Did Justin introduce gospels to Rome?

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MrMacSon
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Re: Did Justin introduce gospels to Rome?

Post by MrMacSon »

rgprice wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 12:09 pm ... I'm saying was Justin the one who introduces narrative stories about Jesus to Rome? Those stories would, of course, not have been exactly the same as the canonical ones, but would have been the first that Romans would have heard of narratives about Jesus walking around on earth and being killed by Pilate.
  • OK. I think that's feasible.

    ( and it raises the question of who was the first to tie Jesus to Pilate? Was it Justin or Marcion? Or someone else? )
lclapshaw
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Re: Did Justin introduce gospels to Rome?

Post by lclapshaw »

If only we had a copy of the Diatessaron.
rgprice
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Re: Did Justin introduce gospels to Rome?

Post by rgprice »

I'm not claiming that Justin was the first to tie Jesus to Pilate, but I am posing the question of whether Justin was the first to make Roman Christians aware of such a story.

As for Justin knowing "Gospels":

And, accordingly, our Lord in His teaching proclaimed that this very thing would take place, saying that Elijah would also come. And we know that this shall take place when our Lord Jesus Christ shall come in glory from heaven; whose first manifestation the Spirit of God who was in Elijah preceded as herald in the person of John, a prophet among your nation; after whom no other prophet appeared among you. He cried, as he sat by the river Jordan: 'I baptize you with water to repentance; but He that is stronger than I shall come, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and will gather the wheat into the barn; but the chaff He will burn up with unquenchable fire.' Matthew 3:11-12 And this very prophet your king Herod had shut up in prison; and when his birthday was celebrated, and the niece of the same Herod by her dancing had pleased him, he told her to ask whatever she pleased. Then the mother of the maiden instigated her to ask the head of John, who was in prison; and having asked it, Herod sent and ordered the head of John to be brought in on a charger. Wherefore also our Christ said, [when He was] on earth, to those who were affirming that Elijah must come before Christ: 'Elijah shall come, and restore all things; but I say unto you, that Elijah has already come, and they knew him not, but have done to him whatsoever they chose.' Matthew 17:12 And it is written, 'Then the disciples understood that He spoke to them about John the Baptist.'

I don't know how to explain Justin's account of things like this other than that Justin had read a Gospel. Obviously the underlined citations are just noted correspondences, they aren't in his text.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Did Justin introduce gospels to Rome?

Post by GakuseiDon »

When analysising Justin Martyr's writings in his three letters, we need to keep in mind his audience.

In his two letters of Apology to the Roman Emperor and Senate, he mentions the word "Gospel" once and the word "memoirs" three times. He explains what he means by "Gospel" and "apostle" in his First Apology:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... ology.html

Accordingly, after He was crucified, even all His acquaintances forsook Him, having denied Him; and afterwards, when He had risen from the dead and appeared to them, and had taught them to read the prophecies in which all these things were foretold as coming to pass, and when they had seen Him ascending into heaven, and had believed, and had received power sent thence by Him upon them, and went to every race of men, they taught these things, and were called apostles.


For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, "This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;" and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, "This is My blood;" and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn.

I've read arguments that Justin's scanty use of the word "Gospel" to refer to written materials meant that this was a new term for Christians, but in fact it seems to have been a new term for pagans, at least in context of the use of the word by Christians (as the word "gospel" had been around for a long time and used by pagans as well in its own context.)

In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin explains a little more about the authors of the memoirs:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... rypho.html

For in the memoirs which I say were drawn up by His apostles and those who followed them, [it is recorded] that His sweat fell down like drops of blood while He was praying...

The "sweat like blood" is from Luke 22:44.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Did Justin introduce gospels to Rome?

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rgprice wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 1:22 pm
As for Justin knowing "Gospels":


And, accordingly, our Lord in His teaching proclaimed that this very thing would take place, saying that Elijah would also come. And we know that this shall take place when our Lord Jesus Christ shall come in glory from heaven; whose first manifestation the Spirit of God who was in Elijah preceded as herald in the person of John, a prophet among your nation; after whom no other prophet appeared among you. He cried, as he sat by the river Jordan: 'I baptize you with water to repentance; but He that is stronger than I shall come, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and will gather the wheat into the barn; but the chaff He will burn up with unquenchable fire' [Matthew 3:11-12].

