Against the Galileans

It seems good to me to set forth to all men the reasons by which I was persuaded that the fabrication of the Galileans is a fiction of men, composed by wickedness. It has in it nothing divine, but, abusing the part of the soul that loves fables and is childish and foolish, it has brought its tale of marvels to be believed as truth.

Since I am about to discourse upon all that they call their first doctrines, I wish to say this first: that those who read, if they should wish to contradict, ought, as in a court of law, to busy themselves with nothing outside the matter, nor, as the saying is, to bring counter-accusations, until they have made their defence concerning their own positions. For it is better thus, and clearer, to set up a separate treatise whenever they wish to examine any of our doctrines, but, where they are making their defence against our examinations, to bring no counter-charge.

It is worth while to take up briefly the question whence the conception of God came to us, and how it came in the first place; then to set beside it what is said about the divine among the Greeks and among the Hebrews; and after this to ask those who are neither Greeks nor Jews, but of the Galilean sect, for what reason they preferred the beliefs of those people to ours, and besides this, why ever they do not even abide by those beliefs, but, having forsaken these too, have turned to a way of their own. For they have agreed with nothing noble or earnest, neither of what is ours among the Greeks nor of what belongs to the Hebrews who took it from Moses; but from both they gathered, like the Furies, the failings that cling to these nations—from the recklessness of the Jews, godlessness; and from the carelessness and vulgarity among us, a base and slovenly way of life—and this they chose to call the noblest worship of God.

That the knowledge of God belongs to men not by teaching but by nature, let our first proof be the common eagerness of all men, in private and in public, man by man and nation by nation, toward the divine. For all of us, untaught, have believed in something divine, of which the exact truth is neither easy for all to know nor possible for those who have known it to declare to all . . . And to this common conception of all men there is added another. For all of us are so naturally bound to heaven and to the gods that appear in it, that even if anyone supposed some other god besides them, he assigned him heaven altogether for his dwelling-place, not removing him from the earth, but, as it were, setting that king of the universe in what is more honourable than the whole, and supposing that he watches over things here from there.

What need have I to call Greeks and Hebrews here as witnesses? There is no one who does not stretch up his hands to heaven when he prays, and when he swears by a god or by gods, taking any conception at all of the divine, is borne thither. And this they suffered not without reason. For seeing that nothing about the heaven is increased or diminished, nor altered, nor undergoes any disorderly affection, but that its motion is harmonious and its order measured, and the illuminations of the moon are fixed, and the risings and settings of the sun are fixed in fixed seasons always, they reasonably supposed it a god and the throne of God. For such a thing—since it is neither increased by any addition nor diminished by any subtraction, and stands outside change by alteration and turning—is pure of all corruption and coming-to-be; and being by nature immortal and indestructible, is clean of every stain; and being eternal and ever-moving, as we see, either it is borne in a circle about the great Creator by a higher and more divine soul dwelling in it, as, I think, our bodies are borne by the soul in us, or, having received its motion from the god himself, it unwinds its boundless circle in a ceaseless and eternal course.

The Greeks, then, invented fables about the gods, incredible and monstrous. For they said that Cronus swallowed his children and then vomited them up again. And there are marriages already lawless: for Zeus had intercourse with his mother, and after begetting children by her, married his own daughter—or rather did not even marry her, but, having simply lain with her, handed her over to another. Then there are the dismemberments of Dionysus and the gluing together of his limbs. Such things the fables of the Greeks tell. Compare with these the Jewish teaching, and the garden planted by God, and the Adam moulded by him, and then the woman made for him. For God says, "It is not good that the man should be alone; let us make for him a helper like himself"—who helped him in nothing of the whole, but deceived him and became to him and to herself the cause of falling outside the delight of the garden.

For these things are wholly fabulous. Since how is it reasonable that God should not know that the being made by him for a help would prove to the one who received it not for good rather, but for evil? And the serpent that converses with Eve—what manner of speech shall we say it used? A human one? And in what do such things differ from the fables invented among the Greeks? And does not God's forbidding the discernment of good and evil to the men moulded by him hold an excess of absurdity? For what could be more foolish than one unable to discern good and evil? For it is plain that he will not flee the one—I mean evils—nor pursue the other—I mean good things. And, in sum, God forbade man to taste of wisdom, than which nothing could be more honourable to man. For that the discernment of the better and the worse is the proper work of wisdom is plain even to the foolish; so that the serpent was a benefactor rather, and not a destroyer, of the human race. And on top of this, God must be called grudging. For when he saw that man had partaken of wisdom, "lest," he says, "he taste of the tree of life," he cast him out of the garden, saying expressly, "Behold, Adam has become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest ever he stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and eat, and live forever." Each of these, then, unless it be a fable holding some hidden meaning—which is what I have supposed—is filled with much blasphemy against God. For not to have known that she who was made for a help would be the cause of the fall, and to have forbidden the knowledge of good and evil, which alone seems to hold together the human mind, and besides to have been jealous lest man, partaking of the tree of life, should from mortal become immortal—this belongs to one exceedingly envious and grudging.

Concerning the things that those men truly hold, and which our fathers handed down to us from the beginning, our account runs thus, naming the immediate Creator of this world . . . For of the gods above this one Moses has said nothing at all, who did not even dare anything about the nature of the angels. That they minister to God in many ways and many times he has said; but whether they were begotten, or unbegotten, or made by one and appointed to minister to another, or in some other way, is nowhere defined. But about heaven and earth and the things in it, in what manner they were ordered, he goes through. And some things, he says, God commanded to come to be, such as light and the firmament; others he made, such as heaven and earth, the sun and the moon; others, which existed but were until then hidden, he separated, such as water, I think, and the dry land. But besides these, he did not even dare to speak about the coming-to-be or the making of the spirit, but only "And the spirit of God moved over the water"; whether it is unbegotten or has come to be, he makes nothing clear.

Here let us set beside it, if you please, the voice of Plato. Consider, then, what this man says about the Creator, and what words he puts upon him in the creation of the world, that we may set Plato's account of creation beside that of Moses, side by side. For so it would appear which is the better and which the more worthy of God—whether Plato, who served the images, or he of whom the Scripture says that "God spoke to him mouth to mouth." "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth. And the earth was invisible and unfurnished, and darkness was over the abyss, and the spirit of God moved over the water. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided between the light and the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water. And God called the firmament heaven. And God said, Let the water under the heaven be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear. And it was so. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the herb of grass and the fruit-bearing tree. And God said, Let there be luminaries in the firmament of heaven, that they may be for light upon the earth. And God set them in the firmament of heaven, to rule over the day and over the night."

In all this Moses says that the abyss was not made by God, nor the darkness nor the water; and yet, after saying about the light that it came to be at God's command, he ought surely to have said something further about the night also, and about the abyss, and about the water. But he said nothing, as of things wholly uncreated, although he often mentioned them. Besides this, he makes no mention either of the begetting or making of the angels, nor in what manner they were brought into being, but only of the bodies about heaven and earth; so that God, according to Moses, is the maker of nothing incorporeal, but the orderer of underlying matter. For "the earth was invisible and unfurnished" is nothing other than the saying of one who makes the wet and dry substance to be matter, and brings in God as the orderer of it.

