Origen of Alexandria, Against Celsus 17

Next, Celsus attacks the Mosaic history by blaming those who read it tropologically and allegorically. One could fairly ask the noble and truthful author of his own book: "Why do you dignify as divine beings figures who suffer such great misfortunes, as your wise poets and philosophers record — engaging in shameful unions, waging war against their fathers, even castrating themselves — and then record that they dared, did, and endured such things? Yet when Moses speaks, he does not attribute such acts to God, nor even to holy angels, but only to human beings, and far lesser offenses at that. No one in his account dared what Kronos did to Ouranos, or Zeus to his father, or what the 'father of men and gods' did with his own daughter. Do you really think you are deceiving the people he gave laws to?"

Celsus strikes me as doing much the same thing as the Platonic Thrasymachus, who would not let Socrates answer about justice on his own terms but insisted, "See that you do not claim the advantageous is the just, nor the necessary, nor anything like them." Celsus first accuses, as he supposes, the histories in Moses and faults the allegorizers, yet he even praises some of them for being more moderate — as if, having accused as he wishes, he could then bar those who are able from offering a defense. That is simply how things stand.