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| Chapter XVI
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Chapter XVI.
I must express my surprise that Celsus should
class the Odrysians, and Samothracians, and Eleusinians, and
Hyperboreans among the most ancient and learned nations, and should not
deem the Jews worthy of a place among such, either for their learning
or their antiquity, although there are many treatises in circulation
among the Egyptians, and Phœnicians, and Greeks, which testify to
their existence as an ancient people, but which I have considered it
unnecessary to quote. For any one who chooses may read what
Flavius Josephus has recorded in his two books, On the
Antiquity3106
| 3106 [ἀρχαιότητος. See Josephus’s Works, for the treatise in two
books, usually designated, as written, Against Apion.
S.] | of the Jews,
where he brings together a great collection of writers, who bear
witness to the antiquity of the Jewish people; and there exists the
Discourse to the Greeks of Tatian the younger,3107
| 3107 [See vol. ii. pp. 80,
81. S.] | in which with very great learning he
enumerates those historians who have treated of the antiquity of the
Jewish nation and of Moses. It seems, then, to be not from a love
of truth, but from a spirit of hatred, that Celsus makes these
statements, his object being to asperse the origin of Christianity,
which is connected with Judaism. Nay, he styles the Galactophagi
of Homer, and the Druids of the Gauls, and the Getæ, most learned
and ancient tribes, on account of the resemblance between their
traditions and those of the Jews, although I know not whether any of
their histories survive; but the Hebrews alone, as far as in him lies,
he deprives of the honour both of antiquity and learning. And
again, when making a list of ancient and learned men who have conferred
benefits upon their contemporaries (by their deeds), and upon posterity
by their writings, he excluded Moses from the number; while of Linus,
to whom Celsus assigns a foremost place in his list, there exists
neither laws nor discourses which produced a change for the better
among any tribes; whereas a whole nation, dispersed throughout the
entire world, obey the laws of Moses. Consider, then, whether it
is not from open malevolence that he has expelled Moses from his
catalogue of learned men, while asserting that Linus, and Musæus,
and Orpheus, and Pherecydes, and the Persian Zoroaster, and Pythagoras,
discussed these topics, and that their opinions were deposited in
books, and have thus been preserved down to the present time. And
it is intentionally also that he has omitted to take notice of the
myth, embellished chiefly by Orpheus, in which the gods are described
as affected by human weaknesses and passions.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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