Hear now what Plato says about the world. "The whole heaven, or world—or whatever other name it might most readily receive, let it be so named by us—was it always, having no beginning of coming-to-be, or has it come to be, beginning from some beginning? It has come to be; for it is visible and tangible and has a body. And all such things are perceptible, and perceptible things, graspable by opinion together with perception, appeared as coming-to-be and begotten . . . So then, according to the likely account, we must say that this world has come to be a living thing, ensouled and truly endowed with mind through the providence of God."

Let us set one beside one only: what kind of address, and of what sort, does the God in Moses make, and what kind the God in Plato?

"And God said, Let us make man according to our image and likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of heaven and over the cattle and over all the earth and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth. And God made man; according to the image of God he made him; male and female he made them, saying, Increase and multiply and fill the earth and have dominion over it; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of heaven and over all the cattle and over all the earth."

Hear, then, also the Platonic address, which he puts upon the Creator of the whole.

"Gods of gods, of whom I am Creator and Father of works, these, being bound by me, are indissoluble, so long at least as I will it. Now all that is bound is dissoluble; yet to wish to dissolve what is nobly fitted together and is in good case belongs to the evil. Wherefore, since you have come to be, you are not immortal nor wholly indissoluble; yet you shall in no wise be dissolved, nor shall you meet with the lot of death, having obtained from my will a bond still greater and more sovereign than those with which you were bound when you came to be. Now therefore learn what I declare and show to you. Three mortal kinds yet remain unbegotten; and if these do not come to be, the heaven will be incomplete, for it will not have in itself all the kinds of living things; and these, coming to be by me and partaking of life, would be made equal to gods. That, then, they may be mortal, and that this whole may be truly a whole, turn yourselves, according to nature, to the fashioning of living things, imitating my power in your own coming-to-be. And in so far as it is fitting that something in them should bear the same name as the immortals, being called divine and ruling in those of them that are always willing to follow justice and you, I, having sown it and made the beginning, will hand it over; the rest is yours—weaving the mortal upon the immortal, work out living things and beget them, and giving them food make them grow, and receive them again when they perish."

But is this perhaps a dream? Learn it by considering it. By "gods" Plato means the visible ones—sun and moon, stars and heaven—but these are images of the unseen. The sun that appears to our eyes is an image of the intelligible and unappearing one; and again the moon that appears to our eyes, and each of the stars, are images of the intelligible. Those intelligible and unseen gods, then, existing in him and along with him, and begotten and proceeding from the Creator himself, Plato knows. Reasonably, then, the Creator in his account says "gods," speaking to the unseen, and "of gods," meaning plainly the visible. And the common Creator of both is this one, who fashioned heaven and earth and sea and stars, and begot among the intelligibles the archetypes of these.

Consider, then, that what follows is also well said. For he says three mortal kinds remain—plainly that of men, that of animals, and that of plants; for each of these is defined by its own principles. "If, then," he says, "each of these too should come to be by me, it would altogether of necessity become immortal." For to the intelligible gods, and to the visible world, there is no other cause of immortality than that they came to be from the Creator. Since, then, he says, "Whatever is immortal must of necessity be given to these by the Creator," and this is the rational soul. "But the rest," he says, "you weave the mortal upon the immortal." It is plain, then, that the creative gods, having received from their father the creative power, begot upon the earth the mortal kinds of living things. For if heaven was to differ in nothing from man, and, by Zeus, from beast, and at the last from the very creeping things and the little fish that swim in the sea, the Creator ought to have been one and the same of all. But if the gulf between immortals and mortals is great—the one neither increased by any addition nor diminished by subtraction nor mingled with the mortal and perishable—it is fitting that the cause of the one be some, and of the others, others.

Since, then, Moses appears to have discoursed not even fully about the immediate Creator of this world, let us set side by side the opinion of the Hebrews and that of our fathers about these nations.

Moses says that the Creator of the world chose out the nation of the Hebrews, and attended to it alone, and cared for it, and gave it his own charge over it alone. But of the other nations, how or by what gods they are administered, he has made no mention whatever—unless one should grant that he assigned them the sun and the moon. But about these a little later. Yet that he calls God the God of Israel alone and of Judaea, and these the chosen ones—Moses himself and the prophets after him, and Jesus the Nazarene, and indeed Paul too, who surpassed all the sorcerers and deceivers everywhere who ever were—I will show. But hear their own words, and first those of Moses: "And you shall say to Pharaoh, Israel is my firstborn son. And I said, Send forth my people, that they may serve me; and you would not send him forth." And a little later: "And they say to him, The God of the Hebrews has called us; we will go, then, into the wilderness a journey of three days, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God." And after a little, again similarly: "The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to you, saying, Send forth my people, that they may serve me in the wilderness."

But that God cared for the Jews alone from the beginning, and that this was his special portion, not Moses only and Jesus but Paul too plainly says—and yet this is worth marvelling at concerning Paul. For according to circumstances, as the polyps change their colour to suit the rocks, so he changes his doctrines about God, now maintaining that the Jews alone are God's inheritance, and again persuading the Greeks to attach themselves to him, saying, "Is God the God of the Jews only? Yes, and of the Gentiles also." It is just, then, to ask Paul: if God was not the God of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles, for what reason did he send the prophetic gift in abundance to the Jews, and Moses and the anointing and the prophets and the law and the marvels and the prodigies of the fables? For you hear them crying, "Man ate the bread of angels." And at the last he sent Jesus too to them; but to us no prophet, no anointing, no teacher, no herald of the lovingkindness that was at last, some day, to come even to us from him. Nay, he even overlooked for myriads of years—or, if you wish, for thousands—men in such ignorance serving, as you say, the images, from the rising of the sun to its setting, and from the north to the south, except for a small race settled less than two thousand whole years ago in one part of Palestine. For if he is the God of us all and alike the Creator of all, why did he overlook us? It is fitting, then, to suppose that the God of the Hebrews is not the maker of the whole world, nor exercises authority over the whole, but, as I said, is confined and, having a limited dominion, is to be conceived as numbered among the other gods. Shall we further grant you that the God of the whole was even imagined, at least in bare conception, by you or by any of your stock? Are not all these things partial? "A jealous God." For why is he jealous, and why does he avenge "the sins of the fathers upon the children"?

But now consider, against these things, our own beliefs. For our people say that the Creator is the common father and king of all, but that the rest of the nations have been distributed by him among national and city-protecting gods, each of whom administers his own portion in a manner suited to himself. For since in the father all things are perfect and all is one, but in the divided realms one power prevails with one and another with another—Ares administers the warlike nations, Athena those warlike with wisdom, Hermes those rather shrewd than daring—and in keeping with the essence of each of their proper gods, the nations they administer follow them. If, then, experience does not bear witness to our account, let our doctrines be a fiction and an unseasonable plausibility, and let yours be praised; but if, on the contrary, experience from all time bears witness to what we say, while to your account nothing anywhere appears in agreement, why do you cling to so great a love of contention?

