Against the Jews 8–9

So we must search out the times of Christ's birth, foretold and then to come, and of his passion, and of the extermination of the city of Jerusalem, that is, its devastation. For Daniel says that both the holy city and the holy place will be exterminated together with the leader who is to come, and the pinnacle destroyed to ruin. So the times of Christ, the leader who was to come, must be searched out; these we shall investigate in Daniel, and when they have been computed we shall prove that he has come, both from the times prescribed and from the fitting signs and from his works. These things we also prove from the consequences which were announced to happen after his coming, so that we may believe that all has been fulfilled just as it was foreseen. Daniel, then, preached about him in such a way as to show both when and at what time he would free the nations, and that after the passion of Christ that city was to be exterminated. For he says thus: “In the first year under Darius son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, who reigned over the kingdom of the Chaldeans, I, Daniel, understood in the books the number of the years. And while I was still speaking in prayer, behold, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, flying, touched me, about the hour of the evening sacrifice, and made me understand, and spoke with me and said: Daniel, I have now come out to fill you with understanding; at the beginning of your supplication the word went out. And I have come to announce it to you, for you are a man of desires; consider the word and understand the vision. Seventy weeks have been cut short upon your people and upon the holy city, until sin grows old, and sins are sealed, and righteousness is obtained by prayer, and everlasting righteousness is brought in, and that the vision and the prophet may be sealed, and the holy of holies anointed. And you will know and perceive and understand: from the going forth of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, to Christ the leader, seven and a half weeks and sixty-two and a half weeks; and he will turn, and it will be built in height and entrenchment, and the times will be renewed; and after these sixty-two weeks the anointing will be exterminated and will not be; and he will exterminate the city and the holy place together with the leader who comes, and they will be cut down as in a flood, until the end of the war, which will be cut down to ruin. And he will confirm the covenant with many. In one week and half a week my sacrifice and libation will be taken away, and in the holy place the abomination of desolation, and until the end of time a consummation will be given upon this desolation.” Let us notice, then, the limit: how truly he foretells that there will be seventy weeks, in which, if they receive him, it will be built in height and length, and the times will be renewed. But God, foreseeing what would happen, that they would not only not receive him but would even persecute him and hand him over to death, went over it again and said that in sixty-two and a half weeks he would be born and the holy of holies anointed; that when the seven and a half weeks were being fulfilled he was to suffer; and that the city was to be exterminated after one and a half weeks, namely, when the seven and a half weeks had been completed. For he says thus: “And the city and the holy place are to be exterminated together with the leader who is to come, and they will be cut down as in a flood, and he will destroy the pinnacle to ruin.” How, then, do we show that Christ came within sixty-two and a half weeks? We shall count from the first year of Darius, since the vision itself was shown to Daniel at that very time. For he says: “And understand and infer that I am answering you these things for the completion of the word.” Hence we must compute from the first year of Darius, when Daniel saw this vision. Let us see, then, how the years are fulfilled up to the coming of Christ. Darius reigned 19 years. Artaxerxes reigned 41 years. Then King Ochus, also called Cyrus, reigned 24 years. Argus one year. Another Darius, also called Melas, 21 years. Alexander of Macedon 12 years. Then after Alexander, who had reigned over both Medes and Persians, whom he had conquered, and had established his kingdom in Alexandria, when he also called it by his own name, there reigned after him there in Alexandria Soter, 35 years; Philadelphus succeeds him, reigning 38 years. Euergetes succeeds him, 25 years. Then Philopator, 17 years. After him Epiphanes, 24 years. Likewise another Euergetes, 29 years. Likewise another Soter, 38 years. Ptolemy, 37 years. Cleopatra, 20 years and 5 months. Cleopatra further reigned jointly with Augustus 13 years. After Cleopatra, Augustus ruled another 43 years; for all the years of Augustus's rule were 56. We see, then, that in the forty-first year of the rule of Augustus, when he had ruled 28 years after the death of Cleopatra, Christ is born. And the same Augustus lived on for 15 years after Christ was born. And the remaining periods of years up to the day of Christ's birth, into the forty-first year, which is the twenty-eighth year of Augustus after Cleopatra's death, make 437 years and 5 months. Hence the sixty-two and a half weeks are fulfilled, which make 437 years and 6 months, on the day of Christ's birth. And everlasting righteousness was made manifest, and the holy of holies, that is, Christ, was anointed, and the vision and the prophet were sealed, and sins were forgiven, which through faith in the name of Christ are washed away for all who believe in him. What does he mean by saying that the vision and prophecy are sealed? That all the prophets announced of him that he would come and would suffer. So, since prophecy was fulfilled by his coming, he said that the vision and prophecy were sealed, because he himself is the seal of all the prophets, fulfilling all that they had formerly announced about him. For after the coming of Christ and his passion there is no longer any vision or prophet to announce that Christ will come. Indeed, if this is not so, let the Jews produce some volumes of prophets after Christ, some visible miracles of angels, such as the patriarchs formerly saw up to the coming of Christ, who has already come, from which time vision and prophecy were sealed, that is, established. And rightly the evangelist says: “The law and the prophets until John the Baptist.” For when Christ was baptized, that is, when he sanctified the waters in his baptism, the whole fullness of the former spiritual gifts ceased in Christ, as he sealed the vision and all the prophecies, which he fulfilled by his coming. Hence he says most firmly that his coming seals vision and prophecy. So, having shown both the number of years and the time of the sixty-two and a half weeks fulfilled, on whose completion Christ came, that is, was born, let us see in what event the other seven and a half weeks, which are marked off in the division from the former weeks, were fulfilled. After Augustus, who lived on after Christ's birth, 15 years are reckoned. Tiberius Caesar succeeded him and held rule 20 years, 7 months, and 28 days. In the fifteenth year of his rule Christ suffered, being about thirty years old when he suffered. Then Gaius Caesar, also called Caligula, 3 years, 8 months, and 12 days. Nero Caesar, 11 years, 9 months, and 13 days. Galba, 7 months and 6 days. Otho, 3 days. Vitellius, 8 months and 27 days. Vespasian, in the first year of his rule, conquers the Jews, and the total is 52 years and 6 months. For he ruled 11 years. And so, on the day of their conquest, the Jews fulfilled the seventy weeks foretold in Daniel. So when these times too had been completed and the Jews conquered, the libations and sacrifices ceased there, which from then on could not be celebrated there; for the anointing too was exterminated there after the passion of Christ. For it had been foretold that the anointing would be exterminated there, as was prophesied in the Psalms: “They exterminated my hands and feet.” The suffering 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 Kalends of April, the first day of unleavened bread, on which they killed the lamb at evening, as Moses had commanded. And so the whole synagogue of Israel killed him, saying to Pilate, when he wished to release him, “His blood be on us and on our children,” and, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend,” so that all the things written about him might be fulfilled.

