Aristides’ Apology

The Apology of Aristides the Philosopher

Aristides of Athens

Found in a Sinai monastery, and then found again inside a novel.

Catch rate: 80 / 255
Base research: 150
Stat total: 248

Base stats

Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.

Stamina62

Contend64

Defend66

Popularity56

Total248

Why these numbers

The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.

Stamina 62

Seventeen chapters, entire — the earliest complete Christian apology anyone has.

Contend 64

Aristides argues from the sky and then, at length, from a congregation. The second half is the one that lands, and it is mostly a list of what these people actually do.

Defend 66

Three witnesses in three languages — Syriac, Greek and Armenian — agreeing. Very few second-century texts defend that well.

Popularity 56

Rediscovered in 1889 and much less famous than it should be.

Cited for this book

Aristides presented this defence to Emperor Hadrian around 125, and then it was lost for seventeen centuries. In 1889 J. Rendel Harris found it in Syriac at St Catherine’s monastery on Sinai. Then J. Armitage Robinson noticed that the Greek had been hiding all along in a medieval novel, Barlaam and Josaphat.

Development

A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.

Aristides Frag.→
Lv 12

Aristides’ Apology

Moves learned

By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.

Lv	Move	Type	Cat.	Pwr	Acc	PP
12	Speak Greek	History	Status	—	100%	5
12	Which of Them Has the Truth	History	Argument	58	100%	20
15	Gods Under Guard	Rationality	Argument	74	100%	15
18	Chapter…	Bible	Scripture	—	—	12
20	Affirm	—	Status	—	—	1
22	They Fast Two or Three Days	Ethics	Argument	86	100%	10
26	As If Setting Out	Eschatology	Argument	72	100%	15
30	A New People	History	Argument	80	100%	10

The quotes behind its moves

How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.

Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.

“let us next proceed to the human race, that we may see which of them participate in the truth and which of them in error.”
Aristides, Apology 2 (trans. D. M. Kay from the Syriac, ANF 9, public domain).public domain

Which of Them Has the Truth

HistoryArgument · power 58 · 100% accurate

In the gameAristides sorts the whole human race into groups and then does the thing nobody expects: he judges each one by what it says about itself. No group is dismissed unheard, and none is excused the comparison either.

Strong against

×2.5The Many Faiths, One Realan argument · why?

Aristides did not say every people was equally right. He sorted the peoples of the world one by one, and grants each what it got right, and then asks which of them actually has the truth. He asked the question Hick sets aside.

“they shut them up together in shrines, and worship them, calling them gods, even though they have to guard them securely for fear they should be stolen by robbers. And they did not perceive that anything which acts as guard is greater than that which is guarded, and that he who makes is greater than that which is made.”
Aristides, Apology 3 (trans. D. M. Kay from the Syriac, ANF 9, public domain).public domain

Gods Under Guard

RationalityArgument · power 74 · 100% accurate

In the gameAristides walks past a temple and notices the lock. If a god has to be kept safe from thieves, the guard is stronger than the god — and the man who carved it is stronger still. A child can check this argument, which is why it has never worn out.

Strong against

×3We Will Make You More Godsan argument · why?

A god that has to be locked up against thieves is weaker than the lock — and weaker than the man who carved him.

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being. As some of your own poets have said.”
Acts 17:28 (WEB) — Paul at the Areopagus, quoting the Athenians’ own poets back to them.

Affirm

Status

In the gamePick the part of the opponent’s case that is true and affirm it. That point can no longer be used against you, and the opponent’s Defend falls sharply. It deals no damage. Affirm something false and you have only agreed with an error.

“And if there is among them any that is poor and needy, and if they have no spare food, they fast two or three days in order to supply to the needy their lack of food.”
Aristides, Apology 15 (trans. D. M. Kay from the Syriac, ANF 9, public domain).public domain

They Fast Two or Three Days

EthicsArgument · power 86 · 100% accurate

In the gameRome said Christians hated mankind. Aristides answers with a household budget: when there is nothing spare, they go without meals so that somebody else can eat. He is not arguing that the charge is unfair. He is telling the emperor what to go and look at.

Strong against

×3"Haters of Mankind"an argument · why?

Aristides answered with a household budget. When Christians had no food to spare, they fasted for two or three days so a poor neighbour could eat. People who hate mankind do not do that.

×3Why Did He Neglect Us?an argument · why?

Aristides described Christians going hungry so that strangers could eat. A God who cared for only one nation would not have taught his people to love every nation.

“And if any righteous man among them passes from the world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God; and they escort his body as if he were setting out from one place to another near.”
Aristides, Apology 15 (trans. D. M. Kay from the Syriac, ANF 9, public domain).public domain

As If Setting Out

EschatologyArgument · power 72 · 100% accurate

In the gameA funeral, described by a stranger who has been watching. They give thanks, and they walk the body out of town the way you walk a friend to the edge of the village when he is going somewhere near. The resurrection is not stated. It is in how they carry him.

“And verily, this is a new people, and there is something divine … in the midst of them.”
Aristides, Apology 16 (trans. D. M. Kay from the Syriac, ANF 9, public domain). The ellipsis marks Kay’s own parenthetical gloss on the Syriac — “(lit: a divine admixture)” — not a cut in Aristides.public domain

A New People

HistoryArgument · power 80 · 100% accurate

In the gameAristides has just spent a chapter describing how Christians live, and this is his verdict on it. He is a philosopher reporting to an emperor, and the report is that something has appeared in the world that was not there before.