Bethlehem and the Ruler from Judah

So even if the Jew offers no defense of Ezekiel and Isaiah, while we set the opening of the heavens in Jesus’ case, and the voice he heard, alongside the like things recorded in Ezekiel, in Isaiah, or in some other prophet — still, for our own part, we will make the case as well as we can. It is a matter of belief that in a dream many people have had things put before their minds: some of them more than human, some announcing what is coming in ordinary life, and this either plainly or in riddles. That much is obvious to everyone who accepts that God governs the world. Then what is strange about saying that whatever stamps its impression on the ruling part of the mind in a dream can stamp it just as well while a man is awake, for the good of the one it is stamped on, or of those who are going to hear his account of it? [a]

And just as in a dream we get the impression that we are hearing, and that the ear itself is being struck, and that we are seeing with our eyes — when in fact neither the body’s eyes nor its ears are struck at all, and it is the ruling part of the mind that is undergoing all this — so there is nothing strange in the same thing having happened to the prophets, where it is recorded that they saw something out of the ordinary, or heard the words of the Lord, or looked at the heavens standing open. For I do not suppose that the sky we can see was opened, and its own body split apart, so that Ezekiel could write such a thing down. Should not the same then be understood in the Savior’s case by anyone who listens to the Gospels with sense — even if it trips up the simpler sort, who out of sheer simplicity set the world moving and tear apart the vast, unbroken body of the whole heaven?

But the man who looks into it more deeply will say this. There is, as Scripture names it, a divine sense of a general kind, which only the man who is blessed has yet found, as the words in Solomon put it: “You will find a divine sense.” And this sense has its several kinds. There is a sight made to see things better than bodies, the sort of things meant when the cherubim and the seraphim are spoken of. There is a hearing that can take in voices which have no existence in the air. There is a taste that feeds on living bread, bread that has come down from heaven and gives life to the world. There is a sense of smell as well, which smells such things as make Paul say that he is “the fragrance of Christ” “to God.” And there is a touch, the touch by which John says he handled with his hands “concerning the Word of life.”

The blessed prophets found this divine sense. They saw in a divine way and heard in a divine way; they tasted, and smelled, if I may put it so, with a sense that was not the body’s sense; and they touched the Word with faith, so that an outflow from him came to them and healed them. That is how they saw what they record having seen, and heard what they say they heard, and were affected as they describe when they ate the “scroll” of a book handed to them. That is how Isaac too “smelled the scent” of his son’s “garments” — garments more than earthly — and added to the blessing of the Spirit the words: “Look, the scent of my son is like the scent of a full field that the Lord has blessed.” And much the same way, and as something to be grasped by the mind rather than by the senses, Jesus “touched” the leper in order to cleanse him — in two ways, I think. He freed him not only from the leprosy that could be seen, by a touch that could be seen, which is how most people hear it, but also from that other leprosy, by a touch of his that was truly divine.

This too is how John bore witness when he said: “I have seen the Spirit coming down from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I did not know him myself; but the one who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘Whoever you see the Spirit coming down and remaining on, that is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen it, and I have borne witness that this is the Son of God.” And it was to Jesus that the heavens were opened; and at that time no one but John is recorded to have seen them opened. The Savior, foretelling to his disciples that this opening of the heavens would happen, and that they would see it, says: “Amen, amen, I tell you, you will see heaven standing open and the angels of God going up and coming down on the Son of Man.” So Paul too was caught up into the third heaven, having first seen it opened, since he was a disciple of Jesus. Why Paul says “whether in the body I do not know, or outside the body I do not know — God knows” is not a thing to explain here.

I will add to my argument even the very things Celsus imagines: that Jesus himself told the story of the heavens opening and of the Holy Spirit coming down on him at the Jordan in the form of a dove — though Scripture nowhere shows that he said he had seen it. Our noble critic did not notice that this would be out of character for the man who said to his disciples, about the vision on the mountain: “Tell no one the vision until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.” He would not then have told his disciples what John saw and heard at the Jordan. You can see it in the way Jesus behaved: everywhere he kept clear of talking about himself, and that is why he said, “Even if I speak about myself, my testimony is not true.” And because he kept clear of talking about himself, and preferred to show by what he did rather than by what he said that he was the Christ, the Jews said to him, “If you are the Christ, tell us openly.”

