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Augustine, Homily 229F and Matthew 27:25

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve made a bit of an effort today to finish off my series on references to Matthew 27:25 in patristic literature.  One of these references can be found in one of Augustine’s sermons, number 229F (which was one of those discovered by G. Morin in the 1930’s).

Today I was able to access the New City Press translation of all of Augustine’s sermons, in 11 very smart-looking volumes, and I thought that, as it is short, I’d just give this sermon complete.  Here it is.  I have omitted the footnotes, however.

    *    *    *    *

SERMON 229F
PREACHED ON THE MONDAY AFTER EASTER
Date: after 418

We have believed in the resurrection of Christ, though we never saw it, on hearing the writings of those who didn’t believe, even when they saw.

1. Some people saw the resurrection of the Lord, others did not believe it when told about it; and they were chided by the Lord, now present among them, because they had not believed those who saw it and brought them the news. What a stupendous favor done to the nations, and to those born long afterward! What has God granted those who now fill the churches of Christ? The holy apostles had gone round with the Lord, heard the word of truth from his mouth, seen him raise the dead; and they didn’t believe that the Lord had risen. We though, born long afterward, have never seen his bodily presence, never heard a word from the mouth of his flesh, never observed with these eyes any miracle performed by him; and yet we have come to believe, on hearing what was written by those who at the time refused to believe. They didn’t believe a most recent event when news of it was brought them; they wrote something for us to read, we heard it, and we believe.

That the Lord Jesus, though, declined to appear to the Jews is because he did not judge them worthy to see the Lord Christ after the resurrection; he showed himself to his own people, not to strangers. And while his own people were preaching, strangers came to believe;4 and those who had been strangers became his own. I mean, many of those, as you can read in the Acts of the Apostles; many of those who crucified the Lord, who defiled themselves by shedding his blood; many of those who said, His blood be upon us and upon our children (Mt 27:25), later on came to believe the apostles bringing them the good news of the resurrection. His blood was indeed upon them, but it was to wash them, not to destroy them; well, upon some to destroy them, upon others to cleanse them; upon those to be destroyed, injustice; upon those to be cleansed, in mercy.

And now too, do all have faith? Just as at that time some of the Jews themselves believed, others did not, so too now with the nations; some have come to believe, others don’t believe. Not everyone has faith (2 Thes 3:2). Those who do have faith, though, believe by God’s grace; they mustn’t pride themselves on it. It’s a gift from God. Is the reason God chose us, do you suppose, that we were good? He didn’t choose good people, but people he wished to make good. We were all in the shadow of death, we were all being held, bundled together in the lump of sin coming from Adam. With the root infected, what sort of fruit could be born of the tree of the human race? But the one who would heal the infection came without infection, and the one who came to clean up sins came without sin.

How Jacob, in his wrestling with the angel, prefigured both the Jews who believed in Christ and those who rejected him.

2. Don’t concentrate on the Jews who are now chaff, that is, who derive from the threshing floor that was threshed then. I mean, if we were to think a bit, my brothers and sisters, from the Jews came the prophets, from the Jews the patriarchs, from the Jews the apostles, from the Jews the virgin Mary who gave birth to Christ, from the Jews later on came Paul as a believer, and so many thousands baptized on one day, from the Jews innumerable Churches of Christians. But all that grain is now stored in the granary; with the chaff the devil will be having his fun.

Believing Jews and unbelieving Jews. Where were they first condemned? In the first of them, in the father of all of them, Jacob himself, who was also called Israel. Jacob: “Supplanter” or “Heel”; Israel: “Seeing God.” When he returned from Mesopotamia with his children, an angel wrestled with him, representing Christ; and while he wrestled, though he surpassed him in strength, he still seemed to succumb to him, and Jacob to prevail. In the same sort of way the Lord Christ too succumbed to the Jews; they prevailed when they killed him.

He was overcome by superior strength; precisely when he was overcome, that was when he overcame for us. What’s that—when he was overcome was when he overcame for us? Because when he suffered, he shed the blood with which he redeemed us.

