Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[Heading: A Demonstration that He Had This Age for Only One Year.] 1. We have already shown that their entire number thirty collapses, since sometimes fewer, sometimes more Aeons are immediately found within the Pleroma according to their own account. There are not, then, thirty Aeons; nor was it for this reason that the Saviour, being thirty years old, came to his baptism -- to show forth their silent Aeons, thirty in number. Otherwise they will find themselves distinguishing and excluding the very first among them by this very reasoning [textual gap in source -- scholarly notes on Pindar, Pelops, and related mythological allusions are corrupt or illegible in the manuscript at this point] ... they claim his suffering fell within the twelfth month, meaning his preaching spanned the single year following his baptism, and they attempt to bolster this very claim from the prophet -- since the text reads: 'to announce the Lord's favorable year, and the day of retribution' -- truly blind, these men who claim to have discovered the depths of the Bythos, and yet do not understand that Isaiah spoke of an 'acceptable year of the Lord' and a 'day of recompense' in a quite different sense. For it is not of a day consisting of twelve hours that the prophet speaks, nor of a year measured by twelve months. For the prophets have said many things in parables and allegories, and not according to the plain sound of the words themselves -- and they themselves admit this. The day of retribution, accordingly, denotes that day on which the Lord repays every person in keeping with their deeds -- the judgment itself. And the Lord's favorable year is the present age, throughout which those who put faith in him are summoned and rendered acceptable to him -- that is, the entire span from his advent until the end, during which he collects to himself, as a harvest, those being saved. For according to the prophet's own words, the day of recompense follows the year; and the prophet would be proven false if the Lord had preached for only a single year, and it is of that single year he is speaking. For where is the day of recompense? The year has passed, and there is still no day of recompense; rather, he still makes his sun to rise on the good and the evil, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. And indeed the righteous suffer persecution, and are afflicted and killed; while sinners abound in plenty, and drink with harp and lyre, and yet the works of the Lord do not... [text corrupt/illegible in source] ...does the echo of persecution and disaster seem to resound throughout, close upon what follows? Indeed these things were written long before... and that the day of recompense follows the year. For the text reads: 'to announce the Lord's favorable year, and the day of retribution.' Fittingly, then, the present age is understood as the Lord's favorable year, throughout which people are summoned and brought to salvation by him; and the day of retribution -- namely the judgment -- comes after it. And this span of time is termed not merely a 'year' but also a 'day' -- so named by the prophet and likewise by Paul, for the Apostle, calling the Scripture to mind, writes in his letter to the Romans: as the text has it, on your account we face death the whole day through; we are reckoned like sheep marked for slaughter. Here 'the whole day through' refers to this entire stretch of time, throughout which we endure persecution and are put to death like sheep. Accordingly, just as this 'day' does not mean one made of twelve hours but rather the entire period during which those who trust in Christ endure suffering and death on his account, so likewise that 'year' is not one comprising twelve months but the entire era of faith, throughout which people, upon hearing the message preached, come to believe, and are made acceptable to the Lord as they join themselves to him. It is indeed a matter for great wonder how these men, who claim to have discovered the depths of God, have not examined in the Gospels how many times, according to the season of the Passover, the Lord went up to Jerusalem after his baptism -- seeing that it was the custom of the Jews, from every region, to gather together at Jerusalem each year at this season, and there to celebrate the feast day of the Passover. First, indeed, when he made wine from water in Cana of Galilee, he went up for the feast day of the Passover; at which time also it is written: 'because many believed in him, seeing the signs which he did,' as John, the Lord's disciple, records. After this he is again found withdrawing into Samaria, where he conversed with the Samaritan woman, and healed the centurion's son by his word though absent, saying, 'Go, your son lives.' And after this he again went up a second time to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover, at which time [he healed] the paralytic, [bidding him] rise and take up his pallet and go; and again withdrawing from there across the Sea of Tiberias, where, when a great crowd had followed him, he satisfied that whole multitude from five loaves, and twelve baskets of fragments were left over. Afterward, once he had brought Lazarus back from death, and the Pharisees conspired against him, he withdrew to the city of Ephraim; and from there, coming to Bethany six days before the Passover, it is written, and going up from Bethany to Jerusalem, and eating the Passover, and on the following day suffering. That these three seasons of the Passover do not make up a single year, everyone will admit. And as for the month itself in which the Passover is celebrated, in which the Lord also suffered -- it is not the twelfth month but the first -- as those who boast that they know everything ought to know, if indeed they do not know it... [remainder of note badly corrupted in the source, referring to a fourfold division of the Gospel narrative around successive Passover ascents: the wedding at Cana; the paschal ascent; the healing of the centurion's son; the healing of the para[lytic — text breaks off]
