Justin Martyr (c.100-165) was one of the key apologists of the Early Church. Oxford Early Christian Texts presents a new critical edition of the Greek text of the Apologies with introduction, English translation, and textual commentary.
Editors Denis Minns and Paul Parvis take a
searching look at the text transmitted by the single fourteenth-century manuscript containing the works of Justin. They attempt to see behind the work of the Byzantine editor, and his predecessors, who sought to make sense of the badly damaged text before them. The commentary is designed not merely
to annotate the text but to identify and draw out Justin's train of thought and the structure of his argument. It explains the readings adopted in the text by setting Justin's Greek within his Christian, Hellenistic, and philosophical contexts.
The introduction traces the complex history
of the text in manuscript and print and discusses the puzzling relationship of the Second Apology to the First, and suggests a new solution. Justin is located against the background of the diversity of Christianity in the second century. A new understanding of Justin emerges from this work. His
thought is often sharper, and his language more pointed than has been recognised, and the difficulty of the task he set himself of bridging the enormous gap between two cultures is clearly shown.
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Justin's Text(s): The Tradition in Manuscript and Print
2. The Man and his Work
3. Justin's World
4. The Apparatus Criticus
Text and Translation
Justin's Apology on behalf of Christians to Antoninus Pius
'The
Second Apology'
Bibliography
Indices
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Denis Minns is an Australian Dominican friar and currently Prior of the Dominican house in Sydney. He was formerly a member of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford, and lecturer in Patristics at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford.
Paul Parvis was formerly a member of the Faculty of
Theology at the University of Oxford and lecturer in Patristics at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. He is currently an honorary fellow in the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, and teaches Patristics and Byzantine History.
