Contra Celsum, Book 2

Having ended the first book of what we dictated against Celsus's work entitled The True Word with the speech of the Jew to Jesus, which received a sufficient treatment, we intend to compose this one in defense against the charges he brings against those from the Jewish people who have believed in Jesus. And we first note this very point: why, having once decided to use an imaginary speaker, does Celsus not have the Jew speak to believers from the nations, but to those from the Jews? The argument would have seemed most plausible to him if it had been written against us. But perhaps the one who professes to know everything did not see what was consistent in the matter of his imaginary speaker. Let us consider, then, what he says to believers from the Jews. He says that, having left their ancestral law because they were misled by Jesus, they were deceived quite ridiculously and deserted to another name and another life—not observing even this, that those from the Jews who believe in Jesus have not left their ancestral law. For they live according to it, and have been named after the poverty of their interpretation of the law. For among the Jews the poor man is called "Ebion," and those from the Jews who have accepted Jesus as the Christ are called Ebionites. Peter too is seen to have kept the Jewish customs according to the law of Moses for a long time, as not yet having learned from Jesus to rise from the law according to the letter to that according to the spirit, as we have learned from the Acts of the Apostles. For "on the next day" after the angel of God appeared to Cornelius, directing him to send "to Joppa" for Simon who is called Peter, "Peter went up to the rooftop to pray about noon. And he became hungry and wanted to eat. While they were preparing it, a trance came upon him, and he saw heaven opened and something coming down like a great sheet, let down by four corners to the earth, in which were all the four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth and birds of the heaven. And a voice came to him: Rise, Peter; kill and eat. But Peter said: By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean. And the voice came to him a second time: What God has cleansed, do not call common." See in this how Peter is presented as still keeping the Jewish customs about clean and unclean. And from what follows it is shown that he needed a vision in order to share the words of faith with Cornelius, who was not an Israelite according to the flesh, and those with him, since he was still a Jew living according to the traditions of the Jews and despising those outside Judaism. And in the letter to the Galatians Paul shows that Peter, still fearing the Jews, stopped eating with the Gentiles when James came to him, and "separated himself" from the Gentiles, "fearing those of the circumcision"; and the rest of the Jews and Barnabas did the same with him. And it was consistent that those sent to the circumcision should not abandon Jewish customs, when "those who seemed to be pillars gave Paul and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship," themselves going "to the circumcision," so that those two might preach to the Gentiles. But why do I say that those who preached "to the circumcision" held back and separated themselves from the Gentiles, when Paul himself became "to the Jews a Jew, that he might win Jews"? That is why, as is written in the Acts of the Apostles, he even brought an offering to the altar, to persuade the Jews that he was not an apostate from the law. If Celsus had known all this, he would not have had the Jew say to believers from Judaism: "What happened to you, fellow citizens, that you abandoned the law of your fathers and, misled by that man with whom we have just been conversing, were deceived quite ridiculously and deserted from us to another name and another life?"

Since we have come to the subject of Peter and of those who taught Christianity to those of the circumcision, I think it not out of place to set out a saying of Jesus from the Gospel according to John and its explanation. It is written that he said: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; but when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears he will speak." And we ask in this passage what the "many things" were that Jesus had "to say" to his disciples but which they could not "bear" then. And I say: perhaps, since the apostles were Jews and had been brought up in the law of Moses according to the letter, he had "to say" what the true law is, and of what "heavenly things" the worship among the Jews was performed "as a copy and shadow," and of what "good things to come" the law about food and drink and festivals and new moons and sabbaths contained "a shadow." These were the "many things" he had "to say" to them. But seeing that it is very hard to overturn from the soul doctrines that were almost born and brought up with a man until adulthood, which had persuaded those who received them that these are divine and that to unsettle them is irreverent, and to prove them, by the surpassing worth of the "knowledge" according to Christ, that is, the truth, to be "rubbish" and "loss" so that the hearers would be persuaded, he postponed this to a more suitable time, after his suffering and resurrection. For truly the help would have been offered at the wrong time to those not yet able to receive it, and it would have overturned the belief about Jesus which they had already received, that he was the Christ and the Son of the living God. And consider whether it does not make good sense to understand "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now" in this way. For "many" are the matters of the explanation and clarification of the law according to its spiritual meaning; and the disciples, having been born and brought up among the Jews at that time, somehow could not "bear" them. I think too that because those things were a type, while what the Holy Spirit was going to teach them was truth, it is said for this reason: "When he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you into all the truth"—as if he said, into all the truth of the realities in whose types you have been, thinking that you worship God with true worship. And according to Jesus' promise, "the Spirit of truth" came upon Peter, saying to him about the four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth and birds of heaven, "Rise, Peter; kill and eat." And it came to him while he was still superstitious; for he said even to the divine voice, "By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean." And it taught him the doctrine of true and spiritual foods in the words, "What God has cleansed, do not call common." And after that vision "the Spirit of truth," guiding Peter "into all the truth," told him the many things that he could not "bear" while Jesus was still with him in the flesh. But there will be another occasion for explaining these things concerning the interpretation of the law of Moses.

Now our task is to refute the ignorance of Celsus, whose Jew says to his fellow citizens and Israelites who have believed in Jesus: "What happened to you that you abandoned the law of your fathers?" and so on. But how have those abandoned the ancestral law who rebuke those who do not listen to it, saying: "Tell me, you who read the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons," up to "which are allegorized," and what follows? And how have those abandoned the ancestral law who always mention in their words their ancestral writings, saying: "Or does not the law also say these things? For it is written in the law of Moses: You must not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain. Is it for oxen that God cares? Or does he speak entirely for our sake? It was written for our sake," and so on? And how confusedly Celsus's Jew says these things, when he could have said more plausibly: "Some of you have abandoned the customs on the pretext of interpretations and allegories; some of you, while interpreting spiritually, as you profess, nonetheless keep the ancestral customs; and some of you, without even interpreting, wish both to accept Jesus as the one prophesied and to keep the law of Moses according to the ancestral customs, as containing the Spirit’s whole meaning in the literal wording." But how could Celsus make the matter clear—he who in what follows mentioned godless sects wholly alien to Jesus, and others that abandon the Creator, but did not know that there are also Israelites who believe in Jesus and have not abandoned the ancestral law? For it was not his purpose to examine the whole subject with love of truth, so as to accept whatever useful thing he might find; but he wrote such things as an enemy, wholly bent on overturning them as soon as he heard them.

Then his Jew says to believers from the people: "Yesterday and the day before, when we were punishing this man who was leading you like cattle, you abandoned the law of your fathers"—knowing nothing accurately in what he said, as we have shown. After this, what follows seems to me to have some cleverness: "Or how is it that you begin from our sacred writings, but as you go on you dishonor them, though you have no other origin to name for your doctrine than our law?" Truly the introduction for Christians is from the sacred writings of Moses and the prophetic writings; and after the introduction, progress for those being introduced lies in the interpretation and clarification of them, as they seek the mystery "according to revelation," kept silent "for long ages" but "now revealed" in the prophetic words and in the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not, as you say, that those who go on dishonor what is written in the law; rather, they give it more honor, showing what a depth of wise and secret meanings those writings have, which have not been perceived by the Jews who read them rather superficially and as myths. And what is absurd in the law being the origin of our doctrine, that is, of the gospel? Our Lord himself says to those who did not believe him: "If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?" And one of the evangelists, Mark, says: "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: Look, I send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you," showing that the beginning of the gospel depends on the Jewish writings. What, then, is said against us by Celsus's Jew in the words: "For if anyone foretold to you that the son of God would come to men, he was our prophet and the prophet of our God"? And what charge against Christianity is it if John, who baptized Jesus, was a Jew? For it does not follow, because he was a Jew, that every believer, whether he comes to the teaching from the nations or from the Jews, must keep the law of Moses according to the letter.

After this, although Celsus repeats himself about Jesus, saying now for the second time that he was punished by the Jews for his offenses, we will not repeat our defense, being content with what was said before. Then, since his Jew belittles as stale the teachings about the resurrection of the dead, the judgment of God, and reward for the righteous but fire for the unrighteous, and thinks he overturns Christianity by saying that Christians are taught nothing new in these matters, we must say to him that our Jesus, seeing that the Jews did nothing worthy of the teachings in the prophets, taught by a parable that "the kingdom of God will be taken away" from them "and given" to those from the nations. That is why one can truly see that all the teachings of the Jews of today are myths and trivialities (for they do not have the light of the knowledge of the Scriptures), while those of the Christians are truth, able to lift up and raise the soul and mind of a human being, and persuading us to have a "citizenship," not like the Jews below, somewhere below, but "in heaven." This is evident among those who contemplate the greatness of the thoughts in the law and the prophets and are able to present them to others.

Suppose that Jesus kept all the Jewish customs, even including their sacrifices: how does this contribute to the view that one must not believe in him as Son of God? Jesus is, then, the Son of the God who gave the law and the prophets; and we of the church do not violate it, but we have fled the mythologies of the Jews and are made wise and trained by the mystical contemplation of the law and the prophets. For the prophets, not letting the meaning of what is said rest in the obvious history or in the legislation according to the words and the letter, say in one place, when they are supposedly about to set out histories, "I will open my mouth in parables; I will speak riddles from the beginning," and in another, praying about the law as obscure and needing God to be understood, they say in prayer: "Unveil my eyes, and I will perceive your wonders out of your law."

Let them show where even a hint of a word spoken from boastfulness is found in Jesus. For how is he boastful who says, "Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls"? Or how is he boastful who, "during supper," took off his outer clothes before the disciples, wrapped himself with a "towel," poured "water into the basin," washed each one's "feet," rebuked the one who did not want to offer them, and said, "If I do not wash you, you have no part with me"? Or how is he boastful who says, "I was in your midst not as one who reclines to eat, but as one who serves"? Let someone prove what lies he told, and set out great and small lies, so as to show that Jesus told the great ones. He can be refuted in another way too: just as no lie is more a lie than another lie, so none is greater; as no truth is more true than another truth or greater in truth. And let Celsus's Jew in particular declare what Jesus' unholy deeds were. Or is it unholy to turn people away from bodily circumcision, a bodily sabbath, bodily festivals, bodily new moons, and clean and unclean foods, and to turn the mind to a law worthy of God, true and spiritual—while the one who is an ambassador "for Christ" knows how to become a Jew "to the Jews, that he might win Jews," and "to those under the law as under the law, that he might win those under the law"?

He says that "many others too, of the same kind as Jesus, would appear to those who wish to be deceived." Then let Celsus's Jew show not many, nor even a few, but even one such as Jesus was, bringing to the human race, with the power that was in him, a teaching and doctrines useful for life, and turning people from the flood of sins. He says that "this charge is brought against the Jews by those who believe in Christ, that they have not believed in Jesus as God"; about this too we have already made our defense above, showing at the same time in what way we understand him as God and in what respect we call him man. "But how," he says, "would we, who made known to all men that one would come from God to punish the unrighteous, dishonor him when he came?" To answer this, since it is quite silly, does not seem to me reasonable. It is as if someone else were to say: "How could we who taught self-control do anything sexually uncontrolled, or we who advocate justice do wrong?" For as those things are found among human beings, so it was human that those who said they believed the prophets, who spoke of the Christ who would come, disbelieved the one who came according to the prophecies. And if we must add another reason, we will say that the prophets foretold this very thing. Isaiah, at any rate, clearly says: "Hearing you will hear and will not understand, and seeing you will see and will not perceive; for the heart of this people has grown fat," and so on. And let them tell us to whom, hearing and seeing, it is prophesied that they will not understand what is said and will not see what is seen in the way they ought, if not to the Jews. It is clear, then, that seeing Jesus they did not see who he was, and hearing him they did not understand from what he said the divinity in him, which transferred God's visitation of the Jews to those from the nations who believe in him. So one can see after the coming of Jesus that the Jews have been wholly abandoned and have nothing of what was formerly revered among them, not even any sign that there is some divinity among them. For there are no longer prophets or wonders, of which traces to some extent are found among Christians, and some even "greater"; and, if we are to be believed when we say it, we too have seen them. Celsus's Jew says: "Why did we dishonor the one we proclaimed beforehand? Was it so that we might be punished more than others?" To this too one can say that because of their unbelief in Jesus and all the other insults they heaped on him, the Jews will suffer more than others not only at the judgment in which we believe, but have already suffered. For what nation has been exiled from its own capital and from the place proper to its ancestral worship except the Jews alone? And they have suffered this as the most wretched of peoples, though they sinned much, for nothing so much as for what they dared against our Jesus.

