Against Celsus 2.13

After this Celsus's Jew says: "Though I have many things to say about what happened to Jesus, both true and not like what was written by Jesus' disciples, I deliberately pass them over." What, then, are these true things, not like those written in the Gospels, which Celsus's Jew passes over? Or, using what he thinks rhetorical cleverness, does he pretend to have something to say, when he had nothing from outside the Gospel to bring forward that could strike the hearer as true and as a clear accusation of Jesus and his teaching? He charges the disciples with having invented the claim that Jesus foreknew and foretold everything that happened to him. That this is true, even if Celsus does not wish it, we will establish from many other things spoken prophetically by the Savior, in which he foretold what would happen to Christians even in later generations. Who would not marvel at the prediction, "You will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the nations," and whatever else he foretold about his disciples being persecuted? For what doctrine held among human beings are others also punished, so that one of Jesus' accusers could say that, seeing impious or false doctrines accused, he thought to make this too impressive by supposedly predicting it about himself? For if some had to be brought "before governors and kings" for doctrines, who should they be but the Epicureans, who wholly abolish providence, or the Peripatetics, who say that prayers and sacrifices to the Divine accomplish nothing? But someone will say that the Samaritans too are persecuted for their worship of God. To him we will say this: the Sicarii are put to death for circumcision, as mutilating themselves against the established laws and what is permitted to the Jews alone. And one does not hear a judge asking whether a Sicarius who strives to live according to this supposed worship of God will be released if he changes his mind, but led away to death if he persists; the proof of circumcision is enough to have the one who underwent it put to death. But Christians alone, according to what was said by their Savior, "You will be brought before governors and kings for my sake," are permitted by the judges, up to their last breath, to go home and live free of danger if they forswear Christianity and sacrifice and swear according to the common customs. See whether it is not said with great authority: "Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I too will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; and everyone who denies me before men," and so on. Go up with me in thought to Jesus as he says these things, and see them prophesied before they happened. Will you not say, if you disbelieve him, that he is talking nonsense and speaking in vain, since what he says will not happen; or, if you are in doubt about assenting to his words: "If these things are fulfilled, and the teaching of Jesus' words is established so that governors and kings take care to put to death those who acknowledge Jesus, then we will believe that he says these things as one who has received great authority from God to sow this teaching in the human race and is persuaded that it will prevail"? Who will not marvel, going up in thought to him as he taught then and said, "This gospel will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to them and to the nations," and seeing that, according to what he said, the gospel of Jesus Christ has been preached in all that is under heaven, "to Greeks and barbarians, to wise and foolish"? For the word spoken with power has prevailed over every kind of human being, and there is no race of men to be seen that has escaped accepting the teaching of Jesus. Let Celsus's Jew, who disbelieves that Jesus foreknew all that happened to him, consider how, while Jerusalem was still standing and all the Jewish worship was carried on in it, Jesus foretold what would happen to it at the hands of the Romans. For they will not say that Jesus' own acquaintances and hearers handed on the teaching of the Gospels without writing and left their disciples without written records about Jesus. In them it is written: "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near." And at that time there were no armies around Jerusalem, surrounding, encircling, and besieging it. That began while Nero was still reigning and lasted until the rule of Vespasian, whose son Titus destroyed Jerusalem—as Josephus writes, because of James the Just, the brother of Jesus called Christ, but as the truth shows, because of Jesus the Christ of God.