Folia Theologica 21. (2010)

Perendy László: An Enigmatic Apology - Aristides on God's created world

FOLIA THEOLOGICA 21 (2010)

87

László Perendy

AN ENIGMATIC APOLOGY - ARISTIDES ON GOD'S CREATED WORLD

I. The Text of the Apology

Although Eusebius1 mentions that Aristides "left an Apology of the faith addressed to Hadrian", he does not quote anything. So this work had been considered lost until 1878,2 when the Mechitarists of San Lazzaro in Venice published the Latin translation of a fragment in Armenian. Most scholars accepted it as original, but the real surprise came in 1889, when J. Rendel Harris published the complete Syriac version of the Apology, which he had found in the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. Before being published, the translation was passed to J. Armitage Robinson, who discovered that the Apology had in fact remained extant in a Greek version as a part of the religious novel of Barlaam and Joasaph3, which was composed about the year 630 A.D. by a monk of the Monastery of St. Saba in Palestine. The publication of J. R. Harris and J. A. Robinson4 is still of crucial importance. In 1922 Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt published a fourth century Greek fragment of the Apology, preserved on an Oxyrhynchus papyrus.5 It holds an intermediate position between the Syriac and the Greek version of Barlaam and Joasaph. A second fragment was published by H. J. M. Milne.6 This was translated into French by

1 Hist. 4,3,2.

2 Joannes Carolus Thomas Otto was in the position to enumerate only the references: Hermiae Philosophi Irrisio Gentilium Philosophorum. Apologetarum Quadrati, Aristidis, Aristonis, Miltiadis, Melitonis, Apollinaris Reliquiae (Corpus Apologetarum Christianomm Saeculi Secundi, 9), lena 1872. 342-348.

3 Cf. Gonzalez, S., Una fuente de la "Historia de Barlaán y JosafatLa Apologia de Aristides, in Razón y fe 40 (1940) 365-378.

4 Harris, J. R. - Robinson, J. A., The Apology of Aristides on Behalf of the Christians from the Syriac Ms. Preserved on Mount Sinai (Texts and Studies, 1/2), Cambridge 1891.

5 Grenfell, B. - Hunt, A., The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part XV, London 1922.1-6.

6 Milne, H. J. M., A New Fragment of the Apology of Aristides, in Journal of Theological Studies 25 (1924) 73-77.