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Dialogue with Trypho
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Chapter 88: Christ Did Not Receive the Holy Spirit Because of Poverty.
NOW: it is possible to see among us women and men who possess gifts of the Spirit of God; it was prophesied that the powers listed by Isaiah would come upon Him, not because He needed them, but because these would not continue after Him. And let this be proof to you, namely, what I told you was done by the Magi from Arabia, who, as soon as the Child was born, came to worship Him, for even at His birth He possessed power; and as He grew up like all other men, by using the appropriate means, He fulfilled each stage of development, was sustained by all kinds of nourishment, and waited for thirty years, more or less, until John appeared before Him as the herald of His coming, and preceded Him in baptism, as I have already shown.
And then, when Jesus went to the river Jordan, where John was baptizing, and stepped into the water, a fire was kindled in the Jordan; and when He came out of the water, the Holy Ghost descended on Him like a dove, as the apostles of this Christ of ours wrote. We know that He didn't go to the river because He needed baptism, or the descent of the Spirit like a dove; just as He submitted to be born and crucified, not because He needed such things, but because of the human race, which from Adam had fallen under the power of death and the deceit of the serpent, and each one had committed personal transgression.
For God, wishing both angels and humans, endowed with free will and able to act at their disposal, to do whatever He enabled them to do, made them so that if they chose the things acceptable to Him, He would keep them free from death and punishment; but if they did evil, He would punish each as He saw fit. For it was not His entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey, which we have shown was prophesied, that made Him Christ, but it provided men with proof that He is the Christ; just as it was necessary in the time of John for men to have proof, that they might know who is Christ.
When John remained by the Jordan, and preached the baptism of repentance, wearing only a leather belt and clothes made of camels’ hair, eating nothing but locusts and wild honey, people thought he was Christ; but he cried to them, ‘I am not the Christ, but the voice of one crying out; for He who is stronger than I will come, whose shoes I am not worthy to carry.’ And when Jesus came to the Jordan, He was considered to be the son of Joseph the carpenter; and He appeared without attractiveness, as the Scriptures declared; and He was considered a carpenter (for He worked as a carpenter among men, making plows and yokes, by which He taught the symbols of righteousness and an active life); but then the Holy Ghost, and for man's sake, as I previously stated, descended on Him in the form of a dove, and there came from the heavens a voice, also uttered by David when he spoke, representing Christ and what the Father would say to Him: ‘You are My Son: today I have begotten You;’ the Father saying that His generation would occur for men when they became familiar with Him: ‘You are My Son; today I have begotten you.’