An Answer to the Jews

Now, if the hardness of your heart shall persist in rejecting and deriding all these interpretations, we will prove that it may suffice that the death of the Christ had been prophesied, in order that, from the fact that the nature of the death had not been specified, it may be understood to have been affected by means of the cross and that the passion of the cross is not to be ascribed to any but Him whose death was constantly being predicted.

For I desire to show, in one utterance of Isaiah, His death, and passion, and sepulture. “By the crimes,” he says, “of my people was He led unto death; and I will give the evil for His sepulture, and the rich for His death, because He did not wickedness, nor was guile found in his mouth; and God willed to redeem His soul from death,” and so forth. He says again, moreover: “His sepulture has been taken away from the midst.” For neither was He buried except He were dead, nor was His sepulture removed from the midst except through His resurrection.

Finally, he subjoins: “Therefore He shall have many for an heritage, and of many shall He divide spoils:” who else (shall so do) but He who “was born,” as we have above shown?— “in return for the fact that His soul was delivered unto death?” For, the cause of the favour accorded Him being shown—in return, to wit, for the injury of a death which had to be recompensed,— it is likewise shown that He, destined to attain these rewards because of death, was to attain them after death— of course after resurrection.

For that which happened at His passion, that mid-day grew dark, the prophet Amos announces, saying, “And it shall be,” he says, “in that day, says the Lord, the sun shall set at mid-day, and the day of light shall grow dark over the land: and I will convert your festive days into grief, and all your canticles into lamentation; and I will lay upon your loins sackcloth, and upon every head baldness; and I will make the grief like that for a beloved (son), and them that are with him like a day of mourning.” For that you would do thus at the beginning of the first month of your new (years) even Moses prophesied, when he was foretelling that all the community of the sons of Israel was to immolate at eventide a lamb, and were to eat this solemn sacrifice of this day (that is, of the passover of unleavened bread) with bitterness; and added that “it was the passover of the Lord,” that is, the passion of Christ.

Which prediction was thus also fulfilled, that “on the first day of unleavened bread” you slew Christ; and (that the prophecies might be fulfilled) the day hasted to make an “eventide,”— that is, to cause darkness, which was made at mid-day; and thus “your festive days God converted into grief, and your canticles into lamentation.” For after the passion of Christ there overtook you even captivity and dispersion, predicted before through the Holy Spirit.