So then, that’s what’s written: Jacob prevailed over him. And yet Jacob himself, who was wrestling, acknowledged the mystery involved. A man, wrestling with an angel, prevailed over him; and when he said, Let me go, the one who had prevailed said, I am not letting you go, unless you bless me. O grand and splendid mystery! Overcome, he blesses, just as having suffered, he sets free; that is when the blessing was completed. What are you called? he said to him. He replied, Jacob. You shall not be called Jacob, he said, but you shall be called Israel (Gen 32:25-29). The imposition of such a great name is a great blessing. “Israel,” as I said, means “Seeing God”; one man’s name, everyone’s reward. Everyone’s; but provided they believe and are blessed, both Jews and Greeks. Greeks, you see, is what the apostle calls all nationalities, the reason being that the Greek language has such prestige among the nations. Glory, he says, and honor—they are the apostle’s words—glory and honor and peace to everyone doing good, to Jew first and Greek; wrath and indignation, trouble and distress on every soul doing evil, to Jews first and Greeks (Rom 2:10.9). Good for good Jews, bad for bad ones; good for good Gentiles, bad for bad ones.

If you have come to believe in Christ, recognize yourself as blessed; if you have denied Christ, recognize yourself as lame.

3. The Jews shouldn’t pat themselves on the back, and say, “There you are, Jacob all the same is our father; he prevailed over the angel and was blessed by the angel.”

We, though, reply, “People of Israel, look at yourself there. Israel isn’t what you are, it’s what you’re called, but aren’t; the name’s all wrong in you, the crime remains in you.”

But he says to me, “Look, my father is Jacob, my father is Israel. There’s the name; where’s the crime?”

“Read the story, discover yourself in it there. You see, it’s written there, And he touched Jacob on the breadth of his thigh, and it withered, and he began to limp (Gen 32:26). Jacob, one man, both blessed and lame. Blessed in whom, and lame in whom? If you have come to believe in Christ, recognize yourself as blessed. If you have denied Christ, recognize yourself as lame; it means, you see, that you are one of those about whom the prophet says, They have limped off from their paths (Ps 18:45).

Where were the holy women from, to whom the Lord first showed himself as he rose again? From the Jews, weren’t they? Where were the apostles from, who even if they didn’t believe the women when they first brought them the news, nonetheless heard Jesus himself later on, and acknowledged his rebuke, and adhered to his teaching? From the Jews, weren’t they? There’s Israel for you, blessed. But limping in many, blessed only in few; that, you see, is the breadth of the thigh—the majority of his race. It didn’t simply say, “He touched his thigh,” but the breadth of his thigh. Where you have the breadth of the thigh, you undoubtedly have the majority of the race. And what’s so surprising about that? I acknowledge the few grains, and I’m astonished at the heap of chaff? But I see what is due for the granary, and what for the flames. And now, let them listen; they’re still alive; let them correct their limping, let them come to the blessing.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The first draft has arrived of Methodius, De cibis, translated from the Old Slavonic, using manuscript 40 of the Lavra of Holy Trinity-Saint Sergius.  It looks very good, except that the translator has used the Authorised Version as the basis for the bible quotations and allusions.  I’ve suggested that he use the NRSV instead.

The translation is being done by Ralph Cleminson, whose grasp of Old Slavonic is clearly first-rate – he suggests that the translation from Greek into Old Slavonic may have been done in Bulgaria – but of course he doesn’t know my shibboleths, or I his.  However we seem to be getting there.

One thing that I always do, when reviewing a translation – and I always review any text that I commission, no matter who does it – is to make sure that it means something.  This means reading the prose, and trying to follow the thread of the author’s thought.  It is essential for editors to do this, as it often preserves us from errors, not in translating words, but in translating sentences.  We have all seen the unhappy results of a student getting all the words right but paying no attention to what the author was saying!

It is remarkable how much the use of antique expression obstructs the modern English reader from grasping the sense of a text.  This is so, even for a reader such as myself, who habitually reads English literature from past centuries, and is currently reading the Letters of an English Country Parson, James Woodroffe, from ca. 1800.  We all know it; but perhaps we fool ourselves by thinking that the odd “thee” and “thou” is of no importance, and that stilted sentence structure is something we can overcome.  But we deceive ourselves, if we do.

This was brought home to me forcibly yesterday, when I tried to read through the draft.  I had to give up about half-way through, after realising that I had no idea what the author was saying any more!  Now my efforts were not aided by four nights of sleep deprivation and a splitting headache; but, even so, that day I did a good day’s work for someone else, so I should have been able to read a 13-page document.

Fortunately I was more successful today, and I have made various suggestions to improve the readability of the final product, and sent them off.

