II.  What Celsus was in the second century, Porphyry became in the third.  His work, which was a large and formal treatise against the Christian religion, is not extant.  We must be content, therefore, to gather his objections from Christian writers, who have noticed in order to answer them; and enough remains of this species of information to prove completely, that Porphyry’s animadversions were directed against the contents of our present Gospels, and of the Acts of the Apostles; Porphyry considering that to overthrow them was to overthrow the religion.  Thus he objects to the repetition of a generation in Saint Matthew’s genealogy; to Matthew’s call; to the quotation of a text from Isaiah, which is found in a psalm ascribed to Asaph; to the calling of the lake of Tiberius a sea; to the expression of Saint Matthew, “the abomination of desolation;” to the variation in Matthew and Mark upon the text, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness,” Matthew citing it from Isaias, Mark from the Prophets; to John’s application of the term “Word;” to Christ’s change of intention about going up to the feast of Tabernacles (John vii. 8); to the judgment denounced by Saint Peter upon Ananias and Sapphira, which he calls an “imprecation of death.” (Jewish and Heathen Test.  Vol. iii. p. 166, et seq.)

The instances here alleged serve, in some measure, to show the nature of Porphyry’s objections, and prove that Porphyry had read the Gospels with that sort of attention which a writer would employ who regarded them as the depositaries of the religion which he attacked.  Besides these specifications, there exists, in the writings of ancient Christians, general evidence that the places of Scripture upon which Porphyry had remarked were very numerous.

In some of the above-cited examples, Porphyry, speaking of Saint Matthew, calls him your Evangelist; he also uses the term evangelists in the plural number.  What was said of Celsus is true likewise of Porphyry, that it does not appear that he considered any history of Christ except these as having authority with Christians.

III.  A third great writer against the Christian religion was the emperor Julian, whose work was composed about a century after that of Porphyry.

In various long extracts, transcribed from this work by Cyril and Jerome, it appears, (Jewish and Heathen Test. vol. iv. p. 77, et seq.) that Julian noticed by name Matthew and Luke, in the difference between their genealogies of Christ that he objected to Matthew’s application of the prophecy, “Out of Egypt have I called my son” (ii. 15), and to that of “A virgin shall conceive” (i. 23); that he recited sayings of Christ, and various passages of his history, in the very words of the evangelists; in particular, that Jesus healed lame and blind people, and exorcised demoniacs in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany; that he alleged that none of Christ’s disciples ascribed to him the creation of the world, except