Vanguard News Network
VNN Media
VNN Digital Library
VNN Reader Mail
VNN Broadcasts

Old May 24th, 2011 #1
Karl Radl
The Epitome of Evil
 
Karl Radl's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: The Unseen University of New York
Posts: 3,130
Default The Jew as Untermensch: Celsus the Epicurean on the Jews

The Jew as Untermensch: Celsus the Epicurean on the Jews


Celsus the Epicurean; usually known as simply Celsus, was a pagan intellectual who wrote a book; ‘On the True Doctrine’, that attacked the growing; then largely jewish, sect of Christianity in Rome. We do not; in fact, have a copy of Celsus’ original work, but what we do have is quotations from Origen’s reply to him; ‘Against Celsus’, some years later that reproduces something of the work and presuming that Origen’s reproduction is a reasonably honest representation of Celsus’ original (possible although hard to definitively prove or disprove). Celsus has been called many names throughout the years; largely by Christian scholars who have sought to dismiss him, but he has had something of a renaissance since the secularisation of the study of the fathers of the Church and the later pagan thinkers. (1)

This revival of more impartial scholarship of the later pagan intellectuals has fortunately lead to Hoffmann extracting and making sense of what we have of Celsus’ original text. This was then drawn up into a small book of the flowing text of Celsus’ thought that would have formed part; although certainly not all or probably even most, of ‘On the True Doctrine’. (2)

As ‘On the True Doctrine’ is a work against Christianity which uses Judaism as part of the means to attack Christianity we have to think slightly laterally here and think of the meaning behind his arguments as opposed to the ostensible argument themselves, which are; as we have said, primarily directed against Christianity not Judaism.

When Celsus first mentions the jews; by this we should understand that Celsus means jew as a follower of Judaism not jews here, he is using them as an example of the fact that Christianity to him was not an original religion and borrowed many of its ideas from other ‘Eastern’ as well as ‘Western’ religions. (3) Celsus also anticipates modern theological criticism when he notes that Christian (and by extension jewish) doctrines in fact largely come other religions and he particularly notes; in line with the normal trend in Roman thought regarding the jews, that Judaism is a corruption of the religion of the Egyptians (4) and perhaps Celsus more particularly means the worship of Isis, which he would have known of in his day and age. (5)

This suggests that Celsus saw the jewish religion as largely a subversive cult, but which unlike Christianity was not as aggressive or as open in its pretensions to rule the world. This is confirmed when Celsus notes that the Torah is nonsense and derides the very idea that the jews are ‘chosen’ by an all-powerful god as he tells us that the Torah is but ‘one among many’. (6) However in spite of his derision of the notion of the ‘chosen’ status of the jews: Celsus explicitly recognises that the jews are a nation whose national religion is Judaism. (7) Celsus at a fundamental level recognises that Judaism is a biological religion that is unique to one people and does not function in the same way religions in general are assumed to (historically and currently).

It also noteworthy that Celsus finds the followers of Judaism to be ‘gullible’ (8) and that the principle deceiver of the jews was Moses himself. (9) This forms the basis of one Celsus’ principle arguments against Judaism in that he recounts that the basis of Judaism; and indeed for him most forms of cultic religion, is defrauding people to believe that there is one god in the sky with no proof for crediting such a fantastic intellectual position. Indeed Celsus goes as far as to state that Moses fought against the ‘natural inclination’ of man to believe in many different gods and goddesses and did so by dishonest means. (10)

Celsus asserts that much of Moses’ aforesaid dishonest means relates to Moses being ‘a magician’; i.e. a trickster and con-artist, (11) and he held such power over the jews because they were naturally superstitious (i.e. very gullible) and were ‘addicted to sorcery’ according to the Torah. (12) It is interesting to note that the jews being regarded as the principle sorcerer and black magician is a common theme in European witchcraft literature (13) and indeed the jews may have been responsible; in large part, for the much overstated and oft little understood ‘witch craze’ due to their close association with witch beliefs and magical practices in Christianity. (14) We can remind ourselves that jews are still heavily involved with the ‘occult’ and that much ‘occult’ literature takes its cue from Judaism; directly or not, (15) as well as the fact that many major occultist figures have been jews. (16)

