Against Celsus 1.15 · Sophia Scriptura

Greek text · Koetschau 1:67–68

Πόσῳ δὲ βελτίων Κέλσου καὶ διὰ πολλῶν δείξας εἶναι ἐλλογιμώτατος καὶ πλείονα βασανίσας δόγματα καὶ ἀπὸ πλειόνων συναγαγὼν ἃ ἐφαντάσθη εἶναι ἀληθῆ ὁ Πυθαγόρειος Νουμήνιος, ὅστις ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ τἀγαθοῦ λέγων περὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν, ὅσα περὶ τοῦ θεοῦ ὡς ἀσωμάτου διείληφεν, ἐγκατέταξεν αὐτοῖς καὶ Ἰουδαίους, οὐκ ὀκνήσας ἐν τῇ συγγραφῇ αὐτοῦ χρήσασθαι καὶ λόγοις προφητικοῖς καὶ τροπολογῆσαι αὐτούς. λέγεται δὲ καὶ Ἕρμιππον ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ νομοθετῶν ἱστορηκέναι Πυθαγόραν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φιλοσοφίαν ἀπὸ Ἰουδαίων εἰς Ἕλληνας ἀγαγεῖν. καὶ Ἑκαταίου δὲ τοῦ ἱστορικοῦ φέρεται περὶ Ἰουδαίων βιβλίον. ἐν ᾧ προστίθεται μᾶλλόν πως ὡς σοφῷ τῷ ἔθνει ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον, ὡς καὶ Ἑρέννιον Φίλωνα ἐν τῷ περὶ Ἰουδαίων συγγράμματι πρῶτον μὲν ἀμφιβάλλειν, εἰ τοῦ ἱστορικοῦ ἐστι τὸ σύγγραμμα, δεύτερον δὲ λέγειν ὅτι, εἴπερ ἐστὶν αὐτοῦ. εἰκὸς αὐτὸν συνηρπάσθαι ἀπὸ τῆς παρὰ Ἰουδαίοις πιθανότητος καὶ συγκατατεθεῖσθαι αὐτῷ τῷ λόγῳ.

English · Claude translation

How much better than Celsus—and he showed himself most eminent in many ways, tested more doctrines, and gathered from more sources what he thought true—is the Pythagorean Numenius! In the first book of his On the Good, speaking of the nations that have held God to be incorporeal, he included the Jews among them, not hesitating to use even the prophetic words in his treatise and to interpret them figuratively. It is also said that Hermippus, in the first book of On Lawgivers, recorded that Pythagoras brought his own philosophy from the Jews to the Greeks. And a book on the Jews is attributed to Hecataeus the historian, in which he is so inclined to regard the nation as wise that Herennius Philo, in his treatise on the Jews, first doubts whether the treatise is by the historian, and second says that if it is his, he was probably carried away by the persuasiveness of the Jews and assented to their teaching.

About this passage

Source

Koetschau 1:67–68 · Paul Koetschau, ed., Origenes Werke 1–2: Gegen Celsus, GCS 2–3 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1899) · Greek text: P. Koetschau, Origenes Werke 1–2 (GCS 2–3, 1899), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library and published by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Koetschau, GCS 2–3. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Koetschau, GCS 2–3; made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4 (1885) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made)

Extrabiblical texts

Numenius, frag. 1a (Numenius of Apamea) · allusion, high confidence

Notes

Translation notes

Numenius of Apamea (2nd cent.), On the Good, book 1 (frag. 1a des Places); Hermippus of Smyrna (3rd cent. BC), On Lawgivers (frag. 21 Wehrli); Pseudo-Hecataeus, On the Jews; Philo of Byblos (Herennius Philo). Hermippus, Pseudo-Hecataeus, and Philo of Byblos have no entry in the extrabiblical list.

Cite this passage

Origen, Cels. 1.15 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/origen-celsum/1/15/).

Plain text

Origen, Cels. 1.15 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/origen-celsum/1/15/).