Feeding of the multitudes; Resurrection; Passion. But this cannot be understood plainly without doing violence to Irenaeus's text. Moreover, since the trustworthiness of this point cannot be doubted here — for Irenaeus's whole argument would utterly collapse if in his time the reading were not found in the fifth, or sixth chapter — we think that Irenaeus actually read these two words where they are handed down from the same source, namely in V, 6, whence afterward extended to VI; there alone would they probably stand firm, from the resemblance of the completion of the true and the twelfth month. And they must either reject their own resolution or reject the Gospel: otherwise, how did the Lord preach for only one year? For being about thirty years old when he came to baptism, and then having reached the full age of a teacher, he came to Jerusalem, so that he was justly heard by all as "Teacher": for he did not appear one thing and was another, as those say who bring in a merely apparent Christ; but he was, in every respect, precisely what he appeared to be. Since he was thus a teacher, he also possessed a teacher's age, neither refusing nor overstepping the human condition, nor undoing in himself the law of the human race, but hallowing every stage of age by that resemblance proper to him. For it was to rescue everyone that he came, through his own person — all, I mean, who are reborn through him unto God: infants, and little children, and boys, and young men, and elders. Therefore he passed through every age, and was made an infant for infants, sanctifying infants; in little children a little child, sanctifying those who are of that very age, and at the same time becoming to them an example of piety, of righteousness, and of submission — for those who suppose that Irenaeus read in Luke... For all things were in Christ...
...in young men a young man, becoming an example to the young, and sanctifying them for the Lord. So too an elder among elders, that he might be a perfect teacher in all things, not only in respect of the exposition of truth, but also in respect of age, sanctifying elders as well, becoming an example to them also; then he went on even unto death, that he might be "the firstborn from the dead," himself holding the preeminence in all things, the prince of life, before all, and taking precedence of all. But those men, in order that they may affirm their fiction concerning what is written as "the accepted year of the Lord," say that his preaching lasted merely a single year, and that he suffered in the twelfth month: in this they forget themselves and undo his whole work, and take away from him that age which is more necessary and more honorable — that more advanced age, I say, in which he was also teaching and presiding over all. For without teaching, how could he have gathered disciples at all? And without a teacher's age, how could he have taught? For he came to baptism not yet having completed thirty years, but had only just entered his thirtieth year (for Luke, who recorded his age, wrote it thus: "Jesus was then close upon thirty years of age" at the time of his baptism), and from his baptism he preached for one year only; completing his thirtieth year he suffered, still being a young man, and not yet having reached the more advanced age. But that the age of thirty years is the first stage of youth, and extends even to the fortieth year, everyone will admit; and after the fortieth and fiftieth year, a person already passes into the elder age, which age our Lord had when he was teaching, even as the Gospel and all the elders bear witness, who conversed with John in Asia, testifying to that tradition; since he continued to live among them well into the reign of Trajan. And some of them saw not only John, but other apostles also, and heard these same things from them, and testify to such a tradition. Whom should we rather believe? Such witnesses as these, or Ptolemy, who never saw the apostles, and has not even in his dreams attained to a trace of an apostle? And indeed the very Jews who at that time disputed with the Lord Jesus Christ themselves most plainly indicated this. For when the Lord declared to them, "Abraham your father rejoiced that he would see my day, and he beheld it, and rejoiced," they replied to him, "You are not yet fifty years old — and have you seen Abraham?" Now this is fittingly said of one who has already passed forty years, but has not yet reached fifty, though not far off from the fiftieth year. But to one who was only thirty years old, it would certainly have been said, "You have not yet reached forty." Those seeking to expose him as untruthful would not have pushed his years much past the age he was seen to have, but would have kept it close to the age they judged him to be, which was above forty; yet not so as to make it appear he was thirty years old. For it would be utterly unreasonable for them to lie by twenty years, when they wished to make him out younger in relation to the times of Abraham. What they saw, that they also spoke of; and he who appeared thus was not merely apparent, but was in truth what he appeared to be. He was not then far from fifty years; and therefore they said to him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?" He therefore did not preach for only a single year, nor did his suffering occur in the year's twelfth month. For the span from the thirtieth to the fiftieth year can never be but one year — unless indeed, as the poet Homer said, himself too inspired by the mother of their error (which we shall render thus in Latin):