Tertullian

He might also have been betrayed by any stranger, did I not find that even here too he fulfilled a psalm: “He who did eat bread with me has lifted up his heel against me.” And without a price might he have been betrayed. For what need of a traitor was there in the case of one who offered himself to the people openly and might quite as easily have been captured by force as taken by treachery? This might, no doubt, have been well enough for another Christ but would not have been suitable in one who was accomplishing prophecies. For it was written, “The righteous one did they sell for silver.” The very amount and the destination of the money, which on Judas’s remorse was recalled “from its first purpose of a fee” and appropriated to the purchase of a potter’s field, as narrated in the Gospel of Matthew, were clearly foretold by Jeremiah: “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him who was valued, and gave them for the potter’s field.”

They take the two sons as types of two peoples, the elder Jewish, the younger Christian.… But if I show that the Jew does not fit the type represented by the elder son, it will be admitted, in consequence, that the Christian is not typified by the younger. Admittedly, the Jew is called a “son” and an “elder son” since he is first by adoption, and although he resents the Christian’s reconciliation with God his Father (this is a point which our opponents seize upon most eagerly), yet the statement “Behold, how many years I serve you and I have never transgressed your commandment” cannot be one which the Jew makes to the Father. For when was Judah not a transgressor of the law? “Hearing with the ear and not hearing, holding in hate him who reproves at the gates and scorning holy speech.”

Jesus’ miracle was performed in the district of Samaria, to which country also belonged one of the lepers. Samaria, however, had revolted from Israel, carrying with it the disaffected nine tribes, which having been alienated by the prophet Ahijah, Jeroboam settled in Samaria. Besides, the Samaritans were always pleased with the mountains and the wells of their ancestors. Thus, in the Gospel of John, the woman of Samaria, when conversing with the Lord at the well, says, “No doubt yours are greater,” and again, “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, but you say that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Accordingly, he who said “woe unto them that trust in the mountain of Samaria,” promising now to restore that very region, purposely requests the men “to go and show themselves to the priests,” because these were to be found only there where the temple was, submitting the Samaritan to the Jew, inasmuch as “salvation was of the Jews,” whether to the Israelite or the Samaritan.

The heavenly intelligences gazed with admiration on “the Jerusalem that is above,” and by the mouth of Isaiah said long ago, “Who are these that fly as clouds, and as doves with their young ones, unto me?” Now, as Christ has prepared for us this ascension into heaven, he must be the Christ of whom Amos spoke: “It is he who builds his ascent up to the heavens,” even for himself and his people.