Defining the task

Among the second-century critics of early Christianity, Celsus was the most prolific. Unfortunately, we possess very little information about his life. His book The True Doctrine, written about 170 CE, no longer exists, and it is known to us only from a rebuttal composed by Origen some seventy years later, Contra Celsum. Luckily Origen quotes Celsus at length, and we are thus in a good position to recover much of what Celsus originally said. Of particular importance for this study is Celsus' remarkable interest in the presence of women among Jesus' followers, and in their role in the development of Christianity. In fact, Celsus describes the Christian resurrection belief as having been created by a ‘hysterical woman’ who was deluded by sorcery: