The ignominy of the life of Jesus was evidence to Celsus of the falsity of his claim to be God's son. He bitterly taunts Christians with following a child of shame--"God's would not be a body like yours--nor begotten as you were begotten, Jesus!"[45] He reviles Jesus for the Passion--"unhelped by his Father and unable to help himself."[46] He goes to the Gospels ("I know the whole story," he says[47]) and he cites incident after incident. He reproaches Jesus with seeking to escape the cross,[48] he brings forward "the men who mocked him and put the purple robe on him, the crown of thorns, and; {250} the reed in his hand";[49] he taunts him with being unable to endure his thirst upon the cross--"which many a common man will endure."[50] As to the resurrection, "if Jesus wished really to display his divine power, he ought to have appeared to the actual men who reviled him, and to him who condemned him and to all, for, of course, he was no longer afraid of any man, seeing he was dead, and, as you say, God, and was not originally sent to elude observation."[51] Or, better still, to show his Godhead, he might have vanished from the gibbet.[52] What befel Jesus, befals his followers. "Don't you see, my dear sir?" Celsus says, "a man may stand and blaspheme your daemon; and not that only, he may forbid him land and sea, and then lay hands on _you_, who are consecrated to him like a statue, bind you, march you off and impale you; and the daemon, or, as you say, the son of God, does not help you."[53] "You may stand and revile the statues of the gods and laugh. But if you tried it in the actual presence of Dionysus or Herakles, you might not get off so comfortably. But your god in his own person they spread out and punished, and those who did it have suffered nothing.... He too who sent his son (according to you) with some message or other, looked on and saw him thus cruelly punished, so that the message perished with him, and though all this time has passed he has never heeded. What father was ever so unnatural (_anosios_)? Ah! but perhaps he wished it, you say, and that was why he endured the insult. And perhaps our gods _wish_ it too, when you blaspheme them."[54]