After this the Jew says: "How were we to think this man a god, who in other respects too, as was commonly heard, showed nothing of what he professed, and when we had convicted and condemned him and judged him worthy of punishment, was caught hiding and running away most disgracefully, and was betrayed by those very people whom he called disciples? Yet," he says, "if he was a god, it was not possible for him to flee, nor to be bound and led away; least of all for one thought to be a savior and the son of the greatest God and his messenger to be deserted and handed over by those who were with him, shared everything with him privately, and had him as their teacher." To this we will say that we too do not suppose that the body of Jesus, then seen and perceptible, was God. And why do I say the body? Not even the soul, about which it is said, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death." But just as, according to the Jewish account, the one who says, "I am the Lord, the God of all flesh," and "Before me there was no other god, and after me there will be none," is believed to be God, using the soul and body of the prophet as an instrument; and, according to the Greeks, the one who says, "I know the number of the sand and the measures of the sea, and I understand those unable to speak and hear the one who says nothing," is thought to be a god speaking and heard through the Pythia; so in our view the Word, God and Son of the God of all, said in Jesus, "I am the way and the truth and the life," and "I am the door," and "I am the living bread that came down from heaven," and anything else similar. We blame the Jews, then, for not thinking him God, who is attested in many places by the prophets as being a great power and God next to the God and Father of all. For we say that it was to him that the Father gave the command, in the account of creation according to Moses, saying, "Let there be light," and "Let there be a vault of sky," and all the other things God commanded to come into being; and to him that he said, "Let us make man according to our image and likeness"; and that the Word, having been commanded, made all things that the Father instructed him to make. And we say this not on our own initiative, but believing the prophecies current among the Jews, in which it is said about God and the things he made, in these very words: "For he spoke, and they came into being; he commanded, and they were created." For if God commanded and the creatures were created, who, according to the mind of the prophetic Spirit, could be the one able to fulfill so great a command of the Father, if not the one who is, so to speak, the living Word and "the truth"? That the Gospels do not know the one who says in Jesus, "I am the way and the truth and the life," to have been confined, as though he existed nowhere outside the soul and body of Jesus, is clear from many passages, and from a few that we will set out, which read as follows. John the Baptist, prophesying that the Son of God would soon appear—not existing only in that body and soul but reaching everywhere—says of him: "Among you stands one whom you do not know, who comes after me." If he had thought that the Son of God was only where the visible body of Jesus was, how could he have said, "Among you stands one whom you do not know"? And Jesus himself, raising the thoughts of his disciples to think greater things about the Son of God, says: "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst." Such too is his promise to the disciples, saying: "And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." We say these things not separating the Son of God from Jesus; for after the incarnation the soul and body of Jesus became, in the highest degree, one with the Word of God. For if, according to the teaching of Paul, who says, "He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit," everyone who has understood what it is to be joined to the Lord, and has been joined to him, is one spirit with the Lord, how much more divinely and greatly is that composite being one with the Word of God? He showed among the Jews that he was "the power of God" by the wonders he did, which Celsus suspected were done by sorcery, and the Jews of that time—who had learned the things about Beelzebul I know not where—thought he cast out "the demons by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons." Our Savior refuted them there for speaking most absurdly, since the kingdom of wickedness had not yet come to an end; this will be clear to those who read the Gospel text with understanding, which there is no time to explain now.

What did Jesus promise and not do? Let Celsus set it out and prove it. But he will not be able to, especially since he thinks he brings what he says against Jesus or against us either from misunderstandings, or from readings of the Gospels, or from Jewish stories. But since the Jew says again, "We convicted and condemned him and judged him worthy of punishment," let them show how those who sought to contrive false witness against him convicted him—unless the great proof against Jesus was what the accusers said, that "this man said: I am able to destroy the temple of God and to raise it in three days." For he "was speaking of the temple of his body," while they, not knowing how to hear according to the intention of the speaker, thought that his words were about the stone temple, which the Jews honored more than the true temple of God the Word, of wisdom and of truth, ought to be honored. And let someone say how Jesus "hid and ran away most disgracefully"; let someone point out what deserves criticism. But since he says also that he "was caught," I would say that if being caught is involuntary, Jesus was not caught. For at the suitable time he did not prevent himself from coming into the hands of men, as "the Lamb of God," that he might take away "the sin of the world." "Knowing all that was coming upon him, he went out and said to them: Whom do you seek? They answered: Jesus of Nazareth. He said to them: I am he. Judas, who was betraying him, was standing with them. When he said to them, I am he, they drew back and fell to the ground. So he asked them again: Whom do you seek? And they said again: Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered them: I told you that I am he; so if you seek me, let these men go." And to the one who wished to help him and struck "the high priest's slave" and cut off "his ear," he said: "Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Or do you think that I cannot now appeal to my Father, and he will immediately send me more than twelve legions of angels? How then would the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen so?" If someone thinks these things are inventions of those who wrote the Gospels, why are not rather the words of those who speak from enmity and hatred toward him and the Christians inventions, and the words of those who showed the genuineness of their devotion to Jesus by enduring anything whatever for his words the truth? [How could] the disciples of Jesus have taken on such endurance and steadfastness even to death, while inventing things about their teacher that were not true? And to the fair-minded the evidence is great that they were persuaded of what they wrote, from their having endured such great and so many things for the one they believed to be the Son of God.

Then Celsus's Jew learned from the Gospels that Jesus "was betrayed by those he called disciples," calling the one man Judas many disciples in order to seem to increase the charge. But he did not trouble himself further with everything recorded about Judas: that Judas, falling into conflicting and contrary judgments about his teacher, neither turned against him with his whole soul nor kept with his whole soul the respect of a student for his teacher. For "he who betrayed him gave" the crowd that came to arrest Jesus "a sign, saying: The one I kiss is he; seize him," preserving some of his respect for him; for if he had not preserved it, he would have betrayed him openly, without the pretense of a kiss. Will this not persuade everyone about Judas's intention—that together with his love of money and his wicked intention to betray his teacher, he had something mixed in his soul, produced in him by the words of Jesus, which showed, so to speak, a remnant of goodness? For it is written that "when Judas, who betrayed him, saw that he was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying: I have sinned in betraying innocent blood. But they said: What is that to us? See to it yourself. And throwing the silver into the temple, he departed, and went and hanged himself." If Judas, the lover of money, who stole what was put into "the money box" for the poor, "repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders," clearly the teachings of Jesus were able to produce some repentance in him, and were not wholly despised and spat out by the traitor; and the words "I have sinned in betraying innocent blood" were those of one confessing his sin. See how burning and violent was the grief that came upon him from repentance for his sins, so that he could no longer bear to live, but threw the silver "into the temple," departed, went away, and hanged himself. For he condemned himself, showing how much power the teaching of Jesus had even in the sinner Judas, the thief and traitor, who could not wholly despise what he had learned from Jesus. Or will Celsus and his friends say that the things showing that Judas was not wholly apostate, even after what he dared against his teacher, are inventions, and that only this is true, that one of the disciples betrayed him, and will they add to what is written that he betrayed him with his whole soul? It is implausible to do everything as an enemy with the same writings, both believing and disbelieving. And if we must also set out an argument about Judas that should put them to shame, we will say that in the book of Psalms the whole of the hundred and eighth Psalm contains the prophecy about Judas, which begins: "God, do not keep silent at my praise, for the mouth of a sinner and the mouth of a deceitful man has been opened against me." It is also prophesied in it that Judas separated himself from the number of the apostles because of his sin, and another was chosen in his place; and this is shown in the words, "And let another take his office." But suppose he was betrayed by one of the disciples with a worse attitude than Judas, who, as it were, poured out all the words he had heard from Jesus: what does this contribute to an accusation of Jesus or of Christianity? And how does it prove the teaching false? We have already answered what follows in what went before, showing that Jesus was not caught fleeing but gave himself up willingly for us all. From this it follows that if he was bound, he was bound willingly, teaching us to accept such things willingly for the sake of godliness.

Childish too, it seems to me, are such things as this: that "a good general who led many thousands was never betrayed, nor even a wicked robber chief, the leader of utter villains, who seemed useful to his companions; but he, betrayed by those under him, neither ruled as a good general, nor, having deceived his disciples, produced in those deceived even the goodwill, so to speak, that robbers have toward their chief." For one could find many stories of generals betrayed by their own men and of robber chiefs caught through those who did not keep their agreements with them. But suppose no general or robber chief was ever betrayed: what does it contribute to the case against Jesus that one of his students became his betrayer? Since Celsus makes a show of philosophy, we would ask him: was it an accusation against Plato that Aristotle, after twenty years of hearing him, left him and attacked the argument for the immortality of the soul, and called Plato's Forms "twitterings"? And, raising further difficulties, we might say this: was Plato no longer capable in dialectic, nor able to present his thoughts, because Aristotle left him, and are Plato's doctrines false for this reason? Or can Plato be right, as those who philosophize according to him would say, while Aristotle became wicked and ungrateful to his teacher? Chrysippus too is seen in many places in his writings to attack Cleanthes, introducing innovations against his views, though Cleanthes had been his teacher when he was still young and beginning philosophy. Yet Aristotle is said to have studied with Plato for twenty years, and Chrysippus spent no short time with Cleanthes; but Judas did not spend even three years with Jesus. And from what is written in the lives of the philosophers one could find many things like those for which Celsus blames Jesus on account of Judas. The Pythagoreans used to build cenotaphs for those who, after being turned to philosophy, ran back to ordinary life; and Pythagoras and his followers were not weak in argument and demonstration for that reason.

After this Celsus's Jew says: "Though I have many things to say about what happened to Jesus, both true and not like what was written by Jesus' disciples, I deliberately pass them over." What, then, are these true things, not like those written in the Gospels, which Celsus's Jew passes over? Or, using what he thinks rhetorical cleverness, does he pretend to have something to say, when he had nothing from outside the Gospel to bring forward that could strike the hearer as true and as a clear accusation of Jesus and his teaching? He charges the disciples with having invented the claim that Jesus foreknew and foretold everything that happened to him. That this is true, even if Celsus does not wish it, we will establish from many other things spoken prophetically by the Savior, in which he foretold what would happen to Christians even in later generations. Who would not marvel at the prediction, "You will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the nations," and whatever else he foretold about his disciples being persecuted? For what doctrine held among human beings are others also punished, so that one of Jesus' accusers could say that, seeing irreverent or false doctrines accused, he thought to make this too impressive by supposedly predicting it about himself? For if some had to be brought "before governors and kings" for doctrines, who should they be but the Epicureans, who wholly abolish providence, or the Peripatetics, who say that prayers and sacrifices to the Divine accomplish nothing? But someone will say that the Samaritans too are persecuted for their worship of God. To him we will say this: the Sicarii are put to death for circumcision, as mutilating themselves against the established laws and what is permitted to the Jews alone. And one does not hear a judge asking whether a Sicarius who strives to live according to this supposed worship of God will be released if he changes his mind, but led away to death if he persists; the proof of circumcision is enough to have the one who underwent it put to death. But Christians alone, according to what was said by their Savior, "You will be brought before governors and kings for my sake," are permitted by the judges, up to their last breath, to go home and live free of danger if they renounce Christianity and sacrifice and swear according to the common customs. See whether it is not said with great authority: "Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I too will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; and everyone who denies me before men," and so on. Go up with me in thought to Jesus as he says these things, and see them prophesied before they happened. Will you not say, if you disbelieve him, that he is talking nonsense and speaking in vain, since what he says will not happen; or, if you are in doubt about assenting to his words: "If these things are fulfilled, and the teaching of Jesus' words is established so that governors and kings take care to put to death those who acknowledge Jesus, then we will believe that he says these things as one who has received great authority from God to sow this teaching in the human race and is persuaded that it will prevail"? Who will not marvel, going up in thought to him as he taught then and said, "This gospel will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to them and to the nations," and seeing that, according to what he said, the gospel of Jesus Christ has been preached in all that is under heaven, "to Greeks and barbarians, to wise and foolish"? For the word spoken with power has prevailed over every kind of human being, and there is no race of men to be seen that has escaped accepting the teaching of Jesus. Let Celsus's Jew, who disbelieves that Jesus foreknew all that happened to him, consider how, while Jerusalem was still standing and all the Jewish worship was carried on in it, Jesus foretold what would happen to it at the hands of the Romans. For they will not say that Jesus' own acquaintances and hearers handed on the teaching of the Gospels without writing and left their disciples without written records about Jesus. In them it is written: "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near." And at that time there were no armies around Jerusalem, surrounding, encircling, and besieging it. That began while Nero was still reigning and lasted until the rule of Vespasian, whose son Titus destroyed Jerusalem—as Josephus writes, because of James the Just, the brother of Jesus called Christ, but as the truth shows, because of Jesus the Christ of God.

Celsus, however, could have accepted or granted that Jesus foreknew what would happen to him, and then made this seem trivial, as he did with the mighty works, saying that they were done by sorcery; and he could have said that many have known what would happen to them from divination by omens, or birds, or sacrifices, or horoscopes. But this he would not grant, as too great a thing, while he seems in a way to accept that Jesus did mighty works, but to slander them on the pretext of sorcery. Phlegon, however, in the thirteenth or fourteenth book, I think, of his Chronicles, even granted Christ foreknowledge of certain future events—though he confused things concerning Peter with things concerning Jesus—and testified that what was foretold happened as he had said. Yet he too, even through what concerns foreknowledge, declared, as if against his will, that the teaching in the founders of our doctrines was not empty of a more divine power.

Celsus says that "the disciples of Jesus, having nothing to plead about an obvious fact, devised this: to say that he foreknew everything"—not noticing, or not wishing to notice, the truthfulness of the writers, who admitted both that Jesus foretold to the disciples, "All of you will fall away because of me this night," and that he spoke truly when they fell away; and that he prophesied to Peter, "Before the rooster crows you will deny me three times," and that Peter denied him three times. For if they had not been lovers of truth, but, as Celsus thinks, were recording inventions, they would not have recorded Peter denying him or Jesus’ disciples falling away. For even if these things happened, who would have proved the account wrong by showing that it happened so? Indeed, in all likelihood, such things should have been kept silent by men who wished to teach the readers of the Gospels to despise death for the confession of Christianity. But as it is, seeing that the teaching would prevail over human beings by its power, they set down even such things, which, I do not know how, would not harm the readers or give them an excuse for denial.

