus as well. Learn the manner of your error. When the successor of Moses was being appointed, Hoshea son of Nun was changed from his former name, and began to be called Jesus [Joshua]. Certainly, you say. We say that this was first a figure of what was to come. For because Jesus Christ was to bring the second people — which we, the nations, are, dwelling once in the desert of the world — into the land of promise flowing with milk and honey, that is, into the possession of eternal life, than which nothing is sweeter; and this was to come about not through Moses, that is, not through the discipline of the law, but through Jesus, that is, through the grace of the new law — we being circumcised with a knife of stone, that is, with the precepts of Christ (for Christ has been foretold a rock in many ways and figures) — therefore that man who was being prepared as an image of this mystery was inaugurated also with the figure of the Lord's name, so that he should be called Jesus. For he who spoke to Moses was himself the Son of God, who was also always seen. For no one has seen God the Father at any time, and lived. And therefore it is established that the very Son of God spoke to Moses, and said to the people: Behold, I send my angel before your face — that is, of the people — who shall keep you on the way, and bring you into the land which I have prepared for you; give heed to him and hear him, and do not be disobedient to him, for he has not hidden himself from you, since my name is upon him. For Jesus, not Moses, was to bring the people into the land of promise. He called him an angel, indeed, because of the greatness of the powers which he was to perform (which powers Jesus son of Nun did, and you yourselves read), and because of the office of a prophet, announcing, that is, the divine will — just as the Spirit, through the prophet, calls the forerunner of Christ, John, a future angel, saying in the person of the Father: Behold, I send my angel before your face — that is, of Christ — who shall prepare your way before you. Nor is it new for the Holy Spirit to call those angels whom God has set as ministers of his power. For the same John was called not only the angel of Christ, but also a lamp shining before Christ. For I have prepared a lamp for my Christ, David foretells; whom Christ himself, coming to fulfil the prophets, names to the Jews. He was, he says, a burning and shining lamp — inasmuch as he not only prepared his ways in the wilderness, but also, pointing out the Lamb of God, illumined the minds of men by his proclamation, so that they might understand him to be the Lamb whom Moses announced as about to suffer. So too Jesus, because of the future mystery of his name; for he confirmed that name of his which he himself had given him, since he had commanded that he be called from then not angel nor Hoshea, but Jesus [Joshua]. So, then, both names fit the Christ of God, so that he should be called Jesus as well. And since the virgin from whom Christ was to be born ought to draw her lineage from the seed of David, as we noted above, the prophet plainly says in what follows: And there shall come forth, he says, a rod from the root of Jesse — that is Mary — and a flower shall ascend from its root, and the Spirit of God shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of knowledge and piety, the Spirit of counsel and truth; the Spirit of the fear of God shall fill him. For the whole of the spiritual endowments fitted no man except Christ, likened to a flower for his glory, for his grace, but reckoned of the stock of Jesse, namely through Mary, and thence to be counted. For Mary, from whom Christ is born, was of the homeland of Bethlehem and of the house of David, as she was registered in the census among the Romans. I demand also whether he has come who was foretold by the prophets as about to come of the race of Jesse, and to display all humility and patience and tranquillity. Equally, then, that man who is shown to be such, he himself will be the Christ who has come. For of him the prophet says: A man set in affliction, and knowing how to bear weakness, who was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer opened not his mouth. If he neither contended, nor cried out, nor was his voice heard abroad — he who did not break the bruised reed, the faith of Israel, who did not quench the smoking flax, that is, the momentary ardour of the nations, but rather made it shine by the rising of his light — he can be no other than the one who was foretold. It is fitting, therefore, that the deeds of his Christ, who has come, be recognized by the rule of the Scriptures. For we read, unless I am mistaken, that he was distinguished by a twofold operation — of preaching and of power. But let provision be made for each title. So let us specifically run through the order we have begun, showing that Christ was announced as a preacher, as through Isaiah: Cry out, he says, with vigour, and do not spare; lift up your voice like a trumpet, and announce to my people their misdeeds, and to the house of Jacob their offences. Me day by day they seek, and they desire to know my ways, as a people that had done justice and had not forsaken the judgement of God, and so on. But that he would perform powers from the Father: Behold our God will repay judgement; he himself will come and will save us; then the weak shall be cured, and the eyes of the blind shall see, and the ears of the deaf shall hear, and the tongues of the dumb shall be loosed, and the lame shall leap like a stag, and the rest. That Christ wrought these things, you yourselves do not deny — inasmuch as you said that you did not stone him for his works, but because he did these things on the Sabbaths.

