The Law That Was Added
4
And he expounded the matter to them from morning till evening, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the law of Moses and from the prophets.
— Acts 28:23
The Two Libraries
Eusebius tells us that Justin, though a native of Samaria, was converted at Ephesus in Asia Minor when he was about thirty years of age. We would date this, for various reasons, to around the year 130 — just about the time Aquila was coming under the influence of the Jamnia rabbis. What brought Justin to Ephesus? We’ll probably never know for sure, but he certainly was a voracious reader of philosophical books at the time — in a day when only the very richest of men could afford to own more than one or two. He had already devoured, by his own account, many of the works of Euripides, Xenophon, and Menander and had delved pretty deeply into the Pythagoreans as well, though the records hold no indication that Justin was a man of means. He may, in other words, have simply got to the bottom of the book barrel in isolated Shechem — a real crisis for many of us, even today — and had to go searching out more grist for the mill. And it just so happens that one of the three greatest libraries in the Roman world (after Alexandria, of course, and Pergamum) had just opened in Ephesus: the famous Library of Celsus, home to more than twelve thousand of the world’s greatest titles.82
The library has a wide portico (it can still be visited today, though the books have gone) that is reached by climbing nine wide steps leading up to three grand entrances. This may be the very spot where Justin first met Trypho, the rabbi with whom his name has been associated these past nineteen centuries, for it matches the recorded description very well. Attracted by the distinctive pallium, or philosopher’s cloak, that Justin still wore even after his conversion, Trypho approached him casually, in a spirit of friendly inquiry, if not here, then at some similar philosopher’s “hangout” in the city. The debate between them (which later became the basis of Justin’s longest surviving work, the Dialogue with Trypho) happened during the last year of the Bar Kokhba revolt, the year 135. Trypho appears as a refugee — perhaps even a deserter — from that conflict, fleeing for his life from a war that was now going very badly for the Jews.
Trypho “is, indeed, a curious type of Jew; a light and superficial inquirer in the courts of the schools, surrounded by a band of loud and lively friends.”83 “In Argos,” he tells Justin,
I was taught by Corinthus, the Socratic philosopher, never to slight or ignore those who wear that gown of yours, but to show them every consideration and to converse with them, since from such a conversation some good might be derived by them or myself. . . . Accordingly, whenever I see anyone wearing such a gown, I gladly accost him. So, for this same reason, it has been a pleasure to greet you. These friends of mine share my hope of hearing something profitable from you. (1, 2)
Despite the direness of his current straits, Trypho still has both the time and the inclination to pass a couple of innocent afternoons (the debate took two full days) in the dialectic pursuit of truth as the Greeks understood it. We also notice at one point during the proceedings that Trypho seems willing to allegorize a least part of the meaning of Moses’ Law; he speaks, for example, of the prayers of the Dispersed as an acceptable substitute for the Temple sacrifices. One detects other echoes of Philo as well; both Moses and the Greek sages, for instance, were equally “philosophers inquiring about the Being of God.” Trypho then, shows definite signs of Hellenization — but, as we will see, his arguments for Judaism are those of Akiba. Could it be that Trypho was one of Jamnia’s recent converts — a typical Hellenized Jew now persuaded that things in the Dispersion really had gotten a little out of hand? Had he, perhaps, joined Akiba’s Great Reformation and gone “back to basics” in his doctrine — perhaps even pledged himself once to the now-fading Son of a Star?
Justin is surprised to find Trypho still engaged in the search for truth via pagan wisdom, when Justin had done just the opposite — turned to the prophets from Plato and Pythagoras. “ ‘How,’ I asked, ‘can you gain as much from philosophy as from your own lawgiver and prophets?’ ‘Why not,’ Trypho replies, ‘for do not the philosophers speak always about God? Do they not constantly propose questions about his unity and providence? Is this not the task of philosophy, to inquire about the Divine?’ ” Justin easily concurs; he still honors many of the philosophers himself and remains quite able to utilize their methods when he chooses. But he quickly points out the contrariety of their opinions; proof, surely, that their reasonings denote the mere guesses of men, lacking any solid touchstone with reality. Trypho responds to this rejoinder just as many modern people might do if similarly contradicted. “Smiling politely, he said, ‘Explain to us just what is your opinion of these matters, and what is your idea of God, and what is your philosophy.’ ”
This is the point at which Justin told his memorable conversion story: of the long walk on the deserted beach, of the mysterious old man who led him to Christ by introducing him first to the Hebrew prophets. Now Trypho realizes for the first time that Justin is not a typically pagan goy but a Christian one — a goy staking claims, that is, to Israel’s patrimony by appropriating an exclusively Jewish idea; to wit, salvation by the action of a Hebrew Messiah. And “at these words,” Justin records,
Trypho’s friends began to laugh, and he [Trypho] replied, smiling, “I commend all your other statements, and I admire your burning desire to know divine things, but it would be better for you to concentrate on the philosophy of Plato or some other philosopher, and in this way attain constancy, continence, and moderation, rather than be ensnared by false teachings, and become a partisan of worthless men. For, while you adhered to your former school of philosophy and lived a blameless life, there was hope of a better destiny for you, but, when you have turned away from God and have placed your hope in man, what chance of salvation do you have? If you will listen to me (indeed I already think of you as a friend), first be circumcised, then observe the precepts concerning the Sabbath, the feasts, and God’s new moons; in brief, fulfill the whole written law, and then, probably, you will experience the mercy of God. But if the Messiah has been born and exists anywhere, He is not known, nor is He conscious of His own existence, nor has He any power until Elias comes to anoint Him and to make Him manifest to all. But you [Christians] have believed this foolish rumor, and you have invented for yourselves a Christ for whom you blindly give up your lives.”
We note here that any faith Trypho may have had in Simon Bar Kokhba is certainly gone now, but his belief in the power of Hebrew law-keeping to save a man’s soul remains potent as ever.
And so the Great Debate is on — though Justin (it should be noted for later reference) did not set down his memories of it in writing until twenty-five years later. The combatants agree to adjourn together to more comfortable digs — the stone benches of a nearby gymnasium — and quickly begin to go at it in earnest. Athletes and bathers drift in and out, some pausing to listen in for a while, before returning to their sports and being replaced by others. A couple of Trypho’s companions get bored and bail on him near the end of day one, while several fresh friends show up in the morning to take their places — among them a man named Mnaseas. Justin puts himself fully at their disposal, though he does set a de facto time limit by sharing the news that he is scheduled to depart soon on a sea voyage — probably to Rome.