He says, very foolishly, that the disciples wrote such things about Jesus to excuse what had happened to him: “As if,” he says, “someone who said that a man was just were to show him doing wrong, and who said he was holy were to show him committing murder, and who said he was immortal were to show him dead, adding to all this that he had foretold it.” His illustration is plainly unlike the case, since there is nothing absurd in one who had taken upon himself the task of setting before human beings a pattern of how they ought to live showing them how one ought to die for the sake of piety; quite apart from the fact that his dying for human beings was of some benefit to the whole universe, as we showed in the preceding book. Next he thinks that the entire admission of his suffering confirms his refutation rather than dissolving it. For he has not seen all that Paul set out philosophically on this subject and what the prophets said. And it escaped him that one of those in the heresies said that Jesus underwent these things in appearance, not in reality. For he did not know this when he said: “For you do not even say that he seemed to irreverent people to suffer these things but did not suffer them; you openly admit that he suffered.” But we do not put “seeming” in the case of his suffering, so that his resurrection too may not be false but true. For if one who truly died rose, he truly rose; but one who only seemed to have died did not truly rise. And since unbelievers mock the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we will cite Plato as well, who says that Er the son of Armenius rose from the pyre after twelve days and reported what he had seen in Hades; and, since we are addressing unbelievers, what Heraclides tells of the woman who lay without breath will not be wholly useless for the subject. Many are also recorded to have come back from their tombs, not only on the same day but even on the next. What wonder, then, if one who did many marvelous things beyond human power, and so evident that those who could not deny they had happened disparaged them by lumping them together with sorceries, had something more also in his own death, so that his soul left the body of its own will and, having accomplished certain things outside it, returned again when it wished? Such a word is recorded in John as spoken by Jesus: “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” And perhaps it was for this reason that he departed from the body beforehand, so as to preserve it and so that his legs should not be broken like those of the robbers crucified with him: “For the soldiers broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with him; but when they came to Jesus and saw that he had breathed his last, they did not break his legs.” We have already answered the question, “How then is it credible that he foretold it?” As to “How is a dead man immortal?”, let anyone who wishes learn that it is not the dead man who is immortal but the one who rose from the dead. Not only is the dead man not immortal, but not even the composite Jesus before his death was immortal, since he was going to die. For no one who is going to die is immortal, but only when he will die no more. “But Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer rules over him,” even if those who cannot grasp how this is said do not wish to understand it.

Very stupid too is this: “What god, or daemon, or sensible man, foreseeing that such things would happen to him, would not avoid them if he could, instead of falling into what he knew beforehand?” Socrates, at any rate, knew that he would drink the hemlock and die, and he could, if he had listened to Crito, have escaped from prison and suffered none of these things; but he chose, according to what seemed reasonable to him, that it was better for him to die as a philosopher than to live unworthy of philosophy. Leonidas too, the Spartan general, knowing that he was about to die with those at Thermopylae, did not scheme to live shamefully, but said to those with him: “Let us eat breakfast as men who will dine in Hades.” Those who care to collect such stories will find many. What wonder, then, if Jesus, knowing what would happen, did not avoid it but met what he also knew beforehand? When Paul too, his disciple, heard what would happen to him if he went up to Jerusalem, he went to meet the dangers, rebuking those who wept around him and tried to keep him from going up to Jerusalem. And many in our own time, knowing that if they confessed Christianity they would die, but if they denied it they would be released and recover their property, have despised life and willingly chosen death for the sake of piety.

Next the Jew in Celsus says something else foolish: “How, if he foretold both who would betray him and who would deny him, did they not fear him as a god, so that the one would no longer betray him and the other would not deny him?” The most wise Celsus did not see the contradiction in this passage. If he foreknew as God, and his foreknowledge could not prove false, then it was impossible for the one known as the future betrayer not to betray, or for the one shown to be the future denier not to deny. But if it was possible for this one not to betray and that one not to deny, so that not betraying and not denying could have happened among those who had learned of it in advance, then the one who said, “This one will betray and that one will deny,” was no longer truthful. For if he foreknew the betrayer, he saw the wickedness from which he would betray, and that wickedness was by no means overturned by the foreknowledge. Again, if he recognized the one who would deny, seeing the weakness from which he would deny, he foretold that he would deny; and that weakness was not going to be overturned so suddenly by the foreknowledge. And where does he get this: “But they betrayed and denied him without caring for him at all”? For it has been shown about the betrayer that it is false that he betrayed his teacher without caring for him at all; and this is shown no less about the one who denied, who “went out” after denying and “wept bitterly.”

Superficial too is this: “For already, surely, even a man who is plotted against, if he learns of it beforehand and tells the plotters in advance, turns them back and puts them on their guard.” For many have plotted against people who knew of it beforehand. Next, as if drawing the conclusion of his argument, he says: “So these things did not happen because they had been foretold, for that is impossible; but since they happened, the claim that they were foretold is proved false. For it is utterly impossible that those who heard it beforehand should still betray and deny.” Now that his premises have been overturned, the conclusion too is overturned with them: “These things did not happen because they were foretold.” We say that they both happened, since it was possible, and that because they happened the foretelling is shown to be true; for what is said about the future is judged true by the outcome. His statement, then, is false: that the foretelling is proved false. And Celsus's words, “For it is utterly impossible that those who heard it beforehand should still betray and deny,” were said in vain.

After this let us see how he speaks: “He foretold these things,” he says, “being a god, and what was foretold had to happen in any case. A god, then, led his own disciples and prophets, with whom he ate and drank, into this, so that they became irreverent and unholy, when he above all ought to have done good to all people, and especially to those who shared his table. Or would a man who had shared a table with another no longer plot against him, whereas one who feasted with a god became his plotter? And what is still more absurd, the god himself plotted against those who shared his table, making them traitors and ungodly.” Since you wish me to answer even Celsus's arguments that seem to me trivial, we will say the following to this too. Celsus thinks that what is declared by some foreknowledge happens because it was declared; we do not grant this, but say that the one who declared it is not the cause of what will be because he foretold that it would happen; rather what will be, which would have been even if it had not been declared, provided the foreknower with the reason for foretelling it. And this whole matter lies in the foreknowledge of the one who declares it: when it is possible for a certain thing to happen and possible also for it not to happen, one or the other of them will be the case. And we do not say that the foreknower, taking away the possibility of its happening or not happening, says something like this: “This will certainly be, and it is impossible for it to happen otherwise.” This applies to every foreknowledge of something that depends on us, whether in the divine Scriptures or in the histories of the Greeks. And what the dialecticians call the “idle argument,” which is a sophism, will not be a sophism as far as Celsus is concerned, but by sound reason it is a sophism. So that this may be understood, from Scripture I will use the prophecies about Judas, or our Savior's foreknowledge of him as the one who would betray him; and from Greek history the oracle to Laius, granting for the present that it is true, since this does not harm the argument. About Judas, then, it is said in the hundred and eighth psalm, spoken in the person of the Savior, which begins: “God, do not pass over my praise in silence; for the mouth of the sinner and the mouth of the deceitful has been opened against me.” And if you observe what is written in the psalm, you will find that, just as he was foreknown as the one who would betray the Savior, so he was also the cause of the betrayal and deserved, because of his wickedness, the curses spoken in the prophecy. For let him suffer these things, “because,” it says, “he did not remember to show mercy, and persecuted a man poor and needy.” So he was able to remember “to show mercy” and not to persecute the one he persecuted; but though he was able, he did not do so, but betrayed him, so as to deserve the curses against him in the prophecy. And against the Greeks we will use what was said in this way to Laius, whether the tragedian recorded its very words or their equivalent. It is said to him by the one who foreknew what would be: “Do not sow the furrow of children against the will of the gods; for if you father a child, your offspring will kill you, and your whole house will wade through blood.” In this, then, it is clearly shown that it was possible for Laius not to sow “the furrow of children”; for the oracle would not have commanded him what was not possible. But it was also possible to sow, and neither of the two was compelled. It followed for him who did not guard against sowing “the furrow of children” that, from having sown, he suffered the tragedy of Oedipus, Jocasta, and their sons. So too the so-called idle argument, being a sophism, runs like this when put hypothetically to a sick man, deterring him, as a sophism, from using the doctor for his health. The argument goes as follows: “If it is fated for you to recover from the illness, you will recover whether you call in the doctor or not; but if it is fated for you not to recover, you will not recover whether you call in the doctor or not. Either it is fated for you to recover or it is fated for you not to recover. So you call in the doctor in vain.” But this argument is wittily met by one like it: “If it is fated for you to father children, you will father them whether you have sex with a woman or not; but if it is fated for you not to father children, you will not father them whether you have sex with a woman or not. Either it is fated for you to father children or not to beget them. So you have sex with a woman in vain.” For just as in this case, since it is impossible and cannot be that one who does not have sex with a woman fathers children, having sex with a woman is not undertaken in vain, so, if recovery from illness comes by way of medicine, the doctor is necessarily called in, and “you call in the doctor in vain” is false. We have brought in all this because of what the most wise Celsus put forward when he said: “Being a god he foretold it, and what was foretold had to happen in any case.” For if he takes “in any case” to mean “by necessity,” we will not grant it to him, since it was possible also for it not to happen. But if he means “in any case” in the sense of “it will be,” which may well be true even if it is possible for it not to happen, this does not harm the argument. Nor did it follow from Jesus' truly foretelling what concerned the betrayer or the one who denied that he himself became the cause of their irreverent and unholy act. For he who, as we believe, knew “what was in man,” saw his wicked character and what he would dare from being a lover of money and from not holding firmly the right convictions about his teacher, and among much else he said: “He who has dipped his hand with me in the dish, he will betray me.”

See also how superficial and how plainly false is this statement of Celsus. He declared that a man who had shared another's table would not plot against him; and if he would not plot against a man, much more would one who had feasted with a god not become his plotter. For who does not know that many who shared salt and table have plotted against their companions at table? The history of Greeks and barbarians is full of such examples. And the iambic poet of Paros, criticizing Lycambes for breaking agreements made over “salt and table,” says to him: “You set aside a great oath, both salt and table.” Those who care for learning in histories, who have given themselves wholly to it and left aside the more necessary lessons about how one ought to live, will cite more examples showing that those who shared a table with some have plotted against them.

Then, as if he had concluded his argument with tightly connected proofs and conclusions, he said: “And what is still more absurd, the god himself plotted against those who shared his table, making them traitors and ungodly.” But how Jesus either plotted against his disciples or made them traitors and ungodly, he could not show, except from the chain of reasoning he imagined, which anyone at all could very easily refute.

After this he says: “If he had decided on these things and was punished in obedience to his Father, it is clear that, since he was a god and willed it, what was done to him according to his own purpose was neither painful nor distressing to him.” He did not see that he was contradicting himself immediately. For if he granted that he was punished, since he had decided on these things and in obedience to his Father gave himself up, it is clear that he was punished, and it was not possible for what the punishers inflicted not to be painful; for pain does not depend on the will. But if what was inflicted was neither painful nor distressing to one who willed it, how did he grant that “he was punished”? He did not see that, having once taken the body that comes through birth, he took a body capable of suffering pain and the distressing things that happen to those in bodies, if we understand “distressing” as something not chosen. So then, just as he willingly took a body not wholly of another nature than human flesh, so together with the body he also took its pains and griefs. He did not control whether he suffered these, since it lay with those who handled him to inflict on him what was distressing and painful. We have already made our defense above, that if he had not wished to come into human hands he would not have come; but he came, since he wished to, because of the benefit to the universe, stated earlier, from his dying for human beings.

Next, wishing to show that what happened to him was painful and grievous, and that it was not possible for him to make it otherwise by willing it, he says: “Why then does he cry out and lament and pray to escape the fear of destruction, saying something like this: ‘Father, if this cup could pass by’?” Here too see Celsus's malice. He does not acknowledge the love of truth of those who wrote the Gospels, who could have passed over in silence what Celsus thinks blameworthy, yet did not keep silent, for many reasons which someone will set out at the proper time in explaining the Gospel. Instead he accuses the Gospel text, adding tragic exaggeration and putting down what is not written; for it is not found that Jesus laments. He paraphrases “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass,” but no longer cites what is written right after it, which plainly shows his reverence toward the Father and his greatness of soul, and which runs: “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Nor does he pretend to have read the ready obedience of Jesus to his Father's will concerning what had been decided that he should suffer, shown in the words: “If this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” He is doing something like the irreverent who hear the divine Scriptures maliciously and “speak unrighteousness on high.” For they seem to have heard “I will kill,” and they often criticize us for it, but they do not even remember “I will make alive.” Yet the whole saying shows that those whose lives harm others and act in wickedness are killed by God, and a better life is brought in for them in exchange, one that God would give to those who have died to sin. So too they have heard “I will strike,” but do not see “and I will heal.” This is like what a doctor says when he has cut into bodies and made severe wounds in order to remove what harms them and hinders their health, and does not stop at the pain and the cutting, but by his treatment restores the body to the health he intends for it. Nor have they heard the whole of “For he causes pain and restores again,” but only “he causes pain.” In the same way the Jew presented by Celsus has set out “Father, if only this cup could pass by,” but not what follows, which displays Jesus’ readiness and firmness toward his suffering. These matters too, which admit of a long exposition from the wisdom of God, fittingly to be handed on to those whom Paul called “mature” when he said, “We speak wisdom among the mature,” we put off for the present and briefly recall only what is useful for the matter at hand.