About the outcome of his passion you plainly waver, denying that the passion of the cross was foretold of Christ, and arguing besides that it is not to be believed that God exposed his Son to that kind of death, since he himself said: Cursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree. But the reason of the matter precedes the sense of this curse. For he says in Deuteronomy: But if a man be in some offence deserving the judgement of death, and he die, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day, since he is cursed by God who is hanged upon a tree, and you shall not defile the land which the Lord your God gives you as your portion. Therefore he did not curse Christ to this passion, but made a distinction, that whoever had incurred the judgement of death for some offence and died hanged on a tree, he was cursed by God who was hanged on the tree for the merits of his offences. Otherwise Christ, who spoke no deceit from his mouth, and who displayed all justice and humility, was (as we have recalled above to have been foretold of him) exposed to that kind of death not for his own merits, but so that the things foretold by the prophets might be fulfilled, befalling him through you — as the very Spirit of Christ already sang in the psalms, saying: They repaid me evil for good; and, What I had not taken, then I was paying back; They have destroyed my hands and my feet; and, They put gall into my drink, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink; For my garment they cast lots — and so the rest of the things you were to commit against him were foretold. All of which indeed he himself endured, suffering not for any evil deed of his own, but so that the Scriptures from the mouth of the prophets might be fulfilled. And surely the mystery of his passion had to be figured in the prophecies; and the more incredible it was, the more it would be a stumbling-block if it were foretold nakedly; and the more magnificent it was, the more it had to be overshadowed, so that the difficulty of understanding might seek the grace of God. And so first of all Isaac, when he was led by his father as a victim, himself carrying the wood, even then marked the outcome of Christ — granted by the Father as a victim, carrying the wood of his own passion. Joseph too himself prefigured Christ, even by this alone (lest I delay the course of my argument), that he suffered persecution from his brothers and was sold into Egypt for the favour of God, just as Christ too was sold carnally by his brothers from Israel, when he is betrayed by Judah [Judas]. For Joseph too is blessed by his father in these words: The beauty of a bull is his, his horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them shall he toss the nations equally even to the ends of the earth. Surely it was no rhinoceros that was meant by the unicorn, nor a minotaur by the two-horned; but Christ was signified in him — a bull, on account of his twofold disposition: to some fierce, as judge; to others gentle, as saviour, whose horns would be the extremities of the cross. For on the yard-arm of a ship too, which is a part of the cross, these extremities are so called; but the unicorn is the upright stake in the middle. By this power of the cross, then, and in this fashion horned, he now tosses all the nations through faith, lifting them from earth to heaven, and then will toss them through judgement, casting them down from heaven to earth. The same will elsewhere be the bull in the same Scripture. When Jacob extended his blessing upon Simeon and Levi, he prophesies concerning the scribes and the Pharisees; for from them their lineage is drawn. For he interprets it spiritually thus. Simeon and Levi have accomplished iniquity out of their faction — by which, namely, they persecuted Christ. Into their counsel let not my soul come, and upon their station let not my inward parts rest, for in their indignation they slew men — that is, the prophets — and in their lust they hamstrung a bull — that is, Christ, whom, after the slaying of the prophets, they killed, and raged against his sinews by fixing them with nails. Otherwise it is empty, if after the murder already committed by them he reproaches others, and not themselves, with butchery. But again Moses — why, indeed, did he then, when Joshua was fighting against Amalek, pray sitting with hands outstretched, when in matters so urgent he ought rather to have commended his prayer on bended knees, with hands beating his breast and his face rolled in the dust — except that there, where the name of the Lord Jesus was spoken, of those who would one day do battle against the devil, the posture of the cross too was necessary, through which Jesus was to bear away the victory? The same Moses again — after every likeness of any thing was forbidden — why did he set up a bronze serpent placed on a tree in the posture of one hanging, as a salutary spectacle for Israel, at the time when they were being