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| Chapter V
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Chapter V.
Immediately after these points, Celsus, imagining
that the Jews are Egyptians by descent, and had abandoned Egypt, after
revolting against the Egyptian state, and despising the customs of that
people in matters of worship, says that “they suffered from the
adherents of Jesus, who believed in Him as the Christ, the same
treatment which they had inflicted upon the Egyptians; and that the
cause which led to the new state of things3452
in
either instance was rebellion against the state.” Now let
us observe what Celsus has here done. The ancient Egyptians,
after inflicting many cruelties upon the Hebrew race, who had settled
in Egypt owing to a famine which had broken out in Judea, suffered, in
consequence of their injustice to strangers and suppliants, that
punishment which divine Providence had decreed was to fall on the whole
nation for having combined against an entire people, who had been their
guests, and who had done them no harm; and after being smitten by
plagues from God, they allowed them, with difficulty,
and after a brief period, to go
wherever they liked, as being unjustly detained in slavery.
Because, then, they were a selfish people, who honoured those who were
in any degree related to them far more than they did strangers of
better lives, there is not an accusation which they have omitted to
bring against Moses and the Hebrews,—not altogether denying,
indeed, the miracles and wonders done by him, but alleging that they
were wrought by sorcery, and not by divine power. Moses, however,
not as a magician, but as a devout man, and one devoted to the God of
all things, and a partaker in the divine Spirit, both enacted laws for
the Hebrews, according to the suggestions of the Divinity, and recorded
events as they happened with perfect fidelity.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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