The Virgin and the Young Woman

And Trypho said: “You have proved this point to me forcefully, my friend, and out of many passages. What is left, then, is for you to prove that he submitted to being born a man through the virgin, according to his Father’s will, and to being crucified, and to dying. And make it plain as well that after that he rose and went up into heaven.” [a]

I answered: This too has already been proved by me, my friends, in the words of the prophecies I set out earlier. Still, for your sakes I will call them to mind again and explain them, and I will try to bring you to agree with me about this as well. Take the word Isaiah spoke: “Who will tell of his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” Does it not seem to you to have been spoken about one who does not have his descent from men — the one God said would be handed over to death for the lawless deeds of the people? It was about his blood that Moses, speaking in a figure, said that he would wash his robe in the blood of the grape, as I said before: his blood did not come from human seed, but from the will of God.

And take the words David spoke: “In the splendor of your holy ones, from the womb, before the morning star, I fathered you. The Lord swore and will not change his mind: You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” Does that not show you that God, the Father of all things, meant him to be born from above and through a human womb? And speaking in other words, which I have also quoted already, he says:

So these words declare plainly that he is to be worshiped, and is God, and is Christ, witnessed to by the one who made these things. And the word of God speaks to those who believe in him — who are one soul and one synagogue and one church — as it would speak to a daughter. That it is addressing the church that came into being out of his name and shares his name (for we are all called Christians) is proclaimed just as plainly in the words that follow, which also teach us to forget the old customs of our fathers. They run this way: “Listen, daughter, and see, and turn your ear; forget your people and your father’s house, and the King will desire your beauty, for he is your Lord, and you will worship him.”

Here Trypho said: “Let him be acknowledged as Lord and Christ and God by you Gentiles, as the Scriptures say — you who have all come to be called Christians from his name. But we are worshipers of the God who made this very one, and we have no need to confess him or to worship him.” [g]

To this I said: Trypho, if I were as fond of a fight and as empty as you are, I would not stay in this conversation with you any longer — since you are not getting ready to understand what is said, but only sharpening yourselves up to say something back. As it is, since I fear the judgment of God, I am in no hurry to pronounce about any one of your race whether or not he is among those who can be saved by the grace that comes from the Lord of hosts. So even if you act badly, I will stay and answer whatever you put forward and whatever you contradict; and I do the very same thing with everyone, of every race, who wants to look into these matters with me or to question me about them. If you had paid attention to the passages of Scripture I quoted earlier, you would have understood by now that those of your own race who are saved are saved through this one and share his portion, and you would obviously not have asked me about it. I will say again the words of David that I quoted before, and I ask you to work at understanding them, rather than at acting badly and stirring one another up merely to contradict. These, then, are the words David says:

And there are other words, also quoted before, spoken through David, which you foolishly claim were spoken about Solomon because they are headed “for Solomon.” From those very words it can be proved both that they were not spoken about Solomon, and that this one existed even before the sun, and that those of your people who are saved will be saved through him. They are these:

And so on, as far as:

And call to mind the other words as well, which I said earlier were spoken in the same way through David — that he was to come out from the far edge of the heavens and to go up again to the same place. Remember them, so that you may recognize him as God coming out from above and as a man living among men, and may recognize that he will come again, and that those who pierced him will see him and mourn for him. They are these:

And Trypho said: “Hard pressed by so many passages of Scripture, I do not know what to say about the passage Isaiah writes, where God says that he does not give his glory to another. His words are these: ‘I am the Lord God; this is my name; I will not give my glory to another, nor my praises.’” [n]

And I answered: If you said these words in simplicity and with no ill intent, Trypho, and then fell silent — neither quoting what comes before them nor joining on what follows — you are to be forgiven. But if you did it because you imagined you could throw the argument into difficulty, so that I would say the Scriptures contradict one another, then you are mistaken. I will never dare either to think such a thing or to say it. If a passage that seems to be of that kind is brought forward, and there is some pretext for saying it runs against another, then, since I am entirely convinced that no passage of Scripture contradicts another, I will admit instead that I myself do not understand what is written, and I will do my best to persuade those who suppose the Scriptures contradict one another to think as I do. With what intention you put your difficulty forward, God knows. For my part I will remind you what the passage says, so that from this very place you may recognize that God gives glory to his Christ alone. And I will take up a few short passages, my friends — the ones standing next to what Trypho has said, and the ones joined on after them in order. I will not be quoting from a different section, but the words as they stand joined together in one. And you, lend me your attention. They are these:

And when I had read this out, I said to them: Have you seen, my friends, that God says he will give glory to this one, whom he set as a light to the nations, and to no one else — and not, as Trypho said, that God was keeping the glory for himself? And Trypho answered: “We have seen this too. Go on, then, to the rest of what you have to say.”

