71. But I do not assent to your teachers when they refuse
where they initiate into their traditions those who believe in him, can I not perceive that in this case they are imitating the saying of Daniel that A stone was cut without hands from a great mountain, and a similar passage in Isaiah, the whole of whose utterances they attempted to imitatel?
For they have arranged that words urging right conduct should be spoken in their rites.
[There follows a quotation from Isa. 33:13-19.] It is clear that in this prophecy mention is made of the bread which our Christ taught us to make in remembrance of his becoming incarnate? for the sake of those who believe in him, for whose sake he even became vulnerable to suffering, and of the cup, which he taught us to make in the eucharist in remembrance of his blood?.
And this same prophecy indicates that we shall see him as a King with glory. And these passages of the prophecy cry aloud that that people which was foreknown to be destined to believe in him was foreknown to be destined to practise the fear of the Lord.
And that those who imagine that they know the text of the Scriptures, and who hear the prophecies read, have no understanding the same Scriptures likewise proclaim.
So, Trypho, whenever I hear that Perseus was begotten of a virgin, I realize that the deceitful serpent is imitating in this detail too.
71.
But I do not assent to your teachers when they refuse to accept as a proper translation that which was made by the Seventy Elders in the reign of Ptolemy who was King of Egypt, but try to produce their own translations.
I would like you to realize that they have entirely removed many passages from the translation of the elders under Ptolemy, in which this same crucified man is indicated, declared directly
1Pan. 2:34; cf. Isa. 33:16.
Or "of his becoming incorporate" (i.e. in the eucharist), $1 Cor. 11:23-25.
to be God and man and crucified and dying!.
I am not bringing these texts into evidence, because I understand that everybody of your race rejects them, but I am here to conduct the discussion from the texts which are still acknowledged by you.
Consequently you are acquainted with such of the texts as I have brought to your notice, except that you attack the verse Behold, the virgin shall conceive in the womb2, and allege that it runs Behold the young woman shall conceive in the womb.
And I promised to demonstrate formally that the prophecy does not apply to Hezekiah, as you have been taught, but to this Christ of mine.
And indeed I will do so."
Trypho said, "We request first that you will tell us some of the passages which you allege to have been entirely omitted."
[Caps.72-77 give these quotations; which consist either of purely Christian additions to the LXX or of passages which are in Hebrew but have no particular reference to Christ.]
(Justin is speaking) 78.
"Consequently this King Herod enquired of the elders of your people when the wise men from Arabia came and told him that from a star which appeared in heaven they knew that a king had been born in your country and that We have come to worship him}.
The elders said, In Bethlehem, YJustin is referring to the Septuagint. Greek translation of the Old
Testament, made in stages over a long period, beginning perhaps about 270 8.c.
The story of it having been made by seventy Jewish translators sent for by Ptolemy I, King of Egypt, is largely legendary, but there is no doubt that Alexandria is the place where this translation was begun.
Justin's accusation that those passages which the Septuagint contains but which are absent from the Hebrew Scriptures were deliberately suppressed by the Jews is childish and absurd.
The Jews of his day were entirely justified in preferring the text of the Hebrew.
Tsa. 7:14.
3The N.T. passages referred to in this section are Matt. 2:5 sq. and 1:18-20.
because this is written in the prophet: And thou, Bethlehem, the country of Judah, art not least among the leaders of Judah, for out of thee shall come a leader, who shall shepherd my people'.
The wise men from Arabia came to Bethlehem and worshipped the child and offered to him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.
Then by revelation, after they had worshipped the child in Bethlehem, they were commanded not to go back again to Herod.
And Joseph who was betrothed to Mary, though he had previously intended to abandon Mary who was betrothed to him, because he thought that she was pregnant as a result of intercourse with a man, that is as a result of fornication, was commanded by a vision not to abandon his wife, for the angel who appeared to him said to him, "What she has in her womb is from the Holy
Spirit'.
Therefore he was afraid and did not abandon her, but as a census was then being held in Judaea, the first under Quirinius, he went up from Nazareth, where he was living, to Bethlehem, which was his native town, to be registered, for he was by descent of the tribe of Judah which used to live in that part of the country.
Then he was ordered to leave for Egypt along with Mary and to stay there with the child until he should know, again by revelation, when to return to Judaea.
At the birth of the child, then, in Bethlehem, since Joseph did not have any place to stay in that village, he put up in a cave near the village, and then while they were there Mary brought forth Christ and laid him in a manger, and this was where the wise men found him when they came from Arabia.
I described to you how Isaiah announced beforehand about the sign referring to the cave
(I said), and for the sake of those who have come today along with you I will recall the passage again (I said). And I recounted the passage from Isaiah which I have already set down, when I said that it is because of these utterances that 1Micah 5 :2(1).
those who teach the mysteries of Mithras are prompted by the devil to say that it is in a place called by them a cave that their initiation ceremonies are enacted.
Well, the wise men from Arabia did not return to Herod, which he expected them to do, but according to their instructions departed to their own country by another way, and Joseph and Mary with the child, following the divine message, had already gone off to Egypt.
So Herod was not able to recognize the child whom the wise men had come to worship, and ordered all the children in Bethlehem to be murdered indiscriminately.
Even this incident was prophesied as destined to take place through Jeremiah; the Holy Spirit said these words: A voice was heard in Ramah, mourning and great lamentation, Rachel mourning for her children, and she would not be comforted because they do not exist any longer?.
So because of this voice which was destined to be heard from Ramah, that is from Arabia (for there is even today a place called Ramah in Arabia), mourning was destined to overwhelm the place where Rachel, the wife of Jacob, who was called Israel, the holy patriarch, was buried, that is
Bethlehem; the mothers were mourning for their own children who were murdered and had no comfort for the disaster which had befallen them.
Further the text of Isaiah, He will take the power of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria', meant that the power of the evil demon who dwelt in Damascus would be conquered by Christ as soon as he was born.
Now this evidently took place. The wise men, who had been forcibly carried away into all evil practices
1Notice that Justin has added to the account of Christ's birth in the gospels the details that the wise men came from Arabia and that the place where Christ was born was a cave.
The first is certainly a guess of his own.
The second just might be based on oral tradition picked up in Bethlehem.
Jer. 38(31) :15.
5Isa. 8:4.