What we are about to see now is simply an incredible display on Justin’s part. To appreciate how incredible, we need to remind ourselves of just how very early in Church history we are. Justin has never seen a complete Christian Bible; never heard the word “Trinity.” The great ecumenical Council of Nicaea, first of twenty more to come, is still 190 years in the future — just about the same span of time as that between the election of George Washington and that of Ronald Reagan. The only true Church Fathers to have gone before him are Polycarp and Clement of Rome, from whose scattershot remembrances, called forth by sheer circumstance, we can gather only nuggets — nothing like a systematic theology or even a simple summation of Christian belief. And yet Justin, somehow, is about to present us with a fully formed case against the law maximizers that seems to come out of nowhere. If we lamented the lack of rationale presented for the apostolic ruling in the book of Acts, we now find ourselves astonished to see one spelled out here in great detail. Though its presence in our Bibles makes the book of Galatians appear to be a treatise on the subject by St. Paul, that letter too was called forth by circumstance — full, as we have seen, of “mystery verses” and closely cut to fit the crisis of the moment. Justin, by contrast, lays out a step-by-step case against Jesus-rejecting legalism, which appears to have been years aborning but whose genesis seems to be a complete mystery. Our reaction (especially if we compare the Dialogue with other Christian writings from the same period) is not unlike that of the common people toward the teaching of Jesus Himself: “Where did this man get all this? . . . No one ever spoke like this!” (Mark 6:2; see John 7:46). And that truly is the question of the hour: Where, when, and how on earth did this newly minted “baby Christian” acquire his profound expertise on these subjects? In five years or less, Justin has gone from complete ignorance of Moses and his Law to a command of the Old Testament so thorough that it allows him to more than hold his own with a knowledgeable rabbi. So where did Justin come by his case against law-keeping — a case so compelling that it soon made him the master of a whole school of thought on this subject; taken up, in years to come, by brilliant minds such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Athanasius, and even St. Thomas Aquinas! What made this astonishing makeover possible?
The solution, we think, must also be found in the setting at Ephesus; in a second library located there, a depository of Christian wisdom that must have been well-nigh unique in the world. This was the library held by the Church at Ephesus — one of the seven early churches addressed by the Spirit in the book of Revelation. This was the congregation to which Justin would have presented himself for baptism after his dramatic seaside conversion. But while there certainly were sacred books at the church of the Ephesians — not just the Septuagint but the New Testament documents cited by Justin as well, among others — the library we’re discussing now was more in the nature of a multimedia archive, a human memory bank not too dissimilar from the great collections of Appalachian storytelling or Native American folkways committed to tape or to old silent films at the Smithsonian Institution.
And what memories they must have been! The first Christians at Ephesus were Jewish disciples of John the Baptist, won to Christ by the biblical Aquila and his wife, Priscilla. Apollos was the first Christian pastor there, joined later by the Apostle Paul, who came to help build up and better organize the new church. Paul made his home at Ephesus from 54 to 57 and likely composed the New Testament book of 1 Corinthians while living there. When he departed, Paul made his own disciple Timothy bishop of the flock and then wrote letters to Ephesus (First and Second Timothy) during his subsequent missionary journeys. Justin himself helped preserve the fact (not recorded in Scripture)84 that John the Apostle later joined this illustrious roster as well; and John, too, seems to have composed New Testament epistles while at Ephesus and possibly the Fourth Gospel.85 Most astonishing of all, Ephesus may have been the final home of the Blessed Virgin Mary herself — perhaps the most authoritative source of all for personal recollections about the Second Person of the Divine Trinity. Her adopted “second son” John (to whose care Christ committed her from the Cross) is said to have brought Mary with him to Ephesus, where she resided for the remainder of her life on earth.86 In times more recent to those of Justin, the beloved martyr Ignatius may have ministered personally at Ephesus; he lived at and pastored the church at nearby Antioch, and his own letter to the Ephesians shows signs of a personal familiarity. From Ignatius, a contemporary of Justin, then, we move backward to John and Timothy, to Paul and Apollos, to the Baptizer and the Mother of God, finding ourselves, after a few shorts steps, linked to the very moment of the Incarnation itself! Here at Ephesus was a chain of custody not to be outdone anywhere! Here was the library of memories archived in the hearts of a veritable hall of fame of early Christian founders.
Would it even have been possible to live as a member of this church in 135 — under shepherds ordained at the hands of those ordained by Christ Himself — without becoming the beneficiary of an amazing body of accumulated wisdom? The New Testament books written by Paul and John can be easily read aloud in an afternoon; yet here is a church where both of them preached for literal months of Sundays, not to mention the long hours of personal counsel they doubtless imparted to clergy and laity alike. Most of these heroes had been Jews as well. Mary, by some ancient accounts, grew up within the shadow of the temple, becoming in the process the very antitype of the wise Jewish virgin who kept her lamp burning, not knowing the hour in which her Redeemer would come. Is it even possible that Jewish heroes such as these would not have had definite opinions about the issues raised by the Judaizers? The real question is how Justin could have been five years in such a place without becoming steeped in their unique body of traditions, in their indubitable understanding of Scripture.
What we’re seeing in the Dialogue then, is Justin transformed by Ephesus87 — possibly the plainest example in history of the reality of unwritten apostolic traditions and how they sometimes found their way into writing after all. We can see the entire principle in action in this case, both coming and going. One of Justin’s own favorite phrases is “we have learned from the Apostles,” which he follows up, at one point, with the saying, “to all who wish to learn, we pass on what we have been taught.”88 We then see Justin doing just this: acting as a conduit for the interpretive traditions he has received by handing them on to the next generation. We mentioned Irenaeus and Tertullian, the next two great Fathers on the timeline; both of these men wrote books of their own against the Jesus rejecters (and also against the later Marcionite movement, for that matter), all of which depend heavily on Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho. Justin, we might even say, became the early Church’s go-to guy on this topic; a fact that will allow us to enhance our understanding of his argument as we go by tapping, from time to time, into the supplementary works written by his students. “The Dialogue,” therefore,
. . . is a perfect storehouse of early Christian interpretation of Scripture. This forms its wonderful value; it carries us back to that first effort at interpretation which dates from Peter’s speech at the election of Matthias,89 and knits itself so closely with the walk at Emmaus, when the Scriptures were first opened. . . . The Old Testament is still the sacred guide and continual companion of the Christian life, the type of written revelation. Yet by the side of it we feel in Justin that a new power has appeared, a fresh canon is forming, another book is beginning to assert itself. The work is full of crucial interest, just because Justin appears at the moment when this is gradually becoming clear.90
The Law That Was Not Added
Trypho begins by paying the Church a bit of a backhanded compliment: “The precepts in your so-called Gospel are so marvelous and great that I don’t think that anyone could possibly keep them. For I took the trouble to consult them.” Here, the rabbi is probably referencing Jesus’ commands to “go the extra mile,” to “turn the other cheek,” to forgive “seventy times seven times,” and so forth (see Matt. 5:39, 41; 18:22) — teachings that take recognized moral principles of the Tanakh and expand them to such heights that only some unprecedented new fountain of supernatural grace could ever begin to make obedience humanly possible. Many Jews since Trypho’s time have expressed similar admiration for such lofty thoughts, but also skepticism about the wisdom of setting mankind’s bar so high.
