The Epistle to Aristides

Julius Africanus (d. 240)

I.-The Epistle to Aristides.

I.

[Africanus ON The Genealogy IN The Holy Gospels.] -Some indeed incorrectly allege that this discrepant enumeration and mixing of the names both of priestly men, as they think, and royal, was made properly, in order that Christ might be shown rightfully to be both Priest and King; as if any one disbelieved this, or had any other hope than this, that Christ is the High Priest of His Father, who presents our prayers to Him, and a supramundane King, who rules by the Spirit those whom He has delivered, a cooperator in the government of all things. And this is announced to us not by the catalogue of the tribes, nor by the mixing of the registered generations, but by the patriarchs and prophets. Let us not therefore descend to such religious trifling as to establish the kingship and priesthood of Christ by the interchanges of the names. For the priestly tribe of Levi, too, was allied with the kingly tribe of Juda, through the circumstance that Aaron married Elizabeth the l sister of Naasson, and that Eleazar again married the daughter of Phatiel, and begat children. The evangelists, therefore, would thus have spoken falsely, affirming what was not truth, but…

See also

• More works by Julius Africanus

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