Trypho has the Hebrew text behind him, which says {191} nothing about a virgin, though the Septuagint has the word. The sign given to Ahaz has a close parallel in a prophecy of Muhammad. Before he became known, an old man foretold that a great prophet should come, and on being challenged for a sign he pointed to a boy lying in rugs by the camp-fire--"That boy should _see_ the prophet"; and he did. Isaiah's sign is much the same; a young woman shall conceive and have a son, and before that son is two or three years old, Damascus and Syria will fall before the King of Assyria. But Justin and the Apologists are not to be diverted. As for Danae, the Devil (_diabolos_) has there anticipated the fulfilment of God's prophecy, as in many other instances, _e.g._:--Dionysus rode an ass, he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven; Herakles is a parody of the verse in _Psalm_ xix--the strong man rejoicing to run a race, a Messianic text; AEsculapius raised the dead; and the cave of Mithras is Daniel's "stone cut without hands from the great mountains." "I do not believe your teachers; they will not admit that the seventy elders of Ptolemy, King of Egypt, translated well, but they try to translate for themselves. And I should like you to know that they have cut many passages out of the versions made by Ptolemy's elders which prove expressly that this man, who was crucified, was prophesied of as God and man, crucified and slain. I know that all your race deny this; so, in discussions of this kind I do not quote those passages, but I have recourse to such as come from what you still acknowledge."[65] The objection to the rendering "young woman" is that it completely nullifies the sign given to Ahaz, for children are born of young women every day--"what would really be a sign and would give confidence to mankind,--to wit, that the firstborn of all creations should take flesh and really be born a child of a virgin womb--that was what he proclaimed beforehand by the prophetic spirit."[66] The whole story is parable. It would be absurd to suppose that an infant could be a warrior and reduce great states. The spoils are really the gifts of the Magi, as is indicated by passages in Zechariah ("he shall gather all the strength of the peoples round about, gold and silver," 14, 14) and the seventy second _Psalm_ ("Kings of the Arabs and of Saba shall bring {192} gifts to him; and to him shall be given gold from the East"). Samaria again is a common synonym with the prophets for idolatry. Damascus means the revolt of the Magi from the evil daemon who misdirected their arts to evil. The King of Assyria stands, says Justin, for King Herod, and so says Tertullian, writing against Marcion, though in the tract _Against the Jews_ (if it is Tertullian's) he says the devil is intended.[67] The usual passages from Micah and Jeremiah are cited to add Bethlehem and the Murder of the infants to the prophetic story.