“But this is what we are most puzzled about,” he continues,
that you who claim to be pious and believe yourselves to be different from the others do not segregate yourselves from them, nor do you observe a manner of life different from that of the Gentiles, for you do not keep the feasts or sabbaths, nor do you practice the rite of circumcision. You place your hope in a crucified man, and still expect to receive favors from God when you disregard His commandments. Have you not read that the male who is not circumcised on the eighth day shall be eliminated from his people? [Gen. 17:14] . . . But you, forthwith, scorn this covenant, spurn the commands that come afterwards, and then you try to convince us that you know God, when you fail to do those things that every God-fearing person would do. If, then, you can give a satisfactory reply to these charges and can show us on what you place your hopes, even though you refuse to observe the Law, we will listen to you most willingly, and then we can go on and examine in the same manner our other differences” (10, 3).
This, of course, is simply the argument of the Judaizers again and of all the other law maximizers since the circumcision party of St. Paul’s day. Yet Justin’s rebuttal cuts to the chase in just the way that Paul’s does not; here is the Apostle’s puzzling, rather skeletal argument in Galatians with the lights turned on, so to speak, with the underlying superstructure exposed at last. To tell the truth, Justin’s answer moves along a bit too fast for modern folk like us. Trypho had likely been steeped in the story of the Exodus from his youth; we, on the other hand, will probably have to step things down to slow motion at times in order to understand Old Testament allusions that would have been apparent to the rabbi immediately. And though this may force us to take a number of pages to manage fully, we will doubtless find it well worth the doing. Here, after all, is Aquila’s answer as well as Trypho’s — and perhaps Marcion’s as well.
“We do not claim that our God is different from yours,” Justin responds, contradicting Trypho’s talk of a mere crucified man,
for he is the God who, with a strong hand and outstretched arm, led your forefathers out of the land of Egypt. Nor have we placed our trust in any other (for indeed, there is no other), but only in him whom you also have trusted, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. But our hope is not through Moses or through the Law, otherwise our customs would be the same as yours. The law promulgated at Horeb91 is already obsolete, and was intended for you Jews only, whereas the law of which I speak is simply for all men.
A little later, Justin establishes his basis for this distinction, inviting Trypho to admit that “some precepts were given for the worship of God and the practice of virtue, whereas other commandments and customs were arranged either in respect to the mystery of Christ or [on account of] the hardness of your people’s hearts” (11, 2).
Here, for the first time, Christ’s explanation for Moses’ divorce concession is linked directly with the concept of a law that “was added because of transgressions.” Some of the Old Testament laws, it would seem, are good and wholesome in and of themselves; others are different than they might have been, altered somehow — even “dumbed down” — in response to the worsened state of those to whom they legislate. To Paul, remember, the law that was added had been temporary by nature and held sway only “till the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made.” “Now,” according to Justin,
a later law in opposition to an older law abrogates the older; so, too, does a later covenant void an earlier one. An everlasting and final law, Christ himself, and a trustworthy covenant has been given to us, after which there shall be no law, or commandment, or precept. . . . He is, indeed, the New Law, the new covenant, and the expectation of those who, from every nation, have awaited the blessings of God. We have been led to God through this crucified Christ, and we are the true spiritual Israel, and the descendants of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham, who, though uncircumcised, was approved and blessed by God because of his faith and was called the father of many nations. All this shall be proved as we proceed with our discussion. (11, 2)
Notice that Justin begins by sending the rabbi’s thoughts backward, to the time long before Moses, when “Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham” (in reverse chronological order) “believed God” without Moses’ Law — and were blessed. This is the original human family whom Yahweh, in His sovereignty, chose as His own and then united to Himself by means of the blood oath ancient peoples called a covenant — the same Old Covenant on which Trypho hopes he can continue to rely. So, in directing us to Israel’s family history, Justin seems to be suggesting that the best way to understand “the law that was added” might be to go looking for the law that wasn’t — the original Law to which these later, concessionary codes are ancillary.
Judah, one of Abraham’s many great-grandsons, was the father of the Jews proper — the direct ancestor of King David, upon whose throne Jesus sits, and of both St. Joseph and his wife, the Blessed Virgin Mary. His “new covenant” was a promise on God’s part that the scepter of kingship would not depart from his family until it should come to him “to whom it belongs; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples” (Gen. 49:10).
Judah’s father had seen the covenant renewed as well — and sealed with a name change. “Your name shall no more be called Jacob,” the angel told him, “but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed” (Gen. 32:28). Jacob became Israel, and the “children of Israel” carry his name to this day. And the new promise to Israel ran thus: “By you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. . . . I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you” (Gen. 28:15).
The mysterious and Christlike Isaac, father of Jacob, also received a new expression of God’s covenant:
Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you, and will bless you; for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will fulfil the oath which I swore to Abraham your father. I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give to your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves: because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. (Gen. 26:3–5)
And Abraham — whose keeping of God’s “requirements, commands, decrees, and laws” is seen in this passage to be the cause of the covenant — kept them hundreds of years before Moses was even born. So what laws were these? Where are they written down?
