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Dialogue with Trypho
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Chapter 19: Circumcision was not known before Abraham. The law was introduced by Moses due to their stubbornness.
"We are confused about this, and understandably so, because while you endure such things, you don’t follow all the other customs we are now discussing."
THIS CIRCUMCISION IS NOT: however, necessary for all men, but for you alone, in order that, as I have already said, you may suffer these things which you now justly suffer. Nor do we accept that useless baptism of cisterns, for it has nothing to do with this baptism of life.
Therefore, God has announced that you have forsaken Him, the living fountain, and dug for yourselves broken cisterns that can hold no water. Even you, who are circumcised according to the flesh, need our circumcision; but we, having the latter, do not require the former.
For if it were necessary, as you suppose, God would not have made Adam uncircumcised; would not have had regard for the gifts of Abel when, being uncircumcised, he offered sacrifice, and would not have been pleased with the uncircumcision of Enoch, who was not found because God had taken him. Lot, being uncircumcised, was saved from Sodom, the angels themselves and the Lord sending him out. Noah was the beginning of our race; yet, uncircumcised, along with his children, he went into the ark.
Melchizedek, the priest of the Most High, was uncircumcised; to whom also Abraham, the first who received circumcision in the flesh, gave tithes, and he blessed him: after whose order God declared, through the mouth of David, that He would establish the everlasting priest. Therefore to you alone this circumcision was necessary, in order that the people may be no people, and the nation no nation; as Hosea, one of the twelve prophets, declares.
Moreover, all those righteous men already mentioned, though they observed no Sabbaths, were pleasing to God; and after them, Abraham with all his descendants until Moses, under whom your nation appeared unrighteous and ungrateful to God, making a calf in the wilderness: therefore God, accommodating Himself to that nation, ordered them also to offer sacrifices, as if to His name, in order that you might not serve idols.
Which command, however, you have not observed; indeed, you sacrificed your children to demons. And you were commanded to keep Sabbaths, that you might retain the memorial of God. For His word makes this announcement, saying, 'That you may know that I am God who redeemed you.'