and that this man, on account of poverty, having hired himself out in Egypt and there having made trial of certain powers on which the Egyptians pride themselves, returned, greatly puffed up over these powers, and on account of them proclaimed himself God.
But all these things, to one who is able to leave nothing of the things said by the unbelievers untested, but examines the origin of the matters, seem to me to conspire to show that Jesus became divine and worthy of the prediction concerning him, that he is the Son of God.
It contributes toward someone of them becoming distinguished and renowned, and his name famous, when the parents happen to be of high station and advancement, and there is wealth of those who reared him and were able to spend on the education of the son, and a fatherland that is some great and notable one.
But when a man, having all the things contrary to these, is able to rise above the things that impede his being known, and to stir those who hear about him, and to become manifest and plain to the whole inhabited world, which says contrary things about him - how is one not to admire such a nature as, from the outset, great-natured and undertaking great matters and possessing a boldness not to be despised? And if one were to examine still further the things concerning such a man, how would one not inquire in what manner one reared in meanness and poverty, and educated in no general culture, nor having learned discourses and doctrines by which he might at least have become persuasive in associating with crowds and playing the demagogue and drawing more hearers, gives himself to the teaching of new doctrines, introducing to the race of men a word that both abolishes the customs of the Jews - while reverencing their prophets - and pulls down the laws of the Greeks, especially concerning the Divine? And how could such a man, so reared, and having learned nothing venerable from men - as even those who speak ill of him confess - say such things concerning the judgement of God and the punishments of wickedness and the honours for what is good, not in a contemptible manner, so as to draw not only rustics and laymen by what was said, but also not a few of the more intelligent and able to see beneath the wrapping of the things reckoned baser, which contains within, so to speak, something more secret? Now the Seriphian in Plato, reproaching Themistocles, who had become famous for his generalship, that he had received his renown not from his own character but from having had the good fortune of a fatherland the most distinguished in all Greece, heard from the fair-minded Themistocles, who saw that the fatherland too had contributed to his renown: 'I would not, had I been a Seriphian, have become so famous; nor would you, an Athenian, having had the good fortune to be born one, have become Themistocles.'
But our Jesus, even though reproached as having come from a village - and that not a Greek one, nor of any nation held in advancement among the many - and slandered as being the son of a poor woman who worked with her hands, and as having, on account of poverty, left his fatherland and hired himself out in Egypt, and, so to speak, with respect to the example taken, being not only a Seriphian and from a most small and insignificant island, but, as one might say, the most ignoble of the Seriphians - he has been able to shake the whole inhabited world of men, not only beyond Themistocles the Athenian, but also beyond Pythagoras and Plato and certain others among the wise or kings or generals of whatever part of the inhabited world.
Who, then, not investigating the nature of things carelessly, would not be amazed at him, having conquered and been able to rise above in glory all the things productive of inglory, and all who were ever glorious? And yet those glorious among men can rarely take up glory in several things at once.
For one was admired for wisdom, another for generalship, and certain of the barbarians for marvellous powers from incantations, and others for other things, but not for many at once, and so became glorious;
For he persuaded some to revolt with him from the laws, neither as a tyrant, nor as a robber arming his followers against men, nor as a rich man supplying those who came to him, nor as any of those confessedly blameworthy, but as a teacher of the doctrine concerning the God of all and of the worship of him and of every ethical theme able to make him who lives according to it akin to the God who is over all.
...of the gifted one; and the death that seems dishonourable, by crucifixion, was sufficient both to make vanish the glory that had previously gone before and preoccupied men, and to make those who, as those who do not assent to his teaching suppose, had been deceived beforehand, withdraw from the deception and condemn the one who had deceived them.
And besides these things, one might marvel whence it came to his disciples - as those who speak ill of Jesus say - who had not seen him risen from the dead, nor been persuaded that he was something more divine, that, besides not being afraid to suffer the same things as their teacher and to go to meet danger and to leave their fatherlands, in order to teach, according to the will of Jesus, the word delivered to them by him.