For let it be told me: what is the cause that the Celts and Germans are fierce, while the Greeks and Romans are on the whole civic and humane, together with being firm and warlike, and the Egyptians more intelligent and skilled in the arts, and the Syrians unwarlike and luxurious, together with being intelligent and hot-tempered and frivolous and quick to learn? For of this difference among the nations, if anyone perceives no cause, but rather says that these things fell out of themselves and by chance, how does he still think the world is administered by providence? But if anyone holds that there are causes of these things, let him tell me, in the name of the Creator himself, and instruct me. For that men's nature framed its laws to suit itself is very plain—civic and humane laws for those in whom the humane element had been most nourished, and savage and inhuman laws for those whose nature underlay and whose characters were the contrary. For lawgivers added little by their training to natures and aptitudes. So the Scythians did not receive Anacharsis raving in Bacchic frenzy; nor would you easily find any of the western nations, except a very few, fitted for philosophy or geometry or anything of the kind, although the Roman dominion has now prevailed so far. But only the very gifted enjoy disputation and rhetoric, and partake of no other learning. So strong, it seems, is nature. What, then, is the cause of the difference among the nations in their characters and laws?

For Moses gave an utterly fabulous cause for the unlikeness among the languages. For he said that the sons of men, coming together, wished to build a city and a great tower in it, but that God said he must come down and confound their languages. And lest anyone suppose that I am here slandering, we will read what follows from Moses himself: "And they said, Come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower, whose head shall be unto heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name before we are scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, Behold, one race and one lip of all, and this they have begun to do; and now nothing of all they may attempt to do will fail them. Come, let us go down and there confound their tongue, that they may not understand each one the voice of his neighbour. And the Lord God scattered them upon the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city and the tower." Then you think it right that we believe this, while you disbelieve what Homer says about the Aloadae, that they planned to set three mountains one upon another, that heaven might be scaled? For I say that this too is fabulous in much the same way as that. But you, accepting the former, for what reason in heaven's name do you reject Homer's fable? For that, I think, we ought to keep silent toward ignorant men—namely, that even if all men throughout the whole inhabited world should use one voice and tongue, they would not be able to build a tower reaching to heaven, even if they should make bricks of the whole earth; for there would be need of countless bricks, each as large as the whole earth, to be able to reach as far as the orbits of the moon. For suppose that all men had come together using one tongue and one voice, and had made bricks of the whole earth and quarried it all—when would it ever reach to heaven, even if it were drawn out and unwound thinner than a thread? This fable, then, so manifestly such, you have believed to be true, and you hold opinions about God, that he feared the murderous violence of men, and for this reason came down to confound their languages; and do you still dare to boast a knowledge of God?

But I return again to that point. For how God confounded the languages, Moses has stated the cause—that he feared lest they should do something against him, having wrought heaven accessible to themselves, being of one tongue and of one mind with one another; but how he did the deed, in no way, but only that he came down from heaven, being unable, as it seems, to do it from above, unless he came down to the earth. But about the difference in characters and customs neither Moses nor any other made anything clear; and yet the difference about the customs and the political arrangements of the nations among men is altogether greater than that about the languages. For which of the Greeks says that one ought to lie with a sister, with a daughter, with a mother? Yet this is judged a good thing among the Persians. Why need I go through each—setting forth the freedom-loving and unsubdued character of the Germans, the docile and tame character of the Syrians and Persians and Parthians, and, in a word, of all the barbarians toward the east and the south, and of all those that love to possess more despotic kingships? If, then, without a greater and more divine providence these greater and more honourable things came together, why do we busy ourselves in vain and serve him who provides nothing? For one who has cared nothing for our lives nor our characters nor our manners nor good order nor political constitution—is it still fitting that he should lay claim to honour from us? By no means. See into how great an absurdity your argument comes. For of the goods that are seen in human life, those of the soul lead, and those of the body follow. If, then, he made light of our goods of soul, taking no forethought even for our natural constitution, and sent us no teachers or lawgivers, as he did to the Hebrews through Moses and the prophets after him, for what shall we have to give him fitting thanks?

But take care lest perhaps God has given to us also gods and good protectors whom you have failed to know, in no way inferior to the one honoured from the beginning by the Hebrews over Judaea, of which alone he obtained the care, as Moses said and those after him down to our own time. But if the one honoured among the Hebrews were the immediate Creator of the world, we should have thought yet better about him; and he has given us greater and more excellent goods than theirs, both those of the soul and those without, of which we will speak a little later; and he sent to us also lawgivers no worse than Moses, if not many far better.

As we were saying, then: unless over each nation a national god presiding, and under him an angel and a daemon and a hero and a peculiar kind of souls, ministering and subservient to the higher, set the difference in laws and characters—let it be shown how these things came about from another. For it is not enough to say, "God spoke, and it was so." For the natures of the things that come to be must agree with the commands of God. What I mean I will say more clearly. God commanded fire to be borne upward, let us say, and earth downward. Was it not, that the command of God might come to pass, necessary for the one to be light and the other heavy? And so likewise of the others . . . in the same manner also of divine things. The cause is that the human race is perishable and corruptible; reasonably, then, its works too are corruptible and changeable and turn about in every way. But since God is eternal, it is fitting that his commands too be such. And being such, they are either the natures of things or in agreement with the nature of things. For how could nature fight against the command of God? How could it fall outside agreement with it? So then, if he commanded the tongues to be confounded, as he did, and not to agree with one another, so too the political ways of the nations, he did not make these things to be and to be by nature by command alone, nor did he frame us for this discord. For first there ought to have underlain different natures in those who were to be different among the nations. This is seen, indeed, if anyone looks also at their bodies—how greatly Germans and Scythians differ from Libyans and Ethiopians. Is this too a bare command, and does the air and the country contribute nothing, along with the gods, toward their being as they are in colour?

Moreover, Moses too veiled such a thing, knowing it, and did not ascribe the confounding of the languages to God alone. For he says that he not only came down, but that not even one came down with him, but more, and these, whoever they are, he did not say; but it is plain that he supposed those who came down with him to be like himself. If, then, toward the confounding of the languages not the Lord alone but those with him also came down, it is plain that toward the confounding of the characters also, not the Lord alone, but those with him who confounded the languages, would reasonably be supposed to be the causes of this separation.

Why, then, since I did not wish to speak at length, have I gone through so much? Because, if the one proclaimed by Moses were the immediate Creator of the world, we hold better opinions about him—we who suppose him the common master of all, and others to be national gods, who are indeed under him, but are as it were viceroys of a king, each setting straight his own charge in a special way; and we do not set him up as a rival to the gods appointed under him. But if, having honoured some partial god, that man sets against him the rule of the whole, it is better for us, persuaded by our own people, to recognize the God of the whole together with not failing to know that one, than, in place of the Creator of all, to honour him who has obtained the rule of the smallest part.

