Against Celsus 2.1

Having ended the first book of what we dictated against Celsus's work entitled The True Word with the speech of the Jew to Jesus, which received a sufficient treatment, we intend to compose this one in defense against the charges he brings against those from the Jewish people who have believed in Jesus. And we first note this very point: why, having once decided to use an imaginary speaker, does Celsus not have the Jew speak to believers from the nations, but to those from the Jews? The argument would have seemed most plausible to him if it had been written against us. But perhaps the one who professes to know everything did not see what was consistent in the matter of his imaginary speaker. Let us consider, then, what he says to believers from the Jews. He says that, having left their ancestral law because they were beguiled by Jesus, they were deceived quite ridiculously and deserted to another name and another life—not observing even this, that those from the Jews who believe in Jesus have not left their ancestral law. For they live according to it, and have been named after the poverty of their interpretation of the law. For among the Jews the poor man is called "Ebion," and those from the Jews who have accepted Jesus as the Christ are called Ebionites. Peter too is seen to have kept the Jewish customs according to the law of Moses for a long time, as not yet having learned from Jesus to rise from the law according to the letter to that according to the spirit, as we have learned from the Acts of the Apostles. For "on the next day" after the angel of God appeared to Cornelius, directing him to send "to Joppa" for Simon who is called Peter, "Peter went up to the housetop to pray about the sixth hour. And he became hungry and wanted to eat. While they were preparing it, a trance came upon him, and he saw heaven opened and a certain vessel coming down like a great sheet, let down by four corners to the earth, in which were all the four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth and birds of the heaven. And a voice came to him: Rise, Peter; kill and eat. But Peter said: By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean. And the voice came to him a second time: What God has cleansed, do not call common." See in this how Peter is presented as still keeping the Jewish customs about clean and unclean. And from what follows it is shown that he needed a vision in order to share the words of faith with Cornelius, who was not an Israelite according to the flesh, and those with him, since he was still a Jew living according to the traditions of the Jews and despising those outside Judaism. And in the letter to the Galatians Paul shows that Peter, still fearing the Jews, stopped eating with the Gentiles when James came to him, and "separated himself" from the Gentiles, "fearing those of the circumcision"; and the rest of the Jews and Barnabas did the same with him. And it was consistent that those sent to the circumcision should not abandon Jewish customs, when "those who seemed to be pillars gave Paul and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship," themselves going "to the circumcision," so that those two might preach to the Gentiles. But why do I say that those who preached "to the circumcision" held back and separated themselves from the Gentiles, when Paul himself became "to the Jews a Jew, that he might win Jews"? That is why, as is written in the Acts of the Apostles, he even brought an offering to the altar, to persuade the Jews that he was not an apostate from the law. If Celsus had known all this, he would not have had the Jew say to believers from Judaism: "What happened to you, fellow citizens, that you abandoned the law of your fathers and, beguiled by that man with whom we have just been conversing, were deceived quite ridiculously and deserted from us to another name and another life?"