Origen’s ‘Celsus’: Questions of Identity (2024)

2.1. ‘Celsus’ and His Alleged Epicureanism

2.2. ‘Celsus’ and the Authority of Plato

Whatever Origen knew about the author of the attack on Christians, his reply seems firmly based on the assumption that he would accept the authority of Plato above all other philosophers. Consequently Plato, Platonists or Platonic doctrine are mentioned far more often in Cels than language associated with other schools (see Table 1).

Authoritative texts include the doctrinal passages in three of the Epistles, the second, sixth and seventh;6 purple passages from the Phaedo,7 Symposium (Penia and Poros at 4.39), Theaetetus (4.62), and Phaedrus (4.40, 6.17, 6.19); material directed against Homer and poetic myths in the Republic (4.36, 4.50); and material from both the Atlantis episode (4.20–21, 4.62) and the exposition of the creation (4.54, 4.56, 4.62, 6.10, 7.42) in the Timaeus. Other late dialogues used are the Philebus (1.25 and 4.48 on Tim. 12C) and Laws (6.15 on 715E–716A). Many of these passages appear to be used at his opponent’s instigation, and, with the exception of the Epistles,8 the list could easily have come from a work of Plutarch. So, while Origen feels able to attack ‘Celsus’ as an inconsistent Epicurean, he nevertheless gives the impression that ‘Celsus’ regarded Plato as a key authority, and defends the Christians with reference principally to the authority of Plato too. What is going on here?

2.3. Names and Shadow-Boxing: Polemics against Whom?

There is another important question that is related to this: why would Origen choose to answer an attack on the Christians that he believes to have been written two or more generations before this? Have the issues not changed? Has something suddenly happened to bring a previously obscure text, for which Origen has no great respect, into the limelight? In general, polemics between belief systems involve fairly rapid reactions between critics and defenders, but Origen seems to suggest that he is writing an eight-book work to rebut criticism that (a) was generations old, and (b) had never accorded with the author’s own beliefs anyway. It is one thing to mention such an obscure text at appropriate points in the course of a general defence of Christianity against its critics, and quite another to engage in an almost personal prolonged exchange with a figure whom he believed to be long dead. An explanation is required.

The name ‘Celsus’ has been placed in inverted commas because I now doubt whether it was ever the real name of the author, and suspect that Origen himself had legitimate doubts about it too. It serves his polemical purpose well to accept the attribution to ‘Celsus’, to note that this has hitherto been the name for Epicurean authors, and to deduce that the author has been utterly inconsistent in what he writes. While Origen would have been conscious that false attributions can occur, as for example was known to Diogenes Laertius (Vitae philosophorum 2.124, 3.62), he would also have known that certain proponents of some kind of Platonism had been known by different names at different times or in different situations. One of the most important sources for the way such alternative names had arisen is Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus, which details his own transition from Malc[h]us to Basileus (Vita Plotini 17) before “Porphyrius” finally sticks.9 Porphyry also mentions other names that had been used for individuals within the schools of Numenius (Vita 17) and Plotinus (Vita 7). Another significant source for alternative names is Lucian, whose Death of Peregrinus suggests that besides the real name mentioned in the title, the butt of Lucian’s humour had also been known as ‘Proteus’, ‘Second Socrates’, and finally ‘Phoenix’ (Tarrant 2009, pp. 18–20). This author also detailed several other cases where a name by which we know a philosopher or philosophic author may well have been an adopted name (Tarrant 2009). Lucian, of course, is himself able to adopt a kind of nom de plume or alter ego (such as ‘Lycinus’ or ‘Menippus’) on occasions. He may even have been responsible for turning ‘Albinus’ into ‘Nigrinus’ in the Nigrinus, though he does address Cronius, the friend of Numenius, by his actual name in the death of Peregrinus. So, when we meet with the Celsus who was the addressee of Lucian’s The Lover of Lies, which could easily be a real name, it is not surprising that this should seem to offer a possible identification for the author of the True Logos.10 But what confidence should one have that Lucian’s ‘Celsus’ was a real person?

Later, one meets one of the most celebrated cases of a false authorial name, when the author we know as pseudo-Dionysius pretends to be Dionysius the Areopagite, a figure mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (17:34). A well-known case of a nom de plume closer to Origen’s time involves Iamblichus’ De Mysteriis, which is actually presented as a reply by the Egyptian teacher and priest ‘Abamon’ to Porphyry regarding matters raised by Porphyry in his Letter to Anebo, and it is noted in this regard that “pseudonymous and anonymous authorship was reasonably common in antiquity” (Clarke et al. 2003, p. xxxi). While it is not known whether ‘Anebo’ too was a fictitious name (Clarke et al. 2003, p. xxix and n. 54), Iamblichus treats the Letter as a disguised challenge to himself (De Mysteriis I.1.2.5–7). Nor is there any reason why it could not have been.