We said above too that some sayings are those of the firstborn “of all creation” in Jesus, such as “I am the way and the truth and the life” and others like it, while others are those of the man understood to be in him, such as “But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from the Father.” Here, then, in his human nature he portrays both the weakness of human flesh and the eagerness of the spirit: the weakness in “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me,” and the eagerness of the spirit in “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” And if one must also observe the order of what was said, notice that first is said what belongs to the weakness of the flesh, being, so to speak, one thing, and afterward what belongs to the eagerness of the spirit, which is more. For there is one saying, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me,” but more: both “not as I will, but as you will” and “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” It must also be observed that he did not say, “Let this cup go away from me,” but said this whole sentence reverently and with reserve: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” I also know of an interpretation of the passage like this: the Savior, seeing what the people and Jerusalem would suffer in punishment for what the Jews had dared against him, for no other reason than his love for them, wished that the people should not suffer what they were going to suffer, and said, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me”; as if he were saying: “Since, because I drink this cup of punishment, a whole nation will be abandoned by you, I pray, if it is possible, that this cup may pass from me, so that your portion, which has dared this against me, may not be wholly abandoned by you.” But if, as Celsus says, nothing painful or grievous happened to Jesus at that time, how could those who came afterward use Jesus as an example of enduring hardships for the sake of piety, if he had not suffered human things but only seemed to have suffered?

The Jew in Celsus further says to Jesus' disciples, as if they had invented these things: “Even with your lies you could not cover up your fictions plausibly.” To this it will be said that an easy way of covering up such things was not to record them at all. For if the Gospels had not contained them, who could have criticized us with Jesus having said such things during his earthly mission? Celsus did not see that it is not possible for the same people both to have been deceived about Jesus as God and as the one foretold by prophecy, and to have invented things about him, obviously knowing that the inventions were untrue. Either, then, they did not invent them, but thought so and wrote without lying; or they wrote lying, and did not think so, and were not deceived into believing him to be God.

After this he says that some of the believers, like people driven by drunkenness to attack themselves, have altered the Gospel from its first writing three and four and many times, and remodeled it, so as to be able to deny things in the face of refutations. I know of no others who have altered the Gospel than the followers of Marcion and those of Valentinus, and I think also those of Lucanus. But this, if said, is a charge not against the teaching but against those who dared to tamper with the Gospels. And just as sophists, Epicureans, Peripatetics, or whoever hold false opinions are not a charge against philosophy, so those who alter the Gospels and bring in heresies foreign to the intent of Jesus' teaching are not a charge against true Christianity.

Since after this the Jew in Celsus also criticizes Christians for appealing to the prophets who proclaimed beforehand what concerned Jesus, we will say, in addition to what was said on this above, that he ought, sparing people as he claims, to have set out the prophecies themselves, and, after conceding their plausibility, to have set out what seemed to him the refutation of the use made of the prophetic writings. For in this way he would not have seemed to snatch at so great a question with a few trivial words, especially since he says that the prophecies can be applied to countless others much more plausibly than to Jesus. He ought to have taken a careful stand against this proof, which has prevailed among Christians as the strongest, and to have shown, prophecy by prophecy, how it can be applied to others much more plausibly than to Jesus. But he did not even see that, if this could plausibly be said against Christians by anyone, it could perhaps plausibly be said by those who are strangers to the prophetic writings; as it is, Celsus has put into the mouth of the Jew what a Jew would not say. For the Jew will not agree that the prophecies can be applied to countless others much more plausibly than to Jesus; but, giving what seems to him the interpretation of each, he will try to stand against the Christians' understanding, not saying things that are altogether convincing, but trying to do so.

We have already spoken above about the prophecy that the Christ would make two comings to the human race. So we no longer need to defend ourselves against what is said as if by the Jew, that the prophets say the one who will come will be great, a ruler, and lord of the whole earth and of all nations and armies. But I think he spoke in a Jewish manner and in keeping with their bitterness, in insulting Jesus without proof, not even plausibly, when he says that they did not proclaim “such a pest.” And yet neither the Jews nor Celsus nor anyone else can show with proof that a pest turns so many people from the flood of evils to a life according to nature, with self-control and the other virtues.

Celsus also threw in this: “No one proves a god and son of God from such signs and misunderstandings, nor from such disgraceful evidence.” But he ought to have set out the misunderstandings and refuted them, and to have shown by argument that the evidence was disgraceful, so that, if the Christian seemed to say anything plausible, he might try to contend against it and overturn the argument. What he did say about Jesus, as though of something great, did in fact happen, but he would not see that it happened, as the evidence shows concerning Jesus. “For as the sun,” he says, “by illuminating everything else first shows itself, so the Son of God ought to have done.” We would say, then, that he did so. For “in his days righteousness dawned, and an abundance of peace” came about, beginning from his birth, as God prepared the nations for his teaching, so that they might come under one king of the Romans, and so that, through the lack of contact among nations caused by many kingdoms, it might not be harder for Jesus' apostles to do what Jesus commanded them when he said: “Go and make disciples of all the nations.” It is clear that Jesus was born in the reign of Augustus, who, so to speak, leveled the many peoples of the earth into one kingdom. The existence of many kingdoms would have been a hindrance to the spread of Jesus' teaching through the whole inhabited world, not only for the reasons stated but also because people everywhere were compelled to serve as soldiers and fight for their countries. This happened before the times of Augustus and still earlier, when there had to be war, as between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, so also between other peoples. How then could this peaceful teaching, which does not allow even revenge on enemies, have prevailed, if the state of the world had not everywhere been changed to a gentler one at Jesus' coming?

After this he accuses Christians of sophistry in saying that the Son of God is the very Word himself, and he thinks he strengthens the charge because, while announcing that the Son of God is the Word, we present not a pure and holy Word but a man most dishonorably arrested and put to death by torture. On this too we have spoken above, in summary, in reply to Celsus's accusations. There it was shown that the “firstborn” “of all creation” took a human body and soul, and that God gave the command concerning the many things in the world and they were created, and that the one who received the command was God the Word. And since the one saying these things in Celsus is a Jew, it will be appropriate to use the words, “He sent out his Word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions,” which we mentioned above too. But I have met many Jews, even ones who professed to be wise, and I have heard none approve the view that the Word is the Son of God, as Celsus has said, attributing this to the character of the Jew, who says: “As if, indeed, the Word is your son of God, we too approve it.”

We have already said that Jesus cannot be either a braggart or a sorcerer; so it is not necessary to repeat what has been said, so that we too do not repeat ourselves in reply to Celsus's repetitions. In finding fault with the genealogy he did not mention at all the questions that are raised among Christians too, and that some bring as charges, concerning the disagreement between the genealogies. For Celsus, who is truly a braggart and professes to know everything about Christians, did not know how to raise difficulties about Scripture intelligently. He says that those who traced Jesus' genealogy from the first man and from the kings among the Jews were arrogant. And he thinks he brings forward something fine, that the carpenter's wife, if she had been of so great a lineage, would not have been unaware of it. What has this to do with the argument? Suppose she was not unaware: what harm does that do to our case? But let her be unaware: why, because she was unaware, was she not descended from the first man, and did her line not go back to those who reigned among the Jews? Or does Celsus think it necessary that poorer people are born from ancestors who were all poorer, or kings from kings? It seems to me idle to spend time on this argument, since it is plain that even in our own times some people poorer than Mary have been born of rich and famous families, and leaders and kings of the most obscure nations.

“What noble deed did Jesus do,” he says, “like a god, despising men and laughing and making fun of what happened to him?” To his question, where should we answer from, even if we are able to show the noble and marvelous in what happened to him, but from the Gospels? That “the earth shook and the rocks were split and the tombs were opened,” “and the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom,” “and darkness came” in the daytime “as the sun failed.” But if Celsus believes the Gospels where he thinks he can accuse Christians, and disbelieves them where they establish the divinity in Jesus, we will say to him: “Sir, either disbelieve them all and do not think to accuse us, or, believing them all, marvel at the Word of God who became man and wished to benefit the whole human race.” A noble deed of Jesus is that to this day those whom God wills are healed in his name. As for the eclipse in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, in whose reign Jesus seems to have been crucified, and the great earthquakes that took place then, Phlegon too recorded them, in the thirteenth or fourteenth book, I think, of his Chronicles.

The Jew in Celsus, mocking Jesus, as he thinks, is represented as knowing the Bacchus of Euripides, who says: “The god himself will free me, whenever I wish.” Jews are not at all given to the study of Greek literature; but suppose some Jew had become so learned. How then does it follow that Jesus, because he did not free himself when bound, could not have freed himself? Let him believe from my Scriptures that Peter too, bound in prison, went out when an angel released his chains, and that Paul with Silas, bound in “the stocks” at Philippi in Macedonia, was freed by divine power, when also “the doors” of the prison “were opened.” But probably Celsus laughs at these things, or has not read the story at all; for he would have seemed to say in reply that some sorcerers too release chains and open doors by incantations, so as to put what sorcerers do on the same level as what is recorded among us. “But,” he says, “not even the one who condemned him suffered anything, like Pentheus, who went mad or was torn apart.” He did not see that it was not so much Pilate who condemned him, since he “knew that out of envy” the Jews “had handed him over,” as the Jewish nation; which has been condemned by God, torn apart and scattered over the whole earth, beyond the tearing of Pentheus. And why did he deliberately pass over what concerns Pilate's wife, who had a dream and was so moved by it that she sent to her husband and said: “Have nothing to do with that righteous man; for I have suffered much today in a dream because of him”? Again, keeping silent about what displays Jesus' divinity, Celsus criticizes Jesus for what is written about him in the Gospel, citing those who mocked him and put a purple robe on him, and the crown of thorns, and the reed in his hand. Where then, Celsus, did you learn these things but from the Gospels? Did you then see that these things deserved criticism, while those who recorded them did not perceive that you and those like you would laugh at them, but that others would take an example from him who readily died for piety, so as to despise those who laugh at and mock them for piety? Marvel rather at their love of truth, and at him who suffered these things willingly for human beings and endured them with all forbearance and patience. For it is not recorded that he lamented, or that because he had been condemned he thought or uttered anything disgraceful.

To this: “Why does he not, if not before, at least now show something divine, and rescue himself from this shame, and punish those who insult both him and his Father?” it must be said that the same thing can be said to the Greeks too, who bring in providence and accept that divine signs occur: why does God not punish those who insult the divine and do away with providence? For as the Greeks defend themselves on this, so will we say similar or even better things. But there was indeed a divine sign from heaven, the failing of the sun, and the other marvels, which showed that the crucified one had something divine, something more than most people.

Then Celsus says: “What does he say too while his body is being crucified? ‘What ichor, such as flows in the blessed gods’?” He, then, is joking; but we, from the serious Gospels, even if Celsus does not wish it, will show that the mythical, Homeric ichor did not flow from his body; but when he was already dead, “one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and blood and water came out. And he who saw it has testified, and his witness is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.” In other dead bodies the “blood” congeals and pure “water” does not flow out; but in the dead body of Jesus there was this marvel even about the dead body, that “blood and water” poured from his side. If he brings words from the Gospel, not even rightly interpreted, in order to accuse Jesus and Christians, and keeps silent about what shows Jesus' divinity, and wishes to hear of divine signs, let him read the Gospel and see that “the centurion and those with him who were keeping watch over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and what took place, were very much afraid, saying: This was the Son of God.”

After this he who has taken from the Gospel words he thinks he can accuse criticizes Jesus for the vinegar and gall, as if he rushed greedily to drink and did not endure his thirst, as even an ordinary man often endures it. This belongs by itself to exposition in the figurative sense; but now what is said would call for a more general answer to the objection, namely, that the prophets foretold this too. For it is written in the sixty-eighth psalm, in the person of the Christ: “And they gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” Or let the Jews say who it is in the prophet who says these things, and let them show from history the one who took “gall” into his “food” and was given “vinegar” to drink. Or let them even dare to say that the Christ whom they think will come is going to be in these circumstances; so that we may say: what harm is there in what was prophesied having already happened? This very thing, said so long before, is enough, together with the other prophetic foreknowledge, to move one who examines the whole matter fairly to agree that Jesus is the Christ who was prophesied and the Son of God.

After this the Jew says further to us: “Is this, then, what you charge us with, most faithful ones, that we do not think this man a god, nor agree with you that he endured these things for the benefit of humanity, so that we too might despise punishments?” To this we will say that we charge the Jews, who were brought up on the law and the prophets who proclaimed the Christ beforehand, because they neither refute what we bring before them as proof that this is the Christ, offering the refutation as their defense for not believing, nor, while failing to refute it, believe in the one who was prophesied; who clearly showed in those who became his disciples, even after his bodily life, that he endured these things for the benefit of humanity. The purpose of his first coming was not to judge human deeds, before teaching and testifying about what ought to be done, nor to punish the wicked and save the good, but to sow his own word marvelously and with a more divine power among the whole human race, as the prophets also showed. We further charge them because, when he displayed the power he had, they did not believe, but said that he cast demons out of people's souls “by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons.” And we charge them because they slander even his love for humanity, since he passed over not only no city but not even any village of Judea, so as to proclaim the kingdom of God everywhere, and accuse him of vagrancy, as a wanderer roving about in a disgraceful body. For a body that endured so many labors for the benefit of those everywhere who could hear is not disgraceful.