But we do now have a translation of De cibis.  If the translator were to drop dead, or to refuse to do anything that I have asked for, I could still fix it enough to be usable myself.

One thing that helped me, when I did read the text, was that, as I went, I started to break the text into English paragraphs.  It is remarkable how that helps, compared with just looking at the wall of text preserved in the manuscript.  It is an old journalists’ trick to over-paragraph a text for readability, and it is one that I employed today.  I commend this point to anybody intending to translate Cyril of Alexandria!!

Unlike De vita, the manuscript is divided by headings in red, which do correspond to the content.  Whether these are ancient or medieval, whether these are authorial, or whether they were added by a Greek scribe, or a Slavonic one, I do not know.

There are  two more short works by Methodius in Slavonic, which were translated into Russian by Michael Chub in the 1960’s, and are present in the ms. 40 of the Holy Trinity-Saint Sergius Lavra.  These are On Leprosy and On the Leech.  No trace of De Vita, or De Cibis, exists in Greek.  But this is not true of the next item, De Lepra, where a Greek fragment is preserved.   This is also the case for De resurrectione and it raises the question of what to do in such cases.

Other things being equal the original language must have priority over a version, however good.   But when we have fragments, what we mean by this is that either we have a quotation from the work, preserved in some later writer, or, worse, a catena fragment, from some medieval Greek bible commentary.  In the latter case the compiler usually modifies the opening and closing words, alters the tenses, and abbreviates etc, in order to create a running narrative.  Even a quotation may display some of these features.  So … what do we do?

My thinking at the moment is to translate both.  That is, to give the translation of the Old Slavonic as the main text.  When we get to a passage extant in Greek, give the translation of the Greek but footnote the translation of the Slavonic; or do the reverse if we think the Greek is damaged.

It will be interesting to see how it works out.

The other short work, On the Leech – such charming names, but these works are really quite interesting! – has no such problems.  That leaves us with the next text, a big one: De resurrectione, in two books.  The price of doing that at the same rate-per-word of the short works might be prohibitive, and I might try to negotiate a bulk discount, or find someone willing to do it cheaper.  Also there are substantial Greek remains, mostly from Epiphanius’ Panarion.  We have a translation of that in English already, so that raises other questions.  We’ll see what to do with this when we get there.

In other news, I’m hoping to persuade a gentleman familiar with Cyril of Alexandria’s works to finish off the translation of his Commentary on Isaiah.  This was started by Robert C. Hill, who died after translating the commentary as far as Isaiah 50.  Holy Cross Press published what he had done in 3 volumes, as I have blogged before.  To this end, I have presented him with a copy of the Hill translation.  But of course there is no obligation on him to do so.

I’ve also come across a post on Ancient World Online, directing my attention to a site listing patristic commentaries on Genesis, and referencing a book from 1912 (?) as the source.  I will look further into this next week, if time and tent-making permit.

Back in the winter, I did commission a translation of Theodore of Mopsuestia on Genesis 1-3, whose fragments are preserved in Syriac and published by Sachau.  Unfortunately the translator went silent on me, and I have therefore rerouted the money put aside for this to other purposes.  Never mind.  One day it will happen, if I am spared, and if I find someone with the necessary language skills.

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Severian of Gabala bibliography – another minor update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve just tweaked my working bibliography of Severian again.  Here are the new files:

These replace the version in the last such post here.

UPDATE (21st July 2015): I have updated the files to include the very useful comments by Sever Voicu in the comments below – thank you.

I have also put out a commission for an English translation of CPG 4197, two short homilies on Genesis.

UPDATE (22 February 2016): A minor tweak.

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The Annals of Eutychius of Alexandria (10th c. AD) – chapter 14 (Abbreviated)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s been a while since I translated any of the Annals of Eutychius of Alexandria (= Sa`id Ibn Bitrik).  But I rather fancy doing some this evening.

I should add that I am working, not from the Arabic, but from the difficult-to-obtain Italian translation of Bartolomeo Pirone, and using Google Translate to do a lot of the hard work!  This is a bit rubbish in a way; but it is worthwhile because nobody ever looks at Eutychius, nobody has access to Pirone, and even an English translation of this kind should prompt interest in this neglected text.

Unfortunately this chapter of the Annals is not historical, but theological.  I am not qualified to translate this, as I don’t understand it.  So I have translated just the opening portion and the last few sentences.

