Foreseeing by divine inspiration that this would so come to pass, a certain outstanding one of the prophets, struck in mind with amazement, cries out in wonder and says: 'Who has heard such things? And who has spoken thus?' Likewise in another place, concerning these very things—that the divine word had foretold that a nation was to be brought forth at once as in travail—he bears witness and says: 'But to these who serve me shall be given a new name, which shall be blessed upon the earth.' And what other new name has been given to the nations than the appellation of 'Christians'? He calls it a new name as lately dispersed, not lately invented. Truly the divine oracles have by no means kept silent that this too should so come to pass, and that this blessing of the name and of faith should be bestowed upon all nations.
For concerning Abraham himself, while he was yet in uncircumcision, the divine word says: 'Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God.' He is therefore said to have believed him whom, as we have shown above, we have taught to have frequently appeared and to have instructed him in the things pertaining to piety and religion—namely Christ, through whom, as has often been proved, all things that have been done or are to be done have their subsistence. From whom also to Abraham himself responses of this kind are conveyed: 'And in thee,' he says, 'shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed'; and again:
'I will make thee into a great and numerous nation, and in thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.' In which it is evidently expressed that that worship and that grace of faith, which was then granted to Abraham and to those few who at that time were distinguished for faith and piety, was afterward to be bestowed, under the title of blessing, through all nations and through all lands by divine grace. For it is certain that, just as he, believing him who appeared to him, was justified, and, having repudiated and spurned his ancestral superstitions, followed out by faith and works the precepts of the true God—and for this it is said to him:
'Because in thee shall all the tribes and all the nations of the earth be blessed'—so also let Christians by faith and works do this, that, having cast off the error of ancestral superstition, they may follow the God whom Abraham followed, and by a faith like his be justified, even as Abraham was justified. What then hinders that one and the same observance of religion should be reckoned in those in whom it has been established that there is one and the same form of faith and works? And therefore the Christian religion is not new nor foreign nor lately arisen; but, if it is lawful to declare freely what is true, it is the first of all, and from its very Founder, even from the beginning, receives its aspect and its form.
Now that we have, in consequence, set forth beforehand these things which ought to precede the historical narrative, it remains that we now approach, as it were, the beginning of our journey—both from the bodily presence of our Lord and Savior and from the things done thereafter—calling upon the almighty God, Father of the Word, and upon him whose deeds are being recounted, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, the heavenly Word of God, as helper. Now upon the death of Antony and Cleopatra, with whom the kingdoms of the Ptolemies in Egypt fell to their utter end, in the twenty-eighth year our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is born in Bethlehem, a town of Judea, at the first registration of the census, while Quirinius was governing Syria, according to the whole order of the prophecy that was foretold concerning him.
Now this census, taken in the times of Quirinius, is also recorded by Josephus, the illustrious historian of the Hebrews, who adds to this narrative that the heresy of the Galileans arose in those same times—concerning which, among us, Luke in the Acts [relates]: 'Judas the Galilean in the days of the enrollment of the census also drew away the people after him. But he too perished, and all who believed in him were scattered.'
Concerning these very matters, Josephus—of whom we spoke above—in his history, in the eighteenth book of the Antiquities, [writes] in this manner: 'Now Quirinius, a man from the assembly of the Roman senate, having ascended through the several magistracies up to the rank of the consulship, and honorable also in other respects, came to Syria with a few, being sent by Caesar to administer justice to the nations. But Judas the Gaulanite, a man from the city of Gamala, taking to himself a certain Sadducee, a Pharisee, strove mightily to stir up the common people, asserting to them that the registration of the census imposed nothing other than the most manifest servitude, and at the same time exhorting his nation not to lose its liberty.' And in the second book of the Jewish War he writes concerning this same matter as follows:
'At which time,' he says, 'a certain Galilean man named Judas was driving the people to defection, persuading them that it would be utterly ruinous for them if they consented to pay tribute to the Romans and, after God, took up a mortal ruler'—[and thus] the kingdom obtained possession of the Jewish nation, and in it is fulfilled the prophecy which Moses had foretold beforehand, that a ruler should not fail from Judah. Concerning which the same Moses also declares that he himself is the expectation of the nations. For the fulfillment of this presage hung uncertain, so long as they were ruled under princes of their own nation, who, beginning from Moses himself who had foretold these things, [continued] down to the reign of Augustus—[when] a man of foreign race received from the Romans the principate of the Jews.
