Song of Apologetics against the Jews and Greeks 1–549

Who can truly know the one God of the heavens, unless he has drawn him … away from accursed error? I wandered ignorant, roaming, caught by empty hope, while the frenzy of my early years bore me on the winds. I was lighter than chaff; as if a hundred heads were on my shoulders, so I was swept headlong anywhere. Nor was that enough: in these things I became at last a criminal Marsian, almost made one by chanting over evil herbs. But thanks be to the Lord — nor is my voice enough to render so much — who at last shone on me, wretched and wavering! I took up the law in the book handed down, to learn what was there; at once a lamp shone for me. Then indeed I recognized God, the one most high in the heights, and so I urge such people to turn back from error. What better physician than one who has felt the burning of the wound? Many indeed, brutish and unknowing, asleep at heart, set themselves to know nothing; like wild beasts they seek what to plunder or on whose blood to live. So long as they may rejoice to live like fattened pigs, they heap dishes up like a mound, applauding their riches. … they will be changed, in poor clothing, by disdain. Surely what they eat so readily would suffice them. If a man is fat with wealth, let it be his; if he is worthy of Caesar, why does the frail man set his own first and regard no one?

Rather, let such a one share his goodness with all, to whom the Most High has given riches and lofty honors. For I do not find fault with riches given by the Most High, but he will be to blame who is lifted up by them. So I now urge the lofty and the humble alike to read diligently either these things or the rest of the law. Look: a short life has been entrusted to us; learn, you who are prudent, why we are born to die! Why do we die dull? What use was it to have seen the light? If you inquire into nothing, that is to live as the beasts. Surely God most high set man over the fields, not wild beast nor cattle. Why should we make ourselves like them? The Almighty willed that man should offer him praises; for this he himself taught us divine things to come. That we might believe them, he did not only speak in word, but also displayed mighty deeds when Pharaoh was deceived. Nor this alone: in the time of Noah also he showed what he could do, since no one sought God. From then on, little by little, he began to be milder, once the flood had come, so that the earth might be filled again. Already nearly half of the six thousand years had passed, and no one knew the Lord; they lived at random. But God, when he saw human hearts too firmly closed, speaks to Abraham, of whom Moses himself tells.

He gave the law to the people after Pharaoh was slain, and through him the Lord foretold who he himself would be. Nor content with one prophetic voice does he make himself known, but called many witnesses, who cry out about him. Him, then, when you read the proclamations of many seers, you will find to have taken flesh for our sake. Hence the error now, [doubting] that the Most High ordained such things, and they sneer, as it were, not knowing that he laughs at them! At times I add how I have read through the prophets, and I teach the unlearned where the hope of life is to be placed. What God did first, and how he made each thing, Moses has already taught; but we teach about Christ. I am no seer, nor a teacher appointed to be one, but I lay open the seers' predictions to those wandering in the winds. So you who are like me, whom the wind sweeps swiftly away, seek now the harbor, where there is no danger. The skilled farmer discerns the seasons far ahead and, before they come, withdraws under shelter. Be prudent, see beforehand what threatens, and before disaster comes, provide for your safety. Sloth is for boys, certainly not for the strong; if it suits the unformed, it does not befit those of mature age. That part of mankind which is not kept in check will grow old like a ham that is hardly salted: it will rot.

No one subdues rock but fire alone, as its food: so stony men grow soft too late, in Gehenna. We cry out in vain, words for the deaf storms to carry off, and offer light to the blind, offering it to no purpose. A soldier stands at the dismissal: one listens, another shakes it off and does not take the warnings to heart, but wanders, lost. Who is it, then, that does wrong (be judges of this!): the one who warns, or the one who will not obey what is said? I trust he is not guilty who obeys Caesar's word, but the proud man who opposes it loses his life. Meanwhile, what is mine to do, who once went astray, I show: the right road to you who still wander, empty. Yet you choose, as your own judgment pleases, which anyone would have: poison or the sweet cups of life! Good and evil were created in this nature, so that after death a man may be proved, who is worthy of God. Set about it now, whoever you are, to know the everlasting things: learn who God is, and in whose name he is present! God is almighty, one, created from himself, whom you will find below to be both great and humble. He was set in the Word, known to himself alone, who is called Father and Son and Holy Spirit. But from the time he decided to compose the world with its signs, he set between a fire to be feared by the angels themselves.

