Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Against conjectures of this sort, then, I will knock down first their opening premise, by which they want all the prophets to have spoken entirely through images: for if that were so, not even the images themselves could be distinguished, unless truths that had also been proclaimed existed, from which the images could be sketched. [2] And indeed, if everything were figure, what would be the thing of which it was a figure? How will you hold up a mirror if a face is nowhere to be found? So far, in fact, is it from being the case that everything is images and not also truths, that everything is shadow and not also bodies, that even concerning the Lord himself the more striking things were proclaimed in language clearer than daylight. [3] For the virgin conceived in her womb, not figuratively, and bore Emmanuel, God with us [Jesus], not obliquely — even though it was obliquely that she would seize the strength of Damascus and the plunder of Samaria, but it was plainly foretold that he would come in judgment alongside the elders and leaders of that nation. [4] For the nations too raged, in the person of Pilate, and the peoples plotted vain things, in the person of Israel: the kings of the earth took their stand — Herod — and the rulers gathered together as one — Annas and Caiaphas — against the Lord and against his Christ; [5] and he too was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer — namely Herod — without a voice, so he opened not his mouth, setting his back to the scourges and his cheeks to the blows, and not turning his face away from the darts of spitting; he was numbered too among the wicked, pierced through hands and feet, suffered the casting of lots over his garment and bitter drink and the mocking nods of heads, priced at thirty pieces of silver by the traitor. [6] What figures are these in Isaiah, what images in David, what riddles in Jeremiah — did they not proclaim even his mighty works other than through parables? Or were the eyes of the blind not really opened, did the tongue of the mute not really speak clearly, did withered hands and weakened knees not really regain their strength, did the lame not really leap like a deer? [7] These things, though we are also accustomed to interpret them spiritually, by comparison with the animal vices healed by the Lord, nevertheless, since they were also fulfilled in the flesh, show that the prophets spoke in both modes — allowing that most of their utterances, bare and simple and free of every cloud of allegory, can be defended as such: [8] as when the downfalls of nations and cities resound — of Tyre and Egypt and Babylon and Idumaea and the ships of Carthage — and when they proclaim at length the plagues or the pardons of Israel itself, its captivities, its restorations, and the outcome of its final dispersion. [9] Who will interpret these things rather than simply recognize them? The facts are held fast in the letters, the letters are read in the facts. So it is not always, nor in every case, that the prophetic word takes an allegorical form, but only now and then, and in certain instances.