In what follows, Celsus, assailing the Mosaic history, finds fault with
those who give it a tropical and allegorical signification. And here one
might say to this great man, who inscribed upon his own work the title
of a _True Discourse_, “Why, good sir, do you make it a boast to have it
recorded that the gods should engage in such adventures as are described
by your learned poets and philosophers, and be guilty of abominable
intrigues, and of engaging in wars against their own fathers, and of
cutting off their secret parts, and should dare to commit and to suffer
such enormities; while Moses, who gives no such accounts respecting God,
nor even regarding the holy angels, and who relates deeds of far less
atrocity regarding men (for in his writings no one ever ventured to
commit such crimes as Kronos did against Uranus, or Zeus against his
father, or that of the father of men and gods, who had intercourse with
his own daughter), should be considered as having deceived those who
were placed under his laws, and to have led them into error?” And here
Celsus seems to me to act somewhat as Thrasymachus the Platonic
philosopher did, when he would not allow Socrates to answer regarding
justice, as he wished, but said, “Take care not to say that utility is
justice, or duty, or anything of that kind.” For in like manner Celsus
assails (as he thinks) the Mosaic histories, and finds fault with those
who understand them allegorically, at the same time bestowing also some
praise upon those who do so, to the effect that they are more impartial
[than those who do not]; and thus, as it were, he prevents by his cavils
those who are able to show the true state of the case from offering such
a defence as they would wish to offer.[1158]
Footnote 1158:
Οἱονεὶ κωλύεται κατηγορήσας, ὡς βούλεται, ἀπολογεῖσθαι τοὺς δυναμένους
ὡς πέφυκεν ἔχειν τὰ πράγματα. We have taken κωλύεται as middle. Some
propose κωλύει. And we have read βούλονται, a lection which is given
by a second hand in one MS.