88. It is possible to see among us both women and men
came upon him not because he was lacking in them, but because they are destined to achieve their rest in him, that is to reach finality in his case, so that there would be no more prophets according to the old tradition among your race.
And this you can see with your own eyes, for after him no prophet at all has occurred among you.
You can understand from my words that it was by each prophet receiving one or perhaps a second power from God that the prophets among you used to do and speak what we too learn from the Scriptures.
Solomon, for instance, had the spirit of wisdom and Daniel of understanding and counsel, and Moses of might and godliness, and Elijah of fear and Isaiah of knowledge, and the others similarly had each one, or one power succeeding another alternately, as Jeremiah and the minor prophets and David and, in short, any others who were prophets among you.
The Spirit therefore rested, that is it ceased, when he came, after whose coming those phenomena were meant to cease from among you, at the period when this divine policy of his dwelling among men was inaugurated.
Yet also these phenomena achieved rest again in him as it was prophesied that gifts would be given which he gives from the grace of the power of that Spirit to those who believe in him, as he knows each to be worthy.
I have already stated and I say again that it was prophesied that this development would occur by his means after his ascent into heaven.
[ There follow citations of Ps. 67(68) :19 and Joel 2:28,29(3:1,2).] 88.
It is possible to see among us both women and men who have endowments from the Spirit of God.
Therefore the prediction was made that the powers enumerated by Isaiah would come on him, not because he was lacking in power, but so that there would not be any more after him.
It should be a proof of this for you that this event of which I told you took place, the arrival of the wise men from Arabia
who as soon as the child was born came and worshipped him.
For even when he was only just born he possessed his power.
He grew up according to the normal growth of all men, he used whatever means were suitable, supplied each stage of his growth with its proper material, ate every sort of food, and waited thirty years, more or less, until John appeared as a herald of his arrival and pioneered the way of baptism, as I have already shown.
Then when Jesus came to the river Jordan, where John was baptizing, he went down into the water, and fire was kindled in the Jordan!, and the apostles of this Christ of ours wrote that when he came up from the water the Holy Spirit perched upon him in the form of a dove. We know that he did not come to the river because he needed to be baptized or that the Spirit should come on him in the form of a dove, just as he did not endure the experience of birth and of crucifixion because he needed to do so; but he did this for the sake of the human race who ever since Adam's time had fallen under the power of death and of the serpent's deceit, as each person committed sin on his own responsibility.
God wanted those who possessed free-will and power of self-direction, that is both angels and men, to do whatever he had given into the power of each to do; so he arranged that if they should choose to do what was pleasing to him he would preserve them immune from corruption and punishment, but if they behaved wickedly he would punish each as seemed best to him.
Not even the fact that he sat on an ass when he entered Jerusalem, which was prophesied, as we have shown, conferred on him the power of being Christ, but he was giving an indication to men that he was Christ, just as at the incident of John's
1This, wholly unhistorical, detail is found added to the account of Jesus' Baptism in the apocryphal Gospel according to the Hebrews, and in several other apocryphal works, some of them with Gnostic associations.