clearer sense of the way Judaism blurs Origen’s Christian apology.
Origen turns to Jesus’ circumcision during a long defense of Jewish customs and “wisdom.”47 Part of Celsus’s argument against gentile Christianity relied on the appropriateness of ancestral customs. According to Origen, Celsus conceded that, for the Jews at least, there might be some value in preserving Jewish custom, but there was no reason for non-Jews to adopt it: “Now if, accordingly, the Jews should cloak themselves in their own law, this is not to their discredit, but rather to those who abandon their own [ways] and make themselves over into Jews.”48 Celsus insisted that there was nothing particularly special about Judaism, and it was therefore unsuitable and even culturally treasonous for good Hellenes to abandon their traditional practices to follow some dead Jewish criminal.
Origen, in order to prove the superiority of Christianity, chooses first to prove the superiority of Judaism, “which has a certain greater wisdom not only than that of hoi polloi, but also of those who bear the semblance of philosophers.”49 Origen argues that the intellectual and historical priority of Judaism over Hellenism makes it precisely the sort of universally admirable system of belief that should be adopted by all, even gentile Greeks.50 Celsus (at least in Origen’s citation) had listed several aspects of Judaism that acted as the Jews’ false basis for superiority: their concept of heaven; their worship of a single, “highest god”; circumcision; and abstention from swine. Older, and better, nations could likewise boast of these practices and, Celsus concluded, were more impressive in their religious and cultural accomplishments.51 After a brief defense of the Jewish concepts of heaven and monotheism,52 Origen turns to circumcision.
Origen’s opening discussion of circumcision already betrays a certain ambivalence with respect to the comparative value of Judaism and Christianity. Origen first asserts, against Celsus, that Jewish circumcision is distinct from (and, consequently, superior to) the rite as practiced by various Near Eastern pagans: “the reason for the circumcision of the Jews is not the same as the reason for the circumcision of the Egyptians or Colchians; therefore it should not be considered the same circumcision.”53 The praise of the singularity of Jewish circumcision is, however, undermined in the very next chapter, when Origen discusses the origins and function of circumcision in more detail: “So even if the Jews boast of circumcision (
This double-sided interpretation of Jewish circumcision is the context in which Origen introduces the circumcision of Jesus, in a manner that likewise preserves the Jews’ superiority while introducing a note of disrepute. In describing the unique circumstances of Jewish circumcision, Origen speculates that it was “on account of some angel hostile (
Now I think this angel had power against those who were not circumcised from the people and generally against all those who worshipped the Creator alone (
The rite of circumcision, according to Origen, affirms the superiority of the Jews: after all, the “hostile angel” has singled out the Jews because of their proper worship of the “Creator alone,” in affirmation of the uniquely correct nature of their monotheistic worship. Presumably, such angelic avengers already held sufficient sway over the idolatrous pagans.59 Yet the mark of the Jewish covenant is also revealed to be, at root, little more than a prophylactic talisman nullified by Jesus’ incarnation. Christ’s circumcision, therefore, reveals the hidden truth of Jewish covenant practice: even as it is superior to the polytheistic idolatry of the gentiles, it is but a stopgap measure long since eradicated by the new covenant of salvation.
This introduction of Jesus’ circumcision into Origen’s discussion of Jewish superiority over hellenistic “wisdom” in his defense of Christianity weaves together several disparate threads of early Christian apology. On the one hand, Judaism is plotted as superior to paganism because it constitutes the true revelation of divine philosophy, of which Plato’s later contribution is but a pale imitation.60 On the other hand, Judaism is portrayed as defunct, no longer the bearer of this divinely inspired wisdom: the narrative of Christian supersession (over Jews and pagans) is inscribed on Christ’s own body.61 By taking circumcision upon himself, Christ both affirms the significance of the Jewish ritual and yet renders it moot and past tense. This overlay of supersession directly onto Christ’s person is so complete that Origen can introduce here (without attribution) Paul’s later voice, from the Letter to the Galatians, the point of departure for most Christian argumentation against circumcision. The obsolescence of the Law is portrayed as synchronous with Christ’s observance of that Law.
Yet this polyphonous synchronicity renders supersession ultimately ambivalent, as well. As in Justin’s Dialogue, transcendence of the Law is accomplished at the moment of Christ’s submission to the Law. In the treatise Against Celsus, we are at least given a glimpse into the mechanics of such a potentially counterintuitive argument: a cosmic drama and angelic avenger are conjured “behind the scenes” in order to explain first the institution and then the eradication of this Jewish ritual. Yet the Jewishness of the ritual on Christ’s body, at the beginning of the incarnation, remains incontestable, indeed, absolutely requisite for the logic of Origen’s argument to make sense.62 Christianity must, therefore, be constantly reminded of the remainder of Jewishness at its origins even as it persists in pushing an increasingly supersessionist line. The artful heteroglossia of Origen’s apology affirms this doubled position of recuperation and repudiation of Christianity’s Jewish origins. The Jewish voice functions at once as critic and defender of the truth of Christianity: Celsus’s prosopopoeial Jew provides Origen with as many occasions for defending Christian novelty against Jewish critique as it does for defending Jewish custom against pagan disrespect.63 The invocation of Christ’s own circumcision at this nexus of identification and differentiation embodies the multivalence at work in the production of insistently porous Christian boundaries.
Simon and Theophilus
The Altercatio Simonis Iudaei et Theophili Christiani (the manuscript title of which already betrays something of a change in tone from Justin’s “dialogue” and Origen’s “reply”) reads much differently from older dialogues (although some of the content may be drawn from earlier texts).64
