The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire Part 24

38. The Crucifixion: the _Is._ 50, 6-8: I gave my back scourging. to the lashes and my cheeks to blows, etc.

The Crucifixion: the _Ps._ 22, 7: they wagged the mocking. head, saying, etc.

The Crucifixion: the _Ps._ 3, 5: I slept and slumbered resurrection. and I rose up (_anesten_) because the Lord laid hold of me.

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39. The sending of the twelve _Is._ 2, 3 f.: Out of Sion shall Apostles. go forth the law.

40. The proclamation of the _Ps._ 19, 2-5: Day unto day, Gospel. etc.

Christ, Pilate, the Jews _Psalms_ 1 and 2: cited _in and Herod. extenso_.

41. Christ to reign after the 1 _Chron._ 16, 23, 25-31: (a Crucifixion. psalm). Cf. _Ps._ 96, i, 2, 4-11, with ending: "The Lord hath reigned from the tree."

45. The Ascension. _Ps._ 110, 1-3: Sit thou at my right hand, etc.

47. The desolation of Jerusalem. _Is._ 64, 10-12: Sion has become desert, etc.

_Is._ 1, 7, and _Jer._ 50, 3: Their land is desert.

48. The miracles of Christ. _Is._ 35, 5, 6: The lame shall leap ... the dead shall rise and walk, etc.

Christ's death. _Is._ 57, 1 f.: Behold, how the Just Man has perished, etc.

49. The Gentiles to find Christ _Is._ 65, 1-3: I was visible to but not the Jews. them that asked not for me ... I spread out my hands to a disobedient people.

50. Christ's humiliation and _Is._ 53, 12: For that they gave the glorious second his soul to death ... he advent. shall be exalted.

_Is._ 52, 13-53, 8: ... he was wounded, etc.

51. His sufferings, origin, _Is._ 53, 8-12.

reign and ascension.

His second coming. "Jeremiah" = _Daniel_ 7, 13, as it were a son of man cometh upon the clouds and his angels with him.

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52. The final resurrection. _Ezek._ 37, 7-8: Bone shall be joined to bone.

_Is._ 45, 23: Every knee shall bow to the Lord.

_Is._ 66, 24: The worm shall not sleep nor the fire be quenched.

Also a composite quotation with phrases mingled from Isaiah and Zechariah, attributed to the latter.

53. More Gentiles than Jews _Is._ 54, 1: Rejoice, O barren, will believe. etc.

"Isaiah" = _Jerem._ 9, 26: Israel uncirc.u.mcised in heart.

60. The Cross foretold in the _Num._ 21, 8: If ye look at this brazen serpent. type(_typo_) I believe ye shall be saved in it (_en auto_).

61. Baptism. _Is._ 1, 16: Wash you ... I will whiten as wool.

[Sidenote: The G.o.d beside the Creator]

What in the _Apology_ is a bare outline, is developed at great length and with amazing ingenuity in the dialogue with Trypho. We may begin with the question of a "G.o.d beside the Creator."

When Moses wrote in _Genesis_ (1, 26) "And G.o.d said, 'Let us make man in our image after our likeness,'" and again (3, 22) "And the Lord G.o.d said, 'Behold the man is become as one of us,'"[52] why did he use the plural, unless there is a G.o.d beside G.o.d? Again, when Sodom is destroyed why does the holy text say "The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrha sulphur and fire from the Lord from heaven"?[53] And again in the _Psalms_ (110) what is meant by "The Lord said unto my Lord"?[54]

and by "Thy throne, O G.o.d, is for ever and ever ... therefore G.o.d, thy G.o.d, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows?"[55]

The Old Testament abounds in theophanies, which are {188} brought up in turn. Justin cites the three men who appeared to Abraham--"they were angels," says Trypho, and a long argument follows to show from the pa.s.sage that one of them is not to be explained as an angel,[56] nor of course as the Creator of all things. Trypho owns this. Justin pauses at his suggestion to discuss the meal which Abraham had served, but is soon caught up with the words: "Now, come, show us that this G.o.d who appeared to Abraham and is the servant of G.o.d, the Maker of all, was born of a virgin, and became, as you said, a man of like pa.s.sions with all men." But Justin has more evidence to unfold before he reaches that stage. Without following the discussion as it sways from point to point, we may take the pa.s.sage in which he recapitulates this line of argument. "I think I have said enough, so that, when my G.o.d says 'G.o.d went up from Abraham,' or 'The Lord spoke to Moses,' or 'The Lord descended to see the tower which the sons of men had built,' or 'The Lord shut the ark of Noah from without,' you will not suppose the unbegotten G.o.d Himself went down or went up. For the ineffable Father and Lord of all neither comes anywhere, nor 'walks' [as in the garden of Eden], nor sleeps, nor rises, but abides in his own region wherever it is, seeing keenly and hearing keenly, but not with eyes or ears, but by power unspeakable; and he surveys all things and knows all things, and none of us escapes his notice; nor does he move, nor can s.p.a.ce contain him, no, nor the whole universe, him, who was before the universe was made."[57]

