"Was it not to Noah," said Constantine, "that God gave the first law?" And this was before circumcision and after the commandment given to Adam in Paradise after his fall. God commanded Noah that no human blood should be shed: "Whosoever sheds the blood of a man, his blood shall be shed" (Gen. 9:6), Then, speaking of the poisoning of potions of grass, beasts, cattle, birds, and fish, God said to Noah: "I make my covenant with you, and with your descendants after you" (Gen. 9:9).

"But the covenant is not the law," said the Jews. - God did not say to Noah, 'My law, but My covenant.' We are talking about the law.

- Do you observe circumcision as a law, or not? Konstantin asked.

"We keep it as a law," the Jews answered.

"Circumcision," continued Constantine, "God also did not call it a law, but only a covenant, when He said to Abraham: 'Thou shalt keep My covenant, thou and thy descendants after thee shall be circumcised in their generations all the males, and this shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you, and My covenant shall be in your flesh in an everlasting covenant' (Gen. 17:913). "Look," said Constantine, "God has never called circumcision a law, but a covenant. Will you therefore renounce circumcision as illegal? But if you keep the covenant of circumcision as a law, then you must also keep the covenant given to Noah as a law, and call it the first law that God gave to the human race, which was expelled from paradise and preserved from the waters of the flood.

"No," answered the Jews. - Only the law given to Moses is the law, and we keep it.

"If the covenant given to Noah," said Constantine, "is not a law, but only a covenant, because God did not call it a law, but a covenant, then the law given to Moses is not a law, because God in the 11th chapter of the book of the prophet Jeremiah [37] does not call it a law, but a covenant: 'Hear the words of this covenant, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Cursed is the man who does not listen to the words of this covenant; which I commanded your fathers, when I brought them up out of the land of Egypt" (Jeremiah 11:23). If this covenant is a law to you, then the covenant given to Noah is also a law. And since this law was given before circumcision, you must also keep it as the first, and not listen to the other laws that came after it, that is, Abraham's and Moses'. After all, you yourself said that the first law is the best and must be obeyed.

The Jews then evaded this question, began to talk about something else, and said:

- Whoever kept the law of Moses pleased God. Therefore, we, too, by observing it, hope to be pleasing to God. But you hold fast to the new law, which you have invented for yourselves, and you despise the old law.

"By adopting the new law," replied the philosopher, "we did well. For even Abraham, if he had not accepted circumcision, but only fulfilled the covenant of Noah, would not have called himself a friend of God. Likewise, Moses, after Abraham, not being satisfied with the laws previously given to Noah and Abraham, wrote a new law. We are following their example.

We shun only everything that is not written on the Mosaic tablets, for example: circumcision, sacrifice of the dumb and the like. They were only a shadow and likeness of the new law that was to come, and therefore with its coming they had to be abandoned. What need is there to keep a shadow when we have the thing itself in our hands?

"If what you say about the old testament," the Jews objected, "the statutes and covenants, except for the tablets of Moses, were only a shadow and likeness of your new covenant, then the ancient legislators would have known this and would have spoken about your new law, which will be in the future time. After all, shadow and likeness should depict the thing that is expected to be seen with the eyes. Your law was not expected by the legislators, and therefore all the Old Testament statutes and covenants, like the Mosaic tablets, are not shadow and likeness, but the very truth (thing), which you, like what is written on the Mosaic tablets, must be preserved as truth.

Against this, the philosopher replied as follows:

- If the ancient lawgivers who were in the Old Testament did not know that according to their law a new law would come, then I would ask you: when God first gave Noah the covenant of which we spoke earlier, did He then declare to him that He would give another law after it to His saint Abraham? Of course not, but He confirmed the first covenant to exist in eternal generations. Did he also announce to Abraham, when he gave him a covenant, that he would later give another law to Moses? As for our new covenant, He proclaimed in detail through His holy prophets. So listen to Jeremiah saying, "Behold, the days are coming, saith the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not such a covenant as I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. that covenant of mine they have broken, though I have remained in union with them, saith the Lord" (Jeremiah 31:3132). You see the well-known prophecy about our new covenant. Likewise, the prophet Isaiah foretold about the new covenant in the presence of the Lord, saying: "But you do not remember the former things, neither do you think of the old things. I create new things, but now they shall appear" (Isaiah 43:1819). Thus, the ancient legislators knew about the newly-graced law, waited for it and prophesied about it. Therefore, your Old Testament decrees and covenants are a shadow and likeness of our expected law, and not the truth itself, and therefore they must be discarded as unnecessary.