Against Celsus 6.32

Celsus's supposed wide learning, which is rather meddlesome curiosity and nonsense, has led us on to these matters, since we wish to show anyone who reads his book and what we have written against it that we are not at a loss about the lore Celsus uses to slander Christians, who neither hold nor know such things; for we too wished to know these things and to set them out, so that the sorcerers may not, by professing to know something more than we do, deceive those who are carried away by the impressiveness of names. I could have added a great deal more to show that we know the teachings of the deceivers but reject them as foreign and impious and incompatible with the truly Christian doctrines which we confess even to death. One should know, however, that those who composed these things, understanding neither magic nor the divine Scriptures, mixed everything together. From magic they took Ialdabaoth, Astaphaeus, and Horaeus; from the Hebrew Scriptures, the one named Iao among the Hebrews, Sabaoth, Adonaeus, and Eloaeus. But the names taken from the Scriptures are titles of one and the same God. Not understanding this, the enemies of God, as they themselves admit they are, supposed that Iao was one, Sabaoth another, a third besides him Adonaeus, whom the Scriptures call Adonai, and another Eloaeus, whom the prophets name in Hebrew Eloai.