our scriptures, their own, which they read blindly, are thus fulfilled in them…. For we realize that on account of this testimony, which they unwillingly provide for us by having and by preserving these books, they are scattered among all the nations, wherever the church of Christ extends itself.22
Within the De civitate Dei's more nuanced exposition of the early stages in the history of salvation, and not simply in support of the figurative exegesis of the Bible that dominated the Contra Faustum, Augustine here reoriented and sharpened several ideas of his earlier, anti-Manichean treatise: The Jews survive as living testimony to the antiquity of the Christian promise, while their enslavement and dispersion confirm that the church has displaced them. Yet here, in the De civitate Dei, Augustine added significantly to the substance of his earlier formulation:
For there is a prophecy given previously in the Psalms (which they still read) concerning this, where it is written…: “Slay them not, lest at any time they forget your law [legem tuam]; scatter them in your might.”23 God thus demonstrated to the church the grace of his mercy upon his enemies the Jews, because, as the Apostle says, “Their offense is the salvation of the Gentiles.” Therefore, he did not kill them—that is, he did not make them cease living as Jews, although conquered and oppressed by the Romans— lest, having forgotten the law of God, they not be able to provide testimony on our behalf in this matter of our present concern. Thus it was inadequate for him to say, “Slay them not, lest at any time they forget your law,” without adding “scatter them.” For if they were not everywhere, but solely in their own land with this testimony of the scriptures, the church, which is everywhere, could surely not have them among all the nations as witnesses to the prophecies given previously regarding Christ.24
The De civitate Dei does not suffice with explicating the phenomenon of Jewish survival as the fulfillment of divine prophecy. It interprets the divine prophecy of Jewish survival as a mandate for the faithful: Slay them not, that is, ensure their survival and that of their Old Testament observance; and scatter them, guaranteeing that the conditions of their survival demonstrate the gravity of their error and the reality of their punishment.
We shall soon return to a review of Augustine's pronouncements concerning the benefits of continued Jewish survival and their proper implications for Christian policymakers. It remains for us first to consider Augustine's sole work dedicated explicitly to anti-Jewish polemic, the brief Tractatus adversus ludaeos (Treatise against the Jews), evidently composed during the final years of his life (ca. 429),25 containing little that is new or distinctive. This sermon first discusses the Pauline doctrine of the inversion of Jews and Gentiles in the divine plan for salvation, noting that the Jews still refuse to acknowledge the Christological import of biblical testimonies. Despite the Jewish claim that Christianity has forsaken the teachings of the Old Testament, it has, in fact, fulfilled them; because Christians now obey the law in its spiritual sense, its literal observances have been rendered obsolete—“not because they have been damned but because they have been changed; not that the things, which themselves used to be signified, might perish, but in order that the signs of these things might suit their times.”26 In support of these claims, the Tractatus presents a Christological interpretation of the three Psalms (45, 69, 80) entitled “for the things that shall be changed”— pro its quae immutabuntur or commutabuntur— a misreading of the Hebrew shoshannim (lit. lilies), perhaps for shinnuyim, changes.27 Echoing earlier etymologies, Augustine concluded that the Jews are not “the true Israel, that is, that which will see the Lord face to face.”28 These changes wrought in the economy of salvation, Augustine maintained, demand that the Jews be confronted with the more evident (apertioribus) biblical testimonies. “Why do the Jews not realize that they have stayed put in useless antiquity [in vetustate supervacaneo], rather than object to us, who hold the new promises, that we do not observe the old?”29 The Tractatus then adduces an array of additional, oft-quoted biblical texts to present to the Jews, in the hope that they may see the light and convert, or that they may at least be convicted of their error.30 Once again, Augustine instructed on the function of the Jew in a properly ordered Christian world—here in a rhetorical query addressed, as it were, to the Jews themselves: “Do you not rather belong to the enemies of him who states in the Psalm, ‘My God has shown me concerning my enemies, slay them not, lest at any time they forget your law; scatter them in your might’? Wherefore, not forgetting the law of God but transporting it as testimony for the Gentiles and a disgrace for yourselves, unknowingly you furnish it to that people called from the rising of the sun to its setting.”31
THE DOCTRINE OF WITNESS:
COMPONENTS AND CHRONOLOGY
This brief survey of Augustine's developing thought on the Jews yields several preliminary conclusions: First, Augustine deviated relatively little from previous apostolic and patristic teaching on the subject. Second, Augustine formulated that which distinguished him from his predecessors, his doctrine of Jewish witness, prior to and independently of his sole, specifically anti-Jewish work, the Tractatus adversus ludaeos. And third, Augustine's distinctive interpretation of Jewish history appeared to hinge upon more basic themes of Augustinian theology.
Owing to the impact of Augustine on subsequent generations in the history of Christian-Jewish relations, this doctrine of Jewish witness warrants careful review and analysis. One can profitably distinguish between six distinct arguments which typically fortify Augustine's view that the Jews have a valuable function in Christendom and that Christians must therefore permit them to live and to practice their Judaism.
1. The survival of the Jews, scattered in exile from their land and oppressed into servitude, testifies to their punishment for rejecting (and crucifying) Jesus and to the reward of faithful Christians by contrast. The image of the murderous, exiled Cain can serve as the prototype of the Jewish people in this respect.
2. Not only does the survival of the Jews thus confirm the truth of Christianity, but their blindness and disbelief also fulfill biblical predictions of their repudiation and replacement.
3. Prefigured by the biblical Ham, the Jews are enslaved within Christendom; carrying and preserving the books of the Old Testament wherever they go, they offer proof to all peoples that Christians have not forged biblical prophecies concerning Jesus. Jews accordingly serve Christians as guardians (custodes) of their books, librarians (librarii), desks (scriniaria), and servants who carry the books of their master's children to school (capsarii) but must wait outside during class.32 Much like those who helped to build Noah's ark but perished in the flood,33 they “appear with regard to the Holy Scripture that they carry much as the face of a blind man appears in a mirror; by others it is seen, but by himself it is not seen.”34 As history unfolds in its path toward salvation, “the Jews inform the traveler, like milestones along the route, while themselves remaining senseless and immobile.”35
4. The Jews provide such corroborating testimony not only in their books but also in their continued compliance with biblical law. Their steadfast refusal to abandon their distinctive religious identity (forma ludaeorum)36 beneath the oppression of Gentile rulers, especially those of Rome, has proven admirable and valuable.
5. The words of Psalm 59:12., “Slay them not, lest at any time they forget your law; scatter them in your might,” constitute a prophetic policy-statement on the appropriate treatment of the Jews in Christendom. Slaying the Jews, thus prohibited, refers above all to preventing their observance of Judaism, and not simply to their physical liquidation.
6. Hand in hand with Jewish survival, the refutation of Judaism contributes directly to the vindication of Christianity. Paradoxically, such a mandate for anti-Jewish polemic hardly bespeaks an urgency for effective Christian missionizing among the Jews. In keeping with the teachings of Paul, their conversion will come in due course; meanwhile, the worth of their service as witness and
