Celsus’s heap of misheard phrases

After setting out what was mentioned above and things like it (the things we ourselves have added), Celsus says this: “And they go on adding one thing after another: words of prophets, and circles upon circles, and emanations of an earthly church and of circumcision, and the flowing power of a certain virgin, Prunicus, and a living soul, and a heaven slain that it may live, and an earth slain with a sword, and many slain that they may live, and death coming to an end in the world when the sin of the world dies, and again a narrow way down, and gates that open of their own accord. And there, everywhere, is the tree of life, and a resurrection of the flesh from a tree, because, I suppose, their teacher was nailed to a cross and was a carpenter by trade. So if he had happened to be thrown down a cliff, or pushed into a pit, or strangled with a noose, or if he had been a shoemaker or a stonecutter or a smith, there would be above the heavens a cliff of life, or a pit of resurrection, or a rope of immortality, or a blessed stone, or iron of love, or holy leather. Or what old woman, crooning a tale to lull a child to sleep, would not be ashamed to whisper such things?”

In this Celsus seems to me to be jumbling together things he has misheard. For it is likely that whenever he heard some scrap of a phrase from any heresy at all, he did not make it clear even according to that heresy’s own meaning, but piled up bits of words and showed off before people who know nothing either of our teachings or of those in the heresies, as though he really knew everything that belongs to the Christians. The passage before us makes this plain too.