Against Celsus 1.28–1.42

Since he also uses an imaginary speaker—imitating, in a way, a boy brought on by a rhetorician—and introduces a Jew saying to Jesus some childish things, not worthy of a philosopher's grey hairs, come, let us examine these too as best we can and show that he has not even kept, in what is said, the character wholly appropriate to the Jew. After this he introduces a Jew conversing with Jesus himself and refuting him, as he thinks, on many points: first, that he invented his birth from a virgin. He also reproaches him with having come from a Jewish village and from a local woman, poor and working for her living with her hands. He says that she was even driven out by her husband, a carpenter by trade, having been convicted of adultery. Then he says that, cast out by her husband and wandering in disgrace, she secretly gave birth to Jesus; and that he, hiring himself out in Egypt because of poverty, and there trying his hand at certain powers on which the Egyptians pride themselves, returned proud of these powers, and because of them proclaimed himself God. But all this, to one who can leave nothing said by unbelievers unexamined but inquires into the origin of things, seems to me to agree with Jesus having been worthy of the prophecy that he is the Son of God.

For among human beings, what helps someone become distinguished and famous and have a celebrated name is birth, when the parents are of high rank and standing; the wealth of those who raised him and could spend on the education of their son; and a great and notable homeland. But when someone who has all the opposite of these can rise above the obstacles to his becoming known, and can stir those who hear of him, and become famous and known to the whole world, which says unlike things about him, how must we not admire such a nature at once as noble, undertaking great things, and having a boldness not to be despised? And if one examined the case of such a man further, how would he not ask how, brought up in cheapness and poverty, having received no general education, and having learned no arguments or doctrines by which he might have become persuasive in addressing crowds, leading the people, and drawing many hearers, he devotes himself to teaching new doctrines, bringing to the human race a teaching that abolishes the customs of the Jews while honoring their prophets, and overthrows the laws of the Greeks, especially about the Divine? How could such a man, so brought up, who (as even his detractors admit) learned nothing venerable from any human being, say such things, not to be despised, about the judgment of God, about punishments of wickedness and rewards of the good, so that not only rustic and uneducated people were led by what he said, but also not a few of the more intelligent and those able to see into the concealment of what is thought to be said in simple terms, which contains, so to speak, something more secret within? The man from Seriphos in Plato, reproaching Themistocles, who had become celebrated for his generalship, as having won his fame not by his own character but by the good fortune of having the most notable homeland in all Greece, heard from Themistocles—who was fair-minded and saw that his homeland had also contributed to his fame—"Neither would I have become so famous if I had been a Seriphian, nor would you have become a Themistocles if you had had the good fortune to be an Athenian." But our Jesus, reproached as coming from a village, and that not a Greek one nor belonging to any nation held in honor by the many, and slandered as the son of a poor woman working with her hands, and as having left his homeland because of poverty to hire himself out in Egypt—being, to follow the example taken, not only a Seriphian from the smallest and most obscure island, but even, so to speak, the most ignoble of Seriphians—has been able to stir the whole world of human beings, not only more than Themistocles the Athenian, but more than Pythagoras and Plato and any others of the world's wise men, kings, or generals whatever.

Who, then, examining the nature of things with more than passing attention, would not be amazed at him, who conquered and was able to rise in glory above everything that produces obscurity, and above all who were ever famous? And yet those famous among human beings have rarely been able to win fame for many things at once. One was admired and became famous for wisdom, another for generalship, some barbarians for wonderful powers from incantations, and others for other things, not many at once. But he is admired, besides other things, for wisdom, for mighty works, and for his power to lead. For he persuaded some to revolt with him from the laws, not as a tyrant, nor as a robber, anointing his followers for combat against men, nor as a rich man, supplying those who came to him, nor as any of those admittedly blameworthy, but as a teacher of the doctrine about the God of the universe, of the worship due to him, and of every moral way of life that can bring whoever lives by it into close relation with the God over all. For Themistocles, or any other famous man, nothing arose to oppose his fame. But for this man, besides what has been said—which was enough to cover in obscurity the soul even of a very gifted man—his death by crucifixion, which seems dishonorable, was enough to wipe out the fame he had already gained, and to make those who, as those who do not assent to his teaching think, had been deceived beforehand abandon the deception and condemn the deceiver.

