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 primâ 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.
When once the possibility of the identification is conceded, there are, as Dr. Keim urges, strong reasons for its adoption. The characters of the two owners of the name Celsus, so far as they can be judged from the work of Origen on the one hand and Lucian on the other, are the same. Both are distinguished for their opposition to magical arts. The Celsus of the Pseudomantis is a friend of Lucian, and it is precisely from a friend of Lucian that the 'Word of Truth' replied to by Origen might be supposed to have come. Lastly, time and place both support the identification. The Celsus of Lucian lived under Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, and Dr. Keim decides, after an elaborate examination of the internal evidence, that the Celsus of Origen wrote his work in the year 178 A.D., towards the close of the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
Such is Dr. Keim's view. In the date assigned to the [Greek: Logos alaethaes] it does not differ materially from that of the large majority of critics. Grätz alone goes as far back as to the time of Hadrian. Hagenbach, Hasse, Tischendorf, and Friedländer fix upon the middle, Mosheim, Gieseler, Baur, and Engelhardt upon the second half, of the second century; while the following writers assume either generally the reign of Marcus Aurelius, or specially with Dr. Keim one of the two great persecutions—Spencer, Tillemont, Neander, Tzschirner, Jachmann, Bindemann, Lommatzsch, Hase, Redepenning, Zeller. The only two writers mentioned by Dr. Keim as contending for a later date are Ueberweg and Volkmar, 'who strangely misunderstands both Origen and Baur' [Endnote 263:1]. Volkmar is followed by the author of 'Supernatural Religion.'
At whatever date Celsus wrote, it appears to be sufficiently clear that he knew and used all the four canonical Gospels [Endnote 263:2].
3.
The last document that need be discussed by us at present is the remarkable fragment which, from its discoverer and from its contents, bears the name of the Canon of Muratori [Endnote 263:3].
Whatever was the original title and whatever may have been the extent of the work from which it is taken, the portion of it that has come down to us is by far the most important of all the direct evidence for the Canon both of the Gospels and of the New Testament in general with which we have yet had to deal. It is indeed the first in which the conception of a Canon is quite unequivocally put forward. We have for the first time a definite list of the books received by the Church and a distinct separation made between these and those that are rejected.