—to Constantinople. The Patriarch of Alexandria escaped and went to Jerusalem without a single bishop in attendance. There he prepared the chrism, consecrated the churches, and anointed them with it. He then travelled to the emperor, reported the matter to him, and the emperor sent him back to Alexandria.

Ibn al-Batriq (1) relates: The emperor ordered that no Jew was to live in Jerusalem or even pass through it, and that anyone who refused to become Christian was to be killed. Thus the Christian religion gained ascendancy, and a great many Jews embraced it. (2) People then said to the emperor, “The Jews are converting only out of fear of death; inwardly they remain upon their own faith.” He asked, “How can we find that out?” Patriarch Paul replied, “Pork is forbidden in the Torah and the Jews will not eat it. Command that pigs be slaughtered, their meat cooked, and that the Jews be made to eat from it; whoever refuses will be known to persist in Judaism.” (3)

The emperor said, “If the pig is forbidden in the Torah, how can it be lawful for us to eat it and to feed it to others?” Paul answered, “Our Master the Messiah has abrogated everything in the Torah and has brought other laws and a new Torah—the Gospel. In his Gospel it is written: ‘Whatever enters the stomach is neither unlawful nor impure; what defiles a person is what comes out of his mouth.’” (4)

Paul further said, “Peter, the chief of the disciples, was once praying at the sixth—”