For I think that the one who fair-mindedly examines the matters would not say that these men gave themselves to a life of hardship for the sake of Jesus' teaching apart from some great persuasion, which he implanted in them by teaching them not only to be disposed according to his lessons, but also to dispose others - and to dispose them when ruin, as regards human life, was manifestly in store for the one who dared everywhere and toward all to innovate, and to keep no man as friend to himself who abided by the former doctrines and customs.
For did not the disciples of Jesus see, when they dared not only to set before the Jews, from the prophetic words, that this was the one prophesied, but also to set before the rest of the nations that the one crucified yesterday and the day before willingly accepted this death on behalf of the race of men, analogous to those who died on behalf of their fatherlands to quench pestilential states that prevailed, or barrenness, or difficulties of navigation? For it is likely that there is in the nature of things, according to certain secret and hard-to-grasp principles for the many, such a nature that one just man, dying willingly on behalf of the common good, works the averting of base demons that bring about pestilences or barrenness or difficulties of navigation or some such thing.
Let those, then, who wish to disbelieve that Jesus died on behalf of men by the manner of the cross, say whether they will also not accept the many Greek and barbarian histories concerning certain men who died on behalf of the common good, for the demolition of the evils that had preoccupied cities and nations;
or whether those things did indeed happen, but the one reckoned a man has nothing plausible toward dying for the demolition of a great demon, the ruler of demons, who has subjected to himself all the souls of men that have come upon the earth? And the disciples of Jesus, seeing these things and many more than these, which it is likely they learned in secret from Jesus, and moreover being filled with a certain power - since there gave them might and courage not some poetic virgin, but the truly true prudence and wisdom of God, that they might become manifest with all, not only to the Argives, but to all Greeks together with the barbarians, and might 'win noble glory.'
But let us return to the impersonation of the Jew, in which is recorded the mother of Jesus as having been thrust out by the carpenter who had betrothed her, having been convicted of adultery and being pregnant by a certain soldier named Panthera;
and let us see whether those who fabricated the adultery of the virgin with Panthera, and the carpenter who thrust her out, did not blindly invent all these things for the demolition of the marvellous conception from the Holy Spirit;
for they were able to falsify it in another way, on account of the story being exceedingly marvellous, and not, as it were unwillingly, to assent that Jesus was not begotten from the marriages customary among men.
but their not doing this plausibly, but together with preserving that it was not from Joseph that the virgin conceived Jesus, was, to those able to hear and to refute fabrications, a manifest lie.
...that he had no marvellous birth, but the most lawless and most shameful of all births? But I will say, as toward the Greeks, and especially toward Celsus - whether he holds the view or not, but at any rate cites the things of Plato:
Does the one who sends down souls into the bodies of men thrust the one who was going to dare so great things and to teach so many and to remove many men from the flood of wickedness into the most shameful of all births, not even bringing him into the life of men through legitimate marriages? Or is it more reasonable that each soul, according to certain secret principles - and I say these things now according to Pythagoras and Plato and Empedocles, whom Celsus often named - being introduced into a body, is introduced according to its desert and according to its former character? It is likely, then, that this soul too, sojourning to be more beneficial to the life of men than that of many - that I may not seem to overstate by saying 'than that of all' - needed a body, not only differing as among human bodies, but one better than all.
For if this soul, having become worthy, according to certain secret principles, not indeed to come to be wholly in the body of an irrational creature, yet not purely in that of a rational one, puts on a monstrous body, such that the reasoning faculty cannot even be filled up in the one thus come into being - having a head disproportionate to the rest of the body and very much smaller - while another takes up such a body as to become a little more rational than that one, and yet another still more so, the nature of the body opposing, to a greater or lesser degree, the apprehension of reason;
why shall there not also be a certain soul taking up an altogether marvellous body, having something common with men, that it may be able to dwell among them, but also having something exceptional, that the soul may be able to remain untasted of wickedness? And if the conclusions of the physiognomists hold good - whether of Zopyrus or of Loxus or of Polemon or of whoever else wrote such things and professed to know something marvellous - that all bodies are appropriate to the characters of the souls, then for the soul that was going to sojourn marvellously in life and to do great things, there had to come to be a body not, as Celsus thinks, from Panthera who committed adultery and a virgin who was debauched - for from such impure unions there had rather to come to be a foolish teacher, harmful to men, of intemperance and injustice and the rest of evils, and not of self-control and righteousness and the rest of the virtues - but, as the prophets too foretold, from a virgin, giving birth according to the promise of a sign to the one named for the matter, indicating that at his birth God would be with men.
