Commodian — Carmen de Duobus Populis 441–462

For your sake my name is blasphemed among the nations, he says. If he was thrown into a pit, why then is it cried that he rises? From the depths, Lord, you set my soul in place: I slept, he says, and took sleep secure; by the Lord’s help I rose, having suffered no evil. And again he says: You will not abandon into hell, nor will you give your holy one to see decay too. Here sounding he says: Son of the prophet, I ascend, that I may say the Lord Most High suffered through misery. And in the book of psalms it is cried about the Lord’s death — not as they think David reports about himself. Or if they think that, do all things he said fit? David was not scourged nor lifted on a cross. What? Jews prophesy in Saturn’s manner; they gather into fables when it is already turning on them. Let them not slap as witchcraft one lifted on a cross. For the unknowing, untaught, ignorant they invent such things. Who is that God whom we fixed on a cross? they say, unwilling to look at the scriptures, blinded in heart. Behold another prophet sings, repeating again, by whose voice nonetheless such an edict is titled: Now I will rise, says the Lord; now I will be glorified — ****** Pit-smear dies when resurrection is cried. Psalms of the Lord’s death are not David’s private scourging story.