(7) Hear what Jeremiah says against those same Jews: "Go off to Kedar and see; send off to the islands of the Kittim and find out if such things have happened. What things? "If the gentiles will change their gods, and indeed they are not gods, but you have changed your glory and from it you will derive no profit." He did not say: "You have changed your God," but, "your glory." What he means is this. Those who worship idols and serve demons are so unshaken in their errors that they choose not to abandon them nor desert them for the truth. But you, who worship the true God, have cast aside the religion of your fathers and have gone over to strange ways of worship. You did not show the same firmness in regard to the truth that they did in regard to their error. That is why Jeremiah says: "Find out if such things have happened, if the gentiles will change their gods, and indeed they are not gods; but you have changed your glory and from it you will derive no profit." He did not say: "You have changed your God," for God does not change. But he did say: "You have changed your glory." You did no harm to me, God says, because no harm has come to me. But you did dishonor yourselves. You did not make my glory less, but you did diminish your own.
(8) Let me also say this to those who are our own-if I must call our own those who side with the Jews. Go to the synagogues and see if the Jews have changed their fast; see if they kept the pre-Paschal fast with us; see if they have taken food on that day. But theirs is not a fast; it is a transgression of the law, it is a sin, it is trespassing. Yet they did not change. But you did change your glory and from it you will derive no profit; you did go over to their rites.
(9) Did the Jews ever observe our pre-Paschal fast? Did they ever join us in keeping the feast of the martyrs? Did they ever share with us the day of the Epiphanies? They do not run to the truth, but you rush to transgression. I call it a transgression because their observances do not occur at the proper time. Once there was a proper time when they had to follow those observances, but now there is not. That is why what was once according to the Law is now opposed to it.
IV
Let me say what Elijah said against the Jews. He saw the unholy life the Jews were living: at one time they paid heed to God, at another they worshipped idols. So he spoke some such words as these: "How long will you limp on both legs? If the Lord our God is with you, come, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him." Let me, too, now say this against these Judaizing Christians. If you judge that Judaism is the true religion, why are you causing trouble to the Church? But if Christianity is the true faith, as it really is, stay in it and follow it. Tell me this. Do you share with us in the mysteries, do you worship Christ as a Christian, do you ask him for blessings, and do you then celebrate the festival with his foes? With what purpose, then, do you come to the church?
(2) I have said enough against those who say they are on our side but are eager to follow the Jewish rites. Since it is against the Jews that I wish to draw up my battle line, let me extend my instruction further. Let me show that, by fasting now, the Jews dishonor the law and trample underfoot God's commands because they are always doing everything contrary to his decrees. When God wished them to fast, they got fat and flabby? When God does not wish them to fast, they get obstinate and do fast; when he wished them to offer sacrifices. they rushed off to idols; when he does not wish them to celebrate the feast days, they are all eager to observe them.
(3) This is why Stephen said to them: "You always oppose the Holy Spirit." This is the one thing, he says, in which you show your zeal: in doing the opposite to what God has commanded. And they are still doing that today. What makes this clear? The Law itself. In the case of the Jewish festivals the Law demanded observance not only of the tune but also the place. In speaking about this feast of the Passover, the Law says to them something such as this: "You will not be able to keep the Passover in any of the cities which the Lord your God gives to you." The Law bids them keep the feast on the fourteenth day of the first month and in the city of Jerusalem. The Law also narrowed down the time and place for the observance of Pentecost, when it commanded them to celebrate the feast after seven weeks, and again, when it stated: "In the place which the Lord your God chooses." So also the Law fixed the feast of Tabernacles.
(4) Now let us see which of the two, time or place, is more necessary, even though neither the one nor the other has the power to save. Must we scorn the place but observe the time? Or should we scorn the time and keep the place? What I mean is something such as this. The Law commanded that the Passover be held in the first month and in Jerusalem, at a prescribed time and in a prescribed place. Let us suppose that there are two men keeping the Passover. Suppose one of them neglects the place but observes the time; suppose the other observes the place but neglects the time. Let the one who observes the time but neglects the place celebrate the Passover in the first month, but far away from Jerusalem; and let the one who observes the place but neglects the time celebrate the feast in Jerusalem but in the second month instead of the first.
(5) Next, let us see which of these two is charged and accused, and which receives approval and esteem. Will it be the one who transgressed in the matter of time but observed the place, or the one who neglected the place but observed the time? If the man who transgressed about the time so as to celebrate the feast in Jerusalem clearly deserves esteem, but the one who observed the time while neglecting the place deserves to be charged and accused for his impious action it is quite obvious that those who do not keep the Passover in the proper place are transgressing the Law, even if they maintain a thousand times over that they are observing the proper time.
(6) Who will make this clear to us? Moses himself. As he tells it, even after some men had observed the Passover outside Jerusalem, "they came up to Moses and said: 'We are unclean through touching the body of a dead man. We should not fail to offer the Lord's offering at its proper time among the sons of Israel, should we'?.' And Moses said to them: 'Stay here and I shall listen to what the Lord will command in your regard.' And the Lord spoke to Moses and said: 'Speak to the sons of Israel and say: "If any man be unclean through the body of a dead man, or if he be afar off oil a journey, whether he be one of you or of your descendants, he shall keep the Pasch in the second month.' ....
(7) He means something such as this. If anyone be away from home in the first month. let him not keep the Passover outside the city: but let him return to Jerusalem and keep it in the second month. Let him disregard the time so as not to fail in the matter of the city. In this way he shows that observance of the place is more necessary than observance of the time.
(8) But what could the Jews say if they observe the Passover outside the city of Jerusalem? Since they transgress in the more necessary matter of place, their observance in the less important matter of time cannot be urged in their defense. The result is that they are guilty of the worst transgression of the Law, even if it is obvious a thousand times over that they are not neglecting the matter of time.
