The End of the Law
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Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. . . . In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
— Hebrews 8:6–7, 13
Picking Up the Pieces
Justin has identified the sin that caused a new law to be added. Now it remains to convince Trypho of that law’s temporary or probationary nature, and of how, when, and by whom it was finally vacated.
As circumcision originated with Abraham, and the Sabbath, sacrifices, oblations, and festivals with Moses (and it has already been shown that your people were commanded to observe these things because of their hardness of heart), so it was expedient that, in accordance with the will of the Father, these things should have their end in Him who was born of the Virgin, of the race of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah, and of the family of David: namely, in Christ, the Son of God, who was proclaimed as the future Eternal Law and New Covenant for the whole world. . . . We, indeed, who have come to God through Jesus Christ, have received not a carnal, but a spiritual, circumcision, as did Enoch and those like him. (43)
To persuade his opponent of this, Justin must use the writings of the prophets, rather than any “biased” pro-Christian sources — something Justin relishes, since he himself had been convinced by the same sources not so very long ago. In order to follow his argument, we need to return to the Exodus narrative for a while — the story of Moses the Lawgiver, greatest prophet of them all.
Most of us recall that Moses, upon his return from the mountaintop, famously smashed the holy tablets of the Law to the ground. Perhaps not so well remembered is the fact that he also poured out his own life picking up the pieces of Israel’s Sinai apostasy. For a “God’s eye view” of the calf crisis, we may turn, once again, to Ezekiel 20: “But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness; they did not walk in my statutes but rejected my ordinances, by whose observance man shall live; and my sabbaths they greatly profaned. ‘Then I thought I would pour out my wrath upon them in the wilderness, to make a full end of them’ ” (20:13). That God did not do so is due, at least in part, to the Christlike intercession of Moses, who offered to accept the people’s punishment vicariously: “Alas, this people have sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if thou wilt forgive their sin — and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written” (Exod. 32:31–32). And though Israel’s deliverer begs for mercy here — while Yahweh acts the part of the Just Judge — both impulses come in truth from the same source. By joining himself so closely to the people that he is unwilling to live if they must perish, Moses reveals the deepest reality in the whole story: God is now in the very same position. The same covenant meal that irrevocably made Israel part of God’s family also made God part of theirs. Now Divine Mercy itself must act to satisfy Divine Justice — a cosmic drama that will not be fully complete until, as Paul wrote, “the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made.”
Yes, the people were saved through Moses’ intercession — but the Mosaic covenant now has to be completely restructured. No longer, for instance, were all the Israelites called to be God’s kingdom of priests. Eleven of the twelve tribes are immediately laicized and defrocked, leaving only the tribe of Levi to act in a priestly capacity. Next, these priests are given their work assignment. They will repeat the animal sacrifice God had ordered at Sinai, not once but daily — and, as it turns out, for the next fifteen hundred years or so. Egypt’s gods would now be ritually slaughtered on a routine basis; an ugly, degrading business that would rub the people’s noses every day in their own incorrigible proclivity towards idols. Many of the other, relatively simple rules of “the Book of the Covenant,” are adjusted downward as well — made lengthier, more cumbersome, and more involved. The covenant could, in other words, be renewed by a merciful God, but only, under these circumstances, on a decidedly suboptimal basis. As Paul (or one of his scribes or disciples) puts it: “When there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law” (Heb. 7:12). And here we find illustrated once again the idea that some portion of the Law came first, other precepts (often contradictory!) were later “added” and that this addition was not necessarily a good thing — or not an absolute good, at any rate.
In any event, this latest covenant, adjusted in response to the calf, prevails only for a few months. As Moses later recounted,
The Lord our God said to us in Horeb, “You have stayed long enough at this mountain; turn and take your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites, and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, in the hill country and in the lowland, and in the Negeb, and by the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. Behold, I have set the land before you; go in and take possession of the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their descendants after them.” (Deut. 1:6–7)
Yet when the travelers arrived at the borders of the new land, the spies they sent ahead of them returned with a faithless report, utterly demoralizing the people. In spite of what the Israelites had seen done to Pharaoh’s army, the Canaanites were, in the opinion of most of these spies, going to be too big a job for Yahweh to handle. And once again, the old hankering for Egypt rises in the people’s throats: “ ‘Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why does the Lord bring us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey; would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?’ And they said to one another, ‘Let us choose a captain, and go back to Egypt’ ” (Num. 14:2–4).
This, notice, is a virtual repeat of the golden calf incident; choosing a captain (in preference to Moses) and going back to Egypt is nothing but a thinly veiled euphemism for returning to the comfortable protection of Egypt’s undemanding gods. The two spies who did remain faithful — Joshua and Caleb — begged the people not to repeat their act of covenant apostasy:
“The land, which we passed through to spy it out, is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land which flows with milk and honey. Only, do not rebel against the Lord; and do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us; their protection is removed from them, and the Lord is with us; do not fear them.” But all the congregation said to stone them with stones. (Num. 14:7–10)
Yet once more, God’s Old Testament messiah stands in the gap, the friend of sinners.
And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs which I have wrought among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.” But Moses said to the Lord . . . , “Pardon the iniquity of this people, I pray thee, according to the greatness of thy steadfast love, and according as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.” Then the Lord said, “I have pardoned, according to your word; but truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs which I wrought in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the proof these ten times and have not hearkened to my voice, shall see the land which I swore to give to their fathers; and none of those who despised me shall see it.” (Num. 14:11–13, 19–23)
The “ten times” referred to seems to be a figure of speech, indicating “over and over again” rather than a literal number, including the many small apostasies along the way as well as the big ones. But for Ezekiel this will be the second of three such events during the Exodus — triggering a second adjustment of God’s marching orders as well: “Moreover I swore to them in the wilderness that I would not bring them into the land which I had given them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the most glorious of all lands, because they rejected my ordinances and did not walk in my statutes, and profaned my sabbaths; for their heart went after their idols” (Ezek. 20:15–16). Along with this terrible penance, the Lord stipulates an additional set of penitential laws as well (see Num. 15:1–41). And unwilling, now, even to treat with their fathers any longer, God addresses Himself to the second generation only: “And I said to their children in the wilderness, Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers, nor observe their ordinances, nor defile yourselves with their idols. I the Lord am your God; walk in my statutes, and be careful to observe my ordinances, and hallow my sabbaths that they may be a sign between me and you, that you may know that I the Lord am your God” (Ezek. 20:18–20).
