Against the Jews

Let us therefore advance step by step, and define 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 sower of all nations, be believed to have given the law through Moses to one people alone, and be said not to have granted it to all nations? For unless he had given it to all, he would by no means have permitted even proselytes from the nations to have access to it; but, as befits the goodness of God and his equity, inasmuch as he is the fashioner of the human race, he gave the same law to all 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 if they did otherwise, they would die the death: which law would have sufficed for them, had it been kept. For in this law given to Adam, we recognize all the precepts as having been contained therein which afterwards sprouted forth 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 neighbor as yourself; and, You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and your mother: and, You shall not covet what belongs to another. For the primordial law given to Adam and Eve in paradise is, as it were, the matrix of all the commandments of God.

Finally, if they had loved the Lord their God, they would not have acted against his commandment: if they loved their neighbor, 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, by acting against the commandment of God; they would also have abstained from theft, if they had not secretly tasted of the fruit of the tree, nor desired to hide themselves under a tree from the sight of the Lord their God: nor would they have become partakers with the devil in his false assertion, by believing him that they would be like God: and so they would not have offended God as a father, who had fashioned them from the clay of the earth as if from the womb of a mother: if they had not coveted what belonged to another, 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 contained, which, brought forth in their own times, have germinated. For it belongs to the same one to teach the law more fully afterwards, who had first set forth the commandment, since it also belongs to him to instruct afterwards who had first undertaken to form the righteous. For what wonder is it if he who instituted augments the discipline? If he who began brought it to completion? Finally, I contend that before the law of Moses written on tablets of stone there existed an unwritten law, which was naturally understood and observed by the patriarchs. For whence was Noah found righteous, if the righteousness of the natural law did not precede him? Whence was Abraham counted a friend of God, if not on account of the equity and righteousness of the natural law?

Whence was Melchisedech named priest of the most high God, if there were not those before the Levitical law who, before there were Levites, offered sacrifices to God? For thus the law was given to Moses after the patriarchs written above, at that time after they had departed from Egypt, after an interval of many times and spaces. Finally, the law was given to Abraham after four hundred and thirty years.

Whereby we understand that the law of God existed even before Moses, and not only in Horeb, or in Sinai and in the desert, but more ancient, first in paradise, afterwards among the patriarchs, and so also reformed for the Jews at fixed times; so that we should not now attend to the law of Moses as though it were the principal law, but as a subsequent one, which God at a fixed time both set forth for the nations, and promised through the prophets to reform 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 for a time: nor let us take away this power of God, reforming the precepts of the law according to the condition of the times for the salvation of man.

Finally, let him who contends that the sabbath must still be observed as a remedy of salvation, and circumcision of the eighth day on account of the threat of death, show that in the past the righteous kept the sabbath or were circumcised, and were thus made friends of God. For if circumcision cleanses a man, when God made Adam uncircumcised, why did he not circumcise him, or afterwards when he sinned, if circumcision cleanses? Certainly, placing him uncircumcised in paradise, he set him over paradise as its cultivator. Therefore, since God established Adam neither circumcised nor keeping the sabbath, consequently he also praised his offspring Abel, offering sacrifices to him, uncircumcised and not keeping the sabbath, accepting what he offered in simplicity of heart, and rejecting the sacrifice of his brother Cain, who did not offer rightly, did not divide rightly. God also delivered Noah, uncircumcised and likewise not keeping the sabbath, from the flood.

For he also translated Enoch, most righteous, neither circumcised nor keeping the sabbath, from this world; who has not yet tasted death, as a candidate for eternity, already showing us that we too, without the burden of the law of Moses, can please God. Melchisedech also, priest of the most high God, uncircumcised and not keeping the sabbath, was chosen for the priesthood of God. Lot also, the brother of Abraham, proves that on account of the merits of his righteousness he was delivered from the burning of the Sodomites without observance of the law.

But Abraham, he says, was circumcised. But he pleased God before he was circumcised, and yet he did not keep the sabbath. For he had received circumcision, but one which was to be a sign for that time, not a prerogative of salvation. Indeed, the Patriarchs who followed were uncircumcised, such as Melchisedech, who offered bread and wine to Abraham himself, already circumcised, returning from battle, being himself uncircumcised. But also, he says, the son of Moses would then have been strangled by an angel, had not his mother Sephora circumcised the foreskin of the infant with a stone. Whence, he says, there is the greatest danger if anyone does not circumcise the foreskin of the flesh. And therefore if circumcision were to bring salvation in every way, even Moses himself would not have omitted to circumcise his own son on the eighth day, seeing that it is established that Sephora was compelled by the angel to do this on the journey.

Let us therefore consider that the forced circumcision of one infant could not prescribe a rule for the whole people, nor as it were establish a law of this commandment. For God, foreseeing that he was going to give this circumcision to the people of Israel as a sign, not for salvation, therefore urges the son of Moses, the future leader, to be circumcised, so that when he had begun to give the commandment of circumcision to the people through him, the people would not spurn it, seeing this example already celebrated in the leader's son.

For circumcision was to be given, but as a sign: whereby Israel in the last time was to be recognized, when according to its own merits it would be forbidden to enter the holy city, through the words of the prophets saying: Your land is desolate, your cities are burned with fire, strangers devour your region in your sight, and it shall be left desolate and overthrown by foreign peoples, the daughter of Sion shall be left as a cottage in a vineyard, and as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, and as a city that is besieged. And therefore the subsequent word of the prophet reproaches them saying: I have begotten and brought up children, but they have despised me. And again: And if you stretch forth your hands, I will turn away my face from you: and if you multiply prayers, I will not hear you: for your hands are full of blood.

And again: Woe, sinful nation, a people laden with sins, wicked children, you have forsaken God, and have provoked to indignation the Holy One of Israel. This therefore was the providence of God in giving circumcision to Israel as a sign whereby it could be recognized, when the time should come at which, by reason of the merits described above, it would be forbidden admission to Jerusalem: which, because it was to come, was announced, and because we see it accomplished, we acknowledge. As therefore carnal circumcision, which was temporal, was granted as a sign to a stubborn people, so spiritual circumcision was given for salvation to an obedient people, the prophet Jeremiah saying: Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns. Be circumcised to God, and circumcise the foreskin of your heart.

And in another place he says: Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Juda and with the house of Jacob, not such as I have already given to their fathers in the day when I led them out of the land of Egypt.

Whence we understand both that the former circumcision then given was to cease, and that a new law, not such as he had already given to the fathers, was announced as coming forth, as Esaias foretold saying, that in the last days the mountain of the Lord would be made manifest, and the house of God above the tops of the mountains: and it shall be exalted, he says, above the hills, all nations shall come upon 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 first-born son, but of Jacob the later, that is of our people, whose mountain is Christ cut out without hands of those who hew, filling the whole earth, shown forth in Daniel.

Finally, from this house of the God of Jacob, Esaias also announces that the new law was to go forth, saying in the following words: For out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and he shall judge among the nations, that is among those who are called from among the nations: and they shall beat, he says, their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and nation shall not take up sword against nation, and they shall learn war no more. Therefore are others than we to be understood, who, taught by the new law, observe these things, the old law being blotted out, whose abolition the very deed demonstrates as coming? For the old law avenged itself by the vengeance of the sword, and plucked out an eye for an eye, and repaid the recompense of injury: but the new law pointed to clemency, and converted the former execution of war against rivals of the law and enemies, into the peaceful acts of ploughing and tilling the earth.

Therefore, as we showed above, that the old law and carnal circumcision were proclaimed as destined to cease, so also the observance of the new law and spiritual circumcision shone forth in the duties of peace. For the people, he says, which I knew not, served me, in the hearing of the ear they obeyed me. The prophets announced it. But who is the people that was ignorant of God, if not ours, who formerly knew not God? And who heard with the hearing of the ear, if not we, who, having left idols, were converted 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 with manna in the desert, reduced for forty years to the likeness of eternity, and neither defiled with human passions nor fed with the food of this world, but fed with the bread of angels with manna, and sufficiently bound to God by his benefits, forgot the Lord its God, saying to Aaron: Make us gods to go before us: for that Moses, who led us out of the land of Egypt, has forsaken us, and we know not what has become of him. And therefore we, who were not formerly the people of God, have become his people, by receiving the new law spoken of above, and the new circumcision foretold before.

