R. Joseph Hoffmann's translation of Celsus: On the True Doctrine [a review and post-script]

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.

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.

MY AMITYVILLE HORROR - A Film Review

After the DVD player on my computer stopped working last night, midway through THE HORROR OF DRACULA, I decided to jump on to Netflix, and watch something.

I realised that MY AMITYVILLE HORROR, a documentary featuring Daniel Lutz, one of the three children at the Amityville hauntings, was now on Netflix and of course, I had to watch it.

I'm always up for a good ghost story, but I've never believed the story of the Amityville Horror.  It's always seemed too trumped up - pardon the pun, considering some of the events said to have happened in the home - to be real.

I remember watching a rather ridiculous Amityville movie about a demonic lamp  the night before my dog was to be put to sleep when I was a child, so I have a negative association with Amityville through that - and I am very superstitious with movies, to the point that I have never watched Mark of the Devil since I was in my mid 20s and a pet bird of ours passed away the next day.

However, Amityville as such has always struck me as being a ridiculous hoax.  I read the book in my late 20s and found it tedious and unbelievable, and aside from the Jodie shot (red glowing eyes freak me out no matter what) I found the movie likewise laughable.

So I was interested in what Daniel Lutz had to say about the Amityville horror case.

It turns out that Daniel, Christopher, and Missy, the three children who lived at the Amityville house at the time of the hauntings, were not the children of George Lutz, the father.  He was in fact their stepfather, Kathy Lutz having married a man before George who fathered all three of the children.  

After Kathleen divorced the children's biological father, she dated around for a while, until meeting George Lutz, a bearded ex-marine with a temper and money.  Kathleen and George dated for a while, then got married.  As a condition for the marriage, However, George wanted to legally adopt the children.  The biological father agreed, and stepped into the shadows.

It is important to note this, because the conflict between Daniel and George is a running theme throughout this film - and Daniel is, from what is captured on film - a very troubled, tortured man, who was let down by everyone in his childhood.

Daniel and George clashed constantly, especially because according to Daniel, George had no parenting skills.  All that George had were Marine skills, and that was what he employed to discipline the children.  The situation became worse when Kathleen and the children moved in with George, and the conflicts only intensified after they moved to the infamous Amity House at 112 Ocean Avenue.

A year before the Lutzes moved in, a man in his early 20s named Ronald "Butch" DeFeo murdered his entire family with a rifle.  After murdering his family, DeFeo went to a local bar he frequented and alerted the other patrons that someone had gone in and murdered his family.  He claimed he had just discovered their bodies, and was terrified.

When he was arrested, his defense was an insanity plea, claiming that he 'heard' his family plotting against him in their thoughts.

That didn't work, and around the time that it looked like DeFeo might actually get the death sentence, the haunting transpired.  Interestingly, DeFeo's defense attorney was aware of, and involved with, the purported haunting.

Daniel, like his brother Christopher in other interviews, maintains that something did happen at the home, but that the books and movies blew it out of proportion, turning the haunting into something that it's not.

Nevertheless, his memory appears to be, at times, confused.  For example, he references a "Father Ryan" - that's the name of a Catholic priest in the film, but not the name of any priest involved in the actual case.  The priest involved was a Fr. Ralph Pecoraro, who stated that he only conversed with those involved in the Amityville situation over the telephone.

This priest supposedly went to bless the home before the Lutzes moved in, which is a strange move for non-practicing Methodists to take (at least, I think they were Methodists - I can't quite recall, but they were definitely American Protestants, not Roman Catholic), though a wise one considering the murders.

To be fair, Fr. Pecoraro has changed his story over the years (he has since passed on), claiming more involvement than he originally stated he had, up to and including the notion that he saw flies in the room the family turned into a sewing room.

However, the Father's original testimony is that he only spoke to the Lutzes over the phone once, due to the murders.

At another point, he claims to have seen a "cartoon pig" with "laser eyes" and "wolf's teeth" - the infamous "Jodie," a supposed demonic pig that was Missy's childhood friend.  It appears that "Jodie" was in reality just a neighbour's cat that liked to wander around the neighbourhood and was obese, causing Butch DeFeo to call her a "pig."

Daniel also claims that he would take a newspaper to the sewing room, and spend time killing dozens of flies, drop the newspaper, run to tell his mother, only to return and find the newspaper gone, along with the corpses of the flies.