The Israelites are turned away from Canaan now to wander aimlessly in the desert. A trip that should have taken a year or less will now take forty, in order that the original generation of apostates should have a chance to die off in transit. One ancient book however, widely read in the early Church, offers some additional thoughts on the delay:
The Jews left Egypt by a circuitous route, rather than the shortest route, in order that the novelty of a new life might be given time to extirpate the evils that resulted from long association with Egyptian customs. . . . Moses, seeing the people so frantic, permitted them to sacrifice, but only to the Lord. This was done in order to remove half the evil, for Moses knew full well that its complete removal would have to await a future teacher.105
Finally, after much additional drama, the forty years of penance came to an end. The people reached the eastern border of God’s Promised Land, at a place called Beth-peor on the borders of Moab. All during this penitential period, Israel’s Levite priesthood had driven the people like a team of oxen, demanding every day the lengthy, vexing sacrifice ritual, no matter how weary the wanderers might have been. Here now, at Beth-peor, was the place where the character of their repentance would be put to the test. Was this next generation ready to succeed where their fathers had failed? Were they ready to throw off at last the onerous terms of their probation and return to the simpler ways of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in a land of milk and honey?
Alas, they were not. Tempted, this time, by the apostate prophet Balaam, who offered them fresh, pretty Moabite wives (who also happened to be priestesses and prostitutes in the service of Moab’s terrible idol, Baal), the new generation fell off the wagon as badly as their parents. And just as before, the sin involved not only idolatry but sexual immorality as well. The gods of the goyim, after all, were well known to be less particular about such things — and even today, the urge on the part of formerly Christian people to find a less persnickety brand of spirituality is not unknown. Here, then, is Ezekiel’s third and final covenant apostasy during the Exodus: the apostasy at Beth-peor.
But the children rebelled against me: They did not follow my decrees, they were not careful to keep my laws — although the man who obeys them will live by them — and they desecrated my Sabbaths. So I said I would pour out my wrath on them and spend my anger against them in the desert. But I withheld my hand, and for the sake of my name I did what would keep it from being profaned in the eyes of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out. (20:21–22)
Three strikes . . . and Israel was out. In fact, a portion of the Midrash Tanhuma, dating from the period of the later Church Fathers, justifies the use of the baseball metaphor completely:
Three times did the Holy One Blessed be He cut a covenant as they went out of Egypt. Once as they stood before Sinai, once in Horeb, and once here [at Beth-peor, as spelled out in Deuteronomy 29:1]. Why did the Holy One Blessed be He cut a covenant with them here? He did so because the covenant that He made with them at Sinai had been nullified by saying, “These are your gods . . .” Therefore, he returned and made another covenant with them in Horeb and set before them a curse for those who would go back on his words.106
The covenant at Sinai had been nullified — and now, the one that had been made on the borders of Canaan had as well. What a profound idea this is, especially considering the issues raised by the Judaizers! It includes at least three distinct, significant implications: (1) that there really are multiple covenants depicted in the Pentateuch, rather than simply one “Old Covenant” that we may set in contrast with the New; (2) that a previous covenant really can be modified, or even annulled by God in favor of one more suited to existing conditions; and (3) that the proscriptions of later covenants may very well contradict those of the former — not because God has changed but because the people have. The idea, especially, that “the Law of Moses” is one body of law made, essentially, on one occasion, has been widespread and harmful, even though it is explicitly contradicted in the verse cited above. Deuteronomy 29:1, on which Rabbi Tanhuma was commenting, runs thus: “These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which he had made with them at Horeb.” For the record, Moab is at least two hundred miles from Mount Sinai, and the incident at Beth-peor takes place forty years after the apostasy of the faithless spies. Justin cites the two events separately as well, reminding Trypho that, despite God’s many miracles, “you still constructed the golden calf, and you are eager to fornicate with the daughters of aliens and to worship idols. And you did the same things even after the [promised] land was handed over to you with so miraculous a display of power that you witnessed the sun stand in the heaven and not set for thirty-six hours at the command of him who was surnamed Jesus”107 (132).
What exactly did the Divine Umpire do after calling the third strike? He forgave, as before, but he also did, for the sake of his name, “what would keep it from being profaned in the eyes of the nations.” He acted, in other words, to preserve His reputation as a Just Judge and to avoid gaining a new one as a pushover, an easy mark, and “soft on crime.” How did He accomplish this? Simply put, Yahweh cooperated in the implementation of a third, even more draconian revamping of the Torah — and in this case, with some definite time on the rock pile included. The law, added on account of transgression, was now added with a vengeance — the full array of vexing decrees we see in today’s Old Testament, St. Peter’s “yoke” from Acts 15, “which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear.”