Yet them he set in their places, made of lesser power, to rule the heavens and the earth and what lies beneath the earth. Him, then, not even the messengers themselves can discern, what he is or how great, except that they follow his commands. There is an honor hidden from us and from the angels themselves, since what God's majesty is, it alone is conscious of. It shines, immense, above the heavens and without end; it is all golden, being like a flaming power. There is God's vessel, only without a form that can be known; these are the secrets of the heavens, known to God alone. This glory of God is unique, above all the angels; this is the God of eternal light, this the spirit of the age. What he is in his original state is seen by no one; he is transfigured, as he wishes to show himself. He makes himself visible to angels according to their form, and to man he becomes man; but God is proved by his word. Therefore the form of so great a God cannot be discerned; whatever he is, he is one, alone in immense light; where face, eyes, mouth, or limbs might be noted, thence he encloses the circle of the world in his fist. And yet, when he willed it to be known who he was, out of so great a godhead he made himself able to be seen. To some he appeared in fire, speaking with a voice; he whom no region could contain was taken up into flesh.

This almighty God, Lord of his own creation, though invisible, makes himself seen by some. Now he takes a form, now he spreads himself into the air, whose beginning or end it is not right to seek. He is God always, without beginning and without end, who, before he made the heaven, moved on through eternity; all that the heaven holds he looks upon everywhere from heaven, and penetrates the whole with his eyes and hears with his ears. It pleased him, then, [to make] the fleshly order of the world, so that his sole eternal majesty might be exalted. For what was before, it is a hard thing now to relate; though it may be described, let us not concern ourselves with it. Since we cannot grasp the whole of what we see, who can know what lies beyond the end of Ocean? And we see the heaven, but what goes on within it no one is given to know until the end of the age comes. Let it be enough only to know the promises of the future; let us strive eagerly toward them, devoted with all our mind. As the bird Phoenix contrives to be reborn from death, it gives us an example that one can rise after death; this above all the almighty God urges us to believe, that a time will come for the dead to live again;

though it be dust now, though the bones lie bare, the man who was once dead is made whole again, and the grace then will be greater than that of this age; there will be no pain nor tears then in our body, the flesh will not receive the sword, no sore will rise. This God will establish, that his glory may be greater. He had made the first man to be eternal, but he fell into death by neglecting the commandments. For this God prepared so many histories, to wipe out all the devil's devices. God had given this angel as ruler on the earth: who, envying man, himself perished first. Meanwhile he discerns the righteous by their deeds, and reserves the criminal Cain for Gehenna. The whole human race began to busy itself with crime, not regarding who their creator was. This the exalted God bore with indignation, and resolves to destroy almost everything created. It is told and read that Noah was delivered from the water; the rest perished in the flood from heaven. From then, as in the beginning, the earth is little by little refilled. The former crime gave way, but another disaster clung on. The fools set about building a tower beneath the stars, so that by it, as it were, they could climb to heaven.

When God saw this being done under a single tongue, he came down and made them speak in different languages. Then he scattered them, set apart, through the islands of the earth, so that they became nations speaking with varied speech. Then the untaught race led a savage life; no one knew God, no one reasoned about life. For that reckless one had crept into the unlearned through the channels of the soul, and depraved their harsh minds, and persuaded them by guile to love unspeakable unions, and to live by plunder, rejoicing in bloodshed. This glory fools pursue for a short time; from it no pardon frees them by saying they were led astray. If the seducer persuades, the fault is yours for following such a one; he does not damn you: you damn yourself of your own will. The untaught wandered by the deceit of the ancient enemy, forgetting the Lord, following evil works. That the robber's rampage might not go on long, at the appointed time he at last took pity, … removed. It pleased him to speak with one out of many, to make a people beloved, which would cross over to him. From that time the profane began to know one God and to become a people according to God's decrees. For Rebecca had divided two peoples from herself: this one was made first, that the other might succeed it.