It follows therefore that, inasmuch as the abolition of carnal circumcision and of the old law is shown to have been cancelled at its appointed times, so also the observance of the sabbath is shown to have been temporal. 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 hence also Moses said to the people: Remember the day of the sabbaths; sanctify it. You shall do no servile work on it, except what pertains to the soul. Whence we understand that we ought rather to keep sabbath from all servile work always, and not only on every seventh day, but throughout all time. And on this account we must inquire what sabbath God would have us keep. For the Scriptures designate an eternal sabbath and a temporal sabbath. For the prophet Esaias says: My soul hateth your sabbaths. And in another place it says: You have profaned my sabbaths.

Whence we discern that the temporal sabbath is human, and the eternal sabbath is reckoned divine, concerning which he foretells through Esaias: 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, saith the Lord. Which we understand to have been fulfilled in the times of Christ, when all flesh, that is every nation, came to worship in Jerusalem the God the Father, through Jesus Christ his Son, as it was foretold through the Prophet: Behold, proselytes shall come to thee through me. Thus therefore before this temporal sabbath, there was also an eternal sabbath foreshadowed and foretold, just as before carnal circumcision there was also a spiritual circumcision foreshadowed.

Let them therefore show, as we have already said before, that Adam kept the sabbath; or that Abel, offering a holy sacrifice to God, was pleasing by reason of sabbath observance; or that Enoch, who was translated, was a keeper of the sabbath; or that Noah, the builder of the ark on account of the great flood, observed the sabbath; or that Abraham offered his son Isaac in the observance of the sabbath; or that Melchisedech received the law of the sabbath in his priesthood. But the Jews will say that from the time this commandment was given through Moses, it was thenceforth to be observed. It is therefore manifest that the commandment was not eternal nor spiritual, but temporal, and would at some point cease.

Finally, so far was this solemnity from being celebrated in the rest of the sabbath, that is of the seventh day, that Jesus of Nave, at the time when he was overthrowing the city of Jericho, said that a commandment had been given him by God, to the effect that he should charge the people that the priests should carry the ark of the covenant of God around the city for seven days; and that so, when the circuit of the seventh day was completed, the walls of the city would fall of their own accord. Which was so done; and when the space of the seventh day was ended, as had been foretold, the walls of the city fell.

From which it is plainly shown that among the number of those seven days the sabbath day fell: for seven days, from whatever point they take their beginning, must needs include the sabbath day within them, on which day not only did the priests perform their work, but also the city was taken with the edge of the sword as spoil by all the people of Israel. Nor is there any doubt that they performed servile work, since they were taking the spoils of war by God's commandment. For also in the times of the Maccabees they fought bravely on the sabbaths, and overcame the allophylian enemies, and by fighting on the sabbaths restored the law of their fathers to its former state of life. Nor do I suppose they were defending any other law than that in which they remembered it was prescribed concerning the day of the sabbaths.

Whence it is manifest that commandments of this kind were valid for a time and for the necessity of the present cause, and that God had not given such a law to them beforehand for the observance of perpetual time.

Thus we have also shown that earthly oblations and spiritual sacrifices were foretold. And indeed we have shown that from the beginning the sacrifices of the elder son, that is Israel, were prefigured in Cain as earthly; and the sacrifices of the younger son Abel, that is of our people, were shown to be different. For Cain the firstborn offered gifts to God from the fruit of the earth, but Abel the younger son offered 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? Is it not so that if you offer rightly but do not divide rightly, you have sinned? Be still: for your conversion is to you, and he himself shall have dominion over you. And then Cain said to Abel his brother: Let us go into the field. And he went with him there, and killed him. And then God said to Cain: Where is Abel your brother?

And he said: I do not know: am I my brother's keeper? And God said to him: The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the earth: wherefore, cursed is the earth, which opened its mouth to receive the blood of your brother. Groaning and trembling shall you be upon the earth. And Cain said to the Lord: My transgression is greater than that it should be forgiven me; and you will cast me out today from the face of the earth, and from your face I shall be hidden, and I shall be groaning and trembling upon the earth, and everyone who finds me will kill me. From this therefore we observe that the twofold sacrifices of the two peoples were already prefigured from the very beginning.

Furthermore, when the priestly law was written down through Moses in Leviticus, we find it prescribed to the people of Israel that sacrifices should be offered to God in no place except in the land of promise, which the Lord God was to give to the people of Israel and their brethren: so that, once Israel was brought in, sacrifices and holocausts should be celebrated there both for sins and for souls, and nowhere else but in the holy land. Why therefore does the Spirit afterwards proclaim through the prophets that it would come to pass that sacrifices would be offered to God in every land or in every place, as through Malachi the angel, one of the twelve prophets, he says: I will not receive sacrifice from your hands, because from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof my name is glorified among all the nations, says the Lord Almighty. And in every place clean sacrifices are offered to my name. Likewise in the Psalms David says: Bring to God, O homelands of the nations.

Without doubt because the preaching of the Apostles was to go out into all the earth. Bring to God glory and honour, bring to God sacrifices of his name. Take up victims, and enter into his courts. For that God is to be propitiated not by earthly sacrifices but by spiritual ones, we read as it is written: A contrite and humbled heart is a sacrifice to God. And elsewhere: Sacrifice to God the sacrifice of praise, and pay your vows to the Most High. Thus therefore spiritual sacrifices of praise are designated, and a contrite heart is shown to be an acceptable sacrifice to God. And so, just as carnal sacrifices are to be understood as reprobated, of which Isaiah also speaks, saying: To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? Says the Lord, so spiritual sacrifices are proclaimed as accepted, as the Prophets announce. For even if you bring me fine flour, he says, it is a vain supplication, an abomination to me.

And further he says: Your holocausts and sacrifices, and the fat of goats, and the blood of bulls I do not want: nor if you come to be seen by me; for who has required these things from your hands? But concerning spiritual sacrifices he adds, saying: And in every place clean sacrifices shall be offered to my name, says the Lord.

Therefore, since it is manifest that a temporal sabbath has been shown, and an eternal sabbath foretold, a carnal circumcision foretold, and a spiritual circumcision pre-indicated, likewise a temporal law and an eternal law announced, carnal sacrifices and spiritual sacrifices prefigured; it follows that, all these precepts having been given carnally to the people of Israel in the preceding time, there would come a time when the precepts of the old law and the old ceremonies would cease, and the promise of the new law and the recognition of spiritual sacrifices and the pledge of the New Testament would supervene, as the light from on high shone upon us, who sat in darkness and were held in the shadow of death.

Therefore a necessity lies upon us, that, since we have declared the new law to have been foretold by the prophets, and not such as had already been given to their fathers at the time when he led them out of the land of Egypt, we ought to show and prove both that the old law has ceased and that the promised new law is now at work. And indeed first of all it must be asked whether there is still awaited the giver of the new law, and the heir of the New Testament, and the priest of new sacrifices, and the purifier of the new circumcision, and the keeper of the eternal sabbath, who would restrain the old law, and establish the New Testament, offer new sacrifices, and suppress the ancient ceremonies, and restrain the old circumcision together with its sabbath, and announce the new kingdom which shall not be corrupted.

For also the giver of the new law, the keeper of the spiritual sabbath, the high priest of eternal sacrifices, the eternal ruler of the eternal kingdom—it must be asked whether he has already come or not. And if he has already come, he is to be served; if he has not yet come, he is to be awaited, provided only that it be clear that at his coming the precepts of the old law are suppressed, and the beginnings of the new law ought to be at work; and first of all it must be determined that the ancient law and the prophets could not have ceased unless he had come who was announced through that same law and through those same prophets as about to come.