The Second Legislation
Though the word “Deuteronomy” (mshnh in Hebrew, to deuteronomion in Greek) means “a copy” or a “repetition” of the Law, several early writers stress a different connotation for the term. Pseudo-Athanasius,108 probably writing late in the fourth century, states plainly that the title signifies “the Second Law”; and others, such as the third-century Jewish redactors of the Mishnah, use it to mean something like “a secondary and fuller revelation” of the Torah. Justin and his school, at any rate, interpret the word “Deuteronomy” to mean “the Second Legislation.” Irenaeus connects the idea explicitly with the apostasy at Beth-peor:
When the forty years were completed, the people came near to the Jordan, and were assembled and drawn up over against Jericho. Here Moses assembled the people and again summed everything up, recounting the great works of God even to that day, preparing and disposing those who had grown up in the desert to fear God and obey His commandments, and imposing on them as it were a new code of laws, in addition to the one made before. And this was called Deuteronomy.109
Later, the real Athanasius established the same chronology: “Neither at the beginning, when God brought the people out of Egypt, did He command them concerning sacrifices or whole burnt-offerings, nor even when they came to Mount Sinai . . . only after they chose to serve Baal.”110
Just as we saw with God’s unwillingness to speak any longer to the generation that spurned Joshua and Caleb, so Deuteronomy illustrates the fact that He and Israel, after the sin at Beth-peor, will be on strained, formal terms for a while. The very structure of the book reveals this. Scholars have noted that Deuteronomy shares a similar literary form with many other ancient covenant treaties made in the Near East. The Hittites, for instance, bound conquered vassal states to their empire with formal oath-curses very much like what we see in Deuteronomy 27 and 28 — more promises, as it were, to “drop down dead in their tracks and rot.” There was always, as well, a ritual affirmation of the pecking order between vassal state and suzerain (e.g., “I am your servant and son,” “I am your king and father”) that is directly paralleled in many passages of Deuteronomy.111 Though the formula does use familial terminology, this is actually legal language, not family intimacy. We are still, in other words, a very long way from walking again with God in the cool of the day.
Most of the terms of the other two covenants are retained in Deuteronomy — but there are contradictions. While one might expect this new and more taxing law to be stricter, morally, than its predecessors, the opposite is more often the case. Deuteronomy, for instance, has far less interest in preserving traditional marriage than the previous covenants. Not only does it allow for divorce and remarriage (an issue, as we saw, that Jesus will take up in the Gospels) but it also loosened some of the earlier laws regulating polygamy, concubinage, and marriage to foreign slave women. Slavery, in fact, remains all too legal in the Second Legislation and is, on the whole, less carefully delimited than before. Even stranger, Deuteronomy altered Israel’s relations with the Canaanites in a very dark way. Whereas the Sinai Legislation went only so far as to forbid any kind of covenant or mixed marriage between Israelites and Canaanites, the book of Deuteronomy allowed Moses (and now his chosen successor, Joshua) to order herem warfare against them, downright genocidal warfare, not only on the men, but on the women and the children. God’s meeting humanity halfway is one thing, in matters such as divorce and sacrifice, but wouldn’t things like this involve Him in actual evil? How could the all-righteous Father of the Universe ever get Himself mixed up in something like these laws of Deuteronomy?
It’s a very good question — and the answer isn’t simple. The Apostle Paul, however, offered us at least the beginnings of a solution in the passage from Galatians we’ve been examining: “Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions . . . and it was ordained by angels through an intermediary” (Gal. 3:19). Yet Deuteronomy 5:22 specifies that God wrote the Sinai tablets Himself and gave them directly to Moses, without any intermediary between them or any angels mentioned. This can only mean that the law Paul speaks of was subsequent to Sinai and was not given directly by God. Irenaeus affirms this conclusion in his commentary on the verse in question: “They (the Jews) had therefore a law . . . which from the beginning [God] had implanted in mankind, that is, by means of the Decalogue (which, if any one does not observe, he has no salvation), and did then demand nothing more of them. As Moses says in Deuteronomy, ‘These are all the words which the Lord spoke to the whole assembly of the sons of Israel on the mount, and He added no more [Deut. 5:22].’ ” Other early Fathers connect this idea to Jeremiah 7:22: “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.” The implication then, in Irenaeus’s eyes, is quite clear: God wrote the tablets at Sinai, but Moses wrote the laws of Deuteronomy.
“When they turned themselves to make a calf,” continues Irenaeus, “and had gone back in their minds to Egypt, desiring to be slaves instead of free-men, they were placed for the future in a state of servitude suited to their wish — [a slavery] which did not indeed cut them off from God, but subjected them to the yoke of bondage.”112 This seems also to be implied by the fact that God Himself cut the tables of stone for the original Decalogue, while the replacement copies were cut by Moses (see Exod. 31:18; 34:4). And here, too, at Beth-peor, the new Law arrives with a mournful silence, pregnant with the absence of God; whereas at Sinai the giving of the Law had been accompanied by thunder and fire. Perhaps such a highly imperfect code as Deuteronomy, which includes so much that Christ will have to undo when He comes as “not having been so from the beginning,” cannot be seen to originate directly from God. It does not express His perfect will (as displayed in the Decalogue) but only His permissive will under the existing circumstances.
Deuteronomy, then, truly is “the Law of Moses,” and in picking up the pieces, the Lawgiver was forced to do much of the work himself. Even so, there’s no doubt at all that God put his full weight behind Moses’ creation. Yahweh had met Israel halfway before this, willing to wink at the people’s weaknesses in various ways all along — in fact, an important passage in the Zohar113 pronounces the entire Torah to have been an accommodation of the hard facts of human existence. Still, we can’t help but be surprised to see God Almighty cooperating in the setting of a lower standard. This is another very profound idea, with extremely important implications — to which we will have to return later in our meditations.
The early Church expressed her understanding of these matters most fully in a third-century book called the Didascalia Apostolorum — one of the earliest attempts to create a body of canon law. The Didascalia is, at heart, an elaboration of the very ancient Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (the Didache) and, like the original, claims to be the work of the Apostles at the Council of Jerusalem. Though that probably isn’t literally true even of the much earlier Didache, the fact that either work could plausibly present itself as such so early in our history, to so many of the early Fathers, suggests very deep roots in tradition. Epiphanius, for instance, mentions the Didascalia by name and believed it to be apostolic. Our earliest surviving copy is attached to a document called The Liturgy of St. James, the earliest of all recorded Christian liturgies, which may have originated at James’s Jewish church in Jerusalem. Some form of the Didascalia, in other words, is, at the very least, quite old enough to have been studied by Justin Martyr and referenced in his Dialogue with Trypho.
