Christ Circumcised. Andrew S. Jacobs

body should be especially noteworthy in a text whose “core … is the vindication of what today we would call supersession” (to quote Tessa Rajak),²⁵ focused particularly on the failure of that Jewish Law. For much of the Dialogue, Justin and Trypho debate Jesus’ status as the true messiah, with particular focus on his fulfillment of prophecy.²⁶ In earlier chapters, Justin manages to convince Trypho that many scriptural elements of the messiah could be seen in the life of Jesus. Trypho, however, balks at the virgin birth. He dismisses Justin’s Greek version of Isaiah 7:14, and instead asks whether it wouldn’t make more sense to believe that Jesus was appointed to the messiahship because of his perfect conformity to the Law of Moses. Could this not be the basis on which Jew and Christian come to agree on Jesus as the Christ?

      At this moment of potential dialogic convergence, Justin pulls away dramatically. The bulk of the Law, he insists, was not given to the Jews as a source of redemption, but rather as a punishment and mark of their continual disobedience.²⁷ If the Law is not a sign of salvation, it cannot be a mark of the Savior. Trypho tries again. He points out that even Justin’s own description of Jesus suggests otherwise, that Jesus did bear the mark of the Law and could therefore satisfy Jewish expectations: “But you have confessed to us (

) both that he was circumcised and that he kept all of the legal precepts (

) ordained through Moses!”²⁸ (It is worth noting that there is, in fact, no point in the Dialogue prior to this assertion where Justin makes such a “confession” to Trypho.) Trypho insists that Jesus’ exemplary and voluntary Jewishness can provide a key to the messianic rapprochement of Jew and Christian.

      Justin, however, continues to demur. Justin does not deny that his “confession” accurately portrays what Justin believes about Jesus’ life (i.e., he was circumcised); but neither does he accede to Trypho’s reading of Christ’s circumcision. Instead, Justin chooses to recontextualize Jesus’ circumcision and, along with it, Jesus’ seeming submission to Jewish Law. According to Justin, circumcision in this one, special case is no longer a sign of Jewish obeisance, but rather a unique symbol of divine redemption: “And I replied: ‘I have confessed it, and I do confess. But I confessed that he underwent all of these things not as if he were made righteous (

) through them, but bringing to fulfillment (

) the dispensation that his father—creator of all things, Lord, and God—wished. For likewise I confess that he underwent fatal crucifixion and that he became a human being and that he suffered as many things as those members of your people arranged for him!’”²⁹ Christ’s circumcision did not demonstrate Jesus’ admirable Jewishness: on the contrary, it was of a piece with the redemptive suffering “arranged” by Trypho’s Jewish confrères, a mark not of fraternization but of alienation. Despite appearances, Christ’s submission to the Law connotes the eradication of legal righteousness, and the establishment of the boundary between Jew and Christian. Circumcision was just one more indignity that Christ suffered in order to redeem humanity, to end the “old dispensation” of the Lord and bring the righteous to a “new dispensation” (a non-Jewish dispensation) ordained by God.³⁰

      This biographical redirection mirrors Justin’s cosmic reinterpretation of the Law, and the division between Christianity and Judaism. In a move that is theologically unsurprising, but still notable in a “dialogue,” Justin claims to understand the Jewish Law more accurately than his Jewish interlocutor. The fact that the Christian savior took the Law upon himself (through such acts as circumcision) appears, in part, to authorize this rhetorical move: now Christians who understand the full scope of salvation through their redeemer can likewise understand in fullness the older dispensation of the Law which that savior took on himself. Yet upon closer examination, Justin’s argument remains tantalizingly vague.³¹ On the one hand, the very Jewishness of Christ’s circumcision provides Justin his warrant for a superior understanding of the Law: he can correct Trypho’s misapprehension of Jesus’ acts and therefore the true relationship of Law and messiah. On the other hand, the uniqueness of Jesus’ circumcision also allows Justin to argue for the dissolution of that Law. Jesus’ circumcision is Jewish (in that it opens up the Jewish Law to the clear perception of Christians), yet non- (or even anti-) Jewish (in that it reveals that Jews do not understand the true meaning of their own Law).

      The mechanics of this doubled understanding of Christ, circumcision, and Law are not fleshed out. Justin merely asserts that—somehow—Jesus’ participation in the rite of circumcision provides the rationale for its discontinuation. The fact that Justin follows up his point on the Mosaic Law with a typical litany of patriarchs “righteous before the Law” only muddies his point further.³² For Christ was precisely not “righteous before the Law,” but rather (Justin argues) he was righteous despite, and within, the Law. Only the Jews, Justin remarks (and Trypho curiously concedes) actually needed the harsh yoke of the Mosaic Law, “because of the hardness of their hearts and their tendency to idolatry.”³³ Neither the righteous patriarchs before the Law nor their spiritual descendants (the Christians) had need of such a burden. Where, then, does that leave Christ? Would he not have demonstrated the impermanence of the Law much better by not submitting to its yoke?

      As we shall see, later interpreters of the divine circumcision handled the logic of Christ’s circumcision with more finesse and creativity. Yet, I suggest, the incompleteness of Justin’s own argument is exactly the point in the Dialogue: in it, we hear the articulation of anxiety about Justin’s Christian identity, an anxiety that is neither dismissed nor glossed over. An earlier moment in the Dialogue clarifies this resistance to an absolute resolution of the difference between Jew and Christian. When Justin delivers his dictum on the negative, pedagogical nature of the Jewish Law (imposed because of the “hardness” of the Jews’ hearts),³⁴ Trypho challenges him. Trypho queries Justin: “But if someone, who knows that this is so [i.e., the Law does not contribute to righteousness], after he knows that this one is the Christ, and clearly he has believed in him and he wishes to obey him and also to observe these [laws], will he be saved?”³⁵ Justin makes his own curious concession: “I said: ‘As it seems to me, Trypho, I say that such a one will be saved, as long as he doesn’t struggle in any way to convince others (I mean those from among the Gentiles who have been circumcised from error through Christ) to keep these things with him, saying that they won’t be saved unless they keep them. Just as you yourself did at the beginning of these speeches, proclaiming that I wouldn’t be saved until I kept them!’”³⁶ Justin draws the barest line between Christians who keep the Law, but don’t bother their gentile coreligionists, and Jews like Trypho, who will not realize the “truth” about their own Law and will insist on imposing it on others.

      But Trypho astutely notices how Justin hedges here (“as it seems to me,”

); when pressed, Justin admits that not all Christians remain in communion with Christians who follow the Law. As for himself, however, as long as the Law-abiding Christians do not “compel” others to follow their example, “so I proclaim it is necessary to admit as our own and keep fellowship with all of them, as kindred spirits (

) and brothers.”³⁷ Already by the early second century, the fraught question of “Jewish Christians” articulated a keen anxiety among the self-proclaimed, gentile “orthodox”:³⁸ what constitutes the lines of division (the horizon) between Judaism and Christianity, and when and how can that boundary be breached? (I return to this question, in its robust fourth-century flower, in Chapter 4.) Justin’s own answer is contingent and uncertain, foreshadowing his equally uncertain discussion of the Law inscribed on Christ’s own person in the circumcision.

      As this earlier discussion in the