Therefore let us in this matter take a step forward, whether the Christ who was announced as coming has already come, or is still hoped for as yet to come. In order that this very thing may be proved, we must also inquire into the times when the prophets announced that Christ would come; so that if we recognize that he came in those times, we may without doubt believe him to be the very one whom the prophets sang as about to come, in whom we, namely the nations, were announced as about to believe: and when it is established that he has come, let us undoubtedly also believe that the new law was given by him, and let us not deny that the New Testament was disposed for us in him and through him. For we know that not even the Jews deny that Christ is to come, inasmuch as they stretch out their hope toward his advent.

Nor is there need to inquire further about this, since all the prophets of old sang of him, as Isaiah says: Thus says the Lord God to my Christ the Lord, whose right hand I have held, that the nations may hearken to him: I will break the strength of kings, I will open gates before him, and cities shall not be closed to him. Which very thing we see fulfilled. For whose right hand does God the Father hold, if not that of Christ his Son? To whom all the nations have hearkened, that is, in whom all the nations have believed, whose preachers the Apostles are also shown in the psalms of David: In all the earth, he says, their sound has gone out, and to the ends of the earth their words. For in whom else have all the nations believed, if not in Christ who has already come? For in whom else have the other nations also believed?

Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and those who inhabit Mesopotamia, Armenia, Phrygia, Cappadocia; and those dwelling in Pontus, and Asia, and Pamphylia; those sojourning in Egypt, and the region of Africa which is beyond Cyrene, Romans and residents; then also in Jerusalem Jews, and the other nations: so that now the various peoples of the Gaetulians, and the many borders of the Moors, all the boundaries of the Spains, and the diverse nations of the Gauls, and the places of the Britons inaccessible to the Romans yet truly subject to Christ, and those of the Sarmatians, and the Dacians, and the Germans, and the Scythians, and of many other nations added, and of many provinces and many islands unknown to us, and which we are less able to enumerate? In all of which places the name of Christ, who has already come, reigns; inasmuch as before him the gates of all cities are opened, and to him none are closed: before him iron bars have been shattered, and bronze doors have been opened.

Although these things are also to be understood spiritually, in that the hearts of individuals, besieged in various ways by the devil, have been unlocked by faith in Christ; yet they are plainly fulfilled, inasmuch as in all those places a people of the name of Christ dwells. For who could have reigned over all, if not Christ the Son of God? Who was announced as about to reign over all nations in eternity. For if Solomon reigned, yet only within the borders of Judah, the limits of his kingdom are marked from Beersheba to Dan. If indeed Darius reigned over the Babylonians and Parthians, he did not have power over all nations. If Pharaoh over the Egyptians, or whoever succeeded him in the inheritance of the kingdom; there only is the dominion of his kingdom rather. So Nebuchadnezzar with his princes had the limits of his kingdom from India to Ethiopia. So Alexander of Macedon never held all Asia and the other regions after he had conquered them.

So the Germans are still to this day not permitted to cross their own borders. The Britons are enclosed within the circuit of their own Ocean. The nation of the Moors and the barbarity of the Gaetulians are hemmed in by the Romans, lest they exceed the bounds of their own regions. What shall I say of the Romans, who fortify their empire with the garrisons of their legions, and cannot extend the forces of their kingdom beyond those nations? But the kingdom and name of Christ is extended everywhere, is believed everywhere, is worshipped by all the nations enumerated above, reigns everywhere, is adored everywhere, is bestowed equally upon all everywhere; with him the king has no greater favour; no lesser joy for any barbarian, no separate merits of dignities or birth for anyone; he is equal to all, king of all, judge of all, God and Lord of all. And do not hesitate to believe what we assert, since we see it coming to pass.

Therefore the times of the predicted and future nativity of Christ, and of his passion, and of the extermination of the city of Jerusalem, that is, its devastation, must be sought out. For Daniel says that both the holy city and the sanctuary shall be exterminated with the coming prince, and that the pinnacle shall be destroyed unto destruction. The times of Christ the coming prince must therefore be sought out, which we shall investigate in Daniel: and when these have been computed, we shall prove that he has come, both from the prescribed times, and from the fitting signs, and from his works: which we prove from the subsequent events that were announced as future after his advent, so that we may believe all things both fulfilled and foreseen. Thus therefore Daniel predicted concerning him, so as to show both when and in what time he would liberate the nations, and that after the passion of Christ this city would have to be exterminated.

For he speaks thus: In the first year under Darius the 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 yet speaking in prayer, behold the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the 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, I am now come forth to imbue thee with understanding; at the beginning of thy supplication the word went forth. And I am come to announce to thee, because thou art a man of desires, and consider the word, and understand in the vision." Seventy weeks are shortened over thy people, and over the holy city, until the transgression grow old, and sins be sealed, and iniquities be expiated, and everlasting justice be brought in, and both vision and prophet be sealed, and the Holy of holies be anointed.

And thou shalt know, and perceive, and understand from the going forth of the word, for restoring and rebuilding Jerusalem unto Christ the prince, seven weeks and a half, and seventy-two and a half: and it shall be converted, and shall be built in breadth and in depth, and the times shall be renewed: and after these seventy-two weeks, the anointing shall be exterminated, and shall be no more: and the city and the sanctuary shall he exterminate with the coming prince, and they shall be cut down as in a flood unto the end of the war, which shall be cut down unto destruction. And he shall confirm the covenant with many. One week and half a week, my sacrifice and libation shall be taken away, and in the sanctuary the abomination of desolation, and unto the end of time a consummation shall be given upon this desolation.

Let us therefore observe the limit, how he truly predicted seventy weeks to come, in which if they received him, it would be built in breadth and in length, and the times would be renewed. But God, foreseeing what was to come, and that they would not only not receive him, but would even pursue him, and deliver him to death, recapitulated and said: That in sixty-two weeks he would be born and the Holy of holies anointed; but when seven and a half weeks should be fulfilled, he would have to suffer, and the city to be exterminated after one and a half weeks, at which time, that is, seven and a half weeks are completed. For he speaks thus: And the city and the sanctuary shall be exterminated with the coming prince, and they shall be cut down as in a flood, and he shall destroy the pinnacle unto destruction. Whence therefore do we show that Christ came within sixty-two and a half weeks?

We shall count from the first year of Darius, since in that very time the vision itself is shown to Daniel. For he says: Understand, and consider unto the completion of the word as I answer thee these things. Whence from the first year of Darius we must compute, when Daniel saw this vision. Let us see therefore how the years are fulfilled unto the advent of Christ. For Darius reigned nineteen years; Artaxerxes reigned forty years: then king Ochus, who is also Cyrus, reigned twenty-four years; Argus one year; another Darius, who was also named Melas, twenty-two years; Alexander the Macedonian twelve years. Then after Alexander, who had ruled over both the Medes and the Persians, whom he had conquered, and had established his kingdom in Alexandria, when he also named it after his own name. Afterwards Soter reigned there in Alexandria thirty-five years; Philadelphus succeeding him reigned thirty-nine years.

To him succeeded Euergetes, twenty-five years; then Philopator seventeen years; after him Epiphanes twenty-four years; likewise another Euergetes, twenty-nine years, Soter thirty-eight years, Ptolemy thirty-eight years, Cleopatra twenty years, six months. Likewise Cleopatra reigned jointly with Augustus thirteen years more, after Cleopatra Augustus another forty-three years. For all the years of the reign of Augustus were fifty-six years. We observe moreover that in the forty-first year of the reign of Augustus, in which he ruled after the death of Cleopatra, Christ is born. And the same Augustus survived after the birth of Christ fifteen years. And the remaining years of time unto the day of the nativity of Christ shall be forty-one years. There result four hundred and thirty-seven years, six months. Whence sixty-two and a half weeks are fulfilled, which make four hundred and thirty-seven years, six months, unto the day of the nativity of Christ.

And everlasting justice was made manifest, and the Holy of holies was anointed, that is Christ; and the vision and prophecy were sealed, and sins were remitted, which through faith in the name of Christ are remitted to all who believe in him.

