I must express my surprise that Celsus should class the Odrysians, and
Samothracians, and Eleusinians, and Hyperboreans among the most ancient
and learned nations, and should not deem the Jews worthy of a place
among such, either for their learning or their antiquity, although there
are many treatises in circulation among the Egyptians, and Phœnicians,
and Greeks, which testify to their existence as an ancient people, but
which I have considered it unnecessary to quote. For any one who chooses
may read what Flavius Josephus has recorded in his two books, _On the
Antiquity of the Jews_, where he brings together a great collection of
writers, who bear witness to the antiquity of the Jewish people; and
there exists the _Discourse to the Greeks_ of Tatian the younger, in
which with very great learning he enumerates those historians who have
treated of the antiquity of the Jewish nation and of Moses. It seems,
then, to be not from a love of truth, but from a spirit of hatred, that
Celsus makes these statements, his object being to asperse the origin of
Christianity, which is connected with Judaism. Nay, he styles the
Galactophagi of Homer, and the Druids of the Gauls, and the Getæ, most
learned and ancient tribes, on account of the resemblance between their
traditions and those of the Jews, although I know not whether any of
their histories survive; but the Hebrews alone, as far as in him lies,
he deprives of the honour both of antiquity and learning. And again,
when making a list of ancient and learned men who have conferred
benefits upon their contemporaries [by their deeds], and upon posterity
by their writings, he excluded Moses from the number; while of Linus, to
whom Celsus assigns a foremost place in his list, there exist neither
laws nor discourses which produced a change for the better among any
tribes; whereas a whole nation, dispersed throughout the entire world,
obey the laws of Moses. Consider, then, whether it is not from open
malevolence that he has expelled Moses from his catalogue of learned
men, while asserting that Linus, and Musæus, and Orpheus, and
Pherecydes, and the Persian Zoroaster, and Pythagoras, discussed these
topics, and that their opinions were deposited in books, and have thus
been preserved down to the present time. And it is intentionally also
that he has omitted to take notice of the myth, embellished chiefly by
Orpheus, in which the gods are described as affected by human weaknesses
and passions.