Against Celsus 6.78

Next Celsus says something like this: Further, if God, like Zeus in the comic poet, woke up from a long sleep and wished to rescue the human race from evils, why did he send this spirit you speak of into one corner? He ought to have breathed similarly into many bodies and sent them out over the whole world. But the comic poet, raising a laugh in the theatre, wrote that Zeus, when he woke up, sent Hermes to the Athenians and Spartans; do you not think that you have made the Son of God, sent to the Jews, more ridiculous? See here too the irreverence of Celsus, who unphilosophically takes up a comic poet trying to raise a laugh, and compares our God, the Creator of the universe, with the one in the poet who woke up and sent Hermes. We said earlier that God did not send Jesus to the human race as though rising from a long sleep. He has assigned the dispensation of the incarnation to the present time for good reasons, but he has always done good to the human race. For nothing good has come about among men without the divine Word visiting the souls of those who were able, even for a short time, to receive such workings of the divine Word. And the coming of Jesus to what seems one corner took place for good reason, since the one prophesied had to come to those who had learned of one God, who read his prophets and learned of the Christ who was proclaimed; and to come at a time when the Word was about to be poured out from one corner over the whole world.