Against Celsus 2.8

He says that "many others too, of the same kind as Jesus, would appear to those who wish to be deceived." Then let Celsus's Jew show not many, nor even a few, but even one such as Jesus was, bringing to the human race, with the power that was in him, a teaching and doctrines useful for life, and turning people from the flood of sins. He says that "this charge is brought against the Jews by those who believe in Christ, that they have not believed in Jesus as God"; about this too we have already made our defense above, showing at the same time in what way we understand him as God and in what respect we call him man. "But how," he says, "would we, who made known to all men that one would come from God to punish the unrighteous, dishonor him when he came?" To answer this, since it is quite silly, does not seem to me reasonable. It is as if someone else were to say: "How could we who taught self-control do anything licentious, or we who advocate justice do wrong?" For as those things are found among human beings, so it was human that those who said they believed the prophets, who spoke of the Christ who would come, disbelieved the one who came according to the prophecies. And if we must add another reason, we will say that the prophets foretold this very thing. Isaiah, at any rate, clearly says: "Hearing you will hear and will not understand, and seeing you will see and will not perceive; for the heart of this people has grown fat," and so on. And let them tell us to whom, hearing and seeing, it is prophesied that they will not understand what is said and will not see what is seen in the way they ought, if not to the Jews. It is clear, then, that seeing Jesus they did not see who he was, and hearing him they did not understand from what he said the divinity in him, which transferred God's visitation of the Jews to those from the nations who believe in him. So one can see after the coming of Jesus that the Jews have been wholly abandoned and have nothing of what was formerly thought venerable among them, not even any sign that there is some divinity among them. For there are no longer prophets or wonders, of which traces to some extent are found among Christians, and some even "greater"; and, if we are to be believed when we say it, we too have seen them. Celsus's Jew says: "Why did we dishonor the one we proclaimed beforehand? Was it so that we might be punished more than others?" To this too one can say that because of their unbelief in Jesus and all the other insults they heaped on him, the Jews will suffer more than others not only at the judgment in which we believe, but have already suffered. For what nation has been exiled from its own capital and from the place proper to its ancestral worship except the Jews alone? And they have suffered this as the most wretched of peoples, though they sinned much, for nothing so much as for what they dared against our Jesus.