Against Celsus 1.49

After this, I do not know why, he deliberately passes over the most important heading for establishing Jesus' case—that he was prophesied by the prophets among the Jews, Moses and those after him, or even before Moses—I suppose because he could not answer the argument, just as neither the Jews nor the sects that do not want Jesus to have been prophesied can. Perhaps he did not even know the prophecies about Jesus; for otherwise, in setting down what Christians say—that many prophets foretold the coming of the Savior—he would not have attached to the Jewish character things more fitting for a Samaritan or a Sadducee to say. Nor would the Jew in the imaginary speech have said: "But a prophet of mine once said in Jerusalem that a son of God would come, the judge of the holy and the punisher of the unjust." For not one prophet only prophesied about Christ; and even if the Samaritans or Sadducees, who accept only the books of Moses, were to say that the Christ was prophesied in them, the prophecy was certainly not spoken in Jerusalem, which had not yet even been named in Moses' time. Would that all the accusers of the teaching were in such ignorance, not only of the facts but even of the bare letters of Scripture, when they accuse Christianity! Then their argument would not have even ordinary plausibility, able to draw away the unsteady, those who believe "for a while," from—not faith, but little faith. A Jew would not admit that some prophet said a son of God would come; what they say is that the Christ of God will come. And indeed they often question us at once about a son of God, as though there were no such being and none had been prophesied. We are not saying that a son of God is not prophesied, but that Celsus did not fittingly attribute to the Jewish character, which does not admit such a thing, the words, "A prophet of mine once said in Jerusalem that a son of God would come."