Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Certainly he 'brings good news' to Zion and Jerusalem — peace and every good thing; certainly he goes up on a mountain and spends the night there in prayer, and is duly heard by the Father. Unroll the prophets, then, and trace the whole sequence. 'Go up on a high mountain,' says Isaiah, 'you who bring good news to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good news to Jerusalem.' They were still astonished, freshly, at his teaching; for he taught as one having authority. And again: 'So on that day my people will come to recognize my name.' What name is meant, if not Christ's? 'That I am he who speaks.' For it was he, even then, who was speaking in the prophets — the Word, the Son of the creator. [2] 'Here I am, when the hour comes, on the mountains, bringing good news, a hearing of peace, bringing good news, good things.' Likewise Nahum, one of the twelve: 'For behold, swift are the feet on the mountain of the one bringing good news of peace.' And as for the voice of nighttime prayer to the Father, the psalm says plainly: 'My God, I will cry out by day, and you will hear; and by night too, and it will not be in vain for me.' And elsewhere, of the same place and the same voice, the psalm: 'With my voice I cried out to the Lord, and he heard me from his holy mountain.' [3] There you have the reenactment of the name, there you have the act of bringing good news, there you have the place, the mountain, the time, the night, the sound of the voice, and the Father's hearing — there you have the Christ of the prophets. But why did he choose twelve apostles, and not some other number? Even from this I could argue that it is my Christ who was foretold, not only by the voices of the prophets, but by the very shape of events. [4] For I find figures of this number already present with the creator: the twelve springs of Elim, the twelve gems on Aaron's priestly breastplate, and the twelve stones that Joshua chose from the Jordan and laid up in the ark of the covenant. For just so many apostles were being foreshadowed — as springs and rivers destined to water a world of nations formerly dry and untouched by knowledge (as also through Isaiah: 'I will set rivers in a waterless land'); as gems destined to illuminate the sacred vestment of the church, which Christ, high priest of the Father, wears; and as stones made solid by faith, whom the true Joshua chose out of the washing of the Jordan and received into the sanctuary of his own covenant. [5] What comparable case, on the strength of a number, can be made for the Christ of Marcion? A thing cannot simply be judged as done without design by that god, when it can be shown to be done not without design by mine. The matter belongs to the one in whom the preparation for that matter is found. He also changes Peter's name from Simon, just as the creator remade the names of Abraham, Sarah, and Hosea — calling this one Jesus, and adding syllables to the others. But why 'Peter'? [6] If it was for strength of faith, plenty of solid, weighty material could have supplied a name from its own resources. Is it because Christ too is 'rock' and 'stone'? For indeed we read that he was appointed 'a stumbling-stone and an offense-rock.' I pass over the rest. So then he chose to share, with the dearest of his disciples, a name drawn specifically from his own figures — closer, I think, than from figures that were not his. Crowds gather to him even from across the sea, from Tyre and other regions. This is what the psalm was looking toward: 'And behold, the Philistines and Tyre together with the Ethiopian folk — these were there: a man will say, Mother Zion' — and a man was made in her (since God was born man) — 'and he built her by the will of the Father'; so that you may know that the Gentiles gathered to him then because God, having been born man, was going to build the church by the Father's will, out of the Philistines as well. [7] So too Isaiah: 'Behold, these come from far away, and these come from the north and the sea, and others from the land of the Persians.' Of whom again: 'Lift up your eyes round about and see, all are gathered together.' And of whom, further on, seeing them as strangers and outsiders: 'And you will say in your heart, Who bore these for me? Who, then, raised these up for me? Where were these for me?' Will this be the Christ of the prophets? And who will be the Christ of the Marcionites? — if it pleases him to be perverse enough to be the Christ of none of the prophets.
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