Contra Celsum, Book 1

Our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ, when people gave false testimony against him, "kept silent," and when he was accused, "answered nothing," being persuaded that his whole life and his deeds among the Jews were stronger than a voice refuting the false witness or than words of defense against the accusations. But you, God-loving Ambrose, wished—I do not know why—that I should defend Christians against the false testimony Celsus gave against them in his writings, and against his accusation of the faith of the churches in his book. As though there were not a plain refutation in the facts themselves, and a reasoning stronger than all writings, which both makes the false witness vanish and does not allow the accusations even the plausibility of having any force! That Jesus "kept silent" when people gave false testimony against him, it is enough for the present to set out what Matthew says, for Mark wrote words of equal force. Matthew’s text reads as follows: "The high priest and the council looked for false testimony against Jesus, that they might put him to death, and they found none, though many false witnesses came forward. At last two came forward and said: This man said, I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days. And the high priest stood up and said to him: Do you answer nothing? What is it that these men testify against you? But Jesus kept silent." And that he did not answer when he was accused is written as follows: "Now Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, saying: Are you the King of the Jews? And Jesus said to him: You say so. And when he was accused by the chief priests and elders he answered nothing. Then Pilate said to him: Do you not hear how many things they testify against you? And he did not answer him to a single word, so that the governor was greatly amazed." And indeed anyone capable of even moderate understanding would be amazed that a man accused and falsely accused, who was able to defend himself and to show himself guilty of no charge, and to recount the praises of his own life and of his mighty works as done by God, so as to give the judge a way to pronounce more favorably on him, did not do this, but despised his accusers and nobly disregarded them. That the judge would have released Jesus without hesitation if he had made a defense is clear from what is recorded of him, where he said: "Which of the two do you want me to release to you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?" and from what the Scripture adds, saying: "For he knew that it was out of envy that they had handed him over." People, then, are always giving false testimony against Jesus, and so long as there is wickedness among human beings there is no time when he is not accused. And he himself even now keeps silent before these things and makes no answer with his voice; but he makes his defense in the life of his genuine disciples, which cries out what really matters and is stronger than all false witness, refuting and overturning the false witnesses and accusations. I dare, then, to say that the defense you ask me to make weakens the defense that lies in the facts and the power of Jesus that is evident to all who are not without perception. Nevertheless, so that I may not seem reluctant about the task you set me, I have tried, as far as my present ability allows, to dictate against each thing Celsus wrote what seemed to me to overturn his arguments, which cannot shake any believer. And may no one be found who has received such love of God "in Christ Jesus" that his resolve could be shaken by the words of Celsus or of anyone like him. Paul, listing countless things that usually separate people "from the love of Christ" and from "the love of God in Christ Jesus," all of which the love in him surpassed, did not rank argument among the things that separate. Notice that first he says: "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written: For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. But in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." And second, setting out another class of things that by nature separate those who are unsteady in godliness, he says: "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." And truly it would be fitting for us to take pride in a tribulation that does not separate us, or in the things listed after it; but not so Paul and the apostles, and anyone who has become like them, because they are far above such things, saying: "In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us," which is greater than conquering. And if apostles too must take pride in not being separated "from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord," they would take pride that "neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities," nor any of the things that follow, can "separate" them "from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." So I do not rejoice with a believer in Christ whose faith can be shaken by Celsus—who no longer even shares human life but has long been dead—or by any plausibility of argument. I do not know how to classify someone who needs arguments against the charges Celsus writes in his books against Christians to restore him from wavering in faith to standing firm in it. Nevertheless, since among the many people counted as believers some might be found who are shaken and overturned by Celsus's writings, but are healed by a defense against them, if what is said has a character that pulls down Celsus's views and establishes the truth, I decided to obey your command and to dictate an answer to the treatise you sent me. I do not think anyone who has made even a little progress in philosophy would agree that it is a "true word," as Celsus entitled it. Paul, perceiving that there are in Greek philosophy things that should not be dismissed and that many find plausible, which present falsehood as truth, says about them: "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ." And seeing some greatness displayed in the words of the wisdom of the world, he said that the words of the philosophers were "according to the elements of the world." But no one with sense would say that Celsus's writings are "according to the elements of the world." Those, since they had something deceptive, he called "empty deceit," perhaps to distinguish them from a deceit that is not empty, which Jeremiah perceived when he dared to say to God: "You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived; you prevailed and were strong." But Celsus's writings seem to me to have no deceit at all, and so not even empty deceit, such as the writings of those who founded schools in philosophy, and who brought extraordinary intelligence to that purpose, possess. And just as one would not call just any false statement in geometrical theorems a false diagram, or write it up for the sake of the exercise it gives, so the things that are to be called, like those, "empty deceit" and "human tradition, according to the elements of the world" must resemble the thoughts of those who founded schools in philosophy. I decided to place this preface at the beginning after I had dictated everything up to the speech Celsus puts in the mouth of the Jew against Jesus, so that whoever reads what I have dictated against Celsus may meet it first and see that this book has not been written at all for those firm in faith, but either for those wholly without experience of faith in Christ, or for those whom the apostle called weak "in the faith." He said: "Welcome the one who is weak in faith." Let the preface also offer this excuse: that I dictated the beginning of my answer to Celsus with one plan and what follows the beginning with another. At first I intended to note down the headings and briefly what could be said against them, and after that to give the argument a full body; but later the subject itself suggested to me, to save time, that I should be content with what had been dictated in that way at the beginning, and in what followed argue, as far as I could, in the form of a treatise against Celsus's charges against us. So I ask pardon for the beginning of what follows the preface. And if you are not effectively moved by what was dictated afterward either, I ask the same pardon for it too, and refer you—if you still want the answers to Celsus's arguments to come to you by dictation—to those wiser than I and able to overturn Celsus's charges against us in words and books. Better, however, is the one who, even on reading Celsus's treatise, does not need any defense against it at all, but despises everything in his book as something that even an ordinary believer in Christ rightly despises because of the Spirit that is in him.

Celsus's first heading, in his wish to slander Christianity, is that Christians make secret agreements with one another contrary to the laws: of agreements, he says, some are public, those made according to the laws, and others secret, those concluded contrary to what is lawful. And he wants to slander the so-called love of Christians for one another, which arises, he says, from their common danger and is stronger than oaths. Since, then, he harps on the common law, saying that the agreements of Christians are contrary to it, we must answer this: suppose someone living among the Scythians, who have lawless laws, had no opportunity to leave and were forced to live among them. He would reasonably, for the sake of the law of truth—which to the Scythians is lawlessness—make agreements with those who think as he does, contrary to what the Scythians hold lawful. So, before the court of truth, the laws of the nations about images and godless polytheism are laws of Scythians, or of people even more irreverent than the Scythians. It is not unreasonable, then, to make agreements contrary to the laws when they are made for the sake of truth. For just as, if some people secretly made agreements to kill a tyrant who had seized the city, they would do well, so also Christians, since the one they call the devil, and falsehood, rule as tyrant, make agreements against the devil that are contrary to the devil's laws, and for the salvation of others whom they can persuade to revolt from the law that is, as it were, Scythian and tyrannical.

Next he says that the doctrine—evidently Judaism, on which Christianity depends—was barbarian in origin. And fairly enough he does not criticize the teaching for its barbarian origin, but praises the barbarians as capable of discovering doctrines; he adds, however, that the Greeks are better at judging, establishing, and putting what the barbarians discovered into practice to cultivate virtue. From what he says, then, we have this for the defense of what is contained in Christianity, since it is true: someone who comes to the teaching from Greek doctrines and training would not only judge it true, but by practicing it would also establish it and supply what seems lacking from the standpoint of Greek demonstration, establishing the truth of Christianity. We must say further that the teaching has a demonstration of its own, more divine than Greek demonstration from dialectic. This more divine one the apostle calls the demonstration "of the Spirit and of power": "of the Spirit" because of the prophecies, which are able to convince the reader, above all in what concerns Christ; and "of power" because of the wonderful mighty works, which can be shown to have happened from many other proofs and also because traces of them are still preserved among those who live according to the will of the Word.

After this, having said that Christians do and teach what they like in secret, and that they do not do this without reason, since they are warding off the death penalty that hangs over them, he compares their danger with the dangers that philosophy faced, as in the case of Socrates; he could have added Pythagoras and other philosophers too. We must answer this: in the case of Socrates the Athenians immediately regretted their actions, and no bitterness about him remained among them, nor in the case of Pythagoras; at any rate the Pythagoreans kept up their schools for a long time in Italy, in what was called Magna Graecia. But against the Christians the Roman Senate, the emperors of each period, the army, the peoples, and the relatives of believers made war on the teaching, and they would have stopped it, overcome by the plotting of so many, if by divine power it had not risen above it and climbed over it, so as to conquer the whole world plotting against it.

Let us see also how he thinks he can slander our moral teaching on the ground that it is shared with the other philosophers and is not a revered or new doctrine. To this we must say that, for those who teach a just judgment of God, punishment for sins would have been ruled out if all did not have, according to the common notions, a sound preconception about moral matters. So it is no wonder that the same God has sown in the souls of all human beings what he taught through the prophets and the Savior, so that every human being may be without excuse at the divine judgment, having the purpose "of the law written" in his own heart. This the Scripture hinted at in what the Greeks think a myth, when it portrayed God writing the commandments with his own "finger" and giving them to Moses, which the wickedness of those who made the calf "broke"—as if it were saying that the flood of sin washed them away. The second time God wrote them again and gave them after Moses had cut stones, as though the prophetic word were preparing the soul, after the first sin, for a second writing of God.

Setting out the teaching about idolatry as unique to those who follow the Word, he even adds support for it, saying that for this reason they do not regard gods made with hands as gods, since it is not reasonable that things made by the most worthless craftsmen, of wicked character, often fashioned by unjust men, should be gods. In what follows, then, wanting to make it common property, as though it were not first discovered by this teaching, he quotes a saying of Heraclitus: "Those who approach lifeless things as gods act as if one were to hold conversation with houses." About this too we must say that, as with the rest of moral teaching, notions were sown in human beings from which Heraclitus, and any other Greek or barbarian, thought of establishing this. For he mentions the Persians too as thinking so, citing Herodotus who records it. We will add ourselves that Zeno of Citium too says in his Republic: "There will be no need to build temples; for no temple ought to be thought of great worth or holy, since it is the work of builders and mechanics." It is clear, then, that on this doctrine too what must be done has been written "in the hearts" of human beings by the letters of God.

After this, moved by some reason I do not know, Celsus says that Christians seem to get their power from the names of certain demons and from incantations, hinting, I suppose, at those who use spells and drive out demons. But he seems plainly to be slandering the teaching. For they do not seem to get their power from incantations but from the name of Jesus, together with the recounting of the stories about him. For these, when spoken, have often made demons leave human beings, especially when those who speak them speak with a sound attitude and genuine faith. Indeed the name of Jesus has such power against the demons that sometimes it is effective even when named by wicked men. Jesus taught this when he said: "Many will say to me on that day: In your name we cast out demons and did mighty works." I do not know whether Celsus passed this over deliberately and maliciously or through ignorance. In what follows he accuses the Savior too, as having been able by sorcery to do the seemingly wonderful things he did, and as foreseeing that others, having learned the same lessons, would do the same, boasting that they do it by the power of God—people whom Jesus drives out of his own community. And he accuses him as follows: if he rightly drives them out while guilty of the same things himself, he is wicked; but if he is not wicked for doing these things, neither are those who act as he did. On the contrary, even if it seems impossible to prove how Jesus did these things, it is clear that Christians use no practice of incantations but succeed by the name of Jesus and other words believed according to divine Scripture.

Next, since he often calls our doctrine secret, here too he must be refuted, since almost the whole world knows the preaching of Christians better than the opinions of the philosophers. For who does not know of the birth of Jesus from a virgin, and of the crucified one, and of his resurrection, believed by many, and of the judgment that is proclaimed, which punishes sinners as they deserve and counts the righteous worthy of reward? Even the mystery of the resurrection, not being understood, is bandied about and laughed at by unbelievers. To say, then, that in view of all this the doctrine is secret is quite absurd. That there are certain things, as it were beyond the public teachings, which do not reach most people, is not unique to Christian teaching but belongs also to that of the philosophers, among whom some teachings were public and others reserved for initiates. Some heard Pythagoras only as "he himself said," while others were taught in secret the things not fit to reach uninitiated ears not yet purified. And all the mysteries everywhere, in Greece and in the barbarian world, though secret, have not been slandered. So he slanders the secret element of Christianity in vain, without even understanding it accurately.

