Heresy II, Of the Gospel of Matthew

OF THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW — Heresy II (De Evangelio Matthaei haeresis II)

To cut out of the Gospel according to Matthew — which was falsely composed by an uncertain author under the name of Matthew — certain things badly inserted by the fault of corrupters.

ASSERTORES HVIVS HAERESEOS [The Assertors of this Heresy]

The first authors of this heresy (as Epiphanius relates) were the Ebionites, [so named] from Ebion, ¹

(printed p. 581)

[from Ebion] so named, not long after the preaching of the Apostles; who, just as they held divers opinions concerning the nativity of Christ, so brought forth divers judgments concerning the gospel of Matthew. Accordingly it must be known that, as Eusebius in the third book of the Ecclesiastical History ² and Epiphanius affirm, the Ebionites were divided in two around [the question of] Christ’s nativity: those of them who followed the error of their teacher Ebion said that Christ was pure man, procreated by common nativity of man and woman; but those who departed from their teacher in this asserted that Christ was neither true man nor born according to the flesh. But because they saw that Matthew, in the very beginning of his gospel, ran counter to this error of theirs, and most openly attested that Christ was man and had a father and mother on earth, therefore — the genealogies being cut off, that is, the first and second chapter of this gospel, in which the generations of Christ are enumerated — they took the beginning of this gospel from its third chapter; yet with many words adulterated and changed, partly added, partly mutilated, after this manner: “It came to pass in the days of Herod, King of Juda, that John came baptizing with the baptism of penance in the river Jordan; who was said to be of the stock of Aaron the priest, son of Zachary and Elizabeth; and all went out to him.” And after they had said many things, they added: “The people being baptized, Jesus also was baptized by John; and when he had come up out of the water, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God in the form of a dove, descending and entering into him. And a voice was made from heaven, saying: Thou art my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased; and again: I this day have begotten thee. And straightway a great light shone round about the place; and when John had seen it, he said to him: Who art thou, Lord? And again a voice from heaven to him: This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. And then John, falling down before him, said: I beseech thee, Lord, baptize thou me. But he forbade him, saying: Suffer it, for thus it is fitting that all things be fulfilled.” Thus they. But those who said Christ was born of the seed of man kept this genealogy entire, that from it they might convince [men] that Christ had a father no less than a mother after the flesh; and on account of this sole genealogy — the other gospels being cast aside — they used the gospel of Matthew alone, though with the genealogy alone entire, the remaining parts mutilated, truncated, and corrupted. And among these the chief were Cerinthus, Merinthus, and Carpocras, as Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and Philastrius attest. ³ But Marcion, after these, rejected the gospel of Matthew entirely, as Epiphanius witnesses. After him the Manichaeans took up the patronage of the same dogma; and before the rest, most of all Faustus the Manichaean, who — as appears from the books of the divine Augustine against the same Faustus, namely the second, third, and seventh — endeavored with many arguments to show that the Gospel according to Matthew was written not by Matthew, but by some other of uncertain name and uncertain authority, composed under the name of Matthew; which moreover he judged should be divided into two parts, namely into the Genealogy and the Gospel. And the Gospel indeed he would have to be that [part] which contains only the preaching of the Son of God after John was shut up in prison; but whatever was narrated before John’s chains, he said, pertained not to the gospel but to the falsely fabricated Genealogy, and therefore that it was deservedly to be repudiated as a mere genealogy, which is not gospel. Then, turning to that part which he himself called the gospel, he taught that not all things out of it were to be received, but that many were to be repudiated as false and fabricated — but especially he rejected all the testimonies of the Law and the Prophets which are inserted in various places of this gospel, as brought in over and above by rash depravers. Finally the Anabaptists and Servetians in our times have called back into the light this same error, now extinct for so many ages, asserting that many vaticinations of the prophets have been falsely and violently wrested to Christ, and sewn wrongly into this gospel, as into the others, to prove the divinity of Christ.

IMPVGNATIO [The Refutation]

In the confutation of the preceding heresy above, we showed by very many arguments that there is nothing in the New Testament either mendaciously written, or maliciously depraved, altered, falsified, superadded, or subtracted. Wherefore, lest repeating the same thing twice we be compelled to take up again, in confuting the particular heresies of the New Testament, the same arguments which we have already employed in reproving the universal heresies of the whole New Testament, we will not bring a new impugnation here; but we remit the reader to the impugnation of the preceding heresy, which, as a common engine (machina), we oppose to this as much as to the other similar heresies of this kind.

OBIECTIONES HAERETICORVM [The Objections of the Heretics]

Now first of all, that the gospel inscribed with the name of Matthew is not the evangelist Matthew’s own, the Manichaeans as well as the Anabaptists strive to show by some arguments — plainly contemptible ones. And first of all Faustus the Manichaean speaks thus:

1. That Matthew did not write this gospel, but some other unknown man under his name, the oblique narration of the very text of Matthew teaches. ⁴ For what does it say? “And when Jesus passed by, he saw a man sitting at the receipt of custom, Matthew by name, and he called him. And he, forthwith rising up, followed him.” ⁵ And who, then, writing of himself, would say: “He saw a man, and called him, and he followed him,” and would not rather say: “He saw me, and called me, and I followed him” — unless because it is evident that Matthew did not write these things, but some other unknown one under his name?

2. But the Anabaptists contend from the language of the author of this gospel that it is not Matthew’s. For Matthew was a Hebrew, and is recorded to have written his gospel for the Hebrews in the Hebrew language and letters, as Eusebius relates out of Papias, ⁶ and Jerome asserts in the book On Illustrious Men. But this gospel, which is now had under the name of Matthew, seems to have been written by its author not in the Hebrew but rather in the Greek tongue. For this the interpretations of the Hebrew names, which are read scattered in very many places of this gospel, manifestly demonstrate;

(printed p. 582)

as in the first chapter, where it is said: “His name shall be called Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us”; ⁷ and in the twenty-eighth chapter [rather, the twenty-seventh], where it is written: “Heli, Heli, lamazabatani, which is interpreted: God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Now if Matthew wrote the whole gospel in the Hebrew tongue, then one rightly wonders in what tongue, or in what words, and for the sake of what, he interpreted sentences of this kind; and whether in their interpretation he used words of his own or of a foreign tongue. For if he interpreted Hebrew words with Hebrew words, he incurs the vice of superfluity, expounding things known by things equally known, without any necessity; but if he expressed his own native words with foreign words, then the interpretation of the words will be more obscure than the words themselves. Next, why should he have interpreted these words of his gospel rather than others, since all were of equal facility or difficulty among the Hebrews? Wherefore, to avoid the inept superfluity of this interpretation, we are compelled to say, first, that the author of this gospel wrote not in Hebrew but in Greek; and because he inserted some Hebrew words of the Greek scripture which contained a mystery, he therefore translated them into Greek, lest the reader be defrauded of the understanding of them. But if anyone shall say that those expressions were superadded not by the author but by a Greek interpreter [translator], and that they are not had in the Hebrew codex of Matthew, then it follows that this gospel is rendered suspect in every part. For just as the interpreter brought in these words out of his own head beyond necessity, so it is likely that he either added, or could have added, many other things at his own pleasure. Nor does it stand in the way that this gospel is now found written in Hebrew letters — just as Jerome of old found this very thing written in Hebrew in the library of Caesarea; since it could have been turned from Greek into Hebrew speech by anyone skilled in the Hebrew tongue, as was done with the gospel of John, which Epiphanius writes was of old translated from the Greek tongue into Hebrew, ⁸ and kept in the treasuries (gazophylacia) of the Hebrews at Tiberias even to his own times.

