Against Celsus 5.29

Celsus seems to me to have misheard certain more mystical accounts of the distribution of things on earth, which Greek history also touches on in a way, when it presents some of those considered gods as contending with one another over Attica, and when in the poets it makes some of the so-called gods acknowledge certain places as more their own. And barbarian history too, especially that of the Egyptians, shows something of this sort about the division of the so-called nomes of Egypt, saying that Athena, to whom Sais fell, is the same who also has Attica. The learned among the Egyptians will say countless things of this kind, though I do not know whether they also include the Jews and their land in the distribution to some being. But about what is said on these matters outside the divine word, enough for the present. We say that Moses, the prophet of God according to us and his genuine servant, sets out in the Song of Deuteronomy the following about the division of things on earth: "When the Most High divided the nations, when he scattered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God; and the Lord's portion became his people Jacob, Israel the lot of his inheritance." And the same Moses, in the book entitled Genesis, speaks of the distribution of the nations in the form of a narrative thus: "And the whole earth was one lip, and there was one speech for all. And it came to pass, as they moved from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they settled there"; and a little later: "The Lord came down," it says, "to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said: Behold, they are one race and all have one lip; and this they have begun to do, and now nothing that they set out to do will fail them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they may not understand each one the speech of his neighbour. And the Lord scattered them from there over the face of all the earth, and they stopped building the city and the tower. Therefore its name was called Confusion, because there the Lord God confused the lips of all the earth, and from there the Lord God scattered them over the face of all the earth." And in the book entitled the Wisdom of Solomon, concerning wisdom and the events at the confusion of languages, at which the division of those on the earth took place, the following is said about wisdom: "She too, when the nations had been confused in their wicked agreement, recognized the righteous man and kept him blameless before God, and kept him strong against his compassion for his child." The account of these things is long and mystical, and to it applies: "It is good to hide the secret of a king," so that the doctrine of souls bound into a body, not by transmigration, may not be thrown to any chance hearers, nor holy things be given "to the dogs," nor pearls cast before swine. For such a thing would be impious, involving betrayal of the secret oracles of God's wisdom, of which it is well written: "Wisdom will not enter a soul that plots evil, nor dwell in a body enslaved to sin." It is enough to present what is said in a hidden way, as in the form of a narrative, according to the manner of the narrative, so that those who are able may work out for themselves the meaning of the passage.