Against Celsus, Book I

Secret compacts against unjust laws§1

1The first charge Celsus brings, in his wish to discredit Christianity, is that Christians make compacts with one another in secret, against what the laws have established. His ground is that some compacts are open, those made in keeping with the laws, while others are hidden, those carried out against what the laws have established. He also wants to discredit what is called the love of Christians for one another, as something that springs from their common danger and is stronger than any oath.

Since, then, he keeps harping on the common law, and says that the compacts of Christians are against it, we must answer as follows. Suppose a man found himself among the Scythians, whose laws are lawless, and, with no chance to get away, were forced to live among them. Such a man would have good reason, because of the law of truth, which in the eyes of the Scythians is lawlessness, to make compacts with those who think as he does, against what the Scythians have established. In the same way, when truth sits in judgment, the laws of the nations about images and their godless worship of many gods are laws of Scythians, or of anything still more impious than Scythians. It is therefore not unreasonable to make compacts against what is established, when they are made for the sake of truth.

For if men made secret compacts to put to death a tyrant who had seized control of the city, they would do well. So it is with Christians: since the one they call the devil, and falsehood with him, rule as tyrants, they make compacts against what the devil has established, compacts against the devil and for the salvation of others, whom they may be able to persuade to break away from that law, which is, as it were, the law of Scythians and of a tyrant.

A doctrine of barbarian origin§2

2Next he says that the doctrine is barbarian in its origin, meaning, evidently, Judaism, on which Christianity depends. And he is fair enough not to reproach our teaching for having its beginning among barbarians; indeed he praises the barbarians as able to discover doctrines. But he adds that the Greeks are better at judging what the barbarians discovered, at confirming it, and at putting it into practice for the sake of virtue.

From his own words, then, we have this to say in defense of what Christianity holds, which is true: anyone who comes to our teaching from the doctrines and training of the Greeks would not only judge these things to be true, but, having put them into practice, would also prove them, and would supply whatever seems to be lacking by the standard of Greek demonstration, and so establish the truth of Christianity.

We must say further that our teaching has a demonstration of its own, more divine than the Greek demonstration drawn from dialectic. This more divine demonstration the apostle calls a demonstration “of the Spirit and of power” (1 Corinthians 2:4): “of the Spirit” because of the prophecies, which are able to bring the reader to faith, above all in what concerns Christ; and “of power” because of the wondrous works of power. That these took place must be shown from many other things, and also from this, that traces of them are still preserved among those who live according to the purpose of our teaching.

Danger, philosophy and persecution§3

3After this he speaks of Christians doing and teaching in secret what pleases them, and says that they have good reason for doing so, since they are warding off the death penalty that hangs over them. He compares this danger with the dangers that befell men for the sake of philosophy, as with Socrates; he might also have said, as with Pythagoras and other philosophers.

To this we must reply that in the case of Socrates the Athenians repented at once, and no bitterness toward him remained among them, nor in the case of Pythagoras. The Pythagoreans, at any rate, kept up their schools for a long time in Italy, in the region called Great Greece. But in the case of the Christians, the Roman senate, the emperors of the day, the soldiery, the common people, and the relatives of believers made war on our teaching, and they would have stopped it, overcome by the plotting of so many, had it not risen above them and surmounted them by divine power, so as to conquer the whole world that plotted against it.

Moral teaching written on every heart§4

4Let us see also how he thinks he can discredit our moral teaching on the ground that it is shared with the other philosophers, and so is no venerable or new lesson. To this we must say that for those who teach a just judgment of God, punishment for sins would have been ruled out if all men did not have, by the common notions, a sound preconception about moral matters. It is therefore no wonder that the same God has sown in the souls of all men what he taught through the prophets and the Savior, so that every man may be without excuse at the divine judgment, having the intent “of the law written” in his own heart (Romans 2:15).

Scripture hinted at this in what the Greeks consider a myth, where it represents God as having written the commandments with his own “finger” (Exodus 31:18) and given them to Moses; and the wickedness of those who made the calf “broke” them (Exodus 32:19), as if it were saying that the flood of sin swept them away. Then God wrote them a second time and gave them, after Moses had hewn the stones (Exodus 34:1), as though the prophetic word were preparing the soul, after the first sin, for a second writing from God.

Against gods made with hands§5

5Setting out our views on idolatry as something peculiar to those who follow our teaching, he even supplies an argument for them, saying that for this reason they do not believe in gods made with hands: it is not reasonable that things made by the basest of craftsmen, men of wicked character, should be gods, when they have often been fashioned by unjust men as well.

Then, in what follows, wishing to make this a common view, on the ground that it was not first discovered by our teaching, he sets out a saying of Heraclitus: “Those who approach lifeless things as gods act like someone chatting with houses” (Heraclitus, fragment 5). So about this too we must say that, as with the rest of moral teaching, notions were sown in men, and from them Heraclitus, and any other Greek or barbarian, thought of arguing this point. For he also points out that the Persians hold this view, citing Herodotus, who reports it (Herodotus, Histories 1.131).

We too will add that Zeno of Citium also says in his Republic: “There will be no need to build temples; for no temple ought to be thought of great worth or holy, since it is the work of builders and mechanics.” It is clear, then, that with this doctrine too, what must be done has been written “in the hearts” of men (Romans 2:15) in God's own writing.

The name of Jesus, not spells§6

6After this Celsus says (what moves him to it I do not know) that Christians appear to gain their power by the names of certain demons and by incantations. He is hinting, I suppose, at those who cast spells on demons and drive them out. But he seems plainly to be slandering our teaching. For Christians do not appear to gain their power by incantations, but by the name of Jesus, together with the telling of the stories about him. These words, when spoken, have often made demons depart from men, especially when those who say them speak from a sound disposition of genuine faith.

Indeed, the name of Jesus has such power against demons that it is sometimes effective even when named by bad men. Jesus taught this when he said: “Many will say to me on that day, ‘In your name we cast out demons and did mighty works’” (Matthew 7:22). Whether Celsus passed over this on purpose and with malice, or from ignorance, I do not know.

In what follows he also accuses the Savior, saying that it was by sorcery that he was able to do the marvels he appeared to have done; and that he foresaw that others too, having learned the same lessons, would do the same thing and would boast that they did it by the power of God; and that Jesus drives such men out of his own commonwealth. And he accuses him thus: if he drives them out justly, while he himself is liable to the same charges, he is a bad man; but if he is not a bad man for having done these things, neither are those who act as he did.

But to speak plainly: even if it seems impossible to put to the test how Jesus did these things, it is clear that Christians use no practice of spells, but the name of Jesus and other words believed in accordance with the divine Scripture.

A secret doctrine known to the whole world§7

7Next, since he often calls our doctrine secret, we must refute him on this point too, for nearly the whole world knows the preaching of Christians better than the opinions of the philosophers. For who is unaware of Jesus' birth from a virgin, and of the Crucified, and of his resurrection, believed by many, and of the judgment that is proclaimed, which will punish sinners as they deserve and count the righteous worthy of reward? Even the mystery of the resurrection, though not understood, is widely talked about, and unbelievers laugh at it. In view of all this, to say that the doctrine is secret is quite absurd.

That there are some things, as it were, beyond the outward teachings, which do not reach the many, is not peculiar to the Christian teaching alone; it is true of the philosophers as well. Among them some discourses were outward and others inward. Some heard Pythagoras on the principle “He said it himself,” while others were taught in secret the things not fit to reach ears that were profane and not yet purified. And all the mysteries everywhere, throughout Greece and the barbarian world, are secret, yet they have not been discredited for it. So it is in vain that he discredits the secret element in Christianity, when he has not even understood it accurately.

Celsus the Epicurean contradicts himself§8

8With some cleverness he seems in a way to speak up for those who bear witness to Christianity even to death, when he says: “And I do not say that a man who holds to a good doctrine ought, if he is going to be in danger among men because of it, to abandon the doctrine, or pretend that he has abandoned it, or deny it.” And he condemns those who hold the beliefs of Christianity but pretend not to hold them, or deny them, saying that one who holds the doctrine ought not to pretend that he has abandoned it, or deny it.

We must show, then, that Celsus contradicts himself. From other writings of his he is found to be an Epicurean. But here, so that his accusation of our teaching may seem more reasonable, he does not admit to the views of Epicurus. Instead he pretends that there is in man something better than the earthly, akin to God, and he says that in those in whom this is in good health (that is, the soul), “it reaches out in every way toward what is akin to it” (he means God), “and they long always to hear something about him and to be reminded of him.”

See, then, how counterfeit his soul is. Having said beforehand that a man who holds to a good doctrine, even if he is going to be in danger among men because of it, must not abandon the doctrine, nor pretend that he has abandoned it, nor deny it, he himself falls into every one of the opposite faults. For he knew that if he admitted he was an Epicurean, he would have no credibility in accusing those who, in whatever way, teach a providence and set God over all that exists. We have learned that there were two Epicureans named Celsus: the earlier under Nero, and this one under Hadrian and later.

Faith for those who cannot study§9

9After this he urges people to accept doctrines by following reason and a rational guide, since anyone who assents to anything in another way is sure to be deceived. He likens those who believe without reason to the begging priests of the Great Mother and to readers of portents, to the devotees of Mithras and of Sabazius, and to whatever one happens to meet: the apparitions of Hecate, or of some other female spirit, or of spirits. For just as among these, wicked men often take advantage of the ignorance of the gullible and lead them wherever they wish, so, he says, it happens among the Christians too. He says that some, who are not even willing to give or to receive an account of what they believe, use the sayings “Do not examine, but believe” and “Your faith will save you” (Mark 5:34; Luke 7:50). And he says that they say: “Wisdom in the world is an evil thing, and foolishness a good one” (1 Corinthians 3:18–19).

To this we must reply that if it were possible for everyone to leave the business of life and devote themselves to philosophy, no one should follow any other way than this alone. For in Christianity there will be found, to say nothing more boastful, no less examination of what is believed, and explanation of the riddles in the prophets, of the parables in the Gospels, and of countless other things that happened or were laid down in the law as symbols. But if this is impossible, partly because of the necessities of life and partly because of human weakness, since very few press eagerly toward rational study, what better method of helping the many could be found than the one handed down to the nations by Jesus?

And we ask, concerning the multitude of believers who have put away the great flood of wickedness in which they once wallowed: is it better for them, believing without reason, to have had their ways somehow restrained, and to have been helped by their belief that people are punished for sins and honoured for good works? Or is it better to refuse their conversion on bare faith until they give themselves to the examination of arguments? For plainly all of them, apart from a very few, will not receive even what they have received from believing simply, but will remain in a most wicked life.

If, then, anything else serves to prove that the Word’s love for humankind has come into human life not without God, this too must be counted with those proofs. For a devout person will not suppose that even a physician of bodies, who has brought many of the sick to better health, visits cities and nations without God; for nothing good comes about among human beings without God. And if one who has healed the bodies of many, or brought them to better health, does not heal without God, how much more is this true of one who has healed, converted and bettered the souls of many, who has made them depend on God who is over all, and has taught them to refer every action to what pleases him and to shun everything displeasing to God, down to the least of the things said or done, or even entering the mind?

Philosophers also begin by believing§10

10Next, since they keep harping on faith, we must say this. We accept faith as useful for the many, and we admit that we teach those who cannot leave everything and pursue the examination of reason to believe even without reason; they do not admit this, yet they do it in practice. For who, when he has been urged toward philosophy and has thrown himself, as if by lot, into some school of philosophers, or has come to it because he happened upon a particular teacher, comes to it for any other reason than that he believes that school to be better? For he does not wait to hear the arguments of all the philosophers and of the different schools, the refutation of some and the proof of others, and only then choose to be a Stoic, a Platonist, a Peripatetic, an Epicurean, or a member of any school of philosophers whatever. Rather, by some irrational impulse, even if they do not wish to admit it, they come to practise, say, the Stoic teaching, leaving the others aside; they look down on the Platonic as humbler than the rest, or on the Peripatetic as the most human of all, and as admitting human goods more candidly than the other schools.

And some, troubled at their first encounter with the question of providence by what happens on earth to the bad and to the good, have too hastily assented to the view that there is no providence at all, and have chosen the doctrine of Epicurus and Celsus.

All of life rests on trust§11

11If, then, as our argument has shown, one must believe some one of those who founded schools among Greeks or barbarians, how much more must one believe the God who is over all, and the one who teaches that he alone must be worshipped, and that all else must be disregarded, either as not existing, or as existing and worthy of honour, yet not of adoration and worship? On these matters, the one who does not only believe but also contemplates things by reason will set out the proofs that occur to him and that he finds by diligent searching.

And since all human affairs depend on faith, how is it not more reasonable to believe God rather than those men? For who sails, or marries, or has children, or casts seed upon the ground, without believing that things will turn out for the better, though the opposite may happen and sometimes does? Yet the belief that things will turn out for the better and as one prays makes everyone venture even on what is uncertain and might fall out otherwise. And if hope, and the more hopeful belief about the future, holds life together in every action whose outcome is uncertain, how much more reasonably will this faith be embraced by one who trusts, more than in the sea that is sailed, the earth that is sown, the wife who is married and the other affairs of human life, in the God who made all these things? And how much more in him who, with surpassing greatness of mind and divine magnanimity, dared to set this teaching before people in every part of the world, amid great dangers and a death thought shameful, all of which he endured for humankind; and who taught also those first persuaded to serve his teaching to dare, amid every danger and the deaths they always expected, to go abroad into every part of the world for the salvation of human beings?

Celsus’s claim to know everything§12

12Then Celsus says, in these very words: “If they are willing to answer me, not as one who is testing them (for I know everything), but as one who cares for all alike, it would be well. But if they will not, and say, as they usually do, ‘Do not examine,’ and so on, then they must,” he says, “explain both what kind of things these are that they speak of, and from what source they have flowed,” and so on.