He seems, with some cleverness, to plead in a way on behalf of those who bear witness to Christianity even to death, saying: "And I do not say that one who holds a good doctrine, if he is going to be in danger among men because of it, must abandon the doctrine or pretend to have abandoned it or deny it." He even condemns those who hold Christian views but pretend not to, or deny them, saying that one who holds the doctrine ought not to pretend to have abandoned it or deny it. Celsus must be shown to contradict himself. For from other writings he is found to be an Epicurean; but here, because he seems to accuse the teaching more reasonably if he does not admit Epicurus's views, he pretends that there is in man something better than the earthly, akin to God, and he says that "those in whom this is in good condition"—that is, the soul—"strive in every way for what is akin to them" (he means God), "and long always to hear something about him and to be reminded of him." See, then, the insincerity of his soul: having said beforehand that one who holds a good doctrine, even if he is going to be in danger among men because of it, must not abandon the doctrine nor pretend to have abandoned it nor deny it, he himself falls into all the opposite faults. For he knew that if he admitted he was an Epicurean he would have no credibility in accusing those who in any way introduce providence and set God over what exists. We have learned that there were two Epicureans named Celsus, the earlier in the time of Nero, and this one in the time of Hadrian and later.

After this he urges us to accept doctrines by following reason and a rational guide, since deception always occurs when someone assents to people without this. And he likens those who believe without reason to the begging priests of Cybele and soothsayers, to devotees of Mithras and Sabazius, and to whatever one may come across—apparitions of Hecate or of some other demon or demons. For as among those, he says, wicked men often take advantage of the simplicity of the easily deceived and lead them where they wish, so it happens also among Christians. He says that some, not even wishing to give or receive a reason for what they believe, use the sayings "Do not examine, but believe" and "Your faith will save you." And he says that they say: "The wisdom in the world is an evil, and foolishness a good." To this we must say that if it were possible for all to leave the business of life and devote their time to philosophy, no one should pursue any other way but this alone. For in Christianity there will be found—not to say anything vulgar—no less examination of what is believed, and explanation of the riddles in the prophets, of the parables in the Gospels, and of countless other things done or legislated symbolically. But if this is impossible, partly because of the necessities of life and partly because of human weakness, since very few rush toward reason, what better method could be found for helping the many than the one handed down to the nations by Jesus? And we ask about the multitude of believers who have put away the great flood of wickedness in which they used to wallow: is it better for them, believing without reason, to have had their characters somehow reformed and to have been helped by their belief about those punished for sins and honored for good works, or not to admit their conversion with simple faith until they give themselves to the examination of arguments? For clearly all but a very few would not receive even what they have received from simply believing, but would remain in a most wicked life. If, then, anything else establishes that the love of humanity in the teaching has not come to dwell in human life without God, this too must be counted with it. For a devout person will not think that even a doctor who treats bodies, who has brought many sick people to health, dwells in cities and nations without God; for nothing good happens among human beings without God. And if the one who has healed the bodies of many, or improved them, does not heal without God, how much more the one who has healed and converted and improved the souls of many, attached them to the God over all, and taught them to refer every action to what pleases him and to avoid everything displeasing to God, down to the least of what is said or done or even comes into the mind?

Next, since they make much of what concerns faith, we must say that we, accepting it as useful for the many, admit that we teach those who cannot leave everything and pursue the examination of reason to believe even without reason; but they, while not admitting this, do it in practice. For who, when urged toward philosophy and throwing himself at random into some school of philosophers, or because he has found such-and-such a teacher, comes to it in any other way than by believing that that school is better? For he does not wait to hear the arguments of all the philosophers and of the different schools, and the refutation of these and the establishment of others, and then choose to be a Stoic, a Platonist, a Peripatetic, an Epicurean, or of any school of philosophers whatever. Rather, by some irrational impulse, even if they do not wish to admit it, they come to practice, say, the Stoic teaching, leaving the rest: dismissing the Platonic teaching as inferior to the others, or the Peripatetic teaching as too concerned with human affairs and as admitting, more candidly than the other schools, the goods of human life. And some, disturbed at first encounter with the argument about providence by what happens on earth to the wicked and the good, have too hastily assented to the view that there is no providence at all, and have chosen the teaching of Epicurus and Celsus.

If, then, we must believe, as the argument has shown, some one of those who introduced schools among Greeks or barbarians, how much more must we believe the God over all and the one who teaches that he alone must be worshiped, and that the rest must be disregarded, either as not existing, or as existing and worthy of honor but not of adoration and worship? About these things one who does not merely believe but also contemplates matters with reason will state the demonstrations that occur to him and are found by diligent inquiry. And since all human affairs depend on faith, how is it not more reasonable to believe God rather than them? For who sails, or marries, or fathers children, or sows seed in the earth, without believing that the better outcome will come, though the opposite is possible and sometimes happens? Yet the faith that the better outcome, the one prayed for, will come makes everyone venture even on things uncertain that could turn out otherwise. And if hope, and a more hopeful faith about the future, holds life together in every action whose outcome is uncertain, how will this not more reasonably be accepted by one who believes—beyond the sea that is sailed, the earth that is sown, the wife that is married, and the other affairs of human life—in the God who created all these things, and in him who with surpassing greatness of mind and divine generosity of spirit dared to present this teaching to those in every part of the world, with great dangers and a death thought shameful, which he endured for human beings, and who taught those who were persuaded at the beginning to serve his teaching to dare, with every danger and with deaths always expected, to travel everywhere in the world for the salvation of human beings?

Next, since Celsus says in these very words: "If they are willing to answer me—not as one who is testing them (for I know everything), but as one who cares equally for all—it will be well. But if they are unwilling and say, as they usually do, 'Do not examine,'" and so on, "they must," he says, "teach me what kind of things they are that they say, and from where they have flowed," and so on. To the words "for I know everything," which he has so boastfully dared to say, we must say that if he had read the prophets especially, which are admittedly full of riddles and of words obscure to the many, and if he had met the parables of the Gospels, and the rest of the writing of the law and of Jewish history, and the utterances of the apostles, and after reading them had wished in good faith to enter into the meaning of the words, he would not have been so bold, nor said, "for I know everything." Not even we who have spent our time in these writings would say, "for I know everything"—for we value truth. None of us will say, "I know everything of Epicurus," or will be confident that he knows everything of Plato, since there are so many disagreements even among those who explain them. Who is so bold as to say, "I know all the Stoic teaching," or "all the Peripatetic"? Unless perhaps, having heard this "for I know everything" from some stupid ordinary people who do not perceive their own ignorance, he thought that, having used such teachers, he knew everything. He seems to me to have done something like a man who visited Egypt, where the wise men of the Egyptians philosophize much, according to their ancestral writings, about what they hold to be divine, while the ordinary people, hearing certain myths whose meanings they do not understand, pride themselves on them—and who thought he knew everything about the Egyptians, having been taught by their ordinary people, without associating with any of the priests or learning the Egyptian secrets from any of them. What I have said about the wise and the ordinary people of the Egyptians can be seen also of the Persians, among whom there are rites honored rationally by the learned among them but performed symbolically by the many and more superficial among them. The same must be said of the Syrians and Indians and all who have both myths and writings.

Since Celsus has set down as a saying of many Christians, "The wisdom in life is an evil, and foolishness a good," we must say that he slanders the teaching, not quoting the actual text found in Paul, which reads as follows: "If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become a fool, that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." So the apostle does not say simply, "Wisdom is foolishness with God," but "the wisdom of this world." And again, not "If anyone among you thinks he is wise, let him become a fool" without qualification, but "let him become a fool in this age, that he may become wise." So by "the wisdom of this age" we mean all philosophy holding false opinions, which according to the Scriptures is brought to nothing; and we call foolishness good not absolutely, but when someone becomes "a fool" to this age. It is as if we were to say that the Platonist, who believes in the immortality of the soul and in what is said about it concerning transmigration, has taken up foolishness in the eyes of the Stoics, who ridicule assent to these things, and of the Peripatetics, who harp on Plato's "twitterings," and of the Epicureans, who charge with superstition those who introduce providence and set God over the universe. Further, that even according to the mind of the Word it is far better to assent to doctrines with reason and wisdom than with simple faith, and that the Word wished this latter too only by force of circumstances, so as not to leave human beings entirely without help, is shown by Jesus' genuine disciple Paul, who said: "For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know God, God was pleased through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe." It is clearly shown by these words that God ought to have been known in the wisdom of God; and since this did not happen, God was pleased, as a second course, to save those who believe, not by foolishness simply, but by foolishness so far as preaching is concerned. For Jesus Christ crucified, when preached at the beginning, is the foolishness of preaching, as Paul too, perceiving this, says: "But we preach Jesus Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."

Celsus, thinking that among many of the nations there is a kinship of the same teaching, names all the nations as having originated such a doctrine; but, I do not know why, he slanders the Jews alone, not counting their nation among the rest as having either labored together with them and shared their views, or taught similar doctrines on many points. It is fair, then, to ask him why he has believed the histories of barbarians and Greeks about the antiquity of the nations he named, but treats as false the histories of this nation alone. For if each people set out its own affairs truthfully, why do we distrust only the prophets of the Jews? And if Moses and the prophets wrote many things about their own people to favor their own teaching, why should we not say the same about the writers among the other nations? Or are the Egyptians, when they speak ill of the Jews in their histories, trustworthy about the Jews, while the Jews, saying the same about the Egyptians—recording that they suffered much unjustly and saying that for this reason the Egyptians were punished by God—are lying? And this must be said not only about the Egyptians; for we will find a conflict of the Assyrians with the Jews, and this recorded in the Assyrian antiquities. So also the Jewish writers—not to seem to beg the question by saying "the prophets"—recorded the Assyrians as their enemies. See, then, at once the self-love of one who believes some nations as wise and condemns others as altogether foolish. For listen to Celsus saying that "there is an ancient teaching from the beginning, with which the wisest nations and cities and wise men have always been occupied." And he would not call the Jews a very wise nation, even on a par with the Egyptians, Assyrians, Indians, Persians, Odrysians, Samothracians, and Eleusinians.

How much better than Celsus—and he showed himself outstanding in many ways, tested more doctrines, and gathered from more sources what he thought true—is the Pythagorean Numenius! In the first book of his On the Good, speaking of the nations that have held God to be without a body, he included the Jews among them, not hesitating to use even the prophetic words in his treatise and to interpret them figuratively. It is also said that Hermippus, in the first book of On Lawgivers, recorded that Pythagoras brought his own philosophy from the Jews to the Greeks. And a book on the Jews is attributed to Hecataeus the historian, in which he is so inclined to regard the nation as wise that Herennius Philo, in his treatise on the Jews, first doubts whether the treatise is by the historian, and second says that if it is his, he was probably carried away by the persuasiveness of the Jews and assented to their teaching.

I wonder how Celsus placed the Odrysians, Samothracians, Eleusinians, and Hyperboreans among the most ancient and wisest nations, but did not see fit to admit the Jews either among the wise or among the ancient, though many writings are current among Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Greeks testifying to their antiquity, which I have thought unnecessary to set out. For anyone who wishes can read what Flavius Josephus wrote on the antiquity of the Jews in two books, where he brings a great collection of writers testifying to the antiquity of the Jews. And there is the Oration to the Greeks of Tatian, a later writer, who sets out with great learning those who have written about the antiquity of the Jews and of Moses. Celsus seems, then, to say these things not truthfully but out of hostility, aiming to accuse the origin of Christianity, which depends on the Jews. Yet he says that Homer's Galactophagi, the Druids of the Gauls, and the Getae are very wise and ancient nations, holding views akin to the Jewish teachings—though I do not know whether any writings of theirs survive—while he excludes the Hebrews alone, as far as it lies with him, from both antiquity and wisdom. And again, making a list of ancient and wise men who benefited their contemporaries, and their successors through writings, he excluded Moses from the list of the wise. Yet of Linus, whom Celsus put first among those he named, neither laws nor teachings survive that have converted and healed nations; but a whole nation, scattered through all the world, carries the laws of Moses. See, then, whether he did not plainly act maliciously in excluding Moses too from the list of the wise, while saying that Linus, Musaeus, Orpheus, Pherecydes, the Persian Zoroaster, and Pythagoras had understood these matters, and that their doctrines were set down in books and have been preserved to this day. And he deliberately forgot the myth about the so-called gods as subject to human passions, recorded above all by Orpheus.

In what follows, accusing the history of Moses, he blames those who interpret it figuratively and allegorize it. One might say to this most noble author, who entitled his book The True Word: Why, sir, do you speak solemnly of the gods, who, as your wise poets and philosophers record, fall into such great misfortunes, engage in cursed sexual unions, make war on their fathers, and cut off their private parts—as having been recorded to have dared, done, and suffered such things; but when Moses says no such thing about God, nor even about holy angels, but far lesser things about human beings (for with him no one dared what Cronus did against Uranus, or what Zeus did against his father, nor did "the father of men and gods" have intercourse with his own daughter), you all think that those who received laws from him were deceived and led astray? Celsus seems to me to do something like Plato's Thrasymachus, who does not allow Socrates to answer as he wishes about justice but says: "See that you do not say that justice is what is advantageous, or what is necessary, or anything else of that sort." For he too, having accused, as he thinks, the histories in Moses, and having blamed those who allegorize them—while also giving them a kind of praise, that they are the more reasonable—in effect prevents, after accusing as he wishes, those who are able from defending them as the facts naturally are.

