But this was not all. Israel had stood for monotheism and that not the monotheism of Greek philosophy, a dogma of the schools consistent with the cults of Egypt and Phrygia, with hierodules and a deified Antinous. The whole nation had been consecrated to the worship of One God, a personal God, who had, at least where Israel was concerned, no hint of philosophic Apathy. The Jew was now asked by the Christian to admit a second God--a God beside the Creator (_allos theos para ton poieten ton holon_[5])--and such a God! The Jews knew all about Jesus of Nazareth--it was absurd to try to pass him off even as the Messiah. "Sir," said Trypho, "these scriptures compel us to expect one glorious and great, who receives from 'the Ancient of Days' the 'eternal Kingdom' as 'Son of Man'; but this man of yours--your so-called Christ--was unhonoured and inglorious, so that he actually fell under the extreme curse that is in the law of God; for he was crucified."[6] The whole thing was a paradox, incapable of proof.[7] "It is an incredible thing, and almost impossible that you are trying to prove--that God endured to be begotten and to become a man."[8] The Jews had a propaganda of their own about Jesus. They sent emissaries from Palestine to supply their countrymen and pagans with the truth.[9] Celsus imagines a Jew disputing with a Christian,--a more life-like Jew, according to Harnack, than Christian apologists draw,--and the arguments he uses came from Jewish sources. Jesus was born, they said, in a village, the bastard child of a peasant woman, a poor person who worked with her hands, divorced by her husband (who was a carpenter) for adultery.[10] The father was a soldier called Panthera. As to the Christian story, what could have attracted the attention of God to her? Was she pretty? The carpenter at all events hated her and cast her out.[11] {173} ("I do not think I need trouble about this argument," is all Origen says.) Who saw the dove, or heard the voice from heaven, at the baptism? Jesus suffered death in Palestine for the guilt he had committed (_plemmelesanta_). He convinced no one while he lived; even his disciples betrayed him--a thing even brigands would not have done by their chief--so far was he from improving them, and so little ground is there for saying that he foretold to them what he should surfer. He even complained of thirst on the cross. As for the resurrection, that rests on the evidence of a mad woman (_paroistros_)--or some other such person among the same set of deceivers, dreaming, or deluded, or "wishing to startle the rest with the miracle, and by a lie of that kind to give other impostors a lead." Does the resurrection of Jesus at all differ from those of Pythagoras or Zamolxis or Orpheus or Herakles--"or do you think that the tales of other men both are and seem myths, but that the catastrophe of your play is a well-managed and plausible piece of