Why was Celsus historicist ?

[Giuseppe]

PREMISE: I love too much the Celsus's intelligence, to accept the fact that he was a historicist.

Why was Celsus historicist?

I think that he was historicist for two reasons:

1) the Christians of the his time did insist on a literalist reading of the Gospels.

2) the Judea of the his time was full of inspired prophets.

The Celsus's argument to believe in a historical Jesus:

If the Judea was full of inspired prophets, and the Gospels describe an inspired prophet, then Jesus existed and was an inspired prophet, too.

While the point 1 is recognized by all, maybe it is not clear the second point.

So Celsus's Jew described the Judea of the his time (II CE) regarding the inspired prophets:

"There are many," he says, "who, although of no name, with the greatest facility and on the slightest occasion, whether within or without temples, assume the motions and gestures of inspired persons; while others do it in cities or among armies, for the purpose of attracting attention and exciting surprise. These are accustomed to say, each for himself, 'I am God; I am the Son of God; or, I am the Divine Spirit; I have come because the world is perishing, and you, O men, are perishing for your iniquities. But I wish to save you, and you shall see me returning again with heavenly power. Blessed is he who now does me homage. On all the rest I will send down eternal fire, both on cities and on countries. And those who know not the punishments which await them shall repent and grieve in vain; while those who are faithful to me I will preserve eternally.'" Then he goes on to say: "To these promises are added strange, fanatical, and quite unintelligible words, of which no rational person can find the meaning: for so dark are they, as to have no meaning at all; but they give occasion to every fool or impostor to apply them to suit his own purposes."

(VII, 9)

Note that Celsus isn't describing a zealot kind of Messiahs, nor simply apocalyptic Messiahs. He is describing Messiahs à la Simon Magus: people possessed by God/the spirit of God and imitators/emulators of the deity.


Therefore Celsus believes mistakenly that the first-century CE Judea was full of inspired prophets of this kind just as it was the Judea of the second century CE.

But Josephus wrote only about riotous messianists. Josephus didn't write about ''inspired prophets'' à la Simon Magus.


MY POINT is that in the Judea of I CE there were not prophets ''accustomed to say, each for himself, 'I am God; I am the Son of God; or, I am the Divine Spirit..''

If the first Gospel was written in the II CE, then ''Mark'' would probably be inspired by these II CE prophets who identified themselves with the deity. What moved ''Mark'' to euhemerize Jesus on the earth, was precisely what moved Celsus to believe that Jesus was historical: the presence of a lot of inspired/claimed ''Sons of God''.

[Giuseppe]

Note that the difference between Josephian messianists and II CE inspired prophets was known by the Jew of Celsus:

while others do it in cities or among armies, for the purpose of attracting attention and exciting surprise. These are accustomed to say, each for himself, 'I am God; I am the Son of God;

The Celsus's Jew is basically recognizing the fact that the Josephian Messianists were a military kind of Messiahs:

while others do it in cities or among armies,

...while, differently from these Josephian messianists, the inspired prophets of the his time were more pacifist and spiritualizing people:

These are accustomed to say, each for himself, 'I am God; I am the Son of God;

CONCLUSION:
Nowhere Josephus claimed that in Judea there were inspired prophets like these described by the Celsus's Jew.

Can you prove the contrary?

[Giuseppe]

Examples of II CE ''inspired prophets'''':


Simon Magus was identified with the Son of God by the his followers.

John the Baptist was called Christ by the his followers.

And, behold, one of the disciples of John asserted that John was the Christ, and not Jesus, inasmuch as Jesus Himself declared that John was greater than all men and all prophets.’If, then, ‘said he, ‘he be greater than all, he must be held to be greater than Moses, and than Jesus himself. But if he be the greatest of all, then must he be the Christ.’

(Book I of the Clementine Recognitions)

Note that both Simon Magus and John the Baptist never existed. They were called Christ by II century CE Christians in polemic against the Jesus ''called Christ'' of the proto-catholics.

[Giuseppe]

Against the proto-catholic claim that *only* Jesus was the ”one called Christ”, other (Gnostic) Christians claimed that John the Baptist was the Christ, that Simon Magus was the Christ, that even Judas (or Mary Magdalene, or Thomas, or the apostle John) was the best disciple of Jesus (and not the catholicized Peter). This is not evidence that Simon Magus, John the Baptist, Judas or Mary Magdalene existed and had real followers in I CE. This is evidence that any name of the proto-catholic propaganda had be used against the same proto-catholics, to reiterate the point that all the inspired prophets were free of claiming spiritual identity with Christ. In II CE.


In I CE there were not ”inspired prophets” like those described by Celsus’s Jew. Only military rebels, but not prophets possessed by God.

This raises the question: did ''Mark'' write his gospel to contrast the claims of identity with the Son of God made by II CE Christians?

If this was the case, then who euhemerized the first time the spiritual Jesus on the earth was the first emulator on the earth of the spiritual Jesus.

Celsus's Jew is evidence that there was a lot of those earthly emulators of Christ, in the II CE.

If ''Mark'' was written in the II CE, then the principal cause of the rapid spread of historicist view about Jesus was precisely the presence, already in the II CE Judea, of would-be earthly emulators of Christ.

''If there are a lot out there who believe themselves ''Jesus'', then I'm more inclined to believe that at least a Jesus really existed.''