To his “for I know everything,” a most boastful thing for him to have ventured, we must reply this. If he had read above all the prophets, which are admittedly full of riddles and of words obscure to the many; if he had read the Gospel parables, the rest of the writing of the law and of Jewish history, and the sayings of the apostles; and if, having read them, he had been willing in good faith to enter into the meaning of the words, he would not have been so bold, nor said, “for I know everything.” Even we, who have spent long study on these writings, would not say “I know everything,” for we love the truth. None of us will say, “I know all of Epicurus,” or will dare to claim that he knows all of Plato, when there are so many disagreements even among those who expound them. For who is so bold as to say, “I know all the Stoic teaching,” or “all the Peripatetic”? Unless perhaps his “I know everything” comes from this: he heard from some ignorant and senseless people, who are unaware of their own lack of learning, and supposed that, having had such teachers, he had come to know everything.

He seems to me to have done something like this. Suppose someone visited Egypt, where the wise men of the Egyptians, following their ancestral writings, pursue much philosophy about what they hold to be divine, while the common people hear certain myths whose meaning they do not understand and pride themselves greatly on them; and suppose he thought he knew everything Egyptian, after becoming a pupil of their common people, without mixing with any of the priests or learning the secret teachings of the Egyptians from any of them. What I have said about the wise and the common people of the Egyptians can also be seen among the Persians. They have rites which their learned men honour with understanding, but which the many and more superficial among them perform symbolically. The same must be said of the Syrians and the Indians, and of all who have both myths and writings.

Foolishness to this age§13

13Celsus has set down, as something said by many Christians, “Wisdom in this life is an evil thing, and foolishness a good one.” We must reply that he slanders our teaching, for he did not set out the actual words found in Paul, which run thus: “If anyone among you thinks he is wise, let him become foolish in this age, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God” (1 Corinthians 3:18–19). So the apostle does not say simply, “Wisdom is foolishness with God,” but “the wisdom of this world”; and again he does not say without qualification, “If anyone among you thinks he is wise, let him become foolish,” but “let him become foolish in this age, so that he may become wise.” By “the wisdom of this age,” then, we mean every philosophy that holds false opinions, which according to the Scriptures is being brought to nothing (1 Corinthians 2:6); and we call foolishness good not absolutely, but when someone becomes “foolish” to this age.

It is as if we were to say that the Platonist too, who believes in the immortality of the soul and in what is said of it concerning its passing into other bodies, has taken up foolishness in the eyes of the Stoics, who mock assent to these things; in the eyes of the Peripatetics, who keep talking of Plato’s “twitterings” (Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 1.22, 83a33); and in the eyes of the Epicureans, who charge with superstition those who bring in providence and set God over the universe.

Further, that even in the judgement of the Word it is far better to assent to doctrines with reason and wisdom than with bare faith, and that the Word willed this also because circumstances required it, so as not to leave human beings wholly without help, is shown by Paul, the true disciple of Jesus, when he says: “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21). These words clearly show that God ought to have been known in the wisdom of God; and since this did not happen so, God was pleased, as a second course, to save those who believe, not through foolishness without qualification, but through foolishness so far as the preaching goes. For Jesus Christ crucified, when he is preached, is at first sight the foolishness of the preaching; as Paul too, who was aware of this, says in the passage: “But we preach Jesus Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:23–24).

Why single out the Jews?§14

14Celsus thinks that many nations share a kinship in this same doctrine, and he names all these nations as having originated such a teaching. Yet I do not know how it is that he slanders the Jews alone, not counting their nation with the rest, as one that either shared their studies and was of one mind with them, or taught much the same on many points. It is fair, then, to ask him why he has believed the histories of barbarians and Greeks about the antiquity of the nations he named, while he makes out the histories of this one nation alone to be false. For if each people set down its own affairs out of love for the truth, why should we distrust the prophets of the Jews alone? But if Moses and the prophets wrote many things about their own affairs to favour their own cause, why shall we not say the same about the writers of the other nations too? Or are the Egyptians to be trusted about the Jews when they speak ill of them in their histories, while the Jews are lying when they say the same things about the Egyptians, recording that they themselves suffered much unjustly and saying that for this reason the Egyptians were punished by God?

Nor is this to be said of the Egyptians alone. For we shall find conflict between the Assyrians and the Jews, and this is recorded in the ancient histories of the Assyrians. In the same way the Jewish writers (so as not to seem to beg the question by saying “the prophets”) recorded that the Assyrians were their enemies. See at once, then, the partiality of a man who believes some nations as wise and condemns others as utterly foolish. For listen to Celsus saying: “There is an ancient doctrine that goes back to the beginning, with which the wisest nations and cities and wise men have always been occupied.” Yet he would not call the Jews one of the wisest nations, not even on a level with the Egyptians, Assyrians, Indians, Persians, Odrysians, Samothracians and Eleusinians.

Pagan witnesses to Jewish wisdom§15

15How much better than Celsus is Numenius the Pythagorean! He showed in many works that he was a man of the greatest learning, he tested more doctrines, and he gathered from more sources what seemed to him to be true. In the first book of his work On the Good, speaking of the nations that have conceived of God as incorporeal, he placed the Jews among them as well, and in his treatise he did not hesitate to use even the words of the prophets and to interpret them figuratively.

It is also said that Hermippus, in the first book of his work On Lawgivers, recorded that Pythagoras brought his own philosophy from the Jews to the Greeks. And a book about the Jews is current under the name of Hecataeus the historian, in which he takes the nation’s part as a wise one so markedly that Herennius Philo, in his treatise on the Jews, first doubts whether the treatise is really the historian’s, and then says that, if it is his, he was probably carried away by the persuasiveness he found among the Jews and assented to their teaching.

Moses struck from the list of the wise§16

16I am surprised that Celsus places the Odrysians, the Samothracians, the Eleusinians and the Hyperboreans among the most ancient and wisest nations, yet has not seen fit to admit the Jews either among the wise or among the ancient, although many writings are current among Egyptians, Phoenicians and Greeks that bear witness to their antiquity. I thought it needless to set these out, for anyone who wishes can read what Flavius Josephus wrote in his two books on the antiquity of the Jews, where he brings together a large collection of writers who bear witness to the antiquity of the Jews. There is also the Address to the Greeks by Tatian, a later writer, who sets out with great learning those who have written about the antiquity of the Jews and of Moses. It seems, then, that Celsus says these things not truthfully but out of hostility, his aim being to bring a charge against the origin of Christianity, which depends on the Jews.

What is more, he says that Homer’s Milk-drinkers (Homer, Iliad 13.5–6), the Druids of the Gauls and the Getae are very wise and ancient nations, holding views akin to the Jewish doctrines; whether any writings of theirs are extant I do not know. But the Hebrews alone, so far as it lies with him, he shuts out from both antiquity and wisdom. Again, when he draws up a list of ancient and wise men who helped the people of their own time, and through their writings those who came after, he shut Moses out of the list of the wise. Yet of Linus, whom Celsus put first among those he named, no laws or discourses are extant that have turned nations around and healed them; whereas a whole nation, scattered over the whole inhabited world, carries the laws of Moses.

See, then, whether it was not out of open malice that he shut Moses too out of the list of the wise, while saying that Linus, Musaeus, Orpheus, Pherecydes, Zoroaster the Persian and Pythagoras held views on these matters, that their doctrines were set down in books, and that they have been preserved to this day. And he chose to forget the myth about the so-called gods as subject to human passions, which Orpheus above all wrote down.

Allegory allowed for the gods but not for Moses§17

17In what follows, while accusing the history written by Moses, he finds fault with those who interpret it figuratively and allegorically. One might say to this most noble man, who gave his own book the title True Doctrine: “Why on earth, sir, do you speak with reverence of the records that gods fell into such great calamities as your wise poets and philosophers describe, that they engaged in abominable unions, made war on their fathers and castrated them, and that they dared, did and suffered such things? And yet when Moses says nothing of the kind about God, nor even about holy angels, but tells far lesser things about men (for no one in his writings dared what Cronus did against Uranus, nor what Zeus did against his father, nor did ‘the father of men and gods’ (Homer, Iliad 1.544) lie with his own daughter), do you people think that he leads astray those who received laws from him, and that they have been deceived?”

It seems to me that Celsus is doing something like Plato’s Thrasymachus, who would not allow Socrates to answer as he wished about justice, but said: “See that you do not say that the just is the advantageous, or what is needful, or anything else of that sort” (Plato, Republic 336c–d). For Celsus too, having accused (as he supposes) the histories in Moses, and having blamed those who allegorize them while also giving them some praise, saying they are “the more reasonable,” as it were prevents those who are able from making a defence that answers to the true nature of the matters, once he has made his accusations as he pleases.

Compare the books themselves§18

18We would say, challenging him to set book beside book: “Bring out, sir, the poems of Linus, Musaeus and Orpheus and the writing of Pherecydes, and examine them together with the laws of Moses, setting histories beside histories, and moral discourses beside laws and commandments. See which are better able to turn those who hear them, even at the first hearing, and which of them might even ruin the listener. Observe how the company of your writers cared little for those who would read them in the plain sense, and wrote their own philosophy, as you say, only for those able to interpret it figuratively and allegorically. Moses, on the other hand, in his five books has acted like a noble orator who studies the figures of speech and everywhere puts forward the double sense of his wording with care: he neither gave the mass of the Jews under his law occasions of harm in matters of conduct, nor set before the few who are able to read with greater understanding, those who can search out his intent, a writing lacking in contemplation.

“And it seems that the books of your wise poets are not even preserved any longer, though they would have been kept if the reader had perceived any benefit. But the writings of Moses have moved many, even of those foreign to the Jewish way of life, to believe that, as the writings themselves declare, the One who first gave them as law and delivered them to Moses was God, who created the world. For it was fitting that the Maker of the whole world, who had laid down laws for the whole world, should give his words a power able to prevail over people everywhere. And I say this not yet examining the case of Jesus, but still showing that Moses, who is far less than the Lord, far surpasses, as the argument will establish, your wise poets and philosophers.”

Floods, fires, and the age of the world§19

19Next, Celsus, wishing covertly to discredit the account of the making of the world given by Moses, which indicates that the world is not yet ten thousand years old but much less than that, sides with those who say that the world is uncreated, while hiding his own intention. For his statement that “there have been many conflagrations from all eternity, and many floods, and the flood in the time of Deucalion is more recent, having happened lately” plainly shows those able to understand him that in his view the world is uncreated.

Let the man who finds fault with the faith of Christians tell us by what demonstrative arguments he was compelled to accept that there have been many conflagrations and many floods, and that the most recent of all are the flood in the time of Deucalion and the conflagration in the time of Phaethon. But if he puts forward Plato’s dialogues on these matters, we shall tell him that we too may believe that the divine Spirit dwelt in the pure and devout soul of Moses, who rose above everything that has come into being and attached himself to the Creator of the universe, and who set forth the things of God far more clearly than Plato and the wise among Greeks and barbarians. And if he demands of us reasons for such a faith, let him first give reasons for what he himself declared without proof, and after that we shall establish that our own positions are so.

Egyptian riddles and Mosaic myths§20

20Yet Celsus, even against his will, fell into bearing witness that the world is rather young and not yet ten thousand years old, when he said that the Greeks too consider these things ancient because, owing to the floods and conflagrations, they have neither seen nor remember anything older. Let the Egyptians, whom he counts the wisest, be Celsus’s teachers of the myth of conflagrations and inundations. The traces of their wisdom are irrational animals that are worshipped, and arguments to show that such worship of God is reasonable, and of a hidden and mystical kind.

If the Egyptians, to give dignity to their doctrine about the animals, offer theological explanations, they are wise. But if one who has assented to the law and the lawgiver of the Jews refers everything to the Creator of the universe, the only God, he is counted by Celsus and those like him inferior to one who brings divinity down not only into rational and mortal living beings but even into irrational ones. This goes beyond the mythical doctrine of transmigration, which tells of the soul falling from the vaults of heaven and descending as far as irrational animals, not only tame ones but even the most savage. And if the Egyptians tell myths, they are believed to have philosophized through riddles and secrets; but if Moses, writing for a whole nation, leaves them histories and laws, his words are thought to be empty myths that do not even admit of allegory.

If Moses learned it, what was his fault?§21

21For this is what Celsus and the Epicureans think. “Moses, then,” he says, “having heard of this doctrine, which was current among wise nations and men of renown, won a godlike reputation.” To this we must reply, even granting him that Moses heard an older doctrine and handed it on to the Hebrews: if he heard a false doctrine, one neither wise nor venerable, and accepted it and handed it on to those under him, he is open to blame; but if, as you say, he assented to wise and true doctrines and educated his own people by means of them, what has he done that deserves accusation?

Would that Epicurus too had heard this doctrine, and Aristotle, who is less impious than he toward providence, and the Stoics, who said that God is a body! Then the world would not have been filled with teaching that sets providence aside, or curtails it, or brings in a corruptible first principle, the bodily one, according to which God too is a body for the Stoics. They are not ashamed to say that he is changeable, alterable through and through, and mutable, and in short capable of perishing if he had anything to destroy him, but fortunate enough not to perish because there is nothing to destroy him. Yet the doctrine of Jews and Christians, which preserves the unchangeableness and unalterableness of God, has been thought impious, because it does not join in impiety with those who hold impious views about God, saying in its prayers to the Divine, “But you are the same” (Psalm 102:27); and it is believed that God also said, “I do not change” (Malachi 3:6).

Circumcision and the name of Abraham§22

22After this Celsus, without finding fault with the Jewish practice of circumcising the private parts, says that it "came from the Egyptians". In this he believes the Egyptians rather than Moses, who says that Abraham was the first among men to be circumcised (Genesis 17:24). Nor is Moses the only one to record the name of Abraham and to claim him as close to God. Many of those who charm demons with incantations also use the words "the God of Abraham" (Exodus 3:6) in their formulas. They achieve their effects through the name and through God's intimacy with that righteous man, and that is why they take up the phrase "the God of Abraham". Yet they do not know who Abraham is. The same must be said of Isaac, of Jacob and of Israel. These names, which everyone admits are Hebrew, are scattered in many places through Egyptian lore that claims to work some power.