But what is it that he says, that vision and prophecy are sealed, since all the prophets announced concerning him that he was to come and to suffer? Therefore, since the prophecy has been fulfilled through his advent, he said that vision and prophecy are sealed, because he himself is the seal of all the prophets, fulfilling all things which the prophets of old had announced concerning him. For after the advent of Christ and his passion, there is now no vision nor prophet who announces that Christ is to come. Finally, if this is not so, let the Jews produce some volumes of prophets after Christ, some visible miracles of angels, such as the patriarchs of old saw unto the advent of Christ, who has now come, from which time vision and prophecy are sealed, that is, established. And rightly does the Evangelist say: The Law and the Prophets until John the Baptist.

For when Christ was baptized, that is, sanctifying the waters in his baptism, the whole fullness of the spiritual gifts of old ceased in Christ, sealing all visions and prophecies, which he fulfilled by his advent. Whence he most firmly says that his advent seals vision and prophecy. Therefore, having shown both the number of years and the time of the sixty-two and a half weeks fulfilled, that Christ then 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, have been fulfilled. For after Augustus, who survived after the nativity of Christ, fifteen years are reckoned: to whom Tiberius Caesar succeeded, and held the empire twenty-two years, seven months, twenty days. In the fifteenth year of his reign Christ suffered, being about thirty years of age when he suffered.

Likewise Gaius Caesar, who is also Caligula, three years, eight months, thirteen days; Nero Caesar nine years, nine months, thirteen days; Galba seven months, six days; Otho three months, five days; Vitellius eight months, ten days; Vespasian in the first year of his reign conquered the Jews: and the number comes to fifty-two years, six months. For he reigned nine years: and thus on the day of their conquest the Jews fulfilled the seventy weeks predicted by Daniel. Therefore, when these times also were completed, and the Jews conquered, thereafter libations and sacrifices ceased there; for they could no longer be celebrated there. For the anointing also was exterminated there after the passion of Christ. For it had been predicted that the anointing would be exterminated there, as it is prophesied in the Psalms: They pierced my hands and my feet.

Which passion of this extermination 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 calends of April, on the first day of unleavened bread, on which Moses had commanded that they should slay the lamb toward evening. And so the whole synagogue of the children of Israel slew him, saying to Pilate, when he wished to release him: The blood of this man be upon us, and upon our children; and if thou release this man, thou art not Caesar's friend: so that all things which had been written concerning him might be fulfilled.

Let us begin, therefore, to prove that the birth of Christ was announced by the prophets. Thus Isaiah says: Hear, O house of David, it is no small contest for you with men, since God furnishes the contest: therefore God himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted: God with us. He shall eat butter and honey. Because, before the infant knows how 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 prediction of Isaiah, and make a comparison, whether to Christ who has already come, that name which Isaiah predicted first belongs to him, and the marks which he announced concerning him. Indeed Isaiah predicts that he ought to be called Emmanuel, and then that he would take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians.

But, they say, this one who has come was neither published under a name of that kind, nor did he perform any military service. But we, on the contrary, have thought it necessary to admonish them to recognize also the coherence of this chapter: for the interpretation of Emmanuel is also subjoined, namely God with us, so that you may regard not only the sound of the name, but also its meaning. For the Hebrew sound, which is Emmanuel, belongs to his own nation; but its meaning, which is God with us, is common through interpretation. I ask, therefore, whether that expression, God with us, which is Emmanuel, has been in use concerning Christ from the time when Christ shone forth? And I think you will not deny it at all. For those who from Judaism believe in Christ, from the time they believe in him, whenever they wish to say Emmanuel, they signify that God is with us.

And thus it is established that he who was proclaimed as Emmanuel has already come, because what Emmanuel signifies has come, that is, God with us. Likewise they are also led astray by the sound of the name, when they take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians in such a way as if they portended Christ as a warrior, not observing what Scripture sets before it: Because before the boy knows how to call father or mother, he shall receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians.

For first you must look at the indication of age, whether that age can present Christ as already a man, let alone as a general; namely, that an infant would summon men to arms with his crying; and would give the signal of war not with a trumpet, but with a rattle; and would aim at the enemy not from a horse or from a wall, but from the back or neck of his nurse and bearer; and would thus subdue Damascus and Samaria instead of breasts. It would be otherwise if in your view infants burst forth into battle, anointed first, I suppose, in the sun, then armed with swaddling-clothes, and provisioned with butter, who would know how to hurl a lance before they know how to be torn to pieces. For 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 it must be seen to have been spoken figuratively.

But also, they say, nature does not permit a virgin to give birth, and yet the prophet is to be believed. And rightly so. For he established credibility for an 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 shall bear a son. But a sign from God would not seem to be a sign unless it were some new and extraordinary thing. Finally, whenever you are eager to turn away certain simple individuals from this divine prediction, or to convert them, you dare to lie, as if Scripture contained not a virgin but a young woman who would conceive and give birth; but you are refuted on this point too, because a commonplace thing, namely the pregnancy and delivery of a young woman, could not be seen as any sign. Therefore a virgin mother set before us as a sign is rightly believed; but an infant warrior is not equally so.

For the logic of a sign does not operate here too, but with the sign of a new birth having been recorded, thereafter after the sign another order of infancy is declared, of one who would eat honey and butter. Nor is this in any way a sign, for this too belongs to infancy; but that he would receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians—this is the wondrous sign. Observe the measure of age, and seek the meaning of the prediction: nay, restore to the truth what you are unwilling to believe, and the prophecy is as well understood as it is declared to be cancelled. The infant Christ received the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria. For let those eastern Magi remain, who honored the recent infancy of Christ with gifts of gold and frankincense, and the infant received the power of Damascus without battle and arms.

For, apart from the fact that it is known to all, that the power of the East, that is its strength, was accustomed to abound in gold and spices, it is certain also from the divine Scriptures that gold constitutes the power of other nations as well; as he says through Zechariah: And Judah shall stretch out against Jerusalem, and shall gather all the strength of the peoples round about, gold and silver. For concerning this gift of gold David also said: And there shall be given to him of the gold of Arabia. And again: The kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall bring him gifts.

For the East has generally had Magi as kings, and Damascus was formerly reckoned as part of Arabia, before it was transferred to Syrophoenicia by the distinction of the Syrias, whose power Christ then received by receiving its tokens, namely gold and spices: but the spoils of Samaria were the Magi themselves, who, when they had recognized him and honored him with gifts, and having bent the knee had worshipped him, were made, as it were under the testimony of the guiding and leading star, spoils of Samaria, that is of idolatry, believing, of course, in Christ. For he designated idolatry by the name of Samaria, as one infamous for the idolatry by which it had then defected from God under king Jeroboam. Nor is this new to the divine Scriptures, to use figurative transference of names by comparison of crimes: for he also calls your rulers rulers of Sodom, and calls your people the people of Gomorrah; although those cities had long since been destroyed.

And elsewhere through the prophet to the people of Israel: Your father, he says, was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite; from whose stock they were not descended, but on account of similar impiety: whom he had at one time also called his own sons through the prophet Isaiah: I have begotten sons and exalted them. So also Egypt is sometimes understood by him as the whole world, by the designation of superstition and malediction. So also Babylon in our John is a figure of the city of Rome, likewise great, and proud in its dominion, and a conqueror of the saints. In this manner, therefore, he also designated the Magi by the appellation of Samaritans, and as despoiled of what they had in common with the Samaritans, as we said, namely idolatry. But against the king of the Assyrians means against the devil, who thinks himself to reign for this purpose, if he drives the saints away from the worship of God.

Moreover this our interpretation will be supported, since the Scriptures also elsewhere designate Christ as a warrior on account of the names of certain weapons and words of that kind. But the Jews will be refuted by comparison with the meanings of other passages: Gird yourself, says David, with a sword upon your thigh. But what do you read above concerning Christ? Fairer in beauty above the sons of men; grace is poured out upon your lips. But it is very absurd if, while he was girding him with a sword for war, he was flattering him about the timeliness of his beauty and the grace of his lips; concerning whom, adding further, he said: Stretch forth, and prosper, and reign. And he added: Because of your gentleness and your justice. For who shall work with a sword, and does not practice things contrary to gentleness and justice? That is, deceit and harshness and injustice, the proper business of battles.