Celsus also declares that the jews ‘worship angels’ (17) meaning by it that the jewish obsession with name-based magic (18) and the use of angelic invocation as an intercession between Yahweh and jew is actually similar to the pagan concept of a leading god with numerous subordinate gods. Celsus’ point is simple: that if one uses angels to intercede between jew and Yahweh then surely that is using the same mechanism as does paganism with its lower order of gods and goddesses. Therefore Celsus asserts; correctly I think, that jewish claims; then and now, to be monotheists are doubtful at best and at worst patently absurd as many; i.e. orthodox and ultra-orthodox, jews still worship Yahweh through the medium of a sub-ordinate goddess (the Shekhina/Shekhinah) (19) who the jews ‘make love to’ in order to attract the attention and favour of Yahweh. (20)

Celsus however does mistakenly attribute one angel as being the Sabbath, (21) but his point is ironically somewhat valid in that the Sabbath; or Shabbos, is almost an object of worship in Judaism as it does revolve almost entirely around Shabbos even with jewish festivals one of the first questions to be answered in the major commentators on the halakhah; jewish religious law, is ‘what do you do if it falls upon the Sabbath?’

This might seem inconsequential to some, but we can regard it as an important point to make in that Judaism revolves around the act of the creation of the universe by Yahweh which reinforces the idea of the chosen status of the jews and the difference between Adam (jews) and the lesser orders of beings (haAdam [non-jews] and animals).

The jew in Judaism is in essence able to celebrate Shabbos; and has a biological right to do so, while a non-jew in Judaism does not and merely plays the part of a spectator who doesn’t know on a biological level; i.e. is inferior to the jew, what he/she has done wrong, while a jew is far more able to discern right/wrong and good/evil than a non-jew because they are far less subject to the ‘evil inclination’ (the ‘gentile spirit’ in essence).

So what Celsus; probably accidentally, has stumbled upon here is at the very core of Judaism there lies idol worship with that idol being themselves as the apex of all that Yahweh has ever wanted his creation to be.

Celsus then; in a section entitled the ‘Address to the Jews’, indicates that he has made a study of Judaism when he rhetorically addresses the jews on the subject of jewish converts to Christianity. This is shown by the fact that he refers to the jews; writ large, in their own; biologically-based, terminology as ‘Israel’. (22) It is interesting to note that Celsus here seems to be on the cusp of comprehending Judaism; as Juvenal did, (23) as a biological group who happen to have a religion when he asserts that he ‘addresses the jewish believers’ who have become Christians. (24)

It is plausible to conversely argue here that because Celsus conceived of Christianity as an off-shoot of Judaism (25) and Celsus means that the jews who converted to Christianity did so because they believed Jesus to be the Messiah as predicted in Judaism. I reject this argument because it fails to take into account that Celsus argues that Judaism was not an original religion and moreover gained all of its ideas from different ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ religions. (26) If Judaism was not; per Celsus’ reasoning, an original religion then how can we ascertain that Celsus’ ‘jewish believers’ were actually viewing Jesus as the Messiah predicted by Judaism?

This argument; that Celsus is referring to the logical progression from Judaism to Christianity, is flawed precisely because the assumption that underlies it is that Judaism was just another religion and that therefore the ‘believers’ merely changed religions, which undermines the argument as it presumes that Celsus views Judaism as an original religion (which he explicitly tells us he does not) and that ‘jewish believers’ could only have come from Judaism.

By Celsus’ use of ‘Israel’ and ‘jewish believers’ for Judaism we can see that he recognises the jews as a people separate from their religion, but that their national existence is owed largely to that religion which has separated them from the rest of humanity. (27)

This view is perhaps somewhat muddied on a first reading in view of Celsus’ own unfortunate habit of using Judaism as a club with which to hit Christianity over the head, but this is more because Christians of the time often appealed to Judaism for their historical tradition as a way to backfill the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Celsus; in fact, explains this very point early on in ‘On the True Doctrine’ when he speaks of the use the Christians make of the ‘books of Moses’ as an intellectual base from which to work. (28)