This Herod, according indeed to what Josephus relates, derived his paternal stock from the nation of the Idumeans, but the origin of his maternal blood from the Arabs. But Africanus, who is himself reckoned foremost among the historians, [says that a certain man] was the father of Herod of Ascalon, who himself was the son of a certain Herod, a temple-warden (aedituus) of the temple of Apollo. This Antipater, captured while yet a mere boy by Idumean brigands, remained with the robbers, for the reason that his father, through poverty of his household estate, was not able to ransom his son.
But the boy became a familiar of the high priest of the Jews, from whom is born this Herod who was to come to empire. Without doubt there was already impending that expectation of the nations foretold by prophetic voices, seeing that among them the succession of princes and kings, begun from the origin of Moses himself, had failed. For before—and thence too David—yea, before the kings, they were ruled by judges, who after Moses and Joshua his successor held the principate of that nation. But after the return from Babylon there was no lack of governance established by the best disciplines. For through the high priests the sum of affairs was administered, until [a foreign power] should pollute [each holy thing] of the temple, so that it did not even restrain hostile entry from the very sanctuaries themselves.
[He put to death] the one who by ancestral succession at that same time held at once both the kingship and the priesthood, Aristobulus by name. And he made the whole Jewish nation, from that time, tributary to the Roman empire. But when Hyrcanus—upon whom the last high priesthood of the Jewish nation had devolved—had been captured by the Parthians, first, as I said above, a man of foreign race, Herod, [received the principate] by decree of the senate while Augustus was reigning; [and] at the coming of the Savior, that awaited salvation and calling of the nations followed, according to what the prophets had foretold.
From which time indeed, the series of the succession of the leaders or princes who descended from the loins of Judah being interrupted, consequently the sacred order also [was interrupted]. You have on these matters too a competent witness in Josephus himself, who indicates that Herod, after the kingdom of the Jews was granted to him by the Romans, no longer appointed high priests according to the order of descent, but committed the priesthoods to sundry ignoble persons. He says that the Romans likewise received the same authority in ordaining priests. The same Josephus indicates that Herod even kept the sacred vestment of the high priest shut up under his own seal, and never permitted the high priests the use or the power over it.
This same practice his successor Archelaus [followed] as well; and after these the Romans too maintained the custom of this priestly outrage. Now let these things have been said by us, wishing to prove the truth of the prophecy which was fulfilled in the coming of our Lord and Savior. But also in the prophet Daniel the number of weeks, which is designated as extending until Christ the Leader, has evidently been fulfilled—concerning which we have expounded in other places. After the consummation of which weeks, that same prophet designates that the chrism (anointing), which was preserved as most sacred among the Jews, was to be abolished. Which indeed is proved to have been fulfilled most manifestly at that very time when our Lord Jesus Christ came.
Now let these things, related by us of great necessity, be held to demonstrate the truth of the times. But since the evangelists Matthew and Luke have handed down to us the generations of Christ variously, and are thought by very many to say things contrary to one another—wherein also some of the faithful, through ignorance of the truth, each attempt to bring forward certain fabrications on behalf of their own opinions—let us bring into the open concerning this too the account which has been transmitted down to us.
Africanus, of whom we made mention above, writing to a certain Aristides concerning the harmony of the Gospels and concerning the genealogies which are differently reported by Matthew and Luke, refutes indeed the opinions of the others as wandering far from the truth, but himself [sets forth] the account [thus]: 'Among the nation of Israel,' he says, 'the names of the generations are reckoned now according to nature, now also according to the order of the law. According to nature, indeed, are those successions which descend from the truth of seed or blood; but according to law, [it is] when one is substituted as another's son, the true father having begotten [him]. For since the hope [of resurrection] had not yet been received, through these things they imitated a certain image of the resurrection, so that the name of the family should not be blotted out by the defect of sterility.'
Since therefore among them such orders of generations were observed—that some [were reckoned] from the very seed, some by substitution begotten of others by others—the aforementioned succession is recorded in such a manner, that is, that one of the two [evangelists] should set forth him who had begotten, but the other him who was reckoned as if he had begotten. And so it comes about that neither Gospel lies, since one follows the order of nature, the other that of the law. For the lineage is joined back to itself mutually through the legal substitutions which were made for those who died without children, and no less through second marriages, whereby one and the same [man], begotten of one set of parents, appeared to be the son of others.
