Against Celsus 2.44

Next to this he says, very foolishly, I do not know how: “If, finding absurd defenses by which you were ridiculously deceived, you think you are truly defending yourselves, what prevents others too, who were condemned and came to a more wretched end, from being thought greater and more divine messengers than he?” That Jesus, who suffered what is recorded, is plainly and clearly nothing like those who came to a more wretched end for sorcery or any other charge is clear to everyone. For no one can point to a work of sorcerers that has turned souls from the many sins among human beings and from the flood of wickedness. And since the Jew in Celsus compares him with robbers too, saying: “One could equally shamelessly say of a robber and murderer who was punished: ‘This man was no robber but a god; for he foretold to his fellow robbers that he would suffer such things as indeed he has suffered,’” it may be said first that we do not hold the views about Jesus that we hold, and speak boldly in him as one who came down to us from God, because he foretold that he would suffer such things. Second, we say that this too was in a way foretold in the Gospels, since God “was reckoned with the lawless” by the lawless, who wished rather that a robber, thrown into prison “for insurrection” “and murder,” be released and that Jesus be crucified, and who crucified him between two robbers. And always, in his genuine disciples who bear witness to the truth, Jesus is crucified with robbers and suffers the same condemnation among men as they. And we say that if those who, for the sake of piety toward the Creator, accept every outrage and every kind of death so as to keep that piety sincere and pure according to Jesus' teaching, have anything in common with robbers, then clearly Jesus too, the father of such teaching, is reasonably compared by Celsus with robber chiefs. But neither was he who died for the common good, nor are these who suffer these things for piety, and who alone of all human beings are plotted against because of the way of honoring the divine that has been revealed to them, put to death justly; nor was Jesus plotted against without impiety.