But, he asked me, if some persons even now desire to live keeping the institutions of Moses, and believe on this Jesus who was crucified, recognizing that He is the Christ of God, and that to Him it has been given to judge absolutely all men, and that the everlasting Kingdom is His — can they also be saved?
I said in turn: Let us look together into this question also, whether it is possible to keep all the institutions of Moses at the present time.
He replied: No, for we are aware, as you said, that it is not possible to slay a passover-sheep elsewhere than in Jerusalem, nor to offer the goats that were commanded at the Fast, nor, in short, all the other offerings.
And I said: What the things are therefore which it is possible to keep, I pray you tell me yourself. For you will then be persuaded that one can most certainly be saved without keeping or performing these everlasting ordinances.
He said: I mean the observance of sabbath, and being circumcised, and keeping the monthly feasts, and washing, if one has touched anything forbidden by Moses, or after sexual intercourse.
And I said: Does it seem to you that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Noah and Job, and any other similarly righteous men before or after these, and, further, Sarah the wife of Abraham, and Rebecca the wife of Isaac, and Rachel the wife of Jacob, and Leah, and all the other women of that kind until the mother of Moses, the faithful attendant, though they kept none of these things, will be saved?
And Trypho answered: Was not Abraham circumcised and his posterity?
I replied: I am aware that Abraham was circumcised and his posterity. But I have already said at length why circumcision was given them, and, if what has been said does not weary you, let us examine the subject again. Now you are aware that up to the time of Moses simply no righteous man ever kept any one of these things about which we have been making enquiry, or received any command to keep them, save that circumcision had its beginning from Abraham.
He said: We are aware of this, and we acknowledge that they are saved.
I answered: Ye perceive that on account of the hardness of the heart of your people God enjoined on you by Moses all such precepts, in order that by these many means you should always, and in every action, have God before your eyes, and not begin to commit injustice or impiety. For He also enjoined you to wear the scarlet dye, in order that by its means forgetfulness of God should not come upon you; and He commanded you to gird yourselves with a phylactery of certain letters written on very thin parchments, which we assuredly consider holy, by these means pressing you ever to hold God in mind, and at the same time to have a sense of sin in your hearts.
But you have not the least mind of piety towards God, and even with such means you were not persuaded to cease committing idolatry. For, when, in the time of Elijah, He was naming the number of them that had not bowed knee to Baal, He said they were only seven thousand in number, and similarly in Isaiah He convicts you of having even sacrificed your children to idols.Isaiah 57:5
But we, because we will not sacrifice to those to whom we used to sacrifice of old, endure punishment to the uttermost, and when we are put to death we rejoice, believing that God will raise us up by His Christ, and will make us incorruptible, and free from suffering, and immortal. And we learn that the ordinances made on account of the hardness of the heart of your people contribute nothing to the practice of righteousness and of piety.