As for the meaning of circumcision, which began with Abraham and was stopped by Jesus, who did not wish his disciples to do the same, it is not our purpose to explain it now. The present occasion is not for teaching about these matters but for a contest, to demolish the charges that Celsus brings against the doctrine of the Jews. He thinks he will more quickly prove Christianity false if, since its origin lies in the Jewish writings, he can by his accusations show that doctrine also to be false.

One world, one Maker§23

23Next Celsus says that "the goatherds and shepherds who followed Moses as their leader were beguiled by rustic deceits and came to think there is one God." Since, as he thinks, goatherds and shepherds turned away from the worship of gods without reason, let him show, then, how he himself can establish the multitude of gods held by the Greeks, or by the other barbarian peoples. Let him show the real existence and substance of Mnemosyne bearing the Muses by Zeus, or of Themis bearing the Hours; or let him prove that the Graces, who are always naked, can truly exist in substance. But he will not be able to show from the facts that the inventions of the Greeks, which seem to be given bodily form, are gods. Why are the Greeks' myths about gods any truer than, say, those of the Egyptians? In their own language the Egyptians know nothing of Mnemosyne as mother of the nine Muses, nor of Themis as mother of the Hours, nor of Eurynome as one of the Graces, nor any of their other names.

How much more effective, then, and how much better than all these inventions it is to be persuaded by what we see, by the good order of the world, to worship its Maker as one, since the world is one and wholly in harmony with itself! For that reason it cannot have been made by many makers, just as it cannot be held together by many souls moving the whole heaven. For one soul is enough, which carries the whole sphere of the fixed stars from east to west and embraces within it all the things the world needs, things that are not complete in themselves. For all these are parts of the world, but God is no part of a whole, since God cannot be incomplete, as a part is incomplete. Yet perhaps a deeper account will show that God, in the proper sense, is not a whole either, just as he is not a part, since a whole is made up of parts. And reason does not allow us to accept that the God over all is made up of parts, each of which cannot do what the other parts do.

The names of God and the nature of names§24

24After this he says that "the goatherds and shepherds thought there was one God, whether Most High, or Adonai, or the Heavenly One, or Sabaoth, or however and in whatever way they like to name this world; and they knew nothing more." And next he says that "it makes no difference whether one calls the God over all by the name current among the Greeks, Zeus, or by such-and-such a name, say, among the Indians, or by such-and-such among the Egyptians."

To this too we must reply that the present subject involves a deep and secret question: the question of the nature of names. Are names a matter of convention, as Aristotle thinks (Aristotle, On Interpretation 2)? Or are they by nature, as the Stoics hold, the first sounds imitating the things the names stand for, which is why the Stoics also bring in certain elements of etymology? Or are names by nature, as Epicurus teaches, though in a different way from what the Stoics think, because the first men burst out with certain sounds in response to things (Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 75–76)?

Suppose, then, that in a treatment devoted to the subject we can establish the nature of names that have power, some of which are used by the wise among the Egyptians, or the learned among the Persian magi, or, among the philosophers of India, by the Brahmans or the Samanaeans, and so on in each of the nations. And suppose we can also prove that what is called magic is not, as the followers of Epicurus and Aristotle think, a thing wholly without coherence, but, as those skilled in it demonstrate, a coherent system, though its principles are known to very few. Then we shall say that the name Sabaoth, and Adonai, and the other names handed down among the Hebrews with great reverence, are not applied to ordinary, created things, but belong to a certain secret theology which refers to the Maker of the universe. This is why these names, when they are spoken with a certain sequence that is woven into them, can be employed for certain purposes; and so can others, current in the Egyptian tongue and applied to certain demons who can do only these particular things, and others, in the Persian language, applied to other powers; and so in each of the nations. And so it will be found that the names of the demons on earth, who have been allotted different places, are spoken in a way suited to the language of each place and nation.

Whoever, then, has with a nobler mind gained even a little insight into these matters will take care not to fit names to things that are not theirs. Otherwise he may suffer the same as those who wrongly apply the name "God" to lifeless matter, or who drag down the title "good" from the First Cause, or from virtue and the beautiful, to blind wealth, to the right proportion of flesh, blood and bones in health and good condition, or to what is counted noble birth.

Why Christians will not call God Zeus§25

25And perhaps the danger is no less for one who brings the name of God, or the name of the good, down to things it should not be given to, than for one who interchanges the names that belong to a secret teaching, applying those of lesser things to greater, and those of greater things to lesser. I pass over the fact that with the name Zeus one at once hears along with it the son of Cronus and Rhea, the husband of Hera, the brother of Poseidon, the father of Athena and Artemis, and the one who lay with his daughter Persephone; or that with Apollo one hears the son of Leto and Zeus, the brother of Artemis, and the brother of Hermes on his father's side; and whatever else is told by those wise fathers of Celsus's doctrines, the ancient theologians of the Greeks. For what arbitrary choice lets the name Zeus be taken in its proper sense, but not also the statement that his father is Cronus and his mother Rhea? The same must be done with the other gods who are named.

But this charge in no way touches those who, according to a certain secret teaching, apply Sabaoth, or Adonai, or any of the other names to God. Whoever can philosophise about names in their hidden meanings would also find much about the names by which the angels of God are called: one of them is called Michael (Daniel 10:13), another Gabriel (Luke 1:19), and another Raphael (Tobit 12:15), names that fit the tasks they perform in the universe by the will of the God of all. Our Jesus too belongs to a like philosophy of names: his name has already been plainly seen to drive countless demons out of souls and bodies, taking effect upon those from whom they were driven out.

Further, on the topic of names it must be said that those skilled in the use of incantations report that the same incantation, spoken in its own language, can accomplish what the incantation promises; but translated into any other tongue whatever, it can be seen to be feeble and powerless. So it is not the meanings that stand for things, but the qualities and peculiarities of the sounds, that have a certain power in themselves for this purpose or that.

By such arguments we shall also defend the Christians for struggling even to death so as not to proclaim Zeus as God, nor to name him in another language. For they confess either the common name "God" without further definition, or with the addition, "the Maker of all, the Creator of heaven and earth (Psalm 146:6), who sent down to the human race these particular wise men"; for the name "God", joined to this designation, works a certain power among men. Much else could be said on the topic of names against those who think one need not care how they are used. And if Plato is admired for saying in the Philebus, "My fear, Protarchus, about the names of the gods is no small one" (Plato, Philebus 12c), because Philebus, who was conversing with Socrates, had called pleasure a goddess, how shall we not rather approve the reverent caution of the Christians, who attach to the Maker of the universe none of the names taken up in the mythologies? But enough of this for the present.

Not without God: the lives Jesus changed§26

26Let us see how Celsus, who professes to know everything, slanders the Jews when he says that they "worship angels and are given to sorcery, in which Moses was their instructor." Where in the writings of Moses did he find the lawgiver handing down the worship of angels? Let him say, since he professes to know the teachings of Christians and Jews. And how is there sorcery among those who have accepted the law of Moses, and who have also read, "You shall not attach yourselves to enchanters, to be defiled by them" (Leviticus 19:31)? He promises to teach next how the Jews too went astray through ignorance and were deceived. Had he found ignorance among the Jews about Jesus the Christ, in that they did not heed the prophecies about him, he would truly have taught how the Jews went astray. As it is, without even caring to imagine these things, he takes for errors of the Jews what are not errors.

Celsus promises to teach about the Jews later, but first he makes his argument about our Saviour, as the one who led the way in our coming to be Christians. He says that "he became the leader of this teaching a very few years ago, and was thought by Christians to be the Son of God." On this very point, that he came a few years ago, we shall say this. Is it without God that Jesus, wishing in so few years to sow his word and teaching, has been able to do so much that in many parts of our inhabited world not a few Greeks and barbarians, wise and foolish, have become so devoted to his word that they struggle even to death for Christianity rather than forswear him, which no one is recorded to have done for any other doctrine?

For my part, not flattering our teaching but trying to examine the facts with careful thought, I would say that not even those who heal many sick bodies reach the goal of bodily health without God. And if someone could free souls from the dissipation of vice, from licentious and unjust deeds, and from contempt for the divine, and could give as proof of such work a hundred people made better (let the argument be about that many), would not anyone reasonably say of him too that it was not without God that he had implanted in those hundred a word able to free them from so many evils? And if one who weighs these things fairly will grant that nothing better has come about among men without God, how much more confidently will he declare as much of Jesus, when he compares the former lives of many who come to his word with their later lives, and considers in how much licentiousness, how much injustice and greed each of them lived before they were "deceived", as Celsus and those who share his views say, and accepted a teaching which, as those men say, ruins human life; and how, from the time they received the word, they have become gentler, more dignified and steadier, so that some of them, for love of surpassing purity and for the sake of worshipping the divine more purely, do not even touch the sexual relations that the law permits.

A word that could not be stopped§27

27Anyone who examines the facts will see that Jesus dared things beyond human nature, and that, having dared them, he accomplished them. From the beginning everyone worked against the sowing of his word through the whole world: the emperors of each age, the commanders-in-chief and governors under them, and, one might say, all who had been entrusted with any power whatever, as well as the magistrates of the cities, the soldiers and the common people. Yet his word prevailed, for as the word of God it is not of a nature to be hindered. Having proved stronger than so many opponents, it won the mastery over all Greece and, more widely still, over the barbarian world, and it turned countless souls to the worship of God that it teaches.

Since the unlearned and the rustic far outnumber those trained in learning, it was inevitable that, in a multitude won over by the word, the unlearned and rustic would far outnumber the more intelligent. But Celsus would not consider this. He thinks that the word’s love for humankind, which reaches every soul “from the rising of the sun” (compare Malachi 1:11; Psalm 113:3), is an unlearned thing, and that because it is unlearned and has no power at all in argument, it has won over only the unlearned. And yet even he does not say that the word has brought only the unlearned to the worship of God taught by Jesus; for he admits that among them there are some who are moderate, fair-minded and intelligent, and ready to read things as allegory.

Celsus’s Jew and the slander about Jesus’ birth§28

28Celsus also makes use of an imagined speaker, imitating, in a way, a boy just starting at a rhetorician’s school, and he brings in a Jew who addresses Jesus with childish talk, nothing worthy of a philosopher’s grey hairs. Come, then, let us examine this too as best we can, and show that in what he says he has not even kept consistently to the character that suits a Jew.

After this he introduces a Jew conversing with Jesus himself and, as he thinks, refuting him on many points, but first on the charge that he made up his birth from a virgin. He also reproaches him with having been born in a Jewish village, of a local woman who was poor and worked with her hands for a living. He says that she was driven out by the man who had married her, a carpenter by trade, after she was convicted of adultery. Then he says that, cast off by her husband and wandering about in disgrace, she gave birth to Jesus in secret; and that Jesus, because he was poor, hired himself out as a labourer in Egypt, and there tried his hand at certain powers on which the Egyptians pride themselves; that he came back proud of these powers, and on account of them proclaimed himself God.

But to me, who cannot leave unexamined anything the unbelievers say, but who look into the origin of the facts, all these things seem to agree with Jesus’ having proved worthy of the prophecy that he is the Son of God.

Fame without rank, wealth or country§29

29Among human beings, what helps a man become distinguished and famous, with his name spoken of everywhere, is birth, when his parents happen to be eminent and of high standing; the wealth of those who raised him and could afford to spend on their son’s education; and a fatherland that is great and renowned. But when someone who has everything opposite to these is able to rise above all that keeps him from becoming known, to stir those who hear of him, and to become conspicuous and well known to the whole world, a world that says conflicting things about him, how can we not marvel at such a nature, so plainly great in its gifts, setting its hand to great tasks, and possessing a boldness not to be lightly dismissed?

If one looked further into such a man’s life, how could one fail to ask how he, brought up in humble circumstances and poverty, having received no general education and having learned none of the arguments and doctrines that might have made him persuasive in addressing crowds, swaying the people and drawing more hearers, gave himself to teaching new doctrines? He brought the human race a teaching that set aside the customs of the Jews while still honouring their prophets, and that overthrew the laws of the Greeks, above all those concerning the divine. And how could such a man, brought up in this way, who had learned nothing of worth from any human being (as even those who speak evil of him admit), say such things about the judgment of God, about punishments for wickedness and honours for goodness, and say them in a way not easily despised, so that not only rustic and unlearned people were won by what he said, but also not a few of the more intelligent, those able to see into the hidden sense of sayings thought to be told in plain and humble words, a hidden sense that holds within it, so to speak, something more secret?

The man of Seriphus in Plato reproached Themistocles, who had become famous for his generalship, saying that he had won his fame not by his own character but by the good fortune of having the most celebrated fatherland in all Greece. He heard this reply from Themistocles, who was fair-minded and saw that his fatherland too had contributed to his fame: “If I had been a Seriphian, I would not have become so famous; nor would you, had you been fortunate enough to be born an Athenian, have become a Themistocles” (Plato, Republic 329e–330a). But our Jesus was reproached with coming from a village, and that not a Greek village, nor belonging to any nation held in esteem by most people. He was slandered as the son of a poor woman who worked with her hands, and as having left his fatherland because of poverty to work for hire in Egypt. To use the example already given, he was not only a Seriphian, from the smallest and most obscure of islands, but, so to speak, the most low-born of Seriphians. Yet he has been able to stir the whole inhabited world, more than Themistocles the Athenian, and more even than Pythagoras and Plato and any other wise men, kings or generals anywhere in the world.

Renowned in every way, despite the cross§30

30Who, then, looking into the nature of things with more than passing attention, would not be astonished at him? He conquered, and by his glory he was able to rise above everything that brings disrepute, and above all who were ever renowned. And yet those who have been renowned among men have rarely been able to win glory for several things at once. One was admired and became famous for wisdom, another for generalship; some barbarians for the wonderful powers they worked by incantations; and others for other things, but not for many at once. He, besides everything else, is admired for wisdom, for mighty works, and for his power to lead.