Well, other than God’s direct orders to “go here” or to “offer Isaac there,” they simply aren’t written. This is why, as we said earlier, Paul’s phrase about a “law that was added” is so baffling; Moses’ Sinai legislation is the first body of actual law contained in Scripture. Noah, for example, “was found righteous” (see Gen. 6:9, 7:1). By what standard? Enlarging, a few years later, on his master Justin’s theme, Tertullian asks: “For whence was Noah ‘found righteous,’ if in his case the righteousness of a natural law had not preceded? Whence was Abraham accounted ‘a friend of God’ [James 2:23], if not on the ground of equity and righteousness, (in the observance) of a natural law? Whence was Melchizedek named ‘priest of the most high God’ [Gen. 14:18], if, before the priesthood of the Levitical law, there were not levites who were wont to offer sacrifices to God?” For Tertullian, there was law even in Eden:
For in the beginning of the world He gave to Adam himself and Eve a law, that they were not to eat of the fruit of the tree planted in the midst of paradise; but that, if they did contrariwise, by death they were to die. Which law had continued enough for them, had it been kept. For in this law given to Adam we recognize in embryo all the precepts which afterward sprouted forth when given through Moses; that is, You shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart and out of your whole soul; You shall love your neighbor as yourself; You shall not kill; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; False witness you shall not utter; Honor your father and mother; and, That which is another’s, shall you not covet. For the primordial law was given to Adam and Eve in paradise, as the womb of all the precepts of God.”92
Irenaeus pitches in on this theme as well, explicitly connecting Tertullian’s idea with the New Testament passages to which it alludes:
And that men were to be saved not according to the wordiness of the law, but according to the brevity of faith and charity, Isaias says thus: “A word shortened and cut short in justice; because a short word shall God make upon the earth.”93 And therefore the apostle Paul says: “Love is the fulfillment of the law, for he who loves the Lord has fulfilled the law” [Rom. 13:10]. But the Lord too, when He was asked, what was the first commandment, said: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole strength; and the second, like to it; thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments, He says, dependeth the whole law and the prophets” [Matt. 22:37–40]. So He has increased, through our faith in Him, our love toward God and our neighbor, rendering us godly and just and good. And therefore He has made a short word upon the earth.94
The whole law and the prophets, according to Justin’s school, depend on an original, embryonic law — a law earlier and simpler than that given through Moses. “In short,” Tertullian continues, “before the Law of Moses, written in stone-tables, I contend that there was a law unwritten, which was habitually understood naturally, and by the fathers was habitually kept.”95
This primordial law, needless to say, served to justify the patriarchs entirely without the external signs so central to the Mosaic covenant. “For if,” as Justin continues with Trypho,
circumcision had been necessary for salvation, God would not have created Adam uncircumcised; nor would he have looked with favor upon the sacrifice of the uncircumcised Abel, nor would he have been pleased with the uncircumcised Enoch, who “was seen no more because God took him” [Gen. 5:24]. The Lord and His angels led Lot out of Sodom; thus was he saved without circumcision. Noah, the uncircumcised father of our race, was safe with his children in the ark. Melchizedek, the priest of the Most High, was not circumcised, yet Abraham, the first to accept circumcision of the flesh, paid tithes to him and was blessed by him. . . . Furthermore, all these men were just and pleasing in the sight of God, yet they kept no sabbaths.
Irenaeus reiterates this passage from Justin very closely at one point, but amplifies it with some fascinating material of his own:
Moreover, all the rest of the multitude of those righteous men who lived before Abraham, and of those patriarchs who preceded Moses, were justified independently of the things above mentioned, and without the law of Moses. As also Moses himself says to the people in Deuteronomy: “The Lord your God formed a covenant in Horeb. The Lord formed not this covenant with your fathers, but for you” [Deut. 5:2–3]. Why, then, did the Lord not form the covenant for the fathers? Because “the law was not established for righteous men.”96 But the righteous fathers had the meaning of the Decalogue written in their hearts and souls, that is, they loved the God who made them, and did no injury to their neighbour. There was therefore no occasion that they should be cautioned by prohibitory mandates, because they had the righteousness of the law in themselves.97
Here, once again, we find the implication of a later law, subsequent to the original written on hearts, added not for righteous men but for sinners.
Searching for the Trigger
Very well, then. If the “law that was added” came after this primordial law, because of sin, when did it come? And occasioned by what sin? The answer, like several in this survey already, isn’t as easy as it might first appear.
Near the end of the book of Genesis, at the conclusion of all God’s covenanting with the patriarchs, comes the story of Joseph, one of Judah’s many sons and a great-great grandson of Abraham. Many of us know the story well: how young Joseph the dreamer, sold into slavery by his callous brethren, ends up, after many providential twists of fate, saving the entire covenant family from starvation as a powerful governor of Egypt. The downside of the story? Joseph relocates that family to a land of rampant paganism and idolatry, where over the course of some four hundred years, they become not only slaves, as Joseph had been, but thoroughly Egyptianized slaves at that. As with immigrants in America, new generations arise who gradually lose touch with their Old Country heritage. They may even have lost the ability to speak Abraham’s tongue or to understand it, or to remember his legacy with any great vividness. So, God’s covenant promise to make them a great nation and use them to bless all the peoples of the earth must have seemed impossible, even laughable, by that point. Yet Genesis soon gives way to Exodus, and God sends Israel’s first, original messiah, Moses the Deliverer. And though the story, once again, is a familiar one, it’s worth reexamining, for our purposes, much more closely.
After the ten plagues, after the pillar and the cloud and the parting of the sea, Moses and the children of Israel came to Sinai, God’s holy mountain, and there they camped. Moses ascended to the summit to pray, and there he received from God the news of yet another new covenant in the works: “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ ” (Exod. 19:3–6).
The terms of this new covenant, notice, contain everything that was present in the previous iterations to the patriarchs, but with additional details. That the covenant revealed to Moses will, in fact, be a new one, and not just a restatement of the original, is established by the passage from Deuteronomy quoted by Irenaeus above: “The Lord your God formed a covenant in Horeb.” There is, however, complete continuity thus far. Each new covenant has been stacked atop the last rather than replacing it — and this did, no doubt, express God’s ideal or perfect plan. Trypho, in other words, is not wrong to have seen each individual covenant revealed to this point as all addition and no subtraction — all part of one Grand Plan, so much so that we can speak, as we do even now, of one Old Covenant rather than many. But the circle does widen here. This new covenant is offered not to one man, as previously, but directly addressed to the whole “house of Jacob.” It does contain the old promise to “be a blessing” but now it reveals what kind of a blessing: the nation of Israel will become a consecrated missionary nation, acting as priests to mediate God’s covenant to the entire surrounding world of pagan Gentiles. And thus, the circle will widen again, adopting, at last, all of humanity into Yahweh’s covenant family, undoing the disaster of the Fall.