We would say, challenging him to compare book with book: Come, sir, bring the poems of Linus, Musaeus, and Orpheus and the writing of Pherecydes, and examine them alongside the laws of Moses, setting histories beside histories and moral discourses beside laws and commandments; and see which are more able to convert their hearers immediately, and which of them might even ruin the listener. And consider how the band of your writers took little thought for those who would read them at face value, but wrote their own philosophy, as you say, only for those able to interpret figuratively and allegorize; whereas Moses, in his five books, has acted like a noble orator who studies his form and everywhere carefully presents the double meaning of his words: he has given the many Jews who received his laws no occasion for moral harm, while giving the few who can read with greater understanding writings full of ideas to contemplate, if they can investigate his meaning. And the books of your wise poets seem no longer even to be preserved, though they would have been kept if the reader had perceived any benefit; but the writings of Moses have moved many even of those who are strangers to the Jewish way of life to believe that, as the writings proclaim, the one who first gave them as law and handed them to Moses was God, the creator of the world. For it was fitting that the maker of the whole world, having laid down laws for the whole world, should give his words a power able to prevail over people everywhere. And I say this not yet examining the case of Jesus, but still showing that Moses, who is far inferior to the Lord, is, as the argument will prove, far superior to your wise poets and philosophers.

After this Celsus, secretly wishing to slander the account of the making of the world according to Moses, which shows that the world is not yet ten thousand years old but much short of that, sides with those who say that the world is uncreated, while concealing his intention. For in saying that there have been many great fires throughout eternity and many floods, and that the flood in the time of Deucalion is the more recent, having happened lately, he clearly shows those able to understand him that in his view the world is uncreated. Let the one who finds fault with the faith of Christians tell us by what demonstrative arguments he was compelled to accept that there have been many great fires and many floods, and that the most recent of all are the flood in the time of Deucalion and the great fire in the time of Phaethon. But if he puts forward Plato's dialogues on these matters, we will tell him that we too may believe that in the pure and devout soul of Moses—who rose above everything created and attached himself to the maker of the universe—a divine spirit dwelt, which explained the things of God far more clearly than Plato and the wise men among Greeks and barbarians. And if he demands of us reasons for such a faith, let him first give reasons for what he himself asserted without proof, and then we will establish that our views are so.

Yet Celsus, even unwillingly, has fallen into testifying that the world is rather recent and not yet ten thousand years old, when he says that the Greeks too consider these things ancient because, on account of the floods and great fires, they have not seen or remembered older things. Let Celsus have as teachers of the myth of great fires and floods the Egyptians, in his view the wisest of men—traces of whose wisdom are irrational animals worshiped, and arguments showing that such worship of God is reasonable and hidden and mystical. If the Egyptians, glorifying their teaching about animals, put forward theological explanations, they are wise; but if one who has assented to the law and lawgiver of the Jews refers everything to the only God, the maker of the universe, he is considered by Celsus and those like him inferior to one who brings down divinity not only into rational and mortal animals but even into irrational ones—beyond the mythical transmigration about the soul that falls from the vault of heaven and descends even to irrational animals, not only tame but also the wildest. And if the Egyptians tell myths, they are believed to have philosophized through riddles and secrets; but if Moses, writing for a whole nation, leaves them histories and laws, his words are thought to be empty myths not even admitting allegory.

For this is the view of Celsus and the Epicureans. "Moses," he says, "having heard this teaching that was current among the wise nations and eminent men, gained a name for divine inspiration." To this too we must say—granting him that Moses heard an older teaching and handed it on to the Hebrews—that if he heard a false teaching, neither wise nor revered, and accepted it and handed it on to those under him, he is blameworthy; but if, as you say, he assented to wise and true doctrines and educated his own people by them, what has he done that deserves accusation? If only Epicurus, Aristotle, who is less irreverent than Epicurus about providence, and the Stoics, who said that God is a body, had heard this teaching! Then the world would not have been filled with a teaching that sets providence aside, or cuts it short, or introduces a perishable, bodily first principle, according to which even God is a body for the Stoics, who are not ashamed to say that he is changeable, altered and transformed throughout, and in a word able to perish if there is something to destroy him, but fortunate enough not to perish because there is nothing to destroy him. But the teaching of Jews and Christians, which preserves the unchangeableness and unalterableness of God, is thought irreverent, because it does not share the irreverence of those who hold irreverent views about God, saying in its prayers to the Divine: "But you are the same." And God is believed to have said: "I have not changed."

After this Celsus, without slandering the circumcision of the private parts practiced by the Jews, says that it came from the Egyptians, believing the Egyptians rather than Moses, who says that Abraham was the first among human beings to be circumcised. And it is not only Moses who records the name of Abraham, associating him closely with God; many of those who cast spells on demons also use in their formulas "the God of Abraham," achieving results through the name and through God's close relation to the righteous man. That is why they adopt the phrase "the God of Abraham," though they do not know who Abraham is. The same must be said of Isaac, Jacob, and Israel: these names, admittedly Hebrew, are sown in many places in the lore of the Egyptians who profess to work some effect. But the meaning of circumcision, which began with Abraham and was stopped by Jesus, who did not wish his disciples to do the same, is not our business to explain now. For the present occasion is not for teaching about these matters, but for a contest that pulls down the charges Celsus brings against the Jewish teaching, since he thinks he will more quickly prove Christianity false if, by accusing its origin, which lies in the Jewish writings, he shows that too to be false.

Next Celsus says that "the goatherds and shepherds who followed Moses as their leader, deceived by crude tricks, thought there was one God." Let him show, then, since the goatherds and shepherds, as he thinks, abandoned the worship of the gods without reason, how he himself can establish the multitude of gods among the Greeks or the other barbarians. Let him show the actual existence of Mnemosyne, who bore the Muses to Zeus, or of Themis, who bore the Hours; or let him show that the Graces, always naked, can have real existence. But he will not be able to show from the facts that the fictions of the Greeks, which seem to be given bodies, are gods. For why are the Greek myths about the gods truer than, say, those of the Egyptians, who in their language know neither Mnemosyne as mother of the nine Muses, nor Themis of the Hours, nor Eurynome as one of the Graces, nor their other names? How much more effective, and better than all these fictions, it is to be persuaded from what is seen, by the good order of the world, to worship its maker as one, since it is one and wholly in harmony with itself, and therefore cannot have come to be by many makers, just as the whole heaven is not held together by many souls moving it. For one is enough, which carries the whole sphere of fixed stars from east to west and embraces within it all the things the world needs, which are not self-sufficient. For all are parts of the world, but God is no part of a whole; for God must not be incomplete, as a part is incomplete. And perhaps a deeper account will show that God, strictly speaking, just as he is not a part, so also is not a whole, since a whole is made of parts; and reason does not allow us to accept that the God over all is made of parts, each of which cannot do what the other parts do.

After this he says that "the goatherds and shepherds thought there was one God, whether they call him the Most High, or Adonai, or the Heavenly One, or Sabaoth, or however and in whatever way they like to name this world; and they knew nothing more." And next he says that it makes no difference to call the God over all by the name current among the Greeks, Zeus, or by such-and-such a name, say, among the Indians, or such-and-such among the Egyptians. To this we must say that a deep and secret question arises here, the one about the nature of names: whether, as Aristotle thinks, names are by convention; or, as the Stoics believe, by nature, the first sounds imitating the things of which the names are names—on which ground they also introduce certain elements of etymology; or, as Epicurus teaches, differently from what the Stoics think, names are by nature, the first human beings having burst out with certain sounds about things. If, then, we can establish in a special treatise the nature of effective names, some of which the wise men of the Egyptians use, or the learned among the Persian magi, or the Brahmans or Samanaeans among the philosophers of India, and so on for each of the nations; and if we can prove that so-called magic is not, as the followers of Epicurus and Aristotle think, something altogether incoherent, but, as those skilled in it demonstrate, coherent, though having reasons known to very few—then we will say that the name Sabaoth, and Adonai, and the other names handed down among the Hebrews with great reverence, are not applied to ordinary and created things but to a certain secret theology that refers to the maker of the universe. That is why these names, when spoken with the sequence that is woven together with them, can be employed for certain purposes; while others, current in the Egyptian language, apply to certain demons who can do only such-and-such things, and others in the Persian language to other powers, and so on for each of the nations. And so it will be found that the names of the demons on earth, who have been allotted different places, are current in the languages proper to each place and nation. So one who has gained a nobler understanding of these things, even a little, will take care not to apply different names to different things wrongly, so that he does not suffer the same as those who wrongly give the name "god" to lifeless matter, or drag down the title "good" from the first cause, or from virtue and the beautiful, to blind wealth, or to the proportion of flesh and blood and bones in health and fitness, or to what is thought noble birth.

And perhaps the danger is no less for one who brings down the name of God, or the name of the good, to things to which it should not be applied, than for one who exchanges names that belong to some secret doctrine, applying those of lesser things to greater and those of greater things to lesser. And I need not mention that the name Zeus immediately suggests also the son of Cronus and Rhea, the husband of Hera, the brother of Poseidon, the father of Athena and Artemis, the one who had intercourse with his daughter Persephone; or that Apollo suggests the son of Leto and Zeus, the brother of Artemis, and half-brother of Hermes on his father's side—and all the other things put forward by Celsus's wise fathers of doctrine and the ancient theologians of the Greeks. For what arbitrary choice is it that Zeus should be named properly, but that his father should not be Cronus and his mother Rhea? The same must be done with the other so-called gods. But this charge in no way touches those who, according to some secret doctrine, apply Sabaoth to God, or Adonai, or any of the other names. And when someone can philosophize about the secret teachings on names, he may find much also about the naming of God's angels, of whom one is called Michael, another Gabriel, and another Raphael, in accordance with the tasks they serve in the universe by the will of the God of all. The name of our Jesus also belongs to the same philosophy of names; it has already been clearly seen to drive countless demons out of souls and bodies, exerting its power on those from whom they were driven out. Further, on the subject of names, we must say that those skilled in the use of incantations report that when the same incantation is spoken in its own language it can accomplish what the incantation promises, but when translated into any other language whatever it can be seen to be weak and powerless. So it is not the things signified but the qualities and properties of the sounds that have some power in themselves for this or that. In this way we will also defend Christians who struggle even to death rather than proclaim Zeus as god or name him in another language. For they confess either the common name "God" without further qualification, or with the addition: "the maker of the universe, the creator of heaven and earth, who sent down to the human race such-and-such wise men"—so that the name "God," when joined to this name, accomplishes a certain power among human beings. Much else could be said on names against those who think we should be indifferent about using them. And if Plato is admired for saying in the Philebus, "My fear, Protarchus, about the names of the gods is not small," because Philebus, Socrates' partner in conversation, had called pleasure a god, how much more should we approve the reverence of Christians who attach to the maker of the universe none of the names used in the making of myths? But enough of this for now.

Let us see how Celsus, who professes to know everything, slanders the Jews, saying that they worship angels and are devoted to sorcery, of which Moses became their instructor. Where in the writings of Moses did he find the lawgiver teaching them to worship angels? Let him who professes to know the affairs of Christians and Jews tell us that, and how sorcery exists among those who have received the law of Moses and have read: "You must not attach yourselves to enchanters, to be defiled by them." He promises to teach next how the Jews too went astray through ignorance and were deceived. If he had discovered the ignorance of the Jews about Jesus the Christ, in not listening to the prophecies about him, he would truly have taught how the Jews went astray; but as it is, not even wishing to imagine this, he supposes things that are not errors of the Jews to be errors. Having promised to teach later about the Jews, Celsus first speaks about our Savior, as the founder of our community as Christians; and he says that "a very few years ago he became the leader of this teaching, being thought by Christians to be the Son of God." About the claim that he lived a few years ago we will say this: is it without God that Jesus, wishing in so few years to sow his word and teaching, was able to do so much that in many parts of our world many Greeks and barbarians, wise and foolish, were so disposed toward his teaching that they struggled even to death for Christianity so as not to renounce it—something that no one is recorded to have done for any other doctrine? I, for my part, not flattering the teaching but trying to examine the facts with reflection, would say that not even those who heal many sick bodies attain the goal of bodily health without God. And if someone could free souls from the flood of wickedness, from sexually uncontrolled and unjust deeds, and from contempt of the Divine, and could give proof of such a work in, say, a hundred people improved (let the argument run on that number), would not one reasonably say that it was not without God that he implanted in the hundred a teaching that freed them from so many evils? And if one who considers these things fairly agrees that nothing better has happened among human beings without God, how much more confidently will he declare this of Jesus, comparing the former lives of many who come to his teaching with their later lives, and considering in how much sexual excess, injustice, and greed each of them lived before—as Celsus and those who think like him say—they were deceived and accepted a teaching that, as they say, ruins human life; and in what way, from the time they received the teaching, they have become more reasonable, more serious, and more stable, so that some of them, out of love of surpassing purity and in order to worship the Divine more purely, abstain even from sexual relations permitted by the law?