When we last looked, Nestorius had just been condemned by the council of Ephesus in 433 AD.  Note that the text has clearly been edited by someone later than Eutychius, as it quotes him.

1.  Exiled, Nestorius fled to Egypt and he settled in the upper part of the country in a place called Ikhmīm, where he remained for seven years.  Then he died, and he was buried in a village called Saqlān, where there occurred, especially in the place where he was buried, a heat wave so intense that no one could walk and travel in the area.  The teaching of Nestorius was later forgotten, but it was revived long afterwards by Barsawmā, Metropolitan of Nisibis, at the time of Justinian, the king of Rum, and Qabād, son of Firuz, king of the Persians, and spread in the East, and especially among the inhabitants of Persia.  It was for this reason that the Nestorians became numerous in the East, in Iraq, in Mosul, al-Furat and Mesopotamia.  They were called Nestorians after Nestorius.  After Nestorius, Maximus was made patriarch of Constantinople.  He held the office for three years and died.  Even before he was buried, Proclus was made patriarch of Constantinople.  Proclus prayed over the body of Maximus and had him buried.  He held the office after him, for thirteen years and died.

2.  Sa`id Ibn Batrīq, the physician, said: “It seemed appropriate to respond to the Nestorians in this part of my book and to show the falsity and absurdity of their doctrine, because it is all a mistake, and in these days they have even misrepresented the original doctrine of Nestorius, asserting that he said that Christ is two Substances and two Persons, perfect God in his Person and in his Substance, and perfect man in his Person and in his Substance, and that Mary created the Christ in what is regarding his humanity, and not in respect of His divinity, as the Father, as they say, has begotten a God and not man, while Maria begot a man and not a God.”  He answers them: “If things are as you say, then Christ should be two Christs and two Sons, or one Christ a real God and a real Son of God, and one Christ a real man and one Son a real man.  Because it must have been necessary for Mary to have, or not to have, generated the Christ.  But if He was generated, He was generated either spiritually or bodily.  Now if He was generated regarding the body, [He] must be different from the one that generated the Father, and then you would need two Christs.  If He was generated spiritually, Christ will then be one Son, one Person and one Christ.  Proof of this is the example of an iron plate, which is put in the fire, and from which results a single sword, burning, cracking, sparkling and shining.  It cannot be said that it is the part of the iron to burn and shine, because the iron without the fire does not burn, nor is the glowing part that cuts from the fire because the fire in itself can only light up and burn.  In the light of this example it is so true what we Melkites say, namely that Christ is one Person, both perfect God and perfect man, and so is refuted the assertions of the Nestorians, that Christ is two.

3.  He also asks them: “Tell us about the humanity of He who to whom the divinity is united and who was called Christ: did he continue to be Christ from the moment in which He was conceived in the womb of Mary, his mother, until she bore him, while she nursed him, while He became a young man, was crucified and buried? Or maybe until he reached the age of thirty he was like one of us men, and only then was united to humanity and became Christ?”  If they answer that He was not Christ while he was in the womb of his mother Mary, and that Mary gave birth only to a man, who, until the age of thirty was like one of us and that only later the divinity was joined to humanity and became Christ, they prove in this the reliability of their doctrine, but accuse of falsity the gospel, Paul and all the books of the church and all that arises out of the Christian faith.  We respond that the divinity was united to humanity at conception and that He was Christ then, in birth and breast-feeding until he was crucified and killed, and we claim that the Virgin Mary gave birth to one God, one Christ and only one Person.

Hmm.  It looks as if this entire chapter of the Annals is theological rather than historical.  I haven’t much enthusiasm for controversies that I don’t understand.  Section 21 finishes with the following words:

To men of understanding and discernment, it is clear that Christ is One , in the union of a single Person to the Eternal Word, and that He has two natures:the divine, that has always been, and the human that he has created for himself; and the absurdity of what is professed by the Nestorians and Jacobites is also clear.  Were it not for the reluctance that we felt from the fact that this would have made our book too long, and run the risk of moving away from the goal that we have set ourself, I would have explained and proven more than I have done. But those who wish to learn these things in abridged form and clearly set forth, should read my book entitled “Book of the Dispute between the Heretic and the Christian.”  In this book, in fact, I have demonstrated the validity of the Christian doctrine, namely that of the Melkites, refuting the assertions of its opponents.

