Trypho said: Even though I seem to interrupt these subjects, which you say must be examined, yet as the question which I desire to propound, is pressing, suffer me first to bring it forward.
And I said: Propound anything you like as it occurs to you. For after the propositions and answers I will try to resume the subjects upon which we have already entered, and to complete them.
Then he said: Tell me therefore: Shall they who have lived in accordance with the Law that was appointed by Moses live equally with Jacob and Enoch and Noah in the resurrection of the dead, or not?
I replied to him: When I said, Sir, the words that were spoken by Ezekiel, even though Noah and Daniel and Jacob were to desire the deliverance of sons and daughters, it should not be given them, but each should plainly be saved by his own righteousness, I said that they also who conducted their lives in accordance with the Law of Moses should equally be saved. For in Moses’ Law too those things that are by nature good and pious and just have been laid down for those that obey and practise it, and such things as were appointed to be done on account of the hardness of the people’s heart are equally recorded, which things also they that are under the Law used to practise.
Since they who did the things that universally, and naturally, and eternally, are good, are pleasing to God, so shall they also be saved by means of this Christ of ours, in the resurrection equally with the righteous who were before them, Noah and Enoch and Jacob, and any others there may be; together with those who recognize this Christ as the Son of God. Now He was also before Morning Star and Moon, and endured to be made flesh and be born by this Virgin who was of the race of David, in order that by this dispensation of God the serpent who did evil in the beginning, and the angels who became like to it, might be destroyed, and death be brought into contempt, and at the Second Coming of Christ Himself it might completely cease troubling them that believe Him and live acceptably to Him, for it will be no more. And then some will be sent into judgment and the condemnation of punishment with fire unceasingly, and others will live together in freedom from suffering, corruption, and distress, and in immortality.