2.4. Origenes and His Criticism of Longinus’ Hedonism

At this point I should like to introduce the other principal materials, shifting my focus to an author whose fragments are collected by Karl-Otto Weber (1962), one who will be here called ‘Origenes’, in order to preserve a certain distance from the theologian and biblical interpreter. Whereas the latter is mentioned by Porphyry in a fragment (Frg. 39) of Against the Christians that is preserved by Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 6.19),11 Origenes is known to us more widely from Porphyry and from other sources probably dependent on him. While difficulties in chronology are often held to count against identifying the two, this is counterbalanced by the fact that Porphyry does not distinguish them for us, even though both were said to be devoted pupils of Ammonius—or of an Ammonius, at least. It is often held that Origenes was a pagan, but this is not stated anywhere, and not at all proven from the evidence. Porphyry (Vit. Plot. 3) implies that his major work was the treatise (syngramma) On Daimones, but this may mean no more than ‘the treatise about daimones’—i.e., it could be a description of content rather than a real title, as also at Vita 20 in a citation of Longinus. Certainly, most non-Christian Platonists postulated the existence of such beings, but if a Christian had written a systematic work on this topic then it could simply have been referring to all supernatural beings postulated by non-Jewish peoples in conformity with LXX Psalm 95:5 (οἱ θεοὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν δαιμόνια), often quoted in Cels (3.2, 4.29, 7.69, 8.3). It is not hard to imagine Cels having gone by such a title, for the vocabulary of daimones12 (all cases of the noun and the adjective daimonios, plus the adverb daimoniôs), constitute more than 0.3% of the vocabulary of Cels,13 but less than 0.04% of that of other works of Origen in Greek.

Porphyry (Vita 3) mentions another title from the same author, That the King is the only Demiurge,14 without calling it a syngramma, so possibly implying that it was an occasional work, yet presumably a second work heavily indebted to Ammonius.15 It is probable that we have an indication of its contents in the second Book of Proclus’ Platonic Theology (Theologia Platonica II 4.31.4–22 [=Origenes Frg. 7 [ed. Weber]]; cf. Tarrant 2017). Origenes seems to be taking the reference to the ‘King’, otherwise known as the ‘first’, in the Second Epistle once credited to Plato (312D-E: cf. Ramelli 2009, p. 236), as a reference to a creator-god. This in turn implies that that creator was not seen as a secondary god, inferior to the Good (like Numenius’ creator for instance, especially Frgs. 11–13) and to the ‘One’ in the first account of the Parmenides (137C4–142A8). His doctrine would thus be diametrically opposed to that of Plotinus in Ennead 5.1.8, and to virtually the entire Neoplatonic tradition down to Damascius, where the Platonic Demiurge was usually associated somehow with intellect and hence with a level lower than the supreme principle. Hence, Proclus is surprised that another pupil of Ammonius could have held such a belief as he thought he had found in Origenes. Even so, it is predictable that any Christian who was not a Gnostic should hold that there can be no god higher than the Creator-god of the Jews. Origen, in fact, assumes the equivalence of the ‘King’ found in the Second Epistle to that Creator-god in Cels 6.18–19.16 So this title is one that could be plausibly credited to a Platonist who is also a Christian as well as to any conservative Platonists who still thought the Demiurge of the Timaeus to be the supreme Platonic principle—a dying breed in the third century.

The reason for involving Origenes here is that he comes close to calling Cassius Longinus,17 Porphyry’s early teacher who had himself attended Origenes’ lectures, an Epicurean. There are three passages where this tactic is employed, and they result from the fact that Longinus highlighted the charms of Platonic diction, at least when tackling Plato’s prefatory material (prooimia) if not in the exposition of the arguments. The first passage comments on Timaeus 19B4-C1, where Socrates explains his feelings about the theoretical city that he has just outlined.

Origenes agreed that Plato is taking care over the grace of his writing, not however because he is aiming at pleasure, but in the course of using this comparison for the presentation of what he [Socrates] felt.

