Chapter LXII.—The words “Let Us make man” agree with the testimony of Proverbs. “And the same sentiment was expressed, my friends, by the word of God [written] by Moses, when it indicated to us, with regard to Him whom it has pointed out,409 that God speaks in the creation of man with the very same design, in the following words: ‘Let Us make man after our image and likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heaven, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creeping things that creep on the earth. And God created man: after the image of God did He create him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them, and said, In- crease and multiply, and fill the earth, and have power over it.’410 And that you may not change the [force of the] words just quoted, and repeat what your teachers assert,—either that God said to Himself, ‘Let Us make,’ just as we, when about to do something, oftentimes say to ourselves, ‘Let us make;’ or that God spoke to the elements, to wit, the earth and other similar substances of which we believe man was formed, ‘Let Us make,’—I shall quote again the words narrated by Moses himself, from which we can indisputably learn that [God] conversed with some one who was numerically distinct from Himself, and also a ra- tional Being. These are the words: ‘And God said, Behold, Adam has become as one of us, to know good and evil.’411 In saying, therefore, ‘as one of us,’ [Moses] has declared that [there is a certain] number of persons associated with one another, and that they are at least two. For I would not say that the dogma of that heresy412 which is said to be among you413 is true, or that the teachers of it can prove that [God] spoke to angels, or that the human frame was the workmanship of angels. But this Offspring, which was truly brought forth from the Father, was with the Father before all the creatures, and the Father communed with Him; even as the Scripture by Solomon has made clear, that He whom Solomon calls 409 Justin, since he is of opinion that the Word is the beginning of the universe, thinks that by these words, “in the beginning,” Moses indicated the Word, like many other writers. Hence also he says in Ap. i. 23, that Moses declares the Word “to be begotten first by God.” If this explanation does not satisfy, read, “with regard to Him whom I have pointed out” (Maranus). 410 Gen. i. 26, 28. 411 Gen. iii. 22. 412 Heresy or sect. 413 Or, “among us.” Maranus pronounces against this latter reading for the following reasons: (1.) The Jews had their own heresies which supplied many things to the Christian heresies, especially to Menander and Sat- urninus. (2.) The sect which Justin here refutes was of opinion that God spoke to angels. But those angels, as Menander and Saturninus invented, “exhorted themselves, saying, Let us make,” etc. (3.) The expression διδάσκαλοι suits the rabbins well. So Justin frequently calls them. (4.) Those teachers seem for no other cause to have put the words in the angels’ mouths than to eradicate the testimony by which they proved divine persons. Chapter LXII.—The words “Let Us make man” agree with the testimony of Proverbs. 609 Chapter LXII.—The words “Let Us make man” agree with the testimony of P…