Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Origen/Origen Against Celsus/Book VI/Chapter XXI

Chapter XXI.

The Scriptures which are current in the Churches of God do not speak of &#8220;seven&#8221; heavens, or of any definite number at all, but they do appear to teach the existence of &#8220;heavens,&#8221; whether that means the &#8220;spheres&#8221; of those bodies which the Greeks call &#8220;planets,&#8221; or something more mysterious.&#160; Celsus, too, agreeably to the opinion of Plato, asserts that souls can make their way to and from the earth through the planets; while Moses, our most ancient prophet, says that a divine vision was presented to the view of our prophet Jacob, &#8212;a ladder stretching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon it, and the Lord supported upon its top,&#8212;obscurely pointing, by this matter of the ladder, either to the same truths which Plato had in view, or to something greater than these.&#160; On this subject Philo has composed a treatise which deserves the thoughtful and intelligent investigation of all lovers of truth.