(Proclus In Tim. 60.1–4 [=Origenes Frg. 9])

Τhis should make it clear that Origenes objected to Longinus’ implication that Plato was aiming at generating pleasure in the mind of the reader, rather than at capturing most precisely the nuances of Socrates’ thoughts. Longinus had in fact claimed that Plato used the beautification of speech as a means to win the listener over (within Proclus, In Tim. I.59.28–29D = I.90.20–91.1vR = Porphyry, In Platonis Timaeum (ed. Sodano [hereafter Plat. Tim.]), Frg. 28), a claim that would have been in danger of classing this type of Platonic writing as a knack ‘of achieving grace and pleasure’ rather than as an art according to the theory of the Gorgias.18 It would class Plato’s diction as rhetoric rather than philosophy. Longinus’ explanation of his own view was directed against other Platonic interpreters who regarded the subtleties of Platonic language here as coming spontaneously from his authorial gifts rather than from the application of technical rules.19 The language strongly suggests that these Platonic interpreters had included Origenes himself.20 In the course of resisting such a view, Longinus had made the provocative claim that it is easier to believe Epicurus’ atoms could come together to create a universe than that a random collection of words could make a Platonic speech. The reference to Epicurus is highly unusual,21 and may already have been designed to provoke Origenes, who accordingly presents Longinus as taking a hedonistic view of Plato.

4.1. Plato and Homer

The lemma of the Timaeus in the last case we examined was 19D2–E2, where Socrates has acknowledged his own inability to laud the inhabitants of his ideal community adequately, and goes on to say that he had come to the same conclusion about both ancient and modern poets, not out of disrespect for that “race”, but because the whole mimetic “tribe” can best imitate those among whom they are raised, whereas it is hard to imitate in deeds what lies beyond their formative experiences and even harder to do so in words. This claim was problematic (ἀπορεῖται) for Longinus and Origenes, if Homer was being included when Socrates claimed not only that modern poets were inadequate for the task, but also the ancient ones. It is rather obvious, I think, that Origenes was deeply embarrassed by this issue. In his view, Socrates’ claim and the resulting difficulty were very considerable, and Origenes was “very keen to demonstrate that the imitation in [the works of] Homer adequately depicts actions of excellence”. This suggests that his admiration for Homer at least matched and possibly exceeded his admiration for Plato (or for Plato’s ‘Socrates’). If the writings of both Plato and Homer were to be salvaged, as not only Longinus and he but also most imperial Platonists thought they should be, then Origenes had to seek some way in which either Homer could be exempt from the Platonic criticism, or the Platonic text could be taken to imply less than its literal meaning implied.25

There would be little difficulty in seeing anybody brought up in the Greek tradition, even a Christian with an appetite for Greek culture, as sufficiently keen on Homer to want to regard him as having the ability to capture with accuracy the deeds and words of persons who lived in an ideal society that functioned according to the proposals of ‘Socrates’. There are in fact some 27 references to Homer or things Homeric in Cels, though ‘Celsus’ himself was responsible for some of these. Iliad 308–321 and 12.200–209 are cited at 4.91, 5.340 at 1.66 (cf. 2.36), Odyssey 4.563–5 at 7.28, an amalgam of 4.685 at 4.94, 10.28126 and 11.93 at 2.76, 12.45 and 12.184 also at 2.76, and 18.117 or 20.120 at 4.94. At 6.42 Origen argues with ‘Celsus’ over the interpretation of Iliad 1.591–2 and 15.18–23. At 7.46 he calls Homer the very best of poets (ὁ τῶν ποιητῶν ἄριστος),27 but the antiquity of an author is so important for him, and Moses is of course regarded as much earlier than Homer, so that a high regard for Homer is compatible with his greater devotion to Jewish scriptures. Yet Homer remains the best that Greek culture had to offer, and the challenge for ‘Celsus’ is to explain how his candidates for inspired poets, particularly Orpheus and Homer (who had better represented the traditional gods, 7.54), could promote a better life (7.41).

Origen of course knew that Plato had excluded the poets from his theoretical best city (4.36, 4.50, 7.54), and that Homer was among these. Nor did he think this irrational given Homer’s ability to lead the youth astray with his depictions of the traditional gods (4.36), and he was reluctant to assume that any such poets were divinely inspired (entheos).28 But the passage in Proclus (in Tim. I.64.2–3D [=I.97.8–10vR]) does not make Origenes insist that Homer was inspired or a source of theological truth, but that Homeric mimesis was adequate for presenting the deeds of virtuous men. In the immediate aftermath of this statement comes a passage that may still seem to originate from Origenes, but its language surely owes much to an intermediate source, presumably Longinus or Porphyry, or both. It is rather important to examine it in the present context.

Who, after all, is more grandiloquent than Homer? Even when he brings gods into strife and battle, he does not fall short of capturing their likeness, but matches the nature of their deeds ‘in his lofty language’ (hypsêlologoumenos). This is the argument that confronts us.