Anyone examining the facts will see that Jesus attempted things greater than human nature, and having attempted them, accomplished them. For although from the beginning everyone opposed the sowing of his teaching over the whole world—the emperors of each period, the commanders and governors under them, and, so to speak, all who had been entrusted with any authority whatever, and further the rulers in the cities, the soldiers, and the peoples—it conquered, since as the Word of God it could not by nature be hindered. And having become stronger than so many adversaries, it prevailed over all Greece and still more of the barbarian world, and converted countless souls to the worship of God that he taught. And since among the multitude conquered by the teaching the ordinary and more unsophisticated people are many times more numerous than those trained in learning, it was inevitable that the ordinary and unsophisticated should be many times more numerous than the more intelligent. But Celsus, not wishing to consider this, thinks that the love of humanity of the teaching, which reaches every soul "from the rising of the sun," is vulgar, and that because of its vulgarity and its complete lack of power in argument it has prevailed over the uneducated alone. Yet not even he says that only the uneducated have been brought by the teaching to the worship of God according to Jesus; for he admits that there are among them some who are moderate, reasonable, and intelligent, and ready for allegory.

Since he also uses an imaginary speaker—imitating, in a way, a boy brought on by a rhetorician—and introduces a Jew saying to Jesus some childish things, not worthy of a philosopher’s gray hair, come, let us examine these too as best we can and show that he has not even kept, in what is said, the character wholly appropriate to the Jew. After this he introduces a Jew conversing with Jesus himself and refuting him, as he thinks, on many points: first, that he invented his birth from a virgin. He also criticizes him for having come from a Jewish village and from a local woman, poor and working for her living with her hands. He says that she was even driven out by her husband, a carpenter by trade, having been convicted of adultery. Then he says that, cast out by her husband and wandering in disgrace, she secretly gave birth to Jesus; and that he, hiring himself out in Egypt because of poverty, and there trying his hand at certain powers on which the Egyptians pride themselves, returned proud of these powers, and because of them proclaimed himself God. But all this, to one who can leave nothing said by unbelievers unexamined but inquires into the origin of things, seems to me to agree with Jesus having been worthy of the prophecy that he is the Son of God.

For among human beings, what helps someone become distinguished and famous and have a celebrated name is birth, when the parents are of high rank and standing; the wealth of those who raised him and could spend on the education of their son; and a great and notable homeland. But when someone who has all the opposite of these can rise above the obstacles to his becoming known, and can stir those who hear of him, and become famous and known to the whole world, which says conflicting things about him, how must we not admire such a nature at once as noble, undertaking great things, and having a boldness that cannot be dismissed? And if one examined the case of such a man further, how would he not ask how, brought up in lowly circumstances and poverty, having received no general education, and having learned no arguments or doctrines by which he might have become persuasive in addressing crowds, leading the people, and drawing many hearers, he devotes himself to teaching new doctrines, bringing to the human race a teaching that abolishes the customs of the Jews while honoring their prophets, and overthrows the laws of the Greeks, especially about the Divine? How could such a man, so brought up, who (as even his detractors admit) learned nothing revered from any human being, say such things, which cannot be dismissed, about the judgment of God, about punishments of wickedness and rewards of the good, so that not only unsophisticated and uneducated people were led by what he said, but also many of the more intelligent and those able to see what is hidden in statements that seem to be expressed simply, which contains, so to speak, something more secret within? The man from Seriphos in Plato, criticizing Themistocles, who had become celebrated for his generalship, as having won his fame not by his own character but by the good fortune of having the most notable homeland in all Greece, heard from Themistocles—who was fair-minded and saw that his homeland had also contributed to his fame—"Neither would I have become so famous if I had been a Seriphian, nor would you have become a Themistocles if you had had the good fortune to be an Athenian." But our Jesus, criticized for coming from a village, and that not a Greek one nor belonging to any nation held in honor by the many, and slandered as the son of a poor woman working with her hands, and as having left his homeland because of poverty to hire himself out in Egypt—being, to follow the example taken, not only a Seriphian from the smallest and most obscure island, but even, so to speak, the lowest-born of Seriphians—has been able to stir the whole world of human beings, not only more than Themistocles the Athenian, but more than Pythagoras and Plato and any others of the world's wise men, kings, or generals whatever.

Who, then, examining the nature of things with more than passing attention, would not be amazed at him, who conquered and was able to rise in glory above everything that produces obscurity, and above all who were ever famous? And yet those famous among human beings have rarely been able to win fame for many things at once. One was admired and became famous for wisdom, another for generalship, some barbarians for wonderful powers from incantations, and others for other things, not many at once. But he is admired, besides other things, for wisdom, for mighty works, and for his power to lead. For he persuaded some to revolt with him from the laws, not as a tyrant, nor as a robber, preparing his followers for combat against people, nor as a rich man, supplying those who came to him, nor as any of those admittedly blameworthy, but as a teacher of the doctrine about the God of the universe, of the worship due to him, and of every moral way of life that can bring whoever lives by it into close relation with the God over all. For Themistocles, or any other famous man, nothing arose to oppose his fame. But for this man, besides what has been said—which was enough to cover in obscurity the soul even of a very gifted man—his death by crucifixion, which seems dishonorable, was enough to wipe out the fame he had already gained, and to make those who, as those who do not assent to his teaching think, had been deceived beforehand abandon the deception and condemn the deceiver.

Besides this, one might wonder how it came into the minds of his disciples—if, as those who slander Jesus say, they had not seen him risen from the dead and were not persuaded that he was something more divine—not only not to fear suffering the same things as their teacher, but to go straight into danger and to leave their homelands in order to teach, according to Jesus' will, the teaching he had handed on to them. For I think that one who examines things fairly would not say that these men gave themselves up to a life of dangers for the sake of Jesus' teaching without some great persuasion that he produced in them, teaching them not only to live according to his lessons but also to bring others to do so—and to bring them to it when ruin, as far as human life is concerned, was plainly in store for one who dared to introduce novelties everywhere and to everyone, and to keep no human being as his friend who clung to his former doctrines and customs. Did Jesus' disciples not see this, when they dared to prove not only to Jews from the prophetic words that he was the one prophesied, but also to the other nations that the one crucified only the other day had willingly accepted this death for the human race, like those who died for their homelands to put an end to prevailing plagues, famines, or storms at sea? For it is likely that in the nature of things, according to certain secret reasons hard for the many to grasp, there is such a nature that one righteous man, dying willingly for the common good, brings about the turning away of evil demons that bring about plagues, famines, storms at sea, or the like. Let those who wish to disbelieve that Jesus died for human beings by way of the cross say whether they will not accept the many Greek and barbarian stories of people who died for the common good to remove evils that had seized cities and nations; or do they say that those things happened, while he who is thought a man has no plausibility for dying to overthrow a great demon, the ruler of demons, who had subjected all the souls of human beings that have come to earth? Seeing these things, and others more than these which they probably learned from Jesus in secret, and being filled besides with a certain power—since it was no poets' maiden that gave them strength and courage but the true understanding and wisdom of God—they hastened "that they might stand out among all," not only among the Argives but among all Greeks and barbarians alike, "and win noble fame."

But let us return to the speech put in the mouth of the Jew, in which the mother of Jesus is described as having been driven out by the carpenter who was engaged to her, having been convicted of adultery and giving birth by a certain soldier named Panthera. Let us see whether those who concocted the tale of the adultery of the virgin with Panthera, and of the carpenter driving her out, did not blindly fabricate all this to overthrow the miraculous conception by the Holy Spirit. For they could have falsified the story in another way, because it is so very miraculous, and not, as it were unwillingly, have agreed that Jesus was not born of an ordinary human marriage. It was natural that those who did not assent to the miraculous birth of Jesus should invent some falsehood; but that they did not do this plausibly, but kept the fact that the virgin did not conceive Jesus by Joseph, made the falsehood evident to those able to hear and refute fabrications. Is it reasonable that one who dared so much for the human race—so that, as far as lay in him, all Greeks and barbarians, expecting divine judgment, might turn from wickedness and do everything in a way pleasing to the maker of the universe—should not have had a miraculous birth, but the most lawless and shameful birth of all? I will speak as to Greeks, and especially to Celsus, whether or not he holds these views, since he quotes Plato: would the one who sends souls down into human bodies thrust one who was to dare so much, to teach so many, and to turn many human beings from the flood of wickedness, into the most shameful birth of all, not even bringing him into human life through a lawful marriage? Or is it more reasonable that each soul, according to certain secret reasons (I speak now according to Pythagoras, Plato, and Empedocles, whom Celsus often named), is put into a body according to its merit and its former character? It is likely, then, that this soul too, which came to dwell in human life to be of more benefit than many human beings (not to seem to beg the question by saying "all"), needed a body not only superior among human bodies but also better than all.

For if one soul, having become worthy, according to certain secret reasons, of being born not wholly in the body of an irrational creature, yet not purely in that of a rational one either, puts on a monstrous body, so that reason cannot even be brought to completion in one so born, whose head is out of proportion to the rest of the body and much too small; and another takes on such a body as to be a little more rational than that one, and another still more, the nature of the body opposing the grasp of reason more or less—why should there not also be a soul that takes on a body wholly extraordinary, having something in common with human beings so that it could live among them, but having also something exceptional, so that the soul could remain untouched by wickedness? And if the teachings of the physiognomists prevail—whether of Zopyrus, or Loxus, or Polemon, or anyone else who wrote such things and professed to know something wonderful—that all bodies are suited to the characters of their souls, then the soul that was to come to dwell in life extraordinarily and to do great things had to have a body born not, as Celsus thinks, from Panthera committing adultery and a virgin who had committed adultery (for from such impure unions there should rather have come some fool, harmful to human beings, a teacher of sexual excess, injustice, and the other vices, not of self-control, justice, and the other virtues),

but, as the prophets also foretold, from a virgin who, according to the promise of a sign, would bear one named for the reality, showing that at his birth God would be with human beings. It seems to me fitting, in answer to the speech put in the Jew's mouth, to set out the prophecy of Isaiah that says Emmanuel will be born of a virgin. Celsus, who professes to know everything, did not quote it, either because he did not know it, or because, having read it, he deliberately kept silent, so as not to seem unwillingly to establish the teaching that opposes his purpose. The text reads as follows: "And the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying: Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God, in the depth or in the height. And Ahaz said: I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. And he said: Listen then, house of David: is it a small thing for you to weary men, and how will you weary the Lord? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: Look, the virgin will conceive in the womb and will bear a son, and you must call his name Emmanuel," which means, "God with us." That Celsus maliciously did not quote the prophecy is clear to me from the fact that, though he cites much from the Gospel according to Matthew, such as the star that rose at the birth of Jesus and other wonders, he did not mention this at all. And if a Jew, quibbling, says that "Look, the virgin" is not written, but instead "Look, the young woman," we will say to him that the word "almah," which the Seventy translated "virgin" and others "young woman," occurs, as they say, also in Deuteronomy of a virgin, as follows: "If there is a girl, a virgin, engaged to a man, and a man finds her in the city and lies with her, you must bring them both out to the gate of their city, and they must be stoned with stones and must die: the young woman because she did not cry out in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife." And next: "But if a man finds the engaged girl in the field, and the man forces her and lies with her, you must kill only the man who lay with her, and to the young woman you must do nothing; the young woman has no sin worthy of death."

But so that we do not seem to base our certainty that the prophet said that the one at whose birth "God with us" was spoken would be born of a virgin on a Hebrew word, for those who cannot judge whether to accept it or not, come, let us establish the point from the text itself. The Lord is recorded to have said to Ahaz: "Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God, in the depth or in the height," and next comes the sign that is given: "Look, the virgin will conceive in the womb and will bear a son." What sort of sign, then, would it be for a young woman who was not a virgin to give birth? And to whom is it more fitting to bear "Emmanuel," that is, "God with us"—to a woman who has had intercourse and conceived through a woman's passion, or to one still pure and chaste and a virgin? For it is fitting for her to bear the offspring at whose birth "God with us" is said. And if he quibbles further, saying that it was said to Ahaz, "Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God," we will answer: Who was born in the time of Ahaz, at whose birth "Emmanuel, which is God with us" is said? If no one is to be found, clearly what was said to Ahaz was said to the house of David, because the Savior is recorded to have been born "from David’s line according to the flesh." And this "sign" is said to be "in the depth or in the height," since "he who descended is the same one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things." I say this as to a Jew who accepts the prophecy. But let Celsus too, or one of those with him, say with what sort of mind the prophet speaks about the future, either these things or the others recorded in the prophecies: was it with a mind foreknowing the future or not? If with one foreknowing the future, the prophets had a divine spirit; if not, let him explain the mind of one who dares to speak about the future and is admired among the Jews for prophecy.

