and the prophets before the Messiah.

The Messiah forbade swine, cursed whoever ate it, and denounced it in the strongest terms—as the Christians themselves admit—meeting his Lord without ever tasting so much as a barley grain’s weight of its flesh, while the Christians seek nearness to him by eating it.

The Messiah never instituted the fast they now observe; he never observed it once in his life, nor did any of his disciples. He never kept the so-called Fast of the Virgins, never ate during a fast what they eat, and never prohibited in it what they prohibit. He did not neglect the Sabbath for even a single day until he was taken up, nor did he ever make Sunday a festival. The Christians acknowledge that he cured Mary Magdalene by casting seven demons out of her, and that when the demons asked, “Where shall we go?” he said, “Enter this unclean beast”—meaning the swine. (1)

Such is the Christians’ own account, yet they claim that the pig is among the purest and most beautiful of animals.

In the matters of sacrifice, marriage, divorce, inheritance, and legal penalties, the Messiah followed the practice of the prophets who preceded him.

Among the Christians there is no worldly penalty at all for one who commits fornication, sodomy (2), or drunkenness, nor, in their view, any punishment in the Hereafter, for the priest or monk grants them absolution. Whenever one of them sins, he offers the priest a gift or pays him a coin or something similar so that he may forgive him. And if a man’s wife commits adultery, he lodges her overnight with the priest to “purify” her for him; when she leaves