Now it is a Jew who, in Celsus’ book, says to Jesus, about the Holy Spirit’s appearing in the form of a dove: “Except that you say so, and you bring forward one man from among those who were punished along with you.” So we have to show him that he has not fitted these words to a Jewish speaker either. Jews do not connect John with Jesus, or John’s punishment with Jesus’. On this point too, then, the man who boasted of knowing everything is caught not knowing what words to give a Jew arguing with Jesus.

After this, for some reason, he deliberately lets slip the strongest point there is in support of Jesus: that his coming was foretold by the prophets among the Jews — by Moses, and by those who came after that lawgiver and before him. I think he could not meet the argument, since neither the Jews nor any of the sects are unwilling to grant that Jesus was the subject of prophecy. Or perhaps he simply did not know the prophecies about Christ. Anyone who knew what Christians say — that many prophets foretold the Savior’s coming — would not have hung on his Jewish speaker words that would have suited a Samaritan or a Sadducee better; and the Jew in the dialogue would not have said: “But my own prophet once declared in Jerusalem that a Son of God will come, the judge of the devout and the punisher of the unjust.” [k]

For it was not one prophet only who foretold what concerns Christ. And even if the Samaritans and Sadducees, who accept only the books of Moses, were to claim that prophecies about Christ are contained in them, the prophecy was certainly not spoken in Jerusalem, which had not so much as been named in Moses’ day. I could wish that all the accusers of our teaching were in as much ignorance as this — not only of the facts, but of the bare letters of Scripture — and that they attacked Christianity in such a way that their case carried not even the ordinary plausibility that can pull loose men with no ballast in them, who believe “for a time”: pull them loose, that is, not from faith, but from their little faith.

A Jew, though, would not admit that any prophet said a Son of God will come. What they say is that the Christ of God will come. Time and again they question us straight out about a “Son of God,” saying there is no such being, and that none was ever the subject of prophecy. We are not saying that a Son of God is not the subject of prophecy. We are saying that it does not fit a Jewish speaker, who admits no such thing, to be given the line: “My own prophet once declared in Jerusalem that a Son of God will come.”

Then, as though this alone had been foretold — that he would be the judge of the devout and the punisher of the unjust — and as though nothing had been said in advance about the place of his birth, or the suffering he would undergo at the hands of the Jews, or his resurrection, or the marvelous works of power he would do, Celsus goes on: “Why should it be you rather than the countless others who were born after the prophecy, and about whom these things were foretold?” And wanting, I do not know how, to hang on others too the possibility of being suspected of being the men the prophets meant, he says: “Some, in a frenzy, and others going about collecting alms, say that a son of God has come down from above.” We have found no record that anything of the sort is admitted to have happened among the Jews. [o]

The first thing to be said, then, is that many prophets foretold what concerns Christ in every kind of way: some in riddles, some by allegory or in some other manner, and some in so many words. And since further on, speaking in the character of the Jew addressing converts from his own people, he says that the prophecies applied to this man’s life can be made to fit other things as well — putting it forcefully and with malice — we will set out a few prophecies out of the many. About these, anyone who likes may say whatever he thinks compelling enough to overturn them, and able to shift those who believe intelligently away from their faith.

Scripture speaks about the place of the Savior’s birth — that the Ruler was to come out of Bethlehem — in this way: “And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephrathah, are too small to be among the thousands of Judah. Out of you there will come out for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, and his goings out are from the beginning, from days of old.” This prophecy could not fit any of the men that Celsus’ Jew speaks of — the men in a frenzy, the men going about collecting, the men saying they have come from above — unless it were plainly shown that he had been born in Bethlehem, or, as someone else might put it, had come out of Bethlehem to lead the people. [q]

As for Jesus being born in Bethlehem: if anyone wants to be convinced from another quarter as well, after Micah’s prophecy and after the account written down in the Gospels by Jesus’ disciples, let him note that, in agreement with the Gospel account of his birth, the cave in Bethlehem is pointed out where he was born, and the manger in the cave where he was wrapped in strips of cloth. And what is shown there is talked about all over that district, even among people who are strangers to the faith: that in this cave was born the Jesus whom Christians worship and admire.