How is it not plainly false, what is said by the Jew in Celsus, that “having persuaded no one while he lived, not even his own disciples, he was punished and endured such things”? For where did the envy of the chief priests, elders, and scribes among the Jews against him come from, if not from the crowds who were persuaded to follow him even into the deserts, held not only by the coherence of his words, since he always spoke what suited his hearers, but also because he astonished by his miracles those who did not believe through the coherence of his word? And how is it not plainly false that he did not persuade even his own disciples, who then suffered something human from cowardice (for they were not yet trained in courage), yet did not lay aside their judgment about him as the Christ? For Peter, after denying him, realizing what evil he had come to, “went out and wept bitterly”; and the others, struck by their dejection over him (for they still admired him), were strengthened by his appearance to believe still more, and more firmly than before, that he was the Son of God.

Celsus, in an unphilosophical way, imagines that preeminence among human beings lies not in saving teaching and a pure character, but in acting contrary to the part one has taken on, so that one who has taken on what is mortal should not die; or should die, but not a death able to become an example to those who would learn from the very deed to die for piety and to speak boldly for it before those who have gone astray in the matter of reverence and irreverence, who think the reverent most irreverent, and suppose that those who err about God and apply their undistorted notion of him to anything rather than to God are most pious; and especially when they rush to kill those who, in the clear light of the one God over all, have given themselves with their whole soul “even to death.”

Celsus further accuses Jesus, through the character of the Jew, of not showing himself pure from all evils. From what evils, let Celsus's argument say, did Jesus not show himself pure? For if he says that he was not pure from evils in the proper sense, let him clearly show a deed of wickedness in him. But if he considers poverty, the cross, and the plotting of wicked men to be evils, it is clear that he says evils happened to Socrates too, who could not show himself pure from evils. And how great a company of poor men there is besides among the Greeks, who practiced philosophy and accepted voluntary poverty, most Greeks know from what is recorded: of Democritus, who let his property become sheep pasture; of Crates, who freed himself by giving the Thebans the money paid to him for the sale of all his possessions. Diogenes too lived in a jar out of extreme frugality; yet no one with even moderate sense thought Diogenes was in an evil condition for this reason.

Further, since Celsus will have it that Jesus was not blameless either, let him show which of those who accepted his teaching recorded anything truly blameworthy in Jesus; or, if he does not accuse him as blameworthy on the basis of these writings, let him show where he learned that he was not blameless when he said so. Jesus did do what he promised, things worthy of belief, by which he benefited those who paid attention to him. And as we continually see fulfilled what he said before it happened, that “the gospel would be preached” in the whole world, and that his disciples would go into “all the nations” and proclaim his word, and further that they would be brought “before governors and kings” for no other reason than his teaching, we are amazed at him and daily confirm our faith in him. I do not know by what greater and clearer proofs Celsus wished him to make his predictions credible; unless, as it seems, not understanding that the Word became the man Jesus, he wished him to suffer nothing human and not to become for human beings a noble example of bearing what happens to them. Even if these things seem to Celsus most pitiable and most shameful, that is because he regards pain as the greatest of evils and pleasure as the perfect good, a view that none of the philosophers who bring in providence and acknowledge courage, endurance, and greatness of soul to be virtues has accepted. Jesus, then, did not discredit faith in him by what he endured; rather he strengthened it among those who wish to embrace courage, and among those taught by him that to live properly and truly, the blessed life, is not here but “in the age to come,” as it is called in his words, while living in what is called “the present age” is a misfortune, or the first and greatest contest of the soul.

After this he says to us: “Surely you will not say of him that, having failed to persuade those who were here, he went to Hades to persuade those there.” Even if he does not wish it, we say this: that while he was in the body he persuaded not just a few but so many that he was plotted against because of the number of those persuaded; and that, having become a soul stripped of the body, he conversed with souls stripped of bodies, turning to himself those of them that were willing,⁠a or those he saw to be more fit for reasons he himself knew.

Next to this he says, very foolishly, I do not know how: “If, finding absurd defenses by which you were ridiculously deceived, you think you are truly defending yourselves, what prevents others too, who were condemned and came to a more wretched end, from being thought greater and more divine messengers than he?” That Jesus, who suffered what is recorded, is plainly and clearly nothing like those who came to a more wretched end for sorcery or any other charge is clear to everyone. For no one can point to a work of sorcerers that has turned souls from the many sins among human beings and from the flood of wickedness. And since the Jew in Celsus compares him with robbers too, saying: “One could equally shamelessly say of a robber and murderer who was punished: ‘This man was no robber but a god; for he foretold to his fellow robbers that he would suffer such things as indeed he has suffered,’” it may be said first that we do not hold the views about Jesus that we hold, and speak boldly in him as one who came down to us from God, because he foretold that he would suffer such things. Second, we say that this too was in a way foretold in the Gospels, since God “was counted with the lawless” by the lawless, who wished rather that a robber, thrown into prison “for insurrection” “and murder,” be released and that Jesus be crucified, and who crucified him between two robbers. And always, in his genuine disciples who bear witness to the truth, Jesus is crucified with robbers and suffers the same condemnation among men as they. And we say that if those who, for the sake of piety toward the Creator, accept every outrage and every kind of death so as to keep that piety sincere and pure according to Jesus' teaching, have anything in common with robbers, then clearly Jesus too, the father of such teaching, is reasonably compared by Celsus with robber chiefs. But neither was he who died for the common good, nor are these who suffer these things for piety, and who alone of all human beings are plotted against because of the way of honoring the divine that has been revealed to them, put to death justly; nor was Jesus plotted against without irreverence.

Notice too the superficiality of his argument about Jesus' disciples at that time, where he says: “Then those who were with him while he lived, who heard his voice and had him as teacher, when they saw him punished and dying, neither died with him nor for him, nor were they persuaded to despise punishments, but even denied that they were his disciples. But now you die with him.” Here he believes that the sin committed by the disciples while they were still beginners and less mature, and recorded in the Gospels, took place, so that he may accuse the teaching; but he passes over in silence what they did rightly after their sin, speaking boldly before the Jews, suffering countless things at their hands, and finally dying for Jesus' teaching. For he did not wish to hear Jesus foretelling to Peter, “But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands,” and what follows, on which the Scripture comments: “He said this to signify by what death he would glorify God”; nor that James the brother of John, an apostle and brother of an apostle, was killed by Herod “with the sword” for the word of Christ; nor all that Peter and the other apostles did, speaking boldly for the word, and how they went out “from the presence of the council” after being flogged, “rejoicing that they had been counted worthy to be dishonored for the name,” surpassing much of what is related among the Greeks of the endurance and courage of the philosophers. From the beginning, then, this teaching of Jesus above all prevailed among his hearers, teaching them to despise the life that the many cling to, and to strive for a life like the life of God.

How is the Jew in Celsus not lying when he says that “while he was present he won over only ten sailors and tax collectors of the most accursed kind, and not even all of these”? For it is clear that even Jews would admit that he won over not only ten, nor a hundred, nor a thousand, but at one time sometimes five thousand, sometimes four thousand; and he won them over to such an extent that they followed him even into the deserts, which alone could hold a great crowd of those who believed in God through Jesus, and there he showed them not only words but also deeds. His repetitions force us to do something similar, since we are careful not to be thought to pass over any of the charges he makes. In the passage before us, then, in the order of his writing that we are following, he says: “If, while he lived, he persuaded no one, but after his death those who wish persuade so many, how is this not utterly absurd?” He ought, keeping the logical sequence, to have said: “If after his death not simply those who wish, but those who both wish and are able, persuade so many, how much more reasonable is it that he, when he was living among us, persuaded many times more by a more powerful word and deeds?”

He takes as our answer to his question something he himself says, when he asks: “By what reasoning were you led to think this man the Son of God?” For he has made us answer that we were led to this because we know that his punishment took place for the overthrow of the father of wickedness. But we were led by countless other reasons, a very small part of which we have set out above, and, God granting, we will set out, not only in dealing with what is regarded as Celsus's True Discourse but in countless other works. And as if we were saying that we think him the Son of God because he was punished, he says: “What then? Were not many others also punished, and no less disgracefully?” In this Celsus behaves like the most servile of the enemies of the faith, who think it follows from the story of Jesus' crucifixion that we worship those who have been crucified.

Celsus has often before, unable to face the miracles Jesus is recorded to have done, slandered them as sorceries; and we have often answered his argument as best we could. Now too he says, as if we had answered, that we thought him the Son of God because he healed the lame and the blind. He adds this too: “He raised the dead, as you say.” That he healed the lame and the blind, for which we consider him the Christ and the Son of God, is clear to us from its also being written in prophecies: “Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will hear; then the lame will leap like a deer.” That he also raised the dead, and that this is not an invention of those who wrote the Gospels, is shown by this: if it were an invention, many who rose would have been recorded, including those who had already been a long time in their tombs; but since it is no invention, very few are mentioned: the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue (of whom, I do not know why, he said, “She is not dead but sleeping,” saying something about her that did not apply to all the dead), the only son of the widow, whom he raised out of compassion, having stopped those who carried the dead man, and third, Lazarus, who had been four days in the tomb. And we will say further about these things to the more fair-minded, and especially to the Jew, that just as “there were many lepers in the days of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian,” and “there were many widows in the days of Elijah” the prophet, “and Elijah was sent to none of them except to Zarephath in Sidon” (for she had become worthy, by a certain divine judgment, of the marvel the prophet worked with the loaves), so there were many dead in the days of Jesus, but only those rose whom the Word knew to be fit for the resurrection, so that what the Lord did might not only be symbols of certain things but might also by itself bring many to the wonderful teaching of the Gospel. I would say that, according to Jesus' promise, the disciples have done even “greater” works than the perceptible ones Jesus did. For the eyes of those blind in soul are always being opened, and the ears of those deaf to words of virtue hear eagerly about God and the blessed life with him. And many who were lame in the feet of what Scripture called the “inner” man, now that the Word has healed them, do not merely leap but leap “like a deer,” an animal hostile to serpents and stronger than all the poison of vipers. These healed lame men receive from Jesus “authority to walk,” with the feet on which they were formerly lame, “upon the serpents and scorpions” of wickedness, and in short “over all the power of the enemy,” and they are not harmed as they walk; for they too have become stronger than the poison of all wickedness and of the demons.

Jesus, then, turned his disciples away, not from paying attention in general to sorcerers and to those who profess to do wonders by any means whatever (for his disciples did not need this), but from those who proclaim themselves to be the Christ of God and try by certain apparitions to turn Jesus' disciples to themselves. In one place he said: “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ,’ or ‘There,’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and will give great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand. So if they say to you, ‘Look, he is in the desert,’ do not go out; ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” In another: “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not eat in your name and drink in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works?’ And I will say to them, ‘Leave me, for you are workers of unrighteousness.’” But Celsus, wishing to put Jesus' wonders on the same level as human sorcery, says in these very words: “Light and truth! With his own voice he expressly declares, as you yourselves have written, that others too will come to you, using similar powers, wicked men and sorcerers, and he names a certain Satan as contriving such things; so that not even he denies that these things are in no way divine but are the works of wicked men. But compelled by the truth, he both revealed what others do and convicted himself. How then is it not wretched to consider him a god because of the same works, and them sorcerers? Why, on the basis of these, should we think the others wicked rather than him, when we use him as witness? He himself admitted that these are the marks not of a divine nature but of certain deceivers and utterly wicked men.” See whether in this Celsus is not clearly convicted of perverting the text, since Jesus says one thing about those who will do “signs and wonders,” and the Jew in Celsus claims another. For if Jesus had simply told his disciples to guard against those who profess to work wonders, without adding what they will claim to be, his suspicion might perhaps have had some ground. But since those Jesus wants us to guard against profess to be “the Christ,” which sorcerers do not do; and since he also says that some who live wickedly in the name of Jesus will do certain mighty works and cast demons out of people; rather, if one must put it so, sorcery is disowned for those in the passage, along with every suspicion against them, and the divinity of Christ and of his disciples is brought in: since it is possible for someone who uses his name, and is moved, I know not how, by some power to pretend that he is the Christ, to seem to perform things like Christ's, and for others, in the name of Jesus, to perform things seemingly like those of his genuine disciples.

Paul too, in the second letter to the Thessalonians, declares in what way there will one day be revealed “the man of lawlessness, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.” And again he says to the Thessalonians: “And now you know what restrains him, so that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord God will kill with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the manifestation of his coming; the one whose coming is by the activity of Satan with all power and with signs and wonders of falsehood, and with all deception of unrighteousness among those who are perishing.” And setting out the reason why the lawless one is allowed to come into the world, he says: “Because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. And for this reason God sends them a force of deception, so that they believe the lie, in order that all may be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness.” Let someone tell us, then, whether anything in the Gospel or in the apostle can give room for suspecting that sorcery is being foretold in the passage. Anyone who wishes can also take the prophecy about the Antichrist from Daniel. But he falsifies Jesus' words, since Jesus did not say, “Others will come using similar powers, wicked men and sorcerers,” yet he himself says that Jesus said this. For just as the power of the enchanters in Egypt was not like the marvelous grace in Moses, but the outcome proved that what the Egyptians did was trickery and what Moses did was divine, so the signs and wonders of the antichrists, and of those who pretend to powers as disciples of Jesus, are said to be “of falsehood,” prevailing “with all deception of unrighteousness among those who are perishing,” whereas those of Christ and his disciples bore fruit, not in deception but in the salvation of souls. For who can reasonably say that a better life, which daily reduces wickedness, comes from deception?

