Not without God: the lives Jesus changed
Let us see how Celsus, who professes to know everything, slanders the Jews when he says that they "worship angels and are given to sorcery, in which Moses was their instructor." Where in the writings of Moses did he find the lawgiver handing down the worship of angels? Let him say, since he professes to know the teachings of Christians and Jews. And how is there sorcery among those who have accepted the law of Moses, and who have also read, "You shall not attach yourselves to enchanters, to be defiled by them" (Leviticus 19:31)? He promises to teach next how the Jews too went astray through ignorance and were deceived. Had he found ignorance among the Jews about Jesus the Christ, in that they did not heed the prophecies about him, he would truly have taught how the Jews went astray. As it is, without even caring to imagine these things, he takes for errors of the Jews what are not errors.
Celsus promises to teach about the Jews later, but first he makes his argument about our Saviour, as the one who led the way in our coming to be Christians. He says that "he became the leader of this teaching a very few years ago, and was thought by Christians to be the Son of God." On this very point, that he came a few years ago, we shall say this. Is it without God that Jesus, wishing in so few years to sow his word and teaching, has been able to do so much that in many parts of our inhabited world not a few Greeks and barbarians, wise and foolish, have become so devoted to his word that they struggle even to death for Christianity rather than forswear him, which no one is recorded to have done for any other doctrine?
For my part, not flattering our teaching but trying to examine the facts with careful thought, I would say that not even those who heal many sick bodies reach the goal of bodily health without God. And if someone could free souls from the dissipation of vice, from licentious and unjust deeds, and from contempt for the divine, and could give as proof of such work a hundred people made better (let the argument be about that many), would not anyone reasonably say of him too that it was not without God that he had implanted in those hundred a word able to free them from so many evils? And if one who weighs these things fairly will grant that nothing better has come about among men without God, how much more confidently will he declare as much of Jesus, when he compares the former lives of many who come to his word with their later lives, and considers in how much licentiousness, how much injustice and greed each of them lived before they were "deceived", as Celsus and those who share his views say, and accepted a teaching which, as those men say, ruins human life; and how, from the time they received the word, they have become gentler, more dignified and steadier, so that some of them, for love of surpassing purity and for the sake of worshipping the divine more purely, do not even touch the sexual relations that the law permits.
Greek