3. It is rendered uncertain, moreover, whether Matthew wrote any gospel at all; because concerning the time at which Matthew wrote it there is divers opinion among the ecclesiastical writers. Eusebius of Caesarea relates in the Chronicles that Matthew first of all wrote a gospel in Judaea while Peter ruled the church of Antioch, in the third year of the empire of Caligula; but Irenaeus, in the third book Against Heresies, chapter one, hands down that Matthew wrote his gospel when Peter and Paul were evangelizing at Rome.

4. But whether this gospel was composed by Matthew or by some other, it matters little (as Faustus says). ⁹ It is enough that many things have been craftily inserted into it by certain depraved tamperers. Among which the first place is held by that genealogy of the Savior set before the beginning of the gospel — which many reasons show was neither written by a good man, nor is a part of the gospel, nor pertains to the gospel at all. And first, the very definition of the gospel teaches that this genealogy stands far from the gospel: for the gospel is the very preaching of Jesus Christ the Son of God; for so it is read in Matthew 4: ¹⁰ “Jesus went about all Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom.” And since this preaching began after John was shut up in prison — as is had in the 4th chapter of Matthew, where it is said, “From that time Jesus began to preach and to say: Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven shall draw near” — it follows that whatever is narrated before Christ’s preaching is not gospel, but is all genealogy, up to the prison of John. For also in the second chapter of Matthew a star is brought in, after the profane custom of the gentiles, seen in the East by the Magi — as it were a certain fatal constellation under whose influence the fortune of the newborn boy was constituted.

5. This same thing appears from the inscription of his genealogy, ¹¹ which Matthew himself did not dare to call a gospel, but inscribed it: “The Book of the Generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David.” For what hindered Matthew from setting down “The Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of David,” except that he thought it wicked to call a genealogy a gospel? Whence we too may rightly name those first two chapters a “Genesidium” [a little Genesis] rather than a Gospel.

6. To this is added that Mark, who was Matthew’s follower and abbreviator, rejected this genealogy from the gospel of Matthew as spurious (notham): ¹² because, since he had undertaken to write the gospel only, he passed over the writing of that generation as in no wise pertaining to the gospel, beginning his gospel from the preaching of the Son of God, which is the true gospel; and to show that the beginning of the gospel is rightly to be taken not from the generation but from the preaching of Christ, he began thus: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”; ¹³ and immediately, Christ’s generation being passed over, he subjoined the preaching of John and of Christ.

7. Moreover, the very dissension of the evangelists in recounting the generation of Christ is so interminable and inexplicable that, if one of them wrote truly, it is necessary that the other of them lie. ¹⁴ For John and Mark do not write that God was born of man, nor do they bring in Mary and Joseph as Christ’s parents; but John indeed says that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God — signifying, namely, Christ; ¹⁵ while Mark says, “the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” — as though reproaching Matthew, who set down “the Son of David.” But Luke and Matthew contend with each other about this generation even much more. For Luke in the third chapter writes that Christ was the son of Joseph, who was [the son] of Heli, who was of Mathat, who was of Levi, who was of Melchi, who was of Janne, who was of Joseph, ¹⁶ who was of Mathathias, who was of Amos, who was of Nahum, who was of Hesli, who was of Aggai, who was of Maath, who was of Mathathias, who was of Semei, who was of Joseph, who was of Juda, who was of Joanna, who was of Resa, who was of Zorobabel, who was of Salathiel, who was of Neri, who was of Melchi, who was of Addi, who was of Thesan [Cosan], who was of Telmadan [Elmadan], and the rest that follow. But Matthew, deducing the generation of Christ from parents, grandsires, great-grandsires, and forefathers far divergent [from these], says that Christ was begotten of Mary, who was the wife of Joseph, sprung

(printed p. 583)

from Jacob, sprung from Mathan, sprung from Eleazar, sprung from Eliud, begotten of Achim, begotten of Sadoch, begotten of Azor, begotten of Eliachim, begotten of Abiud, begotten of Zorobabel, begotten of Salathiel, begotten of Jeconias, begotten of Josias, begotten of Amon, begotten of Manasses, begotten of Ezechias, begotten of Achaz, begotten of Joathan, begotten of Ozias, begotten of Joram, begotten of Josaphat, begotten of Asa, begotten of Abia, begotten of Roboam, begotten of Solomon, begotten of David — and the rest. Since therefore these two evangelists disagree so greatly between themselves about this generation of Christ that Matthew makes Joseph, [Christ’s] father, the son of Jacob and grandson of Mathan, his descent deduced from the stock of David through Solomon, while Luke makes him the son of Heli, grandson of Mathat, great-grandson of Levi, deduced from the stock of David not through Solomon but through Nathan — it follows that either both of them lie, or at least one of them. ¹⁷ Nor can that solution be brought forward in this place which Augustine also condemns in the second book of Evangelical Questions, chapter five: namely, that the same man — as is wont to happen frequently not only among the Jews but among all nations — had two names. For they who think this are easily refuted by the rest of the series of the generation, as Augustine says. For what will they say of Christ’s grandsires, great-grandsires, and the rest of his ancestors, of almost all of whom the several evangelists have woven diverse names, each into his own narration?

8. This Genealogy is furthermore to be cast off from the gospel because in the whole context of this generation, up to the baptism of Christ — in which he was declared by the voice of the Father to be the Son of God — no mention is ever made that Christ is the Son of God, but only the son of David, and born of men: ¹⁸ as if Matthew, together with the Ebionites, had believed that Christ was then first made the Son of God in his baptism, when the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him, but before the baptism was pure man — which is nowhere found in the whole gospel. For Christ never said that he had a father, or a mother, or a lineage on earth; but rather the contrary: that he was not of this world, that he proceeded from God the Father, that he descended from heaven, that none are mothers and brethren to him save those who shall have done the will of his Father who is in heaven. Therefore to ascribe this genealogy to Matthew is to thrust a calumny upon him — as though he had shut up the Son of God in the womb of a woman.

