Is Celsus simply possibilist about a historical Jesus, but not really "historicist"?
Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2018 12:24 pm
I should thank prof Robert Price for this precious point (see his Bart Ehrman Interpreted, 2018). Basically, he points out evidence of Celsus being merely possibilist about a HJ, and in a very rational (probabilistic) way. Something as: under the hypothesis that Jesus existed, then Jesus was probably so and so...
Read by yourself:
Contra Celsum, 1:68
Celsus is saying that he can assume that there is a historical nucleus behind the Gospels, but only if Jesus was a mere magician. What is surprising and new to know for me is that Celsus is introducing his historicist view of Jesus as merely a "hypothesis of work".
This "belief" is not an act of faith (as when elsewhere Celsus assumes for pure sake of discussion that Jesus was really an "angel") but is the mere assumption of a hypothesis: what if the miracles are "true" someway?
Now yes that I read Celsus again for the first time!
This is another nail, as you Americans say...
Read by yourself:
Contra Celsum, 1:68
But after this, Celsus, having a suspicion that the great works performed by Jesus, of which we have named a few out of a great number, would be brought forward to view, affects to grant that those statements may be true which are made regarding His cures, or His resurrection, or the feeding of a multitude with a few loaves, from which many fragments remained over, or those other stories which Celsus thinks the disciples have recorded as of a marvellous nature; and he adds: "Well, let us believe that these were actually wrought by you." But then he immediately compares them to the tricks of jugglers, who profess to do more wonderful things
Celsus is saying that he can assume that there is a historical nucleus behind the Gospels, but only if Jesus was a mere magician. What is surprising and new to know for me is that Celsus is introducing his historicist view of Jesus as merely a "hypothesis of work".
Well, let us believe that these were actually wrought by you
This "belief" is not an act of faith (as when elsewhere Celsus assumes for pure sake of discussion that Jesus was really an "angel") but is the mere assumption of a hypothesis: what if the miracles are "true" someway?
Now yes that I read Celsus again for the first time!
This is another nail, as you Americans say...