ℹ️ This corpus has no verse-level morphological tagging. Lemmas come mainly from word-level tagging of other books in the same language (not from this verse), falling back to dictionary form-matching for the rest. Rare homographs can still be misread; verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
But those who hand down the myths fashioned by the poets offer no proof to the young men who learn them; and we show that these things were spoken for the deceit and leading astray of the human race, by the operation of the wicked demons. For having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that Christ would come, and that the impious among men would be punished by fire, they put forward many to be called sons of Zeus, supposing they would be able to bring it about that men should regard the things concerning Christ as a marvelous tale, like the things told by the poets. And these things were said both among the Greeks and among all the nations, wherever they heard rather that the prophets were proclaiming beforehand that Christ would be believed in. But that even when they heard the things said through the prophets they did not understand them accurately, but, like men in error, imitated the things concerning our Christ, we will make plain. Moses the prophet, as we said before, was older than all the writers, and through him, as we declared beforehand, it was prophesied thus: "There shall not fail a ruler from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until he come for whom it is reserved; and he shall be the expectation of the nations, binding his colt to the vine, washing his robe in the blood of the grape." Hearing, then, these prophetic words, the demons said that Dionysus had been born a son of Zeus, and handed down that he was the discoverer of the vine, and they record an ass among his mysteries, and they taught that, having been torn in pieces, he ascended into heaven. And since by the prophecy of Moses it was not expressly indicated whether he who was to come is the Son of God, and whether, riding upon a colt, he would remain on earth or ascend into heaven, and since the word "colt" could signify the foal of an ass and of a horse, not knowing whether the one proclaimed beforehand would come leading the foal of an ass as a symbol of his coming, or that of a horse, and whether he is the Son of God, as we said, or of a man, they said that Bellerophon too, a man born of men, had ascended into heaven upon the horse Pegasus. And since they heard it said through the other prophet, Isaiah, that he would be born of a virgin and ascend by himself into heaven, they put forward the story of Perseus. And when they learned that it was said, as was foretold in the previously written prophecies, "strong as a giant to run his course," they alleged Heracles to be strong and to have wandered over the whole earth. And again, when they learned it was prophesied that he would heal every disease and raise the dead, they brought in Asclepius.