9. Again, this Genealogy cannot be true: because if Christ is the son of David according to the flesh, as it is the writer’s purpose to show, then Christ drew his flesh from the seed of David either from Joseph or from Mary. ¹⁹ But from Joseph by no means: for you deny that he was seeded from Joseph as father. Therefore you must needs confess that he is not even the son of David: since the generation is deduced from Abraham to David, and from David to Joseph — through all the fathers, namely, of the Hebrews. From which — since Jesus was not conceived, as you say — he will not be David’s son. Accordingly neither could he draw the flesh of David from Mary: because the origin of the virgin herself was not of the same tribe with David — that is, not of the tribe of Juda, from which the kings of the Jews are, but of the tribe of Levi, whence the priests [come]. And this very thing is manifest: both because Luke in the first chapter says she was the kinswoman of Elizabeth, whom he calls of the daughters of Aaron; ²⁰ and because it is agreed that this same [Mary] had for father a certain priest by the name of Joachim — of whom, however, in this generation no mention is anywhere made. How then shall Mary be said to pertain to this lineage of Davidic kindred, in which you see she has neither father nor husband? And hence neither will he be David’s son, whoever is born of her, unless you so join Joseph to this his mother that she be proved either his daughter or his wife.

10. And furthermore, those very men who ascribe these Genealogies to Christ knew Jesus neither before his nativity nor immediately after his nativity — so that it might be believed that they wrote the things they had seen done with their own eyes concerning him — but they were joined to him when he was now a young and mature man, that is, of about thirty years. ²¹ Wherefore, since in every testimony of truth this is always wont to be asked — whether one heard or saw [what he attests] — but these men neither confess that they heard the order of this generation from [Jesus] himself (since he had assuredly [already] been born), nor that they saw it with their eyes (since they came to know him long afterward, that is, after his baptism): to me, and to every right-judging man, it seems as foolish to believe this as if one should call a blind man and a deaf man into judgment [as witnesses]. And these are the causes for which Faustus rejects this Genealogy from the gospel.

11. After these, the wicked Anabaptists, other arguments having been devised, themselves also rise up against the same Genealogy, rashly accusing Matthew. First, because he imprudently deduced the Genealogy of Christ from the kings of Juda and the stock of David through Jeconias by Salathiel, making Salathiel the son of Jeconias and father of Zorobabel; whereas nevertheless it is evident from the sacred letters that Jeconias died in the Babylonian captivity without sons, and that in him the whole royal stock was extinguished, according to that vaticination of the prophet Jeremias pronounced concerning him: ²² “Thus saith the Lord: Write this man barren and childless (sterilem & orbum).” Which words openly show that Jeconias departed wholly bereft of children, and that he had neither Salathiel nor any other son. Next, because Matthew disagrees in the number of these generations as much with Luke the evangelist as with himself: seeing that Luke enumerates from David to Christ forty-three generations, while Matthew enumerates from David to Christ twenty-eight, or twenty-seven. And he differs from himself: because, whereas he says there are three tessaradecades [sets of fourteen] of generations from Abraham to Christ, and affirms that he has placed fourteen generations in each of them, yet in the last tessaradecade he has fitted together not fourteen but only thirteen generations — which is most clear to those who run through the generations of the last tessaradecade, whose first generation is that of Salathiel himself, the second Zorobabel, the third Abiud, the fourth Eliachim, the fifth Azor, the sixth Sadoch, the seventh Achin, the eighth Eliud, the ninth Eleazar, the tenth Mathan, the eleventh Jacob, the twelfth Joseph, the thirteenth Christ’s. Thus far the Anabaptists.

12. But Faustus, not content with this alone — that he has cut away that Genealogy — also [assails] other passages ²³

(printed p. 584)

he casts away from the same gospel as supposititious. Of which the first is that of Matthew 5, where Christ says: ²⁴ “Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.” This sentence of Christ — because it seemed to confirm the Law, which the Manichaeans deny — Faustus, in Augustine, book seventeen, rendered suspect with these words: “Who attests,” says he, “that Jesus said this? Matthew. Where does he say he said it? On the mount. In the presence of whom? Of Peter, Andrew, James, and John — of these four only; for he had not yet chosen the rest, nor Matthew himself. Did one of these four, then — that is, John — write it in his gospel? So [you say]. Does he anywhere mention this himself? Nowhere. How then did Matthew write what John does not attest, who was on the mount — [Matthew] who followed Jesus at a long interval after he came down from the mount? And hence it is doubtful on this very point whether Jesus said any such thing: because the fit witness is silent, and one less fit speaks — one who was not there at all when Jesus was speaking these things on the mount.”

13. Faustus likewise assails another sentence of Christ, out of the eighth chapter of Matthew, ²⁵ because in the words of this sentence Christ approves the Patriarchs of the Old Testament, whom Faustus pursues with execrable calumnies as most flagitious men. The sentence is that which Christ brought forth against the Jews, saying: ²⁶ “Many shall come from the East and the West, and shall recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” And Faustus attempts to explode it after this manner: “That of which it cannot certainly be established where or when it was said, nothing forbids us even not to believe that it was said — just as now happens with this sentence, which the very variety of the writers renders doubtful and uncertain. For whereas the two evangelists Matthew and Luke narrate alike concerning the Centurion whose son [servant] was sick, and on whose account Jesus, admiring his faith, is seen to have said this same thing, yet Matthew alone has added that Jesus, after his admiration, went on to say: ‘Amen I say to you, that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast into the outer darkness.’ But Luke makes no mention there of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And if anyone say that he therefore passed it over because it had already been said by Matthew — why then does he commemorate the deed itself concerning the Centurion and his servant, which had already been sufficiently intimated to us by Matthew’s care? Nor yet did Luke keep silence about this saying in every way — reconsidering, I suppose, lest perchance it might be true; but he changes the place, and applies it to a certain other occasion far dissimilar: that is, where Jesus says to his disciples: ²⁷ ‘Strive to enter by the narrow gate: for many shall come seeking to enter, and shall not be able.’ And a little after: ²⁸ ‘When you shall see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, enter into the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out; and they shall come from the east and the west, and the south, and the north, and shall recline in the kingdom of God.’ Wherefore, since it is not established when, where, or for what cause this was said, if we should believe that it was not said, it matters nothing.” These things Faustus calumniates, as brought into the gospel of Matthew by falsifiers.

