Against Celsus 1.65

Since Jesus, teaching his disciples not to be rash, said to them, "If they persecute you in this city, flee to the other; and if they persecute you in the other, flee again to another," and, as he taught, became to them an example of a steady life, managed so as not to rush into dangers at random, out of season, and without reason, Celsus maliciously slanders this too, and his Jew says to Jesus: "You run away here and there with your disciples." We will say that the story told about Aristotle is like the slander made against Jesus and the disciples. For he, seeing that a court was about to be assembled against him as an impious man, because of certain doctrines of his philosophy which the Athenians thought impious, withdrew from Athens and held his school at Chalcis, defending himself to his pupils and saying: "Let us leave Athens, so as not to give the Athenians an occasion to incur a second guilt like that against Socrates, and so that they may not commit impiety against philosophy a second time." He also says that Jesus went about with his disciples gathering food in a shameful and beggarly way. Let him tell us where he got the shamefulness and beggarliness of the gathering. For in the Gospels "certain women," "healed of" their "infirmities," among whom was "Susanna," provided the disciples with food "from their own means." Which of those who philosophize and devote themselves to the benefit of their pupils did not receive from them what was needed? Or did they do this fittingly and well, while when Jesus' disciples do it they are accused by Celsus of gathering their food in a shameful and beggarly way?