Against Celsus 6.25

In it there was a drawing of circles, ten of them separate from one another but bound together by one circle, which was said to be the soul of the universe and was named Leviathan; the Jewish Scriptures, whatever they may be hinting at, said that he was formed by God as a plaything. For in the Psalms we find: “You made all things in wisdom; the earth was filled with your creation. This is the great and wide sea; there ships pass through, small creatures with great ones; this is the dragon you formed to sport with.” In place of “dragon” the Hebrew had Leviathan. The impious diagram, then, said that this Leviathan, who is so plainly condemned in the prophet, is the soul that has pervaded the universe. We also found in it the one named Behemoth, placed as it were below the lowest circle. The man who fabricated that abominable diagram wrote this Leviathan on the circle and at its centre, setting down his name twice. Further, Celsus says that the diagram was divided by a thick black line, and he said that he was told this was Gehenna, which is also Tartarus. But finding Gehenna written in the Gospel as a place of punishment, we inquired whether it was named anywhere in the ancient writings, especially since the Jews too use the name. We found that in one place Scripture speaks of the Valley “of the son of Ennom,” and we have learned that in the Hebrew, in place of “Valley,” the same thing was called both the Valley of Ennom and Gehenna. And studying the readings closely we find that Gehenna, or the Valley of Ennom, is listed in the lot of the tribe of Benjamin, in which Jerusalem also was. And examining the connection between the existence of a heavenly Jerusalem and the lot of Benjamin and the Valley of Ennom, we find something bearing on the doctrine of punishments, since souls of such a kind are taken to be purified through torment, according to the saying: “Behold, the Lord comes in like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; and he will sit refining and purifying as gold and as silver”