Addressing itself, at one point, to Christian Bible students, the Didascalia offers the following grim warning: “When thou readest the Law, beware of the Second Legislation, that thou do but read it merely; but the commands and warnings that are therein much avoid, lest thou lead thyself astray . . . for our Saviour came for no other cause but to fulfil the Law, and to set us loose from the bonds of the Second Legislation.” Surely it must have been the active threat of Judaizing propaganda in the churches that inspired such practical language.
For He set loose from those bonds and thus called those who believe in Him, and said: “Come unto me, all ye that toil and are laden with heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” [Matt. 11:28]. . . . And our Saviour also, when He cleansed the leper, sent him to the Law, and said to him: “Go, show thyself to the high priests, and offer the gifts of thy cleansing, as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them’ [Matt. 8:4]; that He might show that He does not undo the Law, but teaches what is the Law and what the Second Legislation. For He said thus: “I am not come to undo the law, nor the prophets, but to fulfil them” [Matt. 5:17]. The Law therefore is indissoluble; but the Second Legislation is temporary, and is dissoluble.114
In these ancient pages we find all our guesswork affirmed in a very finished form — and many of Justin’s words prefigured.
The Law then consists of the Ten Words and the Judgments, which God spoke before that the People made the calf and served idols. . . . This is the simple and light Law, wherein is no burden, nor distinction of meats, nor incensings, nor offerings of sacrifices and burnt offerings. . . . Wherefore He does not say, “Make for me” but, “If thou shalt make an altar.” He did not impose this as a necessity, but showed what was about to be. For God had no need of sacrifices; as neither of old was it commanded Cain and Abel, but they of their own accord presented offerings: and their offering achieved a brother’s murder. . . . But when the People denied God . . . and said: “We have no God to go before us”; and they made them a molten calf and worshipped it [Exod. 32:1, 8] and sacrificed to a graven image . . . the Lord was angry; and in His hot anger — (yet) with the mercy of His goodness — He bound them with the Second Legislation, and laid heavy burdens upon them, and a hard yoke upon their neck.
And He says now no longer: “If thou shalt make” [see Exod. 20:24–25; Deut. 27:5–6], as formerly; but He said: “Make an altar, and sacrifice continually” as though He had need of these things. Wherefore He laid upon them continual burnt offerings with a necessity, and caused them to abstain from meats by means of distinctions of meats. For from that time were animals discerned, and clean and unclean flesh; from that time were separations, and purifications, and baptisms, and sprinklings; from that time were sacrifices, and offerings, and tables; from that time were burnt offerings, and oblations, and shewbread, and the offering up of sacrifices, and firstlings, and redemptions, and he-goats for sin, and vows, and many other things marvelous. For because of manifold sins there were laid upon them customs unspeakable; but by none of them did they abide, but they again provoked the Lord.115
As Justin says to Trypho:
Not because he needed such sacrifices but because of the sins of your people, especially their sins of idolatry, did God command you to sacrifice to him. You will admit the truth of my statement if you listen to Amos, one of the twelve prophets, who said: “. . . I hate and have rejected your feasts, and I will not accept the odor of your assemblies. And if you offer me your holocausts and sacrifices, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the show of your peace offerings.”
In fact, Justin goes on to minimize the temple itself by insisting that God regarded it only as “his house or court, not as if he needed a house or a court, but because, by uniting yourselves to him in that place, you might abstain from the worship of idols. This can be proved by the words of Isaiah, ‘What is this house that you built for me? Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool.’ [Isa. 66:1].”
“You also know,” Justin continues,
that because of the hardness of your hearts, God imposed all such commandments upon you through Moses, in order that, by observing these many precepts, you might have him constantly set before your eyes and refrain from every unjust or impious act. Thus he commanded you to wear a red ribbon as a constant reminder of him; and for the same purpose he ordered you to wear the phylactery. . . . By these very ordinances he urges you to have God always in mind and, at the same time, his judgment. Notwithstanding this reminder, you still continued to practice idolatry . . . [proving] that the precepts imposed upon you on account of your people’s hardness of heart are in no way conducive to acts of justice and piety. (46)
Irenaeus uses the Greek word oikonomia to describe God’s actions during the Exodus — a word that can be translated, roughly speaking, as “a family plan for housekeeping.” Inquiring into this housekeeping plan, as we have been doing in these pages, will, according to Irenaeus, “show why it was that more covenants than one were given to mankind; and teach what was the special character of each of these covenants.”116 Tertullian takes up this theme of successive covenants:
[In the primordial law of Adam and Eve] we recognise enclosed all the precepts specially of the posterior Law, which germinated when disclosed at their proper times. . . . [Those original laws were] subsequently reformed for the patriarchs, and so again for the Jews, at definite periods: so that we are not to give heed to Moses’ Law as to the primitive law, but as to a subsequent, which at a definite period God has set forth to the Gentiles too and, after repeatedly promising so to do through the prophets, has reformed for the better. . . . And let us not annul this power which God has, which reforms the law’s precepts answerably to the circumstances of the times, with a view to man’s salvation.117
“Why then the law,” asked St. Paul, “since by it shall no flesh be justified?” “It was added because of transgressions, till the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made; and it was ordained by angels through an intermediary.” And now we see that the transgressions were at Beth-peor, on the borders of Canaan, and, preeminently, with the golden calf. They were added a little at a time to begin with but, preeminently, at the climax of the drama, when the full Deuteronomic Code was enacted by Moses. That later law was imperfect, fit only to be established by an intermediary and handled only by far lesser spirits than Yahweh. Yet it was enacted only until the coming of Abraham’s offspring, the one to whom the promise had been made — the promise, as you recall, to bless all of mankind; to reach, finally, the Gentiles, as well; and to carry Judah’s kingly scepter forever. The offspring, then, is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ. This was God’s will from the beginning — and, as Paul himself noted a few verses earlier, “no one annuls even a man’s will, or adds to it, once it has been ratified. . . . This is what I mean: the law, which came four hundred and thirty years afterward [Moses’ law, in other words], does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void” (Gal. 3:15, 17).
