845. On being asked whether they are sure that they will all come to the land of Canaan, they reply that all will then come, and then the dead Jews will rise again and leave their graves to enter that land. When it is objected that there is no way they can leave their graves since they are already living after death, they reply that they will then go down and enter into their bodies and live like that. On being told that that land is not large enough to hold them all, they reply that it will then be enlarged. When told that the kingdom of the Messiah, since He is the Son of God, will not be on earth, but in heaven, they reply that the land of Canaan will then be heaven. When told that they do not know the location of Bethlehem in Ephrathah, where the Messiah is to be born according to the prophecy of Micah (5:2) and the Psalms of David (132:6), they reply that none the less the mother of the Messiah will give birth there; some say that wherever she gives birth will be Bethlehem. When asked how can the Messiah live with such wicked people, and a number of passages from Jeremiah and in particular the Song of Moses (Deut. chapter 32) are quoted to prove that they are most wicked, they reply that there are both good and wicked people among the Jews, and in those passages it is the wicked who are meant.
When they are told that their line of descent goes back to a woman of Canaan and to Judah's whoring with his daughter-in-law (Gen. chapter 38), they reply that it was not whoring. But when it is objected that none the less Judah ordered her to be brought out and burned because she played the whore, they go away to discuss the matter. After discussion they say that it was simply a levirate marriage, which neither his second son Onan nor his third son Shelah had consummated. They add that very many of them are of the tribe of Levi, which held the priesthood. 'It is enough,' they say, 'that we are all from the loins of Abraham.' When they are told that the Word contains within it a spiritual sense, in which much is said about Christ or the Messiah, they reply that it is not so. But some of them say that within the Word, at its bottom, there is nothing but gold; and other similar things besides.
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