Against Celsus 6.37

He supposes also that we, interpreting the cross figuratively, invented the tree of life; and, consistently with his own error about this, he says that if that man had happened to be thrown down a cliff, or pushed into a pit, or strangled with a noose, there would have been invented a cliff of life above the heavens, or a pit of resurrection, or a rope of immortality. And again he says that if the tree of life had been invented because he was a carpenter, it would have followed that, had he been a cobbler, something would be said about holy leather; had he been a stonemason, about a blessed stone; had he been a blacksmith, about iron of love. Who, then, does not at once see the cheapness of his accusation, as he reviles people whom he professed to convert as being deceived? Next he says things that fit those who invented the lion-shaped, ass-headed, and serpent-shaped archons, and anyone who has told similar myths to theirs, but not those of the Church. For truly even a drunken old woman, lulling a child to sleep, would have been ashamed to sing and whisper to the child such a myth as those who invented the ass-headed archons and the speeches, so to call them, at each gate. But Celsus does not know the teachings of those of the Church, which very few have trained themselves to understand, those who have devoted their whole life, according to Jesus' commandment, to searching “the Scriptures,” and have laboured over the investigation of the meaning of the sacred writings more than the Greek philosophers laboured to acquire some supposed knowledge.