Let us see therefore whether that sword is of another kind, whose action is also of another kind, that is the divine word of God, twice sharp with two testaments, of the old law and of the new law, sharpened by the equity of its wisdom, rendering to each according to his deed. It was permitted therefore also to Christ of God to be girded in the Psalms, without warlike matters, with the sword of the word of God in a figurative sense, to whom the predicted timeliness befits together with the grace of lips, who was then girded upon the thigh in David's time, when he was announced as about to come into the lands by the decree of God the Father: And your greatness, he says, shall lead you, namely the power of spiritual grace, from which the knowledge of Christ is derived: Your arrows, he says, are sharp, through the flying commands of God, threatening the exposure of every heart, piercing and transfixing every conscience. Peoples shall fall under you, worshipping, of course.

Thus Christ is mighty in war and armed, thus he shall receive spoils, not of Samaria alone, but of all nations as well. Acknowledge also the figurative spoils, you who have learned that his weapons too are allegorical.

And thus Christ who came was not a warrior to so great a degree, because he was not foretold as such by Isaiah. But if Christ, they say, who is believed to be yet to come, is not called Jesus, why is he who came called Jesus Christ? Yet both names will be established in the Christ of God, in whom Jesus also is found to be a name applied. Learn the manner of your error. When the successor of Moses was being appointed, Oshea the son of Nun, he is certainly transferred from his former name, and begins to be called Jesus. Certainly, you say. This we first declare to have been a figure of the future.

For because Jesus Christ was about to lead into the land of promise, flowing with milk and honey—that is, into the possession of eternal life, than which nothing is sweeter—a second people, which is ourselves, nations previously dwelling in the desert of this age; 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, after we had been circumcised by a blade of rock, that is, by the precepts of Christ—for Christ is the rock, proclaimed in many ways and figures—for this reason that man who was being prepared as an image of this mystery was also inaugurated with the figure of the Lord's name, so that he was called Jesus. For he who spoke to Moses was himself the Son of God, who also was always seen.

For no man has ever seen God the Father and lived: and therefore it is established that the Son of God himself spoke to Moses, and said to the people: Behold, I send my angel before your face, that is, before the face of the people, who shall keep you on the journey, and bring you into the land which I have prepared for you; attend to him, and hear him, and be not disobedient to him: for he has not concealed from you that my name is upon him. For it was Jesus who was to lead the people into the land of promise, not Moses.

He called him an angel, indeed, on account of the greatness of the powers which he was to display; which powers Jesus of Nun performed, as you yourselves read; and on account of the office of a prophet, namely as one announcing the divine will; just as the Spirit also calls the forerunner of Christ, John, a future angel through the prophet, speaking in the person of the Father: Behold, I send my angel before your face, that is, before the face of Christ, who shall prepare your way before you. Nor is it new for the Holy Spirit to call angels those whom God has set over others 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 proclaims.

Wherefore Christ himself, coming to fulfil the prophets, says to the Jews: He was, he says, a burning and shining lamp: inasmuch as he not only prepared his ways in the desert, but also, by pointing out the Lamb of God, illuminated 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 also Jesus, on account of the future mystery of his name: for he confirmed that name of his which he himself had given him, because he had commanded him to be called thenceforth not an angel, nor Oshea, but Jesus. Thus therefore both names befit the Christ of God, so that he should also be called Jesus.

And since the virgin from whom Christ was to be born was to draw her lineage from the seed of David, as we mentioned above, the prophet Isaiah evidently says in what follows: And there shall come forth, he says, a rod from the root of Jesse, which is Mary, and a flower shall ascend from his root. And the Spirit of God shall rest upon him, and the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and of strength, the spirit of knowledge and of piety, the spirit of the fear of God shall fill him. For the fullness of spiritual gifts was fitting for no man, except for Christ, who was indeed likened to a flower on account of grace, but reckoned as from the stock of Jesse, to be counted through Mary, that is, from that lineage. For Mary was from the town of Bethlehem and from the house of David, as she was registered in the census among the Romans, from whom Christ is born.

I also demand, since it was foretold by the prophets that he would come from the race of Jesse, and would display all humility and patience and tranquility, whether he has come? And thus whether that man who is shown to be such will himself be the Christ who came. For of him the Prophet says: A man set in a plague, and knowing how to bear weakness; who was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer did not open his mouth. If he neither contended, nor cried out, nor was his voice heard outside, who did not break the bruised reed, that is, the shaken faith of Israel; who did not quench the smoking flax, that is, the momentary ardor of the nations, but rather caused it to shine by the rising of his light; he cannot be other than he who was foretold. It is therefore necessary that the work of the Christ who came be recognized according to the rule of the Scriptures.

For we read him distinguished, unless I am mistaken, by a twofold operation, of preaching and of power. But concerning both titles I shall arrange thus; and so let us specifically mark out the order begun, teaching that Christ was foretold as a preacher, as through Isaiah: Cry out, he says, with strength, and spare not; lift up your voice like a trumpet, and announce to my people their crimes, and to the house of Jacob their transgressions. They seek me from day to day, and desire to know my ways. As a people that has done justice, and has not forsaken the judgment of God, and the rest. But that he would perform powers from the Father, Isaiah says: Behold our God renders judgment, he himself shall come, and shall save us. Then the infirm shall be healed, and the eyes of the blind shall see, and the ears of the deaf shall hear, and the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongues of the mute shall be loosed.

And the rest, which things Christ performed, as even you do not deny, inasmuch as you said that it was not on account of his works that you would stone him, but because he did these things on the sabbaths.

You plainly dispute the manner of His passion, denying that the passion of the cross was foretold concerning Christ, and arguing moreover that it is not to be believed that God would have exposed His Son to that kind of death, since He Himself said: Cursed is every man who has hung on a tree. But the proof of the facts precedes the meaning of this curse. For it says in Deuteronomy: But if there shall be in anyone a fault, so that there is a judgment of death, and he shall die, and you shall hang him on a tree. But you shall also bury him with burial on that same day: because cursed by God is everyone who has been hanged on a tree, and you shall not defile the land which the Lord your God will give you as a portion.

Therefore He did not curse Christ unto this passion; but He made a distinction, so that whoever had incurred a judgment of death for some fault and died hung on a tree, this man was cursed by God, because he was hung on the tree on account of the deserts of his own offences.

Christ, on the other hand, who spoke no guile from His mouth, and who displayed all justice and humility; and as we have recalled was foretold of Him above, was not exposed to that kind of death on account of His own deserts, but so that the things foretold by the prophets, which were to befall Him through you, might be fulfilled, just as the Spirit of Christ Himself was already singing in the Psalms, saying: They repaid me evil for good, and: What I had not taken, I then paid back; They dug through my hands and feet; and: They put gall in my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink; and, Upon my garment they cast lots; as likewise the rest of the things you were going to commit against Him were foretold. All of which things, having suffered in His own person, He did not suffer on account of any evil act of His own, but that the Scriptures might be fulfilled from the mouth of the prophets.

And surely the mystery of His passion had to be prefigured in the prophecies; and the more incredible it was, the more it was going to be a stumbling-block if it were proclaimed nakedly; and the more magnificent it was, the more it had to be veiled, so that the difficulty of understanding might seek the grace of God. And so first of all Isaac, when he was being led by his father as a sacrificial victim and was himself carrying the wood, was even then marking out the end of Christ, surrendered as a victim by the Father, bearing the wood of His own passion. Joseph likewise himself figured Christ, if only in this one respect—not to delay my course—that he suffered persecution from his brothers and was sold into Egypt, on account of God's grace, just as Christ also, on account of Israel, was sold by His brothers, when He is betrayed by Judah.