The Law That Failed
One of the main reasons we know that the Second Legislation was always destined to pass away is that Moses himself prophesied the failure of his own Law! And these prophecies are contained within the book of Deuteronomy. A closer look at this fact will provide us with some indispensable insight.
Deuteronomy was the great work of Moses’ life, his “last will and testament.” As Israel finally prepared to enter Canaan, Moses prepared to die. God had told him his work was complete; he was, according to Scripture, 120 years old at the time. Moses, it seems, representing the Law, could lead God’s people to the Promised Land, but only his young successor, Yeshua (which we usually transliterate as Joshua, in order to distinguish him from our New Testament Savior of the same name), can carry them in.
As we’ve seen, God had tolerated Israel’s human foibles in various ways all along. We might say He showed a willingness, as Johnny Mercer once put it, to “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive” for the time being, in hopes of inculcating something better over the long haul. But now Moses had become Israel’s lawgiver instead — and Moses went well beyond all this (with God’s go-ahead, of course). The Second Legislation not only provided prophylactic measures against idolatry and remedial punishments for past sin, but gave permission for the people to operate on a lower standard for a while: “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce.” Other examples include permission to hate one’s enemies, to take vengeance, to practice usury, and to answer an insult with an insult — all allowed by Deuteronomy, only later rescinded by Christ. Because of its inferior origin, the new Law could overlook certain real evils, yet without implicating God’s justice. In regard to slavery, herem warfare, polygamy, and so forth, the Israelites continued to live pretty much like any other Bronze Age dynasty of the ancient Levant, simply because cold turkey had proved too hard and God, had He insisted on it, would likely have lost His people altogether.
Yet such a system, surely, could be only temporary. God’s ultimate plan was to join Himself to humanity as our divine Bridegroom, to live His life in us and eventually “be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28, KJV), to make each one of us “participants in the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). A plan like that could never permanently incorporate so much that is so manifestly of the earth. And, of course, anything that is not permanent must necessarily come to an end.
Near the end of Deuteronomy, Moses assembles the people for a ritual recitation of the terms of the newest covenant. “And Moses and the Levitical priests said to all Israel, ‘Keep silence and hear, O Israel: this day you have become the people of the Lord your God. You shall therefore obey the voice of the Lord your God, keeping his commandments and his statutes, which I command you this day’ ” (Deut. 27:9–10). There follows a list of prohibitions, which correspond more or less to the Decalogue, and to which the people repeatedly give their vocal assent: “And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ ” Finally, the solemn ritual concludes with what is, really, a terrible covenant oath. “ ‘Cursed be he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen’ ” (Deut. 27:26). This was Israel’s vow to stay true this time for sure — or be damned.
St. Paul believed that it had damned them. “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse” he wrote, “for it is written, ‘Cursed be every one who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them’ ” (Gal. 3:10). Literal keeping of every single clause in Deuteronomy is literally impossible, as Paul and the rest of the Jews had learned all too well by apostolic times. And Moses certainly seems to have realized this in advance. We call him a prophet for a reason, for the Spirit of prophecy certainly does come over Moses in the next few chapters. Looking forward into Israel’s future, he begins to see dreadful horrors ahead: pestilence, humiliation, exile, subjugation to pagan enemies, famine so severe that Israelites will resort to cannibalism. And all of it is attributed to the action of Yahweh: “the Lord will cause you to be defeated,” “the Lord will scatter you,” “the Lord will bring on extraordinary afflictions” (see Deut. 28:15–68). This is the destiny, it would seem, of anyone who boldly undertakes to “rely upon the works of the law” and then can’t follow through.
One might think, at first, that these are simply hypothetical possibilities that Moses is evoking to scare the people into obedience this time. Yet as the prophet continues, his tone turns decisively from “if” to “when.” What seemed, to begin with, two distinct visions of the future — either blessings or curses — now begin to be revealed as distinct or successive phases of the same future.
And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, and return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you this day, with all your heart and with all your soul; then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes, and have compassion upon you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. (Deut. 30:1–3)
The curses seem to be fated to happen, but then so do the blessings.
If the keeping of God’s Law were simply and solely a matter of avoiding the promised curses by strict obedience, well, then Moses is a terrible coach, because he tells the people up front that the effort is destined to fail. But it doesn’t seem to be as simple as that. Yes, your efforts at law-keeping will ultimately fail, but the failure will carry you to something beyond. “Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land that belonged to your fathers, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers.” This emphasis on literal descendants had, in the past, always tended to focus the people’s minds on the biological side, even on the actual organ of generation, which the Law ordered circumcised. But now Moses prophesies a day when “the Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.” The people will fail, and their failure will bring misery. But when the people have failed — after the Second Legislation has demonstrated its futility — then God will succeed.
There is a second prophesy in Moses’ last will, as well. “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren — him you shall heed — just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, or see this great fire any more, lest I die’ ” (Deut. 18:16). This is a reference to Exodus 20:19, when the people at Sinai begged Moses to speak to them on God’s behalf, since they were too terrified to see the Lord of the mountain face-to-face. Moses invokes that memory here to emphasize that this new prophet will be, as Moses has been, king, priest, and mediator all in one. “And the Lord said to me, ‘I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not give heed to my words which he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him” (Deut. 18:18–19). Both the Apostle Peter (Acts 3:22–23) and the proto-martyr Stephen (Acts 7:37) identify this new prophet “like Moses” as none other than our Lord Jesus Christ.
So this prophecy, too, of a second Moses to come, bespeaks the insufficiency of the Second Legislation. For if the Law of Moses alone, properly kept, can bring, as Trypho insisted, salvation of itself, what possible use could there be for another Moses? “If the law,” as Justin puts it, “were able to enlighten the nations and those who possess it, what need is there of a new covenant?” (122).
