Trypho answered: The passage is not, Behold the Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, but: ‘Behold the young woman shall conceive and bear a son,’ and so on, as you said. Further, the whole prophecy stands spoken of Hezekiah, with respect to whom events are proved to have taken place in accordance with this prophecy.
Further, among the tales of those whom we call Greeks it is said that Perseus has been born of Danae, still a virgin, by him that they entitle Zeus flowing down upon her in the form of gold. And in fact you (Christians) ought to be ashamed of saying the same sort of things as they, and should rather say that this Jesus was man of human origin, and, if you prove from the Scriptures that He is the Christ, that because of His perfect life under the Law He was deemed worthy to be chosen to be Christ. And do not dare to assert marvels, that you be not convicted of talking folly like the Greeks.
To this I said: I would that you and in fact all men were persuaded of this, that, even though, as you jeer and jest, you make still worse remarks, you will not move me from my intention, but I shall continue to use the very words or deeds with which you used to reproach me as the source of the proofs of what I say, together with the testimony of the Scriptures.
Yet you act neither uprightly nor as a lover of the truth, when you endeavour to destroy even the points about which we have already agreed, that some of the commandments have been laid down by Moses because of the hardness of the heart of your people. For you have just said that it was because He lived under the Law that He was chosen to be Christ and became Christ, if indeed He had been proved to be Christ.
Trypho said: Yet you acknowledged to us that He was both circumcised and kept the other precepts of the Law which were appointed by Moses.
I answered: I did acknowledge it and do so now. But I did not acknowledge that He endured all this as being made righteous by it, but that He was perfecting the Dispensation which was desired by Him who is His Father, and the Creator of the universe and Lord and God. For I acknowledge too that He was crucified and died, and that He endured becoming man, and suffered whatever the men of your race inflicted on Him.
Again, since, Trypho, you do not assent to the points to which you assented before, pray answer me this question: Are those just men and patriarchs who were before the time of Moses, but observed none of those things which the word proves to have been first ordained by Moses, saved among the inheritance of the blessed, or not?
Trypho said: The Scriptures compel me to acknowledge that they are.
In the same way I will put another question to you, I said. Did God charge your fathers to offer offerings and sacrifices because He needed them, or because of the hardness of their hearts, and their inclinations to idolatry?
The latter, he said, is likewise what the Scriptures compel us to acknowledge.
And have the Scriptures likewise foretold that God has promised that a new Covenant will be appointed, besides that which was given at Mt. Horeb?
He replied that this also had been foretold.
Then said I again: But was the old Covenant appointed to your fathers with fear and trembling, so that they were not even able to listen to God?
He acknowledged it to be so.
What follows? I said. God promised that there should be another Covenant, not as that first one was appointed, and said that it would be appointed them without fear and trembling and lightning-flashes, and one that shows what command and work God knows to be everlasting and in harmony with every race, and what He ordered only in harmony with the hardness of your people’s heart, as also He cries aloud by the prophets.
To this too must complete assent be given, he said, by those who love the truth, and love not contention.
Then said I: I know not how you can speak of any as lovers of contention, when you yourself often seem in fact to be so, for you contradict so often that to which you assented.