Besides this, one might wonder how it came into the minds of his disciples—if, as those who slander Jesus say, they had not seen him risen from the dead and were not persuaded that he was something more divine—not only not to fear suffering the same things as their teacher, but to go straight into danger and to leave their homelands in order to teach, according to Jesus' will, the teaching he had handed on to them. For I think that one who examines things fairly would not say that these men gave themselves up to a life of perils for the sake of Jesus' teaching without some great persuasion that he produced in them, teaching them not only to live according to his lessons but also to bring others to do so—and to bring them to it when ruin, as far as human life is concerned, was plainly in store for one who dared to introduce novelties everywhere and to everyone, and to keep no human being as his friend who clung to his former doctrines and customs. Did Jesus' disciples not see this, when they dared to prove not only to Jews from the prophetic words that he was the one prophesied, but also to the other nations that the one crucified only the other day had willingly accepted this death for the human race, like those who died for their homelands to put an end to prevailing plagues, famines, or storms at sea? For it is likely that in the nature of things, according to certain secret reasons hard for the many to grasp, there is such a nature that one righteous man, dying willingly for the common good, effects the averting of evil demons that bring about plagues, famines, storms at sea, or the like. Let those who wish to disbelieve that Jesus died for human beings by way of the cross say whether they will not accept the many Greek and barbarian stories of people who died for the common good to remove evils that had seized cities and nations; or do they say that those things happened, while he who is thought a man has no plausibility for dying to overthrow a great demon, the ruler of demons, who had subjected all the souls of human beings that have come to earth? Seeing these things, and others more than these which they probably learned from Jesus in secret, and being filled besides with a certain power—since it was no poets' maiden that gave them strength and courage but the true understanding and wisdom of God—they hastened "that they might become conspicuous among all," not only among the Argives but among all Greeks and barbarians alike, "and win noble fame."

But let us return to the speech put in the mouth of the Jew, in which the mother of Jesus is described as having been driven out by the carpenter who was betrothed to her, having been convicted of adultery and giving birth by a certain soldier named Panthera. Let us see whether those who concocted the tale of the adultery of the virgin with Panthera, and of the carpenter driving her out, did not blindly fabricate all this to overthrow the miraculous conception by the Holy Spirit. For they could have falsified the story in another way, because it is so very miraculous, and not, as it were unwillingly, have agreed that Jesus was not born of an ordinary human marriage. It was natural that those who did not assent to the miraculous birth of Jesus should invent some falsehood; but that they did not do this plausibly, but kept the fact that the virgin did not conceive Jesus by Joseph, made the falsehood evident to those able to hear and refute fabrications. Is it reasonable that one who dared so much for the human race—so that, as far as lay in him, all Greeks and barbarians, expecting divine judgment, might turn from wickedness and do everything in a way pleasing to the maker of the universe—should not have had a miraculous birth, but the most lawless and shameful birth of all? I will speak as to Greeks, and especially to Celsus, whether or not he holds these views, since he quotes Plato: would the one who sends souls down into human bodies thrust one who was to dare so much, to teach so many, and to turn many human beings from the flood of wickedness, into the most shameful birth of all, not even bringing him into human life through a lawful marriage? Or is it more reasonable that each soul, according to certain secret reasons (I speak now according to Pythagoras, Plato, and Empedocles, whom Celsus often named), is put into a body according to its merit and its former character? It is likely, then, that this soul too, which came to dwell in human life to be of more benefit than many human beings (not to seem to beg the question by saying "all"), needed a body not only superior among human bodies but also better than all.