destroyed by serpents after their idolatry, except that here he was pointing to the Lord's cross, by which the serpent the devil was designated, and that for each one wounded by serpents of this kind — that is, by his angels — salvation was wrought when he turned from the sinfulness of his offences to the mysteries of Christ's cross? For whoever then looked upon it was freed from the bite of the serpents. Come now, if you have read in the prophet, in the psalms: God has reigned from the tree, I await what you understand — lest perhaps you suppose that some woodcutter king is signified, and not Christ, who from then, having overcome death by the tree of his passion, reigned. So too Isaiah: Because a child, he says, is born to us, and a son is given to us. What new thing, if he does not speak of the Son of God? And he is born to us, whose beginning of empire was made upon his shoulder. What king at all carries the emblem of his power on his shoulder, and not either a diadem on his head, or a sceptre in his hand, or some mark of his proper robe? But the one new king of the ages, Christ Jesus, lifted up his new glory and power and sublimity on his shoulder — namely the cross — so that, according to the prophecy above, the Lord might thereafter reign from the tree. For of this tree God hints also through Jeremiah, that you would say: Come, let us cast wood into his bread, and let us wear him away from the land of the living, and his name shall be remembered no more. Surely wood was cast into his body. For thus Christ revealed it, calling his body bread, whose body the prophet had announced of old under the figure of bread. If you still ask for the proclamations of the Lord's cross, the twenty-first psalm can now satisfy you, containing the whole passion of Christ, who even then sang his own glory. They have dug, he says, my hands and my feet, which is the proper atrocity of the cross. And again, when he implores the help of the Father: Save me, he says, from the mouth of the lion — that is, of death — and my lowliness from the horns of the unicorns — that is, from the points of the cross, as we have shown above. Which cross neither David himself suffered, nor any of the kings of the Jews, lest you suppose that the passion of another is prophesied than of him who alone was so signally crucified by the people. Now if your hardness of heart spurns and mocks all these interpretations, we will prove that the foretold death of Christ can suffice, so that from this — that the manner of the death was not stated — it is understood to have come about by the cross, and that the passion of the cross was to be assigned to none but him whose death was foretold. For I wish to show his death and passion and burial by a single utterance of Isaiah. From the misdeeds of my people, he says, he was led to death, and I will give the wicked for his burial, and the rich for his death, because he did no wickedness, nor was deceit found in his mouth, and God willed to deliver his soul from death, and the rest. He says further: His burial has been taken away from the midst. For one is not buried unless he is dead, and his burial was not taken away from the midst except through his resurrection. In short, he adds: Therefore he himself shall have many for an inheritance, and shall divide the spoils of many. Who else but he who was born (as we showed above), for the reason that his soul was handed over to death? For the cause of his grace having been shown — namely, that it was to be repaid for the injury of death — it was equally shown that he would obtain these things on account of his death, after his death, that is, after his resurrection. For what happened in his passion, that midday grew dark, the prophet Amos announces, saying: And it shall be in that day, says the Lord, the sun shall set at midday, and the day of light shall grow dark over the earth, and I will turn your feast days into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation, and I will put sackcloth upon your loins, and baldness upon every head, and I will make it like the mourning for a beloved one, and those with him like a day of grief. For this too Moses prophesied that you would do, at the beginning of the first month of the new things, when all the multitude of the children of Israel was to sacrifice the lamb at evening, and he foretold that they would eat with bitterness the solemnity of this day — that is, of the Passover of unleavened bread — and he added that it was the Passover of the Lord, that is, the passion of Christ. Which was so fulfilled too, that on the first day of unleavened bread you killed Christ, and, that the prophecies might be fulfilled, the day hastened to make evening, that is, to produce darkness, which came at midday; and so God turned your feast days into mourning, and your songs into lamentation. For after the passion of Christ captivity and dispersion befell you too, foretold beforehand through the Holy Spirit.

