is it necessary that I should relate to you, who already know well, of what kind were the actions of each of those who were called the sons of Jupiter; I need only say, that the writings in which they are recorded, tend only to corrupt and pervert the minds of those who learn them; for all take a pride in being the imitators of the gods ****** g ut jf we say t kat he [Jesus] was begotten of God, in a manner far different from ordinary generation, being the Word of God, as we have before said, let this be considered a correspondence with your own tenets, when ye call Mercury the word who bears messages from God. And if any one objects to us that He was crucified; this too is a point of correspondence with those whom ye call the sons of Jupiter, and yet allow to have suffered ****** Again, if we affirm that he was born of a virgin; let this be considered a point in which he agrees with what you (fabulously) ascribe to Perseus. And whereas we say that he made those whole, who were lame, palsied and blind from their birth, and raised the dead; in this too we ascribe to him actions similar to those which are said to have been performed by Esculapius. Justin Martyr's Apology I, 28, 29, 30.
We thus see that the heathen gods and heroes whose father was Jupiter, the Christian Messiah whose father was the holy spirit and the traditional "giants" whose fathers were angels, were, in the eyes of at least one Church Father but different aspects of the same underlying principle the possibility of marital union between dwellers in the unseen world and dwellers upon the earth, for the purpose of begetting children. Today, however, we look upon the story of virgin born Perseus as fabulous.[1] But the ancient heathen opponents of Justin seem to have accorded a scant respect to the story of the virgin-born Jesus as we do to the story of virgin-born Perseus. Now to laugh to scorn the birth of Perseus from the occult union of God with one virgin, and then to accept without question the birth of Jesus from the occult union of God with another virgin, is somewhat inconsistent. On strictly logical grounds, if one story be false, so may the other be false; if one be true, so may the other be true. But Perseus is only one of many virgin-born heroes or gods. We find thesechildren
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