In Egypt Israel first grew up as a foster child; from there God led them out under Moses' leadership, through whom he gave them the law on Mount Sinai, so that our posterity might know one Lord. Then he bade prophets from among them declare that God, as a man, would be held cheap by them. The Lord had led them into the promised land, to live there under the law until he himself should come. An ungrateful race, it would not bear the yoke of good precepts, but rather flourished, rolled back into its ancient crime; nor did it ever cease: today too it is held to be such; leaving God aside, it prefers the luxuries of the world. These above all the Lord compels his beloved to shun; he warns them beforehand to be wholly cut off from the world. If he has called us sons, let us abide in his holy things; why do we go outside as adulterers, following the pomp? The ancient seducer deceives all by such things: he sends in luxuries, by which to destroy the sons of the Most High; he sends in contests, to go to bloody shows or very obscene ones, that the chaste may learn the shameless. One who had been chaste goes on from there to unchastity, and the evil joys that then tempt him please him and smile on him. In such luxuries the first people lived, and, monstrous, always drew back from the law of God.

To cleanse them God often sent his foster sons, to correct them, depraved, for the Most High once more. They never would receive the divine words, but always raged foolishly after their own will. They wickedly slaughtered the righteous who reproved them, unwilling to accept the bridle of heavenly discipline. They saw Isaiah in two; they stone Jeremiah, rising against him; they behead John, cut Zechariah's throat at the altar. And he himself came, who had been foretold by them, and suffers, as he willed, in our likeness. In his death all prophecy was fulfilled; Daniel had said that he would be the last for the prophets. He it was on whose account the seers sang as with a trumpet that he would come to his own, whom his own would deny. Ever improvident, stiff-necked, kicking back, while they spurn the form, they lose the mysteries of the law. Righteousness born in humble flesh did not break them, nor such great goodness, nor his healing of the sick by a word. O holy religion, O majesty so worthy of reverence, whose medicine did such good on earth! He cut no one with the knife, cured no one with a plaster, but without torment healed at once by his word.

Seeing such things, the Jews were troubled in mind, led rather by envy into the zeal of spite, not regarding, buried as they were, the prophets' words, that such a man would come as would scatter them. Until the Lord came, the prophets sang; from the time he came, prophecy fell silent for the Jews. After him they went into exile with hardened heart, nor do they now discern why they have suffered such things. It had been foretold to them by Isaiah the prophet and likewise by Daniel that they would lose the land; yet it would not become desolate thereafter until the leader of the city hung on the wood within it. How suddenly glory shone forth upon a nation, so that a people came to be that was no people before! Was not Esau, beloved of his father, astonished that the younger brother took the birthright? So neither could the synagogue recognize the time, when and under what leader it would fall from its privilege; as it was written: the birds know their seasons, “but this people has not understood that I am present.” It came to pass that the ruler of heaven came himself: according to the Scriptures he was not esteemed by them. The Lord had foreknown this, as one who knows all things; therefore he foretold it by the mouths of the prophets.

A people too stiff-necked and always rebelling, while it claimed the first place for itself, lost its case. In their course he appointed the Gentiles to run; he had said this before: “The Gentiles will hope in him.” For he himself is the stone laid in the foundations of Zion; whoever believes in it would have eternal life. Daniel shows him, the Holy of Holies, anointed, and after him the royal anointing destroyed. David said that he, silent, would be fixed with nails: “They have dug my hands and my feet,” he says. Solomon too prophesies of him so openly, that the Jews would say, “Let us kill the righteous man!” Jeremiah likewise shows the cross in a figure, saying, “Come, let us put wood into his bread!” And their leader Moses proclaims to them: “Before your eyes your life will hang, slain.” This is the Father who came in the Son, one God everywhere: nor would he be called Father had he not become Son. For he did not leave heaven to appear on earth, but, as he arranged, majesty was seen on earth; by his own power he caused himself to be born in the flesh … … may make one fringe. Now God was flesh, in which the power of God worked.

