In many respects, the second-century philosopher Celsus remains an enigma. Nothing is known about him beyond what his nemesis Origen tells us in his critical commentary on parts of the man’s treatise against Christianity entitled Alethes Logos, which can be variously translated as True World/Teaching/Doctrine. The present volume, with the proceedings of an international conference held in Cambridge and a couple of additional essays ‘to cover any lacunas’, once more illustrates how little we know of the author and his work, but also how this inspires scholars to try and make the best of it. The volume contains a substantial introduction by the two editors, eleven essays (by Lewis Ayres, Johannes Arnold, David Sedley, George Boys-Stones, Teresa Morgan, Gretchen Reydams-Schils, Richard Hunter, Loveday Alexander, Sébastien Morlet, Philip Alexander and Judith Lieu, with nine responses, Sedley and Boyd-Stones having agreed each to write an essay instead of using the ‘essay/response’ format), and a twenty-page afterword (Mark Edwards). The essays contribute to furthering a long-overdue dialogue between specialists of early Christian theology and Hellenistic philosophy.

The introduction offers a first, most useful survey of the problems related to several aspects of the study of Celsus’ person and work. Instead of merely offering summaries of the essays, the editors have reviewed various opinions on the introductory questions and on Celsus’ lifeworld. More in particular, they point out that Celsus was most probably not just criticising Christian doctrine, as one might perhaps conclude from the way Origen has used his work, but also offering an antidote to core issues of Jewish and Christian doctrine. Opinions are quite divided with regard to the work’s purpose, ranging from a mere critique for peers to an attempt at convincing a (partly) Christian readership of the problems with their doctrines and tradition. Celsus’ True doctrine is preserved only in part through the citations in Origen’s refutation Contra Celsum. Reconstructing the text and, above all, its structure on this basis remains a lasting problem, as are the date, provenance, and the sources used in Alethes Logos, all scholarly efforts notwithstanding. But there is no reason for despair, as what has been preserved offers ample opportunities to discuss fascinating aspects of the work. In the following I briefly survey those essays that for various reasons have received my particular attention.

Lewis Ayres addresses an interesting question that is often ignored: the time gap between Celsus and Origen and, consequently, between their views on Christianity. They may well be talking, at least in part, about different types of Christianity. It means that both the critique and the response to it may be slightly inconsistent. It is a pertinent observation. But perhaps still more important, in my opinion, is the way Ayres describes Origen’s strategy. The Contra Celsum is not just a piecemeal refutation of separate topics, but rather and more positively a formal presentation of his views as a Christian scholar of what Christianity is all about. Origen is not playing on defence but has chosen a full force forward offensive.

Johannes Arnold continues his groundbreaking analysis of the Celsus fragments in Contra Celsum in light of reconstructing, as far as possible, the original structure of the Alethes Logos. For too long, indeed, scholars have taken it for granted that Origen’s treatment of the passages always followed the order of the original. While it is hard to aspire ever to reach firm results with such an endeavour, given the fact that we only hear Origen’s voice, the project is worth the effort, as it points out difficulties in the order in which the fragments are cited in Contra Celsum, as also Simon Gathercole has to admit in his otherwise quite sceptical response (p. 105).

David Sedley contributes a very appreciative understanding of Celsus’ reading of Plato, especially the Timaeus and the Phaedo, his views on animal intelligence and his attempt at turning (Middle-)Platonic criticism of the Stoa towards targeting Christian doctrine. Celsus knew that Plato had been made a battle ground between Greek and Christian philosophers, and he reacted to it in the only way he thought to be effective, that is by continuing to claim its heritage for himself and not giving it up to Christian ‘Platonising’ theology. George Boys-Stones focuses on Celsus’ philosophical theology, in particular addressing the question what humans can expect from an impersonal god as creator and provident ruler and arguing that Celsus thereby is to be situated in the tradition of the ‘pre-Plotinian Platonists’ of his time (p. 148), which makes good sense.

Teresa Morgan looks at Celsus, ‘a philosophically educated worshipper’ (p. 176), from the point of view of what he has to say, not so much about Christian and philosophical doctrine, as about cultic praxis. She describes her own essay, quite modestly, as a contribution to a growing awareness among scholars that the old cults were still very much alive and thriving at the end of the second century. What is more, it is in such an ambience that Christianity itself could grow and flourish. It is at the same time a helpful warning against reading (anti-)Christian polemics from the anachronistic perspective of a triumphant Church that all but existed when the two protagonists in the Celsus debate were writing their works. And it is above all a plea to acknowledge Celsus’ familiarity with a type of Christianity that is rooted ‘in a shared culture of systematic, theological thinking about the gods and their worship’ (p. 177); Celsus as a philosophically minded pagan theologian.

