The divine Word and Moses

Even now all the Jews teach that the nameless God spoke to Moses. Therefore the prophetic Spirit, rebuking them through Isaiah, the prophet mentioned above, said, as we wrote earlier: “An ox knows its owner, and a donkey its master’s manger, but Israel did not know me, and my people did not understand me.”

Jesus the Christ likewise rebuked them because the Jews did not know what the Father is and what the Son is. He himself said: “No one has known the Father except the Son, nor the Son except the Father and those to whom the Son reveals him.”

The Logos of God is his Son, as we said before. He is also called Angel and Apostle, because he announces whatever must be known and is sent to make known whatever is announced, just as our Lord himself said: “The one who hears me hears the one who sent me.”

This will also be clear from the writings of Moses, where it is written: “An angel of God spoke to Moses in a flame of fire from the bush and said, ‘I am the One Who Is, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of your fathers. Go down into Egypt and bring out my people.’” If you wish to learn what follows, you can do so from those same writings, for it is impossible to record everything here.

These words have been written to demonstrate that Jesus the Christ is the Son of God and his Apostle: formerly being the Logos, appearing at one time in the form of fire and at another in an incorporeal likeness, and now, by the will of God, becoming a human being for the sake of the human race, he endured the sufferings that the demons caused the foolish Jews to inflict upon him.

Although the writings of Moses expressly say, “An angel of God spoke to Moses in a flame of fire in a bush and said, ‘I am the One Who Is, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,’” the Jews say that the one who spoke these words was the Father and Creator of all. Therefore the prophetic Spirit rebuked them, saying, “Israel did not know me, and my people did not understand me.” And again Jesus, while among them, said as we have shown: “No one has known the Father except the Son, nor the Son except the Father and those to whom the Son reveals him.”

The Jews, then, have always supposed that the Father of all spoke to Moses, although the one who spoke to him was the Son of God, who is also called Angel and Apostle. They are therefore justly rebuked both by the prophetic Spirit and by Christ himself for knowing neither the Father nor the Son. For those who say that the Son is the Father are shown neither to know the Father nor to recognize that the Father of all has a Son, who, being the firstborn Logos of God, is also God.

Formerly he appeared to Moses and the other prophets in the form of fire and in an incorporeal likeness. But now, in the time of your rule, as we said before, he became a human being through a virgin according to the will of the Father for the salvation of those who believe in him. He endured being treated with contempt and suffering so that by dying and rising again he might conquer death.

And the words spoken to Moses from the bush—“I am the One Who Is, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob and the God of your fathers”—signified that even though those men had died, they continue to exist and belong to Christ himself. For they were the first among all human beings to devote themselves to the search for God: Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, as Moses also recorded.