Tractates on the Gospel of John
TRACTATE 9 197 understanding is taken away when you have passed over to the Lord, and what was water becomes wine for you.
(2) Read all the prophetic books, without perceiving Christ; what will you find so insipid and silly? Understand Christ there, and what you are reading not only becomes savory, but it also intoxicates, shifting the mind away from the body, so that, forgetting the things that are past, you stretch yourself forth to those things that are before you."
4. Therefore, from ancient times, from the time when the succession of those born in the human race proceeds forward, prophecy was not silent about Christ, but its meaning had been hidden there; for it was still water. How do we prove that in all previous times, up to the age in which the Lord came, prophecy was not lacking about him? From the Lord's own words. For when he had arisen from the dead, he found the apostles doubting about him whom they had followed. For they saw him dead and had no hope that he would rise again; and all their hope perished. Why was that thief praised and [why] did he deserve to be that day in paradise?'^ Because, fastened on a cross, he acknowledged Christ at that time when the disciples doubted about him.
(2) And so he found them faltering and, in a way, reproaching themselves because they had hoped for redemption in him.
Still they grieved that he had been killed without fault because they knew that he was innocent. And they themselves said this after the Resurrection when he found some of them on the road in gloom: '"Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem and have you not known the things that have been done there in these days?' Then he said to them, 'What things?'" Then they said, "Concerning Jesus of Nazareth who was a prophet,
10. The Latin word insipientia probably involves a word play since the root of this word suggests in its ultimate denotation the meaning of "tastelessness" as Gibb translates it; but it seems improbable that this meaning would be uppermost in the minds of Augustine's congregation, in view of the usage of the word in extant Latin writings. Still the metaphor is supported by insipidum in the next sentence and sapit in the following one.
11. Cf. Phil 3.13. 12. Cf. Lk 23.39-43.