But, according to Celsus, “the Christians, making certain additional
statements to those of the Jews, assert that the Son of God has been
already sent on account of the sins of the Jews; and that the Jews
having chastised Jesus, and given him gall to drink, have brought upon
themselves the divine wrath.” And any one who likes may convict this
statement of falsehood, if it be not the case that the whole Jewish
nation was overthrown within one single generation after Jesus had
undergone these sufferings at their hands. For forty and two years, I
think, after the date of the crucifixion of Jesus, did the destruction
of Jerusalem take place. Now it has never been recorded, since the
Jewish nation began to exist, that they have been expelled for so long a
period from their venerable temple-worship[548] and service, and
enslaved by more powerful nations; for if at any time they appeared to
be abandoned because of their sins, they were notwithstanding visited
[by God],[549] and returned to their own country, and recovered their
possessions, and performed unhindered the observances of their law. One
fact, then, which proves that Jesus was something divine and
sacred,[550] is this, that Jews should have suffered on His account now
for a lengthened time calamities of such severity. And we say with
confidence that they will never be restored to their former
condition.[551] For they committed a crime of the most unhallowed kind,
in conspiring against the Saviour of the human race in that city where
they offered up to God a worship containing the symbols of mighty
mysteries. It accordingly behoved that city where Jesus underwent these
sufferings to perish utterly, and the Jewish nation to be overthrown,
and the invitation to happiness offered them by God to pass to
others,—the Christians, I mean, to whom has come the doctrine of a pure
and holy worship, and who have obtained new laws, in harmony with the
established constitution in all countries;[552] seeing those which were
formerly imposed, as on a single nation which was ruled by princes of
its own race and of similar manners,[553] could not now be observed in
all their entireness.
Footnote 548:
ἁγιστειας.
Footnote 549:
ἐπεσκοπηθήσαν.
Footnote 550:
Θεῖον τι καὶ ἱερὸν χρῆμα γεγονέναι τὸν Ἰησοῦν.
Footnote 551:
οὐδ’ ἀποκατασταθήσονται.
Footnote 552:
καὶ ἁρμόζοντας τῇ πανταχοῦ καθεστώσῃ πολιτείᾳ.
Footnote 553:
ὑπὸ οἰκείων καὶ ὁμοήθων.