As their fathers did before them, the Israelites, to their credit, accept God’s offer with gratitude: “All that the Lord has spoken we will do” (Exod. 19:8). And yet they probably had to speak these words in Egyptian — which Moses, happily, was able to accommodate, having been raised in Pharaoh’s household. And yet this reveals the full challenge facing them very vividly: the children of Israel, in their current debased state, are really not so different from the pagans they are being called to “evangelize.” Yes, they’ve seen, over the last few months, countless miracles done by Yahweh on their behalf, but other than that, almost their entire “priestly formation” for the job ahead has yet to be accomplished.
The process begins with the giving of the Decalogue — the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20. Is this, then, the “law that was added” at last? Several early writers seem to have thought so, or at least, they speak loosely of it, together with everything that came later, under the heading “Law of Moses.” And yet where is the “transgression” that Paul stipulates as the cause for the addition? So far, everything has been smooth sailing — the honeymoon period in the relationship, so to speak — and all of Israel’s hardness of heart is in the future.
Once again, we turn to Justin and his school for help. Tertullian, as we saw, taught that the first law, “unwritten . . . but habitually understood naturally,” corresponded closely with the content of the Ten Commandments; and also that Irenaeus believed “the righteous fathers had the meaning of the Decalogue written in their hearts and souls.” Is this, then, a part of the “Law of Moses” that predates Moses — and thus no “new law” at all? Do the Sinai tablets simply represent a formal reassertion to the people on God’s part of the unwritten law their fathers, the patriarchs, had kept “habitually” — before their heritage was lost in the brick pits of Egypt? Tertullian definitely thought so:
In this general and primordial law of God . . . we recognise enclosed all the precepts specially of the posterior Law, which germinated when disclosed at their proper times. . . . For what wonder if He extends a discipline who institutes it? If He advances who begins? . . . But when this righteousness and love to God had passed into oblivion, and became extinct in Egypt, God did necessarily, because of His great goodwill to men, reveal Himself by a voice, and led the people with power out of Egypt, in order that man might again become the disciple and follower of God.98
The Decalogue, then — short, simple, and highly consonant to the principles of Natural Religion — is simply a fuller elucidation of the earlier laws of Adam and Noah — and thus not added to anything.
Nevertheless, God does give three full chapters of additional regulations at this point in the story. Exodus 21, 22, and 23 — known to scholars as “The Book of the Covenant” — are entirely taken up with the giving of basic rules about justice, property rights, sexual ethics, and sacrifice. So this, surely, must be “the law that was added,” must it not?
And yet Israel, once again, remains innocent of Paul’s triggering “transgression” — or so it would seem. The people were shy, it’s true, in chapter 19, just before the giving of the Decalogue, and unwilling to approach their heavenly benefactor as closely as He was willing. Yet God seems to treat this shyness with indulgence rather than anger; understanding, perhaps, that its origin was mainly fear. The mountain, after all, was still shrouded with dark clouds, thunder, and the sound of mysterious trumpets — and like shy country brides on their wedding night, the Hebrews were still afraid of their new Husband. There is, at any rate, no scriptural indication that this shyness caused a serious breach between the two covenanting parties, since God offers the renewal to them afterward, not before. And even after the covenant is made, there are indications that “hardness of heart” is not yet a problem. The next trip to the mountaintop includes other men besides Moses — at God’s invitation. “Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel; and there was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank” (Exod. 24:9–11). This is covenant intimacy, not anger at transgression. So our search, it would seem, continues.
God’s Cure for Addiction
There’s no doubt that something, beyond the Decalogue, was added at Sinai — but was it St. Paul’s “law” and was it added “because of transgression”? This is the simplest way to express the problem at this point. For greater clarity, we need to stop and look a bit more closely at the sequence of events during the Exodus and at some of the additional patristic and scriptural commentary on the subject.
Ezekiel 20, to begin with, is a very important commentary on the book of Exodus. In a sense, it gives us the “inside story” of the great event, since it recounts the tale prophetically from God’s point of view.
On the day when I chose Israel, I swore to the seed of the house of Jacob, making myself known to them in the land of Egypt, I swore to them, saying, I am the Lord your God. On that day I swore to them that I would bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the most glorious of all lands. (vv. 5–6).
This, of course, is the invitation on God’s part to realize his great promise to their fathers at last. But before Israel’s children can carry God’s saving message to the lost and dying world they, themselves, must “go to confession,” so to speak. They must cleanse themselves for the task ahead. “And I said to them, Cast away the detestable things your eyes feast on, every one of you, and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt; I am the Lord your God” (Ezek. 20:7).
In the movies, these Hebrew slaves are often depicted as clinging heroically to their own separate ethnic identity. Yet, as I noted earlier (and as we see illustrated in this passage) God’s covenant family had tarried far too long in a land given over to idolatry. Their eyes delighted now at the sight of Egyptian idols, and Great-Grandma’s Old Covenant God, Yahweh, was scarcely a memory, it seems. The Israelites, in other words, had simply become Egyptian during their long stay, much as the son of Chinese immigrants raised in London will grow up with a Chinese face but speak with a Cockney accent. So, when an invitation from Yahweh did suddenly appear, to follow their half-legendary family God off into the desert, most of them were, apparently, hesitant to renounce the folkways of their adopted nation. This shows vividly what God was up against. To use a different movie analogy, God’s covenant family was appallingly out of shape, leaving Him, like the grizzled old trainer in a boxing flick, faced with whipping the ex-champ into fighting trim — currently drunk and thirty pounds overweight.
Ezekiel speaks metaphorically here as well. He depicts God as angry and tempted to change His mind about the old covenants.
But they rebelled against me and would not listen to me; they did not every man cast away the detestable things their eyes feasted on, nor did they forsake the idols of Egypt. Then I thought I would pour out my wrath upon them and spend my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt. But I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations among whom they dwelt, in whose sight I made myself known to them in bringing them out of the land of Egypt. (20:8–9).
Though we know, in truth, that God is unbreakably bound by His nature to the keeping of His covenant promises, Ezekiel certainly does convey the distressing state of the situation. It’s very important to note, however, that all of this is depicted as having taken place before the Mosaic covenant was made, while the people were still in bondage. The promises of a great destiny and of a land of milk and honey are not, in themselves, enough to do the trick. So God is tempted to forsake the covenant, just as the people have — but He decides instead to “make Himself known” again by bringing them out anyway. The honeymoon period, in other words, with its warm covenant intimacy, was still in the future — a sign, surely, that Israel’s Pauline “transgression” is not what’s being referred to here.