Celsus however makes it quite clear that he is using Judaism to attack Christianity because of its use by Christians and not because he views it as a superior religion or that he views the jews as unobjectionable. (29) He even adopts the common Greek rhetorical tool of taking the jewish position to criticise Christian ideas, but we can hardly suggest on that basis that he was a philo-Semite (30) as he also uses a Greek similarly. (31)

We can see Celsus hostility to jews and Judaism explicitly on occasion in ‘On the True Doctrine’ and in one such instance he remarks in relation to ‘miracles’ and ‘wonders’ claimed by the jews that: ‘yet I am also bound to say that the jews have a knack for generating such nonsense.’ (32) This is partly a repetition of his anti-jewish theme that the jews are a gullible and superstitious people, but also a wider condemnation of the practises of Judaism and the habit of the jews of lying about religious experiences for their own benefit. (33)

Another instance of this hostility may be found in Celsus’ point that the Christians are a prideful group and that in this they are just as proud as the jews. (34) This is clearly not a comparison that Celsus considers to be favourable in relation to his extremely hostile attitude towards Christians as a group and the fact that he considers them to be a subversive secret society devoted to anti-Roman attitudes. (35)

Interestingly Celsus makes an allusion when discussing Egyptian religion to the jews worshipping various animal heads in the seclusion of their temple and tents. (36) This can be compared to Apion’s argument that the jews worshipped an asses head in the Temple in Jerusalem, (37) but as there is no proof other than testimony of this kind and the periodic reference in the Torah and Tanakh to ‘idol worship’ then it is difficult to argue definitively that the jews did indeed worship craven images. However it cannot be abandoned as a real possibility either.

Celsus continues his assault on Judaism by addressing the concept of the Messiah that we have already touched on. He firstly makes reference to the Christian argument that the Messiah has already come and then immediately refers to the jewish argument that he simply hasn’t turned up yet as being ‘shameful’ and ‘not worth refuting’. (38) The basis of Celsus thought here is simply that at least Christians can identify their living god, while the jews simply don’t bother and just claim that the invisible all-knowing god will send one at some indeterminate point in the future and the jews will naturally recognise him via ‘miracles’ and ‘wonders’, (39) which Celsus so rightly derides as both intellectual absurdity and insanity. (40)

So; contrary to Freeman’s view, to Celsus the Christians are not always worse than the jews, (41) but in fact quite a lot of the time the jews are worse than the Christians! (42)

Celsus also points out; in the course of attacking the concept of the Messiah, that the ‘jews say that as life is filled with all manner of evil, it is necessary for God to send someone down so that the wicked may be punished and everything purified, as it was when the first flood occurred.’ (43)

Celsus here implicitly recognises the distinction that is dominant within Judaism between Adam (jews) and haAdam (gentiles) whereby jews are regarded as a race apart from the gentiles; which we discussed earlier, (44) and that their actions are the only important factor as to whether the rest of the world gets punished. (45) Celsus is also here implicitly pointing to the concept of the ‘evil inclination’ in Judaism where-by the ‘spirit of the gentile’ replaces the emunah (46) of the jews making them perform ‘evil’ thus incurring the wroth of Yahweh for daring to emulate the lower orders of his creatures (i.e. gentiles and/or animals).

Celsus sees this; and rightly so, as a positively idiotic idea in that it asserts that man; the jew, was created imperfect by a perfect being who then decides to take vengeance on said imperfect creation by using such innovative genocidal ideas as smiting cities (47) and flooding the world with water created from nothing. (48) Indeed Celsus enjoys poking fun at the absurdity of a supposedly perfect being; who is neither capricious or shares any human characteristic, who delights in ‘reducing cities to rubble’ for no reason other than their citizens obeying the biological instincts that he supposedly gave them in the first place. (49)

Celsus then proceeds to offer possibly the ultimate insult to jews; in light of the laws of kashrut and the idea of their ‘chosen’ status, by referring to them as being intellectually lower than ‘worms and frogs’ in their intellectual ‘squabbles’ and sophistries. (50) Celsus also later refers to Judaism as the ‘thoughts of worms’; perhaps a parallel concept of Nietzsche ‘untermensch’ and Stoddard’s ‘underman’, suggesting as he does several times that the jews are ‘uncivilised’ and ‘barbarians’ incapable of culture.

