Justin Martyr and the Golden Calf: Ethnic Argumentation in the New Israel

chapter 15 Justin Martyr and the Golden Calf: Ethnic Argumentation in the New Israel

Andrew Radde-Gallwitz

In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin Martyr uses the episode of the golden calf to mark the difference between Christianity and Judaism. Justin was a Gentile from Flavia Neapolis (modern Nablus) in Palestine. Born to pagan parents around 100 ce, he became a philosopher, studying with multiple teachers before encountering (perhaps in Neapolis) a Platonist.1 While Platonism “added wings” to Justin’s mind, he ultimately encountered an old man who explained that the sure and useful philosophy was contained not in Plato’s writings, but in the books of the prophets who had more adequately done the work of philosophy, which is to talk about God and the soul. They had also foretold God’s Christ. Justin became a Christian philosopher, continuing to wear the philosopher’s garb (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.11). He travelled to Rome, perhaps twice. Tradition, including the Acts of Justin and His Companions, holds that he was a teacher there in his upstairs apartment near the otherwise-unknown Timiotinian Bath until his martyrdom in 165 or 166. Although he wrote many more, only three written works survived, two if one views the First Apology and Second Apology as originally a single work.2 He addressed both apologies to the Emperor Hadrian. The Dialogue with Trypho is later than the Apologies.3 Here, Justin reports a debate between himself and a Jew named Trypho, who identifies himself as a “Hebrew of the circumcision” and as a refugee of the recent war (i.e., the Bar Kokhba War) now living in Corinth (Dial. 1.3).4 Certain of Trypho’s coreligion- ists also take part. The debate lasted for two days and is set perhaps in Ephesus,

1 The question turns on whether “our city” in Dial. 2.6 is Justin’s hometown or the city in which the dialogue is dramatically set, which is either Ephesus (so Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.18) or Palestinian Caesarea, as is the position of Bagatti (1979), Hamann (1995), and Halton and Slusser (Justin Martyr 2003, xii and 3 n1). 2 See the list of works at Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.18, to which we must add the anti-Marcionite work cited by Irenaeus. 3 Justin refers to the earlier Apology at Dial. 120.6. 4 Unless otherwise noted, translations of Dialogue with Trypho are those of Falls in Justin Martyr 2003.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004386860_016 228 Radde-Gallwitz shortly before Justin was to sail.5 In the Dialogue, Justin shows himself to be conversant with Jewish and Jewish-Christian exegesis, as the groundbreaking work of Oskar Skarsaune has detailed (1987). Following Thomas Falls, we can divide the Dialogue into five sections:

(1) Introduction (1–8), in which Justin, after describing his own educa- tion and eventual conversion to Christianity, sets the limits of the debate; (2) Part I (9–47), which explains why Christians do not observe Mosaic Law; (3) Part II (48–108), which produces arguments to show that Christ is the true Messiah; (4) Part III (109–141), which draws the logi- cal conclusion that Christians are the true heirs of the divine promises; (5) Conclusion (142). Justin Martyr 2003, xv–xvi

Scholars disagree about the work’s intended audience, with some suggest- ing pagan Gentiles, others specifying Gentiles leaning towards Judaism, others saying Jews, and still others favoring the view (which seems to me most likely) that Justin aims to “reinforce a Christian readership in its belief that it had superseded the Mosaic Law and supplanted Judaism as the New Israel” (Halton and Slusser in Justin Martyr 2003, xiii). Yet, we should not assume clear boundaries between Christianity and Judaism. Jon Nilson has suggested that “Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho is addressed primarily to a non-Christian Gentile audience at Rome which is very favorably disposed towards Judaism and Christianity, yet is unable to adequately distinguish the one from the other” (Nilson 1977, 539). Confronted with such a situation, Justin saw it as his task to mark this boundary indelibly. The occasional bitterness of Justin’s tone can perhaps be explained by his report that Jewish hostility toward Christians is worse than that of the other nations. Justin alleges that Jews from Jerusalem have spread rumors throughout the Roman world about Christians, including the slander that Christianity is a “godless heresy” (αἵρεσιν ἄθεον, Dial. 17.1); they

5 That the discussion occurs over two days is shown by the numerous references to a previ- ous day and by Justin’s repetition of scriptural proofs so that those who joined Trypho anew on the second day would hear them. At Dial. 80.3, Justin (the character) points forward to his “future” writing of the Dialogue. For Justin’s expected voyage, see the work’s conclusion (Dial. 142). Rome is not mentioned as the destination. It is probably best to view the voyage for its literary purpose of ending the dialogue after two days—in Marcovich’s phrase, “the sea-trip is a convenient subterfuge” (Marcovich 1997, 5)—rather than to use it as autobio- graphical evidence of a move by Justin (back to) Rome.