Yahweh certainly did make Himself known. The miracles he worked to accomplish their departure were surely enough to convince any sensible person of both His power and His great love. But, as any twelve-step recovery counselor will testify, persons suffering from addiction are not always sensible. And this, really, is the truth of the matter: the Israelites were addicted to paganism — to its ease and moral laxity, as well as to its supposed powers of protection. This may even be seen as the primary reason for the Exodus. In order for God to wean His children off their psychological dependence on toxic religion, He had to get them out from among the bad company by whom they were surrounded. After all, the mission to be a blessing to the Gentiles might just as well have started in Egypt as anywhere. Yet, in practical terms, this would have been like converting an alcoholic and then leaving him in the barrooms to evangelize his old drinking buddies — a noble idea in theory, perhaps, but a bad plan in practice. God’s better plan, however, will go well beyond just removing His patients from their unwholesome environment. What He does is more akin to putting them on methadone — that powerful heroin substitute that doctors use to wean addicts off the real thing.
Moses’ original word from God to Pharaoh was rather simple: “Let my people go that they may serve me in the wilderness” (Exod. 7:16). Later, when God has sent plagues into Pharaoh’s realms as a convincer, the pagan despot softens momentarily and offers a compromise plan:
Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron, and said, “Go, sacrifice to your God within the land.” But Moses said, “It would not be right to do so; for we shall sacrifice to the Lord our God offerings abominable to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice offerings abominable to the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not stone us? We must go three days’ journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord our God as he will command us.” (Exod. 8:25–27)
Notice that Moses puts God’s intent to command sacrifice in the future — and this upcoming sacrifice does, in fact, happen to have been the first such ever commanded by Yahweh. The patriarchs before Moses offered animal sacrifice on their own initiative, without being commanded, as a voluntary act of gratitude to God or to commemorate some great event. It was always their idea, in other words, and not so different an idea from the similar sacrifices offered by nearly all early peoples. Yet that’s just what makes this detail of the narrative so curious. Animal sacrifices were common in Egypt — why should the Egyptians have considered it “abominable” in their sight? Why did Moses think the Hebrews would have to “go out” in order to do it — or be stoned otherwise? The reason is very simple: because God wanted cattle, goats, and rams sacrificed, and all of these creatures were worshipped as gods in Egypt and held sacred. Their god Hathor was worshipped under the form of a cow; Khnum under the form of a ram; and, their highest god, Amun, under the form of a sheep. To sacrifice any one of these in Egypt would have been akin to killing a sacred cow in India. And this, according to the oldest traditions of our faith on the subject, is precisely why Yahweh ordered it done. “Wherefore, God,” as Justin tells Trypho, “adapting His laws to that weak people, ordered you to offer sacrifices to His name, in order to save you from idolatry. . . . Moreover, the observance of the sabbaths was imposed upon you by God so that you would be forced to remember Him, as He Himself said, ‘that you may know that I am the Lord your God’ ” (Ezek. 20:20).
Our very earliest testimony to this effect comes from non-Christian writers. Josephus, for instance, includes two excerpts from Manetho, a pagan priest who wrote a history of Egypt in the third century B.C. Manetho’s account of these events is almost a mirror image of the Exodus with all the names changed. In this pro-Egypt version, Moses was an exiled Egyptian priest named Osarsiph, who, in his bitterness, made a new code of law for his fellow exiles based on the principle of normative inversion — forbidding, that is, every religious rite sacred to the Egyptians and mandating everything Egypt forbade. “His first and foremost commandment,” according to Jewish scholar Stephen D. Benin, was “not to worship the gods, not to spare any of Egypt’s sacred animals, and eat freely of Egypt’s forbidden foods. This principle of ‘normative inversion’ then, consists of turning the abominations of the other culture into sacred obligations and outlawing all of their most hallowed practices.”99 It will be seen how significant this story really is when we recall that many of the animals declared unclean by the later Mosaic codes — such as reptiles, rabbits, and birds of prey — were those that the Egyptians were willing to sacrifice. Osarsiph, at any rate, “destroyed the images of the gods, and used them in roasting those sacred animals which were formerly worshipped.”100
Another pagan witness, the Roman historian Tacitus, explains the origin of the Jewish nation in similar terms. The Egyptians, he recounts, cast the Jews out to face certain death in the desert, but they were saved by the inspired leadership of Moses who brought them safely into the land of Canaan. Moses, once again, introduces a new religion that is the precise mirror image of the old: “The Egyptians worship many animals and monstrous images; the Jews conceive of one God, and that with the mind only: they regard those who make representations of God in man’s image from perishable materials as impious; that supreme and eternal being is incapable to them of representation and is without end.” They sacrifice a ram “in order to ridicule the god Amun” and offer a calf as a way to thumb their noses at Apis, the sacred bull. While we won’t, obviously, be using these pagan accounts as our whole basis for understanding the Exodus, they do, at least, demonstrate that our Christian commentators will be speaking from within a pre-existing historical tradition — rather than simply pulling something out of their hats.
Justin and Irenaeus both reference the idea not long after Tacitus, in writings that we will examine a bit later. For now, let’s turn to Aphrahat, one of the early Syrian fathers, who establishes the Christian version of the theory with great clarity. “When the Holy One,” he writes, in his book On the Distinction of Foods,
saw that [the Israelites] were not purified from the leaven of the Egyptians, but remained in that very opinion of paganism, then he commanded Moses to distinguish foods for them. He made unclean for them those very things which had been clean for them to eat in the land of Egypt . . . and commanded them to sacrifice offerings of the very things they had feared in the land of Egypt. For the Lord had no need of sacrifices and offerings. But in order to restrain the Jews from sacrifices and offerings so that they would not worship the gods of the peoples — when they would enter the land and be mixed among the peoples — as they had worshipped the gods of the Egyptians when they had entered Egypt and been mixed among the Egyptians, he therefore forbade and restrained the Jews thus (saying, as it were), “before my altar they should bring their offerings and sacrifice their sacrifices.”
