Appeal to Tradition. Celsus on Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire

Abstract

In his True Discourse, Celsus characterizes Judaism and Christianity as religions that are born out of opposition to another religious tradition. But if for Celsus Judaism has recovered some elements of the ancient religions, notably their ethnic dimension and attachment to tradition, Christianity is still a revolutionary religion: the Christians enact a separation, a rupture with the social and political order, while their God is responsible for a stasis in the cosmic order. Celsus was the first to establish a relation between “polytheism” and the Roman Empire as a response to the political threat and the potential for subversion of Christian “monotheism”. It is the unique God of the Jews and the Christians who compels the pagan intellectual to reflect on the plurality of his gods and to utilize that plurality to justify the political order.