Celsus

Wrote around 170CE-180CE

• Celsus had a very unflattering view of Christianity.
• He was not a contemporary and was born long after Jesus.
• He said that Jews claim Jesus was the son of a Roman soldier and that he performed miracles by sorcery.
• He also wrote "Jesus himself does not deny that these works at least are not at all divine, but are the acts of wicked men"

Origen quoting Celsus in Contra Celsus Book 1 Chapter 32

"when she was pregnant she was turned out of doors by the carpenter to whom she had been betrothed, as having been guilty of adultery, and that she bore a child to a certain soldier named Panthera;"

Origen quoting Celcus in Contra Celsus Book 2 Chapter 49

O light and truth! he distinctly declares, with his own voice, as ye yourselves have recorded, that there will come to you even others, employing miracles of a similar kind, who are wicked men, and sorcerers; and Satan. So that Jesus himself does not deny that these works at least are not at all divine, but are the acts of wicked men; and being compelled by the force of truth, he at the same time not only laid open the doings of others, but convicted himself of the same acts. Is it not, then, a miserable inference, to conclude from the same works that the one is God and the other sorcerers? Why ought the others, because of these acts, to be accounted wicked rather than this man, seeing they have him as their witness against himself? For he has himself acknowledged that these are not the works of a divine nature, but the inventions of certain deceivers, and of thoroughly wicked men.