02 - Book I, Part 2

CHAPTER IV. THE RELIGION PROCLAIMED BY HIM TO ALL NATIONS But that no one may suppose that his doctrine is new and strange, as if it were framed by a man of recent origin, differing in no respect from other men, let us now briefly consider this point also. It is admitted that when in recent times the appearance of our Savior, Jesus Christ, had become known to all men, there immediately made its appearance a new nation, a nation confessedly not small, and not dwelling in some corner of the earth, but the most numerous and pious of all nations, indestructible and unconquerable, because it always receives assistance from God. This nation, thus suddenly appearing at the time appointed by the inscrutable counsel of God, is the one which has been honored by all with the name of Christ. One of the prophets, when he saw beforehand with the eye of the Divine Spirit which was to be, was so astonished at it that he cried out, Who hath heard of such things? and who hath spoken thus? Hath the earth brought forth in one day? and hath a nation been born at once? And the same prophet gives a hint also of the name by which the nation was to be called, when he says, Those that serve me shall be called by a new name, which shall be blessed upon the earth. But although it is clear that we are new, and that this new name of Christians has really but recently been known among all nations, nevertheless our life and our conduct, with our doctrines of religion, have not been lately invented by us, but from the first creation of man, so to speak, have been established by the natural understanding of divinely favored men of old. That this is so we shall show in the following way. That the Hebrew nation is not new, but is universally honored on account of its antiquity, is known to all. The books and writings of this people contain accounts of ancient men, rare indeed, and few in number, but nevertheless distinguished for piety and righteousness and every other virtue. Of these, some excellent men lived before the flood, others, of the sons and descendants of Noah, lived after it, among them Abraham, whom the Hebrews celebrate as their own founder and forefather. If any one should assert that all those who have enjoyed the testimony of righteousness, from Abraham himself back to the first man, were Christians in fact, if not in name, he would not go beyond the truth. For that which the name indicates, that the Christian man, through the knowledge and the teaching of Christ, is distinguished for temperance and righteousness, for patience in life and manly virtue, and for a profession of piety toward the one and only God over all, all that was zealously practiced by them, not less than by us. They did not care about circumcision of the body, neither do we. They did not care about observing Sabbaths, nor do we. They did not avoid certain kinds of food, neither did they regard the other distinctions which Moses first delivered to their posterity to be observed as symbols, nor do Christians of the present day do such things. But they also clearly knew the very Christ of God, for it has already been shown that He appeared unto Abraham, that He imparted revelations to Isaac, that He talked with Jacob, that He held converse with Moses and with the prophets that came after. Hence you will find those divinely favored men honored with the name of Christ, according to the passage which says of them, Touch not my Christs, and do my prophets no harm. So that it is clearly necessary to consider that religion which has lately been preached to all nations through the teaching of Christ, the first and most ancient of all religions, and the one discovered by those divinely favored men in the age of Abraham. If it is said that Abraham, a long time afterward, was given the command of circumcision, we reply that nevertheless before this it was declared that he had received the testimony of righteousness through faith. As the divine word says, Abraham believed in God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. And indeed unto Abraham, who was thus before his circumcision a justified man, there was given by God, who revealed himself unto him, but this was Christ himself, the Word of God, a prophecy in regard to those who in coming ages should be justified in the same way as he. The prophecy was in the following words, And in thee shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed. And again, He shall become a nation great and numerous, and in him shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. It is permissible to understand this as fulfilled in us. For he, having renounced the superstition of his father's, and the former error of his life, and having confessed the one God over all, and having worshipped him with deeds of virtue, and not with the service of the law which was afterward given by Moses, was justified by faith in Christ, the Word of God, who appeared unto him. To him, then, who was a man of this character, it was said that all the tribes and all the nations of the earth should be blessed in him. But that very religion of Abraham has