Let us begin, then, to prove that the birth of Christ was announced by the prophets. So Isaiah proclaims: “Hear, house of David: it is no small contest for you with men, since God is setting up the struggle. For this reason God himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and you will call his name Emmanuel,” which is interpreted “God with us.” “Butter and honey he will eat, since before the infant knows how to call father or mother, he will receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians.” So the Jews say: “Let us challenge this proclamation of Isaiah and make a comparison, whether the Christ who has already come fits, first, the name that Isaiah proclaimed, and then the signs of him that he announced. Isaiah certainly proclaims that he must be called Emmanuel, and next that he would take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians. But this one who has come,” they say, “was neither called by a name of that kind nor engaged in any warfare.”

We, on the contrary, have thought it right to remind them to recognize also the context of this chapter. For the interpretation of Emmanuel, “God with us,” has been added, so that you may attend not only to the sound of the name but also to its sense. For the Hebrew sound, Emmanuel, has an interpretation, namely “God with us.” Ask, then, whether this expression, “God with us,” which is Emmanuel, has been in use in reference to Christ ever since Christ shone forth. And I think you will not deny it. For those from Judaism who believe in Christ, from the time they believe in him, when they wish to say Emmanuel, mean that God is with us; and so it is established that he who was proclaimed as Emmanuel has already come, because what Emmanuel signifies has come, that is, “God with us.”

They are misled in the same way by the sound of the words when they take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria and the kingdom of the Assyrians as though they foretold Christ as a warrior, not noticing that Scripture puts first: “since before the child knows how to call father or mother, he will receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians.” First you must look at the indication of his age, whether that age could present Christ as already a man, let alone a general. No doubt the infant was going to call men to arms with his wailing, and give the signal for battle not with a trumpet but with a rattle, and point out the enemy not from horseback or from a wall but from the back or neck of his nurse and carrier, and so subdue Damascus and Samaria instead of the breast! It is another matter if among you infants burst into battle, oiled first, I suppose, in the sun, then armed with swaddling clothes and paid in butter, who know how to wield a lance before they know how to tear at the breast. But if nature nowhere allows this, to serve as a soldier before becoming a man, to take the power of Damascus before knowing one's father, it follows that the saying must be seen as spoken figuratively.

