se of his respondent; but a careful study of the fragments
embedded in the text of Origen will perhaps restore the framework of the
original sufficiently to enable us to perceive the points of his
opposition to Christianity, and the manner in which his philosophy stood
in the way of the reception of it. (14)

Celsus commences by introducing a Jewish rabbi to attack Christianity from
the monotheistic stand-point of the earlier faith.(147) The Jew is first
made to direct his criticism against the documents of Christianity, and
then the facts narrated.(148) He points out inconsistencies in the gospel
narratives of the genealogy of Christ;(149) utters the most blasphemous
calumnies concerning the incarnation;(150) turns the narrative of the
infancy into ridicule;(151) imputes our Saviour's miracles to magic;(152)
attacks his divinity;(153) and concentrates the bitterest raillery on the
affecting narrative of our blessed Lord's most holy passion. Each fact of
deepening sorrow in that divine tragedy, the betrayal,(154) the mental
anguish, the sacred agony,(155) is made the subject of remarks
characterized no less by coarseness of taste and unfairness, than to the
Christian mind by irreverence. Instead of his heart being touched by the
majesty of our Saviour's sorrow, Celsus only finds an argument against the
divine character of the adorable sufferer.(156) The wonders accompanying
Christ's death are treated as legends;(157) the resurrection regarded as
an invention or an optical delusion.(158)

After Celsus has thus made the Jew the means of a ruthless attack on
Christianity, he himself directs a similar one against the Jewish religion
itself.(159) He goes to the origin of their history; describes the Jews as
having left Egypt in a sedition;(160) as being true types of the
Christians in their ancient factiousness;(161) considers Moses to be only
on a level with the early Greek legislators;(162) regards Jewish rites
like circumcision to be borrowed from Egypt; charges anthropomorphism on
Jewish theology,(163) and declines allowing the allegorical interpretation
in explanation of it;(164) examines Jewish prophecy, parallels it with
heathen oracles,(165) and claims that the goodness not the truth of a
prophecy ought to be considered;(166) points to the ancient idolatry of
the Jews as proof that they were not better than other nations;(167) and
to the destruction of Jerusalem as proof that they were not special
favourites of heave