Pirone adds that this book referred to is probably the “Kitāb al-gadal bayna’l-mukhālif wa’n-nasrām”, attributed commonly to Eutychius and published under the title of “Kitāb al-Burhān” (The Book of Demonstration) in CSCO, vol. 209, tome 22, Louvain 1961.  Reservations about the authenticity of the work are expressed by “Breydy, op. cit., pp. 77-82 and cap. VI.”

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Spamming to promote the NIV bible?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have written a couple of times before about the collapse in confidence in the New International Version (NIV) of the bible.  This happened after Zondervan, the publishers, decided to revise it to be “gender neutral.”  As I wrote in my last such post:

… “gender neutrality” is not a principle of text criticism, nor of biblical theology, but a principle of the modern political movement referred to as “political correctness”.  So the publisher has acted to corrupt the translation in the interests of a modern political lobby – an incredible thing to do.

It is now the 50th anniversary of the publication of the NIV.  It is, of course, a sad anniversary, considering what has happened.  Zondervan have been trying to boost the “translation” by having a website, thenivbible.com, which is of course their right.  The site is conspicuously silent about the controversy, I note, which is not so acceptable.

They have also, even less forgiveably, employed a PR industry firm to pester bloggers.

A few months ago I received a communication from a PR flack, via my contact form.  The message professed to be all excited about how wonderful my site was, and then seamlessly went on to say how I might like to engage with their new site, etc etc.

In other words, they sent me a spam email.  The content suggested to me that they had mined the lists of top 50 biblioblogs, and spammed the lot.  I deleted it, and thought no more of it.

Today I received another one, from the same PR flack, with the same dishonest message, professing again to be giving feedback and actually trying to get me to visit etc that sad old website.  I must confess to feeling contempt for such attempts to gain my support by such threadbare flattery.

I fear that Dante would have assigned an imaginative fate, for those who brought this about, in the Inferno. Perhaps he would have depicted them being endlessly sodomized by (gender neutral!) demons.  But then I am less imaginative than the Florentine master.

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Methodius, On Life and Rational Action – online in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Today I am quite pleased to be able – at long last! – to upload the first English translation of De Vita, On Life and Rational Action, by Methodius of Olympus.

The translation was made by Ralph Cleminson, from the unpublished Old Slavonic text, which alone has survived.  This was accessed using the online images of manuscript 40 of the Holy Trinity-St Sergius Lavra in Russia.

Here it is:

I have also made the files available at Archive.org here.

As usual, I make these files and their contents public domain.  Do whatever you like with them, personal, educational or commercial.

We all owe Dr Cleminson a debt of thanks.  I have also asked him to translate some more Methodius, and he has agreed in principle.  The next one is likely to be De cibis.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I hope to upload Methodius On life and rational activity soon.  The translation is done, and paid for (as of today), and only needs a tweak to my introductory footnote.

Less good news: the Trinity-St Sergius Lavra site,  which hosts the Old Slavonic manuscripts that we are using, is offline.  Fortunately I did download the images of the two Methodius manuscripts so we are not completely stuck.  I will pop them onto a keydrive and post them to the translator.

This is a warning, tho, that these online collections of manuscripts are very fragile.  In the case of most such sites, I wouldn’t even be able to download the images.

I’ve seen the list of papers for the quadrennial Oxford Patristics Conference, 2015, which is due to start on 10th August.  Invitations went out last year, and I looked at the price for the week, and I looked at the cost of staying in the accommodation (which you do want to do), and I thought about the financial loss involved in being away from work for a week.  I also thought about the problem of car parking, which they make so difficult and expensive, and the lousy quality of the accommodation.  And … I decided not to go.

In truth I didn’t enjoy my conference all that much.  Booking late, I ended up in a poor room in Queens College, which undoubtedly affected my mood rather.

Having made that decision, I looked at the papers with some trepidation.  Would it be full of items that I would ache to be present at?  Things that I would really want to be present for?

In fact, and I hate to say it, the papers look very dull.  An awful lot of them seem to be by Americans, on the sort of topics that might be given to an undergraduate.  So few of these papers looked interesting!

I don’t know whether it is just me, or whether there is a genuine diminution in quality.  The answer is probably a bit of both, in truth.  There will be 900 people there.  I’d like to mix with patristics people, it is true.  But … I think I’ll be happier not to attend.