And so it comes about that each narrative of the generations is traced down to Joseph by most true lines. The generation from David through Solomon, which Matthew reckons, makes Matthan 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, [makes] Heli third [from the end], who was [the son] of Melchi. It falls to us therefore to show how Joseph is said, according to Matthew indeed, to have had as father Jacob, who is traced through Solomon, but according to Luke, Heli, who is traced through Nathan; and how these same men—that is, Jacob and Heli, who were two coming from different lineages—should nevertheless both appear to be grandfathers of this Joseph. This then is the manner of it:
Matthan and Melchi, at different times, from one and the same wife named Estha, each begot a son; because Matthan, who descended through Solomon, had first taken her as wife, and, leaving one son, did not forbid her, [now widowed], to marry another man. Melchi, who traces his lineage through Nathan, being of the same tribe but not of the same family, took to wife the widow left by Matthan, from whom he too received a son named Heli. Whereby, from a different lineage of fathers, Jacob and Heli become brothers by the same mother (uterine brothers); of whom one, that is Jacob, taking by the command of the law the wife of his brother Heli who had died without children, begot Joseph—by nature indeed his own son of his own seed, on account of which it is also written:
'And Jacob begot Joseph'; but according to the precept of the law he becomes the son of Heli, whose wife Jacob—because he was his brother—had taken to raise up seed to his brother. And by this the generation is found to be valid and entire, both that which Matthew enumerates, saying: 'And Jacob begot Joseph,' and that which Luke designates with fitting observation, saying that he 'was supposed to be the son of Joseph, who was of Jacob.'
And he too, by the same distinction sounding in unison beneath the surface, will be supposed to be the son of Heli, who was of Melchi; because the evangelist, observing, designated this legal succession—which consists rather in a certain adoption, as it were, toward the deceased, than in the truth of natural offspring—by a sufficiently fitting indication, so as not at all in successions of this kind to name anyone as having 'begotten': whereby, not descending but ascending by a worthy distinction, he arrives all the way up to Adam and to God himself.
Now these things were not discovered by us on the spur of the moment, nor devised without any authorities; but these very kinsmen of our Savior according to the flesh, whether out of zeal to demonstrate so great a lineage, or to teach the things which [were handed down] according to truth, [transmitted them]. [Africanus relates that when the Idumeans] were plundering the [town] which clung to the wall of the city, and among the other spoils had also carried off captive Antipater, son of a certain Herod, a temple-warden, it afterward came to pass that Antipater came to the friendship of Hyrcanus the high priest; whose principate, because he had aided him in very many things, upon the death of this same Hyrcanus [passed to] his son Herod, who received the kingdom of the Jewish nation from the Romans through ambition. But these things are also set forth in other histories of the Greeks.
But this above all the aforementioned man handed down to memory: that at that same time all the generations of the Hebrews, recorded in the more secret archives of the temple, were preserved; in which were also contained the origins of any foreigners whatsoever, such as Achior of the Ammonites and Ruth of the Moabites, and others too from Egypt who are said to have been mingled with the Israelites. But Herod, when he held supreme power, seeing that indications of lineage of this kind, if they remained, would bring upon him very much obscuring [of his own descent], driven by the consciousness of his own low birth, ordered all the books in which the record of lineage was contained to be burned, thinking that he could appear noble if, being a newcomer and a stranger to the Israelite race, he were pressed by no bundles of records.
But there were then a few diligent and studious men who either had at home such books copied in some part, or even retained by memory the order of their ancestral lineage—especially those whom a nobility handed down from their forefathers admonished [to do so]. Among whom were also these, whom, on account of their kinship to Christ's lineage [I mention], who were also Nazareans from the village of Cochaba of the Jews, and who, going about through the whole region, taught thoroughly the order of the aforesaid generation, partly from memory, partly also from books of the days (annals), so far as was possible. These things having been thus investigated by us, so far as diligence could avail, most evidently [the Gospel is confirmed]. These are the things which we learned from Africanus. In this manner, then, [the descent terminates] in Joseph.
[Mary] should be of the same lineage and of the same tribe, since indeed according to the law of Moses it was not permitted to mingle marriages into different tribes, but it was enjoined that a woman be joined in marriage to one of the same people and of the same family, so that the lot of inheritance should not, by the mixing of wedlock, be brought into doubt. In the times of the aforesaid Herod, certain men from the nation of the Magi, coming from the parts of the East, inquire of Herod where [the newborn king was]; [asking about the star] which had appeared to them in the east and had become for them a guide of their journey; and [declaring] that the cause of so great a haste was to worship and venerate the newly born king. Which things when he had heard, he is incredibly terrified, fearing lest the standing of his empire should be endangered.
Having therefore summoned the teachers of the law, he inquires where they hoped that Christ should be born. And when, from the oracles of Micah, the place of his nativity was designated at Bethlehem, by a single command the king [ordered] all the suckling boys, not only at Bethlehem but also in all its borders, from two years old and under, [to be slain]—[hoping] that in this way he might also destroy Jesus along with those of the same age. But the child, carried off into Egypt, his parents having been warned of the treachery, forestalled the king's snares—as we are taught by the words of the Gospel. But it is worth the while [to show] how a divine vengeance was, before long, turned against the cruelty of Herod, which not only would bring present destruction upon him, but would also show with what punishments he was to be tormented after his death.