For Joseph also is blessed in these words: The beauty of a bull is his, the horns of a unicorn are his horns; with them he shall winnow the nations together unto the ends of the earth. Surely it was not a rhinoceros that was intended with its horns, nor a two-horned minotaur, but Christ was signified in him: a bull on account of both dispensations, fierce to some as judge, gentle to others as saviour: whose horns would be the extremities of the cross: for even in the yard-arm of a ship, which is part of the cross, the extremities are called horns: and the unicorn's horn is the middle stake of the upright. By this power of the cross, and being thus horned in this manner, He now winnows all nations through faith, lifting them from earth to heaven, and then will winnow them through judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth.

The same will also be a bull elsewhere in the same Scripture, when Jacob stretched out his blessing upon Simeon and Levi, prophesying of the Scribes and Pharisees; for from them their lineage is derived. For it is interpreted spiritually thus: Simeon and Levi completed iniquity from their own sect, by which they persecuted Christ. Let not my soul come into their council, and let not my inward parts rest in their assembly: because in their indignation they slew men, that is, the prophets; and in their desire they hamstrung the bull, that is Christ, whom after the slaughter of the prophets they killed, and raged against His sinews by nailing them with nails. Otherwise it would be pointless, if after the homicide already committed by them, He reproaches them with the slaughter of some ox.

Now indeed Moses—why at that particular time, when Jesus was fighting against Amalek, did he pray with hands spread out, sitting; when in affairs so momentous he ought rather to have commended his prayer with knees bent, and hands beating his breast, and face rolling on the ground?—unless because there, where the name of Jesus was fighting, the posture of the cross was also necessary, through which Jesus was to win the victory, for those who would one day fight against the devil.

Again, Moses, after every likeness of any thing had been forbidden, why did he set up a bronze serpent placed on wood, in the posture of one hanging, as a saving spectacle for Israel, at the time when they were being destroyed by serpents after their idolatry, unless because this was pointing to the Lord's cross, by which the serpent the devil is made a public spectacle, and for everyone wounded by such serpents, that is his angels, salvation was effected by turning from the guilt of sins to the mysteries of Christ's cross. For whoever looked upon it at that time was freed from the bite of the serpents. Come now, if you have read in the prophet in the Psalms, God reigned from the tree, I await what you understand by it, lest perhaps you think some carpenter-king is signified, and not Christ, who from that time, from the passion of Christ, having overcome death, reigned. Likewise also Isaiah: For a child, he says, is born to us, and a son is given to us.

What is new, if it is not of the Son of God, that he says: A son is born to us, whose dominion was made upon his shoulder? What king at all bears the insignia of his power on his shoulder, and not either a diadem on his head, or a sceptre in his hand, or sometimes a mark on his own garment? But Christ Jesus alone, the new king of the ages, bore His new glory and power and sublimity upon His shoulder, namely the cross, so that according to the earlier prophecy the Lord might reign from the tree. For concerning this wood God also intimates through Jeremiah what you were going to say: Come, let us put wood into his bread, and let us destroy him from the land of the living, and let his name be remembered no more. Surely the wood was put into His body. For thus Christ revealed it, calling His body bread, whose body the prophets had previously figured in bread.

If you still seek the proclamation of the Lord's cross, the twenty-first Psalm will now be able to satisfy you sufficiently, containing the whole passion of Christ, singing even then of His own glory: They dug through, he says, my hands and feet. Which is the distinctive atrocity of the cross. And again, when He implored the help of the Father: Save me, he says, from the mouth of the lion, that is of death, and from the horns of the unicorns my humility; that is, from the tips of the cross, as we showed above: which cross neither David himself suffered, nor any of the kings of the Jews, lest you think the passion of some other person is prophesied, rather than His who alone was so notably crucified by the people.

Now, even if the hardness of your heart has rejected and mocked all these interpretations, we have proved that the death of Christ as prophesied can suffice, so that from the fact that the manner of death was not specified, it may be understood to have come about through the cross, and the passion of the cross could not have been assigned to any other than the one whose death was foretold. For I wish to show His death and passion and burial in one utterance of Isaiah: He was led to death, he says, for the crimes of my people, and I will give the wicked for his burial, and the rich for his death; because he committed no crime, nor was guile found in his mouth, and God willed to deliver his soul from death. He also says further: His burial was taken away from the midst. For he was not buried unless dead, nor was his burial taken away from the midst, except through his resurrection.

Finally he adds: Therefore he himself shall have many as an inheritance, and shall divide the spoils of many. For who else, unless the one who was born, as we showed above, for the reason that his soul was delivered unto death? For when the cause of his grace has been shown, namely for the requital of the wrong of death, it has equally been shown that he was to obtain these things on account of death; after death, surely, he was to obtain resurrection.

For what happened at His passion, that midday grew dark, the prophet Amos announces, saying: And it shall come to pass, he says, in that day, says the Lord, the sun shall go down 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 him as the mourning of a beloved one, and those who are with him as a day of grief. For this also Moses prophesied at the beginning of the first month of new things that you would do, when all the multitude of the children of Israel was to sacrifice a lamb at evening: and he foretold that they would eat this solemnity of that day, that is the Passover of unleavened bread, with bitterness: and he added that it was the Passover of the Lord, that is the passion of Christ.

Which was so fulfilled also, 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 bring about darkness; which came about at midday: and thus God turned your feast days into mourning, and your songs into lamentation. For after the passion of Christ, captivity and dispersion also came upon you, foretold through the Holy Spirit.

For on account of these your deserts also, Ezekiel announces your coming ruin: and not only in this age, which has already come to pass, but on the day of retribution, which will follow. From which ruin no one will be freed, except one who has been sealed by the passion of Christ, whom you reject. For thus it is written: And the Lord said to me: Son of man, have you seen what the elders of Israel do, each one of them in the darkness, each one in his hidden chamber; because they said: The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land. And he said to me: You shall turn and see yet greater abominations which these men commit. And he brought me to the threshold of the gate of the house of the Lord which looks toward the north, and behold there women sitting, and weeping for Thammuz; and the Lord said to me: Son of man, have you seen?

Is it a small thing for the house of Judah, that they should commit the abominations which they have committed: and you shall yet see greater afflictions of theirs. And he brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord, behold at the thresholds of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and between the altar, about twenty-five men had turned their backs to the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the East, these were worshipping 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 should commit the abominations which they have committed here? Because they have filled up their impieties, and behold they are as it were mocking. I will deal with my indignation, my eye shall not spare, neither will I have mercy. They shall cry out to my ears with a loud voice, and I will not hear them, neither will I have mercy.

And he cried in my ears with a loud voice saying: The punishment of this city has drawn near, and each one had vessels of destruction in his hand. And behold six men were coming by the way of the upper gate, which looked toward the north, and the axe of dispersion was in the hand of each one. And one man in the midst of them clothed in a long robe, and a belt of sapphire on his loins. And they entered in, and stood near the bronze altar, and the glory of the God of Israel ascended from the Cherubim which was upon it to the open court of the house. And he called the man who was clothed in the long robe, who had the belt upon his loins, and the Lord said to him: Pass through the midst of Jerusalem, and mark the sign tau on the foreheads of the men who groan and mourn over all the abominations that are done in the midst of them.

And to these he said to the one listening: Go after him into the city, and strike, and let not your eyes spare, and have no mercy on the elder, or the virgin; and slay all the children and women, that they may be destroyed. But all upon whom the sign tau is, do not approach. And begin from my holy ones.

The mystery of this sign was proclaimed in various ways, through which life was being prepared for men, and in which the Jews would not believe; as Moses foretold beforehand in Exodus, saying: Ye shall be cast out from the land into which ye shall enter, and among those nations ye shall have no rest. And there shall be no stability for the sole of thy foot, and God shall give thee a weary heart, and a wasting soul, and failing eyes, so that they see not; and thy life shall hang upon a tree before thine eyes; and thou shalt not believe thy life.