What of this, that the prophets sing that the invisible would be seen, that so great a brightness would become man too, for our sake? Nor would our people have leapt forth into the new law, had not the Almighty ordained it beforehand concerning us. This was the Almighty, in whose name the Gentiles would believe in full, as the prophet Isaiah said: “A man will arise in Israel from the root of Jesse; in him the Gentiles will hope,” by whose sign they are protected. And another said that he is a witness throughout the world, that he himself would be shown as prince to the nations. In the Psalms it is sung: “The Lord has reigned from the wood; let the earth rejoice, let the many islands be glad.” So too the true blessing of the patriarch Jacob was made plain among the Gentiles: “He will be the hope of the Gentiles,” he says. Under heaven there is no other name set before us but Christ's, in whose name the Gentiles have believed everywhere. We are not urged to believe for the sake of a time that is closed, but for the time to come, living forever. This is the hope for us to hope for, to enjoy what is eternal, not these things, which, frail, soon change our joys. Though riches be before your eyes, to enjoy lavishly, you are shut out from them when falling death replaces them; or if you live on long, you grow horrid to yourself by living, or if your health is bad, what good is life to you?

All that we live under this age is torment; hence our hope must be sought in the future: to this God exhorts us, to this the law, to this the passion of Christ, that we believe we shall rise again in the new age. So God's law cries out: when the Most High became humble, the underworld would give way, that Adam might be raised from death. The Lord, pitying his own handiwork, went down into the tomb, and so by hidden ways emptied the strongholds of death. The Lord crept up, concealed, on the ancient robber, and willed to suffer, the better to lay him low. He indeed, bold and ever savage as an enemy, while he hopes to rage against a man, is conquered by the Most High. By the very means by which the malicious one first laid man low in death, by that he was overcome; whence life has come to us. Adam, having tasted the fruit, was bidden to die, and died; from whose sin all of us likewise die in turn. But again the Lord said: “If he takes from the tree of life, let him live forever in honor.” Death was in the tree, and in a tree life lay hidden, on which the Lord God hung, the finder of our life. This the Lord had foretold would be the tree of life, so that whoever believes in him is as one who takes from it. And he takes and sweetly tastes the precepts of God most high and departs from death, since he rises the stronger.

Whoever believes in Christ tastes of the tree of life, on which the Lord was hung, as Moses foretold. Isaiah declares this same one to be humble and greatly cast down, as though in the form of a slave: “And we saw him, and he was of no splendid form, a man laid low under the stroke, knowing how to bear all things. He grieves for us and carries away our sins, and for our crime God delivered him up. When he was afflicted, he was silent like a lamb at the altar.” This one was no longer a man, but God was flesh for our sake; by which it plainly appears that this name of God was to arise, which now is held a glorious name among the Gentiles. This the prophet Malachi sings, who is himself also an angel, when he rejects the sacrifices of the Jews, saying: “Your sacrifice will not be acceptable to me, but in every place the Gentiles offer to my name, among whom my excellent name is magnified, who offer purely to my name without blood.” For he himself was humble, hidden under a great name, who cries out about himself through the mouths of the prophets: “I am not stubborn,” he says, “nor do I gainsay the one who harms me; I set my back to the scourges, to be beaten, and offered my cheeks to be struck by wicked palms, nor did I turn my face away from their spitting.”

To many it has seemed folly that God suffered such things, that the founder of the world should be proclaimed crucified. So it pleased him, taking counsel of no one — nor could another do it — to come in this way for us. The enemy, in his envy, devised death, which the Lord drank up by suffering, rising from the underworld. Therefore he did not wish to reveal what he was, but said that he was the Son sent by the Father. So he himself had directed the prophets to speak of him, that God on earth should be the Son of the Most High. This too he proclaims while he was humble in the flesh, and bears witness to the Father, to confirm the prophets' words. We read that such a man rises from Israel: “And he is a man,” it says, “and who has known him among them?” Jeremiah says: “This is our God; no other is his equal; afterward he was seen on earth and lived among men.” And Isaiah: “You are God, and we did not know it; and God is in you, and besides you there is no other.” And who would come over the setting [sun], by the law of the prophets? “Sing to the Lord; God is the name of him who comes!” And the forty-fourth psalm says of him: “I will be exalted among the Gentiles with a great name.” And elsewhere we read: “Today I have begotten you, my son; ask, and I will give you, and you will have the Gentiles as your heirs.”

