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| Chapter LVI
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Chapter LVI.
Celsus then adds, for what reason I know not, that
instead of calling Jesus the Son of God, we had better have given that
honour to the Sibyl, in whose books he maintains we have interpolated
many impious statements, though he does not mention what those
interpolations are.4824
| 4824 [Vol. i. pp. 280, 288,
289; vol. ii. pp. 192, 194, 346, and 622.] | He might have
proved his assertion by producing some older copies which are free from
the interpolations which he attributes to us; but he does not do so
even to justify his statement that these passages are of an impious
character. Moreover, he again speaks of the life of Jesus as
“a most infamous life,” as he has done before, not once or
twice, but many times, although he does not stay to specify any of the
actions of His life which he thinks most infamous. He seems to
think that he may in this way make assertions without proving them, and
rail against one of whom he knows nothing. Had he set himself to
show what sort of infamy he found in the actions of Jesus, we should
have repelled the several charges brought against Him. Jesus did
indeed meet with a most sad death; but the same might be said of Socrates, and of
Anaxarchus, whom he had just mentioned, and a multitude of
others. If the death of Jesus was a miserable one, was not that
of the others so too? And if their death was not miserable, can
it be said that the death of Jesus was? You see from this, then,
that the object of Celsus is to vilify the character of Jesus; and I
can only suppose that he is driven to it by some spirit akin to those
whose power has been broken and vanquished by Jesus, and which now
finds itself deprived of the smoke and blood on which it lived, whilst
deceiving those who sought for God here upon earth in images, instead
of looking up to the true God, the Governor of all things.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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