reappeared at the present time, practiced in deeds more efficacious than words, by Christians alone throughout the world. What, then, should prevent the confession that we who are of Christ practice one and the same mode of life, and have one and the same religion, as those divinely favored men of old? Whence it is evident that the perfect religion committed to us by the teaching of Christ is not new and strange, but, if the truth must be spoken, it is the first and the true religion. This may suffice for this subject. CHAPTER V. THE TIME OF HIS APPEARANCE AMONG MEN And now, after this necessary introduction to our proposed history of the Church, we can enter, so to speak, upon our journey, beginning with the appearance of our Savior in the flesh. And we invoke God, the Father of the Word, and Him, of whom we have been speaking, Jesus Christ Himself, our Savior and Lord, the heavenly Word of God, as our aid and fellow-laborer in the narration of the truth. It was in the forty-second year of the reign of Augustus, and the twenty-eighth after the subjugation of Egypt and the death of Antony and Cleopatra, with whom the dynasty of the Ptolemies in Egypt came to an end, that our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, was born in Bethlehem of Judea, according to the prophecies which had been uttered concerning Him. His birth took place during the first census, while Cyrenius was governor of Syria. Flavius Josephus, the most celebrated of Hebrew historians, also mentions this census, which was taken during Cyrenius' term of office. In the same connection, he gives an account of the uprising of the Galileans, which took place at that time, of which also Luke, among our writers, has made mention in the Acts, in the following words. After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing, and drew away a multitude after him, he also perished, and all, even as many as obeyed him, were dispersed. The above-mentioned author, in the eighteenth book of his Antiquities, in agreement with these words, adds the following, which we quote exactly. Cyrenius, a member of the senate, one who had held other offices and had passed through them all to the consulship, a man also of great dignity in other respects, came to Syria with a small retinue, being sent by Caesar to be a judge of the nation, and to make an assessment of their property. And after a little, he says, but Judas, a Golanite, from a city called Gamala, taking with him Saducus, a Pharisee, urged the people to revolt, both of them saying that the taxation meant nothing else than downright slavery, and exhorting the nation to defend their liberty. And in the second book of his History of the Jewish War, he writes as follows concerning the same man. At this time a certain Galilean, whose name was Judas, persuaded his countrymen to revolt, declaring that they were cowards if they submitted to pay tribute to the Romans, and if they endured besides God, masters who were mortal. These things are recorded by Josephus. Chapter 6 About the time of Christ, in accordance with prophecy, the rulers who had governed the Jewish nation in regular succession from the days of antiquity came to an end, and Herod, the first foreigner, became king. When Herod, the first ruler of foreign blood, became king, the prophecy of Moses received its fulfillment, according to which there should not be wanting a prince of Judah, nor a ruler from his loins, until he come for whom it is reserved. The latter, he also shows, was to be the expectation of the nations. This prediction remained unfulfilled so long as it was permitted them to live under rulers from their own nation, that is, from the time of Moses to the reign of Augustus. Under the latter, Herod, the first foreigner, was given the kingdom of the Jews by the Romans. As Josephus relates, he was an Idumean on his father's side and an Arabian on his mother's. But Africanus, who was also no common writer, says that they who were more accurately informed about him report that he was a son of Antipater, and that the latter was the son of a certain Herod of Ascalon, one of the so-called servants of the temple of Apollo. This Antipater, having been taken a prisoner while a boy by Idumean robbers, lived with them because his father, being a poor man, was unable to pay a ransom for him. Growing up in their practices, he was afterward befriended by Hercanus, the high priest of the Jews. A son of his was that Herod who lived in the times of our Savior. When the kingdom of the Jews had devolved upon such a man, the expectation of the nations was, according to prophecy, already at the door. For with him their princes and governors, who had ruled in regular succession from the time of Moses, came to an end. Before their captivity and their transportation to Babylon, they were ruled by Saul first and then by David, and before the kings leaders governed them who were called judges, and who came after Moses and his successor Jesus. After their return from Babylon, they continued to have, without interruption, an aristocratic form of government with an oligarchy. For the priests