And it seems to me fitting, in reference to the impersonation of the Jew, to set forth the prophecy of Isaiah, which says that Emmanuel will be born from a virgin;
which Celsus did not set forth, either because the one who professes to know all things, Celsus, did not know it, or because, though he read it, he willingly kept silence, lest he should seem against his will to establish the argument that opposes his own purpose.
Behold, the virgin shall conceive in the womb and shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us. And that Celsus, acting maliciously, did not set forth the prophecy, becomes plain to me from the fact that, having cited many things from the Gospel according to Matthew, such as the star that arose at the birth of Jesus and others of the marvellous things, he made no mention even of the beginning of this.
But if a Jew, splitting hairs, should say that 'Behold, the virgin' is not written, but instead of it 'Behold, the young woman', we shall say to him that the word almah - which the Seventy rendered as 'the virgin', but others as 'the young woman' - occurs, as they say, also in Deuteronomy of a virgin, in the following passage:
...a man lie with her in the city, you shall bring out both of them to the gate of their city, and they shall be stoned with stones, and they shall die;
the young woman in a figurative sense, because she did not cry out in the city, and the man in a figurative sense, because he humiliated the wife of his neighbor;
But if a man finds the betrothed girl in a field, and the man, forcing her, lies with her, you shall put to death only the man who lay with her, and to the young woman you shall do nothing;
to the young woman there is no sin worthy of death. But lest we seem to those who do not understand to be drawing support from a Hebrew expression—as to whether one should agree with her or not—concerning the prophet having said that this one would be born of a virgin, of whom at his birth it was said 'God with us,' come, let us draw support for what is said from the very wording itself.
Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God, in the depth or in the height; and next the sign that is given is, 'Behold, the virgin shall conceive in her womb and bear a son.' What kind of sign, then, is it for a young woman who is not a virgin to give birth? And to whom is it more fitting to bear Emmanuel, that is, 'God with us'—to a woman who has had intercourse and conceived through womanly passion, or to one still pure and chaste and a virgin? For to such a one it is fitting to bear an offspring, of whom at his birth it is said, 'God with us.'
In the times of Achaz, who was born of whom at his birth 'Emmanuel,' which is 'God with us,' was said? For if no one can be found, it is plain that what was spoken to Achaz was spoken to the house of David, because the Savior is recorded to have come into being from the seed of David according to the flesh;
but also this sign is said to be 'in the depth or in the height,' since the one who descended is himself also the one who ascended above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. These things I say as addressing the Jew who agrees with the prophecy.
Let Celsus too, or one of those with him, say with what mind the prophet speaks concerning things to come, either these or others, as many as are recorded in the prophecies;
but if not with foreknowledge of the future, let him set forth the mind of one who dares to speak about things to come and is admired among the Jews for prophecy.
But since we have once come to the discourse concerning the prophets, the things that will be said will not only be not useless to the Jews who believe that they spoke by a divine Spirit, but also to those of the Greeks who are fair-minded.
To these we shall say that it is necessary to admit that the Jews too had prophets, if indeed they were to be held together under the legislation given to them and to believe in the Creator, as they had received, and—so far as concerns the Law—to have no occasions for defecting to the polytheism of the nations.
