Justin Martyr (; 90–100 AD165 AD), also known as Justin the Philosopher, was an early Christian apologist and philosopher. The First Apology, his most well-known text, passionately defends the morality of the Christian life and provides various arguments to convince the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius to abandon persecution of the Church. Justin also indicates that historical manifestations of the Logos predated Christ's incarnation, and that many historical Greek philosophers (including Socrates and Plato) were unknowing Christians.
Justin was martyred, along with some of his students, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius around the year 165, and is venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, Lutheran Churches, and in Anglicanism.
Life
Justin was born , into a Greek family, at Flavia Neapolis (today Nablus) near the ancient biblical city of Shechem, in Samaria. He knew little or no Hebrew and Aramaic, and had only a passing acquaintance with Judaism. He was uncircumcised, and defined himself as a Gentile.Craig D. Allert, Revelation, Truth, Canon, and Interpretation: Studies in Justin Martyr's Dialogue With Trypho Brill, 2002). p.28. His grandfather, Bacchius, had a Greek name, while his father, Priscus, bore a Latin name,Allert, ibid. p.28 which has led to speculations that his ancestors may have settled in Neapolis soon after its establishment or that they were descended from a Roman "diplomatic" community that had been sent there.Reinhold Plummer,Early Christian authors on Samaritans and Samaritanism, Mohr Siebeck, 2002 p.14.
In the opening of the Dialogue, Justin describes his early education, stating that his initial studies left him unsatisfied due to their failure to provide a belief system that would afford theological and metaphysical inspiration to their young pupil. He says he tried first the school of a Stoic philosopher, who was unable to explain God's being to him. He then attended a Peripatetic philosopher but was put off because the philosopher was too eager for his fee. Then he went to hear a Pythagorean philosopher who demanded that he first learn music, astronomy, and geometry, which he did not wish to do. Subsequently, he adopted Platonism after encountering a Platonist thinker who had recently settled in his city.
Some time afterwards, he chanced upon an old man, possibly a Syrian Christian,Oskar Skarsaune, The proof from prophecy: a study in Justin Martyr's proof-text tradition:text-type, provenance, theological profile, Brill, 1987 p.246. in the vicinity of the seashore, who engaged him in a dialogue about God and spoke of the testimony of the prophets as being more reliable than the reasoning of philosophers.
Moved by the aged man's argument, Justin renounced both his former religious faith and his philosophical background, choosing instead to rededicate his life to the service of the Divine. His newfound convictions were bolstered by the ascetic lives of the early Christians and the heroic example of the martyrs, whose piety convinced him of the moral and spiritual superiority of Christian doctrine. As a result, he thenceforth decided that the only option for him was to travel throughout the land, spreading the knowledge of Christianity as the "true philosophy." His conversion is commonly assumed to have taken place at EphesusJ. Quasten, Patrology, Volume 1: The Beginnings of Patristic Literature (Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1983), p.197.Plummer, 2002 p.15. though it may have occurred anywhere on the road from Syria Palestina to Rome.Skarsaune, The proof from prophecy,pp.245–6 and notes 1 and 2.
He then adopted the dress of a philosopher himself and traveled about teaching. During the reign of Antoninus Pius (138–161), he arrived in Rome and started his own school. Tatian was one of his pupils.Marian Hillar, From Logos to Trinity: The Evolution of Religious Beliefs from Pythagoras to Tertullian, page 139 (Cambridge University Press, 2012). In the reign of Marcus Aurelius, after disputing with the cynic philosopher Crescens, he was denounced by the latter to the authorities, according to Tatian (Address to the Greeks 19) and Eusebius (HE IV 16.7–8). Justin was tried, together with six friends (two of them, Euelpistus and Hierax, slaves educated by him), by the urban prefect Junius Rusticus, and was beheaded. Though the precise year of his death is uncertain, it can reasonably be dated by the prefectural term of Rusticus (who governed from 162 to 168). The Christian "Martyrdom of Justin" reports a record of the trial.
Writings
The earliest mention of Justin is found in the Oratio ad Graecos by his student Tatian who, after calling him "the most admirable Justin", quotes a saying of his and says that the Cynic Crescens laid snares for him. IrenaeusHaer. I., xxviii. 1. speaks of Justin's martyrdom and of Tatian as his disciple. Irenaeus quotes Justin twiceIV., vi. 2, V., xxvi. 2. and shows his influence in other places. Tertullian, in his Adversus Valentinianos, calls Justin a philosopher and a martyr and the earliest antagonist of heretics. Hippolytus and Methodius of Olympus also mention or quote him. Eusebius of Caesarea deals with him at some length,Church History, iv. 18. and names the following works: The First Apology, addressed to Antoninus Pius, his sons, and the Roman Senate;David Rokéah, Justin Martyr and the Jews, page 2 (Leiden, Brill, 2002). A Second Apology of Justin Martyr, addressed to the Roman Senate; The Discourse to the Greeks (thought now not to have been written by Justin), a discussion with Greek philosophers on the character of their gods; An Hortatory Address to the Greeks (known now not to have been written by Justin);Hardwick, Michael, "Contra Apionem and Antiquatates Judaicae: Points of Contact" in Feldman, Louis H. and Levison, John R. (eds.), Josephus' Contra Apionem (Brill Publishers, 1996), p. 379. A treatise On the Sovereignty of God, in which he makes use of pagan authorities as well as Christian; A work entitled The Psalmist; A treatise in scholastic form On the Soul; and The Dialogue with Trypho. Eusebius implies that other works were in circulation; from St Irenaeus he knows of the apology "Against Marcion," and from Justin's "Apology"i. 26 of a "Refutation of all Heresies".Church History, IV., xi. 10. St EpiphaniusHaer., xlvi. 1. and St JeromeDe vir. ill., ix. mention Justin.