And this very prophet your king Herod had shut up in prison; and when his birthday was celebrated, and the niece of the same Herod by her dancing had pleased him, he told her to ask whatever she pleased. Then the mother of the maiden instigated her to ask the head of John, who was in prison; and having asked it, Herod sent and ordered the head of John to be brought in on a charger Matthew 14:6–11].

Wherefore also our Christ said, [when He was] on earth, to those who were affirming that Elijah must come before Christ: 'Elijah shall come, and restore all things; but I say unto you, that Elijah has already come, and they knew him not, but have done to him whatsoever they chose' [Matthew 17:12]. And it is written, 'Then the disciples understood that He spoke to them about John the Baptist' [Matt 17:13].

Dialogue with Trypho 49
.

I don't know how to explain Justin's account of things like this other than that Justin had read a Gospel. Obviously the underlined citations are just noted correspondences, they aren't in his text.
.
Yes, certainly there are correspondences: that version of Matt 3:11-12 is very close to the NIV version. As does the passage that corresponds to Matt 17.12a.

There's an account of Herod beheading John the Baptist in there, too. Which corresponds to the account in Matthew 14:6–11 (NIV) (and Mark 6:21b-28).

That excerpt from Dial. 49 seems like a grab-bag from Matthew.*
It's in the context of Justin trying to justify Christ in the context of "the circumstance that Elijah has not yet come" when Elijah is supposed to be is the precursor of the first advent:

Dialogue 49:


Trypho: Those who affirm him to have been a man, and to have been anointed by election, and then to have become Christ, appear to me to speak more plausibly than you who hold those opinions which you express. For we all expect that Christ will be a man of men, and that Elijah when he comes will anoint him. But if this man appear to be Christ, he must certainly be known as man of men; but from the circumstance that Elijah has not yet come, I infer that this man is not He [the Christ].

Justin: Does not Scripture, in the book of Zechariah [Malachi 4:5], say that Elijah shall come before the great and terrible day of the Lord?

Trypho: Certainly.

Justin: If therefore Scripture compels you to admit that two advents of Christ were predicted to take place — one in which He would appear suffering, and dishonoured, and without comeliness; but the other in which He would come glorious and Judge of all, as has been made manifest in many of the fore-cited passages — shall we not suppose that the word of God has proclaimed that Elijah shall be the precursor of the great and terrible day, that is, of His second advent?

Trypho: Certainly.

Justin: [the excerpt above]

Trypho: This statement also seems to me paradoxical; namely, that the prophetic Spirit of God, who was in Elijah, was also in John.

Justin: Do you not think that the same thing happened in the case of Joshua the son of Nave (Nun), who succeeded to the command of the people after Moses, when Moses was commanded to lay his hands on Joshua, and God said to him, 'I will take of the spirit which is in you, and put it on him?'

Trypho: Certainly.

Justin: As therefore, while Moses was still among men, God took of the spirit which was in Moses and put it on Joshua, even so God was able to cause [the spirit] of Elijah to come upon John; in order that, as Christ at His first coming appeared inglorious, even so the first coming of the spirit, which remained always pure in Elijah like that of Christ, might be perceived to be inglorious. For the Lord said He would wage war against Amalek with concealed hand; and you will not deny that Amalek fell. But if it is said that only in the glorious advent of Christ war will be waged with Amalek, how great will the fulfilment of Scripture be which says, 'God will wage war against Amalek with concealed hand!' You can perceive that the concealed power of God was in Christ the crucified, before whom demons, and all the principalities and powers of the earth, tremble.

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/01284.htm
.


* The first two passages from Matthew in the excerpt in question - Matt 3:11-2 and 14:6–11 - appear to be out-of-context
  • especially Matt 14:6-11 ie. the account of the death of John
To me, which direction the tropes moved - ie. gospel or proto-gospel to Justin or vice versa - remains open
Last edited by MrMacSon on Sun Feb 05, 2023 12:58 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Did Justin introduce gospels to Rome?

