Origen of Alexandria, Against Celsus 1.32

But let us return to the Jewish persona, in whose role it is written that Jesus’ mother was sent away by her betrothed, a carpenter, after being convicted of adultery and bearing a child by a certain soldier named Panthera. Let us see whether those who fabricated the story of the virgin’s adultery with Panthera and the carpenter’s rejection of her did so blindly, inventing all these details for the purpose of abolishing the paradox of a conception from the Holy Spirit. After all, they were able to fabricate falsehoods in another way precisely because the story is so extremely paradoxical, and they did not simply agree unintentionally that Jesus was not born from the usual marriages of men. It naturally followed that those who refused to accept the paradoxical birth of Jesus would fabricate some falsehood. Yet the fact that they did not do this plausibly—but instead maintained that the virgin did not conceive Jesus from Joseph—made it clear to anyone able to hear and examine fabrications that it was a lie. Would it be reasonable, then, that the one who dared so much for the sake of the human race—so that all Greeks and barbarians, expecting divine judgment, would turn away from wickedness and do all things pleasing to the Creator of all—should have had a birth more lawless and shameful than all other births? I will speak to Greeks and especially to Celsus, whether he is thoughtful or not, but setting forth Plato’s teachings. Would the one who sends souls into human bodies have driven the one who dared so much, taught so many, and turned many men from the flow of wickedness to the most shameful birth of all, without even introducing him into human life through genuine marriages? Or is it more reasonable that each soul, according to certain unspoken laws—I say this now according to Pythagoras, Plato, and Empedocles, whom Celsus often names—is judged worthy and introduced into a body according to its former habits? It is likely, then, that this soul also, more beneficial to human life than many others (so that I may not seem to snatch at the claim by saying “all”), dwelling among men, was bound to a body—not only as one differing among human bodies but also as the one who is better than all.