Joshua 22:10

Do you wish that I prove to you still more evidently that among that former people, whom Moses foreshadowed in the "two and a half tribes," not all things were whole nor perfect? That history also declares it, which is written in this very little book of Jesus of Nave, when it says that the true altar was indeed in that land which Jesus was dispensing, yet these who were across the Jordan, that is, "Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh, made themselves an altar," but not a true altar, but one that held the type and pattern of the true altar which was with Jesus. Marvel, then, not at all if those who had built neither a whole nor a true altar had not received a whole knowledge of the Trinity.

After these things there was read to us that "the sons of Reuben and the sons of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh, who were beyond the Jordan, had built up a huge altar; but the sons of Israel" — the rest, not knowing why this altar had been erected — "send Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, with ten men chosen from the several tribes," so that, if perhaps they had done this as those "departing from God," having become as it were "apostates" and acting against the commandment of God, they might be assailed by the rest of the sons of Israel; but if otherwise, that they might learn the cause. But those men give satisfaction concerning the altar and say: we know that the true altar is among you, where Jesus dwells, but we made this altar after the likeness of that altar which has been built among you, so that among us too the figure and image of the true altar may be held; "lest perhaps tomorrow," he says, it should please you "to say that the Jordan is a boundary between us and you" and that it itself sets the limit, and therefore "you have no portion" in our altar. Such were the replies they sent. But let us see what mystery this deed contains. The former people of the circumcision is designated in Reuben, who had been the firstborn; but also in Gad, who himself too is a firstborn, from Zilpah, and no less in Manasseh, the "firstborn." But when I say "firstborn," I speak according to time. These things, then, are said lest any division or separation should seem to exist between us and those who were just before the coming of Christ, but so that they might show themselves to be — even though they were before the coming of Christ — nevertheless our brothers. For although they then, before the coming of the Savior, had an altar, yet they knew and perceived that that altar was not the true one, but that it was the form and figure of this true altar that was to come. They knew this: that the true victims, those which could take away sins, were not offered on that altar which the firstborn people had, but on this one, where Jesus was; here the heavenly victims, here the true sacrifices are consummated. There comes to be, then, "one flock and one shepherd," those former just ones and those who are now Christians. But I wish, for the proof of these things, to call to mind also a certain history, if only the Lord deigns to grant that we may be able to…