So
whilst sick, I finished up a book I'd gotten for a WHOLE DOLLAR, by a
Roman fellow of the second century AD entitled The True Doctrine.
The fellow was a gent named Celsus, though further details are unknown. Much in conjectured, but the problem is, Celsus' identity was lost to time. As he was a writer against Christianity, his writings fell out of favour and, like many other works it was destroyed.
Our record of Celsus' work remains only in a large text by Church father Origen (who was himself a curious character) refuting it. Bear in mind that Origen wrote Contra Celsum at least 50 years after it was presumably written. A companion work promised by Celsus, on how to live one's life properly,was either never written or has otherwise been lost to history.
The work was translated by one R. Joseph Hoffmann, a humanist academic in Christian origins, Near Eastern studies, and theology, with degrees from Harvard and Oxford. Hoffmann has an interest in translating and publishing the fragments of anti-Christian polemic from the ancient world, and has also published fragments from Porphyry and Julian the Apostate.
Celsus' work is important in understand the way early intellectual Romans responded to Christianity - with mild amusement coupled with disgust and confusion. To his credit, Celsus doesn't generally traffic in some of the myths believed by Roman citizens, such as the notion that Christians were partaking in incest (due to their calling one another "brother" and "sister," even between husband and wife) or that they were cannibals.
Instead, he seems to be familiar with Christianity in its wide variety in the 2nd century CE. Christianity was not merely "belief in Christ as the son of God." It encompassed a spectrum of beliefs, from gnostic ideas to magical rites to philosophical arguments.
While Celsus retains the typical Roman citizen's disdain for Jews, women, and slaves, he seems conversant in at least some aspects of Christianity. There is evidence that he has read some of the Hebrew scriptures, and it is entirely likely that he had read some of the various Christian scriptures, though which ones can be difficult to determine at times.
Hoffmann's scholarship has come under question, because it appears that he is more interested in writing an accessible translation of Celsus rather than an accurate one. Therefore he will combine sentence fragments and ideas, presenting them as entire, complete sentences and concrete arguments rather than indicating where the sentence fragments are and the reasons behind combining them.
I can understand the argument against this sort of thing, and it does make one wonder which ideas are genuinely Celsus' and which ones are Hoffmann's, but at the same time, I've read translations of, say, the Epic of Gilgamesh that transform it from a fragmentary poem into a straight narrative.
Having owned Pritchard's book on the ANE, with the translation fragments of Gilgamesh, I must say that the Penguin translation, with the streamlined narrative, is much better for general reading.
Nevertheless, it is wise to note that the ideas and words may be "inspired" by Celsus rather than taken directly from him.
Hoffmann has published works, as I said, on other critics of Christianity, but while Celsus was published by Oxford University Press, those were published by Prometheus Books, a purported "critical thinking" publisher that is atheist but nevertheless named itself after a Greek god.
Back in my angry atheist days, I used to read a fair amount from Prometheus, but it didn't generally have a roster of acclaimed Biblical scholars. It didn't publish Borg, Crossan, Funk, Wright, etc.
It mostly concerned itself with issues regarding modern atheism, and history of atheism in the US, with some outdated works of Biblical criticism. I don't know what the academic quality of Hoffmann's later works are, but if I see them for cheap, I'll certainly give them a try. He also has a book or two out about Marcion, which also sounds like a good read.
One of the interesting aspects of Celsus' work is the reference to Jesus' father being a man named Pantera. No, he does not mean that Dimebag is Jesus' father (although Dimebag is a guitar god, he is not The God, God.)
This is one of those weird things that pops up every now and again. "Pantera" is generally taken to be a pun on Parthenos, virgin in Grk. Perhaps that's all it is (I am no expert in Greek, but "Panthera" and "Parthenos" do not sound particularly 'punny' to me), but there were soldiers by that name in the Roman Empire, and so the notion that Mary was made pregnant, not by an act of Divine fiat, but by either consensual sex or rape with a Roman soldier is technically within the realm of possibility. Certainly Celsus believed so, and he wasn't the only one.
The fellow was a gent named Celsus, though further details are unknown. Much in conjectured, but the problem is, Celsus' identity was lost to time. As he was a writer against Christianity, his writings fell out of favour and, like many other works it was destroyed.
Our record of Celsus' work remains only in a large text by Church father Origen (who was himself a curious character) refuting it. Bear in mind that Origen wrote Contra Celsum at least 50 years after it was presumably written. A companion work promised by Celsus, on how to live one's life properly,was either never written or has otherwise been lost to history.
The work was translated by one R. Joseph Hoffmann, a humanist academic in Christian origins, Near Eastern studies, and theology, with degrees from Harvard and Oxford. Hoffmann has an interest in translating and publishing the fragments of anti-Christian polemic from the ancient world, and has also published fragments from Porphyry and Julian the Apostate.