For he won people over not as a tyrant who gets some to join him in revolt against the laws, nor as a brigand who spurs his followers on against other men, nor as a rich man who provides for those who come to him, nor as any of those who are admittedly to be blamed, but as a teacher of the doctrine about the God of the universe, of the worship due to Him, and of a whole way of moral life able to bring whoever lives by it into kinship with the God who is over all.

Nothing ever stood in the way of the glory of Themistocles, or of any other renowned man. But for him, besides the things already mentioned, which were quite enough to hide in obscurity the soul even of a very gifted man, there was also death by crucifixion, which is thought dishonourable. That death was capable of wiping out the glory he had already won, glory that had already taken hold, and of making those who had been deceived before (so those who reject his teaching suppose) abandon the deception and condemn the deceiver.

Why the disciples faced death§31

31Besides this, one might wonder what moved his disciples, if, as those who speak evil of Jesus say, they had not seen him risen from the dead and had not been persuaded that he was something more divine, not to fear suffering the same things as their teacher, and to meet the danger head-on and leave their homelands to teach, as Jesus willed, the word he had entrusted to them (see Matthew 28:19–20). For I think that anyone who examines the facts fairly would not say that these men gave themselves up to a life full of dangers for the sake of Jesus’ teaching without some great conviction. He had planted it in them by teaching them not only to be shaped by his teachings themselves but also to shape others by them, and to do so when ruin, as far as human life goes, lay in plain view for anyone who dared to bring in new things everywhere and with everyone, and to keep as a friend no one who held fast to his former doctrines and customs.

Did Jesus’ disciples not see this, when they dared to show not only the Jews, from the words of the prophets, that he was the one foretold, but also the other nations that the man crucified only the other day had willingly accepted this death for the human race, like those who died for their countries to put an end to plagues that had taken hold, or famines, or disasters at sea? For it is likely that in the nature of things there is, for certain secret reasons hard for most people to grasp, an order such that one righteous man, dying willingly for the common good, brings about the driving away of evil demons, who cause plagues or famines or disasters at sea or something of the kind.

Let those, then, who wish to disbelieve that Jesus died for mankind by way of the cross tell us: will they also refuse to accept the many Greek and barbarian stories of people who died for the common good, to destroy evils that had already seized cities and nations? Or will they say that those things did happen, but that there is nothing credible in the one they take to be a man dying to destroy a great demon, the ruler of demons, who had made subject to himself all the souls of men that have come to earth?

Jesus’ disciples saw these things, and many more besides, which they are likely to have learned from Jesus in private. They were filled, moreover, with a certain power, since the one who gave them “strength and courage” was not some maiden of the poets but the true understanding and wisdom of God. So they hastened to become “conspicuous among all,” not only among the Argives but among all Greeks and barbarians alike, “and to win noble fame” (Homer, Iliad 5.1–3).

The Panthera story and the virgin birth§32

32But let us return to the speech Celsus puts in the mouth of his Jew. There the mother of Jesus is described as having been driven out by the carpenter who was betrothed to her, after being convicted of adultery, and as having borne a child by a certain soldier named Panthera. Let us see whether those who made up the tale of the virgin’s adultery with Panthera, and of the carpenter’s driving her out, did not invent all this blindly, in order to overthrow the miraculous conception by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18–20; Luke 1:35). For, because the story was so very wonderful, they could have falsified it in some other way, instead of conceding, as if against their will, that Jesus was not born of an ordinary human marriage. It was to be expected that those who did not accept Jesus’ miraculous birth would invent some lie. But they did not do it convincingly: they held on to the fact that the virgin did not conceive Jesus by Joseph. So, to those able to listen and to expose fabrications, the lie was obvious.

For is it reasonable that he who dared so much for the human race, so that, as far as lay in him, all Greeks and barbarians, looking for divine judgment, might turn away from wickedness and do everything in a way pleasing to the Creator of the universe, should have had no miraculous birth, but the most lawless and shameful birth of all?

I will speak as to Greeks, and especially to Celsus, who, whether he holds these views or not, at any rate cites Plato’s words. Would he who sends souls down into human bodies thrust one who was to dare so much, to teach so many, and to turn many people from the flood of wickedness, into the most shameful birth of all, not even bringing him into human life through lawful marriage? Or is it more reasonable that each soul, for certain secret reasons (I say this now following Pythagoras, Plato and Empedocles, whom Celsus has often named), when it is put into a body, is put there according to its desert and its former character? It is likely, then, that this soul too, which came to dwell in human life and was of more benefit to it than many men (I do not say “all,” so as not to seem to be forcing the argument), needed a body that was not only outstanding among human bodies but the best of all.

A soul given a body beyond the ordinary§33

33For suppose one soul, for certain hidden reasons, has come to deserve to be neither wholly in the body of a creature without reason nor purely in that of a rational being. It then puts on a misshapen body, so that reason cannot even reach its full growth in one born in that way, whose head is out of proportion to the rest of the body and far too small. Another soul takes on a body such that it becomes a little more rational than the first, and another more rational still, because the nature of the body works, to a greater or lesser degree, against the grasp of reason. If that is so, why should there not also be some soul that takes on a body wholly beyond the ordinary: a body that has something in common with human beings, so that it can live among them, but also something set apart, so that the soul can remain without any taste of evil?

And if the teaching of the physiognomists holds good, whether that of Zopyrus or Loxus or Polemon or of anyone else who has written such things and claimed to know something wonderful, that every body is suited to the character of its soul, then the soul that was to come into human life in an extraordinary way and do great things there had to have a body born, not as Celsus thinks, of Panthera, an adulterer, and a virgin seduced into adultery. For from impure unions like that there should rather have come some senseless teacher, harmful to humankind, teaching licentiousness and injustice and the other vices, not self-control and justice and the other virtues.

Isaiah’s prophecy of the virgin§34

34Rather, as the prophets also foretold, it had to come from a virgin who, according to the promise of a sign, would give birth to one named after a fact, a fact which showed that at his birth God would be with human beings (Isaiah 7:14).

And it seems to me fitting, in answer to the Jew whom Celsus impersonates, to set out the prophecy of Isaiah, which says that Emmanuel would be born of a virgin. Celsus did not quote it. Either he did not know it, for all that he professes to know everything, or he had read it and chose to keep silent, so as not to seem to be unwittingly building up an argument that tells against his own purpose. The passage reads as follows: “And the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying: Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God, in the depth or in the height. And Ahaz said: I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. And he said: Hear then, house of David: is it a small thing for you to make trouble for men? And how is it that you make trouble for the Lord? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive in her womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel” (Isaiah 7:10–14), which is interpreted “God with us” (Matthew 1:23).

That Celsus left the prophecy out in bad faith is clear to me from this: he cites a great deal from the Gospel according to Matthew, such as the star that rose at the birth of Jesus (Matthew 2:2) and other wonders, yet he makes no mention of this at all. But if a Jew quibbles and says that the text does not read “Behold, the virgin” but instead “Behold, the young woman,” we shall reply to him that the word aalma, which the Seventy rendered “the virgin” and others “the young woman,” also occurs, so they say, in Deuteronomy of a virgin, as follows: “If there is a girl, a virgin, betrothed to a man, and a man finds her in the city and lies with her, you shall bring them both out to the gate of their city, and they shall be stoned with stones and shall die: the young woman because she did not cry out in the city, and the man because he dishonoured his neighbour’s wife” (Deuteronomy 22:23–24). And next: “But if a man finds the betrothed girl in the field, and the man forces her and lies with her, you shall put to death only the man who lay with her, and to the young woman you shall do nothing; the young woman has committed no sin deserving death” (Deuteronomy 22:25–26).

The sign given to the house of David§35

35But so that we may not seem to rest on a Hebrew word, offering people who cannot tell whether to accept it or not our proof that the prophet said this child would be born of a virgin, the child of whose birth the words “God with us” have been spoken, let us make the point good from the wording itself. The Lord is recorded as having said to Ahaz: “Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God, in the depth or in the height” (Isaiah 7:11), and next comes the sign that is given: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son” (Isaiah 7:14). What sort of sign, then, would it be for a young woman who was not a virgin to give birth? And to whom is it more fitting to bear “Emmanuel,” that is, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23)? To a woman who has had intercourse and conceived through a woman’s passion, or to one still pure and chaste and a virgin? For it is fitting for her to bring forth the offspring at whose birth it is said, “God with us.”

And if he quibbles in this way too, saying that the words “Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God” were spoken to Ahaz, we shall answer: who was born in the time of Ahaz at whose birth it is said, “Emmanuel, which is, God with us”? For if no one is to be found, then clearly what was said to Ahaz was said to the house of David (Isaiah 7:13), because the Saviour is recorded to have come “from the seed of David according to the flesh” (Romans 1:3). Moreover, this sign is said to be “in the depth or in the height,” since “he who descended is the very one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things” (Ephesians 4:10). I say this as to a Jew who accepts the prophecy.

But let Celsus too, or any of his party, say with what kind of mind the prophet speaks of the future, in these words or in any of the others recorded in the prophecies. Is it a mind that foreknows the future, or not? If it foreknows the future, the prophets had a divine Spirit. If it does not foreknow the future, let him explain the mind of a man who ventures to speak about the future and is admired among the Jews for prophecy.

Why the Jews needed prophets§36

36Now that we have come to the subject of the prophets, what we are about to bring forward will not be without use to the Jews, who believe that the prophets spoke by a divine Spirit, nor to fair-minded Greeks either. To them we shall say that one must accept that the Jews too had prophets, if they were to be kept within the law given them, to believe in the Creator as they had received him, and, as far as the law was concerned, to have no occasion to fall away into the many gods of the nations. We shall show this necessity as follows. “The nations,” as is written in the very law of the Jews, “will listen to omens and divinations” (Deuteronomy 18:14); but to that people it is said, “But to you the Lord your God has not granted it so” (Deuteronomy 18:14). And to this is added, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers” (Deuteronomy 18:15).

The nations, then, used divination by “omens,” or by augury, or by birds, or by mediums, or by those who profess the art of reading sacrifices, or by Chaldeans who cast nativities, all of which were forbidden to the Jews (Deuteronomy 18:10–11). If the Jews had had no comfort from knowledge of the future, the mere human craving to know what is to come would have led them to despise what was their own, as having nothing divine in it. They would not have received any prophet after Moses, nor written down the prophets’ words, but would have deserted to the oracles and oracle-shrines of the nations, or else tried to set up something of the kind among themselves. So it is not at all strange that their prophets foretold even ordinary matters, to comfort those who longed for such things: so that Samuel prophesied even “about lost asses” (1 Samuel 9:20), and the prophet recorded in First Kings prophesied about the illness of a king’s son (1 Kings 14:1–13). And how could the champions of the Jewish law have rebuked anyone who wanted to get divination from idols? Elijah, for instance, is found rebuking Ahaziah and saying, “Is it because there is no God in Israel that you go to inquire of Baal the Fly, the god of Ekron?” (2 Kings 1:3).

The virgin birth and the Greeks’ own stories§37

37It seems to me, then, that a fair case has been made, not only that our Saviour was to be born of a virgin, but also that there were prophets among the Jews. They foretold not only general things about the future, such as those concerning Christ, the kingdoms of the world, what would befall Israel, the nations that would believe in the Saviour, and many other things said about him, but also particular things: how the lost asses of Kish would be found (1 Samuel 9:3–20), the illness from which the son of the king of Israel was suffering (1 Kings 14:1–13), or anything else of the kind on record.

Further, to Greeks who refuse to believe in the birth of Jesus from a virgin, this must be said. In the generation of the various living creatures the Creator showed that, if he willed, he could do in other creatures, and in human beings themselves, what he does in a single kind of creature. Some female creatures are found that have no union with a male, as writers on animals say of vultures; this creature keeps up the succession of its kind without mating. What is so extraordinary, then, if God, wishing to send a divine teacher to the human race, caused the formative principle of the child to be born to come about in another way, instead of through the seminal principle that comes from the union of men with women?

And even by the account of the Greeks themselves, not all human beings were born of a man and a woman. For if the world had a beginning, as many of the Greeks also held, the first human beings must have come into being not from intercourse but from the earth, when seminal principles took form in the earth. And this, I think, is more extraordinary than that Jesus should have been born half in the same way as the rest of humankind.

There is nothing out of place in using Greek stories too in answering Greeks, so that we may not seem to be the only ones to make use of this extraordinary story. For some have seen fit to record, not only about ancient and heroic tales but also about people of yesterday and the day before, that it was possible that Plato too was born of Amphictione, Ariston being prevented from having union with her until she had given birth to the child begotten by Apollo. But these are truly myths, and they moved people to invent such a story about a man whom they thought to have greater wisdom and power than most, and to have received the first formation of his body from higher and more divine seed, since this befits those who are greater than human.

But since Celsus has brought in his Jew arguing with Jesus and ridiculing what Celsus takes to be the pretence of his birth from a virgin, and adducing the Greek myths about Danae, Melanippe, Auge and Antiope, it must be said that such words befitted a buffoon, not a man in earnest about what he reports.

The charge of magic learned in Egypt§38

38Next he takes the account written in the Gospel according to Matthew of Jesus' journey into Egypt (Matthew 2:13–15). He does not believe the miraculous part of it, either that an angel gave the command for it, or whether Jesus' leaving Judea and staying in Egypt hinted at some hidden meaning. Instead he has made up another story. In a way he grants the miraculous works that Jesus did, by which he persuaded the many to follow him as Christ; but he wants to slander them as done by magic and not by divine power. For he says that “he was brought up in obscurity, went to Egypt to work for hire, tried his hand there at certain powers, and came back from there proclaiming himself God on the strength of those powers.”

For my part, I do not know how a magician would have laboured to teach a doctrine that persuades people to do everything in the belief that God will judge each person for all that he has done, and that shapes in this way his own disciples, whom he meant to use as ministers of his teaching. Did they too, having been taught in this way to work miracles, win over those who heard them, or did they not work miracles at all? To say that they worked no miracles at all, but that, once they believed, they gave themselves to teaching a new doctrine to whomever they came among, without any skill in speech comparable to the dialectical wisdom of the Greeks, is wholly unreasonable. For in what did they trust when they taught the doctrine and brought in something new? But if they too performed miracles, what likelihood is there that magicians would have exposed themselves to such great dangers for a teaching that forbids magic?