Celsus is a philosopher in the Platonic tradition but very much in touch with contemporary forms of philosophical discourse. Gretchen Reydams-Schils squarely puts Celsus in the tradition of ancient rhetorically ornamented polemics that makes use of every tool and weapon it can mobilise to fight a battle in the mode and tone of the Second Sophistic. Whether he can or should also be said to be ‘one of the foundational, creative figures of Christianity’ (p. 214), as Simon Goldhill concludes his response remains, in my opinion, slightly more debatable. As any good philosopher of his own and of earlier times. Celsus enthusiastically shows his love for and indebtedness to Homer. Citations from the bard abound and they are not ignored by Origen, as Richard Hunter illustrates in a fine essay that he concludes with a call upon fellow classicists to pay greater attention to this shadowy intellectual.

A Greek philosopher with an interest in the various aspects of Christian life and doctrine – that is how Loveday Alexander wishes to present Celsus. His ‘outside-in perspective’ (p. 284) and polemics are not all about doctrine and philosophy; the latter are an important part, but Celsus is also interested in countering cultic practices and in tackling the Church’s social politics of his time. An interesting component of his critique that is briefly touched upon by Alexander is the view that Christianity is like a kind of umbrella term for a range of sects that claim a common origin, but are quite different in many respects. The notion or approach are not new and will soon also be used by Irenaeus in presenting Gnostic groups and much later by heresiologists such as Epiphanius.

Sébastien Morlet looks beyond Alethes Logos and how it possibly may have influenced later polemical authors. Strong evidence is hard to come by and Morlet wisely uses modifiers like ‘probable’ and ‘possible’ for the earliest reception in non-Christian milieux which makes his conclusion that Alethes Logos ‘may have been an influential book … before Origen’ (p. 320) slightly incongruent. The situation is a bit better for the later polemicists up to the emperor Julian who may well have had access to both Alethes Logos and Contra Celsum. Whether the latter can be said to be (in part) responsible for the disappearance of the former is indeed a ‘tempting’ suggestion, as Morlet puts it (p. 321).

A similarly limited result is to be gained from Philip Alexander’s inquiry about Celsus’ familiarity with (Alexandrian) Judaism. ‘The short answer’ to the question is: ‘Something, but not a lot’ (p. 351) and most of the little he may have known comes from his personal acquaintance with the Greek Bible, ‘unmediated by significant Jewish input’ (p. 351). One may wonder if the two exceptions Alexander cites, one on Jewish angel worship (Contra Celsum 1.26), the other broadening the same topic to include stars and planets in the worshipping (5.6), and that he explains as failed interpretations on the part of Celsus, are really mere mistakes by ignorance or rather the result of the same polemical approach he uses in countering Christian doctrines.

Judith Lieu is impressed by the way Celsus stages his ‘Jew’, and rightly so, for the prop serves multiple (literary) purposes, most importantly that of mediating ‘alternative traditions about Jesus’, some of which may date back to earliest times (p. 384). At least one early reader of Lieu’s essay seems to be convinced by this novel approach, as James Carleton Paget admits in his response, even if pointing out that the ‘older, more positivistic questions’ will indeed never completely go away (p. 393), but I guess that is very much what happens in our field as a whole. Such a conclusion would be in line with how he handled ‘delicate’ aspects of Jewish tradition itself (see the comment on Ph. Alexander’s essay). If Celsus (‘the chameleon’) can be said to be a master of prosopopoeia (p. 385), he actually was doing what he knew best – changing colours to try to change minds.

It is always interesting to see how a colleague goes about writing an afterword or epilogue to a collection of essays. Mark Edwards offers a great survey of the contents of the book and of the issues at stake in the discussions, as did the editors in the introduction, focusing in the concluding section on the one who gave us the opportunity still to read part of Celsus’ work – Origen. His one and only goal is to demonstrate to his readers that ‘Christians are equal to the Greeks in education and superior in wisdom’ (p. 412). His efforts met with little or no success in non-Christian circles – in part because Origen used the wrong tools. One does not conquer a second-century Greek philosopher with tales about fishermen and citations from obscure Jewish books, as Edwards puts it (p. 413).

The title of the book promised to put the spotlights on Celsus, not on Origen, as scholars of Christianity (too) often have done, and that is also what the essays have achieved. Celsus appears to be a multifaced character. The question then remains whether there really are many ‘Celsi’ or whether the contributors have been creating them and that Origen created his Celsus? If this collection of essays has made one thing clear, it is that Celsus is more than what Origen made of him in trying to dispute (some of) his criticism of Christian doctrine and praxis. Perhaps one might say that honour is done to both the historical Celsus and the essays in this volume when concluding that much can be said for the first option, without completely ruling out the second one.