[Sidenote: The virgin-birth]

Who then was it who walked in the garden, who wrestled with Jacob, who appeared in arms to Joshua, who spoke with Moses and with Abraham, who shut Noah into the ark, who was the fourth figure in the fiery furnace?

Scripture gives us a key. Can the Jew say, who it is whom Ezekiel calls the "angel of great counsel;" and the "man"; whom Daniel describes "as the Son of man"; whom Isaiah called "child," and David "Christ" and "G.o.d adored"; whom Moses called "Joseph" and "Jacob" and "the star"; whom Zechariah called "the daystar"; whom {189} Isaiah again called the "sufferer" (_pathetos_), "Jacob" and "Israel"; whom others have named "the Rod," "the Flower," "the Chief Corner-stone" and "the Son of G.o.d"?[58] The answer is more clearly given by Solomon in the eighth chapter of _Proverbs_--it is the Divine Wisdom, to whom all these names apply. When it is said "Let _us_ make man," it is to be understood that the Ineffable communicated his design to his Wisdom, his Logos or Son, and the Son made man. The Son rained upon Sodom the fire and brimstone from the Father. It was the Son who appeared to men in all the many pa.s.sages cited--the Son, Christ the Lord, G.o.d and Son of G.o.d--inseparable and unseverable from the Father, His Wisdom and His Word and His Might (_dynamis_).[59]

But, while all this might be accepted by a Jew, it still seemed to Trypho that it was "paradoxical, and foolish, too," to say that Christ could be G.o.d before all the ages, and then tolerate to be born a man, and yet "not a man of men." The offence of the Cross also remained.

The Apologist began by explaining the mysteries of the two comings of Christ, first in humiliation, and afterwards in glory, as Jacob prophesied in his last words.[60] For the First Coming Tertullian quotes Isaiah--"he is led as a sheep to the slaughter"; and the _Psalms_--"made a little lower than the angels," "a worm and not a man"; while the Second Coming is to be read of in Daniel and the forty-fifth _Psalm_, and in the more awful pa.s.sage of Zechariah "and then they shall know him whom they pierced."[61] The paschal lamb is a type of the First Coming--especially as it was to be roasted whole and trussed like a cross; and the two goats of _Leviticus_ (16) are types of the two Comings.[62]

"And now," says Justin, "I took up the argument again to show that he was born of a virgin, and that it had been prophesied by Isaiah that he should be born of a virgin; and I again recited the prophecy itself.

This is it: 'And the Lord said moreover unto Ahaz, saying: 'Ask for thyself a sign from the Lord thy G.o.d in the depth or in the height.

And Ahaz {190} said: I will not ask nor tempt the Lord. And Isaiah said: Hear ye then, O house of David! Is it a little thing with you to strive with men? and how will ye strive with the Lord? Therefore shall the Lord himself give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel. b.u.t.ter and honey shall he eat. Before he shall either have knowledge or choose evil, he shall choose good; because, before the child knows evil or good, he refuses evil to choose good. Because, before the child knows to call father or mother, he shall take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria before the King of the a.s.syrians. And the land shall be taken, which thou shalt bear hardly from before the face of two kings. But G.o.d will bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon the house of thy father, days which have never come, from the day when Ephraim removed from Judah the King of the a.s.syrians.' And I added, 'That, in the family of Abraham according to the flesh, none has ever yet been born of a virgin, or spoken of as so born, except our Christ, is manifest to all.'" It may be noted that the pa.s.sage is not only misquoted, but is a combination of clauses from two distinct chapters.[63] The explanation is perhaps that Justin found it so in a manual of proof-texts and did not consult the original. Similar misquotations in other authors have suggested the same explanation.