“But nature does not allow a virgin to give birth either,” they say, “and yet the prophet must be believed.” And rightly so. For he laid a foundation of belief for an incredible thing by saying that it would be a sign: “For this reason,” he says, “a sign will be given you: behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb and bear a son.” But a sign from God would not seem a sign unless it had been some unheard-of wonder. Indeed, if, when you are eager to turn some people away from this divine prophecy or to win over the simple, you dare to lie, as though Scripture said that not a virgin but a young woman would conceive and give birth, you are refuted by this very point: an everyday thing, the pregnancy and childbirth of a young woman, cannot be seen as any sign. So the virgin mother set before us as a sign is rightly believed, but the infant warrior is not in the same way. For here the reason for a sign would not apply; rather, after the sign of the new birth has been stated, a different sequence concerning the infant is then declared: that he would eat honey and butter. Nor is this, surely, by way of a sign: it 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 a marvellous sign. Keep to the limit of his age and look for the sense of the prophecy; rather, give back to the truth what you are unwilling to believe, and the prophecy is understood by the report of its fulfilment.

Let those eastern Magi be believed, who honoured the infancy of Christ with gifts of gold and frankincense as a king, and the infant received the power of Damascus without battle and arms. For besides the fact, known to all, that the power, that is, the strength, of the East usually abounds in gold and spices, it is certain that in the divine Scriptures gold also constitutes the power of the other nations. As he says through Zechariah: “And Judah stands guard at Jerusalem, and he will gather all the strength of the peoples round about, gold and silver.” For of this gift of gold David also said: “And there will be given him of the gold of Arabia”; and again: “The kings of the Arabians and of Saba will bring him gifts.” For the East generally held the Magi to be kings, and Damascus was formerly reckoned part of Arabia, before it was transferred to Syrophoenicia when the Syrias were divided. Christ then received its power by receiving its tokens, that is, gold and spices; and the spoils of Samaria were the Magi themselves, who, when they had recognized him and honoured him with gifts and worshipped him on bended knee as lord and king, on the testimony of the guiding star, became the spoils of Samaria, that is, of idolatry, by believing, of course, in Christ. For he marked idolatry by the name of Samaria, as a place disgraced by idolatry, since it had then revolted from God under King Jeroboam. Nor is this new in the divine Scriptures, to transfer names figuratively on the basis of a likeness of crimes. For he calls your rulers “rulers of Sodom,” and your people “people of Gomorrah,” when those cities had long since been destroyed. And elsewhere, through the prophet, he says to the people of Israel: “Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite,” though they were not born of their race, but because of a like impiety; yet once he had even called them his own sons through the prophet Isaiah: “I have begotten sons and raised them up.” So too Egypt sometimes means the whole world in his usage, under the charge of superstition and curse. So too Babylon, in our John, is a figure of the city of Rome, being likewise great and proud in its rule and a warrior against the saints. In this way, then, he also entitled the Magi with the name of Samaritans, as despoiled of what they had had in common with the Samaritans, as we have said: idolatry against the Lord. And “against the king of the Assyrians” means against the devil, who thinks he reigns in this, if he drives the saints away from the worship of God.

This interpretation of ours will be further helped by the fact that elsewhere too the Scriptures describe Christ as a warrior because of the names of certain weapons and words of that kind. But the Jews will be refuted by comparison with the rest of the sense. “Gird your sword upon your thigh,” says David. But what do you read just before about Christ? “Fair in beauty beyond the sons of men; grace is poured out on your lips.” It is quite absurd if he flattered the one whom he was girding with a sword for battle about the fitness of his beauty and the grace of his lips, of whom he said next: “Stretch out and prosper, go forward and reign”; and added: “because of your gentleness and your righteousness.” Who will work with a sword without practising the opposites of gentleness and righteousness, that is, deceit and harshness and injustice, the proper business, of course, of battles? Let us see, then, whether that sword is not another, belonging to another kind of work, namely the divine Word of God, two-edged with the two testaments of the old law and the new law, sharp with the fairness of its wisdom, rendering to each according to his deeds. So it was permitted to the Christ of God in the Psalms to be girded figuratively, without any warfare, with the sword of the Word of God, to whom the foretold fitness of beauty with grace of lips corresponds, and whom David then girded upon the thigh when he was announced as going to come to earth by the decree of God the Father. “The greatness of your right hand will lead you,” he says: the power, namely, of spiritual grace, from which the knowledge of Christ is led forth. “Your arrows are sharp,” he says: the commandments of God flying everywhere, threatening to expose every heart, and piercing and transfixing every conscience. “Peoples will fall beneath you,” that is, in worship. So Christ is mighty in war and bears arms; so he will receive spoils not of Samaria alone but of all nations. Recognize figurative spoils too, since you have learned of his allegorical arms. And so the Christ who came was not a warrior, because he was not proclaimed as such by Isaiah.