For Ezekiel too announces that, for these merits of yours, your disaster is to come — and not only in this age, which has already come to pass, but in the day of retribution, which will follow. From which disaster no one will be freed, except whoever has been sealed by the passion of Christ, whom you spurn. For thus it is written: And the Lord said to me, son of man, you have seen what the elders of Israel do — each of them in the dark, each in a hidden chamber; for they have said, the Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land. And he said to me, turning further: You shall see greater misdeeds, which these do; and he brought me to the threshold of the gate of the house of the Lord that looks to the north, and behold, there women sitting and weeping for Tammuz; and the Lord said to me: Son of man, have you seen? Is it a small thing for the house of Judah, that they do the misdeeds which they have done? and still you shall see greater abominations of theirs; and he brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord, and behold, in the thresholds of the house of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, about twenty-five men gave their backs to the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the East; these were adoring the sun. And he said to me: Do you see, son of man? Is it a small thing for the house of Judah, that they do the misdeeds which these have done? since they have filled up their impieties, and behold, they themselves as it were mocking; I will act with my indignation, my eye shall not spare, neither will I have mercy; they shall cry out in my ears with a loud voice, and I will not hear them, nor will I have mercy. And he cried in my ears with a loud voice, saying: The vengeance of this city has drawn near, and each man held the vessels of destruction in his hand; and behold, six men were coming by the way of the high gate that looks to the north, and the two-edged axe of dispersion was in the hand of each, and one man in the midst of them clothed in a robe to the feet, and a girdle of sapphire about his loins; and they entered and stood next to the bronze altar, and the brightness of the God of Israel ascended from the Cherubim, which was over it in the inner part of the house, and he called the man who was clothed in the robe, who had upon his loins the girdle, and the Lord said to him: Pass through the midst of Jerusalem, and write the sign Tau on the foreheads of the men who groan and grieve over all the misdeeds done in their midst; and to the rest he said in my hearing: Go after him into the city and cut down, and do not spare your eyes, and do not have mercy on old man or young man or virgin, and slay all the little ones and the women, that they may be utterly destroyed; but all upon whom is the sign Tau, do not approach; and begin from my holy ones. Now the mystery of this sign was foretold in various ways, by which life was prepared beforehand for men, in whom the Jews would not believe — as Moses announced before in Exodus, saying: You shall be cast out of the land which you enter, and among those nations you shall have no rest, and there shall be unsteadiness of the tread of your foot, and God shall give you a weary heart and a wasting soul and failing eyes, that they see not, and your life shall be hanging on a tree before your eyes, and you shall not believe in your life. And so, since the prophecy was fulfilled by his coming — that is, by the birth which we recalled above, and by the passion which we have plainly declared — therefore Daniel too said that the vision and the prophet were sealed, since Christ is the seal of all the prophets, fulfilling all the things that had been announced of him before; for after his coming and his passion there is no longer any vision or prophet. Hence he most firmly says that his coming seals the vision and the prophecy. And so, showing both the number of the years and the time of the sixty-two and a half weeks fulfilled, we have proved that Christ then came, that is, was born; and of the seven and a half weeks, which are subdivided in the cutting off of the former weeks, within which times we have shown that Christ suffered; and so, the seventy weeks being concluded, and the city destroyed, that sacrifice and anointing thereafter ceased. Let it suffice thus far to have run through the order of Christ on these matters for the present, by which he is proved to be such as he was announced, even from this consonance of the Scriptures, by which we have spoken against the Jews from the prejudgement of the greater part. Nor let them call into doubt or deny the things written which we bring forward — so that from this too they cannot deny that they are equal to the divine Scriptures, so that the things which were foretold as to come after Christ may be recognized as fulfilled. Or, unless he had come after whom the things announced had to be struck out, would the things that have been accomplished even be proved?