14. But the Anabaptists, they too, together with Faustus and the other Manichaeans, amputate from this gospel certain histories along with some vaticinations of the prophets: as the history of the Magi coming to Christ with gifts, and the slaughter of the infants perpetrated by Herod. This they pronounce an addition: both because no one of the evangelists except Matthew has remembered this deed; and because Josephus — who was most diligent in recounting the cruelties of Herod, and spent three whole books in describing the life of Herod, namely the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth books of the Hebrew Antiquities — wrote nothing anywhere of this slaughter of the boys which Matthew commemorates. And concerning the vaticinations falsely inserted into this gospel, they bring forward first that which is read in Matthew’s second chapter: ²⁹ “For he shall be called a Nazarene” — which they say is nowhere written in the Old Testament; and that which is noted in the same chapter: ³⁰ “Out of Egypt have I called my son,” the words of which sentence are found nowhere in the Old Testament — as not only the edition of the Seventy interpreters attests, in which they are read neither in Osee, where these words are believed to be, nor elsewhere; but Jerome himself also, as if doubtful and uncertain where they were written in the Old Instrument, ³¹ says now that they are had in the eleventh of Osee, now in Numbers, the twenty-fifth chapter, Balaam saying: “Out of Egypt have I called him.” And however that may be, it is enough that these words, even if they were found in the Old Testament, were violently wrested to Christ: since neither Balaam nor Osee then spoke of Christ, but of the people of Israel, whom the Lord called back from Egypt by the hands of Moses and Aaron, and asserted into liberty; which the words of Osee liquidly indicate, saying: ³² “As the morning passeth, so hath the king of Israel passed: for Israel was a child, and I loved him; and: Out of Egypt have I called my son.” In like manner also that which in the same chapter is read from the thirty-first chapter of Jeremias ³³ has been dragged by the teeth (mordicus) to the murder of the infants, namely: “A voice was heard in Rama, Rachel bewailing her sons, and she would not be consoled, because they are not.” That this is not to be understood of the killing of the infants, but of Rachel weeping for the sons of Israel led away into captivity, the words of the prophet immediately following themselves declare. For he adds directly after the aforesaid words: “Thus saith the Lord: Let thy voice rest from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for there is a reward for thy work, saith the Lord, and they shall return from the land of the enemy, and shall return to their own borders.” Wherefore, since these places have been thrust into this gospel partly falsely, partly violently, it is likely that many other vaticinations of the Old Testament also, with the like licence, were sent in by rash writers according to their purpose. And these are the things which the heretics declare against the holy gospel of Matthew. Now let us pass to their dissolution.

DISSOLVTIO OBIECTORVM [The Dissolution of the Objections]

1. How elegant a thing Faustus seemed to himself to say, when he would have it that Matthew did not write these things for this reason — that, speaking of his own election [calling], he says not: ³⁴ “He saw me, and said to me, Follow me,”

(printed p. 585)

but, “He saw Matthew, and said to him, Follow me.” And I know not whether he said this from the error of ignorance or from the custom of fallacy [deceit]. But I could not think him so unskilled as never to have read or heard that writers of things done, when they come to their own person, are wont so to weave the narration as though they narrated of another what they narrate of themselves — as did John, whom Faustus accepts, when toward the end of his book he spoke of himself: ³⁵ “Peter, being turned about, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved, who also reclined at supper upon his breast, and had said to the Lord: Who is it that shall betray thee?” and a little after: “This is that disciple who giveth testimony of these things; and we know that his testimony is true.” And Christ, when he spoke of himself, said of himself in oblique speech: ³⁶ “When the son of man cometh, thinkest thou he shall find faith on the earth?” and, ³⁷ “The son of man came eating and drinking”; and, “The hour shall come when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.” Since Faustus has heard these things so often, I judge rather that he wished — not as an unskilled man, but as among the unskilled — to pour out fog, hoping that he would capture the more, who did not know these things.

2. But the Anabaptists, we do not doubt, are deceived through unskilfulness when they say this gospel is not Matthew’s because it does not appear to have been written in Hebrew, but in Greek — as the aforesaid interpretations of Hebrew names show. For they do not understand that interpretations of this kind were added by the interpreter who turned Matthew into the Greek tongue. Nor is the interpreter rendered suspect on this account — that by like example he added very many other things within the context of Matthew: for if it be permitted to suspect this of Matthew’s interpreter, the same also, for the same cause, will be permitted to be suspected of those most ancient and most holy interpreters of the Old Testament — which would surely be impious, since the Apostles by their attestation have approved their interpretation to us. For they themselves also frequently interpret names of this kind: as in Genesis they expound the name Galaad, saying: “Therefore was the name of it called Galaad, that is, the heap of witness”; ³⁸ and in the same book: “His mother called his name בן אוני ben oni, that is, the son of my sorrow; but his father called him בן ימין bin iamin, that is, the son of the right hand”; ³⁹ and in Exodus: “For it is פסח Pesach, that is, the passage of the Lord.” ⁴⁰ This very thing also, as Jerome attests in the book On the Best Manner of Interpreting, the apostles and evangelists sometimes did — as we read in Mark, who, when he had brought in Christ [coming] to the dead girl, saying, “Thabitha cumi,” immediately subjoined: “which is interpreted: Girl, I say to thee, arise” — in the interpretation of which sentence he added of his own two words, namely “I say to thee,” which are not in Christ’s Hebrew [Aramaic] utterance, that he might express more clearly and strongly the sense of the one calling and commanding. If therefore the Anabaptists’ argument concludes anything, by the same reasoning it follows that neither the book of Genesis nor of Exodus was written by Moses in the Hebrew speech — against the judgment of all ecclesiastical writers. Matthew, therefore, set forth the evangelical history in Hebrew speech and letters, as both Irenaeus attests, book 3, chapter 1, and Eusebius, from the judgment of Papias, ⁴¹ relates in the third book of the Ecclesiastical History; the same [Eusebius] confirming it in the fifth book from Pantaenus, and in the sixth book from Origen.

3. The third argument is most futile, which is taken from the difference of time. For if those two fathers be rightly inspected, they disagree in nothing between themselves. For what Eusebius says — that Matthew first wrote his gospel in Judaea — in no wise fights with what Irenaeus says, that Matthew put forth his gospel, written in his native tongue, into the light much later. ⁴² For both can easily be [true]: both that Matthew first preached in Judaea his gospel, already written by himself in his own tongue, as Eusebius relates; and that long after this he put it forth into the light and published it to be read by all, according to Irenaeus, when he had removed from Judaea to the gentiles. For thus Eusebius narrates of him in the third book of the History, chapter 24: “Matthew first preached the gospel to the Hebrews. But when he was preparing to pass over to the gentiles, he set down the scripture in his native tongue, and, comprehending in it the things he had preached, he left a memorial of them to those from whom he was setting out, that he might preach to the gentiles.”

