Page:Commentaries of Ishodad of Merv, volume 1.djvu/61

Rh return during the Deluge, how much less afterwards? And to Jacob, I will not forsake thee, until I have performed that which I said unto thee; not that He would desert him afterwards;  and of Michal it is said, she had no child until she died. If she had no child while she lived, how would she have one after her death? And, behold, it is said, I am with you, until. Would He then desert them afterwards? And the Christ shall reign, until His enemies shall be put [under His feet]. And the heavens, it is said, must receive Him, until the fulfilment of the times; then afterwards will He be estranged from His kingdom or removed from the heavens? Therefore these expressions are used instead of without end; and this, until she brought forth her first born son; for it was not decorous, that anything human should touch the womb in which He had consecrated a temple of the Trinity; and the fears of Joseph were not allayed so that he should allow anything carnal, but it was rather due to the remembrance of that word, It is from the Holy Ghost, and on account of the glorious things that had been administered.

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judæa, in the days of Herod; for he recalls the place and the time, in order to shew that all things took their fulfilment according to the voices of the Prophets. Bethlehem, on the one hand, according to what Mica had prophesied, And thou also Bethlehem of Judah, art not little, etc. He mentioned Herod, on the other hand, on account of the promise which the prophecy of Jacob delivered. The sceptre, it said, shall not depart from Judah, etc.; and the kingdom remained to Herod a native of Ascalon; for he destroyed the genealogical books of the Jews, so as to make it appear that he came of the good stock of the Jews; and the robe of the priesthood was put beneath his seal.

A calculation concerning what year of Alexander and at what time [of year] our Lord the Christ was born. In the year 307 of Alexander, son of Philip, which was the 43rd year of Augustus Cæsar, in the 35th year of Herod the king of the Jews, in the month of the first Kanōn, on the 25th of it, on a Wednesday, in the night before cockcrow, our Lord was born of the Virgin, she being 13 years of age; and she died at 51 years of age; and at that time Quirinus was sent as governor; and in the month of Nisan the Magians came. But Babhai the Persian said that in the day and the night that our Lord was born the Magians came; and not after two years, as those who have not investigated say; and this, he says, is quite evident from the Scriptures, that when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judah, there came  Magians; now they were three sons of kings, and nine from among the