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Translated from the Greek original by Frederick Crombie.
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 23
Chapter LV.
The Jew continues his address to those of his countrymen who are converts, as follows: "Come now, let us grant to you that the prediction was actually uttered. Yet how many others are there who practise such juggling tricks, in order to deceive their simple hearers, and who make gain by their deception?--as was the case, they say, with Zamolxis [3335] in Scythia, the slave of Pythagoras; and with Pythagoras himself in Italy; and with Rhampsinitus [3336] in Egypt (the latter of whom, they say, played at dice with Demeter in Hades, and returned to the upper world with a golden napkin which he had received from her as a gift); and also with Orpheus [3337] among the Odrysians, and Protesilaus in Thessaly, and Hercules [3338] at Cape Taenarus, and Theseus. But the question is, whether any one who was really dead ever rose with a veritable body. [3339] Or do you imagine the statements of others not only to be myths, but to have the appearance of such, while you have discovered a becoming and credible termination to your drama in the voice from the cross, when he breathed his last, and in the earthquake and the darkness? That while alive he was of no assistance to himself, but that when dead he rose again, and showed the marks of his punishment, and how his hands were pierced with nails: who beheld this? A half-frantic [3340] woman, as you state, and some other one, perhaps, of those who were engaged in the same system of delusion, who had either dreamed so, owing to a peculiar state of mind, [3341] or under the influence of a wandering imagination had formed to himself an appearance according to his own wishes, [3342] which has been the case with numberless individuals; or, which is most probable, one who desired to impress others with this portent, and by such a falsehood to furnish an occasion to impostors like himself."
[3335] Cf. Herodotus, iv. 95.
[3336] Cf. Herodotus, ii. 122.
[3337] Cf. Herodotus, ii. 122.
[3338] Cf. Diodor., iv., Bibl. Hist.
[3339] auto somati. [See Mozley's Bampton Lectures On Miracles, 3d ed., p. 297: "That a man should rise from the dead, was treated by them (the heathen) as an absolutely incredible fact." S.]
[3340] gune paroistros.
[3341] kata tina diathesin oneiroxas.
[3342] e kata ten autou boulesin doxe peplanemene phantasiotheis.
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/fathers/origen/contra-celsum.asp?pg=23