(CELSUS according myself)

[Giuseppe]

This moves me further to another suggestive question.

According to Ireneus:

Those who separate Jesus from Christ and say that Christ remained impassible while Jesus suffered, and try to bring forward the Gospel According to Mark, can be corrected out of that, if they will read it with a love of the truth.

http://people.bu.edu/dklepper/RN212/irenaeus.html

If I am correct that the Gnostic Christians's strategy against the proto-catholic propaganda was to use their same Gospels (and the Gospel fictitious actors) against them, then the Gnostics coopted an (already catholicized?) Gospel of Mark to insist again and again that even in a Gospel where Jesus claimed:

At that time if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or, 'Look, there he is!' do not believe it.

(Mark 13:21)

...the Christ was (polemically) not Jesus himself, but he was distinct from him (and therefore - as the implication would go - anyone may be the Christ of his own right, insofar paradoxically even the mere man Jesus was one for all the time of the his possession by Christ).


Therefore it is true that in a sense the Gnostics were later than proto-catholics.

Insofar they used the Gospels against the proto-catholic reductio Christi ad unum (the claim that Jesus was only one and the same with Christ), by claiming again and again that Christ could be one, zero and thousand of ''inspired prophets'' (include in the list Simon Magus, John the Baptist, Dositeus, etc), then the Gnostics were surely later or at best contemporary.

reductio Christi ad unum versus reductio Christi ad multos.

The point of Mark is that the true earthly emulator of Christ was Paul and only Paul. All the other ''inspired prophets'' of the II CE were considered not sufficiently worthy ''emulators of Christ''.

The proto-catholics were the Christians behind the Gospel of Matthew for two reasons:

1) they shared the same goal of Mark : to insist that the earthly Jesus called Christ was only one and not 1000 inspired prophets of the last hour.

2) against Mark, they did insist that not even Paul was whorty of be called (not even implicitly) an earthly emulator of Christ.

It is a fact that the proto-catholic author of Matthew severed the implicit link between the Jesus of Mark and Paul. I am inclined to think that maybe the same original authors and readers of Mark did choose to abandon Mark by writing Matthew (i.e., becoming essentially proto-catholics), when they realized the risk of linking directly Jesus with a precise his earthly emulator (even if one who historically didn't do that claim: Paul). And that risk was that the Gnostics were hungry to prove that Christ could be any earthly man, beyond his name.

The paradox is that the Gnostics were more euhemerizers than the same proto-catholics!

[Giuseppe]

So the very acute comment of Tim Widowfield:

I have argued that before the gospels, most Christians conceived of Jesus as a priestly or royal messiah. Only after the war with Rome and the destruction of the Temple did they begin to refashion his image into a prophetic messiah. One of the defining characteristics of a prophet, of course, is the tendency to move from place to place, especially in the countryside — sometimes alone in the wilderness or on mountaintops.

(my bold)
http://vridar.org/2017/03/18/is-jesus-i ... ve-device/

''they begin to refashion his image into a prophetic messiah'' because very probably they - the same Christians - were becoming more and more ''prophetic messiahs'' very like to those described so well by the Celsus's Jew:

"There are many," he says, "who, although of no name, with the greatest facility and on the slightest occasion, whether within or without temples, assume the motions and gestures of inspired persons; while others do it in cities or among armies, for the purpose of attracting attention and exciting surprise. These are accustomed to say, each for himself, 'I am God; I am the Son of God; or, I am the Divine Spirit; I have come because the world is perishing, and you, O men, are perishing for your iniquities. But I wish to save you, and you shall see me returning again with heavenly power. Blessed is he who now does me homage. On all the rest I will send down eternal fire, both on cities and on countries. And those who know not the punishments which await them shall repent and grieve in vain; while those who are faithful to me I will preserve eternally.'" Then he goes on to say: "To these promises are added strange, fanatical, and quite unintelligible words, of which no rational person can find the meaning: for so dark are they, as to have no meaning at all; but they give occasion to every fool or impostor to apply them to suit his own purposes."

[Peter Kirby]

PREMISE: I love too much the Celsus's intelligence, to accept the fact that he was a historicist.

Pertinent to this, there was a thread a while back, mostly a conversation between Ben C. Smith and me:

Did Celsus and His "Jew" Offer Different Arguments?

I (reluctantly) conceded the point to Ben, who (would himself prefer to find the exciting, I think, but) had to argue for the best conclusion on the basis of the available evidence.

I am afraid what I have found to be the case so far in book 3 is the boring outcome

I think you're right, Ben. Nothing to see here folks. Move along.

[MrMacSon]

So there are three persons in Contra Celsum: Origen, Celsus, and 'a Jew' that Celsus is referring to or recounting?

[Peter Kirby]

So there are three persons in Contra Celsum: Origen, Celsus, and 'a Jew' that Celsus is referring to or recounting?

That's right. Three layers to this onion, and we only can see the final product in Origen's text and occasional quotations... (But it's also commonly believed that the "Jew" is a literary device, i.e. a fictional participant in a fictional dialogue, like the "Jew" of Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho. If I recall, Origen himself favors this point of view... but I don't remember the quote, if any.)

[MrMacSon]

Cheers Peter. Origen recounting that in the mid 3rd century hardly seems relevant to historicity of much.