Since we have now come to the subject of the prophets, what is about to be said will be useful not only to the Jews, who believe that they spoke by a divine spirit, but also to the fair-minded among the Greeks. To them we will say that it is necessary to accept that the Jews too had prophets, if they were to be united under the laws given to them and to believe in the Creator as they had received, and, as far as the law was concerned, to have no occasions to fall away to the polytheism of the nations. We will show why this was necessary as follows. "The nations," as is written in the law of the Jews itself, "will listen to omens and divinations"; but to that people it is said: "But the Lord your God has not given it so to you." And to this is added: "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers." Since, then, the nations used divination, whether through "omens," or through auguries, or birds, or spirit mediums, or those who profess sacrificial divination, or Chaldeans casting horoscopes—all of which were forbidden to the Jews—if the Jews had had no comfort from knowing the future, they would have been led by the very human greed to know what will be, and would have despised their own traditions as having nothing divine in them. They would not have accepted any prophet after Moses, nor recorded their words, but would have deserted to the oracles and divinations of the nations, or tried to set up something of the kind among themselves. So it is not at all absurd that their prophets foretold even ordinary things to console those who longed for such things—so that Samuel prophesied even "about lost donkeys," and the prophet recorded in the Third Book of Kingdoms about the illness of a king's son. How else could those who upheld the law of the Jews rebuke one who wished to get divination from idols? As Elijah is found rebuking Ahaziah and saying: "Is it because there is no God in Israel that you go to inquire of Baal-fly, the god of Ekron?"

It seems to me, then, that it has been fairly well established not only that our Savior would be born of a virgin, but also that there were prophets among the Jews, who foretold not only general things about the future—such as those about Christ, about the kingdoms of the world, about what would happen to Israel, about the nations that would believe in the Savior, and many other things said about him—but also particular ones, such as how the lost donkeys of Kish would be found, and about the illness of the son of the king of Israel, or anything else of the kind that is recorded. Further, we must say to the Greeks who do not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus that the Creator, in the reproduction of various animals, has shown that it was possible for him, when he wished, to do in one animal what he does in others and in human beings themselves. Some female animals are found that have no intercourse with a male, as those who have written about animals say of vultures; and this creature preserves the succession of its kind without mating. What is extraordinary, then, if God, wishing to send a divine teacher to the human race, caused the generative principle of the one to be born to arise in another way, instead of the seminal principle from the union of males with women? And according to the Greeks themselves, not all human beings were born of a man and a woman. For if the world is created, as many Greeks too have held, the first human beings must have come into being not from intercourse but from the earth, seminal principles having formed in the earth; which I think more extraordinary than that Jesus was born with only one of the two human parents others have. It is not out of place, in addressing Greeks, to use Greek stories too, so that we may not seem to be the only ones to use this extraordinary story. For some have seen fit to write—not about ancient and heroic stories, but about events of only yesterday—that it was possible that Plato too was born of Amphictione, Ariston having been prevented from coming together with her until she gave birth to the child sown by Apollo. But these are truly myths, which moved people to invent something of the kind about a man they thought had greater wisdom and power than the many, and had received the beginning of his bodily formation from better and more divine seed, as befitting those greater than human. But since Celsus introduced the Jew conversing with Jesus and ridiculing what he thinks the pretense of his virgin birth, bringing up the Greek myths about Danae, Melanippe, Auge, and Antiope, we must say that these words suited a clown, not someone serious in what he reports.

Further, taking from the story written in the Gospel according to Matthew about Jesus' journey to Egypt, he did not believe the extraordinary things connected with it—neither that an angel directed it, nor whether anything was signified by Jesus' leaving Judea and staying in Egypt—but invented something else. In a way he admits the extraordinary mighty works that Jesus did, by which he persuaded the many to follow him as the Christ; but he wishes to slander them as done by magic and not by divine power. For he says that "he was brought up in secret, hired himself out in Egypt, and having tried his hand at certain powers, returned from there, proclaiming himself God because of those powers." But I do not know how a magician would have worked hard to teach a doctrine persuading people to do everything as though God judges each person for all his deeds, and so to train his own disciples, whom he was going to use as servants of his teaching. Did they too, having been taught to do mighty works in this way, win over their hearers, or did they not do mighty works at all? To say that they did no mighty works at all, but that, having believed, they gave themselves to teaching a new doctrine to those among whom they came, with no ability in argument like the wisdom of the Greeks in dialectic, is quite unreasonable; for what did they trust in when they taught the doctrine and introduced novelties? But if they too performed mighty works, what plausibility is there in magicians having exposed themselves to such dangers for a teaching that forbids magic?

I do not think I need to contend with an argument spoken not seriously but in mockery: "Was the mother of Jesus beautiful, then, and did God have intercourse with her because she was beautiful, though he is not by nature one to love a perishable body?" or that "it was not even likely that God would fall in love with her, since she was neither wealthy nor of royal birth, for no one knew her, not even her neighbors." He also jokes in saying that "when she was hated by the carpenter and cast out, neither divine power nor persuasive speech saved her." "These things," he says, "have nothing to do with the kingdom of God." How, then, would these words differ from those of people who trade insults at the crossroads and say nothing worthy of serious attention?

Next after this, taking from the Gospel according to Matthew, and perhaps also from the other Gospels, the account of the dove that settled on the Savior when he was baptized by John, he wants to slander what is said as a fiction. Having ridiculed, as he thought, the story of our Savior's birth from a virgin, he does not set out what follows in order, since anger and hatred have no order; people who are angry and hostile abuse those they hate as it comes to them, not being allowed by their passion to state their accusations thoughtfully and in order. For if he kept to order, he would have taken the Gospel, and, intending to accuse it, would have attacked the first story and then gone on to the second, and so to the rest. As it is, after the virgin birth, Celsus, who professes to know everything of ours, accuses the appearance of the Holy Spirit at the baptism in the form of a dove; then after this he slanders the prophecy of our Savior's coming; and after that he runs back to what is recorded after the birth of Jesus, the account of the star and of the magi who came from the east to "worship" the child. You too, if you watch, could find many things said confusedly by Celsus throughout his whole book, so that by this too he may be convicted, by those who know how to keep and look for order, of having entitled his book The True Word with great boldness and arrogance—something none of the outstanding philosophers did. For Plato says that it is not fitting for a man of sense to insist on such things, which are rather obscure; and Chrysippus, having often set out what moved him, refers us to those we may find who will say better than he. This man, then, wiser than these and than the rest of the Greeks, in keeping with his claim to know everything, entitled his book The True Word.

But so that we may not seem deliberately to pass over his headings for lack of an answer, we have decided to refute, as best we can, each of the things he puts forward, attending not to the natural sequence and order of the subjects but to the order of what is written in his book. Come, then, let us see what he says in slandering the Holy Spirit seen by the Savior, as it were bodily, in the form of a dove. It is still his Jew who says this to the one we confess to be our Lord, Jesus: "When you were bathing," he says, "with John, you say that the apparition of a bird flew down on you from the air." Then his Jew asks: "What trustworthy witness saw this apparition, or who heard a voice from heaven adopting you as son to God? Except that you say so, and bring forward one of those who were punished with you."

Before we begin our defense, we must say that to try to establish that almost any story, even if it is true, actually happened, and to produce a firm conviction about it, is among the very hardest things, and in some cases impossible. For suppose someone said that the Trojan War did not happen, chiefly because of the impossible tale woven into it that a certain Achilles was born the son of a sea goddess, Thetis, and a man, Peleus, or Sarpedon of Zeus, or Ascalaphus and Ialmenus of Ares, or Aeneas of Aphrodite. How would we establish such a thing, especially when pressed by the fiction that, I do not know how, has been woven into the opinion universally held that the war at Ilium between Greeks and Trojans really happened? And suppose someone disbelieved the story of Oedipus and Jocasta and of Eteocles and Polynices, born of them both, because the Sphinx, a sort of half-maiden, is woven into the tale; how would we prove such a thing? So too with the story of the Epigoni, even though nothing of the sort is woven into it, or of the return of the Heraclidae, or countless others. But one who reads histories fairly, and wishes to keep himself from being deceived even in them, will judge which he will accept, which he will interpret figuratively, searching out the intention of those who invented such things, and which he will disbelieve as written to gratify certain people. And we have said this in advance with regard to the whole story of Jesus reported in the Gospels, not calling the more intelligent to simple and irrational faith, but wishing to show that those who read them need fair-mindedness, much examination, and, so to speak, entry into the intention of the writers, so that it may be found with what meaning each thing was written.

We will say first, then, that if the one who disbelieves the apparition of the Holy Spirit in the form of the dove had been described as an Epicurean, a Democritean, or a Peripatetic, what is said would have been consistent with the character portrayed. But as it is, not even this did the most wise Celsus see: that he attached such an argument to a Jew, who believes things more numerous and more extraordinary, from the prophetic writings, than the story about the form of the dove. For one might say to the Jew who disbelieves the apparition and thinks he can accuse it as a fiction: How, sir, could you prove that the Lord God said to Adam, or Eve, or Cain, or Noah, or Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob what he is recorded to have said to these men? And to set story beside story, I might say to the Jew: Your Ezekiel too wrote, saying: "The heavens were opened, and I saw a vision of God"; and after describing it he adds: "This was the vision of the likeness of the glory of the Lord; and he spoke to me." If what is recorded of Jesus is false because, as you suppose, we cannot clearly prove how these things are true that were seen or heard by him alone and, as you thought you had noticed, by one of those who were punished, why should we not rather say that Ezekiel too was telling marvels when he said, "The heavens were opened," and so on? And if Isaiah says, "I saw the Lord Sabaoth sitting on a high and lofty throne, and the Seraphim stood around him, six wings to the one and six wings to the other," and so on, how do you know he truly saw it? For you have believed these things, Jew, as free from falsehood, and as not only seen by the prophet by a more divine spirit but also spoken and written down. Who deserves more belief when he says that the heavens were opened to him and that he heard a voice, or saw "the Lord Sabaoth sitting on a high and lofty throne"—Isaiah and Ezekiel, or Jesus? For no work of theirs so great is found; but the noble achievement of Jesus did not happen only during his bodily life; even to this day the power of Jesus is working conversion and improvement in those who believe in God through him. A clear proof that these things happen by his power is that, as he himself says and as is evident, though there are not workers to work the harvest of souls, there is so great a harvest being gathered and brought together into the threshing floors of God everywhere, the churches.

And I say this to the Jew not as a Christian who disbelieves Ezekiel and Isaiah, but to put him to shame on the basis of what we both believe: that this man is far more worthy than they to be believed when he says he saw such things and, as is likely, handed on to his disciples the vision he saw and the voice he heard. Another might say that not all who recorded the form of the dove and the voice from heaven heard Jesus telling of these things; but the Spirit that taught Moses the history older than himself, beginning from the making of the world and reaching to the time of Abraham his forefather, also taught those who wrote the Gospel the wonder that happened at the time of Jesus' baptism. And one who has been given the gift called "the word of wisdom" will also explain the reason for the opening of the heavens and for the form of the dove, and why the Holy Spirit appeared to Jesus in the form of this creature and not of some other. But the argument does not now require us to explain this; for our purpose is to show that Celsus did not soundly attribute to a Jew, with such words, disbelief in an event that, as is likely, happened—rather than in the things that the Jew himself believes.

I remember once, in a debate with some Jews who were said to be wise, using this argument, with many people judging what was said: "Tell me, sirs: two men have come to dwell among the human race about whom extraordinary things, beyond human nature, have been recorded—I mean Moses, your lawgiver, who wrote about himself, and Jesus, our teacher, who left no writing of his own about himself but is witnessed to by his disciples in the Gospels. What arbitrary choice is it that Moses is believed as telling the truth, although the Egyptians slander him as a sorcerer who seemed to do his mighty works by trickery, while Jesus is disbelieved because you accuse him? For nations bear witness to both: the Jews to Moses, and the Christians, who do not deny the prophetic office of Moses but prove from it the things about Jesus, accept as true the extraordinary things about him recorded by his disciples. If you demand from us an account of Jesus, first give one of Moses, who came before him, and then we will give ours about him. But if you back away and flee from the proofs about Moses, then for the present we will do the same as you and give no proof. Nevertheless, admit that you have no demonstration about Moses, and hear the proofs about Jesus from the law and the prophets. And the remarkable thing is that from the proofs about Jesus in the law and the prophets it is proved that both Moses and the prophets were prophets of God."

The law and the prophets are full of wonders similar to the one recorded of Jesus at his baptism concerning the dove and the voice from heaven. And I think the wonders done by Jesus are a sign of the Holy Spirit who was then seen in the form of a dove, which Celsus slanders, saying that he did them having learned them among the Egyptians. And I will use not only those but also, as is fitting, those that the apostles of Jesus did. For without mighty works and wonders they would not have moved those who heard new teachings and new lessons to abandon their ancestral ways and accept their teachings at the risk of death. And traces of that Holy Spirit who was seen in the form of a dove are still preserved among Christians. They drive out demons, perform many healings, and see certain things about the future according to the will of the Word. And even if Celsus, or the Jew he introduced, mocks what I am going to say, it will be said nonetheless: many have come to Christianity as if against their will, some spirit having suddenly turned their ruling faculty from hating the teaching to dying for it, and having shown them visions awake or asleep. We have known many such cases; if we write of those at which we ourselves were present and which we saw, we will incur loud laughter from unbelievers, who think that we, like those they suppose to have invented such things, are inventing them too. But God is witness to our conscience, which wishes to commend the divine teaching of Jesus not by false reports but by many kinds of evidence. And since it is a Jew who is at a loss about the recorded descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus in the form of a dove, one might say to him: Sir, who is it that says in Isaiah, "And now the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit"? Here, since the text is ambiguous—whether the Father and the Holy Spirit sent Jesus, or the Father sent both the Christ and the Holy Spirit—the second is true. And since the Savior was sent, and then the Holy Spirit, so that what was spoken by the prophet might be fulfilled, and the fulfillment of the prophecy had to be made known to those who came after, the disciples of Jesus recorded what happened.

