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Against Heresies
St Irenaeus of Lyons, ANF 1
Fragments, Fragment 19 · “Take unto thee Joshua (Ἰησοῦν) the son of Nun.” For it was…
XIX
“Take unto thee Joshua (Ἰησοῦν) the son of Nun.”1 For it was proper that Moses should lead the people out of Egypt, but that Jesus (Joshua) should lead them into the inheritance. Also that Moses, as was the case with the law, should cease to be, but that Joshua (Ἰησοῦν), as the word, and no untrue type of the Word made flesh (ἐνυποστάτου), should be a preacher to the people. Then again, [it was fit] that Moses should give manna as food to the fathers, but Joshua wheat;2 as the first-fruits of life, a type of the body of Christ, as also the Scripture declares that the manna of the Lord ceased when the people had eaten wheat from the land.3
Notes
- Num. xxvii. 18.
- Harvey conceives the reading here (which is doubtful) to have been τὸν νέον σῖτον, the new wheat; and sees an allusion to the wave-sheaf of the new corn offered in the temple on the morning of our Lord’s resurrection.
- Josh. v. 12.