Look upon all the nations emerging thereafter from the abyss of human error toward the Lord God the creator and his Christ; and if you dare to deny that it was foretold, at once the promise of the Father confronts you in the psalms, saying: You are my Son, today I have begotten you; ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession. Nor will you be able to call him the son of David rather than Christ, or to say that the ends of the earth were promised to David rather than to Christ — David, who reigned within Judaea alone, but Christ, who has now taken the whole world by the faith of his gospel, as he says through Isaiah: Behold, I have given you for the disposition of my race, for a light to the nations, that you may open the eyes of the blind — namely, of those who err — to loose the bound from their chains — that is, to free them from their offences — and from the house of prison — that is, of death — those sitting in darkness — namely, of ignorance. And if these things come about through Christ, they were prophesied of no other than him through whom we see them struck out.

Therefore, since the children of Israel affirm that we err in receiving Christ, who has now come, let us prescribe to them from the Scriptures themselves that Christ, who was foretold, has now come. Although from the times of Daniel, who foretold it, we have already proved that the Christ who was announced has now come. For he had to be born in Bethlehem of Judah. For thus it is written in the prophet: And you, Bethlehem, are not the least among the leaders of Judah; for out of you shall come forth a leader who shall shepherd my people Israel. But if he is not yet born, who was announced as the leader to come forth of the tribe of Judah out of Bethlehem? For he must proceed of the tribe of Judah and from Bethlehem; but we now observe that no one of the race of Israel has remained in the city of Bethlehem, and from then it has been forbidden that any of the Jews should dwell in the borders of that very region — so that this too might be fulfilled through the prophet: Your land is deserted, your cities burned with fire (that is, what befell them in the time of war), your region strangers shall devour before your face, and it shall be deserted and overthrown by foreign peoples. And in another place it is said thus through the prophet: You shall see the king with brightness — that is, Christ, performing powers in the glory of God the Father — and your eyes shall see the land from afar — because you, for your merits, after the conquest of Jerusalem, forbidden to enter your land, were permitted only to see it from afar with your eyes. Your soul, he says, shall meditate fear — namely, at the time when they suffered their own destruction. How, then, shall a leader be born of Judaea, and how shall he come forth from Bethlehem, as the divine volumes of the prophets declare, when there is no one at all left there of Israel from whose stock Christ could be born? For if, according to the Jews, he has not yet come, when he begins to come, from where shall he be anointed? For the law forbade that the anointing of the royal chrism be made in captivity. But if there is now no anointing there, as Daniel prophesied (for he says: The anointing shall be destroyed), then they now have no anointing, because there is no temple either, where there was the horn from which the kings were anointed. If, then, there is no anointing, from where shall the leader be anointed who shall be born in Bethlehem? Or how shall he come forth from Bethlehem, when of the seed of Israel there is no one at all in Bethlehem? Let us therefore show once more, through the prophets, both that Christ has now come, and has suffered, and has now been received into the heavens, and is to come from there according to the proclamations of the prophets. For after his coming, according to Daniel, we read that the city itself was to be destroyed, and we recognize that it was so done. For Scripture says thus: The city and the holy place shall be destroyed together with the leader — undoubtedly the one who was to come forth from Bethlehem and from the tribe of Judah. Hence too it is plain that the city was at that same time to be destroyed when its leader had to suffer in it, by the Scriptures of the prophets, saying: I stretched out my hands all day long to a stubborn and gainsaying people, who walks in a way not good, but after their own sins. And in the psalms he says: They have destroyed my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones; but they themselves looked on and saw me, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. These things David did not suffer, that he should seem to have rightly said them of himself, but Christ, who was crucified. But hands and feet are not destroyed, except of him who is hanged on a tree. Hence David too said that the Lord would reign from the tree; for elsewhere too the prophet foretells the fruit of this tree, saying: The earth has given its blessings. Surely that virgin earth, not yet watered by