Theodoret, another fourth-century exegete, connects these thoughts to a passage from Jeremiah: “For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices” (7:22). These things were conceded to the people, he believed, only after the Exodus, as a drug (pharmakon) against the disease of Egypt. According to Benin, “Theodoret affirms that the Jews were commanded to sacrifice those animals that they had come to worship in Egypt in order to prove that the gods of the Egyptians were not divine.”101 Athanasius held the same opinion. The law of sacrifices was, in his view, first ordained at Sinai,
that by means of them it might begin to instruct men and might withdraw them from idols, and bring them nearer to God, teaching them for that present time. Therefore neither at the beginning, when God brought the people out of Egypt, did he command them concerning sacrifices and whole burnt-offerings, nor even when they [first] came to Mount Sinai . . . but his commandment was given, that they might know him who was truly God, and his Word, and might despise those which are falsely called gods.102
Here, then, is God’s “methadone” for addiction to pagan idolatry: “Sacrifice if you must — but sacrifice to me instead.” As Benin summarizes, “The Lord permitted Israel to keep practices acquired in Egypt, but turned them in his direction. God acted to restrain idolatry while conceding sacrifice to people accustomed to it.” Yahweh, in short, will tolerate the sacrifices He never required of the patriarchs — but only in order to save His people.103
Why is this interpretation important for our purposes? It shows that something that the Jews — and the Judaizers — later came to see as eternal and fundamental was actually a divine stratagem for dealing with a temporal (and temporary) situation. “When the Holy One saw . . . then he commanded Moses . . . ” “The Lord had no need of sacrifices and offerings . . . but he made unclean for them those very things which had been clean . . . in order to restrain the Jews.” In all of these passages, we see God accommodating Himself to human circumstances — altering His plan, it would seem, to one less ideally perfect, in response to a degraded state of affairs in His covenant family. Yes, new requirements are revealed, and new terms added that had not been required of the patriarchs. Far from being new revelations, however, of the eternal mind of God, these added restrictions are depicted as a step backward from the previous revelation, a sad but necessary retreat from the short, primordial Word incumbent upon their more spiritually mature fathers.
“So I led them out of the land of Egypt and brought them into the wilderness,” Ezekiel continues. “I gave them my statutes and showed them my ordinances, by whose observance man shall live. Moreover I gave them my sabbaths, as a sign between me and them, that they might know that I the Lord sanctify them” (Ezek. 20:10–12). Addicted as they were, the bare decree of the First Commandment would have been like asking the Israelites to go “cold turkey.” Instead, these earliest Mosaic codes — given more or less simultaneously with the Decalogue — constitute God’s program for rehabilitation, not really (or at least not primarily) a program of punishment.
Often referred to in early times as “the Ten Words and the Judgments,” these were essentially curative in nature, aimed eventually at putting the people’s relationship with God back onto the same free, adult basis their ancestors had enjoyed. They are medicine for the spiritually sick — not rocks for a convict to break. And certainly they are not yet the full panoply of burdensome regulations that fills so much of Numbers, most of Leviticus, and practically all of Deuteronomy.
Nevertheless, they do look very much like law. Even though “the Book of the Covenant” takes up only those three chapters of Exodus we mentioned earlier, its regulations definitely do go well beyond the Sabbaths and sacrifices to other matters. For reasons that will become clearer as we go, these are still not to be identified, probably, with Paul’s “triggered” laws in Galatians 2. But there’s no reason to doubt that they do represent some measure of accommodation on God’s part to an essentially pagan people. Chapter 21, for instance, seeks to regulate — but not to outlaw — the institution of slavery. Chapter 22 calls for the death penalty on witches, apostates, and people who sin sexually with animals. As Gregory the Great would write late in the sixth century: “It is certainly impossible to eradicate all errors from obstinate minds at one stroke, and whoever wishes to climb to a mountain top climbs gradually step by step, and not in one leap. It was in this way that the Lord revealed Himself to the Israelite people in Egypt.”104
Recall, once again, that these new codes were delivered before the Mosaic covenant — and should, therefore, like the “drug” of sacrifice, be understood as part of God’s response to Egyptianization. He gives the people a taste, so to speak, of His ideal or eternal principles in “the Ten Words” — the Decalogue. But He also meets them halfway with a far less cosmic (and, frankly, less perfect) “action plan” for crossing the desert, which shows all the signs of having been a cooperative effort between God and His very human coauthor, Moses. In this way, perhaps, the initial lawgiving at Sinai may be compared to the final rulings of the apostolic council at Jerusalem. There, Peter stepped to the fore to deliver the eternal dogma — the final answer straight from the mind of God. And then James brought forward his merely pastoral proscriptions — temporary in nature and cut to fit current circumstances (and later ruled officially to have been so by the fifteenth-century Council of Florence).
All this to say something rather simple — and a little ominous, I’m afraid, moving ahead: though it took many fantastic miracles to get God’s people out of Egypt, it proved much easier, in the long run, than getting Egypt out of them.
There “Orter” Be Blood
“Hucky, you sure you can keep mum?”
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have just witnessed the killing of poor old Muff Potter by Injun Joe the outlaw. And their plan for dealing with the crisis, in the pages of Mark Twain’s classic Adventures of Tom Sawyer, illustrates something important — and often forgotten — about God’s covenant with the Israelites at Sinai.
“Tom, we got to keep mum. You know that. That Injun devil wouldn’t make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to squeak ’bout this and they didn’t hang him. Now, look-a-here, Tom, less take and swear to one another — that’s what we got to do — swear to keep mum.”
I’m agreed. It’s the best thing. Would you just hold hands and swear that we — ”
Oh no, that wouldn’t do for this. That’s good enough for little rubbishy common things — specially with gals, cuz they go back on you anyway, and blab if they get in a huff — but there orter be writing ’bout a big thing like this. And blood.”
There “orter” be blood — and there certainly was blood when it came time for the covenant making in Exodus 24. Just holding hands and swearing wouldn’t be enough.
And [Moses] rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. . . . [Then] took the blood and threw it upon the people, and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.” (vv. 4–8).
Tom and Huck simply pricked their fingers and wrote on a shingle — but the principle is very much the same: “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer swears they will keep mum about This and They wish They may Drop down dead in Their Tracks if They ever Tell and Rot.”
God’s covenant with Israel certainly shared this same terrible, awe-inspiring quality — and Mark Twain, of course, is gently spoofing here the grandiosity that had come into the talk of rural Americans in his day via their deep familiarity with stories like this one as they read them in the King James Bible. All kidding aside, however, the Israelites did, essentially, promise to drop down dead in their tracks and rot if they were ever to go back on their covenant oath. The blood they accepted upon their heads symbolized their own blood and that of their children, for which they were willing to become guilty in the event of apostasy. Yet Sinai was not all blood and thunder. Next came the intimate meal shared in God’s presence, symbolizing the kind of relationship He longed for with His covenant family. But this kind of fellowship and communion could not continue for long if the people’s allegiance remained divided. Yahweh simply was not willing to share the same heart with Ra, Hathor, and Apis — nor will He today, with modern idols. We Catholics renew our own covenant oaths when the celebrant at Mass asperses the congregation with water from the baptismal font. Just as Moses did, he “throws the blood upon the people” — the blood of Jesus, which “cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7), symbolically present in the waters of regeneration — but dispersed only after we pledge ourselves to a series of solemn promises.
