And yet, against his will, Celsus is entangled into testifying that the
world is comparatively modern, and not yet ten thousand years old, when
he says that the Greeks consider those things as ancient, because, owing
to the deluges and conflagrations, they have not beheld or received any
memorials of older events. But let Celsus have, as his authorities for
the myth regarding the conflagrations and inundations, those persons
who, in his opinion, are the most learned of the Egyptians, traces of
whose wisdom are to be found in the worship of irrational animals, and
in arguments which prove that such a worship of God is in conformity
with reason, and of a secret and mysterious character. The Egyptians,
then, when they boastfully give their own account of the divinity of
animals, are to be considered wise; but if any Jew, who has signified
his adherence to the law and the lawgiver, refer everything to the
Creator of the universe, and the only God, he is, in the opinion of
Celsus and those like him, deemed inferior to him who degrades the
Divinity not only to the level of rational and mortal animals, but even
to that of irrational also!—a view which goes far beyond the mythical
doctrine of transmigration, according to which the soul falls down from
the summit of heaven, and enters into the body of brute beasts, both
tame and savage! And if the Egyptians related fables of this kind, they
are believed to convey a philosophical meaning by their enigmas and
mysteries; but if Moses compose and leave behind him histories and laws
for an entire nation, they are to be considered as empty fables, the
language of which admits of no allegorical meaning!