So I picked up the argument again from where I had first broken off — where I was proving that he is born of a virgin, and that his being born through a virgin had been foretold through Isaiah — and I quoted the same prophecy over again. It goes this way: [q]

“And the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying: Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God, in the depth or in the height. And Ahaz said: I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. And Isaiah said: Listen then, house of David. Is it a small thing for you to pick a fight with men? And how is it that you pick a fight with the Lord? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look: the virgin will conceive and will bear a son, and they will call his name Immanuel. He will eat butter and honey. Before he knows or chooses evil he will choose the good; for before the child knows bad or good, he refuses evil by choosing the good. For before the child knows how to call for father or mother, he will receive the power of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria in the presence of the king of the Assyrians. And the land will be seized, the land you bear so hard because of its two kings. But God will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father’s house days such as have not yet come upon you, from the day when Ephraim took away from Judah the king of the Assyrians.”

And I went on: Now it is plain to everyone that in the race of Abraham according to the flesh no one has ever been born of a virgin, or is said to have been born of one, except this Christ of ours.

And Trypho answered: “The Scripture does not say, ‘Look, the virgin will conceive and bear a son,’ but ‘Look, the young woman will conceive and bear a son,’ and so on, as you quoted. And the whole prophecy was spoken about Hezekiah, and it can be shown to have come out in him exactly as the prophecy says. “And in the myths of the people called Greeks it is told that Perseus was born from Danae, who was a virgin, when the one they call Zeus came streaming down on her in the form of gold. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves for saying the same things they say. Better to say that this Jesus was born a man of human parents. And if you prove from the Scriptures that he is the Christ, and that because he lived a lawful and perfect life he was counted worthy of being chosen to be Christ, well and good — but do not dare to tell monstrous tales, or you will be convicted of talking as foolishly as the Greeks.” [s]

To this I said: Trypho, I want to convince you of this, and everyone else along with you: even if you say worse things than that, in ridicule and in mockery, you will not shift me from what I have set out. Out of the very words and facts that you think you are putting forward to refute me, I will always draw the proofs of what I say, with the testimony of the Scriptures. You are not, however, acting rightly, or as a man who loves truth, when you try to undo the very points we have agreed on all along: that certain of the commands were laid down through Moses because of the hard-heartedness of your people. For you said that it was by living a lawful life that he was chosen and became Christ — if in fact he were proved to be the Christ at all.

And Trypho said: “You yourself admitted to us that he was circumcised, and that he kept the other legal customs laid down through Moses.”

And I answered: I admitted it, and I admit it still. But I did not admit that he endured all these things as being counted righteous through them. He was carrying out to the end the plan that his Father — the Maker of all things, and Lord and God — wanted carried out. For I admit as well that he endured dying by crucifixion, and becoming a man, and suffering everything your people laid on him. But since you are once again refusing to agree to what you have already agreed to, Trypho, answer me this. Those righteous men and patriarchs who lived before Moses, who kept none of the things that Scripture shows first received their institution through Moses — are they saved in the inheritance of the blessed, or not?

And Trypho said: “The Scriptures force me to admit that they are.” “In the same way I ask you again,” I said. “Did God command your fathers to make the offerings and the sacrifices because he had need of them, or because of their hard-heartedness and their readiness to turn to idols?” “That too,” he said, “the Scriptures force us in the same way to admit.” “And in the same way,” I said, “did the Scriptures foretell that God has promised to make a new covenant besides the one at Mount Horeb?” He answered that this too had been foretold. Then I said again, “And was the old covenant laid down for your fathers with fear and trembling, so that they could not even listen to God?” He admitted it.

“What then?” I said. “God promised that there would be another covenant, not laid down the way that one was. He said it would be laid down for them without fear and trembling and lightning, and that it would show which command and which deed God knows to be everlasting and fitted to every race, and which ones he laid down to fit the hard-heartedness of your people — as he also cries out through the prophets.” “To this too,” he said, “everyone who loves truth rather than strife must certainly agree.” Then I replied, “I do not know how it is that you call other people lovers of strife, when you yourself have often shown yourself plainly doing that very thing, contradicting again and again what you had agreed to.”