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The old Testament in the Age of the Greek Apologists a.d. 130–180
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Extract
For or against the Old Testament? Such was one of the main issues that divided developing orthodoxy in the primitive Church from its Gnostic and Marcionite rivals during the second century A.D. Was the Old Testament the work of an inferior god of the Jews to be read perhaps for the sake of the Decalogue and a few striking passages, and the remainder rejected, or did it unfold the gradual story of human salvation, and in the prophetic books, by foretelling the life and death of Christ, assure the Christian of his right to consider himself the Third (and chosen) Race of mankind? Behind this issue lay another equally important, namely the relationship between the Christians as the new Israel and the Old Israel represented by orthodox Judaism, whose role as the light to lighten the Gentiles it was challenging and would eventually take over. If the Old Testament did indeed contain the word of God, to whom did its promises refer, to the Christians or the Jews? Could the Christians claim with success that the prophecies in the Old Testament spoke of Christ and none other? The debate which was to span the second century was carried out in the tradition of the synagogue. At times the Church's essential message of hope and salvation threatened to founder amidst the demands of a new haggadah and halakhah evolved from the ceaseless challenge of Jewry.
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References
page 129 note 1 A landmark in the study of Christian-Jewish relations in the Roman Empire was the appearance of Simon's, M.Verus Israel (Paris, 1948, 2nd ed. 1964).Google Scholar Since then, for the connexions between Jewish and Christian theology in the first two centuries see Daniélou, J., Théologie du judéo-christianisme (Paris, 1958)Google Scholar, Hanson, R. P. C., Allegory and Event (London, 1959)Google Scholar, and Prigent, P., Justin et l'Ancien Testament (Paris, 1964).Google Scholar
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page 140 note 2 For the influence of this encounter on Justin's thought see Story, op. cit., pp. 66–7.
page 140 note 3 I Apol. 31: compare ibid., 23 and Dial. 7.1.
page 140 note 4 I Apol. 31: compare ibid., 53. Jews and Samaritans ‘did not recognise the Christ when he came’. Also Dial. 113.1.
page 140 note 6 I Apol. 47.
page 141 note 1 Dial. 1.3. (ed. and tr. Lukyn Williams, S.P.C.K., London, 1930).
page 141 note 2 Ibid., 8.4.
page 141 note 3 Ibid., 36.1; compare 32.1.
page 141 note 4 Ibid., 48.1.
page 141 note 5 Ibid., 47.1. Trypho's objections to Christianity are summarised by L. W. Barnard, Justin Martyr (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 41–3. Here Trypho had evidently come into contact with Gnostics.
page 142 note 1 Indicated by Barnard, op. cit., pp. 49–50.
page 142 note 2 Dial. 28.8. Compare Barnabas, 9.5.
page 142 note 3 Ibid., 29.2. See Lukyn Williams' note Dialogue, p. 57, n. 6.
page 142 note 4 Op. cit., 119.5.
page 142 note 5 Ibid., 40 and 41.1.
page 143 note 1 Ibid., 56.
page 143 note 2 Ibid., 56.10.
page 143 note 3 Ibid., 49.7.
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page 143 note 8 For this use of the term ‘symbol’ (symbolon) see also Dial. 138.3, ‘all the symbols from the time of the Flood’.
page 143 note 9 Dial. 90.4.
page 143 note 10 Ibid., 91.1–4 and 105.2. See R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory and Event, p. 106, on these examples. Also Hanson's essay in The Bible and the Early Church (ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans, Cambridge, 1970) vol. I, p. 415.
page 144 note 1 Dial. 94.1.
page 144 note 2 Dial. 138.1.
page 144 note 3 I Apol. 48. (‘They cast lots for my clothing, and pierced my feet and my hands. I lay down and slept and rose up again for the Lord supported me.’) See J. Danié’lou, Théologie, pp. 109–10.
page 144 note 4 Ibid.. For another instance of conflation consisting of Matt. 4.10 and 16.23 referring to Christ's Temptation, see Dial. 103.6.
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page 145 note 4 Ed. Bonner, Campbell, Studies and Documents, xii (London and Philadelphia, 1940), ch. 59, p. 127.Google Scholar For a similar catena of Israel's Righteous, compare 4 Macc. 18.11ff. and Heb 11.
page 145 note 5 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iv.26, 12–1.4.
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page 147 note 1 One notable reference, however, is Athenagoras' reference of Prov. 8.22 to the pre-existent Christ (Supplicatio 10.3), thus adding another link in the chain that was to make this text one of the most famous in the Trinitarian debates in the fourth century.
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