There is the law of Moses, the wonderful one, that Decalogue: "You shall not steal, you shall not kill, you shall not bear false witness." Let each of the commandments be written in his very words, which he says were written by God himself.

"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." The second after this: "There shall be for you no other gods besides me. You shall not make for yourself an image." And he adds the cause: "For I am the Lord your God, a jealous God, rendering the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third generation." "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain." "Remember the day of the sabbaths." "Honour your father and your mother." "You shall not commit adultery." "You shall not kill." "You shall not steal." "You shall not bear false witness." "You shall not covet your neighbour's goods."

What nation is there, in the name of the gods, except for "You shall not worship other gods" and "Remember the day of the sabbaths," that does not think it ought to keep the other commandments—so that penalties are even laid down for transgressors, in some places more severe, in some about the same as those legislated by Moses, and in some even more humane?

But "You shall not worship other gods"—which indeed he says with great slander against God. For "God is jealous," he says; and again elsewhere, "Our God is a consuming fire." Then if a man is jealous and grudging, does he seem to you worthy of blame, but if God is called jealous, do you deify him? And yet how is it reasonable to lie about so manifest a matter against God? For if he is jealous, against his will all the gods are worshipped, and all the rest of the nations worship the gods. Then how did he not himself, being so jealous and unwilling that the others be worshipped, but himself only, restrain it? Was he, then, unable, or did he not even from the beginning wish to hinder the other gods from being worshipped? But the first is impious—to say that he was unable; and the second agrees with our practices. Let go this nonsense and do not draw upon yourselves so great a blasphemy. For if he wishes no one to be worshipped, for what reason do you worship this bastard son of his, whom he never reckoned nor held to be his own? And I will show this easily. But you, I know not whence, attach to him one suborned . . .

Nowhere does God appear harsh, nor vexed, nor angry, nor swearing, nor swiftly inclining either way, nor changeable, as Moses says in the case of Phinehas. If any of you has read the book of Numbers, he knows what I mean. For when Phinehas, with his own hand, took the man who had been consecrated to Baal-peor together with the woman who had persuaded him, and killed them with a shameful and most painful wound—having struck the woman, he says, through the womb—God is made to say: "Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned away my wrath from the sons of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them; and I did not utterly consume the sons of Israel in my jealousy." What is lighter than the cause for which God, untruly, is made by the writer of these things to be angry? And what more unreasonable, if ten or fifteen—let it be even a hundred, for they will surely not say a thousand—but let us grant even so many to have dared to transgress some of the laws appointed by God: were six hundred thousand to be destroyed for the sake of one thousand? Since to me it seems altogether better to save one wicked man together with a thousand of the best, than to destroy the thousand together with the one . . .

For if the anger even of one hero, or of no distinguished daemon, is hard to bear for whole lands and cities, who could have withstood so great a god, when he was wroth against daemons or angels or even men? It is worth while to compare him with the mildness of Lycurgus and the long-suffering of Solon, or with the fairness and kindness of the Romans toward those who have wronged them. And how much better our ways are than theirs, consider also from this. The philosophers bid us imitate the gods so far as we can, and this imitation lies in the contemplation of the things that are. And that this is apart from passion and rests in passionlessness is plain, even if I do not say it: in so far as we come to be in passionlessness, set in order about the contemplation of the things that are, in so far are we made like to God. But what is the imitation of God hymned among the Hebrews? Anger and wrath and savage jealousy. For "Phinehas," he says, "turned away my wrath from the sons of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them." For God, having found one who shared his indignation and his pain, appears to have laid aside his indignation. These and other such things about God Moses is made to say in not a few places of the Scripture.

But that God cared not for the Hebrews only, but, caring for all nations, gave them nothing earnest or great, while to us he gave far better and more excellent things, consider next what follows. The Egyptians too can tell, counting up among themselves the names of not a few wise men, that they have had many from the succession of Hermes—I mean the third Hermes who visited Egypt; and the Chaldeans and Assyrians those from Oannes and Belus; and the Greeks countless ones from Cheiron. For from him all became by nature skilled in initiations and in theology, in the very point in which the Hebrews alone seem to glorify their own . . .

But did he give you a beginning of knowledge, or any philosophic learning? And of what kind? For the contemplation of the appearances was perfected among the Greeks, the first observations having been made among the barbarians in Babylon; and that concerning geometry, taking its beginning from land-surveying in Egypt, grew to such greatness; and that concerning numbers, beginning from the Phoenician merchants, in time came to be among the Greeks a thing wearing the dignity of a science. These three, then, together with music reckoned along with them, the Greeks joined into one, weaving astronomy together with geometry, and fitting numbers to both, and perceiving the harmony in these. Thence they set the bounds for their music, having found in the harmonic ratios an unerring agreement with the perception of hearing, or what is very near to this.

Shall I, then, name them man by man, or by their pursuits? Shall I name the men—such as Plato, Socrates, Aristides, Cimon, Thales, Lycurgus, Agesilaus, Archidamus—or rather the kind of the philosophers, the kind of the generals, the kind of the craftsmen, the kind of the lawgivers? For the most base and abominable of the generals will be found to have dealt more fairly with those who wronged them most than Moses with those who had done no wrong. What kingship, then, shall I report to you? That of Perseus, or of Aeacus, or of Minos the Cretan, who cleansed the sea of piracy, casting out and driving the barbarians as far as Syria and Sicily, advancing on both sides the bounds of his rule, and mastering not only the islands but the coasts as well? And dividing with his brother Rhadamanthys—not the land, but the care of men—he himself set down the laws, receiving them from Zeus, while to that one he left the judicial part to fulfil . . .

But since, after it was founded, many wars beset it, and it prevailed over all and overcame them, and, growing the more amid the very dangers, needed greater security, again Zeus set over it the most philosophic Numa. This was the noble and good Numa, who passed his time in deserted groves and was ever in company with the gods in his pure thoughts . . . This man established most of the priestly laws. These things, then, out of possession and divine inspiration, both from the books of the Sibyl and from the others who were at that time, in the native tongue, oracle-givers, Zeus plainly gave to the city. And the shield that fell from the air, and the head that appeared on the hill—whence, I think, the seat of great Zeus took its name—shall we number among the first of his gifts or among the second? Then, O wretched men, while our god-sent weapon is preserved, which great Zeus or father Ares sent down, giving a pledge, not in word but in deed, that he will forever hold his shield before our city, you, leaving off to worship and reverence it, worship the wood of the cross, sketching its images on your foreheads and inscribing them before your dwellings.

Would one rightly hate the more intelligent among you, or pity the more foolish, who, following you, have come to such ruin that, leaving the eternal gods, they have gone over to the corpse of the Jew? . . . For I pass over the mysteries of the Mother of the gods, and I emulate Marius . . . For the spirit that comes from the gods to men comes seldom and in few, and it is not easy for every man to partake of it, nor at every season. By this very thing the prophetic spirit among the Hebrews also failed; nor, therefore, is it preserved to this end among the Egyptians either. And the self-springing oracles too appear to have fallen silent, yielding to the periods of the times. Which our man-loving master and father Zeus, considering, that we might not be wholly deprived of fellowship with the gods, has given us through the sacred arts a means of inspection, by which we shall have sufficient help for our needs.

The greatest of the gifts of Helios and Zeus has almost escaped me; and reasonably I kept it for the end. For it is not peculiar to us alone, but, I think, common to us and to the Greeks, our kinsmen. For Zeus in the intelligible realm begot Asclepius from himself, and into the earth he made him manifest through the generative life of Helios. He, having made his procession from heaven to earth, appeared in singular form, in the shape of a man, about Epidaurus; but multiplying himself thence in his processions, he stretched out over the whole earth his saving right hand. He came to Pergamum, to Ionia, to Tarentum afterward; later he came to Rome. And he went to Cos, thence to Aegae. Then he is everywhere on land and sea. He does not visit each one of us, and yet he sets straight souls that are faultily disposed and bodies that are in weakness.

But what such thing do the Hebrews boast was given them by God—those to whom you, deserting from us, give your trust? If you had at least held to their teachings, you would not have fared altogether unhappily, but worse than before, when you were with us; yet you would have suffered things bearable and endurable. For you would have worshipped one god instead of many, and not a man, or rather many wretched men. And using a law harsh and rough, with much that is savage and barbarous in it, instead of our fair and humane ones, you would in other respects have been worse, but purer and cleaner in your rites. But now it has befallen you, as it does the leeches, to draw the worst blood from there, and to leave the purer. And Jesus, having won over the worst among you, has been named for a little more than three hundred years, having done in his lifetime nothing worth hearing, unless one thinks that to heal the lame and the blind and to exorcise the possessed in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany are among the greatest works. Of purity you do not even know whether he made any mention. But you emulate the wraths and the bitterness of the Jews, overturning temples and altars, and you have slaughtered not only those of us who abide by our ancestral ways, but also those, among the heretics, equally astray with you, who do not lament your corpse in the same manner as you. But these things are rather your own; for nowhere did either Jesus hand them down, commanding you, or Paul. The cause is that they did not even hope you would ever come to this height of power; for they were content if they could deceive maidservants and slaves, and through these the women, and men such as Cornelius and Sergius—of whom, if one of those then known be shown to be mentioned (for these things happened under Tiberius or Claudius), think that I am lying about everything.

But this I have uttered—I know not whence, as if inspired—when, from the point where I digressed, namely that "you deserted to the Jews," what wrong did you suffer from our gods to be ungrateful to them? Is it that the gods gave to Rome to rule, but to the Jews to be free for a little while, and ever after to be slaves and sojourners? Consider Abraham: was he not a sojourner in a foreign land? And Jacob: did he not serve first the Syrians, then after these the Palestinians, and in old age the Egyptians? Does not Moses say that he led them out of the house of bondage from Egypt with a high arm? And dwelling in Palestine, did they not change their fortunes more often than the chameleon, they say who have seen it, changes its colour—now obeying the judges, now serving the foreigners? And when they were ruled by kings—let it pass now how; for God did not willingly grant them to be ruled by kings, as the Scripture says, but, forced by them and protesting beforehand that they would be badly ruled—yet they at least dwelt in their own land and tilled it for a little more than three hundred years. After that they served first the Assyrians, then the Medes, later the Persians, and now ourselves. And Jesus, who is proclaimed among you, was one of Caesar's subjects. If you disbelieve, I will show it a little later; or rather let it be said now. For you say that he, with his father and mother, was registered in the time of Cyrenius.

But having become man, of what goods did he prove the cause to his own kinsmen? For they would not, they say, obey Jesus. What then? How did that hard-hearted and stiff-necked people obey Moses, while Jesus—who commands the spirits and walks upon the sea and casts out the daemons, and, as you say, made heaven and earth (for none of his disciples has dared to say this about him, save only John, and he neither clearly nor plainly; but let it be granted that he said it)—could not turn the wills of his own friends and kinsmen to their salvation?

These things, then, a little later, whenever we begin to examine separately the prodigy-mongering and the fabrication of the gospels. But now answer me this. Which is better—to be continually free, and for two thousand whole years to rule the greater part of land and sea, or to be a slave and to live at the bidding of another? No one is so shameless as to choose rather the second. But will anyone think that prevailing in war is worse than being conquered? Who is so dull of feeling? But if we say these things truly, show me one general like Alexander among the Hebrews, one like Caesar. For you have none. And yet, by the gods, I well know that I am doing the men outrage, having mentioned them as though they were comparable. But I mentioned them as well-known. For those lesser than these are unknown to most, each one of whom is more wonderful than all together who have arisen among the Hebrews.

But the ordinance of the polity and the form of the courts, the management of the cities and the beauty of the laws, the advance in learning and the practice of the liberal arts—were these not, among the Hebrews, wretched and barbarous? And yet the wicked Eusebius wishes there to be among them some hexameter verses, and prides himself that there is a science of logic among the Hebrews, of which he has heard the name from the Greeks. What kind of medicine appeared among the Hebrews, as among the Greeks there was the school of Hippocrates and of certain others after him? Is the most wise Solomon like the Phocylides or Theognis or Isocrates among the Greeks? Whence? Indeed, if you should compare the exhortations of Isocrates with that man's proverbs, you would find, I well know, the son of Theodorus better than the most wise king. "But that man," they say, "was trained in theurgy." What then? Did not this same Solomon serve our gods, deceived, as they say, by his wife? O greatness of virtue! O wealth of wisdom! He did not get the better of pleasure, and the words of a woman led him astray. If, then, he was deceived by a woman, do not call this man wise. But if you have believed him wise, do not suppose he was deceived by a woman, but that, persuaded by his own judgment and understanding and by the teaching of the god who appeared to him, he served the other gods also. For envy and jealousy do not reach even as far as the best of men, so far are they from angels and gods. And you, then, busy yourselves about the partial powers, which one would not err in calling daemonic. For the love of honour and the vainglory are here; but in the gods there is nothing of the kind.

For what reason do you nibble at the learning among the Greeks, if the reading of your own scriptures is sufficient for you? And yet it were better to keep men away from those than from the eating of things sacrificed. For from the latter, as Paul too says, the one who partakes is harmed in nothing, but the conscience of a brother who sees might be offended, according to you, O most wise and proud. But through these studies there fell away from the godlessness whatever your nature brought forth as noble. So whoever had even a little portion of natural gifts, to him it most quickly befell to fall away from the godlessness among you. Better, then, to keep men away from learning, not from the sacrifices. But you too know, as it seems to me, the difference, as regards understanding, between your scriptures and ours, and that from yours no one would become a noble man, or rather not even a decent one, while from ours every man would become better than himself, even if he were altogether without gifts. But one well-endowed by nature, and having gained besides the education that comes from these, simply becomes a gift of the gods to men, either kindling a light of knowledge, or showing forth a kind of polity, or routing many enemies, or even traversing much land and much sea, and in this showing himself heroic . . .

The proof of this is plain. Out of all of you choose children and train them to study in the scriptures; and if, when they come to manhood, they appear more earnest than slaves, think me a trifler and full of black bile. Then you are so unhappy and senseless as to think those words divine, by which no one would become wiser or braver or better than himself; while those by which one can gain courage, wisdom, justice, you give over to Satan and to those who serve Satan.

Asclepius heals our bodies; the Muses, together with Asclepius and Apollo and Hermes the god of speech, educate our souls; Ares and Enyo fight along with us in war; Hephaestus apportions and distributes the things pertaining to the arts; and over all these Athena, the motherless virgin, with Zeus, presides. Consider, then, whether in each of these we are not better than you—I mean in the arts and in wisdom and in understanding. For whether you should look to the arts useful for need, or to those imitative for the sake of the beautiful, such as image-making, painting, household management, or the medicine that comes from Asclepius, whose oracles are everywhere on earth, which God grants us continually to share. For me, at any rate, Asclepius has often healed in my sickness, prescribing remedies; and of this Zeus is witness. If, then, not having given ourselves to the spirit of apostasy, we are better off in the things of the soul and the body and the externals, for what reason, leaving these, do you go over to those?

And for what reason do you neither abide by the Hebrew teachings nor love the law which God gave them, but, having forsaken your ancestral ways and given yourselves to what the prophets proclaimed, have fallen away further from them than from us? For if anyone wished to look at the truth concerning you, he would find your impiety compounded of the recklessness of the Jews and the indifference and vulgarity among the nations. For from both, drawing not the noblest but the worse, you have wrought a border-fringe of evils. For among the Hebrews the rules concerning worship are exact, and the objects of reverence and the observances countless, requiring a priestly way of life and choice. But when the lawgiver had forbidden serving all the gods, and only one, whose portion is Jacob and the measuring-line of whose inheritance is Israel—and not saying only this, but, I think, adding also "You shall not revile gods"—the abomination and recklessness of those who came after, wishing to take away all reverence from the multitude, supposed that blasphemy followed from not worshipping; and this alone you drew from there. For in everything else nothing among you is like to anything among them. From the innovation of the Hebrews, then, you snatched the reviling of the gods honoured among us. And from the worship among us you forsook the piety toward all the higher nature together, and the love of our ancestral ways, and gained only the eating of all things like the herbs of the field. And if the truth must be told, you took pains to outdo the vulgarity among us; and this, I think, very reasonably befalls all nations and the lives of cheap men—hucksters, tax-gatherers, dancers, keepers of harlots—and you thought your own ways suited to them.

And that not those of today only, but those from the beginning, the first who received the word from Paul, became some such persons, is plain from what Paul himself testifies, writing to them. For he was not so shameless, I think, as to write so many reproaches to those very men concerning themselves, unless he was conscious of them in them—from which, even if he had written so many praises of them, even if they had been true, he would have had to blush; and if false and fabricated, to sink into the ground, fleeing to seem to deal in lewd fawning and servile flattery. But what Paul writes about those who heard him, to those very men, is this: "Do not be deceived; neither idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the soft, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. And these things you are not ignorant of, brethren, that you too were such; but you were washed, but you were sanctified in the name of Jesus Christ." Do you see that he says these too became such, but were sanctified and washed—water having been found able to cleanse and thoroughly purge, which will sink even into the soul? And baptism does not take away the leprosy from the leper, nor scabs nor white spots nor warts nor gout nor dysentery, nor dropsy, nor a whitlow, nor any bodily ailment, small or great; but it will take away adulteries and robberies and, in a word, all the lawless deeds of the soul? . . .

But since they say that they differ from the Jews of today, yet are exactly Israelites according to their prophets, and obey Moses most of all and the prophets who arose after him about Judaea, let us see in what they most agree with these. And we must begin from the words of Moses, who, they say, himself foretold the coming birth of Jesus. Moses, then, not once nor twice nor thrice, but very many times, thinks it right to honour one god only, whom indeed he names above all, and another god nowhere; angels he names, and lords, and indeed also gods in the plural, but the first as special, while another, a second, he did not suppose, neither like nor unlike, as you have worked it out. But if there is anywhere among you one saying of Moses about these things, you are bound to bring it forth. For "The Lord our God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brethren like me; him shall you hear"—this, indeed, is surely not said about the one born of Mary. But if anyone should grant it for your sake, he says he will become like himself and not like God, a prophet like himself and from men, not from God. And "There shall not fail a ruler from Judah, nor a leader from his loins"—this surely is not said about him, but about the kingship of David, which ended in Zedekiah the king. And indeed the Scripture runs in two ways: "until there come the things stored up for him"; but you have altered it to "until there come he for whom they are stored up." But that none of these things belong to Jesus is plain; for he is not even of Judah. For how is he, according to you, not of Joseph but begotten of the Holy Spirit? For tracing the genealogy of Joseph, you carry it up to Judah; and not even this could you fabricate well. For Matthew and Luke are convicted of disagreeing with one another about his genealogy. But about this, intending in the second treatise to examine the truth exactly, we defer it. But let it be granted that he is even a ruler from Judah—not God from God, according to what is said among you, nor that "all things came to be through him, and without him came to be not one thing." But it is also said in the book of Numbers, "There shall rise a star out of Jacob, and a man out of Israel." That this belongs to David and to those from him is plain somewhere; for David was the son of Jesse.

If, then, from these you attempt to draw conclusions, show me by drawing from there one saying such as I can draw many. That he held the one God of Israel to be God, he says in Deuteronomy: "So that you may know that the Lord your God, he is one God, and there is no other beside him." And further to this: "And you shall turn in your mind, that the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath, and there is none beside him." And again: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." And again: "See that I am, and there is no god beside me." These things, then, Moses, maintaining that there is one god only. But these people will perhaps say: "Neither do we say two, nor three." But I will show them saying this too, calling to witness John, who says: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Do you see that he is said to be "with God"? Whether the one born of Mary, or some other—that I may answer Photinus at the same time—makes now no difference; I leave the dispute to you. But that he says "with God" and "in the beginning"—this is enough to call to witness. How, then, does this agree with the words of Moses?

"But it agrees," they say, "with those of Isaiah." For Isaiah says, "Behold, the virgin shall have in the womb, and shall bear a son." Let this too, then, be granted to be said about God—though it is in no way said; for she was not a virgin who had been married and lain with her husband before bearing—but let it be granted to be said about her: does he anywhere say that God shall be born of the virgin? But you do not cease calling Mary "mother of God"—unless he says anywhere that the son born of the virgin is the only-begotten son of God and the firstborn of all creation. But the saying of John, "All things came to be through him, and without him came to be not one thing"—can anyone show it in the prophetic voices? But what we show, hear next from those very men: "Lord our God, possess us; beside you we know no other." And Hezekiah the king is made by them to pray: "Lord, the God of Israel, who sits upon the Cherubim, you are the only God." Does he leave any room for a second? But if the Word is God from God, according to you, and sprang from the substance of the Father, why do you say that the virgin is the mother of God? For how could she bear a god, being, according to you, a human being? And besides this, while God says plainly, "I am, and there is none beside me who saves," have you dared to call the one born of her "saviour"?

And that Moses names the angels "gods," hear from his words: "And the sons of God, seeing the daughters of men that they were fair, took for themselves wives of all whom they chose." And going a little lower: "And after that, when the sons of God went in to the daughters of men, and they bore to themselves—these were the giants from of old, the men of renown." That he means the angels, then, is plain and not brought in from outside, but clear also from his saying that not men but giants were born of them. For it is plain that, if he supposed their fathers to be men and not of some better and stronger nature, he would not have said that giants were born of them; for it is from the mixture of mortal and immortal, it seems to me, that he declares the race of giants arose. He, then, who names many sons of God, and these not men but angels—if he had known the only-begotten Word, God or Son of God, or however you call him, would he not have made it known to men? But that he did not think this a great thing, he says of Israel, "Israel is my firstborn son." Why did not Moses say these things about Jesus too? He taught one and only one god, but many sons of his, who divided the nations among them. But a firstborn Son of God, or a God the Word, or any of the things later falsely fabricated by you, he neither knew at the beginning nor taught openly. You have heard Moses himself and the other prophets. Moses, then, says many such things and in many places: "The Lord your God you shall fear, and him alone shall you serve." How, then, is Jesus handed down in the gospels commanding, "Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," if they were not also to serve him? And, in keeping with these things, you too theologize the Son together with the Father . . .

And about the things put away in expiation, hear again what he says: "And he shall take two he-goats of the goats for a sin-offering, and one ram for a whole burnt-offering. And Aaron shall bring the calf of the sin-offering, which is for himself, and shall make atonement for himself and for his house. And he shall take the two goats, and set them before the Lord at the door of the tent of witness. And Aaron shall put upon the two goats lots, one lot for the Lord and one lot for the one to be sent away," so as to send it away, he says, as a thing of riddance, and let it go into the wilderness. The one, then, sent to the one to be sent away is sent forth thus. But of the other goat he says, "And he shall slay the goat of the sin-offering of the people before the Lord, and shall bring of its blood within the veil, and shall sprinkle the blood upon the base of the altar, and shall make atonement upon the holy things from the uncleannesses of the sons of Israel and from their wrongdoings concerning all their sins." That Moses knew the modes of the sacrifices, then, is plain somewhere through what has been said. But that he did not think them unclean, as you do, hear again from his words: "And the soul who shall eat of the flesh of the sacrifice of salvation, which is the Lord's, and his uncleanness is upon him, that soul shall perish from his people." So scrupulous was Moses himself about the eating of holy things.

It is fitting now to recall what went before, for the sake of which these things too were said. For why, having deserted us, do you not love the law of the Jews nor abide by what is said by it? Some sharp-sighted man will at once say: "Neither do the Jews sacrifice." But I will convict him of being terribly dim-sighted: first, that not even any of the other things customary among the Jews is kept in guard by you either; and second, that the Jews do sacrifice in their houses, and even now still eat all things sacred and pray before they sacrifice and give the right shoulder as first-fruits to the priests; but, being deprived of the temple, or, as it is their custom to say, of the sanctuary, they are kept from offering the first-fruits of the sacrifices to God. But you who have found the new sacrifice, and need nothing of Jerusalem, in return for what do you not sacrifice? And yet this I have said to you superfluously, since at the outset it was said by me wishing to show that the Jews agree with the nations except in supposing one god only. For that is their own, but foreign to us, since in everything else we somehow have things in common—temples, sacred precincts, altars, purifications, certain observances, about which we differ from one another either not at all or in small matters . . .

For what reason are you, in respect of diet, not pure like the Jews, but say that one ought to eat all things like the herbs of the field, trusting Peter, because, they say, he said, "What God has cleansed, do not you call common"? What proof is this, that of old God thought certain things defiled, but has now made them clean? For Moses, marking among the four-footed beasts all that divides the hoof, he says, and chews the cud, says that it is clean, and that what is not such is unclean. If, then, the swine has now, from the vision of Peter, gained chewing the cud, let us believe him; for it is truly a marvel if, after the vision of Peter, it gained this. But if that man lied about having seen this revelation—to speak as you do—at the tanner's, why should we so quickly believe in matters so great? For what hard thing did Moses lay upon you, if he forbade you, besides swine, to eat the winged and the sea creatures, declaring that these too were cast out by God along with those, and had appeared unclean?

But why do I make long speeches about the things said by them, when it is possible to see whether they have any strength? For they say that God laid down the second law upon the first. For the former, they say, came to be for a season, circumscribed by fixed times, but this latter appeared later because the law of Moses was circumscribed by time and place. That they say this falsely I will show plainly, bringing forward from Moses not ten only but countless testimonies, where he calls the law eternal. Hear now from Exodus: "And this day shall be for you a memorial, and you shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations; an eternal ordinance, you shall keep it a feast. And from the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses." . . . Many such things still being passed over, from which I have declined to call the law of Moses eternal because of their number—but do you show where the saying afterward ventured by Paul is stated, that "Christ is the end of the law." Where did God promise the Hebrews another law beside the one laid down? It is nowhere, nor any correction of the one laid down. For hear Moses again: "You shall not add to the word which I command you, and you shall not take away from it. Keep the commandments of the Lord your God, as many as I command you this day"; and, "Cursed is everyone who does not abide in all things." But you thought the taking away and adding to the things written in the law a small matter, while transgressing it entirely you thought altogether more manly and great-souled, looking not to truth but to what is plausible to all . . .

But you are so unhappy that you have not even abided by the things handed down to you by the apostles; and these too were worked into something worse and more impious by those who came after. For Jesus neither Paul dared to call God, nor Matthew nor Luke nor Mark. But the worthy John, perceiving that already a great multitude in many of the cities of the Greeks and of Italy had been taken by this disease, and hearing, I think, that the tombs of Peter and Paul were being honoured—secretly, indeed, but still hearing it—was the first who dared to say it. And after saying a little about John the Baptist, returning again to the Word proclaimed by him, he says, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us"; but how, he does not say, being ashamed. Nowhere does he call him either Jesus or Christ, so long as he calls him God and Word; but, stealing, as it were, gently and secretly upon our ears, he says that John the Baptist set forth this testimony on behalf of Christ Jesus—that this is he whom one must have believed to be God the Word. But that John says this about Jesus Christ, I myself do not deny; and yet it seems to some of the impious that Jesus is one Christ and the Word proclaimed by John another. Yet it is not so. For him whom he himself says is God the Word, this one he says was recognized by John the Baptist to be Christ Jesus. Consider, then, how cautiously, gently, and stealthily he brings into the drama the crowning point of impiety; and he is so crafty and deceitful that he draws back again, adding, "No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him." Is this one, then, the God the Word who became flesh, the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father? And if it is the same—as I think—you too, no doubt, have seen God. For "he dwelt among you, and you beheld his glory." Why, then, do you add that "no one has ever seen God"? For you have seen, if not the Father God, yet God the Word. But if the only-begotten Son is one, and God the Word another, as I have heard from some of your sect, it seems that not even John dares this any longer.