Mockery about the mother of Jesus§39

39I do not think I need contend with an argument put forward not in earnest but in mockery: “Was the mother of Jesus beautiful, then, and did God have intercourse with her because she was beautiful, though it is not his nature to love a perishable body?” Or that “it was not even likely that God would fall in love with her, since she was neither wealthy nor of royal birth; for no one knew her, not even her neighbours.” He is joking too when he says that “when she was hated by the carpenter and driven out, neither divine power nor persuasive speech saved her.” “These things, then,” he says, “have nothing to do with the kingdom of God.” How would such remarks differ from those of people who hurl abuse at others at the crossroads and say nothing worth serious attention?

Celsus attacks without order§40

40After this he takes from the Gospel according to Matthew, and perhaps also from the other Gospels, the account of the dove that alighted on the Saviour when he was being baptized by John (Matthew 3:16), and wants to slander what is said as a fiction. Having ridiculed, as he supposed, the account of our Saviour's birth from a virgin, he does not set out what comes next in its order. For anger and hatred have nothing orderly about them; people who are angry and hostile abuse those they hate as things occur to them, since their passion does not allow them to state their charges with reflection and in order. If he had kept to the order, he would have taken up the Gospel and, having set himself to accuse it, would have attacked the first account and then gone on in turn to the second, and so to the rest. But as it is, Celsus, who professes to know everything about us, after the birth from a virgin brings charges against the Holy Spirit who appeared at the baptism in the form of a dove; then after this he slanders the prophecy of our Saviour's coming; and after that he runs back to what is recorded next after the birth of Jesus, the story of the star and of the magi who came from the east “to worship” the child (Matthew 2:1–2).

If you watch for it yourself, you could find many things said by Celsus in confusion throughout his whole book, so that by this too he may be convicted, before those who know how to keep order and to look for it, of having given his book the title True Doctrine with great rashness and boasting, a thing that none of the philosophers of repute did. For Plato says that it is not the part of a man of sense to insist firmly on such matters, and on others still more obscure (Plato, Phaedo 114d); and Chrysippus, after setting out in many places the reasons that moved him, sends us on to any we may find who will speak better than he. This man, then, wiser both than these and than the rest of the Greeks, in keeping with his claim to know everything, gave his book the title True Doctrine.

The Jew mocks the dove at the baptism§41

41But so that we may not seem to pass over his main points on purpose, for lack of an answer, we have decided to answer, as well as we can, each of the things he puts forward, paying attention not to the natural connection and sequence of the subjects but to the order of what is written in his book. Come, then, let us see what he says in slandering the Holy Spirit, seen by the Saviour, as it were bodily, in the form of a dove (Luke 3:22). It is still his Jew who says these things, speaking to the one whom we confess to be our Lord, Jesus: “When you were bathing beside John,” he says, “you say that an apparition of a bird flew down on you out of the air.” Then the Jew he has brought in goes on to ask: “What credible witness saw this apparition, or who heard a voice from heaven adopting you as God's Son (Matthew 3:17)? Except that you say so, and bring in one of those who were punished along with you.”

How histories are to be read§42

42Before we begin our defence, it must be said that to try to establish that almost any story, even a true one, actually happened, and to produce a certain and convincing impression about it, is among the very hardest of tasks, and in some cases impossible. Suppose someone says that the Trojan War did not happen, chiefly because an impossible tale has been woven into it, that a certain Achilles was born the son of a sea goddess, Thetis, and of a man, Peleus, or Sarpedon the son of Zeus, or Ascalaphus and Ialmenus the sons of Ares, or Aeneas the son of Aphrodite. How could we establish such a thing, especially when we are hard pressed by the fiction that has somehow been woven into the opinion, held by everyone, that the war at Ilium between the Greeks and the Trojans really happened? Suppose, too, someone disbelieves the story of Oedipus and Jocasta and of Eteocles and Polynices, who were born of them both, because the Sphinx, a kind of half-maiden, has been woven into the tale. How could we prove such a thing? So too with the story of the Epigoni, even though nothing of the kind is woven into it, or with the return of the Heraclidae, or with countless others.

But one who reads histories with fairness, and who wants to keep himself from being deceived even in them, will judge which things he will assent to, which he will take figuratively, searching out the intention of those who invented such things, and which he will disbelieve as written to please certain people. And we have said this in advance with the whole account of Jesus found in the Gospels in view. We are not calling the more intelligent to a bare and unreasoning faith; we want to show that those who are to read them need fairness, much examination, and, if I may call it so, an entering into the intention of the writers, so that it may be found in what sense each thing has been written.

The Jew believes greater wonders in the prophets§43

43First, then, we shall say this. If the man who disbelieves the apparition of the Holy Spirit in the form of the dove had been represented as an Epicurean, or a follower of Democritus, or a Peripatetic, what is said would have fitted the character being portrayed. But as it is, the most wise Celsus has not seen even this: that he has put such an argument in the mouth of a Jew, who believes things from the prophetic Scriptures more numerous and more marvellous than the story of the form of the dove. For someone might say to the Jew, who disbelieves the apparition and thinks he can accuse it as a fiction: And you, sir, how could you prove that the Lord God said to Adam, or to Eve, or to Cain, or to Noah, or to Abraham, or to Isaac, or to Jacob the things that are recorded as said by him to these men (Genesis 2:16; 3:13; 4:6; 6:13; 12:1; 26:2; 28:13)?

And to set one story beside another, I would say to the Jew: Your own Ezekiel too wrote, saying, “The heavens were opened, and I saw a vision of God” (Ezekiel 1:1); and having described it he adds, “This was the vision of the likeness of the glory of the Lord; and he said to me” (Ezekiel 1:28; 2:1). For if what is recorded about Jesus is false, since we cannot, as you suppose, clearly show how these things are true, which were seen or heard by him alone and, as you thought you had noticed, by one of those who were punished, why shall we not all the more say that Ezekiel too was telling marvels when he said, “The heavens were opened,” and the rest? Again, when Isaiah says, “I saw the Lord of Hosts sitting on a throne, high and lifted up; and the Seraphim stood around him, six wings to the one and six wings to the other” (Isaiah 6:1–2), and the rest, how do you know that he truly saw it? For you, Jew, have believed these things as free of falsehood, and as things that, by a more divine Spirit, were not only seen by the prophet but also spoken and written down.

Who is more worthy of belief when he says that the heavens were opened to him and that he heard a voice, or that he saw “the Lord of Hosts sitting on a throne, high and lifted up” (Isaiah 6:1): Isaiah and Ezekiel, or Jesus? For no work of theirs so great is to be found; but the noble work of Jesus did not take place only in the days when he lived in the body. Even to this day the power of Jesus is at work, bringing about conversion and amendment of life in those who believe in God through him. And a clear proof that these things happen by his power is this: though, as he himself says and as one can see, there are no labourers to work at the harvest of souls (Matthew 9:37–38), so great a harvest is being gathered in and brought together into God's threshing floors and churches everywhere.

The Spirit taught the Gospel writers§44

44I say these things to the Jew not because I, a Christian, disbelieve Ezekiel and Isaiah, but to shame him by what we both believe: that this man is far more worthy than they are to be believed when he says that he saw such things and, as is likely, handed on to his disciples the vision he saw and the voice he heard. Someone else might say that not all of those who recorded the story of the form of the dove and of the voice from heaven heard Jesus tell of these things, but that the Spirit who taught Moses the history older than himself, beginning from the making of the world and reaching to the times of Abraham, his forefather, also taught those who wrote the Gospel the wonder that took place at the time of Jesus' baptism.

And the one who has been graced with the gift called “the word of wisdom” (1 Corinthians 12:8) will also explain the reason for the opening of the heavens and for the form of the dove, and why the Holy Spirit appeared to Jesus in the form of this living creature and not of any other. But our argument does not now require us to explain this. For the point in hand is to show that Celsus did not act soundly in putting into a Jew's mouth, with words like these, disbelief about an event that is more likely to have happened than the things the Jew himself believes.

A debate with Jewish teachers about Moses and Jesus§45

45I remember that once, in a debate with some Jews who were said to be wise, with a good many people judging what was said, I used an argument of this kind:

Tell me, sirs: two men have come to live among the human race about whom marvellous things, beyond human nature, are recorded. I mean Moses, your lawgiver, who wrote about himself, and Jesus, our teacher, who left no writing of his own about himself but is attested by his disciples in the Gospels. By what arbitrary choice is Moses to be believed as telling the truth, even though the Egyptians slander him as a sorcerer who seemed to have worked his mighty deeds by trickery, while Jesus is to be disbelieved because you accuse him? For whole peoples bear witness to both: Jews to Moses; and Christians, who do not deny the prophecy of Moses but prove from it the things concerning Jesus, accept as true the marvels about Jesus recorded by his disciples.

For if you demand from us an account of Jesus, first give one of Moses, who came before him; then we in turn will give ours of Jesus. But since you shrink back and run from the proofs about Moses, for the present we do the same as you and offer no proof. Nonetheless, admit that you have no demonstration about Moses, and hear the proofs about Jesus from the law and the prophets. And here is the marvel: from the proofs about Jesus in the law and the prophets it is proved that both Moses and the prophets were prophets of God.

Signs of the Spirit who came as a dove§46

46The law and the prophets are full of marvels like the one recorded about Jesus at his baptism, concerning the dove and the voice from heaven (Matthew 3:16–17; Mark 1:10–11; Luke 3:21–22). And I think that the marvels Jesus performed are a sign that the Holy Spirit was then seen in the form of a dove; Celsus slanders these, saying that he learned them among the Egyptians and so performed them. I will appeal not to those alone but also, as is reasonable, to the ones the apostles of Jesus performed. For without mighty works and marvels they would not have moved those who heard new doctrines and new teachings to leave their ancestral ways and to accept these men's teachings at the risk even of death. And traces of that Holy Spirit who was seen in the form of a dove are still preserved among Christians. They drive out demons, perform many healings, and, as the Word wills, see certain things about the future.

Celsus may mock what I am about to say, or the Jew he has brought in may, but it shall be said all the same: many have come to Christianity as if against their will. Some spirit suddenly turned their ruling mind from hating the message to dying for it, and showed them visions, waking or in dreams. For we have learned of many such things; and if we, who were present ourselves and saw them, were to write them down, we would draw loud laughter from unbelievers, who think that we too, like those they suppose to have made up these things, are making them up. But God is witness to our conscience, which wishes to commend the divine teaching of Jesus not by false reports but by clear evidence of many kinds.

But since it is a Jew who raises difficulties about the Holy Spirit, recorded to have come down upon Jesus in the form of a dove, we should say to him: Sir, who is it that says in Isaiah, “And now the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit” (Isaiah 48:16)? Since the phrase there is ambiguous, whether the Father and the Holy Spirit sent Jesus, or the Father sent both Christ and the Holy Spirit, the second is true. And since the Saviour was sent, and then the Holy Spirit, so that what was spoken by the prophet might be fulfilled, and the fulfilment of the prophecy had to be made known to those who came after as well, for this reason the disciples of Jesus recorded what took place.

Josephus on John the Baptist and James§47

47I should have liked to say to Celsus, who presents his Jew as somehow accepting John as a Baptist who baptized Jesus, that the fact that John was a Baptist, baptizing for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4), was recorded by one who lived not long after John and Jesus. For in the eighteenth book of his Jewish Antiquities Josephus bears witness to John as a Baptist who promised purification to those who were baptized (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.116–119). This same writer, though he did not believe in Jesus as the Christ, was looking for the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. He ought to have said that the plot against Jesus was the cause of these things for the people, because they killed the Christ who had been foretold. Yet, as if against his will, he came not far from the truth, and says that these things befell the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was the brother of “Jesus who is called Christ,” since they killed him although he was most just.

This James is the one whom Paul, a true disciple of Jesus, says he saw, calling him “the Lord's brother” (Galatians 1:19), not so much because of kinship by blood or their shared upbringing as because of his character and his teaching. If, then, Josephus says that the desolation of Jerusalem befell the Jews because of James, is it not more reasonable to say that it happened because of Jesus the Christ? Witnesses to his divinity are the churches, so many in number, of those who have turned from the flood of evils, who cling to the Creator and refer everything to pleasing him.

The divine senses and the opened heavens§48

48Even if the Jew, then, will not make a defence for Ezekiel and Isaiah when we place side by side the opening of the heavens for Jesus, with the voice he heard, and the like things we find recorded in Ezekiel and in Isaiah (Ezekiel 1:1; Isaiah 6:1–2) or in some other prophet, we at least will support our case as best we can. We say that, just as it is believed that many have had visions in dreams, some of more divine things, others telling of future events of this life, whether clearly or in riddles, and this is plain to all who accept providence, so what is absurd in holding that what forms impressions on the ruling mind in a dream can form them on it while awake as well, for the benefit of the one in whom they are formed, or of those who will hear of them from him? And just as in a dream we have the impression that we hear and that our bodily ear is struck, and that we see with our eyes, though neither the eyes of the body nor the hearing is being struck, but the ruling mind is undergoing these things, so there is nothing absurd in such things having happened to the prophets, when it is recorded that they saw certain quite extraordinary things, or heard words of the Lord, or beheld the heavens opening. For I do not suppose that the visible heaven was opened, and its body split apart as it opened, so that Ezekiel might record such a thing.

