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| Chapter XLI
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Chapter XLI.
Let us notice the charges which are next advanced
by Celsus, in which there is exceedingly little that has reference to
the Christians, as most of them refer to the Jews. His words
are: “If, then, in these respects the Jews were carefully
to preserve their own law, they are not to be blamed for so doing, but
those persons rather who have forsaken their own usages, and adopted
those of the Jews. And if they pride themselves on it, as being
possessed of superior wisdom, and keep aloof from intercourse with
others, as not being equally pure with themselves, they have already
heard that their doctrine concerning heaven is not peculiar to them,
but, to pass by all others, is one which has long ago been received by
the Persians, as Herodotus somewhere mentions. ‘For they
have a custom,’ he says, ‘of going up to the tops of the
mountains, and of offering sacrifices to Jupiter, giving the name of
Jupiter to the whole circle of the heavens.’4216
| 4216 Cf. Herodot., i.
131. | And I think,” continues Celsus,
“that it makes no difference whether you call the highest being
Zeus, or Zen, or Adonai, or Sabaoth, or Ammoun like the Egyptians, or
Pappæus like the Scythians. Nor would they be deemed at all
holier than others in this respect, that they observe the rite of
circumcision, for this was done by the Egyptians and Colchians before
them; nor because they abstain from swine’s flesh, for the
Egyptians practised abstinence not only from it, but from the flesh of
goats, and sheep, and oxen, and fishes as well; while Pythagoras and
his disciples do not eat beans, nor anything that contains life.
It is not probable, however, that they enjoy God’s favour, or are
loved by Him differently from others, or that angels were sent from
heaven to them alone, as if they had had allotted to them ‘some region of the
blessed,’4217
| 4217 οἷον δή τινα
μακάρων
χώραν
λαχοῦσιν. | for we see both
themselves and the country of which they were deemed worthy. Let
this band,4218
then, take its
departure, after paying the penalty of its vaunting, not having a
knowledge of the great God, but being led away and deceived by the
artifices of Moses, having become his pupil to no good
end.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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