The title of this work precisely describes its content. After a brief introduction, we meet chapters on ‘Linguistics’ (discussing ‘Discourse Situation’, ‘Tense’, ‘Particles’ and ‘Word Order’), ‘Rhetoric’ (with considerable attention to ancient rhetorical theory) and ‘Philosophical Theology’. This last section pays most attention to Platonism in spite of Origen's initial assumption that the author is an Epicurean; it then goes on to discuss separately the theologies of Celsus and of Origen under almost the same headings: ‘Introduction’, ‘Speaking of God (and Christ)’, ‘Divine Qualities’ and ‘God and the World’. Finally, it tackles their respective theologies in relation to the assumed philosophical landscape, paying attention to the four principal schools in order, and again paying considerably more attention to Platonism than to others.
There follows a detailed commentary on 4.1–22, a quarter of the chapters of one of eight books, but enough to test some of the basic hypotheses such as Origen's familiarity with and attention to the arts of both the rhetor and the grammarian. This does not mean that Contra Celsum has not been fully appreciated throughout, and there are so many fundamental differences between the Contra Celsum and the rest of Origen's surviving output, particularly regarding matters of language, audience and communication, that there is no option but to concentrate heavily on one work. The index of ancient sources contains about 23 columns devoted to Contra Celsum to one only of other works (principally De Principiis). The text tackled is divided into twelve sections, all but the first having the following sub-headings: ‘Rhetorical Strategy’, ‘Philosophical Theology’, ‘Structure of the Text’ and ‘Detailed Commentary’. This sounds mechanical, though in practice that was not this reader's impression, and it is clearly suited to the testing of B.'s methods. After the commentary a conclusion of some nine pages follows. Much of the content regarding language and rhetorical theory goes beyond what a Classicist needs, but is appropriate for many readers.
These conclusions probably tell us relatively little that is unexpected about Origen, who has brought his extensive learning as well as the spontaneous reactions of an educated person to bear upon his response to Celsus. If I have a criticism here, it is that Origen is often depicted as selecting his replies from a smorgasbord of rhetorical tactics and choosing various particles from those available rather than simply drawing on the finely tuned instincts that the addressee Ambrosius knew him to possess. Surely the process of writing cannot, for a natural author like Origen, be quite as mechanical as this? I am rather more worried about the picture of Celsus that emerges. It is claimed that ‘The rhetorical analysis showed that Celsus employs various kinds of offensive strategies’ (p. 455), and I admit that he cleverly draws on a range of known rhetorical tactics. But in this context ‘offensive’ could be taken in the sense of ‘giving offence’, since we learn that ‘his tone tends to be fierce and incriminating’. In any case one has to allow that it is Origen who has chosen which of the words of his opponents should appear, and it is part of Origen's plan to make his opponent look as unattractive and unreasonable as possible. One must surely ask whether the creation of an Epicurean profile for somebody with whom most of the argument is conducted on Platonist premises is not as much a part of this denigration as the accusation of philosophic failure.
The problem is that, unlike Origen, Celsus is unknown outside this work. While a great deal is said in this book about Origen's intended audience, i.e. who he would like to persuade, we can say little about Celsus’ audience or about who, if anybody, he would have liked to persuade. We read in the introduction (p. 8) of his ‘educated readers who were expected to follow elaborated argumentative and philosophical discourses and to recognize literary quotes and allusions’. That suggests quite a restricted audience, steeped mainly in Greek culture, but did it include Christians? If not, did it ever intend to persuade people? And if not, how serious can it have been, given that the analogy of Lucian's Alêthês Historia warns against assuming seriousness? Any such book would indeed have seemed a serious matter for Christians like Origen facing persecution, but it might simply have been intended as a satirical tour de force. While B. assumes that Celsus’ title (Ἀληθὴς Λόγος) means ‘True Doctrine’, it can obviously mean more simply ‘True Account’, but we should consider the possibility, given the amount of Christological debate, that there is a covert reference to the doctrine of Christ as the descended Logos, already well known to Plotinus’ colleague Amelius, as Eusebius (PE 11.19.1) shows. Such a title would imply that the Logos (in whatever sense) of one's opponents, in this case the Christians, would be false.
The chapter on ‘Linguistics’ begins with the discourse situation, and at first involves the use of second, first and third persons. Under the second person there is discussion of the way in which it is used to a limited degree of Ambrose, as dedicatee, and of the cohort of potential Christian and less committed Christian readers. At this point the second person is not discussed in relation to Celsus, since B. follows the scholarly assumption that he is long dead. Instead, a large number of vocatives and second-person verbs addressed to Celsus are treated under the heading ‘Celsus: Third and Second Person’ and compared with a courtroom apostrophe (pp. 24–6). Certainly, it is easy to feel that Origen is turning now to those who are to judge his arguments and now to his opponents, but a courtroom opponent lives and hears. Likewise, dealing with tenses, B. explains the use of the present tense for Celsus’ claims as due to the availability of his words ‘even years after he died’ (p. 29). Yet the text feels like a living debate, and Origen's early assumption of a second-century date for Celsus is linked with his supposition that the author was an Epicurean, since he knew only two Epicureans who had written under that name. Even in Book 1 he realised that Celsus’ arguments were incompatible with Epicurean premises, and the philosophy that most consistently underlies the argument is Platonism. Epicureanism was regarded as atheistic, and, as B. points out (p. 129), ‘Celsus was clearly not an atheist’. But if he was not an Epicurean, Origen makes no claim to know who he was or when he lived.
Surely, then, B. does not believe either that he was an Epicurean. He gives all the expected attention to the Platonic background of the relevant theology, and, while one may find several references to Epicurus and Epicureanism in the general index, there are no entries for Epicurus or Philodemus in the index of ancient sources. In contrast, just over a column and a half is devoted to works of Plato, and as much again to early imperial Platonists and Platonising Pythagoreans.
On page 258 Β. finds the aorist ἐπηπόρησε (cf. 8.2.1 and 2.32.9) ‘remarkable’. While I think that aspect is here more important than past time, he could have said more about this verb occurring eleven times in Contra Celsum, and more about Origen's characterisation of Celsus’ argument as a series of ἀπορίαι, in which he asks a series of questions that he assumes will be embarrassing: part of the communicative situation. Regardless of any such quibbles, this book, written in clear if not flawless English, is a useful contribution to the literature, goes about its work methodically and seems very well indexed.
