Letter to Africanus 16–18

But you say, “How could they judge capital cases while they were in captivity?” — doubting, I know not on what ground, that Susanna was the wife of a king, because of the identity of name with Joakim. It must be said that there is nothing strange in it if, when great nations became subjects, the king allowed the captives to use their own laws and courts. Even now, at any rate, under Roman rule, with the Jews paying them the didrachm, we who have experience of it know how much power the ethnarch has among them by Caesar’s leave, so that he differs in nothing from a king of the nation. Trials are held secretly according to the Law, and some are condemned to death, neither with complete freedom to do so, nor without the ruler’s knowledge; and we learned this and were fully assured of it when we spent a long time in the country of that people. And yet under the Romans only two tribes are said to exist, Judah and Benjamin (let the Levitical be added too); whereas Israel, besides the people of Judah, was ten tribes. And it is likely that the Assyrians, content to hold them as subjects, entrusted them with their own courts.

I found this too in your letter, in these very words: “Besides all this, of so many prophets who went before, and of those who followed, none used another’s thought word for word; for their speech was not poor, being true. But this one, threatening one of them, reminds him of the Lord’s saying: You shall not put to death the innocent and the righteous.” And I wondered how you, who spend so much time in the examination and study of Scripture, have not noticed that prophets use the words of prophets almost in the very same terms. For who, even of the ordinary believers, does not know the passage in Isaiah: “It shall be in the last days that the mountain of the Lord will be manifest, and the house of God on the tops of the mountains, and it will be lifted up above the hills, and all the nations will come to it; and many nations will go and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will declare to us his way, and we will walk in it. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord in Jerusalem. And he will judge between the nations and judge many peoples; and they will beat their swords into plows and their spears into sickles; and nation will not take up sword against nation, and they will no longer learn war”? And something similar to this in every respect, and in the same wording, is written in Micah thus: “And it shall be in the last days that the mountain of the Lord will be manifest, made ready on the tops of the mountains, and it will be raised above the hills; and peoples will hasten to it, and many nations will go and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and they will show us his way, and we will walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he will judge between many peoples and rebuke strong nations far away; and they will beat their swords into plows and their spears into sickles; and nation will no longer lift sword against nation, and they will no longer learn to make war.” Further, in the First Book of Chronicles, the psalm put into the hand of Asaph and his brothers for praising the Lord, which begins, “Give thanks and call upon him by his name,” is for the most part equivalent at the beginning to Psalm 104 [105], down to “and do no evil to my prophets”; and after this it is close to Psalm 95 [96], from its beginning, “Sing to the Lord, all the earth,” down to “for he comes to judge the earth.” Since it would be lengthy to quote the words themselves, we have said this briefly for the matter in hand. You will also find the law about not carrying a burden on the Sabbath day written not only in Moses but also in Jeremiah; and about the Passover and the priestly laws you will find it both in Moses and in the last chapters of Ezekiel. I would have set out the very words, and many others, if I had not seen that the time for writing to you was being cut short by the fewness of our days in Nicomedia.

Besides this, you said that the character of the style differs; this did not seem so to me at all. So much for my defence. It would have been fitting, after the charges, to deliver an encomium of the writing about Susanna, going through each expression and showing the excellence of its thoughts; this some one of those who have studied divine things with love of learning and competence will be able to compose separately. This is my answer to your “strokes,” as you call them, and I write back; would that I could also teach! But as things are I do not credit myself with so much. My lord and holy brother Ambrose greets you; he helped me with the dictation of the letter, was present for all of it, and corrected it where he wished. His most faithful wife Marcella also greets you, together with their children, and Anicetus. Greet our good father Apollinarius, and those who love us.