Celsus had some inkling of Scripture when he made Jesus say that a certain Satan will contrive such things. But he also snatches at the argument, claiming that Jesus does not deny that these things have nothing divine but are the works of wicked men; for he has made them of one kind when they are of different kinds. And just as a wolf is not of one kind with a dog, even if it seems to have something similar in the shape of its body and its voice, nor a wood pigeon with a dove, so what is accomplished by the power of God has nothing like what comes from sorcery. We will say this too against Celsus's malicious tricks: do miracles happen by sorcery from wicked demons, while no miracle is accomplished by the divine and blessed nature? Has human life borne the worse and in no way admitted the better? It seems to me one should set this down as a rule for all cases: where something worse pretends to be of the same kind as the better, there must certainly be, on the opposite side, something better. So too with those who perform things by sorcery: there must certainly also be things done in life by divine working. And it follows for the same person either to do away with both and say that neither happens, or, positing the one, and especially the worse, to acknowledge the better too. If anyone should posit that things happen by sorcery, but not posit that things happen by divine power, he seems to me like one who posits that there are sophisms and plausible arguments that miss the truth while pretending to present it, but that truth and a dialectic free of sophisms dwell nowhere among human beings. If we once accept that it follows from the real existence of magic and sorcery, worked by wicked demons who are charmed by curious invocations and obey sorcerers, that there must also be found among human beings works of divine power, why should we not test those who profess miracles closely, by their life and character and by what follows their miracles, whether to people's harm or to the correction of their morals: who does such things serving demons through certain incantations and trickery, and who, having come to a pure and holy standing before God in his soul and spirit, and I think in his body too, and having received some divine spirit, does such things for people's benefit and to turn them to believe in the true God? And if we must investigate, without being carried away by the miracles, who does such things from the better and who from the worse, so that we neither slander all nor admire and accept all as divine, how will it not be evident from what happened in the case of Moses and of Jesus, when whole nations were formed after their signs, that these men did by divine power what they are recorded to have done? For wickedness and trickery would not have formed a whole nation that passed beyond not only images and things set up by human beings but all created nature, and rose to the uncreated primacy of the God of the universe.

Since the one who says these things in Celsus is a Jew, we might say to him: “You, sir, why have you believed that what is written in your books as accomplished by God through Moses is divine, and try to argue against those who slander it as done by sorcery like the works of the wise men of Egypt, while you, imitating the Egyptians who oppose you, accuse what Jesus did, which even you admit happened, of not being divine? For if the outcome, and the whole nation formed through the wonders in Moses, establishes clearly that it was God who did these things in the time of Moses, how will this not be shown still more in the case of Jesus, who did a greater work than Moses? Moses took those of the nation descended from Abraham, who had kept circumcision by succession and were zealous for the customs of Abraham, and so were more ready, and led them out of Egypt, setting before them the divine laws which you have believed. But Jesus, daring something greater, brought in the way of life according to the gospel in place of the established way of life, ancestral customs, and upbringing according to the existing laws. And just as there was need, for Moses to be believed not only by the elders but also by the people, of the signs he is recorded to have done, why would Jesus not also, to be believed by those of the people who had learned to ask for ‘signs and wonders,’ need such miracles as, being greater and more divine than those through Moses, could draw them away from Jewish fables and the human traditions among them, and make them accept the one who taught and did these things as greater than the prophets? For how was he not greater than the prophets, who was proclaimed by the prophets as the Christ and Savior of the human race?”

And everything the Jew in Celsus says to those who believe in Jesus can be turned equally into an accusation against Moses, so that one could say that Jesus' sorcery does not differ from Moses', or is like it, since both, as far as the words of the Jew in Celsus go, can be brought under the same charges. For example, about Christ the Jew in Celsus says: “But Light and truth! With his own voice Jesus expressly declares these things, as you yourselves have written, that others too will come to you using similar powers, wicked men and sorcerers.” But about Moses one who disbelieves the writings of Moses, whether an Egyptian or anyone else, might say to the Jew: “But Light and truth! With his own voice Moses expressly declares, as you yourselves have written, that others will come to you using similar powers, wicked men and sorcerers. For it is written in your law: ‘If a prophet or one who dreams a dream arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder happens of which he spoke to you, saying, Let us go and follow other gods whom you do not know, and let us serve them, you must not listen to the words of that prophet or of that dreamer of dreams,’” and what follows. And as the one who slanders Jesus' words says that he names a certain Satan as contriving such things, so the one who applies this equally to Moses will say that he names a prophet who dreams as contriving such things. And as the Jew in Celsus says about Jesus, “So that not even he denies that these things are in no way divine but are the works of wicked men,” so one who disbelieves Moses will say the same to him, setting out the passage quoted: “So that not even Moses himself denies that these things are in no way divine but are the works of wicked men.” And he will do the same with this: “Compelled by the truth, Moses both revealed what others do and convicted himself.” And when the Jew also says, “How then is it not wretched to consider him a god because of the same works, and them sorcerers?”, someone might say to him, because of the words of Moses that were set out: “How then is it not wretched to consider him a prophet and servant of God because of the same works, and them sorcerers?” And since Celsus, dwelling on the passage, added to what I have set out as applying equally, “Why, on the basis of these, should we think the others wicked rather than him, when we use him as witness?”, we too will add to what has been said something like this: “Why, on the basis of these, should we think those wicked whom Moses forbids us to obey when they display signs and wonders, rather than Moses, from the things by which he slandered others concerning signs and wonders?” Saying more to the same effect, so as to seem to strengthen his argument, he says: “He himself admitted that these are the marks not of a divine nature but of certain deceivers and utterly wicked men.” Who, then, is “he himself”? You, Jew, say it is Jesus; but the one who accuses you as liable to the same charges will refer “he himself” to Moses.

After this, the Jew of Celsus, in his speech to his fellow citizens who have believed (to keep the character originally assigned to the Jew), actually says to us: “What then led you on, except that he foretold that he would rise after he died?” This too will be applied equally to Moses, like what went before. For we will say to him: “What then led you on, except that he wrote such things about his own death: ‘And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab by the word of the Lord; and they buried him in the land of Moab, near the house of Phogor. And no one knows his burial place to this day’?” For just as the Jew disparages Jesus because he foretold that he would rise after he died, so one who says something similar about Moses will say in reply that Moses too wrote (for Deuteronomy too is his) that “no one knows his burial place to this day,” glorifying and exalting even his burial as unknown to the human race.

After this the Jew says to his fellow citizens who believe in Jesus: “Come now, let us even believe you that this was said. How many others tell such marvels to persuade simple hearers, making profit from their deceit? This is what they say of Zamolxis among the Scythians, the slave of Pythagoras, and of Pythagoras himself in Italy, and of Rhampsinitus in Egypt: that he even ‘played dice with Demeter’ in Hades and came up bringing ‘a golden hand towel’ as ‘a gift from her’; and indeed of Orpheus among the Odrysians, Protesilaus in Thessaly, Heracles at Taenarum, and Theseus. But this must be examined: whether anyone who truly died ever rose again with the same body. Or do you think that the stories of the others are myths and seem so, while you have invented the ending of your drama appropriately or plausibly: his cry on the stake as he breathed his last, and ‘the earthquake’ and the darkness? That, although he could not help himself while alive, when dead he rose and showed the marks of his punishment: who saw this? A frantic woman, as you say, and perhaps someone else of the same sorcery, who either dreamed in a certain state of mind and, according to his own wish, had a vision in deluded fancy, which has happened to countless people, or, what is more likely, wished to astonish the rest with this peddling marvels and by such a lie to give an opening to other beggar-priests.” Since the one saying this is a Jew, we make our defense of our Jesus as to a Jew, still applying the argument equally to Moses, and say to him: “How many others tell such marvels as Moses did, to persuade simple hearers, making profit from their deceit?” And it is more possible for one who disbelieves Moses to cite Zamolxis and Pythagoras, who told marvels, than for the Jew, who is not at all devoted to studying Greek histories. The Egyptian, too, who disbelieves the marvels about Moses, will plausibly cite Rhampsinitus, saying that it is much more credible that he went down to Hades, played dice with Demeter, and, having snatched a golden hand towel from her, showed it as a token that he had been in Hades and had come up from there, than that Moses did so, who wrote of himself that he entered “into the darkness where God was,” and that he alone drew near to God apart from the rest. For he wrote as follows: “And Moses alone must draw near to God, but the others must not draw near.” So we, the disciples of Jesus, will say to the Jew who says these things: “Defend yourself to us, you who accuse our faith in Jesus, and tell the Egyptian and the Greeks what you will say to the charges you have brought against our Jesus, which would first apply to Moses. And even if you strive hard to defend Moses, as indeed the account of him has a striking and clear argument, you will without noticing it, in defending Moses, have unwillingly established Jesus as more divine than Moses.”

Since the Jew in Celsus says that the heroic stories about those said to have gone down to Hades and come up from there are peddling marvels, as if the heroes vanished for a time, secretly withdrew from everyone’s sight, and afterward showed themselves as though they had come up from Hades (for his words seem to suggest this about Orpheus among the Odrysians, Protesilaus in Thessaly, Heracles at Taenarum, and also Theseus), let us show that the account of Jesus' rising from the dead cannot be compared with these. Each of the heroes said to be in those places could, if he wished, have secretly withdrawn from people’s sight and, when he decided, returned to those he had left. But since Jesus was crucified before all the Jews and his body was taken down in full view of their people, how is it possible to invent a similar story, saying that he, like the heroes of the stories, went down to Hades and came up from there? We say that perhaps this too might be said in defense of Jesus' crucifixion, especially because of the stories about heroes thought to have gone down to Hades by force: that if, hypothetically, Jesus had died an obscure death, so that his death was not evident to the whole people of the Jews, and after that had truly risen from the dead, there would have been room to say of him too what was suspected about the heroes. Perhaps, then, besides other reasons for Jesus' crucifixion, this too may contribute to his having died conspicuously on the cross: that no one could say that he deliberately withdrew from people's sight and seemed to have died but had not died, but, when he wished, appeared again and made a marvelous show of rising from the dead. And I think the argument from his disciples is clear and evident: they gave themselves to a teaching that was dangerous to human life, which they would not have taught so vigorously if they had invented Jesus' rising from the dead; besides which they not only prepared others to despise death but did so themselves much earlier.

Notice whether the Jew in Celsus does not speak very blindly, as if it were impossible for anyone to rise from the dead with the same body, when he says: “But this must be examined: whether anyone who truly died ever rose again with the same body.” For a Jew would not say this, believing what is recorded in the third and fourth books of Kingdoms about the boys, one of whom Elijah raised and the other Elisha. And for this reason, I think, Jesus came to no other nation than the Jews, who had become accustomed to marvels, so that by comparing what they already believed with what was done by him and recorded about him, they might accept that this one, about whom greater things happened and by whom more marvelous things were accomplished, was greater than all those.

After the Greek stories he cited about those who, as it were, told marvels and those who supposedly rose from the dead, the Jew says to those of the Jews who believe in Jesus: “Or do you think that the stories of the others are myths and seem so, while you have invented the ending of your drama appropriately or plausibly: his cry on the stake as he breathed his last?” We will say to the Jew that we have considered the stories you cited to be myths; but we say that the contents of the Scriptures common to us and you, in which not only you but we also take pride, are in no way myths. That is why we believe those who wrote about the people raised from the dead there, as not telling marvels, and believe that the one here both foretold it, was prophesied, and rose. And he rose from the dead more marvelously than they, in that prophets, Elijah and Elisha, raised them, but none of the prophets raised him, rather the Father in heaven. That is why his resurrection also accomplished greater things than theirs. For what so great a benefit has come to the world from the boys raised through Elijah and Elisha as through the resurrection of Jesus that is preached and believed by divine power?

He thinks that the earthquake and the darkness too are peddling marvels; about these we have made our defense above as best we could, citing Phlegon, who records that such things occurred at the time of the Savior’s suffering. And he says that “though he could not help himself while alive, when dead Jesus rose and showed the marks of his punishment, and his hands, how they had been pierced.” We ask him what “help himself” means. If with regard to virtue, we will say that he helped himself very well indeed; for he neither said nor did anything improper, but truly “was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent”; and the Gospel testifies that “so he did not” open “his mouth.” But if he takes “help himself” in terms of indifferent and bodily things, we say that we have shown from the Gospels that he came to these things willingly. Then, after citing from the Gospel that when he rose from the dead he showed the marks of his punishment and his hands, how they had been pierced, he asks, “Who saw this?” And disparaging what is said of Mary Magdalene, who is recorded as having seen him, he said: “A frantic woman, as you say.” And since not only she is recorded to have seen Jesus risen, but others too, the Jew of Celsus maligns this as well, saying: “And perhaps someone else of the same sorcery.”

