Objection to the heads of Samuel the Hebrew

Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 The chapters of Samuel the Jew were translated from Latin into Russian by Nikolai Nemchin. These chapters indicate that Samuel lived one thousand and forty years after the ascension of Christ. Since the Jewish kingdom after the ascension of Christ was completely destroyed by the Romans, and they were scattered throughout all countries, meanwhile, some of them left their fellow tribesmen, the Jews of subsequent generations, Scriptures in which it was said that after a thousand years they would return to Jerusalem again, and these Scriptures were respected by them and nourished hope in them; when a thousand years had passed after their captivity, Samuel realized that their circumstances were not tending toward a return, but were taking a turn for the worse. Accusing himself and all the Jews that it was not for some simple crime that they had been in captivity for so many years, but for the crucifixion of Christ, he collected chapters from the prophetic books about the coming of Christ in the flesh and about the calling of the pagans and about the rejection of the Old Testament sacrifice 1 . Then you will be people of God and saved by Him, when, having retreated from all your evil faith, stubbornness and rebellion, you cry out to Him with faith and love together with the people of God: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord... God the Lord has appeared to us” (Ps. 117:26-27), and you begin to live according to His commandments, baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, as it is written: “I am yours, save me,” and then gives the reason: “for I have sought your justifications” (Ps. 119:94). You deny His Divinity, declaring before Pilate: “not the imams of the king, but Caesar” (John 19:15), and again: “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25); and you do not accept His excuses when He says: “Whoever has faith and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not have faith will be condemned” (Mark 16:16). How can you say: we are God’s, no matter what state we are in. Or have you not heard the Prophet, who says: “The sinner has become alienated from lies, gone astray from the womb, and spoken a lie” (Ps. 57:4). You are not God’s now, as we have shown, and your hope is not strong, for it is written: “devour the sacrifice of righteousness and” then “trust in the Lord” (Ps. 4:6). But you, having killed Him, became His enemies and murderers, and not sons, not friends and not people of His flock. How do you trust in Him? Your hope is vain and godless. If you are under the wrath of God, then, therefore, you are His enemies and abominable. How can you call yourselves His people when the Scripture says: “The sons of strangers have lied to Him, the sons of strangers have vowed and are lame from their paths” (Ps. 17:45-46). He recognizes you and calls you strangers: how can you, Samuel, say that you are His own? If, as the word of truth asserts, and as you admit, your fathers sinned and went astray, not knowing the coming of Christ, then, consequently, you yourself sinned and went astray with them, and therefore perished, according to what was said: “all who separate themselves from You will perish” (Ps. 72:27). And in your references to the ancient righteous you speak untruth, Samuel: Moses and the other prophets walked in all the commandments, statutes and justifications of God, living righteously and chastely; with undoubted faith and ardent desire they awaited the coming of Christ the Messiah, trusted in Him and prophesied about Him. Not only do you not walk in all the commandments of God, as they did, but also, by opposing their prophecies, you killed Christ God, who was sent to you to deliver you and the entire human race. If they, as people, ever sinned in anything out of ignorance and oblivion, whether by thought, or by some unimportant sin once, then they immediately corrected themselves, and did not remain in opposition to the commandments of God, did not wallow in carnal filth and lawless pleasures, like you and us. So, you lied and blasphemed those righteous people. And your next word, Samuel, seems to me ugly, not to say insane. If you truly believed that Christ is the Messiah about whom all the prophets wrote so amazingly, then why do you say with regret: “Oh, if only we, when we killed Him, would have crossed out the prediction about this from the book of Isaiah!” It would be more fitting for you to say: “Oh, if we had listened to the prophet then and repented before God, we would not have killed the great Prophet and would not have been rejected by God.” Moreover, even if you had erased the prediction about this from the book of Isaiah, even then you could not have destroyed the Divine glory of Christ: for it is written by the prophet Habakkuk: “The heavens have covered His virtue, and the earth is full of His praises” (Habakk 3:3); and again: “God knows who will destroy; and who can turn away His lofty hand?” (Isa. 14:27). Do not, Mr. Samuel, equate the ascension of Christ with the transfiguration of Enoch and the taking of Elijah “as if into heaven” by a chariot of fire and