What Scripture says of his appearance

After this he says: “Since a divine spirit was in a body, it surely ought to have differed somewhat from the rest, in size or beauty or strength or voice or power to astonish or persuasiveness. For it is impossible that one to whom something divine belonged beyond others should differ in nothing from another. Yet this body differed in nothing from another, but, as they say, was small and ugly and ignoble.”

Here too it is plain that when he wants to accuse Jesus, he cites what comes from the Scriptures that seem to him to offer grounds for accusation, as if he believed them; but where, by the same Scriptures, one might think the opposite is said to what he takes up for his accusation, he does not even pretend to know it.

It is admitted, then, that it is written that the body of Jesus was ugly; not, however, that it was ignoble too, as he has set it out, nor is it clearly shown that it was small. The passage recorded in Isaiah, who prophesies that he would come among the many not in a comely form nor with any surpassing beauty, reads as follows: “Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced before him as a child, as a root in thirsty ground. He has no form nor glory; and we saw him, and he had no form nor beauty; but his form was without honour, falling short compared with the sons of men” (Isaiah 53:1–3).

Did Celsus, then, listen to these words because he thought them useful for accusing Jesus, but pay no attention to what is said in the forty-fourth psalm (Psalm 45 in English Bibles), and how it is said: “Gird your sword upon your thigh, O mighty one, in your comeliness and your beauty; and press on, and prosper, and reign” (Psalm 45:3–4)?