Ἴδωμεν δὲ τίνα τρόπον συκοφαντεῖ Ἰουδαίους ὁ πάντ᾿ ἐπαγγελλόμενος εἰδέναι Κέλσος, λέγων αὐτοὺς σέβειν ἀγγέλους καὶ γοητείᾳ προσκεῖσθαι. ἧς ὁ Μω(??)σῆς αὐτοῖς γέγονεν ἐξηγητής. ποῦ γὰρ τῶν γραμμάτων Μω(??)σέως εὗρε τὸν νομοθέτην παραδιδόντα σέβειν ἀγγέλους. λεγέτω ὁ ἐπαγγελλόμενος εἰδέναι τὰ Χριστιανῶν καὶ Ἰουδαίων, πῶς δὲ καὶ γοητεία παρὰ τοῖς παραδεξαμένοις τὸν Μωϋσέως νόμον ἐστὶν. ἀνεγνωκόσι καὶ τὸ „τοῖς ἐπαοιδοῖς οὐ προσκολληθήσεσθε ἐκμιανθῆναι ἐν αὐτοῖς“; ἐπαγγέλλεται δὲ διδάξειν ἑξῆς, πῶς καὶ Ἰουσαῖοι ὑπὸ ἀμαθίας ἐσφάλησαν ἐξαπατώμενοι. καὶ εἰ μὲν ηὕρισκε τὴν περὶ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐν Ἰουδαίοις ἀμαθίαν. μὴ κατακούσ ασιτῶν περὶ αὐτοῦ προφητειῶν. ἀληθῶς ἂν ἐδίδαξε. πῶς ἐσφάλησαν Ἰουδαῖοι· νῦν δὲ ταῦτα οὐδὲ βουληθεὶς φαντασθῆναι τὰ μὴ σφάλματα Ἰουδαίων σφάλματα εἶναι ὑπολαμβάνει. ἐπαγγειλάμενος δ᾿ ὁ Κέλσος ὕστερον διδάξειν τὰ περὶ Ἰουδαίων. πρῶτον ποιεῖται τὸν λόγον περὶ τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν. ὡς γενομένου ἡγεμόνος τῇ καθὸ Χριστιανοί ἐσμεν γενέσει ἡμῶν. καί φησιν αὐτὸν πρὸ πάνυ ὀλίγων ἐτῶν τῆς διδασκαλίας ταύτης καθηγήσασθαι. νομισθέντα ὑπὸ Χριστιανῶν υἱὸν εἶναι τοῦ θεοῦ. καὶ περὶ αὐτοῦ δὲ τοῦ πρὸ ὀλίγων ἐτῶν αὐτὸν γεγονέναι τοιαῦτα φήσομεν· ἆρα τὸ ἐν τοσούτοις ἔτεσι βουληθέντα σπεῖραι τὸν ἑαυτοῦ λόγον καὶ διδασκαλίαν τὸν Ἰησοῦν τοσοῦτον δεδυνῆσθαι, ὡς πολλαχοῦ τῆς καθ᾿ ἡμᾶς οἰκουμένης διατεθῆναι πρὸς τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ οὐκ ὀλίγους Ἕλληνας καὶ βαρβάρους, σοφοὺς καὶ ἀνοήτους, ὥστε μέχρι θανάτου ἀγωνίζεσθαι ὑπὲρ χριστιανισμοῦ, ἵν᾿ αὐτὸν μὴ ἐξομόσωνται, ὅπερ οὐδεὶς ὑπὲρ ἄλλου δόγματος ἱστόρηται ποιεῖν, ἀθεεὶ γεγένηται; ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν οὐ κολακεύων τὸν λόγον ἀλλὰ πειρώμενος τεθεωρημένως ἐξετάζειν τὰ πράγματα φήσαιμι ἂν ὅτι οὐδ᾿ οἱ σώματα πολλὰ κάμνοντα θεραπεύοντες ἀθεεὶ τυγχάνουσι τοῦ κατὰ τὴν ὑγίειαν τῶν σωμάτων τέλους· εἰ δὲ καὶ ψυχάς τις δύναιτο ἀπαλλάττειν τῆς κατὰ τὴν κακίαν χύσεως καὶ ἀκολαστημάτων καὶ ἀδικοπραγημάτων καὶ τῆς περὶ τὸ θεῖον καταφρονήσεως, καὶ δεῖξιν διδοίη τοῦ τοιούτου ἔργου βελτιωθέντας τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἑκατὸν (ἔστω γὰρ ἐπὶ τοσούτων ὁ λόγος), οὐδὲ τοῦτον ἂν εὐλόγως φήσαι τις οὐκ ἀθεεὶ λόγον τοσούτων κακῶν ἀπαλλακτικὸν ἐμπεποιηκέναι τοῖς ἑκατόν; εἰ δ᾿ ὁ εὐγνωμόνως ταῦτα κατανοῶν συγκαταθήσεται τῷ μηδὲν κρεῖττον ἐν ἀνθρώποις γεγονέναι ἀθεεὶ. πόσῳ πλέον τὸ τοσοῦτον περὶ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ θαῤῥῶν ἀποφανεῖται, συνεξετάζων πολλῶν προσερχομένων αὐτοῦ τῷ λόγῳ ἀρχαιοτέρους βίους μεταγενεστέροις καὶ κατανοῶν, ἐν ὅσαις μὲν ἀκολασίαις ὅσαις δὲ ἀδικίαις καὶ πλεονεξίαις ἕκαστος τῶνδε ἦν. πρὶν, ὥς φησι Κέλσος καὶ οἱ τὰ αὐτὰ αὐτῷ νομίζοντες, ἀπατηθῶσι καὶ παραδέξωνται λόγον λυμαινόμενον, ὡς ἐκεῖνοι λέγουσι. τὸν τῶν ἀνθρώπων βίον, ἐξ οὗ δὲ παρειλήφασι τὸν λόγον, τίνα τρόπον γεγόνασιν ἐπιεικέστεροι καὶ σεμνότεροι καὶ εὐσταθέστεροι, ὥς τινας αὐτῶν διὰ τὸν ἔρωτα τῆς ὑπερβαλλούσης καθαρότητος καὶ διὰ τὸ καθαρώτερον θρησκεύειν τὸ θεῖον μηδὲ τῶν συγκεχωρημένων ὑπὸ τοῦ νόμου ἅπτεσθαι ἀφροδισίων;