Justin Martyr

Background

Justin (c. 100–165), born at Flavia Neapolis in Samaria, came to Christianity through the philosophical schools — his Dialogue opens with Trypho hailing him "Hail, O philosopher!" and Justin recounting his passage through the Stoics, Peripatetics, and Platonists. Teaching at Rome, he became the second century's foremost apologist in both directions: toward the empire (the Apologies, addressed to Antoninus Pius) and toward the synagogue (the Dialogue with Trypho, the foundational literary encounter between church and synagogue). He was executed at Rome c. 165, whence the name by which history knows him.

Positions held in this wiki

• Isaiah 53: Christian vs Jewish Readings — the foundational proponent. Justin stakes the Christian case on Isaiah 53 above all texts, quoting Isa 52:10–54:6 in a single block (Dialogue 13) and answering Trypho's objection that "this so-called Christ of yours was dishonourable and inglorious… for he was crucified" with the two-advents doctrine: "one in which He was pierced by you; a second, when you shall know Him whom you have pierced" (Justin, Dialogue ch. 32). The article also preserves his typological answer to the Deut 21:23 curse objection (Dialogue 90) and records Trypho's partial concession that "the Scriptures announce that Christ had to suffer" (Dialogue 89) — with Machen's caveat that a second-century concession cannot witness first-century conditions.

Key works in our corpus

• Dialogue with Trypho — in corpus. The Isaiah 53 exchange (chs. 13, 32, 89–90) is the article's textual backbone; the work as a whole is the earliest extended Christian-Jewish disputation extant.
• First Apology — in corpus. Beyond its defense of Christians before the emperor, it is a first-rank historical source: ch. 66 calls the gospels "memoirs composed by [the apostles], which are called Gospels," and ch. 67 describes Sunday worship at which "the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits" — evidence for gospel literature in liturgical use by the mid-second century, bearing on Canon Formation — New Testament.
• Second Apology — not in corpus.

Principal critics

• Trypho — the Jewish interlocutor of the Dialogue, whose objections (the inglorious crucified one; the cursed tree) Justin preserves at full strength in his own text.
• David Friedrich Strauss — the modern critical view that the messianic-suffering reading of Isa 53 is post-eventum (Isaiah 53: Christian vs Jewish Readings).
• J. Gresham Machen — though a conservative ally on the main question, he presses the historical limit of Trypho's concession (Machen 1921, pp. 196–197, as cited in the article).

See also

• Origen of Alexandria — repeats and extends the Isaiah 53 case against a Jewish disputant a century later.
• Irenaeus of Lyons — the next generation's systematizer of the apostolic-tradition argument.
• Tertullian — the Latin apologist counterpart.