Against Celsus 2.55

After this the Jew says to his fellow citizens who believe in Jesus: “Come now, let us even believe you that this was said. How many others tell such marvels to persuade simple hearers, making profit from their deceit? This is what they say of Zamolxis among the Scythians, the slave of Pythagoras, and of Pythagoras himself in Italy, and of Rhampsinitus in Egypt: that he even ‘played dice with Demeter’ in Hades and came up bringing ‘a golden napkin’ as ‘a gift from her’; and indeed of Orpheus among the Odrysians, Protesilaus in Thessaly, Heracles at Taenarum, and Theseus. But this must be examined: whether anyone who truly died ever rose again with the same body. Or do you think that the stories of the others are myths and seem so, while you have invented the ending of your drama becomingly or plausibly: his cry on the stake as he breathed his last, and ‘the earthquake’ and the darkness? That, although he could not help himself while alive, when dead he rose and showed the marks of his punishment: who saw this? A frantic woman, as you say, and perhaps someone else of the same sorcery, who either dreamed in a certain state of mind and, according to his own wish, had a vision in deluded fancy, which has happened to countless people, or, what is more likely, wished to astonish the rest with this marvel-mongering and by such a lie to give an opening to other beggar-priests.” Since the one saying this is a Jew, we make our defense of our Jesus as to a Jew, still applying the argument equally to Moses, and say to him: “How many others tell such marvels as Moses did, to persuade simple hearers, making profit from their deceit?” And it is more possible for one who disbelieves Moses to cite Zamolxis and Pythagoras, who told marvels, than for the Jew, who is not at all studious of Greek histories. The Egyptian, too, who disbelieves the marvels about Moses, will plausibly cite Rhampsinitus, saying that it is much more credible that he went down to Hades, played dice with Demeter, and, having snatched a golden napkin from her, showed it as a token that he had been in Hades and had come up from there, than that Moses did so, who wrote of himself that he entered “into the darkness where God was,” and that he alone drew near to God apart from the rest. For he wrote thus: “And Moses alone shall draw near to God, but the others shall not draw near.” So we, the disciples of Jesus, shall say to the Jew who says these things: “Defend yourself to us, you who accuse our faith in Jesus, and tell the Egyptian and the Greeks what you will say to the charges you have brought against our Jesus, which would first apply to Moses. And even if you strive hard to defend Moses, as indeed the account of him has a striking and clear argument, you will without noticing it, in defending Moses, have unwillingly established Jesus as more divine than Moses.”