57. While I was silent Trypho said: "It is clear that
[The rest of the chapter labours to prove that the three figures who appeared to Abraham in the incidents already discussed were two angels accompanying the second or inferior God and Lord to whom, Justin maintains, the Old Testament witnesses. | 57. While I was silent Trypho said: "It is clear that Scripture compels us to acknowledge this.
But you would agree that it is right to be perplexed about the passage which says that (the angel) ate the things prepared by Abraham and put before him."1
I answered: "It is written that they ate.
I suppose we are to assume that the three are said to have eaten, not just the two, who were really angels and, it is evident to us, were fed in the heavens, even though not fed on the kind of food which we men eat (for the Scripture says this about the manna, with which your fathers were fed in the wilderness, they ate angels' food)?.
So I would conjecture that the account which says that they ate would mean much what we would if we said about fire that it devoured everything, but we are not at all to interpret the passage as if they ate chewing with teeth and jaws.
Consequently we would not be perplexed about any point in this passage if we have even the least experience of using figurative language."
Trypho: "It is possible that the problem raised by the method of eating by which according to Scripture they consumed and ate the food prepared by Abraham can be solved.
So come now and give us the reason why this God who was seen by Abraham, and who was the servant of the God Creator of the universe, came to be born of a virgin and to be a man with the same consciousness as all men, as you have already said"3. .
1Gen. 18:8.
*Ps, 77(78): 25.
3857 :4,58,59,60 is omitted.
(Justin speaking) 61. "My friends," I said, "I will give you another testimony from the Scriptures that God produced a Beginning before all created things, a rational power coming from himself, which is also called by the Holy Spirit the glory of the Lord!, who sometimes calls himself Son, and sometimes Angel, and sometimes God, and sometimes Lord and Word and sometimes Captain of the Host2, when he appeared in the form of a man to Joshua of Nun.
All his names are derived from the fact that he serves the Father's purpose and that he was begotten from the Father by his will.
Do we not indeed see a similar phenomenon taking place in our own experience?
When we utter any word, we originate this word but do not produce it by means of division, as if the reason (word) in us were thereby reduced.
But the process is like what we see when one fire is kindled from another; the fire from which the kindling came is not reduced but remains the same and the fire which was kindled from it also appears to be lighting on its own without reducing that from which it was kindled.
The account of wisdom will supply me with a testimony here, wisdom which is this same God begotten by the Father of the universe, who exists also as Word and Wisdom and Power and Glory of its begetter."
[Here follows a quotation of Prov. 8:21-36.] 62.
"The Word of God, my friends, said this very same thing through Moses informing us that he whom he had indicated was by the same conception called God in the passage describing the creation of man.
[Here follows a quotation of Gen. 1:26-28.] Now you may by altering the words just quoted take the same view as your teachers, either that, when God said
1Exod. 16:7.
Josh. 5:14.