Justin Against Marcion

Revision of the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--King's College London, 2015 under title: Defining Christianity: Justin's contra-Marcionite defence.

In a period where Christianity was only beginning to form a definitive identity, Marcion played a remarkable and generative role. Andrew Hayes takes the measure of his impact on second-century Christianity through a close examination of the topics and structure of Justin Martyr’s writings, especially the Dialogue with Trypho, demonstrating that Justin repeatedly described Christianity in a contra-Marcionite fashion. Arguing that the early part of the Dialogue is in fact a contra-Marcionite prelude to all the major themes in the rest of the piece, Hayes claims that the chief task Justin took for himself was to seize back from Marcion the terms of Christian self-definition. Marcion is thus far more important for Justin’s work than the few places where he is explicitly named might suggest, and Hayes shows that these texts are far from anomalous: they reveal Justin’s deeper agenda of presenting Marcion as a demonic instrument. Students of the second century, of Marcion and of Justin alike, will find much to reevaluate in these pages.

This study explores Marcion's ideas through his writings and the writings of early Christian polemicists who shaped the idea of heresy.

Shepherd's Notes- Christian Classics Series is designed to give readers a quick, step by step overview of some of the enduring treasures of the Christian faith. They are designed to be used along side the classic itself- either in individual study or in a study group. The faithful of all generations have found spiritual nourishment in the Scriptures and in the works of Christians of earlier generations. Martin Luther and John Calvin would not have become who they were apart from their reading Augustine. God used the writings of Martin Luther to move John Wesley from a religion of dead works to an experience at Aldersgate in which his "heart was strangely warmed." Shepherd's Notes will give pastors, laypersons, and students access to some of the treasures of Christian faith.

Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho is the oldest preserved literary dialogue between a Jew and a Christian and a key text for understanding the development of early Judaism and Christianity. In Between Jews and Heretics, Matthijs den Dulk argues that whereas scholarship has routinely cast this important text in terms of "Christianity vs. Judaism," its rhetorical aims and discursive strategies are considerably more complex, because Justin is advocating his particular form of Christianity in constant negotiation with rival forms of Christianity. The striking new interpretation proposed in this study explains many of the Dialogue’s puzzling features and sheds new light on key passages. Because the Dialogue is a critical document for the early history of Jews and Christians, this book contributes to a range of important questions, including the emergence of the notion of heresy and the "parting of the ways" between Jews and Christians.

This is the first English translation of the commentary by fourth century AD theologian Ephrem the Syrian on the Diatessaron, a Gospel woven from the text of the four Gospels, which predates our earliest evidence of the official Syriac translation of the New Testament.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Edinburgh, 2009.

"Guilt by Association explores the creation, publication, and circulation of heresy catalogues by second- and early third-century Christians. Polemicists made use of these religious blacklists, which include the names of heretical teachers along with summaries of their unsavory doctrines and nefarious misdeeds, in order to discredit opponents and advocate their expulsion from the "authentic" Christianity community. The heresy catalogue proved to be an especially effective literary technology in struggles for religious authority and legitimacy because it not only recast rival teachers as menacing adversaries, but also reinforced such characterizations by organizing otherwise unaffiliated teachers into coherent intellectual, social, and scholastic communities that are established and sustained by demonic powers. This study focuses especially on the earliest Christian heresy catalogues, those found within the works of Justin, Irenaeus, Hegesippus, and the authors the Testimony of Truth and the Tripartite Tractate, with a special emphasis on the first two. Justin and Irenaeus receive special attention not because as so-called "fathers of the church" they occupy a privileged position in the historical record, but because by promoting and making use of a particular heresy catalogue, the Syntagma against All the Heresies, they popularized one specific heresiological model at the expense of others. By focusing upon the heresy catalogue, Guilt by Association not only accounts for the emergence of the Christian heresiological tradition; it also sheds new light upon the socio-rhetorical aims of the Pastoral Epistles, the circulation of early Christian literature, the emergence of a distinct Christian identity, and the origins of Gnosticism"--