Against Celsus 1.55

I remember once, in a discussion with some who were called wise among the Jews, using these prophecies. The Jew said that they had been prophesied as about one person, namely the whole people, which had been dispersed and smitten, so that many might become proselytes on the occasion of the Jews' being scattered among the other nations. And in this way he explained "your form will be without glory among men," and "those to whom nothing was announced about him will see," and "a man in affliction." Many things were said in that discussion to prove that these prophecies, which are about one particular person, are not reasonably referred by them to the whole people. I asked whose character it could be that says, "This man bears our sins and suffers pain for us," and, "But he was wounded for our sins and made sick for our lawless deeds," and whose character it was that says, "By his stripes we were healed." For clearly those who were in sins and were healed by the Savior's suffering, whether from that people or from the nations, say these things in the prophet, who foresaw them and, by the Holy Spirit, gave them this speaking part. But we seemed to press him hardest with the words: "From the lawless deeds of my people he was led to death." For if, according to them, the people are the ones prophesied, how is this man said to have been led "to death" "from the lawless deeds of the people" of God, unless he is someone other than the people of God? And who is this, if not Jesus Christ, by whose "stripes" we who believe in him "were healed," when he stripped off "the principalities and powers" within us and made a public example of them "openly" on the tree? To make each point in the prophecy clear, and leave none of them unexamined, belongs to another occasion. These things too have been said at some length, necessarily, I think, because of the words of Celsus's Jew set out above.