horses of fire (2 Kings 2:1). They were only holy and righteous people, and therefore one was probably transformed by an angel, and not by himself, and not by air, and the other was sent a fiery chariot and horses. And Scripture does not say that Enoch was translated into heaven; That's what you say. Likewise, Elijah was taken not into heaven, but “as into heaven,” says Scripture. Christ, being God in the flesh, the Creator of all and the Lord of Enoch, and Elijah, and Moses, not with airy lightness, but with Divine power, ascended into heaven itself, and not “as into heaven,” like Elijah: He miraculously brought a bright cloud from non-existence into being, which, according to Luke’s narrative, not only lifted Him up, but “from the sight of His disciples” - and this is not because He needed the help of the cloud for His ascent - may we not have such blasphemous wisdom! - for He carries and holds everything in His hand, but with this He only fulfilled the ancient prophecy, which speaks of the Creator Himself: “stretch out the sky like a skin, cover it with His most exalted waters, set the clouds for His ascent, walk on the wing of the wind” (Ps. 103:2-3), as in another place He says: “and ascended upon the cherubim, and fly, fly on the winged wind” (Ps. 17:11). And what you say is that Methuselah was taken to heaven in the flesh, and so was Moses - this is nowhere to be seen in the Holy Scriptures, but it is said that Methuselah lived for so many years and died, and it does not say: he was transferred or taken into heaven. And it is not said about Moses that he ascended to heaven, but that he died and was buried, obviously, by the Archangel Michael, who argued with the devil “about the body of Moses” and forbade the devil, saying to him: “The Lord rebuke you” (Jude 1:9), and thus, when the devil retreated, the body of Moses was buried on that mountain, or in another place - only God knows, Scripture did not explain this. I say this regarding the time before the coming of the Messiah, that is, before Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion and descent into hell; for when Christ descended there with his all-holy soul, then not only Methuselah and Moses, but also all the righteous from the ages in general, he snatched them from hell, brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death and brought them into the ancient divine paradise, and now they are with their King and Savior both in paradise and in heaven, as it is said: “wherever there is a corpse, there the eagles will be gathered” ( Matthew 24, 28). And what you say about the passage of the children of Israel, that the water carried their bodies, you say this is not in accordance with the Holy Scripture, for the Scripture clearly says this: “The waves thickened like a wall of water in the middle of the sea” (Ex. 15:8). From this it is clearly clear that among these two walls of water a dry path was formed for them by the power of God, who led them, as it is said above: “And the children of Israel walked on dry ground in the midst of the sea: and water was a wall on their right hand, and a wall on their side” (Ex. 14:29), and does not say that they passed through, carried by the water, as you claim. And that you also say that the fire that came down from heaven (under Elijah) carried the bodies of oxen and livestock into heaven, then this is an obvious lie and the product of a child’s mind, for you are not saying this according to Scripture. The Scripture clearly says that the fire that came down from heaven generally burned, devoured and incinerated everything: meat, wood, water, stones, and the earth itself, and does not say that it burned one thing, and carried the bodies of oxen and cattle into the heights. It is not proper, good Samuel, to say or reason anything apart from Scripture: “Do not add to this,” the Lord said to Moses, “and take it away from it” (Deut. 12, 32). Until you confess Christ as the true God and do not retreat from your unbelief, neither your prayer, nor fasting, nor sacrifices, nor circumcision, nor the Sabbath are acceptable to God: all this “my soul hates,” He said through the prophet Isaiah (Is. 1:14). And even though you had countless hopes for Him and ran to Him, all this is in vain and useless for you: you are under the wrath of God, as the prophecy clearly says: “Let Your hand be found against all Your enemies, Let Your right hand find all those who hate You. Thou shalt lay them like a fiery furnace during Thy face" (Ps. 20:9-10). For what reason? “As if I were angry with You, thinking about advice, they won’t be able to draw them up. For I have laid a backbone,” that is, You will defeat them and put them to flight, “in excess” of them, that is, in those who remain in the same unbelief and bitterness, “prepare Your face,” that is, Your wrath (Ps. 20:12-13). So, it is in vain that you boast and often repeat: “After all, we are God’s and we resort to Him.” But at the same time, in these chapters, Samuel asserts that the Jews, no matter what their condition, still continue to remain the people of God. It is against this and other errors of Samuel that the present chapters object. Note translation You might be interested in: