Virtually nothing is known of
Celsus, a late second century
Greek philosopher, other than the fact that in the 170s AD he wrote a
major work, called the True
Discourse, devoted to debunking Christianity. Ironically, the text
is preserved and known to us only because some eighty years later the
early Church Father Origen wrote a
massive reply to Celsus, in eight volumes, in which Origen quoted
from Celsus's arguments at length before refuting them.
Surprisingly, the brief Wikipedia
article on Celsus does not quote his most well known bit of
invective, which displays an acid wit. I therefore thought I'd share
it with you. Origen quotes it in Chapter 34 of
Book 6 of
his response, Contra Celsum:
Everywhere in their [the Christians'] writings, mention is made of the tree of life, and a resurrection of the flesh by means of the “tree,” because, I imagine, their teacher was nailed to a cross, and was a carpenter by trade; so that if he had chanced to have been cast from a precipice, or thrust into a pit, or suffocated by hanging, or had been a leather-cutter, or stone-mason, or worker in iron, there would have been a precipice of life beyond the heavens, or a pit of resurrection, or a rope of immortality, or a blessed stone, or an iron of love, or a sacred leather! Now what old woman would not be ashamed to utter such things in a whisper, even when making stories to lull an infant to sleep?
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