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In his preserved works, Justin doesn’t mention the “Gospel According to” any author. Now, I have no reason to doubt that Justin was familiar with texts very much like what we call the Gospels According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke (John is trickier). But the issue Larsen’s work raises is that Justin isn’t talking about the gospel(s) in that way. Justin is not distinguishing between discreet, independent writings, with individual attributed authors (it’s the “apomnemoneumata of the apostles”), and this point is what should be catching our attention.

To put it in more imaginative terms: I could be confronted today in 2018 with an ancient sheet of papyrus with Greek writing, recognize passages that are unique to what I know as the Gospel according to Mark, and therefore identify the manuscript (correctly, in our terms) as a copy of the Gospel According to Mark. Imagine Justin was confronted with that very same papyrus in the year 140. How would he have characterized it? A gospel? The gospel? An apomnemoneuma of the apostles? Or just the apomnemoneumata of the apostles? Would Justin, or other Christian writers prior to him, have at all differentiated between a copy of the Gospel According to Matthew and a copy of the Gospel According to Mark in the way that Irenaeus did a few decades later? (The question of titles is important here, but that will need to be a different post.)

https://brentnongbri.com/2018/04/09/ear ... /#more-943




When Justin refers to texts very similar to what we would call the Gospel According to Matthew and the Gospel According to Mark, he consistently uses the plural (both apomnemoneumata and euangelia) and does not distinguish individual authorship (it’s nearly always “of/by the apostles” “and their followers”).*

All of this tends, in my view, to confirm Larsen’s argument about how Justin and earlier Christian authors characterize the gospel(s), which in turn supports his larger conclusions: “…early readers and users of gospel texts regarded the gospel not as a book, but as a fluid constellation of texts. … Ancient writing practices and textual fluidity present us with exciting challenges and interesting possibilities to rethink how texts became books, how writers became authors, and how we might describe how texts change.”



* The lone exception to this “plural” rule in Justin’s surviving writings is actually quite telling: At Dialogue 106.3, the manuscripts read καὶ γεγράφθαι ἐν τοῖς ἀπομνημονεύμασιν αὐτοῦ. The singular αὐτοῦ is so out of keeping with Justin’s normal practice that some modern editors have emended the text at this point; Goodspeed and Bobichon follow the manuscripts; Otto reads ἐν τοῖς ἀπομνημονεύμασιν τῶν ἀποστόλων αὐτοῦ; I’m unable to consult Marcovich, but according to Bobichon’s apparatus, he follows Otto in adding the words τῶν ἀποστόλων.

Some translators have followed this emendation (“memoirs of his apostles”), while others have tried to the render the Greek as it is found in the manuscripts. In so doing, they tend to take the referent of the singular αὐτοῦ as either Jesus (Dods et al.: “When it is written in the memoirs of Him…”) or Peter. Either way, the association with the ἀπομνημονεύματα would not be individual authorship. It is either Jesus, the object of what the ἀπομνημονεύματα are about or Peter, who is the ultimate source of the ἀπομνημονεύματα but not the author of the text. It’s clear from context that the passage under discussion comes from (what we would call) the Gospel According to Mark, but Justin does not describe it that way.


https://brentnongbri.com/2018/04/11/jus ... e-gospels/
.

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Re: Did Justin introduce gospels to Rome?

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An emendation, seriously?!

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... Aentry%3Da)pomnhmo%2Fneuma

ἀπομνημονεύμασιν is dative plural:

ἀπομνημόνευμα, from ἀπομνημονεύω

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... Aentry%3Da)pomnhmoneu%2Fw

1.to relate from memory, relate, recount, Plat.
2.to remember, call to mind, id=Plat.; ὄνομα ἀπεμνημόνευσε τῶι παιδὶ θέσθαι gave his son the name in memory of a thing, Hdt.
3.ἀπ. τί τινι to bear something in mind against another, Xen

Somethings that are related from memory. HIS somethings:

γεγράφθαι ἐν τοῖς ἀπομνημονεύμασιν αὐτοῦ - written in the memories of-him. Justin is explicitly referring to text(s) that he labels "things related from memory".
"Emending" here is a brutal sacrilege to textual analysis, this is nothing short of Christifying the little that we have - which naturally is natural to biblical academic, alas

Remembrances perhaps could be another word here

Vinzent makes the same point by the way: Justin refers either to plural things, and only once to a singular Evangellion
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Re: Did Justin introduce gospels to Rome?