4. Now, returning to Faustus, we say that he lies impudently when he says that the generation of Christ does not pertain to the gospel. ⁴³ For from the doctrine of Paul, which he himself accepts, it is most certain that the generation of Christ according to the flesh, from the seed of David, regards the gospel. For thus he says, writing to Timothy: ⁴⁴ “Be mindful that Christ Jesus rose again from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel”; and writing to the Romans ⁴⁵ he says he was called and set apart unto the gospel of the Son of God, who was made to him of the seed of David according to the flesh. And what was the gospel of the apostle Paul, this also is the gospel of Matthew and of the rest of the apostles and of the faithful. But when in the definition of the gospel he concludes only those things which were done by the preaching of Christ, this proceeds from his own error. For all who know Greek even slightly interpret εὐαγγέλιον as good news or a good announcing. And if that is so, why should that not be gospel which is narrated of this generation, since such good things are announced to us — namely, that the Son of God, for our salvation, that he might make us divine, was made man, his flesh deduced through so many generations from the seed of David? ⁴⁶ And to that which he calumniates about the “fatal star,” as though brought in after the manner of the gentiles, we answer: that we place no man’s generation under the fate of the stars, so that we may vindicate the free choice of the will — by which one lives either well or ill — from every bond of necessity, on account of the just judgment of God; ⁴⁷ much less, therefore, do we believe the temporal generation of him to have been made under the condition of the stars, who is the eternal creator and lord of all things. For that star did not rule over Christ unto decree, but did service unto testimony; nor did it subject him to its command, but indicated [him] by its homage; nor was the star fate to Christ, but Christ was fate to the star: for he brought to it, not it to him, the cause of [its] arising.

5. But as for that — who would not laugh at what he adduces about the inscription of this Genealogy? — as though this genealogy did not pertain to the gospel because Mat- ⁴⁸

(printed p. 586)

Matthew did not begin in such wise as to say, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” as Mark says, but “The Book of the generation of Jesus Christ.” ⁴⁹ At this rate neither will John be said to have written a gospel, since he says not “The beginning of the gospel,” nor “The book of the gospel,” but “In the beginning was the Word.” Unless perchance Faustus was so elegant a coiner of words that he would name this exordium a “Verbidium” [a little Word-book] on account of the “Word,” just as he dared to call the other a “Genesidium” on account of the “genesis.” ⁵⁰

6. Nor did Mark, Matthew’s abbreviator, pass over the writing of this genealogy because he thought it either superfluous or repugnant to the evangelical doctrine, but because he had seen that it had already been described fully and abundantly enough by Matthew the evangelist.

7. The seventh argument — which, long before Faustus, Celsus the Epicurean, first of all, objected against the Christians in the book which he entitled Of the True Discourse (Verus sermo), and after him Porphyry, and Julian Augustus [the Apostate] took it up again after both ⁵¹ — the divine Augustine, writing against Faustus, dissolved after this manner. First: that there is no contradiction between John and Mark [on one side], and Luke and Matthew [on the other], because these say the Son of God was born of a virgin, while those say he was born of God; for both are most true: namely, that the Son of God was begotten of God the Father from eternity, and in time was born on earth, according to his humanity, of a woman — not losing the form of God, but taking the form of a servant. But as to what he says — that Luke and Matthew are implacably discordant between themselves — there is nothing to be wondered at, that Joseph has one father according to Matthew and another according to Luke, and one grandfather according to this one and another according to that one, and so on upward as far as David, through so many generations, some being numbered by this one, others by that one. For the whole question lies in this: how Joseph could have two fathers. If it be demonstrated that this could be done, there is no cause at all why any of those evangelists should be believed to have spoken falsely in enumerating divers generations. For if [he could have] two fathers, it will now be neither wonderful nor contrary that there could also be two grandsires and two great-grandsires, and whatever is above, as far as David — of whom both were sons — both Solomon, who pertains to the order which Matthew has obtained [followed], and Nathan, who is in the series which Luke has set forth. For some attend to these things and see that a man cannot be begotten by two men through the commingling of the flesh, and therefore they think this question cannot be dissolved; ⁵² nor do they observe what is most certain and most easy: that a man’s father is said to be not only he by whom he was begotten, but also he by whom he was adopted. For neither was the bond of adoption alien from the customs of the ancients, since we find that even women adopted to themselves sons not born of their own womb — as Sara from Agar, and Lia from her handmaid, and Pharao’s daughter adopted Moses; and Jacob himself adopted his own grandsons, the sons of Joseph. Thus far Augustine.

But because he, writing in this place against Faustus, did not explicate how this series of adoption is to be fitted in the genealogy of Christ, therefore the same blessed Father, in the second book of Retractations, excused himself concerning this, ⁵³ saying that it had been passed over by him because, when he was writing against Faustus, he had not yet read Julius Africanus, who discourses more fully of the series of this generation. Wherefore, since Augustine in this matter remits [us] to the judgment of Africanus, and that judgment is somewhat divergent from Augustine’s aforesaid judgment, it will not be beside the point if I subjoin the words of Africanus himself, writing to Aristides On the consonance of the gospels, out of Eusebius. They are these:

“Among the nation (inquit) of Israel, the names of the generations were enumerated now according to nature, now according to the law: ⁵⁴ according to nature indeed are had the successions which descend from the truth of seed or blood; but according to the law, when someone, another begetting, is substituted as a son under the name of a brother deceased without children. For since among them the hope of the resurrection had not yet been received, they imitated by these means a certain image of the resurrection — lest the name of the race should be abolished by the fault of sterility. Since therefore orders of generations of this kind were kept among them — so that some, begotten from the very stock, others [begotten] by others through substitution, were reckoned sons to others by benefit of the law — the succession of both modes has been commemorated by the several evangelists: that is, so that the one of them set forth him who had [actually] begotten, and the other set forth him who seemed as it were to have begotten. And so it comes to pass that neither gospel lies, while the one follows the order of nature, the other the rule of the law. For the stock is joined to itself mutually — both that [deduced] through Solomon and that which is deduced through Nathan — by the legal substitutions which were made for those who died without children, and nonetheless by second marriages, whereby one and the same man, begotten of some parents, seemed to be the son of others. And so it comes to pass that each narration of the generations is deduced down to Joseph by most true lines — designated indeed in a diverse, but sufficiently ascertained order. But that what is said may become clearer, we will narrate the sequences of the generations themselves from David through Solomon. The generation which Matthew numbers makes Mathan the third from the end, who is said to have begotten Jacob the father of Joseph; but Luke, weaving the order of the generations from David through Nathan, made Melchi the third of the same place; ⁵⁵ for he says: ‘Joseph, who was of Heli, who was of Melchi.’ It lies upon us therefore to show how Joseph, according to Matthew, had Jacob for father, who is deduced through Solomon, but according to Luke, Heli, who is deduced through Nathan; and how these two, that is Jacob and Heli, were two brothers — having, the one Mathan, the other Melchi, for father, coming of a diverse race — and how they [Mathan and Melchi] may be seen to be Joseph’s grandsires. The manner, then, is this. Mathan and Melchi, at diverse times, procreated each a son of one and the same wife, Estha by name: because Mathan, who descends through Solomon, first took her to wife, and, one son by name Jacob being left, died. After his death — since the law does not forbid a widow to marry another man — Melchi, who draws his race through Nathan, being of the same tribe but not of the same race [line], took the widow left by Mathan (relictam Mathae); of whom he too received a son, by name Heli; through which — the race of their fathers being diverse — Jacob and Heli are made uterine brothers [brothers by the same mother]. Of whom the one, that is Jacob, [his] brother Heli having died without children,