For if one soul, having become worthy, according to certain secret reasons, of being born not wholly in the body of an irrational creature, yet not purely in that of a rational one either, puts on a monstrous body, so that reason cannot even be brought to completion in one so born, whose head is out of proportion to the rest of the body and much too small; and another takes on such a body as to be a little more rational than that one, and another still more, the nature of the body opposing the grasp of reason more or less—why should there not also be a soul that takes on a body wholly extraordinary, having something in common with human beings so that it could live among them, but having also something exceptional, so that the soul could remain untouched by wickedness? And if the teachings of the physiognomists prevail—whether of Zopyrus, or Loxus, or Polemon, or anyone else who wrote such things and professed to know something wonderful—that all bodies are suited to the characters of their souls, then the soul that was to come to dwell in life extraordinarily and to do great things had to have a body born not, as Celsus thinks, from Panthera committing adultery and a virgin who had committed adultery (for from such impure unions there should rather have come some fool, harmful to human beings, a teacher of licentiousness, injustice, and the other vices, not of self-control, justice, and the other virtues),

but, as the prophets also foretold, from a virgin who, according to the promise of a sign, would bear one named for the reality, showing that at his birth God would be with human beings. It seems to me fitting, in answer to the speech put in the Jew's mouth, to set out the prophecy of Isaiah that says Emmanuel will be born of a virgin. Celsus, who professes to know everything, did not quote it, either because he did not know it, or because, having read it, he deliberately kept silent, so as not to seem unwillingly to establish the teaching that opposes his purpose. The text runs thus: "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, O house of David: is it a small thing for you to weary men, and how will you weary the Lord? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will conceive in the womb and will bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel," which is interpreted, "God with us." That Celsus maliciously did not quote the prophecy is clear to me from the fact that, though he cites much from the Gospel according to Matthew, such as the star that rose at the birth of Jesus and other wonders, he did not mention this at all. And if a Jew, quibbling, says that "Behold, the virgin" is not written, but instead "Behold, the young woman," we will say to him that the word "almah," which the Seventy translated "virgin" and others "young woman," occurs, as they say, also 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 humbled his neighbor's wife." And next: "But if a man finds the betrothed girl in the field, and the man forces her and lies with her, you shall kill only the man who lay with her, and to the young woman you shall do nothing; the young woman has no sin worthy of death."

But lest we seem to rest our assurance that the prophet said that the one at whose birth "God with us" was spoken would be born of a virgin on a Hebrew word, for those who cannot judge whether to accept it or not, come, let us establish the point from the text itself. The Lord is recorded to have said to Ahaz: "Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God, in the depth or in the height," and next comes the sign that is given: "Behold, the virgin will conceive in the womb and will bear a son." 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"—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 befits her to bear the offspring at whose birth "God with us" is said. And if he quibbles further, saying that it was said to Ahaz, "Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God," we will answer: Who was born in the time of Ahaz, at whose birth "Emmanuel, which is God with us" is said? If no one is to be found, clearly what was said to Ahaz was said to the house of David, because the Savior is recorded to have been born "of the seed of David according to the flesh." And this "sign" is said to be "in the depth or in the height," since "he who descended is the same one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things." I say this as to a Jew who accepts the prophecy. But let Celsus too, or one of those with him, say with what sort of mind the prophet speaks about the future, either these things or the others recorded in the prophecies: was it with a mind foreknowing the future or not? If with one foreknowing the future, the prophets had a divine spirit; if not, let him explain the mind of one who dares to speak about the future and is admired among the Jews for prophecy.

