"By David He said 'A people I knew not has served me, and hearkened to me with the hearing of the ear.' Let us, the Gentiles gathered together, glorify God," says Justin, "because he has visited us ... for he is well pleased with the Gentiles, and receives our sacrifices with more pleasure than yours. What have I to do with circumcision, who have the testimony of God? What need of that baptism to me, baptized with the holy spirit? These things, I think, will persuade even the slow of understanding. For these are not arguments devised by me, nor tricked out by human skill,--nay! this was the theme of David's lyre, this the glad news Isaiah brought, that Zechariah proclaimed and Moses wrote. Do you recognize them, Trypho? They are in your books--no! not yours, but ours--for we believe them--and you, when you {183} read, do not understand the mind that is in them."[48] And with that Justin passes on to discuss whether Jesus is the Messiah. Such a passage raises the question as to how far he is reporting an actual conversation. In his 80th chapter he says to Trypho that he will make a book (_syntaxis_) of their conversation--of the whole of it--to the best of his ability, faithfully recording all that he concedes to Trypho. Probably he takes Plato's liberty to develop what was said--unless indeed the dialogue is from beginning to end merely a literary form imposed upon a thesis. In that case, it must be owned that Justin manages to give a considerable suggestion of life to Trypho's words. [Sidenote: Jesus the Messiah] But, even if the law be temporary, and the Sabbath spiritual, if Israel is to be rejected and the Gentiles chosen, we are still far from being assured on the warrant of the Old Testament that Jesus is the Messiah, who shall accomplish this great change. Why he rather than any of the "ten thousand others" who might much more plausibly be called the Messiah?[49] To prove the Messiahship of Jesus, a great system of Old Testament citations was developed, the origins of which are lost to us. Paul certainly applied Scripture to Jesus in a free way of his own, though he is not more fanciful in quotation than his contemporaries. But he never sought to base the Christian faith on a scheme of texts. Lactantius, writing about 300 A.D., implies that Jesus is the author of the system. "He abode forty days with them and interpreted the Scriptures, which up to that time had been obscure and involved."[50] Something of the kind is suggested by Luke (24, 27). But it is obvious that the whole method is quite alien to the mind and style of Jesus, in spite of quotations in the vein of the apologists which the evangelists here and there have attributed to him.