This is further backed up by his reference to their origins being of ‘dark obscurity’, which is a direct assault on their ‘chosen’ status that Celsus clearly; and rightly, believes is not only intellectually false but utterly stupid. (51) He then once again proceeds to further insult the jews by pointing out; once again, that according to their own Torah they are merely runaway slaves (52) and the offspring of ‘sorcerers and deceivers.’ (53)

Celsus then proceeds to press his attack on jews; as a people and a religion, yet further by assailing the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis. He points out that the jews are completely uncivilised creatures and are unable to comprehend the beauties of Greek poetry such as that of Hesiod. (54) Celsus laughs at the very notion that a serpent could have bested the perfect jewish god; Yahweh, and declares that the idea that Adam was originally a mud pie and Eve a mud pie’s rib is ‘crude and fantastic’, (55) which plays into one of his argument’s themes in that the jews are a superstitious, credulous, uncivilised and fundamentally stupid people (and that the Christians are also such by extension for copying the jews).

Celsus then proceeds to insult the jews even more by declaring that if their god; Yahweh, isn’t even able to control his own creation and is also unable to best a lowly serpent then he is a ‘weakling’ (56) and presumably is going to run scared from a proverbial fly like his ‘chosen’ people.

As proof of this weakness of both Yahweh and his ‘chosen’ people Celsus points out that a man is angry with the jews: he exterminates them all. (57) While; according to Celsus, the supposed supreme deity merely sends letters of complaint in the form of the Messiah. Here; of course, Celsus is confusing the jewish and Christian concepts of the Messiah and does not realise; perhaps understandably so, that the jewish messiah is the ‘son of Yahweh’ who will turn up and then lead the jews to rule the world as is their destiny according to Judaism.

Celsus moves on once more to poke fun at the jews by pointing out that the jews supposed ‘land of milk and honey’ in Palestine was a barren wasteland. Celsus here is possibly referring to Strabo’s comment regarding it being inhospitable and generally hostile: so much so that nobody else wanted it. (58) Celsus means very simply that if the jews are the ‘chosen’ people of the one supreme god; who is omniscient and omnipotent, then why didn’t he assign to them one of the great fertile bits of land where they could have prospered? (59)

No; Celsus tells the jews, you aren’t the ‘chosen’ of the supreme god, but rather you simply chose yourselves or were duped by a barely literate trickster’s sleight of hand! (60)

Celsus develops his argument that the jews are a nation and have chosen themselves; rather than having been chosen by the supreme lord of the universe, when he points out directly this time that the problem with jews is not so much that they believe such things (as Celsus regards these weird beliefs as essentially harmless although probably subversive), but rather that jews abandon their weird beliefs, profess the ideas of other nations and then warp them to fit the assumptions that underlie both Judaism and the customs of the jews. (61)

In this we can see Celsus’ development of the parallel to Nietzsche’s idea of the ‘untermensch’ and Stoddard’s conception of the ‘underman’ in so far as Celsus is asserting that the uncivilised and barbarous nations of the world; notably the jews, will always try to ape the more advanced and able civilisations leading to the corruption of those civilisations if they allow the uncivilised and barbarous nations among them to appropriate their ideas, corrupt them and eventually turn them against their creators in newly modified form.

Celsus’ comments also in a sense anticipate socio-biology’s fundamental argument that although organisms are part of nature they also try to change nature around them in order to make nature fit their own evolutionary stratagem. Are not Celsus’ comments to the same basic affect in that they suggest that a nation will seek to change the evolutionary environment in which it competes; e.g. the empire that has conquered and attempted to integrate it, in order to best fit its own evolutionary stratagem?