Since we have once come to the subject of the prophets, what is about to be said will be useful not only to the Jews, who believe that they spoke by a divine spirit, but also to the fair-minded among the Greeks. To them we will say that it is necessary to accept that the Jews too had prophets, if they were to be held together in the legislation given them and to believe in the Creator as they had received, and, as far as the law was concerned, to have no occasions to fall away to the polytheism of the nations. We will show the necessity thus. "The nations," as is written in the law of the Jews itself, "will listen to omens and divinations"; but to that people it is said: "But the Lord your God has not given it so to you." And to this is added: "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers." Since, then, the nations used divination, whether through "omens," or through auguries, or birds, or ventriloquists, or those who profess sacrificial divination, or Chaldeans casting horoscopes—all of which were forbidden to the Jews—if the Jews had had no consolation of knowledge of the future, they would have been led by the very human greed to know what will be, and would have despised their own traditions as having nothing divine in them. They would not have accepted any prophet after Moses, nor recorded their words, but would have deserted to the oracles and divinations of the nations, or tried to set up something of the kind among themselves. So it is not at all absurd that their prophets foretold even ordinary things to console those who longed for such things—so that Samuel prophesied even "about lost donkeys," and the prophet recorded in the Third Book of Kingdoms about the illness of a king's son. How else could those who upheld the law of the Jews rebuke one who wished to get divination from idols? As Elijah is found rebuking Ahaziah and saying: "Is it because there is no God in Israel that you go to inquire of Baal-fly, the god of Ekron?"

It seems to me, then, that it has been fairly well established not only that our Savior would be born of a virgin, but also that there were prophets among the Jews, who foretold not only general things about the future—such as those about Christ, about the kingdoms of the world, about what would happen to Israel, about the nations that would believe in the Savior, and many other things said about him—but also particular ones, such as how the lost donkeys of Kish would be found, and about the illness of the son of the king of Israel, or anything else of the kind that is recorded. Further, we must say to the Greeks who do not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus that the Creator, in the generation of various animals, has shown that it was possible for him, when he wished, to do in one animal what he does in others and in human beings themselves. Some female animals are found that have no intercourse with a male, as those who have written about animals say of vultures; and this creature preserves the succession of its kind without mating. What is extraordinary, then, if God, wishing to send a divine teacher to the human race, caused the principle of the one to be born to come about in another way, instead of the seminal principle from the union of males with women? And according to the Greeks themselves, not all human beings were born of a man and a woman. For if the world is created, as many Greeks too have held, the first human beings must have come into being not from intercourse but from the earth, seminal principles having formed in the earth; which I think more extraordinary than that Jesus was half born like other human beings. It is not out of place, in addressing Greeks, to use Greek stories too, so that we may not seem to be the only ones to use this extraordinary story. For some have seen fit to write—not about ancient and heroic stories, but about events of only yesterday—that it was possible that Plato too was born of Amphictione, Ariston having been prevented from coming together with her until she gave birth to the child sown by Apollo. But these are truly myths, which moved people to invent something of the kind about a man they thought had greater wisdom and power than the many, and had received the beginning of his bodily formation from better and more divine seed, as befitting those greater than human. But since Celsus introduced the Jew conversing with Jesus and ridiculing what he thinks the pretense of his virgin birth, bringing up the Greek myths about Danae, Melanippe, Auge, and Antiope, we must say that these words befitted a buffoon, not someone serious in what he reports.

Further, taking from the story written in the Gospel according to Matthew about Jesus' journey to Egypt, he did not believe the extraordinary things connected with it—neither that an angel directed it, nor whether anything was signified by Jesus' leaving Judea and staying in Egypt—but invented something else. In a way he admits the extraordinary mighty works that Jesus did, by which he persuaded the many to follow him as the Christ; but he wishes to slander them as done by magic and not by divine power. For he says that "he was brought up in secret, hired himself out in Egypt, and having tried his hand at certain powers, returned from there, proclaiming himself God because of those powers." But I do not know how a magician would have striven to teach a doctrine persuading people to do everything as though God judges each person for all his deeds, and so to train his own disciples, whom he was going to use as ministers of his teaching. Did they too, having been taught to do mighty works in this way, win over their hearers, or did they not do mighty works at all? To say that they did no mighty works at all, but that, having believed, they gave themselves to teaching a new doctrine to those among whom they came, with no ability in argument like the wisdom of the Greeks in dialectic, is quite unreasonable; for what did they trust in when they taught the doctrine and introduced novelties? But if they too performed mighty works, what plausibility is there in magicians having exposed themselves to such dangers for a teaching that forbids magic?

