If this explanation which I have offered is unsatisfactory, I know not whither to look for another which can throw light to the strange silence of Philo, Josephus and Justus.
It is thrown in the teeth of Christians, that history, [pg 042] apart from the Gospels, knows nothing of Christ; that the silence of contemporary, and all but contemporary, Jewish chroniclers, invalidates the testimony of the inspired records.
The reasons which I have given seem to me to explain this silence plausibly, and to show that it arose, not from ignorance of the acts of Christ and the existence of the Church, but from a deliberate purpose.
III. The Jew Of Celsus.
Celsus was one of the four first controversial opponents of Christianity. His book has been lost, with the exception of such portions as have been preserved by Origen.
Nothing for certain is known of Celsus. Origen endeavours to make him out to be an Epicurean, as prejudice existed even among the heathen against this school of philosophy, which denied, or left as open questions, the existence of a God, Providence, and the Eternity of the Soul. He says in his first book that he has heard there had existed two Epicureans of the name of Celsus, one who lived in the reign of Nero († A.D. 68), the other under Hadrian († A.D. 138), and it is with this latter that he has to do. But it is clear from passages of Celsus quoted by Origen, that this antagonist of Christianity was no Epicurean, but belonged to that school of Eclectics which based its teaching on Platonism, but adopted modifications from other schools. Origen himself is obliged to admit in several passages of his controversial treatise that the views of Celsus are not Epicurean, but Platonic; but he pretends that Celsus disguised his Epicureanism under a pretence of Platonism. Controversialists in the first days of Christianity were as prompt to discredit their opponents by ungenerous, false accusation, as in these later days.
We know neither the place nor the date of the birth of Celsus. That he lived later than the times of Hadrian [pg 044] is clear from his mention of the Marcionites, who only arose in A.D. 142, and of the Marcellians, named after the woman Marcella, who, according to the testimony of Irenaeus,[74] first came to Rome in the time of Pope Anicetus, after A.D. 157. As Celsus in two passages remarks that the Christians spread their doctrines secretly, because they were forbidden under pain of death to assemble together for worship, it would appear that he wrote his book Λόγος ἀληθής during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (between 161-180), who persecuted the Christians. We may therefore put the date of the book approximately at A.D. 176.
The author is certainly the Celsus to whom Lucian dedicated his writing, “Alexander the False Prophet.” Of the religious opinions of Celsus we are able to form a tolerable conception from the work of Origen. “If the Christians only honoured One God,” says he,[75] “then the weapons of their controversy with others would not be so weak; but they show to a man, who appeared not long ago, an exaggerated honour, and are of opinion that they are not offending the Godhead, when they show to one of His servants the same reverence that they pay to God Himself.” Celsus acknowledges, with the Platonists, One only, eternal, spiritual God, who cannot be brought into union with impure matter, the world. All that concerns the world, he says, God has left to the dispensation of inferior spirits, which are the gods of heathendom. The welfare of mankind is at the disposal of these inferior gods, and men therefore do well to honour them in moderation; but the human soul is called to escape the chains of matter and strain after perfect purity; and this can only be done by meditation on the One, supreme, almighty God. “God,” says he,[76] “has [pg 045] not made man in His image, as Christians affirm; for God has not either the appearance of a man, nor indeed any visible form.” In the fourth Book he remarks, in opposition to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, “I will appeal to that which has been held as true in all ages,—that God is good, beautiful, blessed, and possesses in Himself all perfections. If He came down among men, He must have altered His nature; from a good God, He must have become bad; from beautiful, ugly; from blessed, unhappy; and His perfect Being would have become one of imperfection. Who can tolerate such a change? Only transitory things alter their conditions; the intransitory remain ever the same. Therefore it is impossible to conceive that God can have been transformed in such a manner.”