In the next place, when Celsus says in express words, “If they would
answer me, not as if I were asking for information, for I am acquainted
with all their opinions, but because I take an equal interest in them
all, it would be well. And if they will not, but will keep reiterating,
as they generally do, ‘Do not investigate,’ etc., they must, he
continues, explain to me at least of what nature these things are of
which they speak, and whence they are derived,” etc. Now, with regard to
his statement that he “is acquainted with all our doctrines,” we have to
say that this is a boastful and daring assertion; for if he had read the
prophets in particular, which are full of acknowledged difficulties, and
of declarations that are obscure to the multitude, and if he had perused
the parables of the Gospels, and the other writings of the law and of
the Jewish history, and the utterances of the apostles, and had read
them candidly, with a desire to enter into their meaning, he would not
have expressed himself with such boldness, nor said that he “was
acquainted with all their doctrines.” Even we ourselves, who have
devoted much study to these writings, would not say that “we were
acquainted with everything,” for we have a regard for truth. Not one of
us will assert, “I know all the doctrines of Epicurus,” or will be
confident that he knows all those of Plato, in the knowledge of the fact
that so many differences of opinion exist among the expositors of these
systems. For who is so daring as to say that he knows all the opinions
of the Stoics or of the Peripatetics? Unless, indeed, it should be the
case that he has heard this boast, “I know them all,” from some ignorant
and senseless individuals, who do not perceive their own ignorance, and
should thus imagine, from having had such persons as his teachers, that
he was acquainted with them all. Such an one appears to me to act very
much as a person would do who had visited Egypt (where the Egyptian
_savans_, learned in their country’s literature, are greatly given to
philosophizing about those things which are regarded among them as
divine, but where the vulgar, hearing certain myths, the reasons of
which they do not understand, are greatly elated because of their
fancied knowledge), and who should imagine that he is acquainted with
the whole circle of Egyptian knowledge, after having been a disciple of
the ignorant alone, and without having associated with any of the
priests, or having learned the mysteries of the Egyptians from any other
source. And what I have said regarding the learned and ignorant among
the Egyptians, I might have said also of the Persians; among whom there
are mysteries, conducted on rational principles by the learned among
them, but understood in a symbolical sense by the more superficial of
the multitude.[1153] And the same remark applies to the Syrians, and
Indians, and to all those who have a literature and a mythology.
Footnote 1153:
Παρ’ οἷς εἰσι τελεταὶ, πρεσβευόμεναι μὲν λογικῶς ὑπὸ τῶν παρ’ αὐτοῖς
λογίων, συμβολικῶς δὲ γινόμεναι ὑπὸ τῶν παρ’ αὐτοῖς πολλῶν καὶ
ἐπιπολαιοτέρων. For γινόμεναι Ruæus prefers γινωσκόμεναι, which is
adopted in the translation.