Against Celsus 3.7

Equally false is it that the Hebrews, being Egyptians, originated from a rebellion, and that others, being Jews, rebelled in Jesus' time against the Jewish state and followed Jesus. For neither Celsus nor those who agree with him will be able to point to any act of rebellion by Christians. Indeed, if rebellion were the cause of the formation of Christians, who took their origin from the Jews, for whom it was lawful to take up arms for their own people and kill enemies, the lawgiver of Christians would not have entirely forbidden the killing of a human being, teaching that his disciples' violence against a man is never just, even if he is most unjust (for he did not think it fitting for his divinely inspired legislation to permit the killing of any human being whatever); nor would Christians, if they began in rebellion, have accepted such gentle laws, by which it befell them to be killed “like sheep” and never to be able to defend themselves against their persecutors. And indeed, examining things more deeply, one can say of those who came out of the land of Egypt that, marvelously, the whole people took up at once, as a gift of God, as it were, the language called Hebrew; as one of their prophets said: “When they came out of the land of Egypt, he heard a language which he did not know.”