My own opinion is that before Christ’s coming the chief priests and the scribes of the people, because the prophecy was so plain and clear, taught that the Christ would be born in Bethlehem, and that this word had got as far as most of the Jews too. That is why it is recorded that Herod, when he inquired of the chief priests and scribes of the people, heard from them that the Christ would be born “in Bethlehem of Judea” — where David came from. It is also said, in the Gospel according to John, that the Jews said the Christ would be born in Bethlehem, where David came from.

But after Christ’s coming, the men who set to work to pull down the belief that the place of his birth had been foretold from of old took this teaching away from the people. They were doing something like what those men did who won over the soldiers of the guard at the tomb, the men who had seen him rise from the dead, and told these eyewitnesses to report: “Say that his disciples came by night while we were asleep and stole him. And if this reaches the governor’s ears, we will win him over and see that you have nothing to worry about.”

Quarrelsomeness and a mind already made up are powerful things for making a man look straight past even what is plain, rather than give up opinions that have been dyed into him past washing out — opinions he has somehow grown used to, which have given his soul its whole color. A man will more easily give up his habits in other matters, hard as it may be to tear himself away from them, than give up his opinions. Even those habits are not lightly set aside by people used to them; in the same way, no one who is attached to them is willing to leave his house, or his city or village, or the people he knows. [t]

This, then, is what made many of the Jews of that time look straight past the plain evidence of the prophecies, and of the marvels Jesus did and the sufferings he is recorded to have undergone. That human nature works this way will be clear to anyone who notices that men whose minds have once been made up, even by the most disgraceful and pointless traditions of their fathers and fellow citizens, do not change easily. You would not quickly persuade an Egyptian to think little of what he received from his fathers, and stop reckoning this or that dumb animal a god — or to stop guarding himself, even at the cost of his life, against tasting the meat of that animal.

So if we have gone on at some length in examining this question, and have worked through what concerns Bethlehem and the prophecy about it, we consider that we were obliged to do it, as an answer to men who would say: if the prophecies about Jesus current among the Jews were as plain as we make out, why, when he came, did they not agree with his teaching and go over to the better things he showed them? But let no one throw the same reproach at those among us who believe. He can see that the arguments brought forward for faith in Jesus, by men who have learned to speak for them, are not to be despised.

And if we need a second prophecy that seems to us to point clearly to Jesus, we will set out the one written down by Moses a great many years before Jesus came. Moses tells how Jacob, as he was leaving this life, prophesied over each of his sons, and said to Judah, among other things: “A ruler will not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until there comes what is laid up for him.” [v]

Anyone who comes on this prophecy — which is in truth far older than Moses, though one of the unbelievers might suppose Moses spoke it — would be astonished that Moses could foretell that the men who reigned over the Jews would be born of the tribe of Judah and rule the people, when there were twelve tribes among them. That is also why the whole people are called Jews: they take their name from the ruling tribe.

And a second thing would astonish anyone who reads the prophecy fair-mindedly. Having said that the rulers and leaders of the people were to come from the tribe of Judah, he also fixed the end of that rule, saying that a ruler would not fail “from Judah,” nor a leader “from his loins, until there comes what is laid up for him, and he is the expectation of the nations.” For he has come, the one for whom “these things are laid up”: the Christ of God, “the ruler” of God’s promises. And plainly he alone, out of all who came before him — and I would be bold enough to say of those who came after him as well — has been “the expectation of the nations.” For men out of every one of the nations have come to believe in God through him, and this in agreement with what Isaiah said, that in his name the nations have hoped: “In his name the nations will hope.”

This is the man who said to those “in chains” — since “each man is bound tight with the cords of his own sins” — “Come out”; and to those in ignorance, that they should come into the light. These things too were foretold, in these words: “And I have given you as a covenant for the nations, to set the land in order, to inherit an inheritance left desolate, saying to those in chains, ‘Come out,’ and to those in darkness, ‘Show yourselves.’” And at his coming we can see this fulfilled, through the people all over the inhabited world who believe in him with a simpler faith: “And in all the roads they will be pastured, and in all the paths will be their pasture.”