(printed p. 587)

taking his wife by the command of the law, begat Joseph — by nature indeed the son of his own stock, on which account also it is written, “But Jacob begat Joseph”; but according to the precept of the law he is made the son of Heli: ⁵⁶ for Jacob, because he was his brother, had taken [Heli’s] wife to raise up his brother’s seed. And hereby the generation is found valid (rata) and entire — both that which Matthew enumerates, saying, “But Jacob begat Joseph,” ⁵⁷ and that which Luke designates with fitting observance, saying, “who was thought to be the son of Joseph.” Now these things have not been found by us at random, or commemorated without authors; but the very kinsmen of our Savior according to the flesh — whether from zeal to demonstrate so great a discourse, or from [desire] to teach — have handed down the things that were done according to the truth. These are the words of Africanus. From which it appears that he solved this question by another way than Augustine did. For what Augustine had distinguished — that Joseph had two fathers, one according to nature, the other according to adoption — Africanus, discoursing otherwise, said that Joseph had two fathers, one according to nature, namely Jacob, the other legal, according to the substitution of the law, namely Heli. And this judgment John Damascene also, in the fourth book [On the Orthodox Faith], chapter six [i.e., in fact ch. 14], and Jerome in the commentaries upon Matthew, have followed.

But perhaps someone will oppose to us, against this solution of Julius Africanus, that Augustine in the second book of Evangelical Questions says that this solution seems weak: ⁵⁸ because, whenever anyone among the Jews raises up offspring from the wife of a deceased brother or kinsman, that which is born is wont to receive the name of the deceased. For so it is written in Deuteronomy: ⁵⁹ “When brethren dwell together, and one of them shall die without children, the wife of the deceased shall not marry another; but his brother shall take her, and shall raise up the seed of his brother, and shall call the first-born son of her by his name, that his name be not blotted out of Israel.” Joseph, therefore, does not seem to have been born of the surviving wife of the deceased Heli; because, according to the order of the law, he ought to have been called not Joseph but by the name of the deceased Heli, whose seed his brother Jacob had raised up.

To whom we answer that the same Augustine, when he retracted this judgment of his in the second book of his Retractations, dissolved the present objection in these words: ⁶⁰ “In the second book,” says he, “of Evangelical Questions, wishing to expound how Joseph — whose spouse the virgin Mary is called — could have two fathers, I said that what is related, that a brother took the deceased brother’s wife to raise up seed for him according to the law, was weak [as an explanation]: because the law would command him who was born to receive the name of the deceased — which is not true. For the law commands the ‘name of the deceased,’ of which it speaks, to avail for this — that he be called his son — not for this, that he be called by his very name (hoc quod ille vocaretur).”

8. Moreover, in that Faustus thinks this Genealogy is to be cast away because nowhere in it, up to the baptism, has Matthew said that Christ is the Son of God, but only the son of man — he lies most imprudently, after his fashion. ⁶¹ For where first the evangelist enumerated the parents of our Savior, he straightway adds that he whom he had called the son of David was conceived and born of the virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit — applying also to this saying the testimony of Esaias: ⁶² “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us.” And in that he says that Christ, in the whole gospel of Matthew, never confesses that he has a mother or a lineage on earth, he proceeds from the same impudence. But since the whole book of Matthew cannot be inserted into this discourse of mine, let him read who will, and see how Matthew leads him whom he called the son of David — while he enumerated his parents — even to the passion and resurrection in his narration, so that he makes him always God and man. ⁶³ And if he therefore thinks that he had no mother or lineage on earth because he said, “Who is my mother, or who are my brethren?” ⁶⁴ — it remains also that he affirm that his disciples, to whom he offered this example in himself, that they might contemn the tie of earthly kindred for the kingdom of heaven, had no fathers, because he said to them: “Call no man your father upon earth; for one is your father, God.” ⁶⁵ What therefore he taught them concerning fathers, this he himself did first concerning his mother and brethren — not denying his mother and brethren as to his humanity, but contemning them [in comparison] for the kingdom of heaven.

9. Now as to that dilemma of Faustus — which that most nefarious Jew also used, the author of the book Nizahon [Nizzahon], namely: if Christ is of the tribe of Juda, the son of David according to the flesh, it is asked from whence he deduces that filiation from David according to the flesh — from Joseph, or rather from Mary? ⁶⁶ — we shall answer: From both. Because both are placed by the evangelist in the series of Christ’s progenitors — [Christ having been conceived] of the Holy Spirit, yet without human intercourse. For he is called, and truly also is, the son of David according to the flesh from Joseph: because Joseph is the man and husband of Mary, having her as wife not by intercourse but by affection, not by conjunction of bodies but by the copulation (which is dearer) of souls, and by the confederation of a chaste mind. For so says the angel: “Joseph, son of David, fear not to take Mary thy wife.” ⁶⁷ And therefore Joseph is the father of Christ because he is the husband of the parent of Christ. Then, he is the son of David according to the flesh from the virgin Mary, without human seed, since Mary draws her origin from the stock of David. And this we believe for this reason: that, since the scriptures say Christ is of the seed of David according to the flesh, and say the same [Christ] was procreated through the virgin Mary of the Holy Spirit, it follows that Mary was of the kindred of David. And what Faustus says — that Mary does not pertain to the consanguinity of David, alleging that she had a father of the tribe of Levi, a certain priest by name Joachim — does not constrain me, because it is not canonical. But even if I believed this, I should rather say that Joachim himself in some way pertained to the blood of David, and in some way was adopted from the tribe of Juda into the tribe of Levi — either he himself or some progenitor of his; or certainly that he was so born in the tribe of Levi that he drew some consanguinity from the stock of David. This therefore, or some such thing, I should rather believe — even if I were held by the authority of that apocryphal scripture where Joachim is read as the father of Mary — than that the gospel lies, in which it is written that our Savior

(printed p. 588)

was procreated of the seed of David according to the flesh, and through the virgin Mary. Thus far Augustine. And lest anyone should suppose, on account of the aforesaid words, that he so believed Mary to have been of the stock of David as in no way to have believed she was [also] of the stock of Levi, it has seemed good to add the certain and undoubted judgment of this father, in which he confesses that Mary was of both stocks, of David and of Levi. For thus he says in the second book On the Consensus of the Evangelists: ⁶⁸ “That Mary drew some consanguinity from the stock of David we assuredly ought not to doubt. And since the priestly race of this woman is not passed over in silence — Luke insinuating that her kinswoman was Elisabeth, whom he says was of the daughters of Aaron — it is to be held most firmly that the flesh of Christ was propagated from both races: namely, of the kings and of the priests; in which persons, among that people of the Hebrews, the mystical unction also was prefigured — that is, the chrism, whence the name of ‘Christ’ shines forth, signified so long before by that most evident token.”