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Works of Fulgentius the Mythographer now online in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I learn via AWOL that the Ohio State University Press is sensibly placing online older volumes, of no conceivable commercial value.  Among these is the 1971 translation of the complete works of the 5th century Roman author Fulgentius Mythographicus.  He lived in Vandal Africa and composed a handbook of ancient mythology and other works.  The translation is in PDF and is here.  Well done, OSUP.

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A little more Asterius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Blogger Albocicade has very kindly sent me some excerpts from Asterius the Homiletist’s 31 homilies on Psalms, which he has culled from a French book.  Let me give them here; I’m sure we can all use Google Translate.

Sur l’arbre verdoyant:

“Le Verbe est le bois planté au bord des eaux, que le Père a engendré sans séparation, chargé de fruits, à la sève vigoureuse, à la cime élevée, aux belles pousses. C’est de cet arbre qu’Adam ayant refusé le fruit est déchu en son contraire. En effet, le Christ est l’arbre de vie, le démon l’arbre de mort.”
—  Homélie I.5, sur Ps.1, traduction Daniélou : “Les symboles chrétiens primitifs” p 40

Sur la crucifixion du Sauveur:

“Durant la Passion, le monde était secoué comme un navire, le pilote était cloué à la croix, le voile du Temple se déchirait comme une voilure ; alors le choeur des apôtres, privé de pilote et secoué par la tempête s’écrie : Délivre-moi, Seigneur, car le juste fait défaut !”
— Homélie XX.17, sur Ps.11, traduction Daniélou : “Les symboles chrétiens primitifs” p 71

Sur la trahison de Judas:

“Le juste a fait défaut. Il a abrégé l’horloge des Apôtres. Du jour de douze heures des disciples, il a fait un jour de onze heures. Il a montré l’année du Seigneur privée d’un mois. Et c’est pourquoi est onzième le psaume où est rapportée la lamentation des Onze sur le Douzième”
— Homélie XX.14, sur Ps.11, traduction Daniélou : “Les symboles chrétiens primitifs” p 131

Sur la fuite des apôtres:

“Avec les trois heures, les autres heures des Apôtres ont fui le jour. Les heures du jour sont devenues heures de la nuit, lorsque le jour lui-même, qui nous présente en lui l’image des Apôtre, a été changé.”
— Homélie XX.15-16, sur Ps.11, traduction Daniélou : “Les symboles chrétiens primitifs” p 131

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Asterius on Matthew 27:25

Posted on by Roger Pearse

My original reason for interest in Asterius the Sophist, and the collection of 31 homilies that bears his name in Richard’s edition, is the reference to Mathew 27:25 – His blood be upon us and upon our children – in homily 21.  Of course we must now recognise that this is by Asterius the Homiletist, and written around 400 AD, as has emerged from the series of posts on Asterius.

I’ve got the text of Homily 21 from Richard’s edition, and I’ll post it here, for those without access to the TLG:

The passage of interest to us has very generously been translated by “Inepti graeculi” for us all.  The file is here, with copious and useful notes:

But let me give just the raw translation here:

13. On the eighth day he was raised from the dead. For the end, upon the eighth, when the end of the world became the beginning of the world and since death was cut off on the eighth. For the end, upon the eighth, when also on the second eighth he appeared to Thomas and cut off his disbelief by belief. For the one who said ‘unless I put my hand in his side’, used the sight alone of Christ as a knife and cut off disbelief, and believing in him he said, ‘my Lord and my God.’

14. Eight days after the resurrection Jesus came to the disciples when the doors were shut and stood among them and said: ‘Peace be with you.’ For the enemy death, by [his] death had been put to death. Then he said to Thomas: ‘Put your hand in my side, not to pierce my side with a spear as the soldier, but (so that) you may receive the blood and water from my side in your mind, and learn why the blood and water came out, the two witnesses of the Lord-killers: the blood in order to convict the Jews who said; ‘His blood be on us and on our children’; the water, in order to accuse Pilate, who taking water and washing his hands, as innocent an innocent and righteous [man] scourged and crucified. Put your finger, Thomas and put your hand, first your finger and thus your hand. First taste that the lord is good, [he] who while [you were] disbelieving did not beat you, and so receive the bread of life. And so Thomas had not yet tasted, and immediately blurted out the confession: ‘And Thomas replied, saying to him: “My Lord and my God”’.

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