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9. And not without reason is the number six understood to be put for
a year in the building up of the body of the Lord, as a figure of
which He said that He would raise up in three days the temple
destroyed by the Jews. For they said, "Forty and six years was
this temple in building." And six times forty-six makes two hundred
and seventy-six. And this number of days completes nine months and
six days, which are reckoned, as it were, ten months for the travail
of women; not because all come to the sixth day after the ninth month,
but because the perfection itself of the body of the Lord is found to
have been brought in so many days to the birth, as the authority of the
church maintains upon the tradition of the elders. For He is believed
to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also He
suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which He was conceived,
where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in
which He was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before nor
since. But He was born, according to tradition, upon December the
25th. If, then you reckon from that day to this you find two
hundred and seventy-six days which is forty-six times six. And in
this number of years the temple was built, because in that number of
sixes the body of the Lord was perfected; which being destroyed by the
suffering of death, He raised again on the third day. For "He
spake this of the temple of His body," as is declared by the most
clear and solid testimony of the Gospel; where He said, "For as
Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall
the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the
earth."
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