| Summary: | The second-century philosopher Celsus disparaged Christians who ‘alter the original text of the
Gospel three or four or many times’ (Cels. 2.27). Modern scholars have understood this passage
as criticism of multiple distinct Gospels, but Celsus’ invective is better explained by elite secondcentury polemics (e.g., Galen, Lucian, Gellius) against readers who lack discernment and
arbitrarily alter manuscripts. For Celsus, Christians’ irresponsible textual practices reveal their
cultural inferiority. The complaint is about varying copies of what Celsus thinks to be the same
work: ‘the Gospel’. Christian thinkers in the second and third centuries—including Irenaeus,
Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Origen—also participate in this discourse about good and bad
readers. This article thus offers a window into the wider ancient Mediterranean politics of
reading in which early Christian textuality emerged.
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