Perhaps, then, in the case of the Saviour too, whoever listens to the Gospels with understanding should take it in the same way, even if such a view offends the simpler sort, who in their great simplicity set the universe moving, splitting the vast, unified body of the whole heaven. But one who examines the matter more deeply will say this. There is, as Scripture has named it, a divine sense, general in kind, which only the blessed man finds even now, according to what is said in Solomon too: “You will find a divine sense” (Proverbs 2:5). This sense has its kinds: a sight naturally able to see things higher than bodies, among which the cherubim or the seraphim are shown (Ezekiel 10:1; Isaiah 6:2); a hearing that receives voices whose being is not in the air; a taste that feeds on living bread, which has come down from heaven and gives life to the world (John 6:33, 51); so too a smell that smells such things as Paul means when he speaks of being “the aroma of Christ to God” (2 Corinthians 2:15); and a touch, by which John says he has handled with his hands “the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). The blessed prophets found this divine sense. They saw in a divine way and heard in a divine way, and tasted and smelled in the same way, by a sense that, if I may so name it, is not of the senses; and they touched the Word with faith, so that an outflow from him came to them to heal them. In this way they saw what they record that they saw, and heard what they say they heard, and had the like experiences as they wrote of them, eating the “roll” of a book that was given to them (Ezekiel 2:9–3:3).

So too Isaac “smelled the smell of” his son's more divine “garments,” and spoke these words as a spiritual blessing: “See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a full field, which the Lord has blessed” (Genesis 27:27). In a like way, Jesus “touched” the leper (Matthew 8:3) with a touch of the mind rather than of the senses, to cleanse him, as I think, in two ways: he freed him not only, as most people take it, from bodily leprosy by a bodily touch, but also from the other leprosy by his truly divine touch.

It was in this way, then, that “John bore witness, saying: ‘I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove from heaven, and it remained on him. And I did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize in water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, this is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.” And I have seen, and have borne witness that this is the Son of God’” (John 1:32–34). And for Jesus the heavens were opened (Matthew 3:16), and at that time no one but John is recorded to have seen the heavens opened. But the Saviour, foretelling to his disciples that this opening of the heavens would come, and that they would see it, says: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (John 1:51). And so Paul was caught up to the third heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2), having first seen it opened, since he was a disciple of Jesus. But to explain now why Paul says, “Whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know; God knows” (2 Corinthians 12:2), does not belong to the present occasion.

Further, I will add to my argument the very point Celsus assumes: that Jesus himself told of the opening of the heavens and of the Holy Spirit that came down upon him in the form of a dove at the Jordan, although Scripture does not present him as saying that he saw this. This most noble man did not see that it does not fit the one who said to his disciples about the vision on the mountain, “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man has risen from the dead” (Matthew 17:9), to have told his disciples what John saw and heard at the Jordan. One may see this also in the character of Jesus, who everywhere avoided speaking about himself and for that reason said, “Even if I speak about myself, my testimony is not true” (John 5:31). And since he avoided speaking about himself, and wished to show that he was the Christ by his deeds rather than by his words, for this reason the Jews say to him, “If you are the Christ, tell us plainly” (John 10:24).

But since it is a Jew in Celsus who says to Jesus, about the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, “Except that you say so, and bring forward one of those who were punished with you,” we must show Celsus that this too he has not fittingly attributed to the Jewish character. For the Jews do not link John with Jesus, nor John's punishment with the punishment of Jesus. In this too, then, the man who boasted that he knew everything stands convicted, for he did not know what words to give the Jewish character in addressing Jesus.

Celsus passes over the prophecies§49

49After this, I do not know how, he willingly passes over the most important point in the case for Jesus: that he was foretold by the prophets of the Jews, by Moses and those after him, and even by those before Moses. I think he does so because he cannot answer the argument, any more than the Jews can, or the sects that do not want Jesus to have been foretold. Perhaps he did not even know the prophecies about Jesus. For had he taken up what Christians say, that many prophets foretold the Saviour's coming, he would not have put into the mouth of his Jew words that would have suited a Samaritan or a Sadducee better. Nor would the Jew of his invented speech have said: "But a prophet of mine once said in Jerusalem that a Son of God will come, judge of the holy and punisher of the unrighteous."

For it was not just one prophet who foretold the things about Christ. And even if the Samaritans or the Sadducees, who accept only the books of Moses, were to say that the Christ was foretold in those books, still the prophecy was certainly not spoken in Jerusalem, which had not yet been named in the time of Moses.

If only, then, all who accuse our teaching were as ignorant as this, not only of the facts but even of the bare letter of Scripture, and accused Christianity in that state, so that their argument might lack even ordinary persuasiveness, the kind able to draw away the unsteady and those who believe "for a while" (Luke 8:13), not from faith but from little faith.

But a Jew would not admit that any prophet said that a Son of God would come. What they say is that the Christ of God will come. And indeed they often argue with us straight away about the Son of God, as though there were no such being and none had been foretold. We are not saying that a Son of God is not foretold, but that Celsus has given the Jewish character, who does not admit any such thing, words that do not fit him: "A prophet of mine once said in Jerusalem that a Son of God will come."

Prophets spoke of Christ in many ways§50

50Then, as though this alone had been foretold, that he would be judge of the holy and punisher of the unrighteous, and as though neither the place of his birth, nor the suffering he would undergo at the hands of the Jews, nor his resurrection, nor the wonderful works of power he would do had been foretold, he says: "Why should you, rather than the countless others who have lived after the prophecy, be the one about whom these things were foretold?" And, I do not know how, wishing to allow that others too might be suspected of being the ones foretold, he says that "some in a frenzy and others going about begging say that a Son of God has come from above." For we have not found it recorded that the Jews admit such things to have happened.

First, then, it must be said that many prophets foretold the things about Christ in every kind of way: some through riddles, others through allegory or in some other manner, and some even in so many words. Later on, in the speech he gives his Jew addressed to those of his own people who believe, he says that the prophecies referred to the events of Jesus' life can be fitted to other events as well. Since he says this cleverly and with ill intent, we shall set out a few prophecies out of many. Let anyone who wishes say something compelling against them to overthrow them, something able to move those who believe with understanding away from the faith.

Bethlehem foretold and remembered§51

51About the place of his birth it has been said that "the ruler will come forth" (Matthew 2:6) from "Bethlehem," in this way: "And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephrathah, are small indeed to be among the thousands of Judah; out of you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, and his goings forth are from the beginning, from the days of eternity" (Micah 5:2). This prophecy would fit none of those who, as Celsus's Jew says, are in a frenzy and go about begging and say they have come from above, unless he were clearly shown to have been born in Bethlehem, or, as someone else might put it, to have come from Bethlehem to lead the people.

As for Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, if anyone wants to be persuaded from other sources as well, besides Micah's prophecy and the account recorded in the Gospels by Jesus' disciples, let him consider this. In keeping with the Gospel account of his birth, the cave in Bethlehem where he was born is shown, and the manger in the cave where he was wrapped in swaddling cloths (Luke 2:7). And what is shown there is widely known in those parts, even among those who are strangers to the faith: that in this cave was born the Jesus whom Christians worship and admire.

For my part, I think that before Christ's coming the chief priests and scribes of the people taught that the Christ would be born in Bethlehem, because the prophecy was clear and plain. And this teaching reached the mass of the Jews as well. That is why Herod is recorded to have heard from the chief priests and scribes of the people, when he inquired of them, that the Christ would be born "in Bethlehem of Judea" (Matthew 2:4-5), the town David came from. Further, in the Gospel according to John it is said that Jews stated that the Christ would be born in Bethlehem, the town David came from (John 7:42).

But after Christ's coming, those who set to work to destroy the belief that his birth had been foretold long before removed this teaching from the people. In this they did something much like those who won over the soldiers of the guard at the tomb, who had seen him risen from the dead and were reporting it, and who said to those who had seen it: "Say that his disciples stole him by night while we were asleep. And if this is heard before the governor, we will do the persuading and keep you free of trouble" (Matthew 28:13-14).

Why habit blinds people to plain proof§52

52For contentiousness and prejudice are a hard thing. They can make people set themselves even against what is evident, so that they will not give up doctrines which have dyed them indelibly, to which they have somehow grown used, and which have coloured their souls. A man would more easily give up his habits in other matters, even if he finds it hard to tear himself from them, than those that concern doctrines. Yet even those other habits are not easily set aside by those used to them. So people who have grown attached to houses, or cities or villages, or familiar companions, are not readily willing to leave them.

This, then, was the reason why many of the Jews at that time also set themselves against the plain evidence of the prophecies and of the wonders that Jesus did and is recorded to have undergone. That human nature is affected in some such way will be clear to those who observe how people once taken up even with the most shameful and senseless traditions of their fathers and fellow citizens are not easily moved from them. One would not quickly persuade an Egyptian, at any rate, to despise what he has received from his fathers, so that he would no longer think this or that irrational animal a god, or no longer guard himself, even at the cost of his life, from tasting the flesh of this or that animal.

So if, in examining this argument, we have gone through the matter of Bethlehem and the prophecy about it at some length, we think we have done so of necessity. We were answering those who might say: if the prophecies about Jesus among the Jews were so plain, why ever did they not assent to his teaching when he came, and go over to the better things that Jesus showed? But let no one bring the like reproach against those of us who believe, seeing that arguments by no means contemptible are put forward for faith in Jesus by those who have learned to champion them.

The ruler from Judah and the hope of the nations§53

53And if a second prophecy about Jesus is needed, one that seems to us plain, we shall set out the one written by Moses very many years before Jesus' coming. Moses says that Jacob, as he was departing this life, prophesied to each of his sons (Genesis 49:1), and said to Judah, among other things: "A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until the things laid up for him come" (Genesis 49:10).

Anyone who reads this prophecy, which in truth is much older than Moses, though one of the unbelievers might suppose it was spoken by Moses, would wonder how Moses could have foretold that the kings of the Jews, though there were twelve tribes among them, would be born of the tribe of Judah and would rule the people. That is why the whole people are called Jews, taking their name from the ruling tribe.

And one who reads the prophecy fair-mindedly would wonder at it a second time: how, having said that the rulers and leaders of the people would come from the tribe of Judah, he also fixed the end of their rule, saying that a ruler would not fail "from Judah," nor a leader "from his thighs, until the things laid up for him come, and he is the expectation of the nations" (Genesis 49:10). For he has come to whom "the things laid up" belong, the Christ of God, "the ruler" of God's promises. And he alone, beyond all who were before him, and I would boldly say beyond all who came after him too, has clearly become "the expectation of the nations." For people from all the nations have believed in God through him, and, as Isaiah said, the nations have hoped in his name; for he said: "In his name the nations will hope" (Isaiah 42:4).

He also said "Come out" "to those in bonds," since "each one is bound fast by the cords of his own sins" (Proverbs 5:22), and he told those in ignorance to come into the light. These things too were foretold, in this way: "And I have given you as a covenant of the nations, to establish the earth and to inherit a desolate inheritance, saying to those in bonds, Come out, and to those in darkness, Show yourselves" (Isaiah 49:8-9). And at his coming one can see fulfilled, in the simpler believers all over the world, the words: "And in all the ways they shall feed, and in all the paths shall be their pasture" (Isaiah 49:9).

The Servant’s suffering foretold by Isaiah§54

54Celsus, who professes to know everything about our teaching, reproaches the Saviour over his suffering, as though he had not been helped by the Father or had not been able to help himself. We must therefore show that his suffering was foretold together with its cause: that it was to the profit of mankind that he should die for them and suffer the bruise that came with his condemnation (Isaiah 53:5). It had also been foretold that those from the nations, among whom the prophets had not arisen, "will understand" him (Isaiah 52:15), and it had been said that he would be seen with a "form without honour" in the sight of men (Isaiah 53:3). The text runs thus:

"Behold, my servant shall understand, and he shall be exalted and glorified and lifted up exceedingly. Just as many shall be astonished at you, so shall your form be held in no esteem by men, and your glory by men. So shall many nations marvel at him, and kings shall shut their mouths; for those to whom nothing was announced about him shall see, and those who have not heard shall understand" (Isaiah 52:13-15).

"Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced him as a little child before him, as a root in a thirsty land. He has no form nor glory; and we saw him, and he had no form nor beauty. But his form was without honour and fell short of all men's: a man under the stroke, and knowing how to bear weakness, for his face is turned away. He was dishonoured and held of no account. He bears our sins and suffers pain for us, and we reckoned him to be in toil and under the stroke and in affliction. But he was wounded because of our sins and made weak because of our lawless deeds; the chastisement that brings us peace was upon him; by his bruise we were healed. All of us went astray like sheep; each man went astray in his own way; and the Lord gave him up for our sins. And he, because he has been afflicted, does not open his mouth. As a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb is silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation his judgement was taken away. Who shall tell of his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth; because of the lawless deeds of my people he was led to death" (Isaiah 53:1-8).

The suffering servant is not the whole people§55

55I remember once using these prophecies in a debate with those whom the Jews call wise. To this the Jew replied that they had been prophesied of the whole people as of a single person, a people that had been in the dispersion and had been struck, so that many might become proselytes through the Jews having been scattered among the other nations. In this way he explained “Your appearance will be without honour among men” (Isaiah 52:14), and “Those who were not told of him will see” (Isaiah 52:15), and “a man under a blow” (Isaiah 53:3).

Many arguments were put forward in that debate to prove that they have no good reason for referring to the whole people these prophecies, which concern one particular person. I asked whose character it could be that says, “This man bears our sins and suffers pain for us” (Isaiah 53:4), and, “But he was wounded because of our sins, and has been made weak because of our lawless deeds” (Isaiah 53:5); and whose character it was that declares, “By his bruise we were healed” (Isaiah 53:5). For plainly it is those who had been in sins and were healed through the Saviour’s suffering, whether they came from that people or from the nations, who say these words in the prophet, who foresaw this and, by the Holy Spirit, put these words in their mouths.

But we seemed to press them hardest with the passage that says, “Because of the lawless deeds of my people he was led to death” (Isaiah 53:8). For if, on their view, it is the people who are the subject of the prophecy, how is this man said to have been led “to death” “because of the lawless deeds of the people” of God, unless he is someone other than the people of God? And who is he, if not Jesus Christ, by whose “bruise” we who believe in him “were healed” (Isaiah 53:5; 1 Peter 2:24), he who stripped off “the rulers and authorities” that were in us, and made a show of them “openly” on the tree (Colossians 2:15)?