I would have liked to say to Celsus, who portrayed the Jew as in some way accepting John as a baptizer who baptized Jesus, that John's having been a baptizer, baptizing for the forgiveness of sins, was recorded by one who lived not long after John and Jesus. For in the eighteenth book of the Jewish Antiquities Josephus bears witness to John as having been a baptizer and as promising purification to those who were baptized. The same writer, although he did not believe in Jesus as the Christ, when seeking the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple—though he ought to have said that the plot against Jesus was the cause of these things for the people, since they killed the prophesied Christ—nevertheless, as if against his will not far from the truth, says that these things happened to the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was the brother of "Jesus who is called Christ," since they killed him though he was most righteous. This James Paul, the genuine disciple of Jesus, says he saw, as "the brother of the Lord," not so much because of blood relationship or their common upbringing as because of his character and his teaching. If, then, he says that the devastation of Jerusalem came upon the Jews because of James, how is it not more reasonable to say that it happened because of Jesus the Christ? Witnesses to his divinity are the many churches of those who have turned from the flood of evils and depend on the Creator and refer everything to what pleases him.

Even if the Jew will not defend Ezekiel and Isaiah when we compare the opening of the heavens for Jesus and the voice he heard with similar things recorded in Ezekiel and Isaiah or some other prophet, we at least will establish our case as best we can, saying this: just as it is believed that many have seen in a dream visions announcing some things more divine, and some things about the future of this life, either clearly or in riddles—and this is evident to all who accept providence—so what is absurd in supposing that what impresses the ruling faculty in a dream can impress it also when awake, for the benefit of the one in whom the impression is made or of those who will hear from him? And just as we have the impression in a dream of hearing, of the bodily hearing being struck, and of seeing with the eyes, though neither the eyes of the body nor the hearing is struck, but the ruling faculty experiences these things, so there is nothing absurd in such things having happened to the prophets, when they are recorded to have seen extraordinary things, or heard words of the Lord, or saw the heavens opened. For I do not suppose that the visible heaven was opened, and its body split apart by the opening, for Ezekiel to record such a thing. Perhaps, then, one who hears the Gospels with understanding should take the same to be true of the Savior too, even if this offends the simpler folk, who in their great simplicity set the world in motion, splitting apart so vast and unified a body as the whole heaven. But one who examines the matter more deeply will say that there is, as Scripture has named it, a certain divine sense in general, which only the blessed man finds, according to what is said in Solomon: "that you will find a divine sense"; and that there are kinds of this sense: a sight naturally fitted to see things higher than bodies, among which the cherubim or seraphim are shown; a hearing that perceives voices that do not have their being in the air; a taste that feeds on the living bread which came down from heaven and gives life to the world; so too a smell that smells such things, in the sense in which Paul says there is "a fragrance of Christ to God"; and a touch, by which John says he has handled with his hands "concerning the word of life." The blessed prophets, having found the divine sense, and seeing divinely, hearing divinely, and likewise tasting and smelling, so to speak, with a perception beyond the bodily senses, and touching the Word with faith, so that an emanation from him came to them and healed them—in this way they saw what they record that they saw, and heard what they say they heard, and experienced similar things, as they recorded, eating the "scroll" of a book given to them. So too Isaac "smelled the smell" of his son's more divine "garments," and added in a spiritual blessing: "See, the smell of my son is like the smell of a full field, which the Lord has blessed." Similarly to these, and in an intellectual rather than a bodily way, Jesus "touched" the leper to cleanse him—in two ways, I think: freeing him not only, as the many understand it, from bodily leprosy by bodily touch, but also from the other by his truly divine touch. In this way, then, "John bore witness, saying: I saw the Spirit descending like a dove from heaven, and it remained on him. And I did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize in water said to me: He on whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining, this is he who baptizes in the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God." And for Jesus the heavens were opened; and at that time no one except John is recorded to have seen the heavens opened. But the Savior, foretelling to his disciples that this opening of the heavens would happen and that they would see it, says: "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man." And so Paul was caught up to the third heaven, having first seen it opened, since he was a disciple of Jesus. But to explain now why Paul says, "whether in the body I do not know, whether out of the body I do not know; God knows," is not for the present occasion. I will add to the argument also this: Celsus thinks that Jesus himself told of the opening of the heavens and of the Holy Spirit coming down on him in the form of a dove at the Jordan, though Scripture does not state that he himself said he had seen this. This most noble man did not perceive that it is not in keeping with one who said to his disciples about the vision on the mountain, "Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is raised from the dead," to have told his disciples what was seen and heard by John at the Jordan. One can see this also in the character of Jesus, who everywhere avoided talking about himself and for this reason said, "If I bear witness about myself, my witness is not true." And since he avoided talking about himself and wished to show that he was the Christ by his works rather than by words, the Jews said to him for this reason: "If you are the Christ, tell us plainly." But since it is a Jew in Celsus who says to Jesus about the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, "Except that you say so, and bring forward one of those who were punished with you," we must show him that this too he did not attribute appropriately to the Jewish character. For the Jews do not connect John with Jesus, nor John's punishment with that of Jesus. In this too, then, the one who boasted that he knew everything is shown not to know what words to attach to the Jew's speech to Jesus.

After this, I do not know why, he deliberately passes over the most important heading for establishing Jesus' case—that he was prophesied by the prophets among the Jews, Moses and those after him, or even before Moses—I suppose because he could not answer the argument, just as neither the Jews nor the sects that do not want Jesus to have been prophesied can. Perhaps he did not even know the prophecies about Jesus; for otherwise, in setting down what Christians say—that many prophets foretold the coming of the Savior—he would not have attached to the Jewish character things more fitting for a Samaritan or a Sadducee to say. Nor would the Jew in the imaginary speech have said: "But a prophet of mine once said in Jerusalem that a son of God would come, the judge of the holy and the punisher of the unjust." For not one prophet only prophesied about Christ; and even if the Samaritans or Sadducees, who accept only the books of Moses, were to say that the Christ was prophesied in them, the prophecy was certainly not spoken in Jerusalem, which had not yet even been named in Moses' time. If only all who accuse the teaching were so ignorant, not only of the facts but even of even the literal words of Scripture, when they accuse Christianity! Then their argument would not have even ordinary plausibility, able to draw away the unsteady, those who believe "for a while," from—not faith, but little faith. A Jew would not admit that some prophet said a son of God would come; what they say is that the Christ of God will come. And indeed they often question us at once about a son of God, as though there were no such being and none had been prophesied. We are not saying that a son of God is not prophesied, but that Celsus did not fittingly attribute to the Jewish character, which does not admit such a thing, the words, "A prophet of mine once said in Jerusalem that a son of God would come."

Then, as if this alone had been prophesied, that he would be the judge of the holy and the punisher of the unjust, and neither the place of his birth, nor the suffering he would undergo from the Jews, nor his resurrection, nor the wonderful mighty works he would do had been foretold, he says: "Why you, rather than countless others who were born after the prophecy, about whom these things were prophesied?" And, I do not know why, wishing to attribute to others too the possibility of being suspected of being the ones prophesied, he says that "some in ecstasy and others begging say that a son of God has come from above." For we have not learned that the Jews admit that this has happened. We must say first, then, that many prophets foretold the things about Christ in all sorts of ways—some in riddles, others by allegory or some other way, and some even in plain words. And since in what follows, in the speech of the Jew to believers from his own people, he says that the prophecies referred to his case can be applied to other events as well—saying this cleverly and maliciously—we will set out a few out of many. About these, let whoever wishes say something compelling to overturn them, able to move from their faith those who believe intelligently.

It has been said, then, about the place of his birth, that the ruler "will come" from "Bethlehem," in this way: "And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephrathah, are the least to be among the thousands of Judah; from you will come for me one to be ruler in Israel, and his origins are from the beginning, from the days of eternity." This prophecy would not fit any of those whom Celsus's Jew calls ecstatics and beggars saying they have come from above, unless it were clearly shown that he was born in Bethlehem, or, as someone else might put it, came from Bethlehem to rule the people. As for Jesus' being born in Bethlehem, if anyone wants to be persuaded from other sources besides the prophecy of Micah and the story recorded in the Gospels by Jesus' disciples, let him note that, in agreement with the story in the Gospel about his birth, there is shown in Bethlehem the cave where he was born and the manger in the cave where he was wrapped in infant cloths. And what is shown there is famous in those parts, even among those alien to the faith, namely that in this cave was born the Jesus who is worshiped and admired by Christians. I think that before the coming of Christ the chief priests and scribes of the people taught, because of the clearness and plainness of the prophecy, that the Christ would be born in Bethlehem; and this teaching reached the many among the Jews too. That is why Herod is recorded, when he asked the chief priests and scribes of the people, to have heard from them that the Christ would be born "in Bethlehem of Judea," where David came from. And further, in the Gospel according to John it is said that the Jews said that the Christ would be born in Bethlehem, where David was from. But after the coming of Christ, those who busied themselves to overthrow the belief that his birth had been prophesied long before took such teaching away from the people—doing something akin to what was done by those who persuaded the soldiers guarding the tomb, who had seen him risen from the dead and were reporting it, and said to those who had seen: "Say that his disciples came by night and stole him while we were asleep. And if this comes to the governor's attention, we will persuade him and keep you out of trouble."

For contentiousness and prejudice are hard things, able to make people shut their eyes even to what is evident, so as not to abandon doctrines that have dyed their souls deeply, to which they have somehow become accustomed, and which have given their souls their quality. A person would more easily abandon his habits in other things, even if he is hard to tear away from them, than those concerning doctrines. Yet not even those do people accustomed to them easily disregard; so those who have become attached to houses, or cities, or villages, or familiar people are not willing to leave them easily. This, then, was the cause for many of the Jews at that time of shutting their eyes to the evidence both of the prophecies and of the wonders that Jesus is recorded to have done and suffered. That human nature is affected in this way will be clear to those who observe that people whose minds have been shaped, even by the most shameful and senseless traditions of their fathers and fellow citizens, are not easily changed. One would not quickly persuade an Egyptian, at any rate, to despise what he has received from his fathers, so as not to regard such-and-such an irrational animal as a god, or not to guard himself even to death against tasting the flesh of such-and-such an animal. If, then, examining this argument at greater length, we have gone through the matters concerning Bethlehem and the prophecy about it, we think we have done so necessarily, answering those who might say: if the prophecies about Jesus among the Jews were so clear, why, when he came, did they not assent to his teaching and change over to the better things Jesus showed? But let no one criticize us believers with something similar, seeing that no contemptible arguments are brought forward about faith in Jesus by those who have learned to uphold them.

If there is need of a second prophecy about Jesus which seems to us clear, we will set out the one recorded by Moses very many years before Jesus' coming. He says that Jacob, when departing this life, prophesied to each of his sons, and said to Judah among other things: "A ruler will not cease to come from Judah, nor a leader from his descendants, until the things reserved for him come." Anyone reading this prophecy—which in truth is much older than Moses, though an unbeliever might suppose it spoken by Moses—might wonder how Moses was able to foretell that the kings of the Jews, though there were twelve tribes among them, would be born of the tribe of Judah and rule the people; which is why the whole people is called Jews, named after the ruling tribe. And second, one who reads the prophecy fairly might wonder how, having said that the rulers and leaders of the people would be from the tribe of Judah, he also set the end of its rule, saying that a ruler will not cease to come "from Judah," nor a leader "from his descendants, until the things reserved for him come; and he is the expectation of the nations." For he has come to whom "the things reserved" belong, the Christ of God, "the ruler" of God's promises; and clearly he alone, compared with all before him—and I would boldly say, all after him too—has become "the expectation of the nations." For from all the nations they have believed in God through him, and, according to what Isaiah said, the nations have hoped in his name, since he said: "In his name the nations will hope." He also said "to those in chains," in the sense that "each is bound fast by the cords of his own sins," "Come out," and to those in ignorance to come to the light, these things having been prophesied as follows: "And I have given you as a covenant of the nations, to establish the earth and to inherit a desolate inheritance, saying to those in chains, Come out, and to those in darkness, Be revealed." And one can see, at his coming, through those everywhere in the world who believe more simply, the fulfillment of: "And they will feed in all the ways, and in all the paths will be their pasture."

