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| Chapter XXXV
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Chapter
XXXV.
And let any one who peruses the treatise of Celsus
observe whether it does not convey some such insinuation as the above,
when he says: “And they attempted to derive their origin
from the first race of jugglers and deceivers, appealing to the
testimony of dark and ambiguous words, whose meaning was veiled in
obscurity.” For these names are indeed obscure, and not
within the comprehension and knowledge of many, though not in our
opinion of doubtful meaning, even although assumed by those who are
aliens to our religion; but as, according to Celsus, they do
not3834
| 3834 κατὰ δὲ
Κέλσον, οὐ
παριστάντα.
Libri editi ad oram ὡς
παριστάντα. | convey any ambiguity, I am at a loss to know
why he has rejected them. And yet, if he had wished honestly to
overturn the genealogy which he deemed the Jews to have so shamelessly
arrogated, in boasting of Abraham and his descendants (as their
progenitors), he ought to have quoted all the passages bearing
on the subject; and, in the first place, to have advocated his cause
with such arguments as he thought likely to be convincing, and in the
next to have bravely3835
refuted, by means
of what appeared to him to be the true meaning, and by arguments in its
favour, the errors existing on the subject. But neither Celsus
nor any one else will be able, by their discussions regarding the
nature of names employed for miraculous purposes, to lay down the
correct doctrine regarding them, and to demonstrate that those men were
to be lightly esteemed whose names merely, not among their countrymen
alone, but also amongst foreigners, could accomplish (such
results). He ought to have shown, moreover, how we, in
misinterpreting3836
the passages in
which these names are found, deceive our hearers, as he imagines, while
he himself, who boasts that he is not ignorant or unintelligent, gives
the true interpretation of them. And he hazarded
the assertion,3837
in speaking of those names, from which the
Jews deduce their genealogies, that “never, during the long
antecedent period, has there been any dispute about these names, but
that at the present time the Jews dispute about them with certain
others,” whom he does not mention. Now, let him who chooses
show who these are that dispute with the Jews, and who adduce even
probable arguments to show that Jews and Christians do not decide
correctly on the points relating to these names, but that there are
others who have discussed these questions with the greatest learning
and accuracy. But we are well assured that none can establish
anything of the sort, it being manifest that these names are derived
from the Hebrew language, which is found only among the
Jews.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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