To make clear each point in the prophecy, and to leave none of it unexamined, belongs to another occasion. Even this much has been said at some length, necessarily, I think, because of the words of Celsus’s Jew quoted above.

Two comings of Christ and the God who is anointed§56

56Celsus and his Jew, and all who have not believed in Jesus, have failed to notice that the prophecies speak of two comings of Christ. The first is more subject to human sufferings and more lowly, so that Christ, being with human beings, might teach the way that leads to God, and might leave no one in this human life any room to plead that he had not known of the judgment to come. The other is glorious and wholly divine, with nothing of human suffering woven into its divinity.

To set out the prophecies would take a long time. For the present it is enough to take the passage from the forty-fourth Psalm (Psalm 45 in English Bibles), which, among other things, bears the title “A song for the beloved” (Psalm 45, title). There he is also plainly proclaimed God, in these words: “Grace has been poured out on your lips; therefore God has blessed you for ever. Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your loveliness and your beauty; and bend your bow, and prosper, and reign, for the sake of truth and meekness and righteousness, and your right hand will guide you wonderfully. Your arrows are sharpened, O mighty one; peoples will fall beneath you; in the heart of the king’s enemies” (Psalm 45:2–5).

Pay careful attention to what comes next, where he is called God. “Your throne,” it says, “O God, is for ever and ever; a rod of uprightness is the rod of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions” (Psalm 45:6–7). Notice that the prophet, addressing God, whose “throne” is “for ever and ever,” and the rod of whose kingdom is “a rod of uprightness,” says that this God has been anointed by God, who was his God; and that he was anointed because he, above his “companions,” loved “righteousness” and hated “lawlessness” (Psalm 45:7).

And I remember pressing the Jew who was thought wise very hard with this passage. At a loss before it, he said what fitted his own Judaism: he said that “Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a rod of uprightness is the rod of your kingdom” (Psalm 45:6) was spoken to the God of the universe, and that “You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you” (Psalm 45:7), and what follows, was spoken to the Christ.

True sonship and those who falsely claimed it§57

57Again, his Jew says to the Saviour: “If you say this, that every human being who has come into being by divine providence is a son of God, how would you differ from anyone else?” To him we shall reply that everyone who is no longer schooled by fear, but chooses the good for its own sake, is, as Paul named him, a son of God. But the Saviour differs greatly, and by a long way, from everyone who is called a son of God because of virtue, for he is, as it were, a kind of spring and source of all such. Paul’s words run like this: “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, in which we cry, ‘Abba, Father’” (Romans 8:15).

“Some, too,” as Celsus’s Jew says, “countless people, will refute Jesus, claiming that what was prophesied of him was said of themselves.” We do not know, then, whether Celsus knew of any who came into the world and wished to do something like what Jesus did, and to proclaim themselves sons of God or a power of God. But since we examine these matters with a love of truth, we shall say that a certain Theudas arose among the Jews before the birth of Jesus, “saying that he was somebody great”; and when he died, those he had deceived were scattered (Acts 5:36). After him, “in the days of the census” (Acts 5:37), about the time when Jesus seems to have been born (Luke 2:1–2), a certain Judas the Galilean led many of the Jewish people to revolt with him, as a wise man and one bringing in something new. When he too paid the penalty, his teaching was overthrown, and it survived only among a very small number indeed.

After the time of Jesus, too, Dositheus the Samaritan wished to persuade the Samaritans that he was the Christ prophesied by Moses, and he seemed to have won some over by his teaching. But it is not unreasonable to quote what was said, very wisely, by Gamaliel, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, to show how those men were strangers to the promise, being neither sons of God nor powers of his, while Christ Jesus was truly the Son of God. Gamaliel said there: “If this plan and this word are from men, they will be overthrown,” as the movements of those men were overthrown when they died; “but if it is from God, you will not be able to overthrow this man’s teaching, or you may even be found fighting against God” (Acts 5:38–39).

Simon the Samaritan magician also wished to steal some away by his magic (Acts 8:9–11). At that time he did deceive them; but now, I think, it is not possible to find Simonians in the whole world numbering thirty in all, and perhaps I have put the number higher than it is. There are very few of them around Palestine, and in the rest of the world, through which he wished to spread his glory, his name is nowhere found. For wherever it is known, it is known from the Acts of the Apostles; it is Christians who say these things about him, and the plain facts have borne witness that Simon was nothing divine.

Magi, not Chaldaeans, and the new star§58

58After this, Celsus’s Jew, in place of the magi in the Gospel (Matthew 2:1–2), says that Jesus has told of Chaldaeans: that they were stirred at his birth and came to worship him as God while he was still an infant, and made this known to Herod the tetrarch; and that Herod sent men to kill those born at that same time, thinking that he would destroy Jesus along with them, for fear that, if he lived long enough, he might become king (Matthew 2:16).

Notice here, then, the misunderstanding of a man who does not distinguish magi from Chaldaeans, and has not observed that their professions are different, and so has told lies about the Gospel Scripture. I do not know how it is that he has also kept silent about what moved the magi, and has not said that it was a “star” seen by them “in the East,” as it is written (Matthew 2:2). Let us see, then, what must be said in answer to this too.

We think that the “star” seen “in the East” (Matthew 2:2) was new, and not like any of the familiar ones, neither those in the sphere of the fixed stars nor those in the lower spheres; but that it was of the same kind as the comets that appear from time to time, or the beams, or the bearded stars, or the jars, or whatever names the Greeks like to give to their different kinds. We establish this point in the following way.

Comets and the star Balaam foretold§59

59It has been observed that such stars rise at the time of great events and of the greatest changes in things on earth, signifying either changes of kingdoms, or wars, or whatever else can befall human beings that is able to shake things on earth. We have read in the treatise On Comets by Chaeremon the Stoic how comets have sometimes risen even when good things were about to happen, and he sets out the account of these cases.

If, then, the so-called comet, or some star like it, rises at the coming of new kingdoms or at other great events on earth, is it any wonder that a star should have risen at the birth of one who was going to bring something new into the human race, and to bring in a teaching not only for Jews but also for Greeks, and for many of the barbarian nations as well?

But I would say that no prophecy is on record about comets, to the effect that such and such a comet will rise in such a reign or at such times. About the star that rose at the birth of Jesus, however, Balaam prophesied, as Moses recorded, saying: “A star will rise out of Jacob, and a man will rise up out of Israel” (Numbers 24:17). And if we must also examine what is recorded about the magi at the birth of Jesus, and about the appearing of the star (Matthew 2:1–12), we would say something like this, part of it to Greeks and part to Jews.

The magi, the demons, and the star§60

60To the Greeks, then, we would say this. Magi, who have dealings with demons and summon them for the purposes they have learned and desire, achieve such things only so long as nothing more divine and more powerful than the demons and the incantation that summons them appears or is spoken. But if some more divine manifestation takes place, the workings of the demons are overthrown, since they cannot face the light of the Godhead. It is likely, then, that at the birth of Jesus too, since “a multitude of the heavenly host,” as Luke recorded and as I believe, praised God and said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill among men” (Luke 2:13–14), the demons for this reason lost their strength and grew weak. Their sorcery was exposed and their working undone; they were overthrown not only by the angels who visited the region around the earth because of the birth of Jesus, but also by the soul of Jesus and the Godhead in him.

So the magi, wishing to do what they were used to doing, which they had formerly done by certain incantations and tricks, looked for the cause, judging that it must be a great one; and seeing a sign from God in the sky, they wanted to see what it signified. It seems to me, then, that they had the prophecies of Balaam, which Moses also recorded, since Balaam himself had been skilled in such arts. There they found what is said about the star, and the words, “I will show him, but not now; I call him blessed, but he will not draw near” (Numbers 24:17). From this they guessed that the man foretold together with the star had come into the world; and having concluded beforehand that he was stronger than all the demons and than the beings that usually appeared to them and worked for them, they wished “to worship” him (Matthew 2:2).

They came, then, to Judea, convinced that some “king” had been born (Matthew 2:2), or knowing where he would be born, but not understanding over what kind of kingdom he would reign. They brought “gifts,” and these they “offered” to one who was, if I may call him so, a kind of compound of God and mortal man: gold as a symbol for a king, myrrh as for one who would die, and frankincense as for God (Matthew 2:11). And they “offered” them after they had learned the place of his birth (Matthew 2:9–11). But since the Saviour of the human race, who exists above the angels who help human beings, was God, an angel repaid the magi for their reverence in worshipping Jesus: he warned them not to go to Herod but to return to their own country by another way (Matthew 2:12).

Herod’s plot and the kingdom not of this world§61

61If Herod plotted against the newborn child, it is no wonder, even if Celsus's Jew does not believe that this really happened. For wickedness is a blind thing, and wants to defeat what is destined, as though it were stronger. This is what happened to Herod too. He believed that a king of the Jews had been born, and yet he held a conviction at odds with that belief, not seeing that either the child was certainly a king and would reign, or he would not reign and to kill him would be pointless. So he wanted to kill him, his judgements set at war with one another by his wickedness, moved by the blind and wicked devil, who from the beginning plotted against the Saviour, imagining him to be someone great and to be destined for greatness.

An “angel,” then, preserving the order of events, warned Joseph, even if Celsus does not believe it, to withdraw with the child and his mother “into Egypt” (Matthew 2:13); and Herod “killed” all the children “in Bethlehem” and “in its region” (Matthew 2:16), thinking to kill along with them the king of the Jews who had been born. For he did not see the sleepless power that guards those who are worthy to be guarded and kept safe for the salvation of human beings. Of these the first of all, greater in honour and in every kind of excellence, was Jesus. He was to be a king, not as Herod supposed, but as it befitted God to give a kingdom, for the good of those who are ruled, to one who would do his subjects no middling or indifferent good, if I may so call it, but would train them and bring them under laws that are truly God's. Jesus knew this; and while he denied that he was a king in the sense in which most people understand it, he taught what sets his own kingdom apart when he said: “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would be fighting, so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, my kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

If Celsus had seen this, he would not have said: “If it was so that you might not grow up and reign in his place, why, now that you have grown up, do you not reign? Why do you, the Son of God, go about begging so ignobly, cowering for fear and wandering wretchedly up and down?”

But it is not ignoble to steer around dangers with deliberate purpose and not rush straight into them, not out of fear of death but so that, by his useful stay in this life, he might help others, until the fitting time should come for the one who had taken on human nature to die a human death, a death that brought something of use to human beings. This is plain to anyone who has understood that Jesus died for human beings; and of this we have spoken, as well as we could, in what came before.

Unlettered apostles and the power of their preaching§62

62After this, since Celsus, not even knowing the number of the apostles, said that Jesus “attached to himself ten or eleven notorious men, tax collectors and sailors of the worst sort, and with them ran away here and there, gathering his food in a shameful and beggarly way,” come, let us deal with these points too, as far as we can. It is plain to those who read the Gospel accounts, which Celsus seems not even to have read, that Jesus chose twelve apostles (Matthew 10:1–4), of whom Matthew was a tax collector (Matthew 10:3). By those whom he loosely called sailors he perhaps means James and John, since they left the boat and “their father Zebedee” and followed Jesus (Matthew 4:21–22). For Peter and his brother Andrew, who used a casting net to get the food they needed, must be counted not among sailors but, as Scripture recorded, among fishermen (Matthew 4:18). Granted that Levi too, a tax collector, followed Jesus (Mark 2:14); yet he was not of the number of his apostles, except in some copies of the Gospel according to Mark. Of the rest we have not learned the trades by which they earned their food before they became disciples of Jesus.

To this, then, I say that those who are able to examine the story of the apostles of Jesus with good sense and fairness can see that these men taught Christianity by divine power and succeeded in winning people over to the word of God. For what was in them and won over their hearers was not a power of speech or an ordered delivery shaped by the dialectical or rhetorical arts of the Greeks. It seems to me that if Jesus had chosen men who were wise in the opinion of the multitude and able to think and speak in a way that pleases crowds, and had used them as ministers of his teaching, he would with very good reason have been suspected of having been proclaimed by a method like that of philosophers who stand at the head of some school. Then the claim that the message is divine would no longer have shone out, since the message and the preaching would have rested on the persuasiveness of a wisdom that lies in the phrasing and arrangement of words (1 Corinthians 2:4); and “faith,” like the faith that the philosophers of the world have in their doctrines, would have been “in the wisdom of men” and not “in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:5).

But as it is, the Gospel records that these fishermen and tax collectors had not learned even their first letters (Acts 4:13), and on this point Celsus has believed them, as telling the truth about their lack of learning. Who, then, seeing such men speaking boldly not only to Jews about faith in Jesus but also preaching him among the other nations, and succeeding, would not ask where their power to persuade came from? For it was not the kind that most people are used to. And who would not say that Jesus fulfilled the words “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19) by some divine power in his apostles? Paul too sets this power before us, as we have also said above, when he says: “And my word and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that our faith might not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:4–5). For, as was said in the prophets, who announced beforehand the preaching of the gospel, “The Lord gave a word to those who preach the good news with great power, the King of the powers of the beloved” (Psalm 68:11–12), so that the prophecy which says, “His word will run swiftly” (Psalm 147:15), might also be fulfilled. And indeed we see that the “sound” of the apostles of Jesus “has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world” (Psalm 19:4; Romans 10:18).

That is why those who hear the word proclaimed with power are filled with power, and they show it in their disposition, in their life, and in their struggle for the truth even to death. But some are empty, even though they profess to believe in God through Jesus: those who seem to be brought to the word of God without having divine power. Though I have already mentioned above a saying in the Gospel spoken by the Saviour, I will nonetheless use it again now, since the moment calls for it, to show both our Saviour's foreknowledge about the preaching of the gospel, made known in a most divine way, and the strength of the word, which without teachers prevails over those who believe, by a persuasion joined with divine power. Jesus says: “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:37–38).

