Celsus
Celsus wrote a diatribe against the Christian gospel, which
Origen preserves in his rebuttal. Celsus chided the Christians for worshipping
as God a man who died so ignobly. He reproached them for having "set
up as a god one who ended a most infamous life by a most miserable death":
"Seeing you are so eager for some novelty, how much better it would have been if you had chosen as the object of your
zealous homage some one of those who died a glorious death, and whose divinity might have received the support of some myth to perpetuate
his memory!...Might you not, then, take Epictetus, who, when his master was twisting his leg, said, smiling and unmoved, ‘You will break
my leg;’ and when it was broken, he added, ‘Did I not tell you that you would break it?’ What saying equal to these did your God utter
under suffering? If you had said even of the Sibyl, whose authority some of you acknowledge, that she was a child of God, you would have
said something more reasonable. But you have had the presumption to include in her writings many impious things, and set up as a god
one who ended a most infamous life by a most miserable death. How much more suitable than he would have been Jonah in the whale’s
belly, or Daniel delivered from the wild beasts, or any of a still more portentous kind!” (Celsus quoted by Origen, 'Against Celsus,'
Book 7, Chapter 53)
If this document's testimony to its time of composition is taken seriously, then it was written
very early. The author tells us that Jesus taught "a few years ago:"
"Jesus is the leader of their generation, in so far as they are
Christians, and a few years ago he began to teach this doctrine, being
regarded by Christians as the son of God." (Celsus, On True
Doctrine.) Origen
offers two possible dates: "And we have heard that there were two
individuals of the name of Celsus, both of whom were
Epicureans; the earlier of the two having lived in the time of Nero, but
this one in that of Adrian, and later." (Origen, Against Celsus, Book 1, Chapter 8).
The earlier of the two authors of this name discovered by Origen's
researches must have been Aulus Cornelius Celsus, the
empiricist doctor and encylopediast known to Quintilian. Quintilian himself
is given to disparaging
Christian beliefs, albeit under a veil:
"This kind of proofs is considered with reference to
all times, past, present, and future; for that she who has had a child
must have lain with a man regards the past; that there must be
waves when a strong wind has fallen on the sea, concerns the
present; and that he whose heart is wounded must die, relates
to the future. In like manner it is impossible that there can
be harvest where there has been no sowing; that a person can be
at Rome when he is at Athens; or that he who is without a scar
can have been wounded with a sword." (Quintilian, Institutes of
Oratory, Book V, Chapter
IX, 5).
However the fact that the author, when he recommends alternatives to
Christianity, is under the impression that reciting Egyptian syllables is
an effective cure for disease, points away from a practicing physician
like the first century Celsus.
The author is writing after the Jewish war, thus subsequent to 70 A.D.,
when Titus burned Jerusalem. As the reader can discover from the version of 'On True Doctrine' in the Thriceholy
Library, the text lists Antinous, beloved of Hadrian, in its catalogue of
god-men or pretended gods, indicating the latter of Origen's two candidates
for dating. Hadrian ruled in the first half of the second century,
during which time Bar Kochba revolted and revved up the estrangement between
Christians and Jews to a deadly new level. The Christians, the author informs us,
exceeded the honors paid to the deified Antinous in their worship of the
risen Christ: "They regard this Jesus, who was but a mortal body,
displaying all the infirmities and impurities belonging to the flesh, as
a god, and suppose that they act piously in so doing."
(Celsus, On True Doctrine, 'Aescupalius Appears Among Men').
Celsus' testimony confirms that Christians did worship Jesus as God; indeed the Jewish
Christians who are his principal concern and objects of address, did so. He
understands the central event of the gospels to be the incarnation, when
God came down and dwelt among men:
"The Christians say that God, having
abandoned the heavenly regions, and despising this great earth, takes up
his abode amongst themselves alone, and to themselves alone makes His
announcements, and ceases not his messages and inquiries as to how they
may become his associates for ever." (Celsus, On True Doctrine, 'Ants
and Worms').
How those who want to claim Constantine introduced these
ideas deal with this text, I don't know; by delaying its composition of
course, but you cannot delay it forever, as the text itself testifies to
an early period. It is noteworthy that Celsus never resorts to the tactic advanced by
modern 'scholars' such as Robert M. Price, of denying that Jesus ever
existed. Perhaps because it was impossible to do so?