Many of Israel’s later prophets foresaw the ultimate cessation of the Second Law as well. Justin quotes from Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, and others. “The children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or teraphim,” according to Hosea (3:4); “And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals when she burned incense to them and decked herself with her ring and jewelry, and went after her lovers, and forgot me, says the Lord. . . . I will put an end to all her mirth, her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts . . . [but afterward] I will make for you a covenant . . . and I will make you lie down in safety.” (2:11, 18). Other Fathers cite Daniel 9:27 — “he shall cause sacrifice and offering to cease” — and Psalm 40:6: “Sacrifice and offering thou dost not desire. . . . Burnt offering and sin offering thou hast not required.” Tertullian emphasizes, especially, the prophecies of Jeremiah:
“Make a renewal for you, and sow not in thorns; be circumcised to God, and circumcise the foreskin of your heart” [see Jer. 4:3–4]. In another place [Jeremiah] says, “Behold, days shall come, says the Lord, and I will draw up, for the house of Judah and for the house of Jacob, a new testament; not such as I once gave their fathers in the day wherein I led them out from the land of Egypt” [Jer. 31:31–32]. Whence we understand the coming cessation of the former circumcision then given, and the coming procession of a new law (not such as He had already given to the fathers).118
Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch, expresses the hope most plainly of all: “And I will make with them another covenant that shall be everlasting, to be their God, and they shall be my people: and I will no more remove my people, the children of Israel, out of the land that I have given them” (Bar. 2:35, Douay-Rheims). That Baruch’s new covenant “shall be everlasting” certainly suggests that the one in force during his own time was not.
According to Didascalia Apostolorum, it was the coeternal Son of God who inspired the prophets in this way:
Even before His coming He foretold His coming through the prophets, and together with His coming He signified also the disobedience of the People, and preached the undoing of the Second Legislation; as He said by Jeremiah: “Why bring ye me frankincense from Sheba, and cinnamon from a far country? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable unto me, and your sacrifices delight me not” [Jer. 6:20]. And again He said: ‘Bring together your burnt offerings with your sacrifices, and eat flesh. For I gave you no command, when I brought you out from the land of Egypt, neither concerning burnt offerings nor concerning sacrifices” [Jer. 7:21–22]. Yea, verily, in the Law He gave no command, but in the bonds of the Second Legislation, after that they had served idols. And again by Isaiah also He said: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord, I am sated with burnt offerings of rams; and the fat of lambs and the blood of oxen I desire not. And when ye come to see my face, who hath required these things at your hands? Trample my courts no more. If ye will bring me fine flour, it is a vain oblation; and your new moons and your sabbaths and solemn days are rejected of me: your fasts and your restings are not acceptable unto me, and your festivals my soul hateth” (Isa. 1:11–14). And in all the Scriptures He speaks thus; and through the sacrifices He abolishes the Second Legislation; for, as we have already said, it is in the Second Legislation that sacrifices are prescribed. If, then, even before His coming He made known and revealed His coming, and the disobedience of the People, and spoke of the abolition of the Second Legislation, much more, being come, did He fully and completely abolish the Second Legislation. . . . He loosed you and called you from the bonds, and said: “Come unto me, all ye that toil and are laden with heavy burdens; and I will give you rest” [Matt. 11:28]. Now we know that our Saviour did not say (this) to the Gentiles, but He said it to us His disciples from among the Jews, and brought us out from burdens and a heavy load.”119
The Eighth Day
Yet hadn’t God Himself called the Sabbath “perpetual” and “everlasting” — “a statute for ever in all your dwellings throughout your generations” (Gen. 17:7; Exod. 31:16–17; Lev. 23:21)? Even Jesus promised that the Law would never pass away — not one jot or tittle (Matt. 5:17–18). If nothing, then, of the Law is to be destroyed, well, the Sabbath is part of the Law, isn’t it? And are we not meant to be imitators of Christ? Christ, as Trypho carefully points out, observed the Law, rather than disparaging it — not only the Ten Words and the Judgments but the Second Legislation as well. What authorizes us to imitate Him in some things but not in this?
All good questions — but troubling only when taken in isolation. We must keep firmly in mind that the prophecies about a New Covenant — a covenant “not like the covenant which I made with their fathers” (Jer. 31:32) — are not in doubt. The inspired author of Hebrews makes this very plain in his comment about Jeremiah’s prophecy: “In speaking of a new covenant he treats the first as obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Heb. 8:13). Since, therefore, the Sabbath cannot be both perpetual and destined for abandonment we must be dealing with two Sabbaths now: one literal and one moral or figurative. And this was, in fact, the judgment of the Apostles and the Fathers.
Earlier in Hebrews, while commenting on the apostasy at the borders of Canaan, the same writer interpreted the Sabbath allegorically. There, he links the rest that God intended for His people at the close of their journey to God’s own rest on the seventh day of Creation; then he construes both of them as prophecies of Christian salvation: “So then, there remains a sabbath rest for the people of God; for whoever enters God’s rest also ceases from his labors as God did from his” (Heb. 4:9–10). The day after the seventh day is Sunday, the Eighth Day, so to speak, and in the eyes of the early Church, it signified a new beginning for the world. Christ was raised on a Sunday and the Holy Spirit descended on a Sunday, the day of Pentecost. Christian baptismal fonts have, for centuries, been built with eight sides to perpetuate just this thought — that the newly baptized are entering the “Long Sabbath” of the Church Age, the day of eternal rest. And the rest to be enjoyed is rest from the rigors of the Second Legislation.