In this case we can see that the attempted general usage; although certainly not the only one, was most likely the medium of religion to which the jews presented to the Romans in the age-old alluring form of the mystery cult. (62)

Indeed Celsus is so hostile to Judaism that goes so far as to call the Torah ‘absolute rubbish’! (63)

He makes further comment regarding this when he asserts how superstitious and idiotic; i.e. how barbaric and uncivilised, the jews are in so far as Judea is filled with mentally-ill prophets proclaiming absurdities which ‘no sane or intelligent person would trouble himself to figure out.’ (64) Celsus’ point here is that the Torah (and presumably the part of Tanakh he knew) could just have easily been concocted by any number of proverbial lunatics high on anything from their own ego, their own stewed brains and/or magic mushrooms than those whose writings form its substance. (65)

Celsus takes this even further when he all but declares the jews to be contrary to humanity as a whole; much as Philostratus argued, (66) by pointing out that the jews under the direction of Moses and Yahweh slaughtered ‘whole races of people’; including infants, in order that they might be ‘rich and famous’ and ‘populate the earth’. (67)

Celsus then; gleefully, turns this on its head and kicks the jews in the intellectual groin by pointing out that their supposed status as the ‘chosen’ people of Yahweh surely indicates that if they disobey their supreme god they will too get exterminated if he is so inclined. (68) The jews think this is unlikely of course, but Celsus certainly didn’t think so given that if one follows the logic of the Torah and Judaism that is one of the inevitable consequences of the assumptions and intellectual positions that are taken.

Celsus then; as we have discussed, was certainly no friend to the jews and indeed viewed them as one of the most dangerous foes that Rome had ever faced in that he saw them as a subversive threat to the national fabric of Roman society who would not integrate and used others to do their bidding while remaining smirking in the background peddling their wares much as Martial attacked them as doing in a notable epigram. (69)

Is Celsus’ proto-anti-Semitism the reason that his writings were actively destroyed and only survive in quotation from the Fathers of the Church?

We’ll never know for sure, but it is certainly an intriguing possibility: is it not?