Sinners chosen to show the healing of souls§63

63Since Celsus also called the apostles of Jesus notorious men, saying that they were “tax collectors and sailors of the worst sort,” we will say about this too that he seems to believe what is written where he wishes, so that he can bring a charge against our teaching, but to disbelieve the Gospels so that he need not accept the Godhead plainly proclaimed in those same books. Yet he ought to have recognised the writers' love of truth from their record of the less creditable things, and so to have believed them about the more divine things too.

Now it is written in the catholic epistle of Barnabas, from which Celsus perhaps took his claim that the apostles were notorious and of the worst sort, that Jesus “chose his own apostles, who were more lawless than all lawlessness” (Epistle of Barnabas 5:9). And in the Gospel according to Luke, Peter says to Jesus: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord” (Luke 5:8). Paul too, who himself afterwards became an apostle of Jesus, says in the letter to Timothy: “The saying is trustworthy, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first” (1 Timothy 1:15).

I do not know how Celsus forgot, or did not think, to say something about Paul, who after Jesus firmly founded the churches that are in Christ. For it is likely that he saw that the story of Paul would call for an answer from him: how Paul, after he had persecuted the church of God (Galatians 1:13) and fought bitterly against the believers, so far as to want to hand the disciples of Jesus over to death (Acts 22:4), later changed so greatly that “from Jerusalem as far as Illyricum” he “fully preached the gospel of Christ” (Romans 15:19), “making it his aim to preach the gospel” so as not to build “on someone else's foundation” (Romans 15:20), but to build where the gospel of God in Christ had not been preached at all.

What is out of place, then, if Jesus, wishing to show the human race how great a skill in healing souls he has, chose men who were notorious and of the worst sort, and led them on so far that they became a pattern of the purest character for those who were brought through them to the gospel of Christ?

Lives changed, in philosophy and in the Church§64

64If we are going to reproach those who have changed with the life they led before, then it is time for us to accuse Phaedo as well, even though he became a philosopher, since, as the story goes, Socrates brought him over from a brothel to the study of philosophy. We shall also reproach philosophy with the dissolute life of Polemon, who succeeded Xenocrates, though there too we ought to welcome this in philosophy: that the reasoning of those who won them over had the power to draw men who had been held fast by such great evils away from them.

Among the Greeks there was one Phaedo, and I do not know whether a second, and one Polemon, who turned from a dissolute and utterly wicked life and took up philosophy. But with Jesus it was not only the twelve at that time; it has always been many times as many, who have become a company of the self-controlled and say of their former lives: “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to all kinds of desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another; but when the kindness and love for humankind of God our Saviour appeared” (Titus 3:3–4), then “through the washing of rebirth and renewal of the Spirit, which he poured out on us richly” (Titus 3:5–6), we became what we are. For God “sent his word and healed them, and rescued them from their corruptions” (Psalm 107:20), as the one who prophesied in the Psalms taught.

To what has been said I might add this. Chrysippus, in his book on the treatment of the passions, in order to check the passions of the soul in human beings, tries to treat those held fast by the passions according to the various schools, without laying claim to know which doctrine is the true one. He says that even if pleasure is the end, the passions must be treated in this way; and even if there are three kinds of goods, those caught in the passions must, on this reasoning, be freed from them in this way none the less.

But the accusers of Christianity do not see in how many people the passions are checked, and in how many the flood of wickedness, and how many people’s savage characters are tamed, by means of the word. They, who boast of their public spirit, ought to have given it thanks for turning people away from many evils by a new method, and to have borne witness to it, if not that it is true, at least that it is of benefit to the human race.

Wise flight, and the women who provided§65

65Jesus taught his disciples not to be rash, and said to them: “If they persecute you in this city, flee to the other; and if they persecute you in the other, flee again to another” (Matthew 10:23). And as he taught them, he became for them an example of a steady life, one that takes care not to go out to meet dangers at random, or at the wrong time, or without good reason. Here again Celsus maliciously misrepresents this, and his Jew says to Jesus: “With your disciples you run away, now here, now there.”

We shall say that the story told of Aristotle is just like what he slanders in Jesus and his disciples. For Aristotle saw that a court was about to be assembled against him as an impious man, because of certain doctrines of his philosophy which the Athenians thought impious. He withdrew from Athens and held his school at Chalcis, and he explained himself to his pupils, saying: “Let us leave Athens, so that we may not give the Athenians an occasion to bring on themselves a second guilt like their guilt over Socrates, and so that they may not commit impiety against philosophy a second time.”

He also says that Jesus “went about with his disciples collecting their food in a disgraceful and beggarly way.” Let him tell us where he found the disgrace and the beggarliness in this collecting. For in the Gospels “certain women” who “had been healed of” their “infirmities,” among whom was “Susanna,” provided the disciples with food “out of their own means” (Luke 8:2–3). Which of those who practised philosophy and devoted themselves to the good of their pupils did not receive from them what they needed? Or did the philosophers do this fittingly and well, while the disciples of Jesus, when they do the same, are accused by Celsus of “collecting their food in a disgraceful and beggarly way”?

Why the child was taken to Egypt§66

66After this, Celsus’s Jew goes on to say to Jesus: “Why did you also, while still an infant, have to be carried off to Egypt, so that you would not be slaughtered? For it was not likely that a god would be afraid of death. Yet an angel came from heaven ordering you and your family to flee, so that you would not be left behind and die (Matthew 2:13). Could the great God, who had already sent two angels on your account, not keep his own Son safe right there?”

In these words Celsus supposes that what is said of Jesus is not that there was something divine in a human body and soul, but that his body too was of the kind that the myths of Homer present. At any rate, mocking the blood of Jesus that was poured out on the cross, he says that it was not “ichor, such as flows in the blessed gods” (Homer, Iliad 5.340).

We, however, believe Jesus himself when he says of the divinity that was in him, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6), and whatever else is like this; and when he declares of his being in a human body, “But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth” (John 8:40). So we say that he became a composite being. And it was right that he who was taking thought for his own sojourn in this life as a man should not go out at the wrong time to meet a mortal danger. So too he had to be led by those who brought him up, who were guided by a divine angel. First the angel who gave the divine message said: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for what has been begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20); and a second time: “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and stay there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him” (Matthew 2:13).

What is recorded in these passages does not seem to me at all extraordinary. For in both places of Scripture the angel is said to have spoken these words to Joseph in a dream (Matthew 1:20; 2:13); and to be shown in a dream to do this or that happens to many other people as well, whether it is an angel or some other being that brings images before the soul. What is absurd, then, in this: that he who had once become man should also be guided in a human way so as to avoid dangers? This was not because it was impossible for things to happen otherwise, but because what was possible had to be arranged, step by step and in due order, for the safety of Jesus.

And it was certainly better that the child Jesus should slip away from Herod’s plot and go abroad with those who were bringing him up “into Egypt” “until the death” of the one plotting against him (Matthew 2:14–15), than that the providence watching over Jesus should hinder the free choice of Herod, who wanted to kill the child; or that it should put about Jesus what the poets call the “cap of Hades” (Homer, Iliad 5.845), or something like it; or that it should strike those who came to kill him, as the men in Sodom were struck (Genesis 19:11). For help given to him in a wholly extraordinary and more conspicuous way would not have served his purpose: to teach that he, a man to whom God bore witness, had something more divine within the man who was seen. That more divine element was he who is Son of God in the proper sense, God the Word (John 1:1), the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24), the one called Christ.

But now is not the time to set out what concerns the composite being, and of what elements Jesus, who became man, was made up; for this is a question that is, if I may call it so, a family matter for believers.

The sons of the gods and the work of Jesus§67

67After this, Celsus’s Jew, as though he were some Greek fond of learning and schooled in Greek literature, says: “The ancient myths that gave a divine descent to Perseus and Amphion and Aeacus and Minos (and even these we did not believe) still showed great and wonderful works of theirs, truly beyond human power, so that they would not seem unbelievable. But you, what fine or wonderful thing have you done, in deed or in word? You showed us nothing, although we challenged you in the temple to produce some clear sign that you were the Son of God.”

To this we must say: let the Greeks show us, from any of those listed, some work that was of use to human life, brilliant, reaching down to later generations, and so great that it lends credibility to the myth about them that says they were born of divine seed. But in the men he named they will show nothing that comes even close to what Jesus displayed; unless, that is, the Greeks lead us back to myths and to the stories told among them, wanting us to believe those without reason but to disbelieve these even after so much clear evidence.

We ourselves, then, say that the whole inhabited world of human beings holds the work of Jesus; in it dwell, as sojourners, the churches of God through Jesus, made up of those who have turned from countless evils. And still the name of Jesus drives madness from people’s minds, and demons, and diseases as well. And it produces a wonderful gentleness, composure of character, love for humankind, kindness and mildness in those who have not pretended for the sake of a livelihood or some human need, but have sincerely accepted the teaching about God and Christ and the judgment to come.

Jesus and the sorcerers§68

68Next, Celsus, wary of the great works that will be shown to have been done by Jesus, of which we have mentioned a few out of many, pretends to grant that everything recorded is true: the healings, or the raising from the dead, or the few loaves that fed many people and left much over (Matthew 14:17–20), or whatever other marvels he thinks the disciples invented and recorded. And he adds to them: “Come, let us believe that these things were done by you.”

And at once he puts them on a level with the works of sorcerers, as though these promised still more wonderful things, and with the feats performed by those who learned from the Egyptians, who sell their solemn lore for a few obols in the middle of the market-place, drive demons out of people, blow away diseases, call up the souls of heroes, display costly dinners, tables, cakes and dishes that do not exist, and make things move as though they were alive, though they are not truly living things but only appear so to the imagination. And he says: “Since those men do these things, shall we then have to think them sons of God? Or must we say that these are the practices of wicked and wretched men?”

You see how by these words he in effect admits that magic exists. I do not know whether he is the same man who wrote several books against magic. In any case, since it serves his present purpose, he likens what is recorded of Jesus to the works of magic. And they would be alike if Jesus, like the conjurers, had gone no further than a display. But as it is, none of the sorcerers uses what he does to call those who watch to the reform of their characters, nor trains in the fear of God those who are astonished at the spectacle, nor tries to persuade those who saw it to live as people who are to be justified by God. Sorcerers do none of these things, because they cannot, or do not even wish or want to concern themselves with the amendment of human beings, being themselves full of the most shameful and infamous sins.

But he, by the wonders he worked, called those who saw what was happening to the reform of their characters; how, then, is it not likely that he offered himself, not only to his genuine disciples but to the others as well, as an example of the best life? His purpose was that the disciples should be spurred on to teach people according to the will of God, and that the others, taught more fully how one ought to live by his word, or by his character and his wonders as well, should do everything with the aim of pleasing the God who is over all. If such was the life of Jesus, how could anyone reasonably compare him with the sorcerers in their aims, and not believe, as is proclaimed of him, that he is God who appeared in a human body for the good of our race?

Whether a body like his could be God’s§69

69After this, muddling his argument and bringing what is said by a certain sect against all who follow the divine word, as though these were charges common to Christians, he says: “A body such as yours could not belong to a god.” But to this we reply that, coming into this life from a woman, he took on a human body, one capable of human death. That is why, among other things, we say that he also became a great contender: because his human body was “tempted in all things” like all human beings, yet not, as human beings are, with sin, but wholly “without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). For it is plain to us “that he committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22; Isaiah 53:9). And him who “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21) God delivered up, as one pure, for all who have sinned (Romans 8:32).

Then Celsus says: “A body begotten as you were begotten, Jesus, would not be the body of a god.” Yet he suspected that, if Jesus had been born as it is written, his body could in some way be more divine, even in the eyes of most people, and in a certain sense a body of God. But in fact he does not believe what is recorded about his conception from the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18, 20; Luke 1:35), and he believes that he was begotten by a certain Panthera who seduced the virgin. That is why he said: “A body begotten as you were begotten would not be the body of a god.” But we have spoken about these things at greater length above.

His eating and his voice§70

70He says: “Nor does the body of a god eat such food,” on the ground that he can show from the Gospel writings that Jesus ate, and what kind of food he ate. Well, let it be so: let him say that Jesus ate the Passover with his disciples, not only saying, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you” (Luke 22:15), but also eating it; and let him say that Jesus also became thirsty and drank at Jacob's well (John 4:6–7). What has this to do with what we say about his body? And he is plainly shown to have eaten fish after the resurrection (Luke 24:42–43). For according to us he took on a body, as one “born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4).

“But neither,” he says, “does the body of a god use such a voice, or such a way of persuading.” These objections too are trivial and wholly contemptible. For it will be said to him that he whom the Greeks believe to be a god, the Pythian and Didymaean, uses a voice of just this kind, that of the Pythia or of the prophetess who served at Miletus; and yet the Greeks do not on that account charge the Pythian or the Didymaean, or any other Greek god of this kind enshrined in a single place, with not being a god. But it was far better than this for God to use a voice which, because it was proclaimed with power, produced in those who heard it a persuasion beyond words.

Abuse is not argument§71

71Then, abusing Jesus, this man, who for his impiety and his depraved doctrines is, if I may say so, hateful to God, says: “These were the doings of a depraved sorcerer, hateful to God.” And yet, if names and things are examined strictly, it will be impossible for a human being to be hateful to God, since God loves all things that exist and abhors none of the things he has made; for he did not make anything that he hated (Wisdom of Solomon 11:24). And if some prophetic expressions say something of this kind, they will be explained by this general principle: that Scripture uses expressions about God as about one who has human feelings.

But what need is there to say anything in defence against a man who thinks that, in what he professes to be persuasive arguments, he must use slander and abuse, as though Jesus were a depraved man and a sorcerer? For this is the work not of one who demonstrates, but of one who has given way to an unschooled and unphilosophical passion, when he ought to set out the matter, examine it fairly, and say in reply to it, as far as he can, whatever occurs to him.

But since Celsus's Jew has ended his speech to Jesus here, we too shall close our first book in reply to him at about this point. And if God grants the truth that destroys false arguments, according to the prayer that says, “In your truth destroy them” (Psalm 54:5), we shall begin in what follows on the second speech that Celsus puts into a character's mouth, in which he has made his Jew say what comes next to those who have been persuaded by Jesus.