The Apology of Aristides

The Apology of Aristides is the name given to a short early Christian manuscript: two copies of which were independently discovered in the late nineteenth century. What little we know about Aristides himself comes from the Church Fathers Eusebius of Caesarea and Saint Jerome: both these authors claim that Aristides was an Athenian philosophical convert to Christianity in and around the second century after Christ. We may also assume that he spent some time trying to convert high born and/or influential Romans to Christianity considering that fact that Apology of Aristides is addressed to the Emperor Hadrian. What is important for us in the Apology is not its peculiar history, but rather that it deals with the issue of the jews in several places. This is of interest precisely because Aristides is an early Christian author and accordingly can be taken as being proverbially 'closer to the source' than more modern authorities who all too often have ulterior and often directly political motivations for their theological positions on the subject of the jews. Now the Apology brings up the subject of the jews when it states that there are fours kinds of men: Barbarians, Greeks, Jews and Christians. The Apology then moves on to summarise the genealogies in relation to the origin of man that these four groups believe in. It asserts that Barbarians think they come from Kronos, Greeks think they come from Zeus, Jews think they come from Abraham and Christians think they come from Jesus Christ. Now in this we can easily detect the truth of Eusebius and Jerome's assertions that Aristides was Greek (and probably Athenian) given that he dates all religions that are not Judaism or Christianity to two generations of Greek gods: Kronos and Zeus. The relation between Kronos and Zeus being that the former was the father of the latter and latter overthrew the former to become the leader of the gods. If we bear in mind that Aristides was well aware of non-Greek religions such as traditional Egyptian polytheism then it is clear that Aristides is engaging in fairly typical Greek intellectual snobbery in relation to the rest of the world. This is particularly evident when the Apology states that the Greeks were far wiser than the barbarians, but then qualifies this by stating that the Greeks have consequently erred far more grievously than the barbarians because they were more able to divine the falsehood of polytheism and the truth of monotheism. In essence Aristides is trying to argue; although not very well in my view, that Christianity is the necessary end of all rational philosophical speculation, but to make his case he relies more on the common Greek belief in their eminent intellectual superiority over non-Greeks writ large as opposed to logic and making a reasoned case to intellectually convert his readership. This at first glance would suggest that the Apology is a philo-Semitic document, but if we look a bit closer we can see that in the same breath as Aristides' statement about the jewishness of Mary: we also see him directly accuse the jews of deicide (the murder of god) when he declares that the jews; and not the Romans, killed Christ.

This is noteworthy because it clearly indicates that for Aristides both facts were important in his understanding of the jewish question as they are superficially contradictory to the modern Christian mindset of today, but yet obviously were not for Aristides. In spite of his critics regarding the jewish people it seems that Aristides is being philo-Semitic because he accedes that the jews are 'much nearer the truth' and that they perform acts of charity. Aristides however then immediately goes back on the offensive and accuses the jews of having 'strayed' from the proper path ('accurate knowledge'), which is represented by their observance of superstitious and absurd ritualistic nonsense such as the Sabbath ('sabbath' and 'fast'), the phases of the Moon ( 'new moons' i.e. the jewish lunar calendar) and/or the practice of Schechita ('cleanness of meats'). Indeed the Apology makes it explicitly clear that the jews do not; in fact, worship god, but rather worship angels, because they deify rituals that focus on the intervention of angels (e.g. Passover/Pesach) and other beings which to Aristides' mind is nearly as bad as worshiping idols as had long been the custom in the ancient world. In essence to Aristides' mind the jews are the major antagonists of both Jesus in his lifetime and of Christians in his time as they were addicted to ritual for the sake of ritual and demented religious fanaticism because they could not conceive of anything higher or better. Thus we come back full circle to Aristides' belief that Christianity is the logical end of philosophical speculation and that the Greeks (with the other non-jews following close behind) have superseded the jews as the people of the one god as represented in the chalice of Christianity passing to them with Jesus' death at the hands of proverbial 'children of the devil'. Therefore we should see in the Apology of Aristides not just a Christian philosophical argument, but rather an anti-jewish Christian manifesto of a sort.