had the direction of affairs until Pompey, the Roman general, took Jerusalem by force and defiled the holy places by entering the very innermost sanctuary of the temple. Aristobulus, who, by the right of ancient succession, had been up to that time both king and high priest, he sent with his children in chains to Rome, and gave to Hercanus, brother of Aristobulus, the high priesthood, while the whole nation of the Jews was made tributary to the Romans from that time. But Hercanus, who was the last of the regular line of high priests, was very soon afterward taken prisoner by the Parthians, and Herod, the first foreigner, as I have already said, was made king of the Jewish nation by the Roman Senate and by Augustus. Under him Christ appeared in bodily shape, and the expected salvation of the nations and their calling followed in accordance with prophecy. From this time the princes and rulers of Judah, I mean of the Jewish nation, came to an end, and as a natural consequence the order of the high priesthood, which from ancient times had proceeded regularly in closest succession from generation to generation, was immediately thrown into confusion. Of these things Josephus is also a witness, who shows that when Herod was made king by the Romans he no longer appointed the high priests from the ancient line, but gave the honor to certain obscure persons. A course similar to that of Herod in the appointment of the priests was pursued by his son Archelaus, and after him by the Romans, who took the government into their own hands. The same writer shows that Herod was the first that locked up the sacred garment of the high priest under his own seal, and refused to permit the high priests to keep it for themselves. The same course was followed by Archelaus after him, and after Archelaus by the Romans. These things have been recorded by us in order to show that another prophecy has been fulfilled in the appearance of our Savior Jesus Christ. For the scripture in the book of Daniel, having expressly mentioned a certain number of weeks until the coming of Christ, of which we have treated in other books, most clearly prophesies that after the completion of those weeks the unction among the Jews should totally perish. And this, it has been clearly shown, was fulfilled at the time of the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. This has been necessarily premised by us as a proof of the correctness of the time. Matthew and Luke in their Gospels have given us the genealogy of Christ differently, and many suppose that they are at variance with one another. Since, as a consequence, every believer, in ignorance of the truth, has been zealous to invent some explanation which shall harmonize the two passages, permit us to subjoin the account of the matter which has come down to us, and which is given by Africanus, who was mentioned by us just above, in his epistle to Aristides, where he discusses the harmony of the Gospel genealogies. After refuting the opinions of others as forced and deceptive, he gives the account which he had received from tradition in these words. For whereas the names of the generations were reckoned in Israel either according to nature or according to law, according to nature by the succession of legitimate offspring, and according to law whenever another raised up a child to the name of a brother dying childless. For because a clear hope of resurrection was not yet given, they had a representation of the future promised by a kind of mortal resurrection, in order that the name of the one deceased might be perpetuated. Whereas then some of those who are inserted in this genealogical table succeeded by natural descent the son to the father, while others, though born of one father, were ascribed by name to another, mention was made of both of those who were progenitors in fact, and of those who were so only in name. Thus neither of the Gospels is in error, for one reckons by nature, the other by law. For the line of descent from Solomon and that from Nathan were so involved, the one with the other, by the raising up of children to the childless and by second marriages, that the same persons are justly considered to belong at one time to one, at another time to another, that is, at one time to the reputed fathers, at another to the actual fathers. So that both these accounts are strictly true, and come down to Joseph with considerable intricacy indeed, yet quite accurately. But in order that what I have said may be made clear, I shall explain the interchange of the generations. If we reckon the generations from David through Solomon, the third from the end is found to be Matan, who begat Jacob, the father of Joseph. But if, with Luke, we reckon them from Nathan, the son of David, in like manner the third from the end is Melchi, whose son Eli was the father of Joseph. For Joseph was the son of Eli, the son of Melchi. Joseph, therefore, being the object proposed to us, it must be shown how it is that each is recorded to be his father, both Jacob, who derived his descent from Solomon, and Eli, who derived his from Nathan. First how it is