Rufinus borrows from his Latin original of Hadrian's letter.
Spurious medieval works
After Rufinus, Justin was known mainly from St Irenaeus and Eusebius or from spurious works. A considerable number of other works are given as Justin's by Arethas of Caesarea, Photius of Constantinople, and other writers, but this attribution is now generally admitted to be spurious. The Expositio rectae fidei was assigned by Johann Dräseke to Apollinaris of Laodicea, but it is probably a work of as late as the 6th century. The Cohortatio ad Graecos has been attributed to Apollinaris of Laodicea, Apollinaris of Hierapolis, as well as others. The Epistola ad Zenam et Serenum, an exhortation to Christian living, is dependent upon Clement of Alexandria, and was assigned by Pierre Batiffol to the Novatian Bishop Sisinnius (). The extant work under the title "On the Sovereignty of God" does not correspond with Eusebius' description of it, though Adolf von Harnack regarded it as still possibly Justin's, and at least of the 2nd century. The author of the smaller treatise To the Greeks cannot be Justin, because he is dependent on Tatian; Von Harnack placed it between 180 and 240.
Parisinus graecus 450 After this medieval period in which no authentic works of Justin Martyr were in widespread circulation, a single codex containing the complete works of Justin Martyr was discovered and purchased by Guillaume Pellicier, in Venice. Pellicier sent it to the Bibliothèque nationale de France where it remains today under the catalog number Parisinus graecus 450. This codex was completed on 11 September 1364 somewhere in the Byzantine Empire. The name of the scribe is unknown, although Manuel Kantakouzenos has been suggested as patron. Internal textual evidence shows that multiple older manuscripts were used to create this one, which strongly suggests that it must have originated in a major population center like Mistra, since libraries holding Justin Martyr were already rare by 1364. Other partial medieval manuscripts have been shown to be copies of this one.Philippe Bobichon, "Œuvres de Justin Martyr : Le manuscrit de Londres (Musei Britannici Loan 36/13) apographon du manuscrit de Paris (Parisinus Graecus 450)", Scriptorium 57/2 (2004), pp. 157-172 The editio princeps was published by Robert Estienne in 1551.
Dialogue with Trypho The Dialogue is a later work than the First Apology; the date of composition of the latter, judging from the fact that it was addressed to Antoninus Pius and his adopted sons Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, must fall between 147 and 161. In the Dialogue with Trypho, after an introductory section, Justin undertakes to show that Christianity is the new law for all men.
The Dialogue's central contention is that the Hebrew scriptures are the property of the Christians, because they alone grasp their true meaning – a comprehension that Jews, in Justin's view, lack entirely. This idea is already found earlier, though in a less developed form, in the Epistle of Barnabas, part of the New Testament apocrypha written around 130 AD. Justin's argument rests on three foundations: that Christ had replaced the Law of Moses, rendering Jewish observance obsolete; that the biblical prophecies find their fulfillment in Christ; and that the Christian community is the "new Israel", inheriting the status once held by the Jewish people.
The Dialogue is most frequently interpreted as a Christian polemic directed against Judaism. Some scholars also interpret as a significant intervention in intra-Christian debates. They point to Justin's frequent use of the Greek term hairesis (meaning "school of thought", and the origin of the word "heresy") as evidence of a developing concern with defining the borders of Christianity and opposing rival Christian groups, and as a foundational, or at least significant, milestone in the development of Christian heresiological discourse.
Justin's dialogue with Trypho is unique in that he provides information on tensions between Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus of the second century (Dial. 47:2–3) and in acknowledging the existence of a range, and a variety, of attitudes toward the beliefs and traditions of the Jewish believers in Jesus.
On the Resurrection
The treatise On the Resurrection exists in extensive fragments that are preserved in the Sacra parallela. The fragments begin with the assertion that the truth, and God the author of truth, need no witness, but that as a concession to the weakness of men it is necessary to give arguments to convince those who gainsay it. It is then shown, after a denial of unfounded deductions, that the resurrection of the body is neither impossible nor unworthy of God, and that the evidence of prophecy is not lacking for it. Another fragment takes up the positive proof of the resurrection, adducing that of Christ and of those whom he recalled to life. In yet another fragment the resurrection is shown to be that of what has gone down, i.e., the body; the knowledge concerning it is the new doctrine, in contrast to that of the old philosophers. The doctrine follows from the command to keep the body in moral purity.