Then, as if this could happen, I mean that someone should have a vision of a dead man as living, he adds like an Epicurean that someone “dreamed in a certain state of mind, or, according to his own wish, had a vision in deluded fancy,” and reported such a thing, “which,” he says, “has happened to countless people.” Even if this seemed to be very cleverly said, it nonetheless establishes a necessary doctrine: that the soul of the dead continues to exist, and that one who has embraced this doctrine has not believed in vain in the soul's immortality, or at least its survival; as Plato too says in his work on the soul that “shadowy apparitions” of those already dead have appeared to some people around tombs. The “apparitions” that occur concerning the soul of the dead arise from something that really exists, from the soul continuing to exist in what is called the luminous body. Celsus, not wishing this, will have it that some people dream even while awake and, according to their own wish, have visions in deluded fancy. It is not unreasonable to believe that this happens in a dream; but that it happens while awake to those who are not wholly out of their minds, delirious, or melancholic is not credible. Celsus foresaw this and said the woman was frantic, which the recorded story, from which he takes his accusation, does not suggest.

So, as Celsus thinks, Jesus after death sent out an image of the wounds on the cross, and was not truly so wounded. But as the Gospel teaches, which Celsus believes in some parts when he wishes, so as to accuse, and disbelieves in others, Jesus called to him one of the disciples who disbelieved and thought the marvel impossible. For that disciple had agreed with the woman who said she had seen him, as though it were not impossible for the soul of a dead man to be seen; but he no longer thought it true that he had been raised in a solid body. So he said, “Unless I see,” “I will not believe,” and added: “Unless I put my hand into the mark of the nails and touch his side, I will not believe.” These things were said by Thomas, who judged that a soul's body could appear to the eyes of sense, “like in all things” to its former form, “in height, and beautiful eyes, and voice,” and often “with such clothes covering its skin.” And Jesus called Thomas and said: “Bring your finger here and see my hands; and bring your hand and put it into my side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.”

And it was consistent with all the prophecies about him, among which was this one too, and with his deeds and what happened to him, that this should be marvelous beyond all. For it had been foretold in the person of Jesus in the prophet: “My flesh will dwell in hope; for you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your holy one see corruption.” And at his resurrection he was, as it were, on a borderline between the density of the body before his suffering and a soul appearing stripped of such a body. So, when “his disciples” were together “and Thomas with them, Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, Bring your finger here,” and what follows. And in the Gospel according to Luke, while Simon and Cleopas were talking “with each other about all that had happened” to them, Jesus came up to them and “went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him; and he said to them, What are these words that you are exchanging with each other as you walk?” And when “their eyes were opened and they recognized him,” then Scripture says in these very words: “And he vanished from their sight.” So even if Celsus wishes to put what concerns Jesus and those who saw him after the resurrection on the same level as other apparitions and others who saw visions, to those who examine the matter fairly and intelligently it will appear the more marvelous.

After this Celsus, with an argument that deserves attention, disparages what is written, saying that, if Jesus really wished to show divine power, he ought to have appeared to those who had insulted him, to the one who condemned him, and in short to everyone. For truly it seems to us too, according to the Gospel, that after the resurrection he was not seen in the way he appeared before, publicly and to all. Rather, it is written in the Acts that, “appearing over forty days” to the disciples, he proclaimed “the things concerning the kingdom of God”; and in the Gospels, not that he was always with them, but that once, after eight days, he appeared among them “when the doors were shut,” and at other times in similar ways. And Paul, at the end of the first letter to the Corinthians, as if he had not been seen publicly as in the time before his suffering, writes as follows: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,” “and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom remain until now, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also.” I consider what concerns this passage to be great and wonderful things, beyond the capacity not only of most believers but even of those well advanced; in them the reason could be shown why, having risen from the dead, he did not appear as in the former time. From many things, as is fitting in such a work, written in reply to a treatise against Christians and their faith, see whether by setting out a few we will be able reasonably to reach those who will hear this defense.

Jesus, though one, was many in aspect, and was not seen alike by all who saw him. That he was many in aspect is clear from “I am the way and the truth and the life,” “I am the bread,” “I am the door,” and countless others. That even when seen he did not appear in the same way to those who saw him, but according to their capacity, will be clear to those who consider why, when he was about to be transfigured on the high mountain, he did not take even all the apostles, but only Peter, James, and John, as alone able to see his glory at that time, and able also to perceive Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory, and to hear them talking together and the voice from heaven out of the cloud. And I think that even before he went up the mountain, where only the disciples came to him and he taught them the Beatitudes, when he was somewhere below the mountain and, “evening having come,” healed those brought to him, delivering them from every disease and every sickness, he did not appear the same to the sick who needed his healing as to those who, being healthy, were able to go up the mountain with him. Moreover, if he privately explained to his own disciples the parables spoken in a veiled way to the crowds outside, then just as those who heard the explanation of the parables were superior in hearing to those who heard the parables without explanation, so too were they in seeing: certainly with the eyes of the soul, and I think also of the body. That he did not always appear the same is shown by Judas, when about to betray him, saying to the crowds who went with him, as to people who did not know him: “The one I kiss, he is the man.” I think the Savior himself also suggests something like this in the words: “Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me.” Since we hold such a view of Jesus, not only regarding the divinity within him, hidden from the many, but also regarding his body, which was transformed when he wished and for whom he wished, we say that all were able to see Jesus while he had not yet stripped off “the rulers and the powers” and had not yet died “to sin”; but when he had stripped off “the rulers and the powers” and no longer had anything that could be seen by the many, not all those who had seen him before were able to see him. Therefore, sparing them, he did not appear to all when he had risen from the dead.

And why do I say to all? He was not always with even the apostles and disciples themselves, or always visible to them, since they could not bear to see him continuously. For his divinity was more brilliant after he had completed his earthly mission; Cephas, that is Peter, as it were the “firstfruits” of the apostles, was able to see it, and after him the Twelve, Matthias having been appointed in place of Judas, and after them “five hundred brothers at once.” “Then he appeared to James, then to all the” other “apostles” besides the Twelve, perhaps the Seventy; “and last of all” to Paul, as to one “untimely born,” who knew how he said: “To me, the very least of all the saints, this grace was given”; and perhaps “very least” is equivalent to “untimely born.” Just as no one could easily blame Jesus for not taking all the apostles onto the high mountain, but only the three already mentioned, when he was about to be transfigured and to show the brightness of his clothes and the glory of Moses and Elijah talking with him, so no one could reasonably find fault with the apostolic writings for relating that after the resurrection Jesus was seen not by all, but by those whom he saw had received eyes able to see his resurrection. I think this too, said of him, is useful for the defense of our subject: “For to this end Christ died and rose, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” See in these words that Jesus “died, that he might be Lord of the dead,” “and rose, that he might be Lord” not only “of the dead” but also “of the living.” And the apostle knows as the dead of whom Christ is Lord those listed as follows in the first letter to the Corinthians: “For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable”; and as the living, those who will be changed, who are other than the dead who will be raised. About them the text reads: “And we will be changed,” said after “the dead will be raised first.” And in the first letter to the Thessalonians, presenting the same distinction in other words, he says that those who sleep are one group and the living another: “We do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, about those who are asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus. For we say this to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.” The interpretation of these passages that seemed right to us we set out in the commentaries we dictated on the first letter to the Thessalonians.

And do not be surprised if not all the crowds who have believed in Jesus see his resurrection, since Paul, writing to the Corinthians as to people unable to receive more, says: “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Of the same kind is this: “For you were not yet able; indeed, even now you are not able, for you are still fleshly.” So the Word, doing all things by divine judgment, recorded of Jesus that before his suffering he appeared in general to the many, and not even that always, but after his suffering no longer appeared in the same way, but with a certain judgment that measured to each what was fitting. And just as it is recorded that “God appeared to Abraham” or to one of the saints, and this “appearing” did not happen continually but at intervals, and he did not appear to everyone, so understand that the Son of God too appeared by a judgment like that by which God appeared to them.

We have made our defense, as best we could in such a work, against the claim that “if he really wished to show divine power, he ought to have appeared to those who insulted him, to the one who condemned him, and in short to everyone.” He ought not, then, to have appeared to the one who condemned him or to those who insulted him. For Jesus was sparing both the one who condemned him and those who insulted him, so that they might not be struck with “blindness,” as the people in Sodom were struck when they plotted against the beauty of the angels who were guests with Lot. This is shown by these words: “But the men reached out their hands and pulled Lot into the house to them and shut the door; and they struck the men at the door of the house with blindness, from small to great, and they wore themselves out looking for the door.” Jesus, then, wished to show his power, which was divine, to each of those able to see it, and according to the measure of what each could receive. And surely he avoided being seen for no other reason than the capacities of those unable to see him. And Celsus brought in to no purpose: “For he no longer feared any man, having died and being, as you say, a god; nor was he sent in the first place to be hidden.” He was sent not only to be known but also to be hidden; for not all that he was was known even to those by whom he was known, but something of him escaped them; and to some he was not known at all. And he opened the gates “of light” to those who had become sons “of darkness” and “of night,” but had given themselves to becoming sons “of the day” and “of light.” And the Lord came as Savior to us rather as a good doctor to those full of sins than to the righteous.

Let us see in what way the Jew in Celsus says: “If he really had to do so much to display his divinity, he ought at least to have vanished immediately from the stake.” This seems to me like the argument of those who oppose providence and sketch for themselves things other than what exists, saying: “It would have been better if the world were as we have sketched it.” Where they sketch what is possible, they are shown, as far as it lies with them and their sketch, to make the world worse; where they seem not to paint something worse than what exists, they are shown to want what is impossible by nature; so that either way they are ridiculous. Here too, then, that it was not impossible for him, as one of a more divine nature, to vanish when he wished is clear in itself, and also plain from what is written about him, to those who do not accept some of what is written in order to accuse the teaching, and think the rest fictions. For it is written in the Gospel according to Luke that after the resurrection Jesus “took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it” to Simon and Cleopas; and when they had taken the bread, “their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.”

We wish to show how it was not more useful for the whole divine plan for him to have vanished bodily immediately from the stake. What is recorded to have happened to Jesus does not disclose the whole truth to be contemplated in the literal text and historical account; for each of these things is shown, to those who read Scripture more intelligently, to be also a symbol of something. Just as his being crucified has the truth shown in “I have been crucified with Christ” and signified by “But I will never boast except in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world”; and his death was necessary because of “For the death he died, he died to sin once for all,” and because the righteous man says, “being conformed to his death,” and “For if we have died with him, we will also live with him”; so also his burial extends to those conformed to his death, crucified with him and dying with him, as Paul too said: “For we were buried with him through baptism,” and we rose with him. What is recorded about the burial, the tomb, and the one who buried him we will explain more fittingly and at greater length elsewhere, where it is our principal task to speak of these things. For now it is enough to mention the clean linen cloth, in which the pure body of Jesus had to be wrapped, and the new tomb, “which” Joseph “had cut in the rock,” “where no one had yet been laid,” or, as John says, “in which no one had yet been placed.” And consider whether the agreement of the three evangelists, who took care to record that the tomb was carved or cut in rock, may move someone who examines the meanings of what is written to see something worthy of reflection both in these things and in the newness of the tomb, which Matthew and John report, and in no dead man having been there, according to Luke and John. For he who was not like the other dead, but showed signs of life even in death, the water and the blood, and was, so to speak, a new kind of dead man, had to be in a new and clean tomb; so that, just as his birth was purer than every birth, since he was born not from intercourse but from a virgin, so his burial too might have purity, shown symbolically in his body's being laid in a new tomb, not built of gathered stones with no natural unity, but carved and cut in one rock united throughout. The explanation, and the ascent from what is recorded to have happened to the realities of which the events were signs, one might set out more grandly and more divinely, presenting such things more fittingly in a work devoted to them. As for the literal meaning, one might explain it as follows: it belonged to one who had decided to endure hanging on the stake to keep also what followed from that undertaking, so that, having been taken down as a man, since he had died as a man, he should also be buried as a man. But if, hypothetically, it had been written in the Gospels that he vanished immediately from the stake, Celsus and the unbelievers would have found fault with the text and accused it as follows: “Why did he vanish after the cross, but not arrange this before suffering?” If, then, having learned from the Gospels that he did not vanish immediately from the stake, they think they can accuse the teaching because it did not invent, as they demanded, his vanishing immediately from the stake, but reported the truth, how is it not reasonable for them to believe also in his resurrection, and that, when he wished, he once “stood in the midst” of the disciples “when the doors were shut,” and another time, having given bread to two of his acquaintances, immediately “vanished from their sight” after speaking certain words to them?

Where did the Jew of Celsus get the statement that Jesus hid himself? For he says of him: “What messenger ever sent, when he ought to announce what he was commanded, hides himself?” He did not hide himself who said to those seeking to arrest him: “Day after day I was in the temple teaching openly, and you did not seize me.” To what follows, which Celsus repeats, we, having answered once, will be content with what was said before. For above we have written also against this: “Or, when he was disbelieved while in the body, he preached to all without restraint; but when he would have provided strong faith by rising from the dead, he appeared secretly to one little woman alone and to his own band of followers?” But it is not even true that he appeared to one little woman alone. For it is written in the Gospel according to Matthew: “After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And look, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone.” And a little later Matthew says: “And look, Jesus met them” (clearly the Marys already mentioned), “saying, Greetings. And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him.” We have also answered this: “When he was being punished he was seen by all, but when he rose, by one,” when we replied to the objection that he was not seen by all. And now we will say that his human attributes were visible to all, but his more divine attributes (I speak not of those that have a relation to other things, but of those by which he differs) were not accessible to all. Notice too Celsus's contradiction with himself in the very next words. Having said that he appeared secretly to one little woman and to his own band of followers, he immediately adds: “When he was being punished he was seen by all, but when he rose, by one; whereas the opposite should have happened.” Let us hear what he thinks “should have happened.” The opposite of being seen by all when punished and by one when risen: so far as his words go, he wanted what is both impossible and unreasonable, that when punished he should be seen by one, and when risen by all. Or how will you explain “whereas the opposite should have happened”?