10. As to what he says at last — that the apostles are not to be believed concerning this genealogy because they joined themselves to Christ when he was already mature, and did not see [his birth], nor ever said that they heard it from him — this recoils upon himself. ⁶⁹ For why does he believe John, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God,” etc. — words which please him, though he understands them not? Let him say where John saw this, or where he said he heard it from the Lord himself. For whatever he may say as to whence John could know this, thence we believe that all the announcers of Christ’s nativity could know it also. Next, if Matthew could not know that Christ was born, because he joined himself to him when already a young man, whence could Manichaeus — born after so many years — know that Christ was not born? They will say: he knew this by the Holy Spirit, who was in Manichaeus. But why do we not rather believe this of the disciples of Christ — who adhered to him bodily, and gathered the whole origin of Christ according to the flesh — than of the sacrilegious Manichaeus, who, since he has said so many false things, could not have the Holy Spirit?

11. I come now to the argument of the Anabaptists, which has three parts: the first, that the genealogy of Christ is wrongly deduced from the stock of David out of Jeconias through Salathiel; the second, of the dissonance of the generations between him [Matthew] and Luke; the third, of this — that though he said he had placed fourteen generations in each set of fourteen (quartodenario), he has set only thirteen in the last set of fourteen. To the first of these it is answered that Salathiel was the son of Jeconias, whom he begat in Babylon after being led out of prison. For Philo the Jew writes of him in the second book of the Chronography after this manner: “At the end of the seventh year, Euilmerodac held in honor Joachim, surnamed Jeconias, led out of prison; and the people surnamed him Neri (lucerna), because the lamp of David, which was feared extinguished, had shone forth. Soon, Neri being freed, a son was given him by God, Mesezebeel, surnamed Salathiel, who in the seventeenth year before the loosing of the captivity begat Barachias, who in the seventeenth year after the loosed captivity was leader of the people, and from that leadership called Zorobabel, in the eighty-first year from the transmigration, and the seventieth from the desolation.” And nothing stands against this judgment from the words of Jeremias: since he speaks not of sterility and bereavement of offspring, but of the bereavement of the kingdom — because Joachim left himself no successor of the kingdom. And this the following words of Jeremias show most clearly: ⁷⁰ for immediately after those words, “Write this man barren,” he adds: “Who in his days shall not prosper; nor shall there be of his seed any man who may sit upon the throne of David, and have power any more in Juda.” And that Mesezebeel, surnamed Salathiel, was the father of Zorobabel, as Matthew writes, the book of Esdras, in the second and third chapters, and likewise the book of Nehemias in the third chapter, abundantly attest.

To the second part of the argumentation Augustine gives satisfaction in the second [book] On the Consensus of the Evangelists, in these words: ⁷¹ “Therefore the number of the generations in Matthew and in Luke is diverse, because each, under a diverse person of Christ, wove a diverse genealogy. Matthew indeed, who had undertaken to insinuate the royal person in Christ, enumerates the natural generations of Christ from the kings of the Jews; but Luke, wishing to show the priestly person in Christ, runs through the generations of the adoption of Christ. In the generations of Matthew, according to nature, is signified the taking-up of our sins by Christ; in the generations of Luke, according to adoption, is signified the abolition of our sins by Christ. And therefore the latter narrates them descending, the former ascending. And therefore on both sides the number of the generations with them is diverse, because the series of the generations is diverse.”

To the third part of the argument — which Porphyry of old had objected against the Christians — Augustine answers one way, Jerome another. Augustine, looking to allegory, says that we ought to enumerate Jeconias twice, that the number of fourteen generations may be filled out; ⁷² and he rightly says that Jeconias is numbered twice, because from him was made a certain deflection into foreign nations — namely, when the transmigration was made into Babylonia. Now where an order is bent from straightness, so as to go off in a diverse direction, it makes as it were an angle; and that which is in the angle is numbered twice — namely, at the end of the former order and at the head of the deflection itself: so also that Jeconias, who makes the angle, is enumerated twice. But Jerome, coming closer to the sense of the letter, says that no generation is lacking in this genealogy: ⁷³ because under the name of Jeconias — which seems to signify only one person and to embrace only one generation — two kings, and two generations of them, are contained. For there were two kings, father and son, each named Joachim and surnamed Jeconias, of whom it is read in the latter book of Paralipomenon. ⁷⁴ And they differ between themselves: because the former is the son of Josias, of whom mention is made in the beginning of Daniel under the name Ioakim, which is written with קים Kim; but the latter is the son of Ioakim and grandson of Josias, who is placed in the beginning of Ezechiel, [and his name] is written not with קים Kim but with כין Chin. ⁷⁵ The second tessaradecade [set of fourteen], therefore, ends in Ioakim the son of Josias; and the third begins from Ioachin the son of Ioakim — each of whom was surnamed Jeconias. Ignorant of this, Porphyry builds up a calumny against the Church, showing his own unskilfulness,

(printed p. 589)

while he strives to convict the evangelist Matthew of falsity.

12. For the rest, if what Faustus says is valid — that Matthew, testifying of Christ, is not to be believed, because he was not present; and he who was not present does not speak the truth — it follows that no one today speaks true things of Christ, since no one of those who are today has seen and heard him present. ⁷⁶ Further, if today true things are said of him by his faithful for this reason — that those who heard or saw disseminated them, whether by preaching or by writing — why could not Matthew hear true things of Christ from the mouth of John his fellow-disciple, where the latter was present and he himself was not present? To this is added that the Lord himself also could narrate to Matthew what he had done, before he called him, with those whom he had called earlier. But [says Faustus] John ought to have put this very thing in his own gospel, if he had heard this said by the Lord — he who was present when it was said. As if it could not be that, since he could not write all the things he had heard from the Lord, among the other things he passed over, he passed over this too, being intent on writing other things. Did he not himself so conclude his gospel, saying: ⁷⁷ “These and many other things indeed Jesus did, which are not written in this book; which if they were written one by one, I think that not even the world itself could hold the books that should be written”? Here at any rate he shows that he knowingly passed over many things.