rains nor made fruitful by showers, from which man was then first fashioned, from which now Christ was born through the flesh of a virgin. And the tree, he says, has brought forth its fruit — not that tree in paradise which gave death to the first-formed, but the tree of Christ's passion, from which life hung, not believed by you. For this tree was then in the mystery by which Moses sweetened the bitter water, from which the people, perishing of thirst in the wilderness, revived by drinking — just as we, drawn out from the calamities of the world, in which we dwelt perishing of thirst (that is, deprived of the divine word), have revived by drinking in faith, which is in him, the water of baptism from the tree of Christ's passion — from which faith Israel fell, as he says through Jeremiah: Send, and inquire diligently, whether such things have been done, whether the nations will change their gods, and these are not gods; but my people has changed its glory, from which nothing will profit them; heaven was appalled at this. And when was it appalled? Undoubtedly when Christ suffered. And it shuddered, he says, very greatly, and the sun grew dark at midday. And when did it shudder greatly, except at the passion of Christ, when the earth too trembled, and the veil of the temple was rent, and the tombs were burst open? For two evils, he says, has my people done: Me they have forsaken, the fountain of the water of life, and they have dug for themselves broken cisterns, which cannot hold water. Undoubtedly, by not receiving Christ, the fountain of the water of life, they began to have broken cisterns — that is, synagogues in the dispersions of the nations, in which the Holy Spirit no longer dwells, as it dwelt of old in the temple before the coming of Christ, who is the true temple of God. For the prophet Isaiah had also said that they would suffer this thirst of the divine Spirit, saying: Behold, those who serve me shall eat, but you shall hunger; those who serve me shall drink, but you shall thirst, and from the affliction of spirit you shall howl; for you shall leave your name as a satisfaction to my chosen, but you the Lord shall slay; but to those who serve me a new name shall be named, which shall be blessed in the lands. And further, the mystery of this tree we read celebrated also in the books of Kings. For when the sons of the prophets were cutting wood with axes over the river Jordan, the iron leaped out and was sunk in the river; and so, the prophet Elisha coming upon them, the sons of the prophets ask him to draw up the iron that had been sunk in the river. And so Elisha, having taken wood and cast it into that place where the iron had been sunk, immediately it floated up, and the wood was sunk, which the sons of the prophets received. From this they understood that the spirit of Elijah was represented in him. What is plainer than the mystery of this tree — that the hardness of this world, sunk in the depth of error, is freed by the tree of Christ, that is, of his passion, in baptism, so that what had once perished by the tree in Adam might be restored by the tree of Christ? for us, namely, who have succeeded in the place of the prophets, enduring today in the world the things which the prophets always suffered for the sake of the divine religion. For some they stoned, others they put to flight, and many they handed over to the slaughter of death, which they cannot deny. This wood Isaac too, the son of Abraham, himself carried for the sacrifice, when God had commanded that he be made a victim. But since these were mysteries which were kept to be accomplished in the times of Christ, both Isaac was preserved with the wood, a ram being offered, caught by its horns in a thicket, and Christ in his own times carried the wood on his shoulders, clinging to the horns of the cross, with a crown of thorns set about his head. For he it was who had to be made a sacrifice for all the nations, who was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb without voice before its shearer, so he opened not his mouth. For when Pilate questioned him, he said nothing; for in his lowliness his judgement was taken away. But his birth, who shall declare it? Since no man at all was conscious of the birth of Christ in the conceiving, when the virgin Mary was found pregnant by the word of God, and because his life would be taken from the earth. Why, then, after his resurrection from the dead, which took place on the third day, did the heavens receive him? According to the prophecy of Hosea, sent forth in this manner: Before the light they shall rise to me, saying: Let us go and return to the Lord our God, for he himself shall snatch us away and free us. After two days, on the third day, which is his glorious resurrection, he received him from earth into the heavens — whence the very Spirit had come to the virgin, whose neither birth nor passion the Jews acknowledged. Therefore, since the Jews still contend that Christ has not yet come, whom in so many ways we have proved to have come, let the Jews