Dialogue against the Jews

Ninth Titulus

NINTH TITULUS OSES: SINCE THEN, using many authorities, you show that the one whom you call Christ could be both God and man, with what authority, I ask you, can you show that he has already come, as you believe? For perhaps he has not yet come, but will only come at some future time. petrus: There are actually several, O Moses, which clearly demonstrate that he has already come. For both the time when the prophets predicted that he would come has passed, and we know that he appeared during it, and besides this there are many other things we recognize in him and in his words and deeds, as was predicted by the prophets. moses: In the first place, I ask you to show me when and how the prophets have spoken about that time and how to identify it. petrus: Clearly we read that Jacob, speaking to his sons and individually blessing them when they were called before him, said: “The scepter shall not be taken away from Judah, nor a ruler from his thigh, until he come that is to be sent, and around him the nations will gather.”1 Moreover, I will not explain this prophecy in any way other than your ancient sages explained it. For they themselves said: “The scepter shall not be taken away,” that is, the rod of the kingdom, “from Judah, nor a ruler from his thigh,” that is, from the sons of his sons for the ages [in secula ], “until he come that is to be sent,” that is, Christ, whose kingdom it is, “and around him the nations will gather.” And indeed we know that after Christ came there was no king or ruler of Judah any more. Therefore, we have to believe that this 196 1. Gn 49.10. Note that the Vulg. does not read, “around him the nations will gather” (ad eum congregabuntur gentes), but instead, “he shall be the expectation of nations” (ipse erit expectatio gentium). The author may have altered the passage here to reflect an alternate Jewish reading that can be found in Rashi. See J. H. L. Reuter, Petrus Alfonsi, 47, n. 2. was established as the time of Christ’s coming and that the one who came at that time was, without the scruple of any doubt, the Christ. Likewise, in the book of Daniel an angel spoke with Daniel in this way concerning the time of Christ’s advent: “Seventy weeks have been established upon your people and upon the city of your sanctuary, that transgression may be finished and sin may have an end, and iniquity may be abolished, and the justice of the ages may be brought, and vision and prophecy may be fulfilled, and the saint of saints may be anointed. Know, then, and take notice: from the going forth of the word to build up Jerusalem again until Christ the ruler there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks, and the streets shall be built again and the walls in the straitness of times. And after sixty-two weeks Christ will be slain [.....] and the people with the leader that will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary, and the devastation of the end [will occur], and after the end of the war the appointed desolation. And he will confirm the covenant with many, in one week, and in half of the week the victim and the sacrifice will fail, and there will be the abomination of desolation in the Temple, and the desolation will continue even to the consummation and the end.”2 Certainly this prophecy, Moses , is obscure and difficult to understand, and there are many periods [termini] indicated there, yet nevertheless all of them were established in order to reveal the advent of Christ. At the outset, therefore, one must know that those weeks are weeks of years. Therefore, when it says, “Seventy weeks have been established upon your people and upon the city of your sanctuary, that transgression may be finished and sin may have an end, and iniquity may be abolished, and the justice of the ages may be brought, and vision and prophecy may be fulfilled, and the saint of saints may be anointed,” when it says this, I say, it wants it to be known that seven times seventy—that is, four hundred ninety—years were appointed from the year of this same prophecy until the destruction of Jerusalem and...