While this is, undoubtedly, a purely symbolic interpretation of the data, there is precedent for its usage in the Old Testament. Though the Eighth Day is, in one sense, just the first day of an entirely new week, the Pentateuch nevertheless ascribes a mysterious significance to it. The Eighth Day was the day when Israelite boys became “children of the promise” via circumcision (Gen. 17:12). It was also the climax of the eight-day feast of Tabernacles (literally, of tents) — celebrating God’s presence in the Ark of the Covenant as it traveled through the wilderness along with His people, sheltered, as they were, by a tent. The Talmud, in fact, refers to this presence as God’s Shekinah — his willingness to “dwell” or “be sheltered,” a word that shares the same Hebrew root as the word “tabernacle.” “[The Tent of Meeting] that dwells among them,” writes Rabbi Charina in the Talmud, remains with the people even “in the midst of their impurities. Even in a time that they are impure, the divine presence is among them.”120 The festival of the Eighth Day, then — the greatest of all Jewish festivals, according to Josephus — was the festival of “Immanuel — God with us” (see Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:23).
Yet the Ark was taken from the people, leaving them bereft of this presence. This means that the Eighth Day became the feast of “the God who used to be with us.” And as time went on, this festival seemed to call out every year for the return of God’s Shekinah, a cry that was finally answered — in spades! — at the Incarnation, “the Great Tabernacling.” By becoming man, the Second Person of the Divine Trinity could succeed, where the people had failed, in keeping all the rigors of the Law and then offer Himself to the Father as a spotless Lamb, an acceptable sacrifice at last. And once this terrible work was finished — so rigorous that God Himself sweat blood under the load of it (Luke 22:44) — He rested from his labor, according to St. Augustine, in the silence of his tomb: “He suffered voluntarily, and so could choose His own time for suffering and for resurrection, He brought it about that His body rested from all its works on Sabbath in the tomb, and that His resurrection on the third day, which we call the Lord’s day, the day after the Sabbath, and therefore the eighth, proved the circumcision of the eighth day to be also prophetical of Him.”121 God’s restored presence among men is also symbolized by the two angels who sit, one at the head, another at the feet, of the body of Christ as it lay resting in the tomb. Two cherubim sat atop the Ark of the Covenant in just this same way, standing watch over the Mercy Seat, where the Shekinah of Yahweh appeared whenever sacrificial blood was offered.
Tertullian, at any rate, speaking from within the traditions represented by Justin and the Didascalia, asserts directly that the Law Sabbath was merely symbolic of a greater Sabbath to come:
The Jews say, that from the beginning God sanctified the seventh day, by resting on it from all His works which He made; and that thence it was, likewise, that Moses said to the People: “Remember the day of the sabbaths, to sanctify it: every servile work you shall not do therein, except what pertains unto life.” Whence we [Christians] understand that we still more ought to observe a sabbath from all “servile work” always, and not only every seventh day, but through all time. And through this arises the question for us, what sabbath God willed us to keep?
To continue observing the type once the antitype itself has arrived is, in Tertullian’s judgment, the height of absurdity:
For the Scriptures point to a sabbath eternal and a sabbath temporal. For Isaiah the prophet says, “Your sabbaths my soul hates” [Isa. 1:13]; and in another place he says, “My sabbaths you have profaned” [Ezek. 22:8]. Whence we discern that the temporal sabbath is human, and the eternal sabbath is accounted divine. . . . Thus, therefore, before this temporal sabbath, there was withal an eternal sabbath foreshown and foretold; just as before the carnal circumcision there was withal a spiritual circumcision foreshown.”122
Yet what of Trypho’s larger argument — that Jesus promised not to destroy even one jot or tittle of Moses’ Law? Well, our Savior did promise this, to be sure, but it’s very important to cite the entire quotation: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (Matt. 5:17-18, emphasis added). What is it that needs to be accomplished first, in order that the law should pass away? The answer is contained within the very same passage: the law must be fulfilled.
But what does fulfilling the law entail? In what sense is something fulfilled if fulfillment, in practice, only means abrogation or complete destruction? Perhaps the best analogy ever offered was that of Grossteste:
To fulfill . . . and not destroy a thing whose existence is transient is to lead it through its natural progression continually unto its end. . . . He truly fulfills and does not destroy the seed who brings it about that the seed should germinate at the opportune time and that it pass into another more perfect form. For example: to fulfill and not destroy the seed of a tree or the seed of grain is to cause it to die by decaying in soil and through germination to pass into a tree or an ear of grain, and so to cease to have the form and existence of the seed. Therefore, he fulfills and does not destroy a seed who in the aforementioned way brings the seed to non-existence, because the true existence of the seed is to pass in this manner into non-existence. But he who hides a seed in a storeroom and keeps it for many years and does not allow it to germinate by dying and does not allow something more imperfect to pass away by dying and germinating — he who does this truly destroys the seed and ruins it. . . . Thus Christ fulfilled and did not destroy the temporal and transient Law because he led it from its beginning through its proper progress to its end in time, an appropriate and suitable end for its passing away. Christ did not cut off the Law before it reached its suitable end, and did not extend the Law beyond its suitable end; rather, he ended it at its proper time and, as if it were a seed, he made it live by dying according to its carnal sense and operation and causing it to germinate and produce a spiritual sense and operation.123
This language of fulfillment is echoed in the words of the New Testament — specifically, of Hebrews once again: “According to [the former] arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various ablutions, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation” (Heb. 9:10, emphasis added). Other translations describe this time as “the new order” or even “the restoration” — very significant phrases, obviously, on a timeline in which an original, primordial law has been modified for the worse. “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then [by passing] through the greater and more perfect tent” — and here is the Tabernacle once again, with its feast celebrated on the Eighth Day —
. . . he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant. (Heb. 9:11-15)
Here, the whole mission of Christ is portrayed as the restoration of the Law as it once was — before more Law was added — and the establishment, afterward, of a new Sabbath rest that will last eternally. As Justin tells Trypho:
The precept of circumcision, obliging you without fail to circumcise your sons on the eighth day, was a type of the true circumcision by which we are circumcised from error and wickedness through our Lord Jesus Christ who arose from the dead on the first day of the week. For the first day of the week, while it remains the first of all the days, yet is called the eighth, according to the number of all the days of the cycle, and still it remains the first. (41)
The Bottom Line
How, ultimately, did Trypho respond to Justin’s arguments? How did the great debate turn out?