(9) This is certain not only from what I have said but also from the prophets. What excuse would the Jews of today have when it is clear that the Jews of old never offered sacrifice, nor sang hymns in an alien land, nor did they observe any such fasts as they do today? To be sure, the Jews of old were expecting to recover the way of life in which they could observe these rituals. Therefore, they remained obedient to the Law and did what it commanded, for the Law told them to expect this. But the Jews of today have no hope of recovering their forefathers' way of life. In what prophet can they find proof that they will? They have no hope, but they cannot bear to give up these practices. And yet, even if they were expecting to recover the old way of life, even so they ought to be imitating those holy men of old by neither fasting nor observing any other such ritual.
V
To prove to you that the Jews in exile observed none of these rituals, hear what they said to those who asked them to do so. For their barbarian captors were urging them by force and demand to play their musical instruments. "Sing to us a hymn of the Lord," they said. But the Jews clearly understood that the Law commanded them not to do so. Therefore, they said: "How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?" And, again, the three boys who were captives in Babylon said; "At this time we have no prince or prophet nor place to offer sacrifice in your sight and find mercy." Certainly there was much room for a place of sacrifice in the country, but since the temple was not there, they steadfastly refrained from offering sacrifice.
(2) And again God spoke to his people through the lips of Zechariah: "For these seventy years you have not kept a fast for me, have you? He was speaking of the captivity. Tell me. By what right, then, do you Jews fast today, when your ancestors neither offered sacrifices, nor fasted, nor kept the feasts? And this makes it especially clear that they did not observe the Passover. Where there was no sacrifice, there no festival was held, because all the feasts had to be celebrated with a sacrifice.
(3) Let me provide proof for this very point. Listen to the words of Daniel: "In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three weeks. I ate not desirable bread, and neither flesh nor wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself with ointment in those weeks. And it came to pass on the twenty-fourth day of the first month that I saw the vision. Pay careful heed to me here, for this text makes it clear that they did not observe the Passover. Let me tell you how this is. The Jews were not permitted to fast during the days of the feast of unleavened bread. But for twenty-one days Daniel took no food at all. And what proves that the twenty-one days included the days of the feast of unleavened bread? We learn this from what he said, namely, that it was on the twenty-fourth day of the first month.
(4) But the Passover comes to an end on the twenty-first of that month. If they began the feast on the fourteenth day of the first month and then continued it for seven days, they then come to the twenty-first. Nonetheless, Daniel steadfastly continued his fast even after the Passover had come and gone. For if Daniel had begun his fast on the third day of the first month and then continued through a full twenty-one days, he passed the fourteenth, went on for seven days after that, and then kept fasting for three more days.
(5) How, then, do the Jews of today avoid being cursed and defiled? The holy ones of old followed no such observances of what the Law prescribed, because they were in a strange land. Are today's Jews doing just the opposite so that they may stir up contentiousness and strife? If some of the holy ones of old who spoke and acted tiffs way were lax and irreverent, perhaps we would have considered their failure to observe these precepts as a sign of their laxity. But they loved and revered God, they gave their very lives for what God had decreed. So it is abundantly clear that failure to keep the Law was not the result of their laxity. Rather, their failure to keep the Law was prompted by the Law itself, because the Law said they must not observe those rituals outside Jerusalem.
(6) This brings us to a conclusion on another matter of great importance. The observances regarding sacrifices, Sabbaths, new moons, and all such things prescribed by the Jewish way of life of that day were not essential. Even when they were observed they could make no great contribution to virtue; when neglected they could not make the excellent man worthless, nor degrade in any way the sanctity of his soul. But those men of old, while still on earth, manifested by their piety a way of life that rivals the way the angels live. Yet they followed none of these observances, they slew no beasts in sacrifice, they kept no feast, they made no display of fasting. But they were so pleasing to God that they surpassed this human nature of ours and, by the lives they lived, they drew the whole world to a knowledge of God.
(7) Who could match a Daniel? Who could match the three boys in Babylon? Did they not anticipate the greatest commandment which the Gospels give, the commandment which is the chief source of all blessings? Had they not already proved this by their deeds? For John says: "Greater love than this no one has, that one lay down his life of his friends. But they laid down their lives for God.
(8) We must admire them for this. But we must also admire them because they were not doing it for any reward. This is why the boys in Babylon said: "There is a God in heaven, and he can save us; but if lie will not, be it known, O king, that we will not worship your gods." The prophet means: The reward is sufficient for us that we are dying for God. And they gave proof of this great virtue even though they were observing none of the Law's prescriptions.
VI
You Jews will say: "Why, then, did God impose these prescriptions if he did not wish them observed?" And I say to you: If he wished them observed, why, then, did he destroy your city? God had to do one or the other of two things if he wished these prescriptions to remain ill force: either he had to command you not to sacrifice in one place, since he intended to scatter you to every corner of the world; or, if he wished you to offer sacrifice only ill Jerusalem, he was obliged not to scatter you to every corner of the world and he should have made that one city impregnable, because it was there alone that sacrifice has to be offered.
(2) Again the Jews will say: "What is this, then? Was God contradicting himself when he ordered the Jews to sacrifice in one place but then barred them from that very place?" By no means! God is very consistent. He did not wish you to offer sacrifices from the beginning, and I bring forward as my witness of this the very prophet who said: "Hear the word of the . . . Lord, you rulers of Sodom, give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah." But it was really to the Jews the prophet spoke, not to those dwelling in Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet he calls the Jews by the names of these people because, by imitating their evil lives, the Jews had developed a kinship with those who dwelt in those cities.