Ethnicity 379to that of Isocrates four centuries earlier (Paneg. 50), Paul announced the essence of
Judaism to be centered in faith. Whereas Isocrates delimited Greek identity more strictly
when he heralded the Athenians’ achievement of showing true Hellenicity to be a matter
not of birth but ofpaideia(Jüthner 1923: 34–6; Hall 2002: 208–10), Paul opened up
Jewish identity by elevating a spiritual kinship of faith, rooted in the faith of the forefather
Abraham, over kinship by birth. Rather than weakening notions of kinship, the openness
of faith indicated a more real and more stable form of kinship in its heightened level of
demands on the true children of Abraham.
In dialogue with the Jews, many Christian thinkers amplified Paul’s assertions of being
the true Israel in contrast to “the children of the flesh” (Rom. 9:8). Justin Martyr offered
the lengthiest elaboration of this thesis, building up a series of testimonies from the
Jewish Scriptures, the Christian Old Testament, in order to show not only Christ but the
Christian race to be the fulfillment of biblical prophecies (Kimber Buell 2005: 95–114).
Through a spiritual circumcision that abrogated the “circumcision by blood,” Christ
created a “nation of righteousness” (Dial. 24; cf. 119). The incredulous Jew, Trypho,
who asked “What then? Are you [Christians] Israel?” eventually receives the answer, “We
are the true race of Israel” (Dial. 123; 135). Such an argument accomplished more
than the articulation of a “supercessionist” conception of Christians in relation to Jews.
Significantly, Christian claims to being rooted in the ancient Hebrew past allowed them
to make a powerful bid to national priority and possession of the primal wisdom and
piety of an earlier golden age, which was superior to later ethnic forms.
The defense of Christianity by means of ethnic revisionism did not go unchallenged.
While many pagan authors expressed anti-Christian sentiment in accusations of alleged
“Thyestean feasts” and “Oedipal unions” at clandestine Christian gatherings, or of the
irrationality and incredulity of the simple-minded “faithful,” others targeted Christianity
through ethnic argumentation. Christian intellectuals could respond in kind. One partic-
ularly vivid exchange survives—the confrontation between Celsus and Origen, and it is to
this that we now turn. While a good deal of scholarly attention has been devoted to both
thinkers, much of which acknowledges the importance of at least some aspects of ethnic-
ity to their arguments against and for the faith, the degree to which ethnic conceptions
functioned as the driving mechanisms for the arguments of each has only partly been ana-
lyzed in previous discussions. The following remarks aim to highlight a salutary—but by
no means isolated—example of the deep engagement with ethnicity by early Christians
in order to develop their own communal identity and structure their (textual) interaction
with their rivals in terms of ethnic argumentation.
Ethnic Argumentation: Celsus
One of the greatest intellectuals of his day, Origen produced his lengthy and meticulous
apology in answer to the scorning ridicule of Celsus’True Word, a treatise that sought,
amid other criticisms, to delegitimize Christianity for its dubious relationship to other
nations. Writing in the years just preceding the systematic persecutions of the emperor
Decius inAD250, Origen belatedly responded to the vitriolic but apparently little-known
assault of Celsus issued nearly 80 years before (AD177–180; see Frede 1994: 5188–91).
Based on what we can discern from Origen’s quotations and paraphrases of the otherwise