The text as Origen found it must date from the second century; there is
no reason to suppose the reference to Hadrian's deified beloved/victim is
an interpolation. However, it does seem to incorporate earlier material.
Celsus personates a Jew admonishing Jewish Christians. He is not in fact a
Jew, and indeed does not respect Jews. Naturally an antagonist would wish
to 'divide and conquer;' but at the time he is writing the split between
the church and the synagogue was already final and irrevocable. Can this
material come from a pamphlet he happened upon in his researches? The
'Jewish' author, real or imagined, is writing at a time when
Christianity's center of gravity still lay in the Jewish community, which
points to a date of authorship prior to the final rupture between church
and synagogue, in other words, before Hadrian and before Celsus. He says
to them,
"You have forsaken the law of your fathers, in consequence of
your minds being led captive by Jesus. You have been most ridiculously
deceived, and have become deserters to another name and to another mode of
life. What induced you, my fellow-citizens, to abandon the law of your
fathers, and to allow your minds to be led captive by him with whom we
have just conversed, and thus be most ridiculously deluded, so as to
become deserters from us to another name, and to the practices of another
life?" (Celsus, On True Doctrine).
This calls to mind circumstances of the early years as reported in the book of Acts.
Celsus' own understanding of Christianity is that it is a secession from
Judaism: "The Jews suffered from the adherents of Jesus, who believed in
him as the Christ, the same treatment which they had inflicted upon the
Egyptians; and the cause which led to the new state of things in either
instance was rebellion against the state." Just as Moses led his people
out of Egypt, so the Christians had come out of Israel. But aside from the
fact that they didn't come out, they were kicked out, during the times of
Hadrian the church's center of gravity had shifted decidedly to the
Gentile side; this was where growth was occurring. 'The Jew,' if so he
was, doesn't seem to realize that.
Whether the pamphlet was in fact written by a Jew, or by the
government, it speaks of the events of Jesus' life, and death, as recent:
"Yesterday and the day before, when we visited with punishment the man who
deluded you, you became apostates from the law of your fathers." (Celsus,
On True Doctrine). By Celsus' own day, Bar Kochba, the false Messiah, had
massacred Christians wherever he found them, and the synagogue routinely
anathematized them in its corporate prayers. Driving a wedge between these
two groups was decidedly beside the point. So the fact that his Jew
wants to scold Jewish Christians for deserting the fold is a little bit
anachronistic. While it is certainly possible that Celsus invented his
Jewish speaker, and composed his words, it is not clear why he would have invented just this
speaker making just these allegations, which are a little bit out of date;
perhaps the material is actually older. At the time this pamphlet was
authored, whenever that was, Christians were fully understood to worship
Jesus as God: "Now, of a truth, he who shared a man’s table would not be
guilty of conspiring against him; but after banqueting with God, he became
a conspirator." (Celsus, On True Doctrine).
It is noteworthy that, as Origen points out, even a vehement critic
like Celsus will not venture to deny the authenticity of the gospel
record: "For they will not maintain that the acquaintances and pupils of
Jesus Himself handed down His teaching contained in the Gospels without
committing it to writing, and left His disciples without the memoirs of
Jesus contained in their works." (Origen, Against Celsus, 2:13). It was
left to the modern era to make this 'discovery,' that the gospels were
written by anonymous parties who never knew the Lord, not including the
tax-collector Matthew and the beloved John.
When the atheists overstate the textual difficulties that come with the wealth of
manuscript evidence for the New Testament, which is more a problem of
over-abundance than of scarcity,— as is sometimes pointed out, it is like
having 1,010 pieces to a 1,000 piece puzzle,— people sometimes point
out that, if there were no surviving early manuscripts at all, the New
Testament could very nearly be completely reconstructed from quotes
embedded in the early church authors. Not only that, but if the gospel
were lost altogether, it could in its outlines be reconstructed from
Celsus alone. He understands that the Christians, even Jewish Christians,
worship Jesus as God. He also understands that the Christian gospel
teaches salvation by faith. Of course he despises this teaching, but he
has noticed it. This is interesting, because while Paul very plainly
states this teaching in his letters, many of the early church authors seem
scarcely to have noticed it. Apparently the preaching you heard on
street-corners was not so non-observant.
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