"Trypho rejoined: 'The scripture has not: Behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son; but: Behold the young woman shall conceive and bear a son: and the rest as you said. The whole prophecy was spoken of Hezekiah and was fulfilled of him. In the myths of the Greeks it is said that Perseus was born of Danae, when she was a virgin--after their so-called Zeus had come upon her in the form of gold. You ought to be ashamed to tell the same story as they do. You would do better to say this Jesus was born a man of men, and--if you show from the Scriptures that he is the Christ--say that it was by his lawful and perfect life that he was counted worthy of being chosen as Christ. Don't talk miracles of that kind, or you will be proved to talk folly beyond even that of the Greeks."'[64]

Trypho has the Hebrew text behind him, which says {191} nothing about a virgin, though the Septuagint has the word. The sign given to Ahaz has a close parallel in a prophecy of Muhammad. Before he became known, an old man foretold that a great prophet should come, and on being challenged for a sign he pointed to a boy lying in rugs by the camp-fire--"That boy should _see_ the prophet"; and he did. Isaiah's sign is much the same; a young woman shall conceive and have a son, and before that son is two or three years old, Damascus and Syria will fall before the King of a.s.syria.

But Justin and the Apologists are not to be diverted. As for Danae, the Devil (_diabolos_) has there antic.i.p.ated the fulfilment of G.o.d's prophecy, as in many other instances, _e.g._:--Dionysus rode an a.s.s, he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven; Herakles is a parody of the verse in _Psalm_ xix--the strong man rejoicing to run a race, a Messianic text; aesculapius raised the dead; and the cave of Mithras is Daniel's "stone cut without hands from the great mountains." "I do not believe your teachers; they will not admit that the seventy elders of Ptolemy, King of Egypt, translated well, but they try to translate for themselves. And I should like you to know that they have cut many pa.s.sages out of the versions made by Ptolemy's elders which prove expressly that this man, who was crucified, was prophesied of as G.o.d and man, crucified and slain. I know that all your race deny this; so, in discussions of this kind I do not quote those pa.s.sages, but I have recourse to such as come from what you still acknowledge."[65] The objection to the rendering "young woman" is that it completely nullifies the sign given to Ahaz, for children are born of young women every day--"what would really be a sign and would give confidence to mankind,--to wit, that the firstborn of all creations should take flesh and really be born a child of a virgin womb--that was what he proclaimed beforehand by the prophetic spirit."[66]

The whole story is parable. It would be absurd to suppose that an infant could be a warrior and reduce great states. The spoils are really the gifts of the Magi, as is indicated by pa.s.sages in Zechariah ("he shall gather all the strength of the peoples round about, gold and silver," 14, 14) and the seventy second _Psalm_ ("Kings of the Arabs and of Saba shall bring {192} gifts to him; and to him shall be given gold from the East"). Samaria again is a common synonym with the prophets for idolatry. Damascus means the revolt of the Magi from the evil daemon who misdirected their arts to evil. The King of a.s.syria stands, says Justin, for King Herod, and so says Tertullian, writing against Marcion, though in the tract _Against the Jews_ (if it is Tertullian's) he says the devil is intended.[67] The usual pa.s.sages from Micah and Jeremiah are cited to add Bethlehem and the Murder of the infants to the prophetic story.

"At this Trypho, with some hint of annoyance, but overawed by the Scriptures, as his face showed, said to me: 'G.o.d's words are holy, but your expositions [or translations] are artificial--or blasphemous, I should say.'"[68]

To complete the proof, it is shown that the very name of Jesus was foretold. When Moses changed the name of his successor from _Auses_ to _Jesus_, it was a prophecy, as Scripture shows. "The Lord said unto Moses: Say to this people, Behold I send my angel before thy face that he may guard thee in the way, that he may lead thee into the land that I have prepared for thee. Give heed unto him ... for he will not let thee go, for my name is in him."[69] This is confirmed by Zechariah's account of the High Priest Joshua. Furthermore, the chronology of the book of Daniel, when carefully worked out, proves to have contained the prediction of the precise date at which Christ should come, and at that precise date Christ came.

Barnabas discovers another prophecy of Jesus in an unlikely place.

"Learn, children of love," he says," that Abraham, who first gave circ.u.mcision, looked forward in spirit unto Jesus, when he circ.u.mcised, for he received dogmata in three letters. For it saith: And Abraham circ.u.mcised of his house men 18 and 300. What then was the knowledge given unto him? Mark that it says 18 first, and then after a pause 300. 18 [IH in Greek notation] there thou hast Jesus. And because the cross in T [= 300 in Greek notation] was to have grace, it {193} saith 300 as well. It shows Jesus in the two letters, and in the one the cross."[70]

We now reach the prophecies of the cross, and, as the method is plain, a few references may suffice, taken this time from Tertullian (_c._ 10):--

_Genesis_ 22, 6: Isaac carrying the wood for the sacrifice of himself.

_Genesis_ 37, 28: Joseph sold by his brethren.