Against Celsus 1.14

Celsus, thinking that among many of the nations there is a kinship of the same teaching, names all the nations as having originated such a doctrine; but, I do not know why, he slanders the Jews alone, not counting their nation among the rest as having either labored together with them and shared their views, or taught similar doctrines on many points. It is fair, then, to ask him why he has believed the histories of barbarians and Greeks about the antiquity of the nations he named, but treats as false the histories of this nation alone. For if each people set out its own affairs truthfully, why do we distrust only the prophets of the Jews? And if Moses and the prophets wrote many things about their own people to favor their own teaching, why shall we not say the same about the writers among the other nations? Or are the Egyptians, when they speak ill of the Jews in their histories, trustworthy about the Jews, while the Jews, saying the same about the Egyptians—recording that they suffered much unjustly and saying that for this reason the Egyptians were punished by God—are lying? And this must be said not only about the Egyptians; for we shall find a conflict of the Assyrians with the Jews, and this recorded in the Assyrian antiquities. So also the Jewish writers—not to seem to beg the question by saying "the prophets"—recorded the Assyrians as their enemies. See, then, at once the self-love of one who believes some nations as wise and condemns others as altogether foolish. For hear Celsus saying that "there is an ancient teaching from the beginning, with which the wisest nations and cities and wise men have always been occupied." And he would not call the Jews a very wise nation, even on a par with the Egyptians, Assyrians, Indians, Persians, Odrysians, Samothracians, and Eleusinians.