Since Celsus, who professes to know everything of the teaching, criticizes the Savior for his suffering, as not having been helped by the Father or not having been able to help himself, we must set out that his suffering was prophesied together with its cause: that it was useful for human beings that he should die for them and suffer the lashes of a condemned person. It was also foretold that those from the nations, among whom the prophets had not been, would "understand" him, and it was said that he would be seen with a "form without honor" in the eyes of men. The text reads as follows: "Look, my servant will understand, and he will be exalted and glorified and lifted up greatly. As many will be astonished at you, so will your form be without glory among men, and your glory among men. So will many nations marvel at him, and kings will shut their mouths; for those to whom nothing was announced about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand. Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced him as a child before him, as a root in a thirsty land; he has no form nor glory. And we saw him, and he had no form nor beauty; but his form was without honor and failing beyond all men: a man in affliction, and knowing how to bear sickness, for his face is turned away. He was dishonored and not esteemed. This man bears our sins and suffers pain for us, and we considered him to be in toil and in affliction and in ill treatment. But he was wounded for our sins and made sick for our lawless deeds; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him; by his wounds we were healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; each has gone astray in his own way; and the Lord handed him over for our sins. And he, because he has been ill treated, does not open his mouth; like a sheep he was led to slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment was taken away; who will tell of his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth; from the lawless deeds of my people he was led to death."

I remember once, in a discussion with some who were called wise among the Jews, using these prophecies. The Jew said that they had been prophesied as about one person, namely the whole people, which had been scattered and struck down, so that many might become converts on the occasion of the Jews' being scattered among the other nations. And in this way he explained "your form will be without glory among men," and "those to whom nothing was announced about him will see," and "a man in affliction." Many things were said in that discussion to prove that these prophecies, which are about one particular person, are not reasonably referred by them to the whole people. I asked whose character it could be that says, "This man bears our sins and suffers pain for us," and, "But he was wounded for our sins and made sick for our lawless deeds," and whose character it was that says, "By his wounds we were healed." For clearly those who were in sins and were healed by the Savior's suffering, whether from that people or from the nations, say these things in the prophet, who foresaw them and, by the Holy Spirit, gave them this speaking part. But we seemed to press him hardest with the words: "From the lawless deeds of my people he was led to death." For if, according to them, the people are the ones prophesied, how is this man said to have been led "to death" "from the lawless deeds of the people" of God, unless he is someone other than the people of God? And who is this, if not Jesus Christ, by whose "wounds" we who believe in him "were healed," when he stripped off "the rulers and powers" within us and made a public example of them "openly" on the tree? To make each point in the prophecy clear, and leave none of them unexamined, belongs to another occasion. These things too have been said at some length, necessarily, I think, because of the words of Celsus's Jew set out above.

It escaped Celsus, and his Jew, and all who have not believed in Jesus, that the prophecies speak of two comings of Christ: the first more subject to human experience and more humble, so that Christ, being with human beings, might teach the way that leads to God and leave no one in human life room for excuse as not knowing about the coming judgment; and the other glorious and wholly divine, having nothing of human experience woven into its divinity. To set out the prophecies would take long; for the present it is enough to cite the forty-fourth Psalm, which is entitled, among other things, "A song for the beloved," where he is also clearly proclaimed God in these words: "Grace has been poured out on your lips; therefore God has blessed you forever. Strap your sword to your thigh, mighty one, in your splendor and your beauty; and bend your bow, and prosper, and reign for the sake of truth and meekness and righteousness, and your right hand will guide you wonderfully. Your arrows are sharp, mighty one—peoples will fall under you—in the heart of the king's enemies." But pay careful attention to what follows, where he is called God: "Your throne," he says, "God, is forever and ever; a scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions." And notice that the prophet, addressing God, whose "throne" is "forever and ever" and "a scepter of uprightness is the scepter of" his "kingdom," says that this God has been anointed by God, who was his God; and anointed because, "above his companions," he loved "righteousness" and hated "lawlessness." And I remember pressing hard a Jew thought to be wise with this passage. At a loss before it, he said what was consistent with his Judaism: that "Your throne, God, is forever and ever; a scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom" was said to the God of the universe, and "You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you," and what follows, to the Christ.

Further, his Jew says to the Savior: "If you say this, that every human being who has come into being by divine providence is a son of God, how would you differ from anyone else?" To him we will say that everyone who, as Paul put it, is no longer trained by fear but chooses the good for its own sake is a son of God; but this one differs greatly, by far, from everyone who is called a son of God on account of virtue, since he is, as it were, a source and origin of such. Paul’s words read as follows: "For you did not receive a spirit of slavery again to fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, by which we cry, Abba, Father." But, as Celsus's Jew says, "countless people will refute Jesus, claiming that what was prophesied of him was said about themselves." We do not know, then, whether Celsus knew of some who came into life and wished to do something like Jesus and proclaim themselves sons of God or a power of God. But since we examine these matters with love of truth, we will say that Theudas arose among the Jews before the birth of Jesus, "saying that he himself was somebody" great; and when he died, those deceived by him were scattered. And after him, "in the days of the census," when Jesus seems to have been born, a certain Judas the Galilean drew away many of the Jewish people after him, as though he were wise and introducing some new things; and when he too paid the penalty, his teaching was overthrown, surviving among only very few and insignificant people. And after the time of Jesus, Dositheus the Samaritan too wished to persuade the Samaritans that he was the Christ prophesied by Moses, and he seemed to have won some over by his teaching. But it is not unreasonable to set out what was said very wisely by Gamaliel, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, to show how those men were strangers to the promise, being neither sons of God nor powers of his, whereas the Christ, Jesus, was truly the Son of God. Gamaliel said there: "If this plan and this word is from men, it will be destroyed"—as theirs too were destroyed when they died—"but if it is from God, you will not be able to destroy" this man's teaching, "so that you are not even found fighting against God." Simon too, the Samaritan magician, wished to steal some away by his magic; and at that time he deceived them, but now, I think, it is impossible to find thirty Simonians in the whole world, and perhaps I have said more than there are. There are very few around Palestine; in the rest of the world, throughout which he wished to spread his fame, his name is nowhere mentioned. And among those where it is mentioned, it is mentioned from the Acts of the Apostles; it is Christians who say these things about him, and the evidence has testified that Simon was nothing divine.

After this Celsus's Jew, instead of the magi of the Gospel, says that Jesus said that Chaldeans, moved at his birth, came to worship him as God while he was still an infant, and made this known to Herod the tetrarch; and that Herod sent to kill those born at the same time, thinking to destroy him too along with them, so that he would not live long enough to become king. See in this the misunderstanding of one who does not distinguish magi from Chaldeans, and who has not observed that their professions differ, and so has falsified the Gospel writing. I do not know why he also kept silent about what moved the magi, and did not say that it was a "star" seen by them "in the east," as is written. Let us see what must be said to this too. We think that the "star" seen "in the east" was a new one, not like any of the familiar ones, neither those in the sphere of fixed stars nor those in the lower spheres, but of the same kind as those that appear from time to time—comets, or meteors, or bearded stars, or jar-shaped stars, or however the Greeks like to name their different kinds. We establish this in the following way.

It has been observed that such stars rise at great events and very great changes on earth, signifying either the transfer of kingdoms, or wars, or whatever can happen among human beings capable of shaking things on earth. And we have read in the treatise On Comets by Chaeremon the Stoic how comets have sometimes appeared also when good things were to come, and he sets out the history of these. If, then, at new kingdoms or other great events on earth the so-called comet, or some similar star, rises, what wonder is it that at the birth of one who was to bring newness into the human race, and introduce a teaching not only to Jews but also to Greeks and to many barbarian nations, a star rose? I would say that no prophecy is current about comets, that such-and-such a comet will rise in such-and-such a kingdom or at such-and-such times; but about the one that rose at the birth of Jesus, Balaam prophesied, saying, as Moses recorded: "A star will rise out of Jacob, and a man will rise up out of Israel." And if we must also examine what is recorded about the magi at the birth of Jesus and the appearance of the star, we would say the following, some things to Greeks and others to Jews.

To the Greeks, then, we say that magi, having dealings with demons and summoning them for the purposes they have learned and wish, do such things so long as nothing more divine and more powerful than the demons and the incantation summoning them appears or is spoken; but if a more divine manifestation occurs, the activities of the demons are brought down, unable to face the light of divinity. It is likely, then, that at the birth of Jesus too, since "a multitude of the heavenly host," as Luke recorded and I believe, praised God and said, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men," the demons for this reason lost their strength and were weakened, their sorcery refuted and their activity destroyed, being brought down not only by the angels who came to the region around the earth because of Jesus' birth but also by the soul of Jesus and the divinity in him. So the magi, wishing to do their usual practices, which they formerly did by certain incantations and tricks, sought the cause, judging it to be great; and seeing a divine sign in heaven, they wished to see what it signified. It seems to me, then, that having the prophecies of Balaam, which Moses also recorded, since he too had been skilled in such matters, and finding there the passage about the star and the words "I will show him, but not now; I call him blessed, but he will not come near," they guessed that the man prophesied along with the star had come into life; and, anticipating that he was stronger than all the demons and than what usually appeared to them and worked for them, they wished "to worship" him. So they came to Judea, persuaded that some "king" had been born, and knowing where he would be born, but not understanding what kingdom he would rule. They brought "gifts," which they "offered" to one who was, so to speak, composite of God and mortal man: gold as symbols to a king, myrrh to one who would die, and frankincense to God; and they "offered" them after learning the place of his birth. But since the Savior of the human race was God, above the angels who help human beings, an angel repaid the magi's piety in worshiping Jesus by warning them not to go to Herod but to return to their own country by another way.

If Herod plotted against the newborn child—even if Celsus's Jew does not believe that this really happened—it is no wonder. For wickedness is a blind thing, and wishes to conquer fate as though stronger than it. Herod experienced this: he both believed that a king of the Jews had been born and gave his assent openly to this belief, not seeing that either he is certainly a king and will reign, or he will not reign and will be killed in vain. So he wished to kill him, having judgments at war with one another because of his wickedness, moved by the blind and wicked devil, who from the beginning plotted against the Savior, imagining that he was and would be someone great. So an "angel," keeping to the sequence of events, even if Celsus does not believe it, warned Joseph to withdraw with the child and his mother "to Egypt"; and Herod "killed" all the children "in Bethlehem" and "in all its region," intending to kill with them the newborn king of the Jews. For he did not see the sleepless guardian power of those worthy to be guarded and kept for the salvation of human beings, of whom Jesus was first of all, greater in every honor and distinction. He was to be king, not as Herod thought, but as it was fitting for God to give a kingdom for the benefit of its subjects to one who would give those subject to him no ordinary and insignificant benefit, so to speak, but would train them and bring them under laws truly of God. Jesus too knew this; and denying that he was a king in the sense the many understand, but teaching the special character of his kingdom, he says: "If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight, that I should not be handed over to the Jews; but now my kingdom is not from this world." If Celsus had seen this, he would not have said: "If it was so that you might not grow up and reign in his place, why, now that you have grown up, do you not reign, but, being the son of God, go about begging so disgracefully, cowering from fear and wandering back and forth?" But it is not disgraceful to avoid dangers with wise management and not rush into them—not from fear of death, but so as, by living usefully in this life, to benefit others—until the suitable time comes for one who has taken on human nature to die a human death, one that has some benefit for human beings. This is clear to one who has understood that Jesus died for human beings, about which we have spoken as best we could above.

After this, since, not even knowing the number of the apostles, he said that Jesus attached to himself ten or eleven notorious men, tax collectors and the most wicked sailors, and with them ran away here and there, gathering food shamefully like beggars, come, let us deal with these things too as best we can. It is plain to those who read the Gospel accounts, which Celsus does not appear even to have read, that Jesus chose twelve apostles: Matthew a tax collector; and those whom he vaguely called sailors are perhaps James and John, since they left the boat and "their father Zebedee" and followed Jesus. For Peter and his brother Andrew, who used a net to earn their necessary food, are to be counted not among sailors but, as Scripture recorded, among fishermen. Let Levi too be a tax collector who followed Jesus; but he was not of the number of his apostles, except according to some copies of the Gospel according to Mark. Of the rest we have not learned the occupations by which they earned their food before becoming Jesus' disciples. I say, then, to this too, that to those able to examine the story of Jesus' apostles intelligently and fairly, it is evident that these men taught Christianity by divine power and succeeded in bringing people under the word of God. For it was not power of speech and orderly exposition according to the dialectical or rhetorical arts of the Greeks that was in them to win over their hearers. It seems to me that if Jesus had chosen men who were wise in the opinion of the many and able to think and speak in a way pleasing to crowds, and had used them as servants of his teaching, he would most reasonably have been suspected of having proclaimed his teaching by a method like that of philosophers who head some school. And the claim that the teaching is divine would no longer have been evident, since the teaching and the preaching would have been in the persuasiveness of wisdom in the style and composition of words; and "faith" would have been, like the faith of the world's philosophers in their doctrines, "in the wisdom of men" and not "in the power of God." But as it is, who, seeing fishermen and tax collectors who had not even learned to read (as the Gospel records of them, and as Celsus has believed them on this point, since they tell the truth about their lack of education), boldly speaking not only to Jews about faith in Jesus but also preaching him among the other nations and succeeding, would not ask where their power of persuasion came from? For it was not the kind the many recognize. And who would not say that Jesus fulfilled by some divine power in his apostles the words, "Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men"? Paul too, explaining this power, as we said above, says: "And my word and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that our faith might not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God." For according to what is said in the prophets, who foretold the preaching of the gospel, "The Lord gave a word to those who preach the good news with great power, the King of the powers of the beloved," that the prophecy that says, "His word will run swiftly," might also be fulfilled. And we see that "into all the earth" has gone out "the sound" of Jesus' apostles, "and their words to the ends of the world." For this reason those who hear the word proclaimed with power are filled with power, which they show in their disposition, their life, and their struggle for the truth even to death. But some are empty, even if they profess to believe in God through Jesus, who, not having divine power, only seem to be brought to the word of God. Although I mentioned above a Gospel saying spoken by the Savior, I will use it again now at the right moment, to show both our Savior's foreknowledge concerning the preaching of the gospel, most divinely shown, and the strength of the word, which without teachers wins over believers by persuasion joined with divine power. Jesus says: "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."