(In Tim. I.64.4–7 [=I.97.9–12vR])

I suspect that if Origenes were a Christian he would have been less likely to have spoken of Homer ‘capturing the likeness of the gods’. For instance, Origen was willing to talk about the gods of [Greek] convention with phrases such as οἱ νομιζόμενοι θεοί, but he would not recognize the divine status of such ‘gods’. One may note that Plato himself had doubts about strife that involved the gods, most obviously at Euthyphro 6B–C, and that a wide range of Plato-interpreters would have been expected to share them. If one did not accept that gods ever fought each other, then how could one capture an accurate likeness of gods involved in warfare? However, it should be obvious that the point of contention here is style rather than instruction. Homer is assumed to be able to capture in words the excellence and grandeur of the gods. Certainly, the lofty language, expressed in terms of hypsêlologia, is suggestive of a particular kind of discourse credited to the Muses in the eighth book of Plato’s Republic (545E3: hypsêlologoumenas). The terminology then disappears until Pollux in the second century CE; it does not occur in Origen, but it is found elsewhere in Porphyry (Zetemata 314.27–28; Questiones Homericae I.89.17). Its occurrence here is unlikely to be due to Proclus, for of only four other cases in Proclus, three refer or allude to the address of the Muses in the Republic. It is fairly obvious, therefore, that this word came either from Porphyry or from his teacher Longinus. Porphyry himself uses both megethos and hypsos in his contribution immediately below (I.64.8D [=I.97.14vR]), and he also used the language of grandiloquence (megalophônia) in a Homeric context, effectively praising Homer,29 though other authors also did so by this time.30 But hypsos is a concern of Longinus from the very first lemma of the Timaeus, mentioned twice in a very few lines, and one would suppose that some known concern with this quality has resulted in the treatise On the Sublime (peri Hypsous) being attributed to Longinus.31 It should be no surprise if the stylistic terminology here should be found to be characteristic of both Longinus and Porphyry, given that Longinus has clearly shaped Porphyry’s thoughts on stylistic and linguistic matters.

4.2. Origen on Platonic Style

When it comes to the assessment of the desirability of Homer, it may appear that the views expressed by Origenes in Proclus are in fact compatible with those expressed by Origen in Cels. There was an understandable admiration for Homer’s poetic abilities, allowing him to be called ‘the best of poets’, but his poetic ability did not make him above criticism in other respects. This evaluation came close to Porphyry’s solution of the difficulties posed by Timaeus 19D-e in Proclus’ In Tim. I.64.9–11D [=I.97.13–17vR], where he suggested that Homer, though capable of capturing the intensity of the emotion and of building up an impression of towering deeds, was nevertheless incapable of presenting intellective freedom from passion and the philosophic life in action. Both could agree that Homer’s virtues were poetic rather than philosophic. But how far does Origen’s view of Plato conform with what Proclus attributes to Origenes? One assumes that Origenes has been giving lectures on the Timaeus, but not written lectures that ever circulated. Though the lectures included some prefatory material, Proclus fails to include him along with Longinus, Severus, Porphyry and Iamblichus when giving examples of different approaches that commentators had adopted to the preface (In Tim. I.204.16–27D [=I.302.17–303.3vR]), so that he probably did not adopt a systematic approach. It is clear that exegesis of the physiology of the Timaeus was expected of almost anybody who taught philosophy through Plato, but Origenes is not remembered for his natural philosophy because Longinus too made no lasting impression in this regard.32 As for Origen, we have shown above how widely he employs and interprets Platonic material in Cels.

We are fortunate to have in Cels an indication of how Origen saw Plato’s stylistic abilities, which should be of assistance in helping one to decide whether to distinguish him from Origenes:

And if one should dare to say it, the beautiful and practised diction of Plato and those who spoke similarly has only been of benefit to a few, if at all, whereas that of the majority who have taught and written more economically in a practical and inexact manner [have benefitted] more. Indeed, one can only see Plato in the hands of those thought to be language-lovers (philologoi),33 whereas Epictetus is admired also by ordinary people and those inclined to receive benefit, since they are conscious of the self-improvement that comes from his words. And we are not saying this out of criticism of Plato …

(Cels 6.2).34

‘The beautiful and practised diction’ suggests that Origen too regards Plato’s style as exemplary, but achieved by virtue of long-practised habits (such as would give it that spontaneous plausibility that contributed to accurate character-portrayal) rather than by inspiration or technical expertise. The surprise is that Origen talks of Plato being read by philologists (or ‘language-lovers’) rather than by philosophers (or ‘wisdom-lovers’). It seems that he feels that it is principally the connoisseurs of style that have been especially captivated by Plato, while those with ordinary philosophical motivation are just as happy to be seeking it in the works of Epictetus, the unpretentious Stoic author.