Justin’s later written account, sad to say, doesn’t end with Trypho’s conversion to Christianity; but neither does the rabbi simply walk away confirmed in his rejection of Jesus. It ends inconclusively; and it may be that Justin never knew what became of Trypho later in life. History gives us no help either. Trypho was, for many years, cautiously identified with another famous second-century rabbi with a similar name; but now we think, for various reasons, that the identification was a mistake. No, when Trypho walks away from this dispute, he walks into historical oblivion — a symbol, perhaps, for the larger, still-unsettled debate about Jesus going on inside the Golden Chrysalis.
There is one very telling exchange in the Dialogue, however, that seems, almost accidentally, to reveal the deepest root of Trypho’s concerns — not really confusion about the permanence of the Law but a much more fundamental, even much more respectable, stumbling block instead. It comes near the end of Justin’s arguments about a Second Law, when Trypho, backed into a corner, shifts his attack to the claims of the New Testament instead — specifically, to Justin’s use of Isaiah 7:14, as it appears in the Septuagint version:
Then Trypho objected, “The quotation is not ‘Behold a virgin will conceive and bear a Son,’ but ‘Behold a young woman will conceive and bear a son,’ and so forth, as you quoted it. Furthermore, the prophecy as a whole refers to Hezekiah, and it can be shown that the events described in the prophecy were fulfilled in him. Besides, in Greek mythology there is a story of how Perseus was born of Danae, while she was a virgin, when the one whom they call Zeus descended upon her in the form of a golden shower. You Christians should be ashamed of yourselves, therefore, to repeat the same kind of stories as these men, and you should, on the contrary, acknowledge this Jesus to be a man of mere human origin. If you can prove from the Scriptures that He is the Christ, confess that He was considered worthy to be chosen as such because of His perfect observance of the Law, but do not dare to speak of miracles, lest you be accused of talking nonsense, like the Greeks.”
Justin notes Trypho’s sudden change of subject and calls him out on it. “You are neither fair nor truthful when you endeavor to eliminate those points on which we have mutually agreed, for example, that some precepts of the Law were instituted by Moses because of your people’s hardness of heart.” Not to be put off the hunt so easily, Justin forces the rabbi’s feet back up to the fire:
Now, Trypho, since you deny the points which you had previously admitted, tell me if those just men and patriarchs who lived before Moses, and therefore did not observe those precepts which Scripture shows were first commanded by Moses, have attained salvation in the inheritance of the blessed?”
“The Scriptures,” said Trypho, “force me to admit that they have.”
“Answer this question, too,” I persisted. “Did God order your ancestors to offer up oblations and sacrifices because He needed them, or because of their hardness of heart and tendency to idolatry?”
“The Scriptures,” he answered, “also compel me to admit the second reason.”
“And have those same Scriptures also predicted that God had announced a new Covenant, other than that which He made at Mount Horeb?”
“They have,” he admitted.
“And was not that old Covenant,” I continued, “delivered to your ancestors amid such fear and trembling that they could not listen to God?”
“That also is true,” he conceded.
“Then why do you argue?” I went on to ask. “God promised another covenant, different from the old one, which would be delivered to them without fear and trembling and flashes of lightning, and which would indicate what precepts and actions God knows to be eternal and fit for every nationality, and what precepts He issued as suited only to the hardness of your people’s hearts (as He proclaimed through His Prophets).”
“They who love the truth and not strife,” replied Trypho, “must agree with you completely.”
“I don’t know,” I said, “how you can accuse others of admiring strife, when you yourself so often seem to do just that, for you frequently contradict what you had previously conceded.”
We can almost hear, across the centuries, the confusion and desperation in Trypho’s voice at this point and then the blurting out, at last, of his troubled response:
“Because,” replied Trypho, “you are attempting to prove what is incredible and practically impossible, namely, that God deigned to be born and to become man.”
Here, at last, behind all smokescreens, is the real, inescapable objection to Christian belief, impenetrable to reason alone, the Grand Miracle at which even the angels staggered. And Trypho is not wrong to stop at it and stare, as a good portion of his whole nation was doing at this time, and as all thoughtful persons must do, even today, while praying for the faith to move forward.
105 Clementine Recognitions, quoted in Benin, Footprints of God, 146.
106 Midrash Tanhuma, Nitzavim 3.
107 The reference is to Joshua (called “Jesus Nave” in the Septuagint) and the miracle of the sun described in Joshua 10.
108 Pseudo-Athanasius is a designation assigned to the unknown author (or authors) of a group of fifth- to ninth-century works once widely ascribed to Athanasius of Alexandria.
109 Irenaeus, Proof of the Apostolic Preaching 28, in Ancient Christian Writers, 16:66.
110 Athanasius, Epistle 19, 4, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series, vol. 4, Athanasius: Select Works and Letters, trans. R. Payne-Smith, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1892), 546. The command to sacrifice daily came after the calf incident as a temporary “marching order” and became perpetual only at Beth-peor.
111 Deut. 8:5; 14:1; 32:5–6, 19–20.
112 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4, 15.
113 The Zohar, which first appeared in Spain in the thirteenth century, is the foundational book of Jewish mysticism, a system known as Kabbalah.
114 Didascalia Apostolorum, ed. R. Hugh Connolly (Omaha: Wipf and Stock, 2010), 48.
115 Didascalia Apostolorum, 33.
116 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1, 10.
117 Tertullian, Answer to the Jews 2.
118 Tertullian, Answer to the Jews 3.
119 Didascalia Apostolorum 14.
120 Talmud Tractate Yoma 56b.
121 Augustine, Reply to Faustus the Manichaean 16, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 4, St. Augustine: The Writings against the Manichaeans and against the Donatists, trans. Richard Stothert, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1887), 231.
122 Tertullian, Answer to the Jews 4.
123 Grosseteste, On the Cessation of the Laws, 96–97.