He charges us, moreover, with introducing “a man formed by the _hands_
of God,” although the book of Genesis has made no mention of the “hands”
of God, either when relating the creation or the “fashioning”[623] of
the man; while it is Job and David who have used the expression, “Thy
hands have made me and fashioned me;”[624] with reference to which it
would need a lengthened discourse to point out the sense in which these
words were understood by those who used them, both as regards the
difference between “making” and “fashioning,” and also the “hands” of
God. For those who do not understand these and similar expressions in
the sacred Scriptures, imagine that we attribute to the God who is over
all things a form[625] such as that of man; and according to their
conceptions, it follows that we consider the body of God to be furnished
with wings, since the Scriptures, literally understood, attribute such
appendages to God. The subject before us, however, does not require us
to interpret these expressions; for, in our explanatory remarks upon the
book of Genesis, these matters have been made, to the best of our
ability, a special subject of investigation. Observe next the
malignity[626] of Celsus in what follows. For the Scripture, speaking of
the “fashioning”[627] of the man, says, “And breathed into his face the
breath of life, and the man became a living soul.”[628] Whereon Celsus,
wishing maliciously to ridicule the “inbreathing into his face of the
breath of life,” and not understanding the sense in which the expression
was employed, states that “they composed a story that a man was
fashioned by the hands of God, and was inflated by breath blown into
him,”[629] in order that, taking the word “inflated” to be used in a
similar way to the inflation of skins, he might ridicule the statement,
“He breathed into his face the breath of life,”—terms which are used
figuratively, and require to be explained in order to show that God
communicated to man of His incorruptible Spirit; as it is said, “For
Thine incorruptible Spirit is in all things.”[630]
Footnote 623:
ἐπὶ τῆς πλάσεως.
Footnote 624:
Cf. Job x. 8 and Ps. cxix. 73.
Footnote 625:
σχῆμα.
Footnote 626:
κακοήθειαν.
Footnote 627:
πλάσεως.
Footnote 628:
Gen. ii. 7; Heb. בְּאֵַפָּיו , LXX. πρόσωπον.
Footnote 629:
ἐμφυσώμενον.
Footnote 630:
Wisd. of Solom. xii. 1.