Contra Celsus: Were the first Christians Gullible Dweebs?

Did anyone ever warn you, "Point a finger at someone else, and four fingers point back at you?"

There is a subclass of skeptics who delight in pointing fingers at early Christians and calling them fools, knaves, and liars. My book, Why the Jesus Seminar Can't Find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could, is in part a response to skeptics who scoff at early Christians in somewhat more sophisticated terms. I also posted an informal rebuttal of Richard Carrier, along with Landon Hedrick and Robert Price, after Carrier portrayed the early Christians as described in the Acts of the Apostles as gullible. (See "Were early Christians gullible dweebs?" )

In both cases, I argued, the charges tend to reverse themselves, revealing early Christians as more reasonable than some modern critics.

A character who calls himself Celsus often posts on Amazon.com, and makes perhaps the most shameless (and ultimately counter-productive) accusations along these lines I have seen. The original Celsus was a critic of Christianity, to whom the brilliant 2nd Century philosopher Origen replied in his book, Contra Celsus.

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Our modern Celsus is the faithful heir of his namesake. His greatest passion is to post quotes from ancient Christians and call them "liars." It usually turns out he has not read his sources carefully (if at all), but his citations are obscure enough, and his claims fit their worldview well enough, that he seems to fool even some well-educated skeptics by this technique.

In this post I will explore Celsus' most recent attack on ancient Christians, and show how it makes one of them, the historian Eusebius, come out looking good -- especially compared to ancient and modern opponents.

The underlying issue here, though, is the historical credibility of the Gospels. What our modern Celsus, his allies, and their ancient forebears, are desperately trying to do, is find some parallel to the Gospels, so they can dismiss them as incredible. Like many other modern skeptics, Celsus tries to use an ancient text called Apollonius of Tyana for this purpose. It is an act of great desperation, that not only fails, as we will see, but helps show why the Gospels remain a byword for truthfullness.


The Challenge

Not long ago, Celsus opened a forum on Amazon entitled "Superstition, gullibility, and Christianity." He wrote, in part, as follows:

"It appears that superstition and gullibility were rampant at the time when Christianity arose, and this may be one of the primary causes of its success. For example, the Bible describe how the inhabitants of Malta thought Paul was a god just because he survived a snake bite (Acts 28:6). Furthermore, Paul and Barnabas had difficulty convincing the inhabitants of Lystra that they were not gods simply because a man with bad feet stood up (14:8-18).

"Miraculous healings were apparently commonplace at that time. Aslepius was a god / man (worshipped before and after Christ) who was reputed to have accomplished a myriad of miraculous healings . . .

"Appolonius of Tyana was a contemporary of Christ who miracles rivaled those of Christ (Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana). His ability to perform miracles was not questioned by early Christians such as Eusebius, but was already attributed to the work of demons (Treatise Against Appolonius) . . . "

Celsus ended his post by citing two leaders of the ancient Alexandrian school: Clement for gullibly believing in the phoenix, a bird that lives 500 years and then regenerates itself, and then his student Origen citing the first Celsus, upbraiding fellow Christians for appealing to the "foolish, dishonorable and the stupid."

Some initial problems

Celsus' post was applauded by several skeptics, itself quite a testimony to gullibility. As I pointed out, even these short comments are riddled with dubious historical claims. Let us warm up with a few tangential examples:

* The inhabitants of Malta didn't suggest Paul was divine "just because" he "survived a snake bite," rather because a viper, probably known to be poisonous, bit him and caused no harm, and also because he had just survived shipwreck in a remarkable way.

* The "man with bad feet" had never walked in his life: he stood up in response to Paul's command. Having probably known the man since childhood, why wouldn't they find this impressive?

*But no doubt this mob was gullible, which is Luke's point, and does not need Celsus to tell us.

* Aslepius was the Greek god of healing. There seems to be little evidence that he lived as an historical figure. Of course people in the era before modern medicine were desperate for healing.

 

* Origen answered Celsus' charge that ancient Christians were ill-educated and gullible well. Let me recommend chapters 9-12 of Contra Celsus, which should take about ten minutes to read. His perspective on faith and reason is balanced, sensible, and still of value.

* It is misleading to call Apollonius a "contemporary" of Jesus. He appears to have died (records are vague) some sixty years after Jesus. The biography Celsus cites was written hundreds of years later, under the sponsorship of an opponent of Christianity. So it is possible that the author, Philostratus, copied some ideas from what he had heard about Jesus, which were widely in circulation by that time.

