Against Celsus 4.31

After this, wanting to establish that Jews and Christians differ in no way from the animals mentioned before in his work, he says that “the Jews were runaways from Egypt, who never did anything worth mentioning and were never of any account or number.” That they were not runaways, nor Egyptians, but Hebrews who sojourned in Egypt, we have said above. And if he thinks that their having been of no account or number is established by the fact that their history is scarcely found among the Greeks, we shall say that if anyone looks closely at their way of life from the beginning and the arrangement of their laws, he would find that they were men who showed on earth a shadow of heavenly life. Among them nothing was held to be God except the One over all, and none of those who make images was a citizen. For there was neither painter nor sculptor in their commonwealth, since the law expelled all such from it, so that there might be no pretext for making statues, which attract foolish men and drag the eyes of the soul down from God to earth. They had, then, a law such as this: “Do not act lawlessly and make for yourselves a carved likeness, any image, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies under heaven, the likeness of any creeping thing that creeps on the earth, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters under the earth.” The law wanted them to deal with the truth of each thing and not to fashion other things contrary to the truth, falsifying what is truly male or really female, or the nature of beasts, or the race of birds or of creeping things or of fish. Dignified and lofty too among them was the command: “Do not, looking up to heaven and seeing the sun and the moon and the stars, all the array of heaven, be led astray and worship them and serve them.” And what a commonwealth there was for a whole nation, in which it was not even possible for an effeminate man to appear! Admirable too was the removal from their commonwealth of prostitutes, the kindlers of young men's passions. There were also courts of the most just men, who had given proof of a sound life over a long time and were entrusted with judgments, who, because of their pure character, surpassing the human, were called gods by an ancestral custom of the Jews. And one could see a whole nation practicing philosophy; and for the leisure to hear the divine laws there were the so-called Sabbaths and the other [festivals] among them. [And why speak of the orders] of priests and sacrifices, which contain countless symbols made clear to those who love learning?