References


(1) One can hardly assert that the study of Cicero, Plato or Aristotle had ever been lacking as neither of those thinkers have ever been a direct threat to Christian thought as such, but later pagan and agnostic thinkers did confront Christianity directly and were dismissed without answer by those after the fathers of the Church had attacked their work. For example John Calvin read Cicero regularly, Martin Luther hated learning and teaching Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas’ ‘Summa Theologica’ is an attempt to synthesize Platonic and Aristotelian ideas with Christian theology (Saint Augustine’s theology having become largely untenable by the rediscovery of Aristotle’s ‘Physics’).
(2) R. Joseph Hoffmann, 1987, ‘Celsus - On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians’, 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York
(3) Ibid, p. 55
(4) For example Strab 16.2.35; Diod. Sic. 1.28; Tac. Hist. 5.2-4
(5) Suet. Tib. 36: suggests by implication the association of the worship of Isis and Judaism in Rome and Celsus supports just such an association in Hoffmann, Op. Cit., pp. 88; 98
(6) Ibid, pp. 55-56
(7) Ibid.
(8) Ibid, pp. 54; 57; 59-60; 73; 106
(9) Ibid, p. 56
(10) Ibid. pp. 56; 70-71; 94-95; 108
(11) Ibid, pp. 56; 59-60; 64; 69; 79; 85-86; 89-90
(12) Ibid. p. 56
(13) Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, 1988, ‘The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany’, 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, pp. 144-151; Joshua Trachtenberg, 1943, ‘The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and its Relation to Modern Antisemitism’, 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, pp. 196-216
(14) Brian Levack, 1995, ‘The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe’, 2nd Edition, Longman: New York, pp. 228-229; Norman Cohn, 1993, ‘Europe’s Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom’, 2nd Edition, Pimlico: London, pp. 5-8; Jeffrey Burton Russell, 1972, ‘Witchcraft in the Middle Ages’, 1st Edition, Cornell University Press: New York, pp. 167-169
(15) Usually using Kabbalah as a starting point for their effusions of mumbo-jumbo.
(16) A good example is Anton La Vey: the jewish founder of the ‘Church of Satan’.
(17) Hoffmann, Op. Cit., pp. 56; 96-97
(18) Name-based magic is the basis for much of the theory of witchcraft in Europe interestingly enough: most notably the idea of the ‘evil eye’ and ‘being overlooked’.
(19) Formerly the Canaanite goddess Astarte: it is worth noting that the ancient jews stole Yahweh from the Canaanites too so it was only right that they steal both parties in the celestial couple.
(20) On this see William Dever, 2005, ‘Did God have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel’, 1st Edition, Eerdmans: Grand Rapids and Erich Brauer, Raphael Patai, 1990, ‘The Hebrew Goddess’, 3rd Edition, Wayne State University Press: Detroit.
(21) Hoffmann, Op. Cit., p. 56
(22) Ibid, p. 60
(23) On this see my article; ‘Lampooning the Jew: The Depiction of the Jews in Juvenal’s ‘Satires’’, which is available at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...f-jews-in.html.
(24) Hoffmann, Op. Cit., p. 60
(25) Ibid, p. 59
(26) Ibid, pp. 55-56
(27) Similar to Philostr. V A 5.33
(28) Hoffmann, Op. Cit., pp. 55; 67
(29) Ibid, p. 56; 69
(30) Ibid, pp. 61-64
(31) Ibid, pp. 69-76
(32) Ibid, p. 69
(33) Still one of the best run-downs of absurd jewish ‘miracles’ and ‘wonders’ can be found in Joshua Trachtenberg, 1939, ‘Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion’, 1st Edition, Behrman’s Jewish Book House: New York.
(34) Hoffmann, Op. Cit., p. 70
(35) Ibid, pp. 53; 74-75
(36) Ibid, pp. 71; 117
(37) Joseph. Ap. 2:8
(38) Hoffmann, Op. Cit., p. 76
(39) Ibid, p. 69
(40) Ibid, pp. 76-78
(41) Charles Freeman, 2009, ‘A New History of Early Christianity’, 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, pp. 172-173, which; although Freeman doesn’t cite it as such, is probably based on Hoffmann, Op. Cit., p. 87 where Celsus seems to suggest that the Christians are all jews but what he in fact means is that Christianity simply isn’t an original religion in that it takes a lot of justifications and ideas from Judaism (which is not an original religion either) as Celsus himself clarifies on Ibid, pp. 89; 105.
(42) As implicitly claimed by Hoffmann in his introduction. Ibid, pp. 5-6
(43) Ibid, p. 78
(44) Ibid, pp. 55-56; 83; 87-88
(45) Ibid, p. 78
(46) Usually translated as ‘faith’, but that doesn’t clarify its meaning hence my use of ‘spirit of the jews’ rather than ‘faith’ as the former makes the meaning obvious while the latter conceals it via literality.
(47) Hoffmann, Op. Cit., p. 78
(48) I.e. Noah’s flood.
(49) Hoffmann, Op. Cit., pp. 78-79; 96
(50) Ibid, pp. 79; 81
(51) Ibid., p. 79
(52) Effectively calling them mamzerim (lit. ‘bastards’) i.e. those of illegitimate origin. This is possibly one of the greatest insults that can be levelled at jews as it directly calls into question their ‘chosen’ status by suggesting they are not born of a suitably jewish union.
(53) Hoffmann, Op. Cit., pp. 79; 85-86
(54) Ibid, p. 80
(55) Ibid. pp. 80; 104-105
(56) Ibid, p. 80
(57) Ibid, p. 82
(58) Strab. 16.2.37-38
(59) Hoffmann, Op. Cit., pp. 89; 105
(60) Ibid, p. 89
(61) Ibid.
(62) Suet. Tib. 36. I have discussed this passage in some detail in my article; ‘Suetonius on the Jews’, which is available at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...s-on-jews.html.
(63) Hoffmann, Op. Cit., p. 101
(64) Ibid, p. 107
(65) I have covered part of this argument in my article; ‘Strabo on the Jews’, which is available at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...o-on-jews.html.
(66) Philostr. V A 5.33
(67) Hoffmann, Op. Cit., pp. 108-109
(68) Ibid, p. 108
(69) Mart. Epi. 12:57

-----------------


This was originally posted at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...curean-on.html
__________________

Last edited by Karl Radl; May 24th, 2011 at 02:18 PM.
 
Reply

Share


Thread
Display Modes


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 07:42 AM.
Page generated in 0.31003 seconds.