* No serious person who reads Apollonius of Tyana and the Gospels can however think Apollonius and Jesus were much alike, or that the stories of Apollonius are as credible as those about Jesus. I compare the two in chapter 16 of Why the Jesus Seminar Can't Find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could. Analyzing a variety of ancient writings, I found that Apollonius of Tyana was far less like the Gospels than such historical works as Tacitus' Agricola. I concluded, in part:

"Philostratus would seem to have all the advantages over Mark. He received the best education, and rose into the best society by wit and talent. Yet his story comes off as an entertaining yarn, with weak characters, no moral power, and no link to real-world geography, let alone zoology."

* To support his claim that Apollonius worked miracles like Jesus, Celsus claims later in the forum that Apollonius raised people from the dead. But not even Philostratus believes that story, as we will see.

* Clement used the phoenix as a symbol for the resurrection. He is not claiming to be a biologist. He is just borrowing a popular story about a creature in remote parts to make a theological point.

 

 

But for the rest of this post, I will focus on Celsus' criticism of Eusebius. This is especially interesting, because Eusebius is participating in an ancient debate over the same subject -- whether Christians are guilty of "reckless and facile credulity," as he puts it. Also, to do so, Eusebius responds to an ancient writer, one Hierocles, who, like many modern skeptics, cited Apollonius of Tyana to try to debunk Christianity.

As I will show, Celsus' argument is indeed a remarkable testimony to gullibility -- his own, and other modern skeptics who think Apollonius can serve as a useful weapon against Christ.

Eusebius, the Gullible?

What first strikes one, reading Eusebius, is not his naivite, but his tone of urbane and skeptical sarcasm. That sarcasm is directed precisely at supernatural claims made about Apollonius:

Well, we will not grudge him his natural and self-taught gift of understanding all languages. But if he possessed it, why was he taken to a school-master . . . (and) by the dint of close study and application, he acquired the Attic dialect?

Thus he, who just before, according to Philostratus, had an understanding of all languages, now on the contrary, according to the same witness, is in need of an interpreter.

Eusebius takes sardonic delight in the title of Hierocles' book, Lover of Truth:

Here then at the bidding of one of these sages an elm-tree, we are told, spoke to Apollonius in an articulate but feminine voice, and this is the sort of thing which the Lover of Truth expects us to believe.

In fact, Eusebius thought Philostratus' tales so self-evidently ridiculous -- you find apes that run pepper farms, dragons throwing sparks from their heads, Brahmans levitating two cubits off the ground, a four-footed animal with the head of a man shooting thorns from his tails -- that all he needs to do to make his (supposedly gullible) readers scoff is to repeat them.

Eusebius notes sarcastically:

Such are the stories which Hierocles, who has been entrusted to administer the supreme courts of justice all over the province, finds true and reliable after due enquiry . . . he proceeds to brag about himself and says (I quote his very words): 'Let us anyhow observe how much better and cautiously we accept such things . . . '

In sum, Eusebius makes it plain, to anyone with eyes to read, that he does not in the slightest believe Philostratus' miracle claims:

According to (Hierocles), they were most highly educated, yet never by actual sifting of the facts, established them with any accuracy in the case of Apollonius.

Overleap the bounds of humanity and transcend philosophy . . . in that case his reputation for us as a philosopher will be gone, and we shall have an ass instead concealed in a lion's skin . . . 

True, Eusebius often admits claims about Apollonius for the sake of the argument. But to careful readers, this only makes it clear he does not believe them at all:

But admitting, though it is against all probability, that he is not lying, but telling the truth, we are still at a loss to know, how he can pretend to have acquired this lore from (Pythagoras) . . . inasmuch as the latter deceased some thousand years before him.

So is it true that Eusebius does "not question" Philostratus' ability to work miracles, as our Celsus claims?  Baloney, he questions it endlessly.  Apparently Celsus has either not read Eusebius, or does not recognize such rhetorical devices as sarcasm and admitting claims for the sake of an argument. Eusebius makes it perfectly clear he does not believe any of Philostratus' supernatural claims:

The tales of Thule, and any other miraculous legends ever invented by any story-tellers, turn out to be by comparison with these quite reliable and perfectly true.


His very insistence on the truth of his earlier tales, I refer to those of lightening and wind kept in jars (etc) . . . fully betrays and exposes the mythical character of everything else which he has to tell us.

Eusebius also tells the story of how Apollonius supposedly saved the city of Ephesus from the plaque by having the people of the city stone a beggar to death. This is a fascinating tale, cited by Rene Girard in one of his works to illustrate scapegoating in the ancient world. I have cited it myself to show how different Jesus, who saved a woman from being stoned, was from his alleged rival.