I do not think I need to contend with an argument spoken not seriously but in mockery: "Was the mother of Jesus beautiful, then, and did God have intercourse with her because she was beautiful, though he is not by nature one to love a corruptible 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 neighbors." He jests also in saying that "when she was hated by the carpenter and cast out, neither divine power nor persuasive speech saved her." "These things," he says, "have nothing to do with the kingdom of God." How, then, would these words differ from those of people who trade insults at the crossroads and say nothing worthy of serious attention?

Next after this, taking from the Gospel according to Matthew, and perhaps also from the other Gospels, the account of the dove that alighted on the Savior when he was baptized by John, he wants to slander what is said as a fiction. Having ridiculed, as he thought, the story of our Savior's birth from a virgin, he does not set out what follows in order, since anger and hatred have no order; people who are angry and hostile abuse those they hate as it comes to them, not being allowed by their passion to state their accusations thoughtfully and in order. For if he kept to order, he would have taken the Gospel, and, intending to accuse it, would have attacked the first story and then gone on to the second, and so to the rest. As it is, after the virgin birth, Celsus, who professes to know everything of ours, accuses the appearance of the Holy Spirit at the baptism in the form of a dove; then after this he slanders the prophecy of our Savior's coming; and after that he runs back to what is recorded after the birth of Jesus, the account of the star and of the magi who came from the east to "worship" the child. You too, if you watch, could find many things said confusedly by Celsus throughout his whole book, so that by this too he may be convicted, by those who know how to keep and look for order, of having entitled his book The True Word with great boldness and arrogance—something none of the eminent philosophers did. For Plato says that it is not fitting for a man of sense to insist on such things, which are rather obscure; and Chrysippus, having often set out what moved him, refers us to those we may find who will say better than he. This man, then, wiser than these and than the rest of the Greeks, in keeping with his claim to know everything, entitled his book The True Word.

But so that we may not seem deliberately to pass over his headings for lack of an answer, we have decided to refute, as best we can, each of the things he puts forward, attending not to the natural sequence and order 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 Savior, as it were bodily, in the form of a dove. It is still his Jew who says this to the one we confess to be our Lord, Jesus: "When you were bathing," he says, "with John, you say that the apparition of a bird flew down on you from the air." Then his Jew asks: "What trustworthy witness saw this apparition, or who heard a voice from heaven adopting you as son to God? Except that you say so, and bring forward one of those who were punished with you."

Before we begin our defense, we must say that to try to establish that almost any story, even if it is true, actually happened, and to produce a firm conviction about it, is among the very hardest things, and in some cases impossible. For suppose someone said that the Trojan War did not happen, chiefly because of the impossible tale woven into it that a certain Achilles was born the son of a sea goddess, Thetis, and a man, Peleus, or Sarpedon of Zeus, or Ascalaphus and Ialmenus of Ares, or Aeneas of Aphrodite. How would we establish such a thing, especially when pressed by the fiction that, I do not know how, has been woven into the opinion universally held that the war at Ilium between Greeks and Trojans really happened? And suppose someone disbelieved the story of Oedipus and Jocasta and of Eteocles and Polynices, born of them both, because the Sphinx, a sort of half-maiden, is woven into the tale; how would we prove such a thing? So too with the story of the Epigoni, even though nothing of the sort is woven into it, or of the return of the Heraclidae, or countless others. But one who reads histories fairly, and wishes to keep himself from being deceived even in them, will judge which he will accept, which he will interpret figuratively, searching out the intention of those who invented such things, and which he will disbelieve as written to gratify certain people. And we have said this in advance with regard to the whole story of Jesus reported in the Gospels, not calling the more intelligent to simple and irrational faith, but wishing to show that those who read them need fair-mindedness, much examination, and, so to speak, entry into the intention of the writers, so that it may be found with what meaning each thing was written.