The First Apology
Chapter XXXVI.—Different modes of...: Chapter XXXVI.—Different modes of prophecy.
Chapter XXXVI.—Different modes of prophecy.
But when you hear the utterances of the prophets spoken as it were personally, you must not suppose that they are spoken by the inspired themselves, but by the Divine Word who moves them. For sometimes He declares things that are to come to pass, in the manner of one who foretells the future; sometimes He speaks as from the person of God the Lord and Father of all; sometimes as from the person of Christ; sometimes as from the person of the people answering the Lord or His Father, just as you can see even in your own writers, one man being the writer of the whole, but introducing the persons who converse. And this the Jews who possessed the books of the prophets did not understand, and therefore did not recognise Christ even when He came, but even hate us who say that He has come, and who prove that, as was predicted, He was crucified by them.
Edition and rights
ANF01. The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Historical English edition; series volume first published 1885.
Marcus Dods and George Reith
Ancient work and historical English translation: public domain in the United States (published before 1931). Copyright rules vary by country. This is a historical source transcription, not an official Church edition. Modern website material is not reproduced.
Historical footnotes and publisher introductions are omitted. Author-written openings are retained. Paragraph whitespace is normalized. Transcriptions can contain errors; this is not a critical edition. Attribution follows the historical edition, not universal scholarly agreement.
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Source section: viii.ii.xxxvi · Text SHA-256: 6830181abf828ef32f34dc48a5a4c54d5cbc9f88734911e56836399d5f61eb2d