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In his preserved works, Justin doesn’t mention the “Gospel According to” any author. Now, I have no reason to doubt that Justin was familiar with texts very much like what we call the Gospels According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke (John is trickier). But the issue Larsen’s work raises is that Justin isn’t talking about the gospel(s) in that way. Justin is not distinguishing between discreet, independent writings, with individual attributed authors (it’s the “apomnemoneumata of the apostles”), and this point is what should be catching our attention.
What should be catching our attention is that, in two of his extant letters, JUSTIN WAS WRITING TO PAGANS.

Justin's description of the written material used by Christians should be regarded as a reflection of what he thought pagans knew about Christianity, not what Justin knew. Thus his use of "memoirs" and definition of "apostles" and "Gospel" in the First Apology.

In his Dialogue with Trypho, he refers to memoirs which were "drawn up by His apostles and those who followed them", and then IMMEDIATELY quotes from gLuke.

It doesn't invalidate the guy's point, but it does add context to it.
To put it in more imaginative terms: I could be confronted today in 2018 with an ancient sheet of papyrus with Greek writing, recognize passages that are unique to what I know as the Gospel according to Mark, and therefore identify the manuscript (correctly, in our terms) as a copy of the Gospel According to Mark. Imagine Justin was confronted with that very same papyrus in the year 140. How would he have characterized it? A gospel? The gospel? An apomnemoneuma of the apostles? Or just the apomnemoneumata of the apostles? Would Justin, or other Christian writers prior to him, have at all differentiated between a copy of the Gospel According to Matthew and a copy of the Gospel According to Mark in the way that Irenaeus did a few decades later? (The question of titles is important here, but that will need to be a different post.)
It's a good point. But at the least, Justin was aware of material that supposedly went back to the apostles themselves, and material that was supposedly written by the apostles' followers. And his quote above appears to suggest he was to identify a passage as coming from a follower rather than an apostle.

It still leaves many questions. But Justin wasn't writing to modern audiences, so it's important to keep his actual audience in mind when doing analysis of his writings.
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Re: Did Justin introduce gospels to Rome?

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GakuseiDon wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 2:20 pm
But at the least, Justin was aware of material that supposedly went back to the apostles themselves, and material that was supposedly written by the apostles' followers. And his quote above appears to suggest he was to identify a passage as coming from a follower rather than an apostle.

My understanding (given the context) is that by "apostles" Justin means the gospels of Matthew and John (since they were thought to be written by apostles) and by "follower" he means the gospels of Mark and Luke (since they were thought to be written by followers of Peter and Paul).

And this ties in with whether Justin knew about Paul, since Luke (in his mind) would be one of "those who followed" the apostles (in this case Paul).
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Did Justin introduce gospels to Rome?

Post by GakuseiDon »

John2 wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 2:45 pm
GakuseiDon wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 2:20 pmBut at the least, Justin was aware of material that supposedly went back to the apostles themselves, and material that was supposedly written by the apostles' followers. And his quote above appears to suggest he was to identify a passage as coming from a follower rather than an apostle.
My understanding (given the context) is that by "apostles" Justin means the gospels of Matthew and John (since they were thought to be written by apostles) and by "follower" he means the gospels of Mark and Luke (since they were thought to be written by followers of Peter and Paul).

And this ties in with whether Justin knew about Paul, since Luke (in his mind) would be one of "those who followed" the apostles (in this case Paul).
Yes, it's consistent with that at the least, though obviously we don't know for sure. Luke was thought to be the companion of Paul based on Acts of the Apostles, which may not have been written by the time of Justin. I'm not sure about the timing there. Paul is referred to in 1 Clement and Ignatius so appears to have been considered 'proto-orthodox' fairly early. If Acts was the mechanism through which a Marcionite Paul was reconciled with the proto-orthodox, then it was written early.

Also, it's conceivable that Justin might have included 1 Peter, James, etc, also in the category of "memoirs", so not just the written Gospels.
Last edited by GakuseiDon on Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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