But this evil took its beginning from John; and all that you have further invented after this, bringing in many fresh corpses upon the old corpse—who could loathe it as it deserves? You have filled everything with tombs and sepulchres, and yet nowhere is it said among you to grovel at the tombs and pay them court. But you have advanced so far in wickedness that for this you think you ought not even to hear the words of Jesus the Nazarene. Hear, then, what he says about the sepulchres: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs; outside the tomb appears beautiful, but within it is full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness." If, then, Jesus said the tombs are full of uncleanness, how do you call upon God upon them? . . . These things, then, being so, on whose behalf do you grovel at the sepulchres? Do you wish to hear the cause? It is not I who would say it, but Isaiah the prophet: "In the tombs and in the caves they sleep for the sake of dreams." Consider, then, how ancient this work of trickery was among the Jews—to sleep in the tombs for the sake of dreams. Which indeed it is likely that your apostles too, after the death of their teacher, took up and handed down to you from the beginning, to the first who believed, and that they themselves practised trickery more skilfully than you, and showed to those after them the public workshops of this trickery and abomination. You, then, practise the things which God from the beginning loathed, both through Moses and through the prophets, but you have refused to bring victims to the altar and to sacrifice. "For fire," they say, "does not come down, consuming the sacrifices, as in the time of Moses." This happened once in the time of Moses, and again, after many years, in the time of Elijah the Tishbite. Since that Moses himself thinks one ought to bring in fire from elsewhere, and Abraham the patriarch yet before him, I will show in brief . . .

And not this only, but, the sons of Adam offering first-fruits to God, "God looked," he says, "upon Abel and upon his gifts; but upon Cain and upon his sacrifices he gave no heed. And it grieved Cain exceedingly, and his countenance fell. And the Lord God said to Cain, Why have you become very grieved, and why has your countenance fallen? If you offer rightly, but do not divide rightly, have you not sinned?" Do you long to hear, then, what their offerings were? "And it came to pass after days, Cain brought of the fruits of the earth a sacrifice to the Lord; and Abel, he also brought of the firstborn of the sheep and of their fat." "Yes," they say, "it was not the sacrifice, but the dividing, that he blamed in Cain, saying, If you offer rightly, but do not divide rightly, have you not sinned?" This one of the very wise bishops said to me; but he was deceiving first himself, and then the others also. For when he was asked in what way the dividing was blameworthy, he could not explain, nor even talk frigidly with me. Seeing him at a loss, I said, "This very thing which you say, God rightly blamed. For the eagerness was equal on both sides, in that both supposed they ought to bring gifts and sacrifices to God; but as to the dividing, the one hit the mark, the other missed it. How, and in what way? Since, of the things on earth, some are ensouled and some soulless, and the ensouled are more honourable than the soulless to the living God and the cause of life, inasmuch as they have a share of life and of a soul more akin to him—for this reason God rejoiced over him who brought the perfect sacrifice."

But now I must take it up again with them. For why are you not circumcised? "Paul," they say, "said that circumcision of the heart, but not of the flesh, was given to Abraham who believed." Nay, he did not still say the things according to the flesh, and one must believe the words proclaimed by him and by Peter, which are not impious. But hear again that the circumcision according to the flesh God is said to have given for a covenant and for a sign to Abraham: "And this is the covenant which you shall keep between me and you and between your seed throughout your generations. And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be for a sign of covenant between me and you and between me and your seed." . . . Since, then, he has commanded indisputably that the law ought to be kept, and has hung up penalties for those who transgress a single commandment, you, who have transgressed them all together, what manner of defence will you find? For either Jesus will speak falsely, or you are altogether and in every way no keepers of the law. "The circumcision shall be in your flesh," says Moses. Disregarding this, they say, "We are circumcised in our hearts." Quite so; for there is no evildoer among you, no wicked man—so do you circumcise your hearts! "We cannot keep the unleavened bread and make the Passover," they say; "for Christ was sacrificed once for us." Very well; then did he forbid the eating of unleavened bread? And yet, by the gods, I am one of those who shrink from keeping festival with the Jews, but I ever worship the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, who, being themselves Chaldeans, of a sacred and theurgic race, learned circumcision while sojourning among the Egyptians, but reverenced a god who was gracious to me and to those who reverence him as Abraham reverenced him—being himself very great and mighty, but in no way belonging to you. For you do not even imitate Abraham, raising altars to him and building sacrificial places and serving him, as he did, with sacred rites. For Abraham sacrificed, as we too do, always and continually. And he used the divination of shooting stars—Greek, perhaps, this too. And he took auguries to a greater degree. And he had even the steward of his house skilled in omens. But if any of you disbelieves, the very things said about these to Moses will show it plainly: "And after these words the word of the Lord came to Abraham, saying in a vision of the night: Fear not, Abraham, I shield you; your reward shall be very great. And Abraham says, Master, what will you give me? For I am being released childless, and the son of Masek, born in my house, shall inherit me. And straightway a voice of God came to him, saying: This one shall not inherit you, but he who shall come forth from you, he shall inherit you. And he led him out, and said to him: Look up to heaven and number the stars, if you are able to count them. And he said, So shall your seed be. And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness."

Tell me here, for what reason did the angel or god who delivered the oracle lead him out and show him the stars? For did he not know, while indoors, how great is the multitude of the stars that ever appear and twinkle by night? But, I think, wishing to show him the shooting stars, that he might furnish a manifest proof of his words—the verdict of heaven that accomplishes and ratifies all things. And lest anyone suppose such an interpretation forced, I will confirm it by setting beside it what follows. For it is written next: "And he said to him, I am the God who led you out of the land of the Chaldeans, so as to give you this land to inherit it. And he said, Master Lord, by what shall I know that I shall inherit it? And he said to him, Take me a heifer of three years and a she-goat of three years and a ram of three years and a turtledove and a pigeon. And he took for him all these and divided them in the midst, and set them face to face with one another; but the birds he did not divide. And birds came down upon the divided pieces, and Abraham sat down with them."

Do you see the foretelling of the angel that appeared, or rather of God, confirmed through the art of augury—not, as among you, by the way, but with the divination accomplished by means of sacrifices? And he says that by the flight of the birds he showed the promise to be sure. And he accepts the faith of Abraham, adding that faith without truth seems to be a kind of folly and senselessness. And the truth it is not possible to see from a bare word, but there must follow upon the words some manifest sign, which, when it has come to pass, will confirm the prediction made about the future . . .

One pretext for your ease in this matter is left to you—that it is not lawful to sacrifice for those who have come to be outside Jerusalem; and yet Elijah sacrificed on Mount Carmel, and not in the holy city.