Ethnicity 381against Egypt and migrated to Palestine. “The Jews,” Celsus avers, “being Egyptian by
race, abandoned Egypt since they were seditious against the community of Egyptians and
despised the rites customary in Egypt” (C. Cels. 3.5–6, 17–19). Possibly drawing upon
the evidence of Herodotus 2.104, Celsus claims that the Jews kept a vestige of their Egyp-
tian origins in the practice of circumcision (C. Cels. 1.22). That seemingly quintessential
marker of Jewish identity was at the same time, according to Celsus, a stark reminder of
national connections between Jews and Egyptians.
Later, Celsus persists in his disparagement: “The Jews were runaway slaves from Egypt
and never did anything worth mentioning; neither in narrative nor numbers have they
become anything” (c.Cels. 4.31). The Jews, therefore, not only lacked unique racial ori-
gins, they also lacked status and the ability to lay claim to contributions toward the
progress of civilization. Celsus will make the same point later, when he uses parallels
between Platonic and Jewish thought to prove that Jews were also dependent upon the
Greeks for wisdom (C. Cels. 6.1, 6, 15–19). If Celsus’ hostile portrayal of Jewish ethnic
origins were granted validity, Christians who sought to alleviate the uncomfortable new-
ness of Christianity by appealing to its roots in an ancient Jewishethnoswould have their
argument rendered useless. Origen recognized the importance of facing this attack head
on, as we shall see shortly.
A second strategy of Celsus’ ethnic argumentation is based on the diversity of nations
and their customs. Celsus repeatedly reminds his readers of the plurality of nations, their
customs, and their laws. Where a given practice does appear across national borders,
Celsus puts the congruity to good use. For instance, while the Christians may have sup-
posed that they possessed the rational upper ground in their opposition to religious
images and idolatry, Celsus calls attention to the adoption of similar iconoclastic sen-
timents among other nations, such as the Scythians, Libyan nomads, Seres (Chinese),
and Persians (C. Cels. 7.62–65). Appeal to ethnic ways of thinking and living could thus
effectively relativize Christian truth claims. Yet, such assertions of moral relativity contain
an inherent weakness; for, if no nation can claim superiority in its customs and laws, then
the Christians’ apostasy from those customs becomes insignificant and accusations of the
illegality of Christianity are sapped of any strength. To deal with this weakness, Celsus
provided an explanatory context for the existence of ethnic and moral relativity.
Despite the great variety in national ways of life, members of each people are obligated
to adhere to the particular customs and laws under which they were born, because each
people has been assigned a different divine “overseer” by the one God over all. As he
declares:
Each [nation] attends to their ancestral ways, whichever ones may happen to have been
established. It seems that this happened in this way...because the different parts of the earth
were probably allotted to different overseers from the beginning and were divided as though
into administrative districts, and in this way they were governed. Indeed, things are correctly
performed by each when they are done in the way that is dear to each of the overseers; it is
unholy to dissolve things instituted from the beginning in each place.(C. Cels. 5.25)Apostasy from one’s native laws is, therefore, an act of impiety, deserving of punishment
as well as ridicule (C. Cels. 8.54–56). A theological hierarchy consisting of one god at
the top of a pyramid that broadened out into a plethora of local national deities provided