Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsus
Celsus (/ˈsɛlsəs/; Hellenistic Greek: Κέλσος, Kélsos; fl. AD 175–177) was a 2nd-century Greek philosopher and opponent of early Christianity.[1][2][3] His literary work, The True Word (also Account, Doctrine or Discourse; Greek: Hellenistic Greek: Λόγος Ἀληθής),[4][5] survives exclusively in quotations from it in Contra Celsum, a refutation written in 248 by Origen of Alexandria.[3] The True Word is the earliest known comprehensive criticism of Christianity.[3] Hanegraaff[6] has argued that it was written shortly after the death of Justin Martyr (who was possibly the first Christian apologist), and was probably a response to his work.[6] Origen stated that Celsus was from the first half of the 2nd century AD, although the majority of modern scholars have come to a general consensus that Celsus probably wrote around AD 170 to 180.[7][8]
THIS points out that there may be more than one Celsus, and there is confusion as to whether the anti-Christian Celsus was in fact an Epicurean:
Philosophy[edit]
All that is known about Celsus personally is what comes from the surviving text of his book and from what Origen says about him.[9] Although Origen initially refers to Celsus as an Epicurean,[10][11][12] his arguments reflect ideas of the Platonic tradition, rather than Epicureanism.[10][13][12] Origen attributes this to Celsus's inconsistency,[10] but modern historians see it instead as evidence that Celsus was not an Epicurean at all.[10][11] Joseph Wilson Trigg states that Origen probably confused Celsus, the author of The True Word, with a different Celsus, who was an Epicurean philosopher and a friend of the Syrian satirist Lucian.[11] Celsus the Epicurean must have lived around the same time as the author of The True Word and he is mentioned by Lucian in his treatise On Magic.[11] Both Celsus the friend of Lucian and Celsus the author of The True Word evidently shared a passionate zeal against superstitio, making it even easier to see how Origen could have concluded that they were the same person.[11]
