46. He asked me: "If there are some people who want
46. He asked me: "If there are some people who want to follow a course of life observing the ordinances imposed by Moses and also believe in this crucified Jesus, recognizing that he is the Christ of God and that to him is granted authority to judge every single person, and his is the everlasting kingdom, can such people be saved too?"
I said in reply, "Let us consider this point, whether it is possible to observe now all the ordinances imposed by Moses."
He answered: "No. We recognize that, as you have said, it is not possible to slay the Passover lamb elsewhere than in Jerusalem, nor for those who are commanded to do so to sacrifice goats at the Day of Atonement, nor in fact any of the other sacrifices."
I said, "Which ones then is it possible to observe? I ask you to tell me yourself.
For you will be convinced that a man can certainly be saved who does not observe or do the everlasting ordinances."
He answered, "I would say, to keep the sabbath and to be circumcised and to keep the monthly feasts and to observe ritual washing after touching any of the things forbidden by Moses or after having sexual intercourse."
I said, "There were Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Noah and Job, and all the other similarly righteous people who lived before them or after them, I mean Sarah the wife of Abraham and Rebecca the wife of Isaac and Rachel the wife of Jacob, and Leah, and all the other women of this sort until the mother of Moses, the faithful servant.
They observed none of these ordinances.
Do you think they will be saved?"
Trypho answered: "Were not Abraham and the people later than he circumcised?"
I replied, "I believe that Abraham and those who came after him were circumcised.
But I told the reason why 1Num. 12:7.
circumcision was given to them on many occasions during my earlier arguments, and unless the discussion is annoying you, let us examine the point again. You realize that until
Moses absolutely no righteous person observed a single one of the ordinances which we have been discussing and received no command to observe them, except that circumcision took its starting-point in Abraham."
He said, "We realize this, and we admit that they are saved."
I replied, "You should know that it was because of the hardness of heart of your people that God enjoined all these ordinances on you through Moses, so that as you frequently practised many of them you should always have God before your eyes and initiate no wrongdoing nor impiety.
He enjoined you to wear the scarlet fringe! so that thereby no forgetfulness of God should overtake you; and he ordered you to clasp round you a phylactery? containing very thin parchments on which are written some letters, which we too certainly consider holy, and thereby he challenged you perpetually to preserve the memory of God, and at the same time to have a sense of sin in your hearts.
So you have many reminders of piety, but even so you were not persuaded to avoid idolatry, but in the time of Elijah when he calculated the number of men who had not bowed the knee to Baal he said that they were seven thousand3, and in Isaiah he convicts you of even offering your children as a sacrifice to idols+.
But we in order to avoid sacrificing to the things to whom we used to sacrifice, endure the very worst punishments and when we are put to death we rejoice, believing that God will raise us up through his Christ and render us no longer subject to 1§0, by adopting an emendation; see Num. 15:37-41.
2They were contained in very small boxes; on the parchment were written the texts Exod. 13:1-10,11-16; Deut. 6:4-9; 11:13-21.
31 Kings 19:18.
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