that these two, Jacob and Eli, were brothers, and then how it is that their fathers, Matan and Melchi, although of different families, are declared to be grandfathers of Joseph. Matan and Melchi, having married in succession the same woman, begat children, who were uterine brothers, for the law did not prohibit a widow, whether such by divorce or by the death of her husband, from marrying another. By Esther, then, for this was the woman's name, according to tradition, Matan, a descendant of Solomon, first begat Jacob. And when Matan was dead, Melchi, who traced his descent back to Nathan, being of the same tribe but another family, married her, as before said, and begat a son, Eli. Thus we shall find the two, Jacob and Eli, although belonging to different families, yet brethren by the same mother. Of these the one, Jacob, when his brother Eli had died childless, took the latter's wife and begat by her a son, Joseph, his own son by nature and in accordance with reason. Wherefore also it is written, Jacob begat Joseph. But according to law he was the son of Eli, for Jacob, being the brother of the latter, raised up seed to him. Hence the genealogy traced through him will not be rendered void, which the evangelist Matthew in his enumeration gives thus, Jacob begat Joseph. But Luke, on the other hand, says, who was the son, as was supposed, for this he also adds, of Joseph, the son of Eli, the son of Melchi, for he could not more clearly express the generation according to law. And the expression he begat he has omitted in his genealogical table up to the end, tracing the genealogy back to Adam, the son of God. This interpretation is neither incapable of proof nor is it an idle conjecture. For the relatives of our Lord according to the flesh, whether with the desire of boasting or simply wishing to state the fact, in either case truly, have handed down the following account. Some Idumean robbers, having attacked Ascalon, a city of Palestine, carried away from a which stood near the walls, in addition to other booty, Antipater, son of a certain temple slave named Herod. And since the priest was not able to pay the ransom for his son, Antipater was brought up in the customs of the Idumeans, and afterward was befriended by Hercanus, the high priest of the Jews. And having been sent by Hercanus on an embassy to Pompey, and having restored to him the kingdom which had been invaded by his brother Aristobulus, he had the good fortune to be named procurator of Palestine. But Antipater, having been slain by those who were envious of his great good fortune, was succeeded by his son Herod, who was afterward, by a decree of the Senate, made king of the Jews under Antony and Augustus. His sons were Herod and the other Tetrarchs. These accounts agree also with those of the Greeks. But as there had been kept in the archives up to that time the genealogies of the Hebrews, as well as those who traced their lineage back to proselytes, such as Achior the Ammonite and Ruth the Moabitess, and to those who were mingled with the Israelites and came out of Egypt with them, Herod, inasmuch as the lineage of the Israelites contributed nothing to his advantage, and since he was goaded with the consciousness of his own ignoble extraction, burned all the genealogical records, thinking that he might appear of noble origin if no one else were able, from the public registers, to trace back his lineage to the patriarchs or proselytes and to those mingled with them who were called geori. A few of the careful, however, having obtained private records of their own, either by remembering the names or by getting them in some other way from the registers, pried themselves on preserving the memory of their noble extraction. Among these are those already mentioned, called desposenai, on account of their connection with the family of the Savior. Coming from Nazareth and Kokabah, villages of Judea, into other parts of the world, they drew the aforesaid genealogy from memory and from the Book of Daily Records as faithfully as possible. Whether then the case stand thus or not, no one could find a clearer explanation, according to my own opinion and that of every candid person. And let this suffice us, for, although we can urge no testimony in its support, we have nothing better or truer to offer. In any case, the Gospel states the truth. And at the end of the same epistle he adds these words, Mathan, who was descended from Solomon, begot Jacob. And when Mathan was dead, Melchi, who was descended from Nathan, begot Eli by the same woman. Eli and Jacob were thus uterine brothers. Eli having died childless, Jacob raised up seed to him, begetting Joseph, his own son by nature, but by law the son of Eli. Thus Joseph was the son of both. Thus far Africanus. And the lineage of Joseph being thus traced, Mary also is virtually shown to be of the same tribe with him, since, according to the law of Moses, intermarriages between different tribes were not permitted. For the command is to marry one of the same family and lineage, so that the inheritance may not pass from tribe to tribe. This may suffice here.