2.

The question in regard to Celsus, whose attacks upon Christianity called forth such an elaborate reply from Origen, is chiefly one of date.  To go into this at once adequately and independently would need a much longer investigation than can be admitted into the present work.  The subject has quite recently been treated in a monograph by the well-known writer Dr. Keim [Endnote 260:1], and, as there will be in this case no suspicion of partiality, I shall content myself with stating Dr. Keim’s conclusions.

Origen himself, Dr. Keim thinks, was writing under the Emperor Philip about A.D. 248.  But he regards his opponent Celsus, not as a contemporary, but as belonging to a past age (Contra Celsum, i. 8, vii. 11), and his work as nothing recent, but rather as having obtained a certain celebrity in heathen literature (v. 3).  For all this it had to be disinterred, as it were, and that not without difficulty, by a Christian (viii. 76).

Exact and certain knowledge however about Celsus Origen did not possess.  He leans to the opinion that his opponent was an Epicurean of that name who lived ‘under Hadrian and later’ (i. 8).  This Epicurean had also written several books against Magic (i. 68).  Now it is known that there was a Celsus, a friend of Lucian, who had also written against Magic, and to whom Lucian dedicated his ‘Pseudomantis, or Alexander of Abonoteichos.’

It was clearly obvious to identify the two persons, and there was much to be said in favour of the identification.  But there was this difficulty.  Origen indeed speaks of the Celsus to whom he is replying as an Epicurean, and here and there Epicurean opinions are expressed in the fragments of the original work that Origen has preserved.  But Origen himself was somewhat puzzled to find that the main principles of the author were rather Platonic or Neo-platonic than Epicurean, and this observation has been confirmed by modern enquiry.  The Celsus of Origen is in reality a Platonist.

It still being acknowledged that the friend of Lucian was an Epicurean, this discovery seemed fatal to the supposition that he was the author of the work against the Christians.  Accordingly there was a tendency among critics, though not quite a unanimous tendency, to separate again the two personalities which had been united.  At this point Dr. Keim comes upon the scene, and he asks the question, Was Lucian’s friend really an Epicurean?  Lucian nowhere says so in plain words, but it was taken as a prima facie inference from some of the language used by him.  For instance, he describes the Platonists as being on good terms with this very Alexander of Abonoteichos whom he is ridiculing and exposing.  He appeals to Celsus to say whether a certain work of Epicurus is not his finest.  He says that his friend will be pleased to know that one of his objects in writing is to see justice done to Epicurus.  All these expressions Dr. Keim thinks may be explained as the quiet playful irony that was natural to Lucian, and from other indications in the work he concludes that Lucian’s Celsus may well have been a Platonist, though not a bigoted one, just as Lucian himself was not in any strict and narrow sense an Epicurean.