More to our present point, Eusebius did not buy it:

For if anybody feels the shadow of doubt about the matter, the very manner in which the story is told will convince him that fraud and make-believe was in this case everything . . . For he pretends that the plague was seen in the form of an aged man, a beggard and dressed in rags; who, when Apollonius ordered the mob to stone him, began by shooting fire from his eyes, but afterwards . . . appeared as a dog all crushed and vomitting foam, as mad dogs do . . . Who, I would ask, after reading this would not laugh heartily at the miracle-mongering of this thaumaturge?

Indeed! And who cannot laugh heartily at "scholarship" that reads Eusebius as a gullible naif who accepted Philostratus' stories uncritically?

Nor, pace Celsus, does Eusebius believe the story of resurrection supposedly told about Apollonius:

The fifth and sixth miracles however in this book do not stand in need of much argument and discussion, so thoroughly do they prove our writer's easy credulity . . . As for the damsel whom he is said subsequently to have brought back again to life in Rome after she had died, the story clearly impressed Philostratus himself as being extremely incredible, and we may safely reject it.

Nor does Eusebius credit stories about Apollonius' own supposed apotheosis. In chapter 40, he points out that no one even knows where Apollonius died: some say Ephesus, others Crete, though Philostratus suggests (based largely on a hymn) that he was raised into heaven bodily.


Did Eusebius buy any of Apollonius' miracles?

Celsus thinks he did. He gives two quotes from Eusebius to prove this. To bring this post towards a conclusion (the truth of the matter being clear by now, I think), I'll examine the shorter of the two:

From chapter 25: 'And why, too, was he not able to do this by daytime, instead of doing it in the dead of night and alone? . . . I cannot think but that evil demons would have found such and hour seasonable and appropriate for their devilish interviews, rather than the soul of a hero which, having been freed from the crass matter of the body, must necessarily be good and unsullied. In any case the demon conjured up on this occasion is represented as of a malignant and envious disposition, both rancorous and mean in humor.

Celsus takes this with utter literalness, and challenges me to explain it away.

Sober readers should by now recognize Eusebius' sarcasm, and his tendency to make concessions for the sake of an argument.

Eusebius has just told the story of Apollonius and the demon-beggar of Ephesus in the previous paragraphs, and "laughed heartily." He then tells Philostratus' story of how the soul of Achilles appeared to the sage, five cubits high, in response to prayers he learned in India.

Afterwards Eusebius relates the "fifth and sixth miracles," and heaps equal scorn on them, "so thoroughly do they prove our writer's easy credulity."

Easy credulity, indeed.


Conclusions

For two thousand years, skeptics have tried to find some parallel to the life of Jesus, so as to render it less unique, and, if possible, dismiss it as "just another tall tale."

Apollonius of Tyana is a dreadful choice for this role. It is about somehow whose career mostly occurred after the life of Jesus, was written up hundreds of years later, perhaps purposely in order to compete with or undermine Christianity. As I show in my Jesus Seminar book, no comparison could be more incongruous. (I compare Apollonius of Tyana to old Saturday Night Live skits, from the classic era of my own youth!) Something obviously much deeper and more remarkable is going on in the Gospels.

This Eusebius also sees. In his introduction, he ticks off several points of contrast between Jesus and Apollonius. Mostly these have to do with a priori probability -- reasons why you might credit the Gospels outside the text itself: that "Hebrew sages" fortold the coming of Jesus, that he founded "a school of sober and chaste living that has survived him," that people of all races rally to him by the tens of thousands, including enemies, that miracles are still worked in his name.

But it says something about the Gospels that a man like Eusebius, while deftly scewering the follies of Apollonius of Tyana, came to believe the canonical stories of Jesus. In Why the Jesus Seminar Can't Find Jesus, I analyze the differences between the texts.

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It also says something about the Gospels that so many skeptics have spent so much time looking for parallels, yet the best they can come up with is something like Apollonius of Tyana.  This includes not only an amateur like Celsus (update: now doing an MA in classical history, I understand!), but also two of my debate partners during our debates, Robert Price and Richard Carrier!  (And some of the Jesus Seminar crowd.)

 

Celsus, and some scholars with better credentials, delight in trying to hoodwink the gullible by citing obscure texts that they know few people have read, and making dramatic claims. One should be careful one should be about buying arguments at second hand, especially in this day, when it is so easy to read the originals.