'But to you the Lord your God has not given it so.' And there is added to this: 'The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers.' If, then, while the nations were using divinations, whether through omens or through auguries or through birds or through ventriloquists or through those who profess the art of sacrificial divination or even through the Chaldeans who cast nativities—all of which were forbidden to the Jews—the Jews had no consolation of knowledge of things to come, then, being led by the very human craving for knowledge of things that will be, they would have despised their own things as having nothing divine in themselves, and would not have admitted any prophet after Moses, nor recorded their words, but would have deserted to the divinations and oracles of the nations, or would have attempted to establish some such thing also among themselves.
the prophets among them foretold things, for the consolation of those who longed for such matters, so that Samuel even prophesied concerning lost donkeys, and the one recorded in the Third Book of Kingdoms concerning the sickness of a royal child.
And how would those who upheld the things of the Law of the Jews have rebuked the one who wished to obtain divination from the idols? Just as Elijah is found rebuking Ochozias and saying:
'Is it because there is no God in Israel that you go to inquire of Baal the fly, the god of Accaron?' It seems to me, then, that it has been moderately demonstrated, not only that our Savior would be born of a virgin, but also that there were prophets among the Jews, foretelling not only the general things concerning the future—such as the things concerning Christ, and the things concerning worldly kingdoms, and the things that would befall Israel, and the things concerning the nations that would believe in the Savior, and many other things that were spoken concerning him—but also particular things, such as concerning the donkeys of Kis that were lost, how they would be found, and concerning the sickness with which the son of the king of Israel was sick, or whatever else of such a kind is recorded.
Further, we must say to the Greeks, who disbelieve the birth of Jesus from a virgin, that the Creator, in the generation of various animals, showed that it was possible for him, when he willed, to do what he did in the case of one animal, also in the case of others and in the case of human beings themselves.
What, then, is paradoxical, if God, when he willed to send a certain divine teacher to the human race, brought it about that the conception of the one to be born came to be in another manner—instead of through the seminal principle that comes from the union of males with women? And even according to the Greeks themselves, not all human beings came into being from a man and a woman.
For if the world is generated, as also pleased many of the Greeks, it is necessary that the first humans came into being not from intercourse, but from the earth, when seminal principles came together in the earth;
And there is nothing absurd in using even Greek histories in addressing the Greeks, lest we seem to be the only ones who have made use of this paradoxical history;
for it seemed good to some to record—not concerning certain ancient and heroic histories, but even concerning some who came into being yesterday and the day before—that it was possible that even Plato was born of Amphictione, Ariston having been prevented from coming together with her until she should bring forth the one sown by Apollo.
But these are truly myths, which moved people to fabricate some such thing concerning a man whom they considered to possess wisdom and power greater than the many, and to have received the beginning of the constitution of his body from better and more divine seeds, as if this were fitting for those greater than according to a human measure.
But since Celsus introduced the Jew conversing with Jesus and ridiculing what he supposes to be the pretense of his birth from a virgin, bringing in the Greek myths concerning Danae and Melanippe and Auge and Antiope, it must be said that these words befitted a buffoon and not one in earnest in his narration.
Further, having taken from the history written in the Gospel according to Matthew concerning Jesus' having gone abroad into Egypt, he did not believe the marvelous things connected with this—neither that an angel gave this oracle, nor whether Jesus, in leaving Judea and sojourning in Egypt, was hinting at something;
but he fabricated something else, in a way conceding the marvelous powers which Jesus performed—by which he persuaded the many to follow him as Christ—yet wishing to slander them as having come about from magic and not by divine power;
for he says that he, having been brought up in obscurity, having hired himself out in Egypt, and having there tried his hand at certain powers, returned from there, and on account of those powers proclaimed himself a god.