13. He adds moreover that that sentence of Christ which is read in Matthew, chapter eight, has little credit, ⁷⁸ because Matthew and Luke write that it was said by Christ not at the same time, not on the same occasion and place, but at plainly divers ones between them — Luke, after the interrogation made by the disciples about the fewness of those to be saved; Matthew, after the Centurion’s faith was heard. ⁷⁹ But an argument of this kind is most trifling. For why could it not come to pass that Christ repeated the same sentence once and again in divers places and times, and applied it also to divers causes and occasions? As it is also possible and likely that what Matthew said, Luke passed over; nor is that absurd — that what one has narrated, another has omitted, whether purposely or howsoever. For who, ever, reading two historians writing of one matter, judged that both of them, or either of them, must either deceive or be deceived, if one of them said what the other passed over? or if the one, embracing it more briefly, yet keeping the same sentence safe and entire, has set it forth, while the other has digested all things as it were limb by limb (membratim), so as to intimate not only what was done but also how it was done? — just as Faustus wished from hence to calumniate the truth of the gospels: because Matthew said something which Luke, though narrating the same thing, passed over in the telling — as though Luke denied that Christ said what Matthew wrote that he said.

14. There remains the last argument of the Anabaptists, whereby they induce suspicion concerning the vaticinations of the prophets falsely adduced, and concerning the coming of the Magi and the slaughter of the infants — because of this history the other evangelists have said nothing. Which argumentation surely, if it avails anything, it follows that the very history also of the resurrection of Lazarus — which John alone writes, and which the Anabaptists themselves dare not deny to be true — is false, because the other evangelists have remembered nothing of it. And they therefore passed it over, God so disposing, that (as Chrysologus says) so grand a miracle — than which none in Judaea was more illustrious — might be left to be described by John, the supreme [latest] of all the evangelists. And John, and Luke, and Mark therefore wrote nothing of the coming of the Magi and of the slaughter of the infants, because they had seen that Matthew had spoken abundantly of both, as much as was needful. But if Josephus, among the other savageries of Herod, did not recount this cruelty of the slain infants, that ought to move a Christian man nothing: especially since Josephus has passed over other things almost innumerable, of much greater moment even, and much more illustrious, whether by oblivion, or by carelessness, or rather by malice — as Hegesippus, that most ancient historian, accuses him: that willing and knowing he kept silence about the divine resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and very many of his divine works. Nay more — the authority of the gospel hangs upon the authority of the Holy Spirit and of the Catholic Church, and not upon the testimony of Josephus or of any other profane writer, however approved. And yet even among those most ancient writers the testimony of this deed would not be altogether lacking, if we had need of the testimony of infidels in this matter. For Philo the Jew, in the third little book of his Chronography, enumerating among the other cruelties of Herod this slaughter of the infants, writes thus of Herod: “Herod the Ascalonite, in the thirtieth year of his tyrannical princedom, destroyed the Sanhedrin out of the house of David, and substituted a certain Annalaeus [Ananel], and other [members of the] Sanhedrin from proselytes, who seemed exceedingly erudite in the law; then he slew both Salome his sister and her husband, of the tribe of Juda, and likewise his own son, whom he had received of the same man’s wife — because it was said that the Christ promised in the law was [already] born.” With whom Macrobius, a celebrated author among the Ethnics [pagans], agreeing — likewise concerning the son, and the boys slain within the two-year age (intra bimatum) — speaks thus in the second book of the Saturnalia: “Augustus, when he had heard that among the boys whom Herod the king ordered slain in Syria within the two-year age, his own son also was killed by him, said: It is better to be Herod’s pig (porcum) than his son (filium)” — alluding, namely, to this: that the Jews out of religion do not kill pigs. Of which saying Dion Cassius of Nicaea, the Greek author, also made mention in the life of the same Augustus. Likewise of the apparition of the star made to the Magi at Christ’s nativity, Chalcidius writes in his second book on the Timaeus of Plato: that that star announced not death and diseases, but the coming of a venerable God, for the grace of human consummation [salvation] and of mortal affairs; which star, when the wise men of the Chaldaeans had beheld it in the night season, they said it signified the recent birth of a God.

But concerning the testimonies of the prophets which are complained of as falsely and violently sent into this gospel, we shall meet each one in order. And first, to that: “For he shall be called a Nazarene” — we answer that Jerome does not say that Matthew cited that from any particularly determined prophet, but indeterminately and indefinitely from “the prophets.” For he [Matthew] did not say, “that it might be fulfilled what was said through the prophet,” but in the plural number, “through the prophets”; ⁸⁰ intimating hereby that he took from the scriptures not the words but the sense

(printed p. 590)

that he took. For thus the very words of Jerome have it: “If he had set a fixed example from the scriptures, he would never say, ‘What was said through the prophets,’ but simply, ‘What was said through the prophet.’ But now, calling the prophets in the plural, he shows that he took from the scriptures not the words but the sense. For ‘Nazarene’ is interpreted holy; and that the Lord would be holy, all scripture commemorates.” We can also say otherwise: that this is written in those same words, according to the Hebrew truth, in Esaias: ⁸¹ “There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a Nazarene [branch, netser] shall ascend out of his root.” Now concerning those words passed over by the Seventy interpreters, namely “Out of Egypt have I called my son,” there is no doubt that they are in Osee, in the eleventh chapter. ⁸² And they were passed over (as Jerome attests) by the Seventy interpreters by prudent counsel — as also other places like these, which speak of Christ the Son of God — lest Ptolemy and the other gentiles should be scandalized, thinking that God had a son, and hence should suppose there are two Gods; or for other causes indicated by us when we treated of the translations of holy scripture. And as to their saying that Jerome was in doubt where those words might be read in the Old Testament, it is most false; since he himself, in the commentaries on Osee, openly asserts that these words are contained, according to the Hebrew truth, in the eleventh chapter; and in the same place he refutes Julian Augustus — overturning this passage long before the Anabaptists — in these words: ⁸³ “This passage, in the Seventy’s volume, Julian Augustus — who vomited [wrote] against us Christians — calumniates, and says: What was written of Israel, Matthew the evangelist transferred to Christ, that he might mock the simplicity of those of the gentiles who believed. To whom we shall answer briefly: first, that Matthew put forth his gospel in Hebrew letters, which none could read except those who were of the Hebrews; therefore he did not do it to mock the ethnics. But if he wished to mock the Hebrews, he was either foolish or unskilled: foolish, if he feigned an open lie; unskilled, if he did not understand of whom these things were said. But his folly the volume itself excuses, seeing it is prudently and ordinately composed; and we cannot call him unskilled, whom we know from other testimonies of the scriptures to have had knowledge of the law. It remains therefore that we say this: that the things which precede typically (τυπικῶς) in others [in the type] are referred to Christ according to the truth and the fulfillment.” Thus far Jerome — whose last words can be so fitted to that vaticination which the Anabaptists oppose to us out of Jeremias, that we may say: the things which of old were said to the letter concerning the captivity of the sons of Israel, over Rachel, ⁸⁴ those same things, according to the mystical fulfillment of the figure, are referred to the slaughter of the infants.