Celsus' work is important in understand the way early intellectual Romans responded to Christianity - with mild amusement coupled with disgust and confusion. To his credit, Celsus doesn't generally traffic in some of the myths believed by Roman citizens, such as the notion that Christians were partaking in incest (due to their calling one another "brother" and "sister," even between husband and wife) or that they were cannibals.
Instead, he seems to be familiar with Christianity in its wide variety in the 2nd century CE. Christianity was not merely "belief in Christ as the son of God." It encompassed a spectrum of beliefs, from gnostic ideas to magical rites to philosophical arguments.
While Celsus retains the typical Roman citizen's disdain for Jews, women, and slaves, he seems conversant in at least some aspects of Christianity. There is evidence that he has read some of the Hebrew scriptures, and it is entirely likely that he had read some of the various Christian scriptures, though which ones can be difficult to determine at times.
Hoffmann's scholarship has come under question, because it appears that he is more interested in writing an accessible translation of Celsus rather than an accurate one. Therefore he will combine sentence fragments and ideas, presenting them as entire, complete sentences and concrete arguments rather than indicating where the sentence fragments are and the reasons behind combining them.
I can understand the argument against this sort of thing, and it does make one wonder which ideas are genuinely Celsus' and which ones are Hoffmann's, but at the same time, I've read translations of, say, the Epic of Gilgamesh that transform it from a fragmentary poem into a straight narrative.
Having owned Pritchard's book on the ANE, with the translation fragments of Gilgamesh, I must say that the Penguin translation, with the streamlined narrative, is much better for general reading.
Nevertheless, it is wise to note that the ideas and words may be "inspired" by Celsus rather than taken directly from him.
Hoffmann has published works, as I said, on other critics of Christianity, but while Celsus was published by Oxford University Press, those were published by Prometheus Books, a purported "critical thinking" publisher that is atheist but nevertheless named itself after a Greek god.
Back in my angry atheist days, I used to read a fair amount from Prometheus, but it didn't generally have a roster of acclaimed Biblical scholars. It didn't publish Borg, Crossan, Funk, Wright, etc.
It mostly concerned itself with issues regarding modern atheism, and history of atheism in the US, with some outdated works of Biblical criticism. I don't know what the academic quality of Hoffmann's later works are, but if I see them for cheap, I'll certainly give them a try. He also has a book or two out about Marcion, which also sounds like a good read.
One of the interesting aspects of Celsus' work is the reference to Jesus' father being a man named Pantera. No, he does not mean that Dimebag is Jesus' father (although Dimebag is a guitar god, he is not The God, God.)
This is one of those weird things that pops up every now and again. "Pantera" is generally taken to be a pun on Parthenos, virgin in Grk. Perhaps that's all it is (I am no expert in Greek, but "Panthera" and "Parthenos" do not sound particularly 'punny' to me), but there were soldiers by that name in the Roman Empire, and so the notion that Mary was made pregnant, not by an act of Divine fiat, but by either consensual sex or rape with a Roman soldier is technically within the realm of possibility. Certainly Celsus believed so, and he wasn't the only one.
Celsus, as I recall, claimed that the Jewish community made this claim.
Roman soldiers were in the area enough, due to the constant rebellions
by the Jewish community. There is a grave of a certain Tiberius
Pantera in Germany, who was a member of the first archer cohort and was
stationed in Judea during Jesus' birth and childhood, and "Pantera" was a
common name among Roman soldiers.
The notion of a Jesus the son of Pantera crops up later in the Mishnah and in a text called the Toledoth Yeshu, a sort of "satire" on the Gospels from a Jewish perspective. These texts also relate that this Yeshua ben Pantera was viewed by the Jewish community as a sorcerer who obtained his knowledge of the magical arts from sojourns in Egypt - again, Celsus says much the same thing.
Very few scholars accept this notion, be they Christian or not. Celsus is the earliest evidence of this tradition, and whenever the patristic writers encounter it, they make claims that "Panther" was a nick-name of Joseph, or Mary's grandfather, or some other figure in Jesus' lineage.
I certainly don't advocate such a view, however, it illustrates just how odd the study of Christian origins can get, and just how much information has been lost over time.
The notion of a Jesus the son of Pantera crops up later in the Mishnah and in a text called the Toledoth Yeshu, a sort of "satire" on the Gospels from a Jewish perspective. These texts also relate that this Yeshua ben Pantera was viewed by the Jewish community as a sorcerer who obtained his knowledge of the magical arts from sojourns in Egypt - again, Celsus says much the same thing.
Very few scholars accept this notion, be they Christian or not. Celsus is the earliest evidence of this tradition, and whenever the patristic writers encounter it, they make claims that "Panther" was a nick-name of Joseph, or Mary's grandfather, or some other figure in Jesus' lineage.
I certainly don't advocate such a view, however, it illustrates just how odd the study of Christian origins can get, and just how much information has been lost over time.