For did those, having been taught thus to perform powers, capture their hearers, or did they not even perform powers? Now to say that they in no way performed powers, but having believed with no sufficiency of arguments comparable to the dialectical wisdom of the Greeks, devoted themselves to teaching a new doctrine to whomever they sojourned among, is utterly unreasonable;
for relying on what did they teach the doctrine and innovate? But if those too accomplished powers, what plausibility has it that magicians should have exposed themselves to so many dangers for the sake of a teaching that forbade magic? It does not seem to me worth contending against an argument spoken not with earnestness but with mockery:
Was the mother of Jesus, then, beautiful, and did God consort with her as with one who was beautiful, though he is not by nature one to fall in love with a corruptible body? Or that it was not even likely that God would fall in love with her, since she was neither prosperous nor of royal rank, for not even any of her neighbors knew her;
How, then, would these things differ from those of people abusing certain persons at the crossroads and saying nothing worth taking seriously? Next after these things, taking from the Gospel according to Matthew, and perhaps also from the rest of the Gospels, the matter concerning the dove that flew down upon the Savior when he was being baptized by John, he wishes to slander what is said as a fabrication.
Having ridiculed, as he thought, the history concerning our Savior's having been born of a virgin, he does not set forth the things that follow in order, since wrath and enmity have nothing orderly, but according to what comes to mind, those who are angry and those who are hostile slander whom they hate, not being permitted by their passion to state their accusations in a considered manner and in order.
For if he had kept order, having taken the Gospel and having set out to accuse him, he would, after speaking against the first history, have proceeded next to the second, and thus to the rest;
but as it is, after the birth from a virgin, Celsus, who professes to know all things, accuses our affairs concerning the Holy Spirit that appeared at the baptism in the form of a dove; then after this he slanders the prophesying of the coming of our Savior; and after these things he runs back to what is recorded next after the birth of Jesus—the account concerning the star and concerning the Magi who came from the East to worship the child.
so that even through this he may be refuted, by those who know how to maintain and seek out order, for having, with much audacity and arrogance, entitled his book 'A True Discourse'—which none of the eminent philosophers did.
This man, then, who is wiser even than these and than the rest of the Greeks, consistently with claiming to know all things, entitled his book 'A True Discourse.'
But lest we seem willingly, on account of being at a loss for an answer, to pass over his main points, we have decided to refute each of the points proposed by him as far as we are able, taking thought not for the connection and sequence in the nature of things, but for the order of the things recorded in his book.
"What trustworthy witness saw this apparition, or who heard a voice from heaven adopting you as a son to God? Except that you yourself assert it, and you cite as witness one of those who were punished along with you."
To establish a matter as having actually happened, and to produce a clear and apprehensible impression of it, is among the most exceedingly difficult things, and in some cases impossible.
For suppose someone were to say that the Trojan War never happened, chiefly because of the impossible story woven into it—that there was a certain Achilles, son of a sea goddess and of the man Peleus, or Sarpedon son of Zeus, or Ascalaphus and Ialmenus sons of Ares, or Aeneas son of Aphrodite—
how could we establish such a thing, being especially pressed by the fiction that has somehow been interwoven with the opinion, prevailing among all, that the war between Greeks and Trojans at Ilium truly took place? Or suppose someone were to disbelieve concerning Oedipus and Jocasta and their offspring Eteocles and Polynices, born of them both, because there is woven into the story the Sphinx, a creature half-maiden;
how could we prove such a thing? So too with the stories about the Epigoni, even if no such element is interwoven with the account, or about the return of the Heraclidae, or about countless other matters.
But the person who reads the histories fair-mindedly, and wishes to keep himself from being deceived even in those accounts, will judge to which he should assent and which he should interpret figuratively—searching out the intention of those who fashioned such tales—and which he should disbelieve as having been recorded out of favor toward certain people.
We have said this by way of anticipation concerning the whole account about Jesus that is contained in the Gospels, not calling the more discerning to a bare and irrational faith, but wishing to show that those who will read need fair-mindedness, much examination, and, so to speak, an entry into the intention of those who wrote, so that it may be discovered with what purpose each thing was written.
We shall say, then, first, that if the one who disbelieves the apparition of the form of the dove of the Holy Spirit had been recorded as being an Epicurean, or a Democritean, or a Peripatetic, what is said would have had a place consistent with the character portrayed;