Against Celsus 4.33

Next after this Celsus, running over what is in the first book of Moses, which is entitled Genesis, says that “they tried to trace their genealogy from the first seed of sorcerers and deceivers, calling to witness dim and ambiguous words hidden somewhere in darkness, and misinterpreting them to the ignorant and foolish; and this though in all the long time before no one had ever even disputed such a thing.” In these words he seems to me to have expressed very unclearly what he meant. It is likely that he deliberately made this passage unclear, since he saw the strength of the argument that the Jewish nation descends from such ancestors; and again he did not want to seem ignorant of something about the Jews and their race that is not to be despised. It is clear that the Jews trace their genealogy from the three fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; whose names, joined to the title of God, have such power that the formula “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” is used not only by those of that nation in their prayers to God and in exorcising daemons, but by almost all who practice incantations and magic. For such an invocation of God, and use of the name of God as belonging to these men, is found in many places in magical writings for use against daemons. These things, then, which are brought forward by Jews and Christians to prove that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the fathers of the Jewish nation, were holy men, Celsus seems to me not to have been wholly ignorant of, yet not to have set out clearly, since he could not answer the argument.