The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

[StephenGoranson]

Pete T./LC wrote above, in part:
".... Momigliano goes so far as to say "it is indeed impossible to be certain that Celsus is fairly represented by the texts Origen quotes to refute him.""
That is an accurate quote, but it could also be noted that Ambrose, Origen's patron, coerced him into writing a refutation, and it would not have satisfied Ambrose, nor any other readers of Celsus, if Origen had left out important arguments by Celsus.
Further, a longer passage with the continuation shows that Momigliano, himself, did not press the possibility very far (On Pagans, Jews, and Christians, page 148):
"But the impression remains that, though he had gone farther than his pagan predecessors in presenting a theological parallelism between Olympus and Roman Empire, Celsus had not relied on this argument and had not developed it."

If interested, my "Celsus of Pergamum: Locating a Critic of Early Christianity" attempts to find more info about Celsus, here:
https://people.duke.edu/~goranson/Celsu ... rgamum.pdf

[Leucius Charinus]

Pete T./LC wrote above, in part:
".... Momigliano goes so far as to say "it is indeed impossible to be certain that Celsus is fairly represented by the texts Origen quotes to refute him.""

That is an accurate quote, but it could also be noted that Ambrose, Origen's patron, coerced him into writing a refutation, and it would not have satisfied Ambrose, nor any other readers of Celsus, if Origen had left out important arguments by Celsus.

Further, a longer passage with the continuation shows that Momigliano, himself, did not press the possibility very far (On Pagans, Jews, and Christians, page 148):

"But the impression remains that, though he had gone farther than his pagan predecessors in presenting a theological parallelism between Olympus and Roman Empire, Celsus had not relied on this argument and had not developed it."

I have relied on Momigliano's overall assessments a good deal. I find his writing to contain heavy doses of irony, much like Gibbon. Some consider him to be a continuator of Gibbon. What is your opinion about Momigliano SG? Where does he fit on your bookshelf?

In his humorous but at the same time quite serious after-dinner speech at Brandeis University, Arnaldo Momigliano looked back on his own intellectual development:

• "In a sense, in my scholarly life I have done nothing else but to try to understand what I owe both to the Jewish house in which I was brought up and to the Christian-Roman-Celtic village in which I was born."

In a certain sense, this sentence contains the key not only to Momigliano's intellectual impetus, but also to the core of his scholarly work: the studies in the field of the history of historiography.

Arnaldo Momigliano and the History of Historiography
Author(s): Karl Christ
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 30, No. 4, Beiheft 30: The Presence of the Historian:
Essays in Memory of Arnaldo Momigliano (Dec., 1991), pp. 5-12
Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/250550

If interested, my "Celsus of Pergamum: Locating a Critic of Early Christianity" attempts to find more info about Celsus, here:
https://people.duke.edu/~goranson/Celsu ... rgamum.pdf

Yes I'd read through that well done. Although as you know I am more skeptical of the integrity of the evidence when it only exists as extracts extant in Christian refutations of anti-Christian writers. Origen refuting Celsus thus is similar to Eusebius refuting Hierocles, or Athanasius refuting Arius, or Cyril refuting Emperor Julian. There are probably other examples. What we have is one step removed from the non-Christian source.


BTW does anyone know whether Momigliano expressed any opinion on the possible Hellenistic origin of the Hebrew Bible ----- or ----- on the work of Thomas L. Thompson ?

[ABuddhist]

Yes I'd read through that well done. Although as you know I am more skeptical of the integrity of the evidence when it only exists as extracts extant in Christian refutations of anti-Christian writers. Origen refuting Celsus thus is similar to Eusebius refuting Hierocles, or Athanasius refuting Arius, or Cyril refuting Emperor Julian. There are probably other examples. What we have is one step removed from the non-Christian source.

But Arius was Christian, albeit his non-Trinitarian views were conbdemned as heretical and now qualify him as non-Christian to most Christians. But earlier Christians had broader understandings of Christianity. Marcion was considered by Juistin to be a Christian, even though he denied that YHWH was the supreme god.

[Leucius Charinus]

Yes I'd read through that well done. Although as you know I am more skeptical of the integrity of the evidence when it only exists as extracts extant in Christian refutations of anti-Christian writers. Origen refuting Celsus thus is similar to Eusebius refuting Hierocles, or Athanasius refuting Arius, or Cyril refuting Emperor Julian. There are probably other examples. What we have is one step removed from the non-Christian source.

But Arius was Christian, albeit his non-Trinitarian views were condemned as heretical and now qualify him as non-Christian to most Christians.

The Christian "historical documents" from the 4th and subsequent centuries assert Arius was a Christian presbyter but I have some doubts about that assertion and instead have made the suggestion that Arius was indeed not a Christian of any form but rather a pagan (Platonist) philosopher.

For example: viewtopic.php?p=137088#p137088


Rowan Williams wrote a book "ARIUS: Heresy & Tradition" in which he notes:

Chapter: INTELLECT and BEYOND

199-209

Is spent searching for any precedents in the beliefs expressed by Arius.

p.209

".... It should be fairly clear by now that these views were unusual
in the church of his day, if not completely without precedent of some
sort in Origen. Kannengeisser suggests [63] that we should look directly
at the fifth Ennead [of Plotinus] for the background to Arius's ideas,
and for the heresiarch's 'break with Origen and his peculiarity with
respect to all the masters of Middle-Platonism with whom he has been
compared. [64]

For Kannengiesser .... only the radical disjunction between first and
second principles for which Plotinus argues can fully account for Arius'
novel teaching in this area.

"Arius' entire effort consisted precisely in acclimatizing
Plotinic logic within biblical creationism." [66]


[63-66] Charles Kannengeisser

Beneath the hood of the Arian controversy is not a squabble between Christian theological nuances but rather the final war of books (NT Apocrypha) and words exchanged between the emperor's Christianisation agenda and the last (pagan) voices of the Hellenic civilisation. These voices opposed the Christian revolution of the 4th century. The last of these was the last pagan emperor Julian who legislated during his brief rule that Christians were to be henceforth known by the title "Galilaeans". A term which he may have found in a number of NT Apocryphal books such as "The Acts of Peter and Andrew" and others.

[StephenGoranson]

If, LC/Pete, you regard Momigliano as reliable, then you accept that Celsus criticised Christianity before the time of Constantine?

[Leucius Charinus]

If, LC/Pete, you regard Momigliano as reliable, then you accept that Celsus criticised Christianity before the time of Constantine?

M. writes that "it is indeed impossible to be certain that Celsus is fairly represented by the texts Origen quotes to refute him". I regard this as a reliable statement. And that as a result it is impossible to be certain that the pagan Celsus criticised Christianity full stop. We may assume or infer that he did. But we cannot be certain he did.

I have pointed out that it is evident that M. used heavy doses of irony in his works. And that he is considered to be a continuator of Edward Gibbon. I have read many (but not all) of his books and articles.

* He has no problem in pointing out that pious forgery is fraud and that "priests are notoriously inclined to pious frauds in all centuries". I find these to be reliable comments.

* He makes a point of differentiating between classical and biblical studies and explicitly refers to the biblical scholars as the "insiders" and the classical scholars (himself included) as the "outsiders". I find this also to be a reliable observation.

But what do you think he means by these * comments ?