Celsus’s list of oracles and portents

Let us look also at what comes next, which runs as follows: “Why need I list all that has been foretold with inspired voice, partly from the oracles by prophets and prophetesses, partly by other men and women who were possessed? All the marvels that have been heard from the inner shrines themselves? All that has been made known to inquirers from victims and sacrifices, and all from other portentous signs? To some, clear visions have appeared. All of life is full of these things. How many cities have been restored by oracles and rid themselves of plagues and famines, and how many, by neglecting or forgetting them, have been miserably destroyed? How many have been sent out to found a colony and, by carrying out what was commanded, have prospered? How many rulers, how many private persons, have fared better or worse because of this? How many, distressed at being childless, gained what they prayed for and escaped the wrath of demons? How many have been healed of bodily maiming? How many again, after committing outrage at the temples, were caught at once, some seized with madness on that very spot, others even confessing what they had done, others taking their own lives, others bound fast by incurable diseases? And before now a dreadful voice from the inner shrines themselves has struck some down.”

I do not know how Celsus brings these things forward as clearly true, while he has held that the wonders recorded among us, whether those of the Jews or those about Jesus and his disciples, are myths. Why should ours not be true, and what Celsus tells be fabricated myths? Not even the philosophical schools of the Greeks have believed his stories, such as the schools of Democritus, Epicurus and Aristotle. Yet perhaps they would have believed ours, because of their clear evidence, if they had met Moses, or one of the prophets who worked marvels, or Jesus himself.