I should note that Daniel appears very sincere.  I do not doubt a word of it - or rather, I do not doubt that he believes it.

Daniel claims that when he first moved in with George Lutz, that he was digging through George's books and found books on witchcraft, demonology, and transcendental meditation.  Christopher, Daniel's brother, has claimed that while the events in the book and film are hoaxes, that George Lutz would do transcendental meditation  but instead of chanting a mantra of peace or love, he would chant the name of a demonic entity from one of those old demonology books.

Of course, I myself own books on witchcraft, demonology, and TM, and in the film, Daniel doesn't appear to know much about the books except that they were about those subjects - no titles or details are given, except the general sort of information of "witches worshiping the devil" stuff that is in a number of books on the subject.

Daniel also claims that George could move things with his mind, and cites seeing George do just that with a wrench, when Daniel wasn't supposed to see it happen.  When he saw it, he ran to his mother, but his mother felt it was just an overactive imagination at work.

It appears that, whatever happened at 112 Ocean View, the real Amityville Horror was the behaviour of the parents.  It is evident that George Lutz was not cut out to be a father, and was abusive towards the children, and that the mother did little to protect them - in fact, Daniel said, he felt he had to be there to protect his mother.

In my own experience, I know how traumatic this can be.  While my father is supposedly my biological father (I'd prefer it not be the case), my mother was often either not around or trying to be peacemaker, forcing me to also try to protect her from him.  While George was physically abusive, my father only was once - and ceased immediately after I pulled a knife on him and told him to go ahead and hit me, I remember all too well what it made me feel like, and like Daniel said, he's still protecting the 10 year old inside.

His original father had abandoned him, his step-father was abusive and vicious (to be fair, Daniel made it clear that he instigated plenty of trouble, but that he hated George and that George was cruel - Christopher detests him as well) and, when the family became famous, Daniel (and presumably his siblings) were dropped off  at a Catholic school for a year while the parents went around the world, onto talk-shows - when they returned, Daniel says, his mother wasn't the same woman and once he was 15, she let him simply walk out and walk away from her and the rest of the family.

He traveled around the country, was homeless in the desert, worked odd jobs and got small apartments, and learned how to play the guitar.  He now works for himself in upstate New York.

In a story this tragic, you don't NEED demons.  The biological father, George, and Kathleen are evil enough without involving the denizens of hell - if you define utter selfishness as evil, which I certainly do.

I feel sad for Daniel, because he has spent his life as "the Amityville Horror guy," and he tried very hard to escape it, but he could not escape it - that's who he is, through no fault of his own.  All of the adults in his life failed him completely.

I can't say that I doubt their stories that George Lutz was involved in some less than positive spiritual activities.  I don't believe that the place was necessarily haunted, but it wouldn't surprise me if George Lutz was trying to invoke something that he shouldn't have been messing around with and that it caused some chaos for the family.

No-one living at the home after the Lutzes have reported anything of note happening, and everyone involved does seem to think that whatever was going on, George was the center of it.

There is one part of the film that is darkly comical, and that is the visit to Lorraine Warren, who is a purported demonologist and medium.  For some reason, she keeps caged roosters in her home, and the place just looks weird and creepy (and that's ME saying it - I want to live in the Addams house, and I think this place is just weird and creepy).  She has a cross with a supposed piece of the 'true cross' in it, and an image of Padre Pio with some of Padre Pio's hair taped to it - the latter of which she credits with keeping her from being destroyed at the haunted house, and claims that an apparition of Padre Pio appeared to her.

I'm a fan of Pio myself, and I borrowed one of his images or holy cards or whatever it was from Mark McDonough when I was going through the terrible spot in my life after I was put in the hospital, lost my flat, etc.  and it comforted me - but I find her story of the Padre appearing to her, etc. questionable at best.  She seems rather... loopy.

And her home does look very very creepy, and not in a fun or good way.

I genuinely enjoyed the movie as a character study of a man who had a very traumatic and miserable childhood that has led to a lot of pain in his adult life.  As an illustration of how badly parents can ruin their children by being selfish and pathetic, you couldn't do better.  As far as proving or disproving anything about the haunting - not so much.  Again, I believe that Daniel is telling the truth as he believes it.

I just don't necessarily think that anything paranormal happened there.