And here, alas, is where the story turns tragic. After the meal, Moses again went to the mountaintop, where he received God’s marching orders for the journey ahead. A new high priesthood was minted, a job to be occupied by Moses’ brother Aaron; and instructions were given for making the Ark of the Covenant, as well as for the movable temple in which it was to be housed, the Tabernacle. Yet even as these arrangements were being made, the people on the slopes below were already begging their high priest–elect to fashion a very different type of religious artifact.
Most of us know the general outline: how the Israelites, impatient with Moses’ long delay and worried, perhaps, about their short store of provisions, reverted in a panic back to their old thought forms — their superstitious faith in the gods of Egypt. They demanded from Aaron a golden calf to supplicate — an image, probably, of Apis the bull. They would likely have stoned Aaron to death had he not yielded to their pleas — a death Aaron should have embraced with honor rather than do what he did. But, in fact, Yahweh’s new high priest caved quickly. He not only made them a molten calf; he also set up an altar at which to offer pagan sacrifice. Later, just before the actual offering, Aaron seems to have tried to reinterpret the act somehow, as a syncretistic blend of both rites, so that an offering to Apis could be thought of as having passed on to Yahweh (see Exod. 32:6). But the usual sexual orgies that accompanied the rite (Apis, was, after all, a fertility god) made the truth of the matter all too clear. “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (Exod. 32:4).
It’s difficult to overstate the centrality of this event in Israel’s history. The golden calf isn’t just one more interesting episode during the story of the Exodus: it is the defining episode — and Justin identifies it as such in his exchanges with Trypho: “We, too, would observe your circumcision of the flesh, your sabbath days, and, in a word, all your festivals, if we were not aware of the reason why they were imposed upon you, namely, because of your sins.” The children of Israel had been
just and pleasing in the sight of God, yet they kept no sabbaths. . . . [This continued] down to the time of Moses, when your people showed itself wicked and ungrateful to God by molding a golden calf as an idol in the desert. Therefore, God, adapting his laws to that weak people, ordered you to offer sacrifices to his name, in order to save you from idolatry. . . . Then God, through Moses, ordered you to abstain from all unclean, harmful, and violent animals, whether they come from the soil or the sea, for, after you had eaten the manna in the desert and had seen all the miracles God wrought for your sake, you did not hesitate to make and adore the golden calf. With good reason, therefore, does God repeatedly say of you, Foolish children, in whom there is no faith [Deut. 32:20]. (18, 19)
In just the same way that Adam’s taking of the forbidden fruit spoiled God’s perfect plan for the first covenant with humanity, so this solemn act of apostasy at Sinai torpedoed His original plan for the Mosaic covenant. No longer could Adam and Eve, after their Fall, “walk with God in the garden in the cool of the day” (see Gen. 3:8) — nor would the elders of Israel sit any longer at table with Yahweh on a floor of clear heavenly sapphire. Through their return to idolatry, the people activated the “automatic” curses they had agreed to in their blood oath, obligating their God to mete them out exactly as stipulated — or make Himself a liar.
Here, in other words, we have finally found a transgression serious enough to work earthshaking changes in God’s law — and brought about, without any doubt at all, through “hardness of heart.”
82 The Library of Celsus was originally built about 125 in memory of Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, a Greek who served as governor of Roman Asia from 105 to 107.
83 H. S. Holland, “Justin Martyr,” in Dictionary of Christian Biography, ed. Henry Wace and William C. Piercey (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 618.
84 This fact is also preserved by Irenaeus, Polycrates, and Clement of Alexandria.
85 Byzantine tradition has always indicated Ephesus as the resting place of the Apostle.
86 An ancient stone house still standing in Ephesus, known to locals since time immemorial as Panaya Kapulu (“Doorway to the Virgin”), was rediscovered in the 19th century by two priests guided by the private relevations of a Catholic seer.
87 Eusebius’s claim that Justin was converted in Ephesus has been doubted by some modern scholars who, for various reasons, prefer to picture him moving to Rome directly from Neapolis. Yet as far as we can tell, there was little or no Christian presence in Samaria at all in Justin’s day (our first evidence is a Samaritan bishop at First Nicaea in 325), leaving the question of Justin’s remarkable level of discipleship wholly unaccounted for.
88 Justin Martyr, First Apology, in Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 56, St. Justin Martyr: The First and Second Apologies, trans. Leslie William Barnard, (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), 30.
89 “Brethren, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David, concerning Judas who was guide to those who arrested Jesus . . . ‘Let his habitation become desolate, and let there be no one to live in it’; and ‘His office let another take’ ” (Acts 1:16, 20).
90 Holland, “Justin Martyr.”
91 The Tanakh uses the names “Mount Horeb” and” Mount Sinai” almost interchangeably, as if employing two terms for the same location. The New Testament uses “Mount Sinai” exclusively, and that probably accounts for its greater familiarity to Christians. Some scholars believe the two names may refer to different parts of the same mountain.
92 Tertullian, Answer to the Jews, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. trans. S. Thelwall, (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1885), 327.
93 Isa. 10:23, LXX, quoted in Rom. 9:28.
94 Irenaeus, Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, in Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 16, Irenaeus, trans. Joseph P. Smith, (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), 101.
95 Tertullian, Answer to the Jews, 331.
96 “The law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane” (1 Tim. 1:9).
97 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4, 16, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1885), 481.
98 Tertullian, Answer to the Jews, 332.
99 Stephen D. Benin, Footprints of God (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 76.
100 Josephus, Against Apion, in The Works of Flavius Josephus, the Learned and Authentic Jewish Historian,trans. William Whiston (Belfast: Simms and M’Intyre, 1843), 800.
101 Benin, Footprints, 72.
102 Ibid.
103 In addition to the great names already mentioned, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil, Gregory Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Ephrem, Augustine, and Jerome all subscribe to the theory of normative inversion — as does the later Doctor Thomas Aquinas. Many important Jewish authorities are known to have accepted the principle as well; the idea is present in the Midrashim and explicitly outlined in the writings of Maimonides and several of the other great medieval rabbis.
104 Quoted in Benin, Footprints of God, 109.