It would be tedious were I to recount the prosperities of his empire, in which up to that time he was powerful, obscured by domestic calamities; and if I were to relate the slaughter [of his sons], of his sister also and of all his kinsmen, it would seem woven rather as a tragedy than as a history. Concerning which, however, if anyone wishes to know, Josephus reports more fully. Therefore, since for the sacrilege which he had committed against the Savior, and the crime which he had perpetrated against those of the same age as him, the vengeance [came upon him]—if [we relate] these very words of Josephus himself in the seventeenth book of the Antiquities: 'Herod,' he says, 'moreover, a disease day by day the more bitter pressed upon him, exacting the penalties of the crime committed long ago. For with a slow fire he was burned outwardly upon the...'
[here follows a copyist's marginal note:] 'The scribe of his codex, from which P depends, understood from Matthew's narrative that Herod...' [Josephus continues:] '...upon the surface of the body, but within was hidden a vast conflagration. There was always in him an insatiable craving for food, nor yet could his gluttony ever satisfy itself, though roused with ravenous jaws—his inward parts hedged about with ulcers within, and he was tortured also with the greatest pains of the colon. A fluid and livid humor flowed about his swollen feet, and from the lower parts, distended with swelling up to the groin, his very private parts were putrefying; and an obscene enough and execrable itching-swelling [afflicted them]. Moreover, along with all these pains, a more dreadful stench was given off, whether from the putrefaction of his members or from the exhalation of his gasping breath.'
Thus, worn out on every side with torments, no strength could suffice for endurance. Those therefore who had skill in divination said that these were divinely inflicted penalties from the ruler on account of his many impious and cruel [deeds]. These things indeed the man of whom we made mention a little before reports in the aforesaid history. But also in the second book the same historian writes similar things no less concerning the same man, saying in this manner: 'But after these things a disease, invading his whole body, avenged itself upon him with a diverse kind of corruption.'
'For a fever afflicted [him] with a slow [heat] in one part; an intolerable itching in another part, spread over the whole surface of the body; a most frequent pain also of the colon; his feet up to the groin shuddered with dropsy; there were also inflations of a tortuous [flatulence] and frequent sighs of the viscera drawn up in violent convulsions—so that it was said by the seers that these were not [afflictions] of bodily disease, but the punishments of divine vengeance. And though he was pressed by so many diseases, even deadly ones, yet still cherishing a hope of living, he thought about medicines and remedies. At length, having crossed the Jordan, he made use of the warm waters which are at Callirrhoe, which are also said to be beneficial to those who drink them. It seemed good to the physicians also that his whole body should be bathed with warm oil.'
'And when he had been set down in a fomentation of this kind, he was so relaxed in all his members that even his very eyes [slipped] from their sockets. When he began to despair of recovery, he ordered fifty drachmas apiece to be distributed to the soldiers, and lavished very much money upon his commanders and friends. But he himself, now full of fury and, so to speak, threatening death itself, is carried into an execrable crime. For from each of the several villages or fortresses, whoever were the more noble and leading men, from all Judea, he ordered to be gathered to himself and shut up in the place which is called the hippodrome. Then, having summoned his sister Salome and her husband named Alexas...'
'I know,' he said, 'that the Jews will rejoice at my death; yet I can have mourners and an honorable funeral procession from a multitude of lamenters, if you are willing to obey my commands. All those nobles of all Judaea whom I have ordered to be held in custody — as soon as I have breathed out my spirit, slay them, with soldiers made ready for this very purpose, so that all Judaea and every house, even against its will, may weep at my passing.' Then again — for he was racked both by a craving for food and by the convulsions of a cough — when from the violence of his pains he perceived that the end of his life was now at hand, having received an apple he called for a knife, for he was accustomed to peel it himself; and looking about lest there be anyone to prevent him, he raised his right hand against himself and aimed the blow.
To this the same writer adds that, a little before he yielded up his last breath, he had a third son of his — after the two he had earlier put to death — cut down by his impious commands, and so fled from the light of day as though escaping punishment. Such then was the end of Herod, by which he paid a fitting penalty for the crime he had committed at Bethlehem against the little ones; and concerning the snares laid against us the Gospel fully instructs us, that after Joseph had been warned by an angel — 'hearing,' says the evangelist, 'that Archelaus reigned in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there,' and being warned in a dream 'he withdrew into the region of Galilee.'
