And Trypho answered: "The Scripture does not have, 'Behold, the virgin shall conceive in the womb and shall bear a son,' but, 'Behold, the young woman shall conceive in the womb and shall bear a son,' and the rest as you said. And the whole prophecy was spoken concerning Hezekiah, in whom it is also shown to have been fulfilled according to this prophecy."
"And in the myths of the so-called Greeks it is said that Perseus was born of Danaë, who was a virgin, when the one whom they call Zeus flowed down upon her in the form of gold; and you, saying the same things as those people, ought to be ashamed, and rather to say that this Jesus was a man born of men; and if you demonstrate from the Scriptures that He is the Christ, that it was because of His living lawfully and perfectly that He was deemed worthy to be chosen as Christ—but do not dare to tell monstrous tales, lest you be convicted of being foolish like the Greeks."
And I said to this: O Trypho, I want you, and indeed all people, to be persuaded of this: that even if you say worse things in jest or in mockery, you will not divert me from my purpose. On the contrary, from the very arguments and matters you suppose you are putting forward as a refutation, from these I will always derive the proofs of what I say, together with the testimony of the Scriptures.
Yet you are not acting rightly, nor as a lover of truth, in trying to undo those very things on which we have always reached agreement—namely, that because of the hardheartedness of your people certain of the commandments were laid down through Moses. For you said that he was chosen and became Christ because he lived according to the Law, if indeed he should be proven to be the one.
And I answered: I did acknowledge it, and I do acknowledge it; but I did not acknowledge that he submitted to all these things as one being justified through them, but rather as one fulfilling the dispensation which his Father, the Maker and Lord and God of all things, willed. For I confess too that he submitted to die by crucifixion, and to become man, and to suffer as much as those of your race inflicted upon him.
Since again, O Trypho, you do not stand by what you have already conceded, answer me this: those who lived as righteous men and patriarchs before Moses, having kept none of the things which the Scripture shows received the beginning of their institution through Moses—are they saved in the inheritance of the blessed, or not?
And Trypho said: The Scriptures compel me to acknowledge it. Likewise I ask you again, I said: Did God command your fathers to offer the oblations and sacrifices because of any need, or because of their hardheartedness and their proneness to idolatry? And this too, he said, the Scriptures likewise compel us to acknowledge.
And I said: Did the Scriptures likewise foretell that God promised to establish a new covenant besides the one made at Mount Horeb? And he answered that this too had been foretold. And again I said: Was not the old covenant ordained to your fathers with fear and trembling, so that they could not even give heed to God? And he acknowledged it.
What then? I said. God promised that there would be another covenant, not ordained as that one was, and He said it would be appointed to them without fear and trembling and flashes of lightning, and that it would reveal what God knows to be eternal and fitting for every race, both as commandment and as work, but what He commanded with a view to the hardheartedness of your people—as He also cries out through the prophets.
And he said: All who love truth, and are not contentious, must necessarily agree to this. And I said: I do not know how, while calling certain people contentious, you yourself have often shown yourself to be just that in this matter, having frequently contradicted the things you had agreed to.