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Chapter
XXII.
But, according to Celsus, “the Christians,
making certain additional statements to those of the Jews, assert that
the Son of God has been already sent on account of the sins of the
Jews; and that the Jews having chastised Jesus, and given him gall to
drink, have brought upon themselves the divine wrath.” And
any one who likes may convict this statement of falsehood, if it be not
the case that the whole Jewish nation was overthrown within one single
generation after Jesus had undergone these sufferings at their
hands. For forty and two years, I think, after the date of the
crucifixion of Jesus, did the destruction of Jerusalem take
place. Now it has never been recorded, since the Jewish nation
began to exist, that they have been expelled for so long a period from
their venerable temple-worship3763 and service, and
enslaved by more powerful nations; for if at any time they appeared to
be abandoned because of their sins, they were notwithstanding visited
(by God),3764 and returned to
their own country, and recovered their possessions, and performed
unhindered the observances of their law. One fact, then, which
proves that Jesus was something divine and sacred,3765
3765 Θεῖόν τι καὶ
ἱερὸν χρῆμα
γεγονέναι
τὸν
᾽Ιησοῦν. | is this, that Jews should have suffered on
His account now for a lengthened time calamities of such
severity. And we say with confidence that they will never be
restored to their former condition.3766
3766 οὐδ᾽
ἀποκατασταθήσονται.
[A very bold and confident assertion this must have seemed sixteen
hundred years ago.] | For they
committed a crime of the most unhallowed kind, in conspiring against
the Saviour of the human race in that city where they offered up to God
a worship containing the symbols of mighty mysteries. It
accordingly behoved that city where Jesus underwent these sufferings to
perish utterly, and the Jewish nation to be overthrown, and the
invitation to happiness offered them by God to pass to
others,—the Christians, I mean, to whom has come the doctrine of
a pure and holy worship, and who have obtained new laws, in harmony
with the established constitution in all countries;3767
3767 καὶ
ἁρμόζοντας
τῇ πανταχοῦ
καθεστώσῃ
πολιτείᾳ. | seeing those which were formerly imposed, as
on a single nation which was ruled by princes of its own race and of
similar manners,3768
3768 ὑπὸ
οἰκείων καὶ
ὁμοήθων. | could not now be
observed in all their entireness.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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