Since Celsus also called Jesus' apostles notorious men, saying they were tax collectors and the most wicked sailors, we will say about this too that, in order to find fault with the teaching, he seems to believe what is written where he wishes, but, so as not to accept the divinity that appears and is proclaimed in the same books, to disbelieve the Gospels. He ought rather, seeing the writers' love of truth in their recording of worse things, to believe them also about the more divine. Now it is written in the general letter of Barnabas—from which Celsus perhaps took his saying that the apostles were notorious and most wicked—that Jesus "chose his own apostles, who were lawless beyond all lawlessness." And in the Gospel according to Luke, Peter says to Jesus: "Leave me, for I am a sinful man, Lord." And Paul too, who later himself became an apostle of Jesus, says in the letter to Timothy: "The saying is trustworthy, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost." I do not know how he forgot, or did not think, to say something about Paul, who after Jesus founded the churches in Christ. Probably he saw that the account of Paul would need an explanation from him: how one who persecuted the church of God and fought bitterly against believers, so as even to wish to hand Jesus' disciples over to death, later changed so much that "from Jerusalem as far as Illyricum he fully preached the gospel of Christ," and made it his "ambition to preach the gospel" so as not to build "on another's foundation," but where the gospel of God in Christ had not been preached at all. What, then, is absurd in Jesus, wishing to show the human race how great a healing of souls he possesses, choosing notorious and most wicked men and bringing them so far forward that they became an example of the purest character to those brought through them to the gospel of Christ?

If we were going to criticize those who have changed for their former life, it would be time for us to accuse Phaedo too, even after he became a philosopher, since, as the story says, Socrates brought him from a brothel to the philosophical school. And we will criticize philosophy for the uncontrolled life of Polemon, the successor of Xenocrates—when we ought, there too, to credit philosophy with this: that the reasoning in those who persuaded them was able to bring those previously held by such great evils away from them. Among the Greeks there was one Phaedo, and I do not know of a second, and one Polemon, who turned from an uncontrolled and deeply wicked life to philosophy; but with Jesus there were not only the twelve at that time, but always, and many times as many, who, having become a company of the self-controlled, say of their former state: "For we too were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another; but when the kindness and love of humanity of God our Savior appeared," "through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Spirit, which he poured out on us richly," we became such as we are. For God "sent his word and healed them and rescued them from their corruptions," as the prophet in the Psalms taught. I might add this to what has been said: Chrysippus, in his Therapeutics of the Passions, wishing to restrain the passions of human souls, tries, without making it an issue which doctrine is true, to treat those held by the passions according to the different schools; and he says that even if pleasure is the goal, the passions should be treated in this way, and even if there are three kinds of goods, no less according to that view those caught in the passions should be freed from them in this way. But the accusers of Christianity do not see how many people's passions, and how great a flood of wickedness, are restrained, and how many people's savage characters are tamed, by means of the teaching. They ought, boasting as they do of their public spirit, to acknowledge their gratitude to it for turning human beings from many evils by a new method, and to bear witness to it, if not as truth, at least as beneficial to the human race.

Since Jesus, teaching his disciples not to be rash, said to them, "If they persecute you in this city, flee to the other; and if they persecute you in the other, flee again to another," and, as he taught, became to them an example of a steady life, managed so as not to rush into dangers at random, out of season, and without reason, Celsus maliciously slanders this too, and his Jew says to Jesus: "You run away here and there with your disciples." We will say that the story told about Aristotle is like the slander made against Jesus and the disciples. For he, seeing that a court was about to be assembled against him as an irreverent man, because of certain doctrines of his philosophy which the Athenians thought irreverent, withdrew from Athens and held his school at Chalcis, defending himself to his pupils and saying: "Let us leave Athens, so as not to give the Athenians an occasion to incur a second guilt like that against Socrates, and so that they may not offend against philosophy a second time." He also says that Jesus went about with his disciples gathering food shamefully like beggars. Let him tell us where he got the idea that they gathered food shamefully like beggars. For in the Gospels "certain women," "healed of" their "illnesses," among whom was "Susanna," provided the disciples with food "from their own means." Which of those who philosophize and devote themselves to the benefit of their pupils did not receive from them what was needed? Or did they do this fittingly and well, while when Jesus' disciples do it they are accused by Celsus of gathering their food shamefully like beggars?

Next after this, Celsus's Jew says to Jesus: "And why did you have to be carried off to Egypt while still an infant, so that you would not be slaughtered? For it was not likely that a god would be afraid of death. But an angel came from heaven, commanding you and your family to flee, so that you would not be left behind and die. Could not the great God, who had already sent two angels on your account, guard his own son there?" In this Celsus supposes that what was divine in Jesus could not have been in a human body and soul, but that his body too must have been such as Homer's myths portray. At any rate, mocking the blood of Jesus poured out on the cross, he says that it was not "ichor, such as flows in the blessed gods." But we, believing Jesus himself when he says of the divinity in him, "I am the way and the truth and the life," and anything similar, and when he says of his being in a human body, "But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth," say that he was a certain composite being. And it was necessary that one who provided for his own coming into life as a man should not rush into danger of death at the wrong time. So too it was necessary that he be led by those who brought him up, who were guided by a divine angel. First the one giving the warning said, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife; for what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit"; and second, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you; for Herod is about to seek the child to destroy him." In these things what is recorded seems to me not at all extraordinary. For in both places of Scripture the angel is said to have said these things to Joseph in a dream; and it happens to many others to be shown in a dream to do certain things, whether an angel or anyone else gives the soul the vision. What is absurd, then, in one who had once become man being guided also in a human way to avoid dangers—not because it was impossible to happen otherwise, but because what was possible had to be managed in a methodical and orderly way for Jesus’ safety? It was better for the child Jesus to escape Herod's plot and go away with those who brought him up "to Egypt" "until the death" of the plotter, than for providence for Jesus to hinder the free will of Herod, who wished to kill the child, or to put around Jesus what the poets call "the helmet of Hades" or something similar, or to strike those who came to kill him as those in Sodom were struck. For help given to him that was wholly extraordinary and too obvious would not have been useful for his purpose of teaching that, as a man attested by God, he had something more divine in the man who was seen. That was, in the proper sense, the Son of God, God the Word, the power of God and the wisdom of God, the one called Christ. But this is not the time to explain the composite, and the elements of which Jesus, who became man, was composed; that is, so to speak, a special question for believers.

After this Celsus's Jew says, like some Greek fond of learning and educated in Greek culture: "The ancient myths, which ascribed divine birth to Perseus, Amphion, Aeacus, and Minos (we did not believe even them), nevertheless showed great and wonderful deeds of theirs, truly beyond human power, so as not to seem unconvincing. But you—what fine or wonderful thing have you done in deed or word? You showed us nothing, though we challenged you in the temple to produce some clear sign that you were the son of God." To this we must say: let the Greeks show us, of those listed, some deed useful to life, splendid, extending to later generations, and so great as to make plausible the myth about them that says they were born of divine seed. But they will show nothing even a little less than what Jesus presented, concerning the men about whom they wrote—unless the Greeks take us back to myths and their stories, wishing us to believe them without reason and to disbelieve these even after much evidence. We say, then, that the whole inhabited world of human beings holds the work of Jesus, in which dwell the churches of God, through Jesus, made up of those who have turned from countless evils. And still the name of Jesus removes mental derangements from human beings, and demons, and diseases too, and produces a wonderful gentleness and restraint of character, love of humanity, kindness, and mildness in those who have not pretended for worldly reasons or some human needs but have genuinely accepted the teaching about God and Christ and the judgment to come.

Next after this, Celsus, suspecting the great deeds of Jesus that would be shown—of which we have mentioned a few out of many—pretends to grant that what is recorded about healings, or resurrection, or a few loaves feeding many, from which many fragments were left over, or whatever else he thinks the disciples told as marvels, is true; and he adds: "Come, let us believe that these things were done by you." And immediately he puts them on a level with the works of sorcerers, as though they promised more wonderful things, and with what is done by those who have learned from the Egyptians, who in the middle of the marketplaces sell their revered lessons for a few obols, drive demons out of people, blow away diseases, call up the souls of heroes, display costly banquets, tables, cakes, and dishes that do not exist, and set in motion as living things what are not really living things but only appear such to the imagination. And he says: "Since they do these things, should we have to think them sons of God? Or must we say that these are the practices of wicked men possessed by evil demons?" You see how by these words he in effect accepts that magic exists—I do not know whether he is the same as the one who wrote several books against magic—but, as it is useful to him for his purpose, he likens the stories of Jesus to the results of magic. And they would have been similar if Jesus, like the tricksters, had gone only as far as display. But as it is, none of the sorcerers by what he does calls the spectators to the correction of their character, or trains in the fear of God those amazed at the spectacles, or tries to persuade those who have seen to live as people who will be judged by God. Sorcerers do none of these things, since they cannot, or do not even wish or want to take up the correction of human beings, being themselves full of the most shameful and notorious sins. But how is it not likely that he who by the wonders he did called those who saw them to the correction of their character offered himself as an example of the best life not only to his genuine disciples but also to the rest? So that the disciples might be moved to teach human beings according to the will of God, and the rest, taught more by his word and character than by his wonders how one must live, might do everything with reference to pleasing the God over all. If such was the life of Jesus, how could one reasonably compare him with the purpose of sorcerers, and not believe, according to the promise, that he is God appearing in a human body for the benefit of our race?

After this, confusing the argument and bringing against all who come from the divine word, as common charges of Christians, things said by some sect, he says: "The body of a god would not be such as yours." To this we say that he took a body, coming into life from a woman, a human body capable of human death. That is why, among other things, we say he became a great contender: because his human body was "tempted in every respect" like all human beings, yet no longer as human beings are, with sin, but wholly "without sin." For it is clearly evident to us that "he committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth"; and God handed him over, as pure, who "knew no sin," for all who have sinned. Then Celsus says: "The body of a god would not be born as you, Jesus, were born." However, he suspected that if he had been born as is written, his body could in some way be more divine than that of the many, and in some sense a body of God. But he disbelieves what is recorded about his conception by the Holy Spirit and believes that he was fathered by a certain Panthera who seduced the virgin; that is why he said, "The body of a god would not be born as you were born." But we have spoken more about this above.

He says too that "the body of a god does not eat such things," as though he could show from the Gospel writings that he ate, and what sort of things he ate. But suppose so: let him say that he ate the Passover with his disciples, not only saying, "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you," but also eating it; and let him say that, being thirsty, he drank at the well of Jacob. What has this to do with what we say about his body? He is clearly seen to have eaten fish after the resurrection; for in our view he took a body, since he was "born of a woman." "But," he says, "the body of a god does not use such a voice, nor such a manner of persuasion." These things too are trivial and quite contemptible. For it will be said to him that the one believed by the Greeks to be a god, the Pythian and the Didymaean, uses such a voice as that of the Pythia or of the prophetess at Miletus; and the Pythian or the Didymaean, or any other such Greek god established in one place, is not for this reason charged by the Greeks with not being a god. But it was much better for God to use a voice that, because it is proclaimed with power, produces an inexpressible persuasion in the hearers.

Then he says, insulting Jesus—he who, because of his irreverence and wicked doctrines, is, so to speak, hateful to God himself—that "these are the doings of someone hateful to God and a wicked sorcerer." Yet if the words and the facts are examined strictly, a human being cannot be hateful to God, since God loves all things that exist and loathes nothing of what he made; for he did not make anything hating it. And if some prophetic sayings say such a thing, they will receive this general explanation: that Scripture uses words about God as about one subject to human passions. What need is there to say in defense against one who thinks that, in what he professes to be persuasive arguments, he should use abuse and insults against Jesus as a wicked man and a sorcerer? That is not the work of one who demonstrates, but of one who has fallen into a vulgar and unphilosophical passion. He ought, setting out the matter, to examine it fairly and say against it, as best he can, what occurs to him. But since Celsus's Jew ends his speech to Jesus here, we too will end here the scope of our first book against him. And if God grants the truth that destroys false arguments, according to the prayer that says, "In your truth destroy them," we will begin in what follows the second speech, in which his Jew is made to say what follows to those persuaded by Jesus.