Therefore, since the prophecy has been fulfilled through his coming, that is through the birth which we mentioned above, and through the passion which we have plainly declared, for this reason also Daniel said that the vision and the prophet were to be sealed, because Christ is the seal of all the prophets, fulfilling all things that had previously been announced concerning him: for after his coming and his passion, there is now neither vision nor prophet. Hence he most firmly declares that his coming seals the vision and the prophecy. And so, setting forth both the number of 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 the seven and a half weeks, which are subdivided as a cutting off from the earlier weeks, within which times we have shown Christ to have suffered; and thus with the seventy weeks concluded, and the city destroyed, sacrifice and anointing cease from that point.

It suffices thus far to have traced in the meantime the order of Christ's course, whereby he is proved to be such as was announced, even from this harmony of the Scriptures which, by the prior judgment of the greater part, we have set forth against the Jews. For let them not call into doubt or deny what we bring forward from the writings: so that from this also they cannot deny that these things are equal to the divine Scriptures; so that what was foretold as about to come to pass after Christ may be recognized as fulfilled. For the arrangement would not be found accomplished, unless he had come after whom the things that were announced were to be accomplished, which would also be proved to have been completed.

Behold all the nations, emerging thenceforth from the whirlpool of human error unto the Lord God the Creator and unto God his Christ; and if thou darest, deny the prophet. Straightway the promise of the Father meets thee in the Psalms, saying: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession.

Nor wilt thou be able to call him rather the son of David than Christ; or to say that the ends of the earth were promised to David rather than to Christ, seeing that David reigned within Judaea alone, whereas Christ has already taken the whole world captive by the faith of his Gospel, as he says through Isaiah: Behold, I have given thee as a covenant of my people, for a light of the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, that is, of those who wander, to loose those who are bound from their chains, that is, to free them from their sins: and from the prison house, that is, from death, those who sit in darkness, namely of ignorance. If these things come to pass through Christ, they will have been prophesied of none other than him through whom we observe them to have been accomplished.

Therefore, since the sons of Israel affirm that we err in receiving Christ, who has already come, let us establish against them from the Scriptures themselves that Christ who was proclaimed has already come; although from the times of Daniel prophesying we have proved that Christ who was announced has already come. For it was necessary that he be born in Bethlehem of Judah; for thus it is written in the prophet: And thou Bethlehem, thou art not the least among the rulers of Judah: for out of thee shall come forth a ruler who shall feed my people Israel.

But if he who was announced as a ruler about to proceed from the tribe of Judah out of Bethlehem has not yet been born—for it is necessary that he proceed from the tribe of Judah and from Bethlehem—we observe that now no one of the race of Israel has remained in the city of Bethlehem, and that from that time it has been forbidden that any of the Jews dwell even in the borders of that region, so that this too might be fulfilled through the prophet: Your land is desolate, your cities are burned with fire, that is, what befell them in time of war; strangers devour your region in your sight, and it shall be desolate and overthrown by alien peoples.

And in another place it is thus said through the prophet: Ye shall see the King in his glory, that is, Christ performing mighty works in the glory of God the Father, and your eyes shall behold the land from afar: which was permitted to you, according to your deserts, after the conquest of Jerusalem, when you were forbidden to enter your land, to behold it from afar with your eyes only. Your soul, he says, shall meditate fear, namely at the time when they suffered the destruction of their own city. How therefore shall the ruler be born from Judah, and how shall he proceed from Bethlehem, as the divine volumes of the prophets announce, when there is absolutely no one left there from Israel to this day, of whose stock Christ could be born? For if, according to the Jews, he has not yet come, when he shall begin to come, whence shall he be anointed? For the Law commanded that in captivity it is not lawful to prepare the anointing of the royal chrism.

But if there is now no anointing for them, as Daniel prophesied; for he says: The anointing shall be destroyed: therefore there is now no anointing there, because there is no temple either, where was the horn from which kings were anointed. If therefore there is no anointing, whence shall the ruler who is to be born in Bethlehem be anointed? Or how shall he proceed from Bethlehem, when there is absolutely no one of the stock of Israel in Bethlehem? Let us then show once more, both that Christ has already come according to the prophets, and that he has suffered, and has already been received into heaven, and that he is to come thence 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 acknowledge that it has been so done.

For Scripture says: So also the city and the sanctuary are to be destroyed together with the ruler, without doubt, who was to proceed from Bethlehem and from the tribe of Judah. Whence it is also manifest that the city ought to be destroyed at the same time, when its leader was to suffer in it, according to the scriptures of the prophets, who say: I have spread out my hands all the day to a rebellious people who contradict me, who walk in a way that is not good, but after their own sins. And in the Psalms he says: They have pierced my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones. But they themselves looked and stared at me: and, In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. These things David did not suffer, so that he might seem to have spoken them rightly of himself, but Christ who was crucified. Now hands and feet are not pierced except of one who is suspended from a tree.

Whence David himself also said that the Lord would reign from a tree: for also elsewhere the prophet foretells the fruit of this tree, saying: The earth has given her blessings. Surely that virgin earth not yet watered by rains, nor made fruitful by showers, from which man was then chiefly formed, from which now Christ has been born according to the flesh from a virgin. And the tree, he says, brought forth its fruit. Not that tree in paradise, which gave death to the first-formed, but the tree of the passion of Christ, from which life hanging was not believed by you.

For this tree was then in mystery, by which Moses sweetened the bitter water; whence the people, who were perishing of thirst in the desert, revived by drinking: just as we, drawn out from the calamities of the world in which we dwell, perishing of thirst, that is, deprived of the drink of the divine word, drinking the water sweetened by the tree of the passion of Christ in baptism, or that which is unto him, have revived; from which faith Israel has fallen away, according to Jeremiah saying: 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 shall profit them. The heaven was astonished at this. And how and when was it astonished? Without doubt when Christ suffered: And it shuddered, he says, exceedingly, and the sun grew dark at midday.

And when did it shudder exceedingly, if not at the passion of Christ, when the earth also trembled, and the veil of the temple was rent, and the tombs were broken open? Because my people has done these two evils: me, he says, they have forsaken, the fountain of living water, and they have dug for themselves broken cisterns, which cannot hold water. Without doubt by not receiving Christ, the fountain of living water: they began to have broken cisterns, that is, synagogues in the dispersions of the nations, in which the Holy Spirit no longer dwells, as he formerly dwelt 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, they who serve me shall eat; but ye shall hunger: they who serve me shall drink, but ye shall thirst, and shall howl from anguish of spirit.

For ye shall leave your name as an oath to my chosen ones; but the Lord shall slay you.

But to those who serve me, a new name shall be given, which shall be blessed in the earth. We read further that the mystery of this tree was celebrated in the Books of Kings. For when the sons of the prophets were cutting wood with axes by the river Jordan, the iron flew off and sank in the river, and so when the prophet Elisha came upon them, the sons of the prophets asked him to retrieve from the river the iron which had sunk. And so Elisha, taking a piece of wood and casting it into the place where the iron had sunk, it immediately floated up, and the wood sank, which the sons of the prophets received. From this they understood that the spirit of Elijah had been restored in him. What could be plainer than the mystery of this tree?

That the hardness of this age, sunk in the deep of error, is freed by the wood of Christ, that is his passion, in baptism, so that what was once lost through the wood in Adam might be restored through the wood of Christ. To us therefore who have succeeded in the place of the prophets, enduring today in the world what the prophets always suffered on account of the divine religion. For some they stoned, others they drove into flight, and very many they delivered to the punishment of death, which they cannot deny. This wood Isaac also, the son of Abraham, himself carried to the sacrifice, when God commanded that he become a victim for him. But since these were mysteries, which were kept to be fulfilled in the times of Christ; Isaac too was spared along with the wood, a ram being offered caught by its horns in a thicket, and Christ in his own times carried the wood upon his shoulders, clinging to the horns of the cross, a crown of thorns encircling his head.

For it was necessary that he become a sacrifice for all the nations, who was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opened not his mouth. For when Pilate questioned him he said nothing: for in his humiliation his judgment was taken away. But who shall declare his generation? Because absolutely no man was aware of the birth of Christ in his conception, since the virgin Mary was found with child by the word of God. And because his life was taken from the earth; since indeed after his resurrection from the dead, which was accomplished on the third day, the heavens received him, according to the prophecy of Hosea uttered 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 rescue and deliver us, after two days on the third day.

