Against Celsus 5.27

Let anyone who wishes explain how, and according to what dominions, the parts of the earth are divided and administered by those who oversee them; and let him tell us also how the things done among each people are rightly done, in the way that pleases the overseers, and whether, for example, the laws of the Scythians about killing fathers are right, or those of the Persians, which do not forbid mothers to be married by their own sons nor daughters by their fathers. And why need I, selecting from those who have written about the laws among different nations, raise further difficulties about how the laws among each people are rightly practised as it pleases the overseers? Let Celsus tell us how it is unholy to abolish ancestral laws about marrying mothers and daughters, or about its being blessed to depart from life by hanging, or about those who give themselves up to the fire and to release from life by fire being wholly purified; and how it is unholy to abolish laws, for example, among the Taurians about offering strangers as sacrifices to Artemis, or among some of the Libyans about sacrificing children to Cronus. Yet it follows for Celsus that it is not holy for the Jews to abolish their ancestral laws about not worshipping any other God besides the Creator of the universe. And on his view holiness will be divine not by nature but by some convention and custom: for among some it is holy to revere the crocodile and to eat something that others worship; for others it is holy to revere the calf, and among others to consider the goat a god. So the same person will act holily with regard to these laws and unholily with regard to others; which is the most absurd of all.