Surely it is now plain who is God and who is in him, and in whose name we Gentiles everywhere were to believe: that word was spoken to my Christ, whose right hand I hold: “Let the Gentiles hear, and let him rule over the Gentiles.” What need of more, when the thing is proved so plainly, when the people that is scorned now rejoices in him? But those wretches who embellish empty fables and defame him as a magician … What shall I call them? before they were scattered, they whom neither exile broke nor slavery itself. If he had been a magician, why then did the prophets sing that he would come from heaven, to be the hope of the Gentiles? If they prophesied falsely of them that they would lose the land, which has befallen them, then what they said of him is false as well. But because they are always despised, since they were bloody, they rebel against their Lord, calling him a magician. Nor will they hear what the seers said against them, that they would not understand at all, even at the end. God himself described them: “With closed heart let them neither see with their eyes nor understand with hardened heart; for the heart of this wicked people has grown fat, so that they recognize nothing, until they are healed by my word.” God was foretold to be born in the flesh for our sake, so that their punishment might deservedly be greater:

“Behold, God himself will give you a sign from on high: a virgin will conceive, and earth will bring forth the heavenly one; and let him be called Emmanuel,” he had commanded them; which the Latin tongue renders “God with us.” Hear that he would be fed on honey and butter, and would take Samaria before he could speak a word. But this is a closed history, which the learned unfold: that a little child at the breast should take spoils without a fight; whose passion was foretold thus beforehand, that God should become able to suffer, his blood poured out. Isaiah says: “Like a sheep led to the altar, he did not cry out with his voice; he bore all things patiently.” He is fixed with nails, as David had foretold long ago; and according to the Scriptures they gave him vinegar to drink. “And for my garments,” he said, “they cast lots”; which was done, and we read that in him all things were accomplished. And there was darkness for three hours from the sixth, and the day hastened, bringing on the stars of night. This had been foretold through the prophet Amos, that the day would suddenly hide itself at the holy festival. O evil progeny, … with deceitful brow! “I have begotten children,” said God, “who would deny me.” And he said: “Hear the voice of the trumpet.” — “We will not,” they say. Ezekiel says this: “Then let the Gentiles hear from afar.”

With a single heading I will touch the book of Deuteronomy: “You will be the head, you Gentiles; for the unbelieving, the tail.” If the rebels indeed reject everything said above, what, tell me, do they set against it, when the thing is said so plainly? See now, then, you doubters who till now are adrift, that the Gentiles were set first in the Lord's Scripture. Now, then, it is right to believe him whom the books point to, not vain idols, worshiped to no purpose for life, nor to join those lovers of pleasure, without bridle, who love luxuries more than the precepts of the Most High. One fault is not enough for those who will not believe, but they slander him further: “We threw him into a pit.” For this the Lord too, in indignation, reproaches them: “Because of you my name is blasphemed among the Gentiles,” he says. If he was thrown into a pit, why is it proclaimed that he rose? “From the underworld, Lord, you have brought up my soul.” “I slept,” he says, “and took my sleep secure; by the Lord's help I rose, suffering no harm.” And again he says: “You will not abandon me in the underworld, nor will you let your holy one see corruption.” Here he speaks aloud, son of the prophet: “I ascend,” so that I may say the Lord most high suffered through misery. And in the book of Psalms the Lord's death is proclaimed, not, as they suppose, that David speaks of himself.

Or if they think so, does everything he said fit? David was not scourged, nor lifted up on a cross. What? Do the Jews prophesy in the manner of Saturn? Do they take refuge in fables, when the words turn against them? They would not strike him, lifted on the cross, as an evildoer. Such tales they invent for the unknowing, untaught, and ignorant. “Who is that God whom we fixed to the cross?” they say, unwilling to look at the Scriptures, blinded in heart. Behold, another prophet sings, repeating it again, by whose voice such a decree is nonetheless proclaimed: “Now I will arise,” says the Lord, “now I will be glorified, now I will be exalted, whom you saw humble before; now you understand, now shall be your confusion: you think vain things; therefore fire will have you.” This Isaiah says. And so too the majesty itself, when it was in the flesh, declares itself who it was: “No one, however he tries, will be able to take away my life, but I lay it down of myself, by my own decree. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” And more plainly still the death of the righteous one is proclaimed, so that the Jews may appear the more hardened: “Behold, the righteous one perishes, and no one understands; but the burial of this beloved one will be in peace.”