In harmony with this evangelical truth the aforementioned historian too writes carefully these things: how, under Caesar Augustus, Archelaus became the successor to the kingdom of the Jews, and how after ten years he was stripped of his dominion, and how Philip and the younger Herod, together with Lysanias, held the kingdom of Judaea divided into tetrarchies; in the tenth year of Tiberius Caesar, who succeeded Augustus after fifty-seven years, and there for ten continuous years he endured almost to the very end of Tiberius.
From all of which the shameless fabrication of the 'Acts' is plainly convicted, those which, fashioned from a recent forgery, are put forth against Christ the Lord; in which, first of all, the very time — the seventh year of his reign — these false Acts assign as the time of the sacrilege committed against the Savior. At which time it is clearly shown that Pilate had not yet even been sent to the procuratorship of Judaea, according to the testimony of Josephus, that most approved historian, who most plainly writes of Pilate.
And in harmony with these the evangelist agrees with the historian, saying 'in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar' — in which was the fourth year of Pilate's procuratorship, when moreover Herod and Lysias and Philip were held as tetrarchs of Judaea — the Lord and Savior came to be baptized. For then indeed the beginning of the evangelical preaching took its course under the high priests Annas and Caiaphas, that is, extending into the pontificate of Annas; within which spaces scarcely a full four years are comprised.
Now the legal precepts were by that time ceasing through force and ambition, since the honor of the high priesthood was no longer rendered to the merit of life or of lineage, but by the Roman power the chief office of the priesthood was bestowed now on some, now on others, so that by yearly successions they were changed. Finally, this same Josephus records that four in order, down to Caiaphas, discharged the office of the high priesthood after Annas, writing in these words: 'Valerius Gratus, having thrust Annas from the priesthood, designated Ishmael as high priest, the son of Baphi. But casting him also out not long after, he substituted for the high priesthood Eleazar, son of the high priest Ananias.'
'But after a year he removed even this one from the office and handed over the ministry of the high priesthood to a certain Simon, son of Camith; and when he too had discharged it no longer than the space of a single year, he received as his successor Josephus, whose name was also Caiaphas.' And through all this time, in which the Lord and our Savior was upon the earth, those four successions of high priests which Josephus records are described as ministering, each scarcely for a single year. In agreement therefore with what Josephus writes, the Scripture of the Gospel also designates Caiaphas as high priest of that year in which the Savior suffered.
Therefore the Lord and our Savior, not long after the beginning of his preaching, took to himself twelve disciples out of all, whom, preferring them above his other followers by a certain special privilege of election, he named apostles — the meaning of which name indicates men who are sent. But he also chose others after these, seventy, whom likewise two by two through the several places and cities to which he himself was about to come [he sent forth]. [John was] beheaded by Herod, of which the Gospels indeed relate. And with concordant testimony Josephus too writes of this, mentioning by name also Herodias, as one violently torn from the marriage of Philip his brother while yet living, and joined to Herod in his incestuous nuptials, his own lawful wife having been driven away.
He says that this Herodias was the daughter of Aretas, king of Arabia, on whose account he also relates that John the Baptist was put to death by Herod. He says too that a war arose between Aretas and Herod, as though to avenge the dishonor done to the daughter; in which war he reports that Herod's army was destroyed, and that all these things befell him because of the sacrilege he committed in the murder of John. This same Josephus reports that John was the most just of all men, in accord with the faith of the Gospels, and that he was beheaded by Herod on account of Herodias; on whose account too Herod was driven from his kingdom and thrust into exile at Vienne, a city of Gaul.
These things he writes in the eighteenth book of the Antiquities, in the very words which are noted below: 'To some of the Jews,' he says, 'it seemed that Herod's army had perished for this reason, because divine vengeance was stirred against him quite justly, in requital for John, who was called the Baptist, whom Herod punished — a man exceedingly good, who charged the Jews to devote themselves to virtue, to keep justice one toward another and to maintain piety toward God, and by baptism to come together into one.'
'For in this way baptism would be acceptable, if it were received not only for the washing away of sins, but were also kept for the chastity of the body and for the justice and purification of the soul, and were held, as it were, as a seal of all the virtues alike and a certain faithful safeguard. And when these things were being taught by him through precepts of this kind, and a very great multitude thronged together to hear him, Herod, fearing lest perhaps by the persuasion of his teaching the people should revolt from their king — for he saw that the common folk were ready to obey his precepts and admonitions in all things — thought it better, before anything new should arise, to forestall the man by death, than afterwards, when affairs were in turmoil, to feel a too-late repentance.'