Jesus: Man, Messenger, Messiah · 2. The Copyists

Celsus and Origen: the charge of alteration is second-century

Handle with care. Origen's complaint is about scribal carelessness and localised editing, not a wholesale rewriting of the Bible. Quoting him as if he said the Gospels were fabricated overstates it and will be corrected instantly.

In short

• 1.The pagan philosopher **Celsus** (c. 177 CE) accused Christians of altering their gospels three or four times over to escape criticism.
• 2.**Origen**, replying around 248 CE, does not deny that changes occurred — he blames particular groups.
• 3.Origen elsewhere complains that differences among Matthew's copies are now 'great', through scribal carelessness and wilful editing.
• 4.Both writers predate every complete New Testament manuscript we possess.

The claim being examined

The claim that Christians altered their texts is often treated as a modern Muslim polemic.

The Islamic position

The Qur'anic critique of tahrif is not a novelty; it names a phenomenon already documented inside the Christian tradition itself.

Analysis

Ehrman quotes Celsus at length via Origen's *Against Celsus*, including the accusation that believers rewrote the text so they could deny difficulties when confronted. Origen's reply concedes the phenomenon while restricting the blame. For dialogue this is valuable because the testimony is internal and early: the observation that the text was being altered comes from a Church Father defending the faith, not from a later opponent of it.

From the Qur'an

Sources

Bart D. Ehrman · Origen · Celsus · Bart D. Ehrman, *Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why* (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), ch. 2, pp. 51-55

More in 2. The Copyists

• How copies drift without anyone intending it
• The earliest copyists were amateurs