First Apology 54

Those who hand down the myths invented by the poets offer no proof to the young who learn them, and we show that they were told by the working of the evil demons to deceive and lead astray the human race. For when they heard it proclaimed through the prophets that Christ would come and that the ungodly among men would be punished by fire, they put forward many to be said to have been sons of Zeus, thinking they could bring people to consider the things about Christ a tale of marvels, like the things said by the poets. And these things were said both among the Greeks and among all the nations, where they heard more of the prophets foretelling that Christ would be believed. But that even when they heard what was said through the prophets they did not understand it accurately, but imitated the things about our Christ like people going astray, we will make plain. Moses, then, the prophet, was, as we said before, older than all writers, and through him, as we indicated before, it was prophesied thus: “A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes for whom it is laid up; and he will be the expectation of the nations, binding his foal to the vine, washing his robe in the blood of the grape.” When the demons heard these prophetic words, they said that Dionysus had been a son of Zeus, and handed down that he was the discoverer of the vine, and they include an ass in his mysteries, and taught that he was torn to pieces and went up into heaven. And since it was not expressly indicated by the prophecy of Moses whether the one who was to come is the Son of God, and whether, riding on a foal, he would remain on earth or go up into heaven, and since the word “foal” could mean the foal of either an ass or a horse, not knowing whether the one foretold would bring the foal of an ass or of a horse as the sign of his coming, and whether he is the Son of God, as we said before, or of a man, they said that Bellerophon too, a man born of men, went up to heaven on the horse Pegasus. And when they heard it said through the other prophet, Isaiah, that he would be born through a virgin and by his own power go up into heaven, they put forward what is said of Perseus. And when they knew that it had been said, as was quoted in the prophecies written above, “Strong as a giant to run his course,” they said that Heracles was strong and traveled over the whole earth. And when again they learned that it had been prophesied that he would heal every disease and raise the dead, they brought forward Asclepius.