recognize their own outcome, which they were foretold as about to undergo after the coming of Christ, for the impiety by which they both despised and slew him. For first, from the day on which, according to the saying of Isaiah, a man cast away his abominations of gold and silver, which they made for adoring vanities and harmful things — that is, from the time when we the nations, our hearts being enlightened through the truth of Christ, cast away the idols (let the Jews see) — what follows has been struck out. For the Lord of hosts took away from among the Jews and from Jerusalem, among other things, also the wise architect, who builds the church of God, the temple, and the holy city, and the house of the Lord. For from then the grace of God ceased among them. And it was commanded to the clouds that they should not rain rain upon the vineyard of Soreq — that is, the heavenly benefits — that they should not come to the house of Israel. For it had made thorns, from which it had crowned Christ, and not justice, but the outcry by which it had forced him onto the cross. And so, the former gifts being withdrawn, the law and the prophets were until John; and the pool of Bethesda was until the coming of Christ. He ceased thereafter to cure the diseases of Israel, when from the persistence of their madness the name of the Lord was blasphemed through them, as it is written: Because of you the name of God is blasphemed among the nations. For from them the infamy began; and the middle time was from Tiberius to Vespasian. And since they had committed these things, and had not understood that Christ was to be found in the time of their visitation, their land was made deserted, and their cities burned with fire; strangers devouring their region before their face, the daughter of Zion was left like a watch-post in a vineyard, or like a hut in a cucumber field — that is, from the time when Israel did not know the Lord, and the people did not understand him, but rather forsook him and provoked the Holy One of Israel to indignation. So too the conditional threat of the sword: If you will not, nor obey, the sword shall devour you. From which we prove that the sword was Christ, by not hearing whom they perished — who in the psalm too asks of the Father their dispersion, saying: Scatter them in your power. Who again, through Isaiah, prays for their burning: Because of me, he says, these things have been done to you; in anguish you shall sleep. Since, then, these things were foretold as about to be suffered by the Jews on account of Christ, and we find that they have suffered them, and see them lingering in dispersion, it is plain that these things befell the Jews on account of Christ, the sense of the Scriptures conspiring with the outcome of events and the order of the times. Or if Christ has not yet come, on account of whom they were foretold as about to suffer these things, then when he has come, they shall suffer them. And where then is the daughter of Zion to be left, who today is nothing? where are the cities to be burned, which are already burned and lie in mounds? where is the dispersion of the nation, which is already an exile? Restore the state of Judaea, which Christ may find, and then contend that another is to come.

Learn now, from the abundance of your error, its leadership. We say that two characters of Christ were shown by the prophets, and as many comings of his marked beforehand. One in humility, the first, of course, when he had to be led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer, voiceless, so he opened not his mouth — not even comely to look upon. For we have announced, he says, concerning him, like a little child, like a root in thirsty ground, and he had neither form nor glory. And we saw him, and he had no form nor beauty, but his form was without honour, failing beyond the sons of men, a man in affliction, and knowing how to bear weakness — namely, as set by the Father for a stone of offence, and made by him a little lower than the angels; he calls himself a worm, and not a man, the disgrace of a man and the outcast of a people. These tokens of ignobility belong to the first coming, as those of sublimity to the second, when he shall come no longer as a stone of offence, nor a rock of scandal, but the highest cornerstone, taken up after rejection and exalted to the consummation, and that very rock cut from the mountain in Daniel, which shall break in pieces and grind down the image of the worldly kingdoms. Of which second coming the same Daniel said: And behold, with the clouds of heaven like a son of man one came, and came even to the Ancient of Days, and was present in his sight, and those who stood by led him forward, and to him was given royal power, and all the nations of the earth according to their kind and all glory shall serve him, and his power is eternal, which shall not be taken away, and his kingdom which shall not be corrupted. Then, of course, he shall have a form honourable and a beauty unfailing beyond the sons of men — for, fair in beauty