Why do they slander him, saying he was let down into a pit, when we read that he was given burial? Shameful, cruel, blind, proud, they who ought rather to mourn the deed applaud it! For Solomon, inspired, prophesies of him, and goes further, to show the righteous one more fully: “Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, since he seems burdensome, who strongly resists and opposes our works; he reproaches us that nothing at all is kept of our law, and moreover affirms that he is the Son of the Most High. In every way he rejects us and reckons us triflers; he keeps himself apart from us and goes another way; he calls us unclean and brings in another righteousness, and rejoices that the Lord of the heavens is his Father. So, if his words are true, let us put them to the test; let us try this God, and see what happens to him; let us question him, the quiet one, with every torment; let us condemn him to a most shameful death,” they say. When they had done these things, they wagged their heads and jeered: “Let the Father save him, or let him come down from there!” That Solomon may show them plainly blind, he blames them, as if he told it now, for doing such things: “While they think these things, they were led into accursed error; their malice blinded them, so that they raged.”

See: though they themselves are blind, they call others so; Solomon said of them: “They did not know the secrets of God.” Whatever all the earlier witnesses said was fulfilled in Christ. Or let them say: in someone else? If they want to do just that, deceiving with their mouths, let them mock themselves; let them see it fulfilled in him. Who was that righteous one of whom the prophets sang, since no one on earth is righteous, unless he had come from heaven? For David, the prince, sinned by loving a girl; Solomon too sinned; and yet they repented. Since even these, their kings so famous and renowned, were not righteous, but themselves sang of the righteous one, nor did Isaiah the seer say such things of himself, who was cut with a saw by King Manasseh; one was stoned, another slaughtered at the altar, another Herod ordered to be beheaded in prison. All these seers were killed by some other death, whereas the Lord hung on the wood, by the word of Moses: “Not as a man is God hanged,” he intimates beforehand; “nor does he suffer threats as a son of man,” he says. So the Lord himself, when he came, followed these words: “I must,” he says, “be rejected,” by the word of Moses. But I do not pluck the whole, only the highest tops, so that the ignorant may more easily learn the truth.

But these wicked men, who seek to live by guile, once stained with blood, persist in inventing empty things. They befool the foolish the more, to vanish into words: that he was crucified, when this was how it had to be. For so he arranged it because of the fall of the first man; not for him alone, but for us too he came from heaven. He established a new people, firm in his name; Christ fulfilled all things according to the prophecies. “Behold, I make new things,” Isaiah cries of him, “and let no one consider the former things nor follow the ancient.” These are the new things come forth today under our law: that we Gentiles have believed in Christ, by the word of Moses. He had foretold that there would be two peoples, and said that the younger people would surpass the other. But these, full of wickedness, now in desperate fury, say: “The law was given to us; where have you come from?” If they oppose us, let them reckon that they resist the Most High, who willed to be good to us … nor do the stiff-necked, their bristles raised, consider that they always tortured the innocent, having corrupted the law. So they did to God, cruel, as they were accustomed, and still dare to call themselves sons of the Most High. How he rose again I have noted above; I did not speak from my own voice, but spoke prophetic words.

He had foretold to the disciples all that concerned himself: how he would suffer at the people's hands, while Peter denied him; and that he would rise from the tomb on the third day; this too he had said, and he fulfilled all that he said. And when he rose, he came himself to the apostles and stood in their midst: “Peace be with you,” he said. Among those disciples at prayer one was not present; when they told him, he began to disbelieve, and added: “Unless I first put my finger where the nails were, or where he was pierced by the lance, I do not believe.” Then on the Lord's day he came back to them again and stood in their midst: “Peace be with you,” he said. And at once he approaches the unbelieving Thomas: “Come nearer and touch my body as before. I am not a shade, such as the dead are held to be: a shade leaves no footprint; look at the wound.” He stretched out his palms; and Thomas began to touch, and put his hand into the side, where the lance had been fixed, and then threw himself down in prayer: “You are truly my God and Lord!” To whom he said: “Because you have seen these things, you have believed; but blessed are those after you, who believe having only heard the name.” Forty days he spent with them, one after another, and taught them many things that would come upon the world.