Jesus also taught us who the one was who sent him, in the words “No one knows the Father except the Son” and “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten God, who is close to the Father’s heart, he has made him known.” He, speaking of God, declared to his genuine disciples the things concerning God; finding traces of these in the Scriptures, we have starting points for speaking of God, hearing in one place, “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all,” and in another, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” And the purposes for which the Father sent him are countless; let anyone who wishes learn them, partly from the prophets who proclaimed him beforehand, partly from the evangelists; and he will learn many from the apostles too, especially Paul. Moreover, he gives light to the pious and will punish sinners; Celsus did not see this, and wrote: “and to give light to the pious, and to have mercy on sinners, or on those who have repented.”

After this he says: “If he wished to be hidden, why was the voice from heaven heard proclaiming him Son of God? But if he did not wish to be hidden, why was he punished, or why did he die?” He thinks he shows a contradiction in what is written about him, not seeing that he neither wished everything about himself to be known to absolutely everyone, nor everything about himself to be hidden. At any rate, the voice from heaven proclaiming him to be the Son of God and saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” is not recorded to have been audible to the crowds, as the Jew of Celsus supposed; and the voice from the cloud on the very high mountain was heard only by those who had gone up with him. For such is the divine voice: it is heard only by those whom the speaker wishes to hear it. I do not yet say that the voice of God recorded in Scripture is certainly not air that has been struck, or a vibration of the air, or whatever is said in treatises on voice; that is why it is heard by a hearing better and more divine than the hearing of sense. And when the speaker wishes his voice not to be audible to all, the one who “has” the better “ears” hears God, while one whose soul's hearing is deafened does not perceive God speaking. So much for “why was the voice from heaven heard proclaiming him Son of God?” As for “if he did not wish to be hidden, why was he punished, or why did he die?”, what we said at greater length above about his suffering is enough.

After this the Jew of Celsus sets out as a consequence what is not a consequence. For it does not follow from “He wished to teach us, through the punishments he suffered, even to despise death” that, having risen from the dead, he should call all openly to the light and teach them why he had come down. For he had already called all to the light, saying: “Come to me, all who work hard and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.” And why he had come down is recorded in the words he spoke at length in the Beatitudes and in what is proclaimed after them, in parables, and in his discourses with the scribes and Pharisees. The Gospel according to John sets out all he taught, showing Jesus' grandeur not in words but in deeds; and it is clear from the Gospels that “his word was with authority,” at which they also marveled.

And to all this the Jew of Celsus adds: “These things, then, we have set before you from your own writings, for which we need no other witness; for you contradict yourselves.” But we have shown that the Jew's speeches, whether against Jesus or against us, contain much nonsense contrary to our writings, the Gospels. And I do not think he has shown how we contradict ourselves; he only thinks so. And since his Jew adds to this: “In short, most high and heavenly one, what god, being present among human beings, is disbelieved?”, it must be said to him that, even according to the law of Moses, God, recorded as having come most clearly to the Hebrews, not only in the signs and wonders in Egypt, and further the passage through the Red Sea, the pillar “of fire,” and the cloud of light, but also when the Ten Commandments were proclaimed to the whole people, was disbelieved by those who knew. For if they had believed what they saw and heard, they would not have made a calf, nor would they have “exchanged their glory for the likeness of a calf that eats grass,” nor would they have said to one another about the calf: “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And see whether it is not characteristic of the same people both formerly to disbelieve, through the whole wilderness, such great wonders and such manifestations of God, as is written in the law of the Jews, and at the marvelous coming of Jesus not to be won over by the words he spoke with authority and the marvelous deeds he did in the sight of all the people.

I think this is enough for anyone who wishes to show that the Jews' unbelief toward Jesus was consistent with what was recorded about the people from the beginning. For I would say to the Jew in Celsus who says, “What god, being present among human beings, is disbelieved, and that when he appears to those who hope for him? Or why is he not recognized by those who have long awaited him?”: “Sirs, how will you answer our questions? What miracles seem to you, by your own judgment, to be greater: those in Egypt and the wilderness, or those we say Jesus did among you? If by your reckoning the former are greater than the latter, how is it not shown immediately that it belongs to the character of those who disbelieved the greater to despise the lesser too? For this is what is supposed about what we say concerning Jesus. But if those told of Jesus are said to be equal to those recorded by Moses, what strange thing has happened to a people who disbelieved at both beginnings of these events? For the beginning of lawgiving was in Moses' time, in which the sins of the unbelievers and sinners among you are recorded; and the beginning of lawgiving and of a second covenant is acknowledged to have come to us in the time of Jesus. And by your unbelief toward Jesus you bear witness that you are sons of those who in the wilderness disbelieved the divine manifestations; and what our Savior said will be said to you too, who disbelieved him: ‘So you are witnesses and approve of the deeds of your fathers’; and in you is fulfilled the prophecy that says: ‘Your life will hang before your eyes, and you will not believe in your life.’ For you did not believe in the Life that came to dwell among the human race.”

In giving the Jew his part, Celsus did not manage to put into his speech anything that could not be turned back on him from the writings of the law and the prophets. For he blames Jesus, saying of him: “He threatens and insults lightly whenever he says, ‘Woe to you,’ and ‘I tell you beforehand.’ For in these words he openly admits that he is unable to persuade, which would not happen to a god, nor even to a sensible man.” See whether these words do not recoil directly on the Jew. For in the writings of the law and the prophets God threatens and insults, whenever he says “woe,” no less than in the Gospel, as in these words in Isaiah: “Woe to those who join house to house and add field to field,” and “Woe to those who rise early in the morning and pursue strong drink,” and “Woe to those who draw sins after them as with a long rope,” and “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,” and “Woe to the mighty among you who drink wine.” And you could find countless others. How is “Woe, sinful nation, a people full of sins, an evil seed, lawless sons,” and what follows, not like the threats he speaks of? To these he adds threats so great that they are no less than those he says Jesus spoke. Or is it not a threat, and a great one, that says: “Your land is desolate, your cities burned with fire; strangers devour your country before you, and it is laid waste, overthrown by foreign peoples”? And how are there not insults of the people in Ezekiel too, where the Lord says to the prophet: “You live among scorpions”? Did you, Celsus, make the Jew say knowingly of Jesus that “he threatens and insults lightly whenever he says, ‘Woe to you’ and ‘I tell you beforehand’”? Do you not see that what the Jew in your book says against Jesus could be said against him about God? For the God in the prophets is found, as the Jew thinks, plainly liable to the same charges, as being unable to persuade. I would further say to those who think the Jew in Celsus rightly accuses Jesus of these things that very many curses are recorded in Leviticus and Deuteronomy; and however the Jew defends them, standing by Scripture, in that way or even better we will defend what are thought to be Jesus' insults and threats. And we will be better able than the Jew to defend the law of Moses itself, since we have been taught by Jesus to understand the writings of the law more intelligently. And the Jew too, if he sees the intent of the prophetic words, will be able to show that God does not threaten and revile lightly when he says “woe” and “I tell you beforehand,” and how God would say such things for the conversion of human beings, which Celsus thinks not even a sensible man would do. And Christians, who know one God, the same in the prophets and in the Lord, will show the reasonableness of what are thought to be threats and what Celsus calls insults. And a few words on this passage will be said to Celsus, who professes to be a philosopher and to know our affairs: “Sir, if Homer's Hermes says to Odysseus, ‘Why again, unhappy man, do you go alone over the hilltops?’, you accept the defense that the Homeric Hermes speaks this way to Odysseus to turn him back (since flattery and pleasing words belong to the Sirens, around whom lies a heap of bones, who say: ‘Come here, much-praised Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans’); but if my prophets and Jesus himself say ‘woe,’ and what you consider insults, for the conversion of their hearers, is nothing accomplished for the hearers by such words, and does such a word not bring them a healing, Paean-like remedy? Unless, perhaps, you want God, or one who shares in the divine nature, when he converses with human beings, to look only to what belongs to his own nature and is worthy of himself, and no longer to consider what is fitting to promise to those who are guided and led by his word, and to speak to each according to his existing character.” And how is it not ridiculous to say of Jesus that he was unable to persuade, when this applies equally not only to the Jew, who has many such things in the prophecies, but also to the Greeks, among whom each of those who won great fame for wisdom could not persuade those plotting against him, or his judges, or his accusers, to cease from wickedness and to travel through philosophy to virtue?

After this the Jew says to him, evidently in keeping with what Jews hold: “We hope, of course, to rise in the body and to have eternal life, and that the one sent to us will be the example and pioneer of this, showing that it is not impossible for God to raise someone with the body.” We do not know whether the Jew will say that the expected Christ shows in himself an example of the resurrection; but let it be granted that he both thinks and says this. We will answer him who said he had spoken to us from our own writings: “Sir, did you read those passages in which you suppose you accuse us, but not go through the resurrection of Jesus, and that he is ‘the firstborn from the dead’? Or, since you do not wish these things to have been said, have they not been said?” And since the Jew in Celsus still speaks of and accepts the resurrection of bodies, I do not think this the right time to discuss it with one who both believes and says that there is a resurrection of bodies, whether he articulates it for himself and can champion the doctrine well, or whether he assents to it in a more mythical way. So let this be said in this way to Celsus's Jew. And since after this he says, “Where is he, then, that we may see and believe?”, we will say to him: “Where now is the one who speaks in the prophets and who did wonders, that we may see and believe that you are God's portion? Or may you defend God's not always appearing to the Hebrew race, while the same defense is not granted to us concerning Jesus, who once rose and persuaded his disciples of his resurrection, and persuaded them so far that by what they suffer they show all that, looking to eternal life and to the resurrection shown them in word and deed, they make light of all the hardships of life?”

After this the Jew says: “Or did he come down for this, that we should disbelieve?” To him it will be said: he did not come to produce unbelief in the Jews; but foreknowing that it would happen, he foretold it, and made use of the Jews' unbelief for the calling of the nations. For by their “trespass salvation has come to the nations,” of whom the Christ in the prophets says: “A people whom I did not know served me; at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me,” and “I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.” And it is clear that the Jews also suffered punishment in this life, after doing to Jesus what they did. Let the Jews say how they would answer if we accused them with these words: “Wonderful indeed is God's providence and love for humanity toward you, who have been punished and deprived of Jerusalem, of what is called the sanctuary, and of the most solemn worship.” Whatever they say in defense of God's providence, we will establish more fully and better, saying that God's providence has been wonderful, making use of that people's sin so that those of the nations should be called through Jesus into God's kingdom, those who were strangers to “the covenants” and aliens to the promises. The prophets foretold this too: that because of the sins of the Hebrew people God would choose not a nation but select persons from everywhere, and, having chosen “the foolish things of the world,” would make the nation without understanding come to be in the divine oracles, the kingdom of God being taken from those and given to these. For the present it is enough, out of many, to cite the prophecy from the song of Deuteronomy about the calling of the nations, spoken in the person of the Lord: “They made me jealous with what is no god, they provoked me with their idols; and I will make them jealous with what is no nation, I will provoke them with a nation without understanding.”

Then, as the Jew's conclusion to all this, he says of Jesus: “He, then, was a man, and such a man as the truth itself makes plain and reason shows.” I do not know whether a man who dared to sow throughout the whole world the worship of God and the teaching that he brought could, without God, do what he wishes and prevail over all who opposed the spread of his teaching: kings, governors, the Roman senate, rulers everywhere, and the people. And how could a human nature having nothing greater in itself convert so great a multitude? And it is no wonder if it converted the sensible; but it converted also the most irrational and those given over to their passions, who because of their irrationality are harder to change to a more self-controlled life. But since Christ was the power of God and the wisdom of the Father, for this reason he has done these things and still does them, even if neither Jews nor Greeks, who disbelieve his word, wish it. We then will not cease believing in God according to the instructions of Jesus Christ and wishing to turn those who are blind concerning the worship of God, even if those who are truly blind insult us as blind, and those who lead astray, whether Jews or Greeks, accuse us, who seek to bring people to agree with us, of leading people astray. A fine leading astray indeed, that from sexual excess they become self-controlled, or at least make progress toward self-control; from unjust, just, or making progress toward justice; from foolish, wise, or on the way to wisdom; and from cowardly, disgraceful, and lacking manly courage, brave and steadfast, showing this especially in their contests for piety toward God, who created all things. Jesus Christ, then, came, proclaimed beforehand not by one prophet but by all. And this too belonged to Celsus's ignorance, to make the Jewish character say that one prophet foretold the Christ. And since the Jew in Celsus is introduced saying these things, supposedly according to his own law, and there somewhere ended his speech, after saying other things not worth remembering, I too will here end the second book dictated by me in reply to his treatise. God granting, and the power of Christ dwelling in our soul, we will try in the third to deal with what Celsus wrote next.