Which is his glorious resurrection, when he was received from earth into the heavens, whence that same Spirit had come to the virgin; whose birth and passion the Jews acknowledged not. Therefore, since the Jews still contend that their Christ has not yet come—whom we have proved to have come in so many ways—let the Jews recognize their own ruin, which was foretold as something they would bring upon themselves after the coming of Christ, on account of the impiety by which they both despised and slew him. For first, from the day on which, according to that saying of Isaiah, a man shall cast away his abominations of gold and silver which they made for worshipping vanities and night-owls: that is, from the time when the nations—we—having had the truth made clear through Christ, cast away idols (let the Jews observe this), what follows was also fulfilled.

For the Lord of Sabaoth took away from the Jews and from Jerusalem, among other things, the wise architect, who builds the Church, the temple of God, and the holy city, and the house of the Lord. For from that time the grace of God ceased among them. And it was commanded to the clouds that they should not rain upon the vineyard of Sorech, that is, that heavenly benefits should not come to the house of Israel. For it had brought forth thorns, with which it had crowned Christ; and not justice, but a cry, by which it had extorted his crucifixion: and so, with the former gifts of grace withdrawn, the law and the prophets were until John; and the pool of Bethsaida, which had been healing the infirmities of Israel until the coming of Christ, thereafter ceased from its benefits, since through their perseverance in fury the name of the Lord was blasphemed by them; as it is written: Because of you the name of God is blasphemed among the nations.

For from them the disgrace begins, and the intervening time from Tiberius to Vespasian. Since they had committed these things and had not understood that Christ was to be found in the time of his visitation, their land was made desolate, and their cities burned with fire: strangers devouring their region before their eyes: the daughter of Sion was left as a watchtower in a vineyard, or as a hut in a cucumber field; from the time, that is, 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 also the threat of the conditional sword, If ye are willing and will not hearken, the sword shall devour you, proved that it was Christ whom, by not hearkening to him, they perished; who also in the Psalm asks the Father for his dispersion, saying: Scatter them in thy power; who also again through Isaiah prays for their burning: Because of me, he says, these things were done to you; in anguish shall ye sleep. Since therefore the Jews are foretold to suffer these things on account of Christ, and we find that they have suffered them, and we observe that they remain in dispersion, it is manifest that these things have befallen the Jews on account of Christ, the sense of the Scriptures agreeing with the outcome of events and the order of times. Or if Christ has not yet come, on account of whom they were foretold to suffer these things, then when he comes they shall suffer them. And where then is the daughter of Sion to be left desolate, she who today is nothing?

Where are the cities to be burned, which are already burned in heaps? Where is the dispersion of the nation, which is already in exile? Restore the state of Judaea for Christ to find, and contend that another is coming.

Learn now from the abundance of your error the guidance you need. We say that two aspects of Christ were shown by the prophets, and that they prefigured an equal number of his comings: one in humility, assuredly the first, when he was to be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer without a voice, so he opened not his mouth, not even honorable in appearance: For we announce, it says, concerning him, as a little child, as a root in a thirsty land, and there was no form nor glory in him. And we saw him, and he had no form nor comeliness, but his form was without honor, failing beyond the sons of men, a man in plague, knowing how to bear infirmity: namely, as one placed by the Father as a stone of stumbling: and made a little lower than the angels by him, he declares himself a worm, and not a man, the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people.

These marks of lowliness belong to the first coming, just as those of exaltation belong to the second; when he shall be, no longer a stone of stumbling, nor a rock of scandal, but the chief cornerstone, taken up after rejection, and exalted to the completion: and indeed that rock in Daniel cut from the mountain, which shall crush and grind the image of the kingdoms of this age. Concerning this second coming the same Daniel said: And behold, with the clouds of heaven as a son of man coming, he came even to the Ancient of days, and was present in his sight. And those who stood by brought him near: and there was given to him royal power, and all 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 an honorable form and an unfailing comeliness above the sons of men: for he is timely in comeliness beyond the sons of men. Grace is poured out, it says, upon thy lips, therefore God hath blessed thee for ever. Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O mighty one, in thy timeliness and thy beauty: when also the Father, after he had made him a little lower than the angels, crowned him with glory and honor, and subjected all things under his feet. And then they shall recognize him whom they pierced. And they shall beat their breasts, tribe by tribe, assuredly because they did not previously recognize him, set in the humility of the human condition. Jeremiah says: And he is a man, and who shall know him? Because also his birth, says Isaiah, who shall declare? As in Zechariah in the person of him—nay, even in the mystery of his very name—Christ Jesus, the true high priest of the Father, is outlined in a double aspect corresponding to two comings.

In the first he was clothed in filthy garments, that is, in the unworthiness of passible and mortal flesh, when also the devil opposed him, namely as the instigator of Judas the betrayer, who had also tempted him after his baptism. Then, stripped of his former filth, adorned with a long robe and a mitre and a clean tiara (that is, of the second coming), he is shown as having obtained glory and honor. Nor will you be able to call him the son of Josedech, who was adorned with no filthy garment at all, but always with priestly vestments, and was never deprived of his priestly office. But this Jesus, the Christ, the high priest of God the Father, who in his first coming came in human form and passible in humility even unto the passion; himself also made a victim in all things for all of us, who after his resurrection, clothed with the long robe, was named priest for ever of God the Father.

For so also I shall give the interpretation of the two goats which were offered on the fast. Do not even they show both aspects of the name of Christ, who has now come? Equal indeed and alike, on account of the same appearance of the Lord, who is not going to come in any other form, since he must be recognized by those by whom he was also wounded. But one of them, wrapped in scarlet, was cursed, and spat upon, and torn, and pierced, and cast out by the people beyond the city to destruction, marked with the plain tokens of Christ's passion; who, wrapped in a scarlet robe, and spat upon, and afflicted with all manner of insults, was crucified outside the city.

But the other, offered for sins, and given as food only to the priests of the temple, signified the tokens of the second manifestation, by which, all sins expiated, the priests of the spiritual temple, that is, of the Church, might enjoy as it were a certain feast of the Lord's grace, while the rest fast from salvation. Therefore, since the first coming was proclaimed both obscured by very many figures and prostrated in all manner of dishonor, but the second both manifest and worthy of God; for this reason, looking only upon the one which they could easily both understand and believe, that is the second, which is in honor and glory, they were not undeservedly deceived regarding the more unworthy, and certainly more obscure, that is the first. And so to this day they deny that their Christ has come, because he did not come in exaltation, since they are ignorant that he was to come first in humility.

It is enough that up to this point we have traced the order of Christ in these matters, by which he is proved to be such as he was announced, so that from this consonance of the divine Scriptures we may understand that what was foretold as future after Christ is believed to have been fulfilled by divine dispensation. For unless he had come after whose coming these things were to be fulfilled, in no way would those things have come to pass which were foretold as future at his coming.

Therefore, if you see all nations emerging from the deep of human error and turning to God the Creator and to his Christ, you dare not deny that this was prophesied; because, even if you denied it, straightway the promise of the Father in the Psalms, as we have already said before, would confront you, saying: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee; ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession; nor will you be able to claim that prophecy for Solomon the son of David rather than to call Christ the Son of God; nor the ends of the earth promised to the son of David, who reigned within Judaea alone, rather than to Christ the Son of God, who has already illumined the whole world with the rays of his Gospel. Finally, the throne for ever also belongs more fittingly to Christ the Son of God than to Solomon, a temporal king, who reigned over Israel alone.

For today the nations invoke Christ who did not know him, and today peoples flee to Christ whom they formerly knew not. You cannot contend that what you see happening is yet to come. Either deny that these things were prophesied, since they are seen before your eyes; or that they were fulfilled, since they are read: or if you deny neither, they will have been fulfilled in him in whom they were prophesied.