beyond the sons of men. Grace is poured, he says, upon your lips, therefore God has blessed you forever. Gird your sword upon your thigh, O most mighty, in your fairness and beauty — when the Father afterwards, having made him a little lower than the angels, crowned him with glory and honour, and put all things under his feet. And then they shall know him, whom they pierced, and shall beat their breasts tribe to tribe — namely, because in the past they did not recognize him, set in the lowliness of the human condition. Jeremiah says: He is a man, and who shall know him? Because, says Isaiah, his birth too, who shall declare? So too in Zechariah, in his person — nay, even in the mystery of his very name — Christ, the truest priest of the Father, is delineated by a twofold dress for his two comings. First he is clothed in filthy garments — that is, in the indignity of passible and mortal flesh, when the devil too opposed him, namely the author of Judas the betrayer, who had even tempted him after his baptism. Then, stripped of his former filth, he is adorned with the robe to the feet and the mitre and the clean turban — that is, of the second coming; since he is shown to have attained glory and honour. Nor will you be able to call him the son of Jehozadak, who was in no way clothed in a filthy garment, but was always adorned with the priestly robe, nor ever deprived of the priestly office. But this Jesus is the Christ, high priest of God the Father most high, who at his first coming came in human form and passible, in humility, even to the passion, himself made a victim through all things for all of us, who after his resurrection, clothed in the robe to the feet, was named priest forever of God the Father. For thus I will give the interpretation of the two goats too, which were offered at the fast. Do not they also show the twofold order of the name of Christ, who has now come? Equal indeed and alike on account of the same appearance of the Lord, since he is to come in no other form, as one who has to be recognized by those by whom he was also injured. But one of them, wrapped in scarlet, cursed and spat upon and rent and pricked, was cast out by the people outside the city into perdition, marked with the plain emblems of Christ's passion — who, wrapped in a scarlet robe and spat upon and afflicted with every insult, was crucified outside the city. But the other, offered for the offences and given as food only to the priests of the temple, marked the tokens of the second representation, by which, all offences expiated, the priests of the spiritual temple — that is, of the church — should enjoy, as it were by a kind of feast, of the Lord's grace, while the rest fasted from salvation. Therefore, since the first coming was sung both obscured by very many figures and laid low with every dishonour, but the second both manifest and worthy of God, for this reason — looking only to the one they could easily both understand and believe, that is, the second, which is in honour and glory — they were not without cause deceived concerning the more obscure, the more unworthy, surely, that is, the first. And so to this day they deny that their Christ has come, because he did not come in sublimity, while they are ignorant that he was first to come in humility. Let it suffice thus far to have run through the order of Christ on these matters for the present, by which he is proved to be such as he was announced, so that now, from this consonance of the divine Scriptures, we may understand also that the things foretold as to come after Christ are, by the divine disposition, believed to be struck out. For unless he had come after whom they had to be struck out, by no means would the things have come to pass which were foretold as to happen at his coming. Therefore, if you see all the nations emerging thereafter from the depth of human error toward God the creator and his Christ (which you do not dare to deny was prophesied, since, even if you denied it, at once in the psalms, as we have already said, the promise of the Father would confront you, saying: You are my Son, today I have begotten you, ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession), you will not be able to claim Solomon, David's son, for this prophecy rather than Christ, the Son of God, nor that the ends of the earth were promised to David's son, who reigned within Judaea alone, rather than to Christ the Son of God, who has now illumined the whole world with the rays of his gospel. In short, the throne forever fits Christ the Son of God rather than Solomon, a temporal king, of course, who reigned over Israel alone. For today the nations call upon Christ, who did not know him, and the peoples today take refuge in Christ, whom they once knew not. You cannot contend that to be future which you see come to pass. Either deny that these things were prophesied, when they are seen before your eyes, or that they are fulfilled, when they are read; or, if you deny neither, they will be fulfilled in the one in whom they were prophesied.