Jesus foretold the persecution of his followers and the fall of Jerusalem

After this Celsus’s Jew says: “Though I have much to say about what happened in Jesus’ life, things that are true and unlike what Jesus’ disciples wrote, I deliberately pass them over.” What, then, are these true things, unlike what is written in the Gospels, that Celsus’s Jew passes over? Or is he using what passes for rhetorical skill, pretending that he has something to say, when in fact he had nothing from outside the Gospel to bring forward that could strike the hearer as true and as a clear accusation against Jesus and his teaching?

He charges the disciples with having invented the claim that Jesus foreknew and foretold everything that happened to him. That this too is true, whether Celsus likes it or not, we shall show from many other things the Saviour spoke prophetically, in which he foretold what would happen to Christians even in later generations. Who would not marvel at the prediction, “You will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the nations” (Matthew 10:18), and at whatever else he foretold about the persecution of his disciples? For on account of what doctrine, among all that have arisen among men, are others punished too, so that one of Jesus’ accusers could say that Jesus, seeing impious or false doctrines being prosecuted, thought he would lend dignity to this one too by an alleged prediction about it? If anyone had to be brought “before governors and kings” (Matthew 10:18) for their doctrines, who should it have been but the Epicureans, who do away with providence altogether, and the Peripatetics as well, who say that prayers and the sacrifices offered as to the divine achieve nothing?

But someone will say that the Samaritans too are persecuted for their religion. To him we shall reply: the Sicarii are put to death because of circumcision, as men who mutilate the body contrary to the established laws and to what is granted to the Jews alone. And you will not hear a judge asking whether a Sicarius who strives to live by this supposed religion will be released if he changes his mind, but led off to death if he holds firm. No, proof of circumcision is enough to have the man who underwent it put to death. Christians alone, in keeping with what their Saviour said, “You will be brought before governors and kings for my sake” (Matthew 10:18), are allowed by the judges, right up to their last breath, once they have forsworn Christianity, sacrificed according to the common customs and taken the oath, to go home and live without danger.

See whether it is not with great authority that these words are spoken: “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; and everyone who denies me before men,” and the rest (Matthew 10:32–33). Go back with me in thought to Jesus as he says these things, and look at things prophesied that had not yet happened. See whether you would not say, if you disbelieved him, that he was talking nonsense and speaking in vain, since what he said would not come to pass; or, if you were in two minds about assenting to his words, whether you would not say: “If these things are fulfilled, and the teaching of Jesus’ words becomes established, so that governors and kings take pains to put to death those who acknowledge Jesus, then we shall believe that he says these things as one who has received great authority from God to sow this word in the human race, and who is convinced that it will prevail.”

Who will not marvel, going back in thought to him as he then taught and said, “This gospel will be preached in the whole world, as a testimony to them and to the nations” (Matthew 24:14), and seeing that, just as he said, the gospel of Jesus Christ has been preached throughout the world under heaven “to Greeks and barbarians, to wise and foolish” (Romans 1:14)? For the word spoken with power has prevailed over every kind of human nature, and no race of men can be found that has escaped receiving the teaching of Jesus.

Let Celsus’s Jew, who does not believe that Jesus foreknew all that happened to him, consider how, while Jerusalem still stood and the whole Jewish worship was carried on in it, Jesus foretold what would befall it at the hands of the Romans. For surely they will not say that Jesus’ own acquaintances and hearers handed down the teaching of the Gospels without writing and left their disciples without written records about Jesus. Now it is written in them: “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near” (Luke 21:20). At that time there were no armies at all around Jerusalem, encircling it, enclosing it and besieging it. That began while Nero was still emperor and went on until the reign of Vespasian, whose son Titus destroyed Jerusalem: as Josephus writes, on account of James the Just, the brother of Jesus who was called Christ; but as the truth shows, on account of Jesus the Christ of God.