4.3. Celsus as Longinus

When Origen claims that “one can only see Plato in the hands of those thought to be language-lovers (or ‘literature-fanatics’: philologoi)” there is little doubt that some possible readers, including but not confined to Plotinus and Porphyry, would immediately have thought of Longinus. Plotinus never uses the term ‘language-lover’ in the Enneads, making it all the more memorable when, according to Porphyry (Vit. 14), he was prompted to dismiss Longinus as such—rather than counting him as a ‘wisdom-lover’, or ‘philosopher’. He did so in response to the reading of two of Longinus’ works within the school. The title of one of these, Philarkhaios (‘antiquity-lover’, ‘antiquity-fanatic’), actually suggests that Longinus was already responding to questions about what his own professional passion really amounted to. Indeed, there is little doubt that his principal legacy had been in the areas of ancient learning and stylistics, not philosophy. Origen too, I suggest, is here (Cels 6.2) challenging the philosophical commitment of a prominent reader of Plato. Could this be a clue that he suspects this ‘Celsus’ to be Longinus?

Besides being reminiscent of Plotinus’ famous evaluation of Longinus, the adjective philologos, along with its adverb and its associated degrees of comparison, are found four times in Cels (2.34, 3.12 × 2, 6.2), and elsewhere in Origen only in the Homilies on Psalms (3.1, 5.6); in Porphyry, a second case in the Vita Plotini is actually from the quotation of Longinus’ own letter (20); it is also used by Porphyry in De Abstinentia 1.3 of the less philosophical opponents of vegetarianism, while at Plat. Tim. Frg. 2 [=Proclus, In Tim. I.18.31–19.9D = I.28.3–12vR] it is used of the preferred life of the missing fourth person. Porphyry is also known from Eusebius (Praeparatio evangelica 10.3.1) to have written a work entitled Philologos Akroasis in which he described his time studying with Longinus. Even Proclus associates the term philologos primarily with Longinus.35 But might there also be clues concerning ‘language-lovers’ in other passages in Cels? A passage on the crucifixion (2.33) may be revealing. Here ‘Celsus’ has presented a Jewish speaker36 jokingly suggesting that Jesus knew a line from Dionysus in Euripides’ Bacchae (498): “The god himself will release me whenever I want”. Origen retorts that the Jews were not obsessed with Greek literature (ta Hellênôn philologein), and then grants that someone of the Jews may have become a language-lover (philologos) of that kind, going on to question different aspects of Celsus’ attack. Clearly, there had been the implication that one had to be a philologos in the Greek tradition to be finding Euripidean quotes for such unlikely occasions. And ultimately it had been ‘Celsus’ himself who had done so, confirming his status as a philologos.37 This was not a professional term, for nowhere in ancient Greek do I find references to teachers of philologia, or to the teaching of philologia, as one would expect in such a case. Referring to philologoi was more like referring to ‘literati’ in modern English.

So, Origen’s implication is that ‘Celsus’ was a philologos. Furthermore, the implication throughout this work is that he was not worthy of the name philosophos. Of the twenty occasions in Cels where that term is used in the singular, it qualifies ‘Celsus’ only once, in the mocking expression “that noblest of philosophers Celsus (6.29: ὁ γενναιότατος φιλόσοφος Κέλσος)”.38 The Jew whom he introduces says “nothing worthy of a grey-haired philosopher” (1.28). ‘Celsus’ was a philologos, not a philosophos. That in turn would suggest that Origen’s real opponent, the ‘Epicurean’ adopting the guise of Platonist, was in fact Longinus, whom Origenes had accused of attributing Epicurean motives to Plato’s selection of language in the Timaeus. If Longinus had referred to himself as an ‘antiquity-lover’ in response to the criticisms by another, then he could also adopt the transparent disguise of an earlier Epicurean in response to the criticism that he made Plato too ‘Epicurean’.

Yet Celsus was not merely an Epicurean name. It was also a name with a meaning, ‘lofty’, very much like the Greek hypsêlos, and perhaps even comparable with the Latin longus when that term was applied to tall people. Longinus would have known well that Homer referred to lofty towers, palaces or mountains,39 while Virgil used celsus for buildings, cities, mountains, and also ships. But it was, as we have seen, lofty language that Longinus had been most interested in, not simply because of its relevance to the debates he entered into concerning the early pages of the Timaeus, but also because somehow somebody had seen fit to attribute the extant treatise on lofty language (Peri Hypsous) to him.