“But if the Christ who is believed to be coming,” they say, “is not called Jesus, why is the one who came called Jesus Christ?” Both names, however, will be found to belong to the Christ of God, in whom the name Jesus too is found. Learn the habit of your error. When a successor to Moses was being appointed, Auses the son of Nave is transferred from his former name and begins to be called Jesus. “Certainly,” you say. This, we say, was first a figure of what was to come. For Jesus Christ was going to lead the second people, which we are, the nations who formerly lived as deserted in the world, into the land of promise flowing with milk and honey, that is, into the possession of eternal life, than which nothing is sweeter; and this was to come about not through Moses, that is, not through the discipline of the law, but through Jesus, that is, through the grace of the new law, after we had been circumcised with a knife of stone, that is, with the precepts of Christ (for Christ was proclaimed a rock in many ways and figures). Therefore the man who was being prepared as an image of this sacrament was also consecrated with the figure of the Lord's name, so as to be named Jesus. For the one who spoke to Moses was himself the Son of God, who was also always the one seen. For no one has ever seen God the Father and lived. And so it is certain that the Son of God himself spoke to Moses and said to the people: “Behold, I send my angel before your face” (that is, the people's) “to guard you on the way and bring you into the land that I have prepared for you. Attend to him and hear him, and do not be disobedient to him; for he has not hidden you, since my name is upon him.” For it was Jesus, not Moses, who was going to bring the people into the land of promise. He called him an angel because of the greatness of the mighty works he was going to perform (which mighty works Jesus the son of Nave did, as you yourselves read), and because of his office as prophet, one who announces the divine will; just as the Spirit, speaking through the prophet in the person of the Father, calls the forerunner of Christ, John, a future angel: “Behold, I send my angel before your face” (that is, Christ's), “who will prepare your way before you.” Nor is it new for the Holy Spirit to call “angels” those whom God has appointed ministers of his power. For the same John was called not only the angel of Christ but also the lamp shining before Christ. “I have prepared a lamp for my Christ,” David proclaims; and Christ himself, coming to fulfil the prophets, says of him to the Jews: “He was a burning and shining lamp,” since he not only prepared his ways in the wilderness but also, by pointing out the Lamb of God, enlightened the minds of men by his preaching, so that they understood him to be the Lamb whom Moses announced would suffer. So too he was called Jesus because of the future sacrament of his own name; for he confirmed that name of his which he himself had given him, since he had ordered that from then on he be called not angel nor Auses but Jesus. So, then, both names belong to the Christ of God, so that he was also called Jesus.

And since the virgin of whom Christ had to be born had to draw her lineage from the seed of David, as we mentioned above, the prophet says plainly in what follows: “And a rod will be born from the root of Jesse” (which is Mary) “and a flower will rise from his root, and the Spirit of God will rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of knowledge and piety, the spirit of counsel and truth; the spirit of the fear of God will fill him.” For the whole range of spiritual proofs befitted no man except Christ, likened to a flower because of his glory and grace, but reckoned of the stock of Jesse, that is, to be registered from there through Mary. For she was from the home town of Bethlehem and of the house of David, as Mary, of whom Christ is born, was recorded in the Roman census. I ask further whether he has come who was proclaimed by the prophets as coming from the line of Jesse and as going to show all humility and patience and calm. In the same way the man who is shown to be such will himself be the Christ who came. For of him the prophet says: “A man set in affliction, and knowing how to bear weakness, who was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer did not open his mouth.” If he neither strove nor cried out, nor was his voice heard outside; if he did not break the bruised reed, the faith of Israel, nor quench the burning flax, that is, the momentary ardour of the nations, but made it shine the more by the rising of his own light, he cannot be other than the one who was proclaimed.

The activity of the Christ who came must therefore be tested against the rule of the Scriptures. For, unless I am mistaken, we read that he was marked out by a twofold work, of preaching and of power. But let each heading be arranged in turn. So let us go through, point by point, the sequence we have begun, showing that Christ was announced as a preacher, as through Isaiah: “Cry out with strength,” he says, “and do not spare; lift up your voice like a trumpet, and declare to my people their misdeeds, and to the house of Jacob their sins. Day after day they seek me and desire to know my ways, as a people that has done righteousness and has not forsaken the judgment of God,” and the rest. And that he would do mighty works from the Father: “Behold, our God will repay judgment; he himself will come and save us. Then the sick will be healed, and the eyes of the blind will see, and the ears of the deaf will hear, and the tongues of the mute will be loosed, and the lame will leap like a deer,” and so on. That Christ performed these things you do not deny either, since you used to say that you were not stoning him for his works but because he did these things on sabbaths.