First & Second Apology

Justin Martyr, First and Second Apology

Justin Martyr

Two apologies bound as one. Philosophy answered in its own dialect.

Catch rate: Not found in the wild
Base research: 150
Stat total: 266

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.

Stamina68

Contend74

Defend56

Popularity68

Total266

Why these numbers

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

Contend 74

Both apologies now, addressed to emperor and senate — the case for the faith argued on the philosophers’ own ground, with more force than the First alone.

Defend 56

Still resting on essentially one late manuscript — famous, but thinly witnessed, so Defend stays modest.

Development

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

First Apology→
Lv 11

First & Second Apology→
Lv 25

J. Martyr’s Corpus

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
11	Evil Is From Demons	Presupposition	Argument	55	100%	15
14	Two Ways	Ethics	Argument	40	100%	25
16	Plato’s Timaeus	Rationality	Argument	55	100%	15
18	Passover Fulfilled	Christology	Argument	55	100%	15
19	Affirm	—	Status	—	—	1
20	None But One	Rationality	Argument	88	90%	5

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.

“The evil demons, who hate us, and who keep such men as these subject to themselves, and serving them in the capacity of judges, incite them, as rulers actuated by evil spirits, to put us to death.”
Justin Martyr, Second Apology 1 (trans. Dods & Reith, ANF 1, public domain).public domain

Evil Is From Demons

PresuppositionArgument · power 55 · 100% accurate

In the gameJustin’s diagnosis of persecution: the pagan gods are demons, and it is they who drive the courts and rulers against the Christians.

“We who formerly… hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not live with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies.”
Justin Martyr, First Apology 14 (ANF, public domain).public domain

Two Ways

EthicsArgument · power 40 · 100% accurate

In the game"There are two ways…" May convict the foe, lowering its Contend.

Strong against

×2"Haters of Mankind"an argument · why?

The Didache’s way of life begins with loving God and your neighbour, and blessing those who curse you. That is what these supposed haters of mankind were taught.

×2"We Are All Religious"an argument · why?

The Didache says there are two ways, one of life and one of death. Being religious is not enough, because not every way leads to life.

×2"What Good Are You?"an argument · why?

The Didache teaches a way of life: love your neighbour, give to anyone who asks, and care for the poor. A city is better off with people like that than with its games.

“But if it lives, it lives not as being life, but as the partaker of life; but that which partakes of anything, is different from that of which it does partake. Now the soul partakes of life, since God wills it to live.”
Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 6 (trans. Dods & Reith, ANF 1, public domain).public domain

Plato’s Timaeus

RationalityArgument · power 55 · 100% accurate

In the gameJustin turns the philosophers’ own Timaeus back on them: world and soul alike live only by a life not their own. May leave the foe grasping (accuracy down).

“The mystery, then, of the lamb which God enjoined to be sacrificed as the passover, was a type of Christ; with whose blood, in proportion to their faith in Him, they anoint their houses, i.e., themselves, who believe in Him.”
Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 40 (ANF, public domain).public domain

Passover Fulfilled

ChristologyArgument · power 55 · 100% accurate

In the gameMelito: the type in Egypt, the truth in Christ. The Creator’s own attributes read back as the sentence of his execution.

Strong against

×2Alien Godan argument · why?

Melito preached the Passover as the pattern and Christ as what it was patterned on. Cut the pattern and nothing is fulfilled.

×2Letter to Floraan argument · why?

Melito reads the very Law Ptolemy assigns to a lesser god, and finds Christ in it — the lamb, the blood, the firstborn spared.

×2Moses or Jesus?an argument · why?

Melito shows that Moses and Jesus tell one story. The Passover lamb in Egypt pointed ahead to Christ, the Lamb who was killed.

“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.

“No one trusted in Socrates so as to die for this doctrine, but in Christ… not only philosophers and scholars believed, but also artisans and people entirely uneducated.”
Justin Martyr, Second Apology 10 (ANF, public domain).public domain

None But One

RationalityArgument · power 88 · 90% accurate

In the gameNo one died for Socrates. They die for Christ — and not the learned only, but laborers and the unschooled. The world’s verdict, not the academy’s.

Read it: What Convinced Him

The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Koine Greek.

“For I myself, too, when I was delighting in the doctrines of Plato, and heard the Christians slandered, and saw them fearless of death, and of all other things which are counted fearful, perceived that it was impossible that they could be living in wickedness and pleasure.”
Justin Martyr, Second Apology 12 (trans. Dods & Reith, ANF 1, public domain).

“For what sensual or intemperate man, or who that counts it good to feast on human flesh, could welcome death that he might be deprived of his enjoyments…?”
Justin Martyr, Second Apology 12 (trans. Dods & Reith, ANF 1, public domain).

“Whatever things were rightly said among all men, are the property of us Christians… For all the writers were able to see realities darkly through the sowing of the implanted word that was in them. For the seed and imitation imparted according to capacity is one thing, and quite another is the thing itself.”
Justin Martyr, Second Apology 13 (trans. Dods & Reith, ANF 1, public domain).

“For no one trusted in Socrates so as to die for this doctrine, but in Christ, who was partially known even by Socrates… not only philosophers and scholars believed, but also artisans and people entirely uneducated, despising both glory, and fear, and death; since He is a power of the ineffable Father, not the mere instrument of human reason.”
Justin Martyr, Second Apology 10 (trans. Dods & Reith, ANF 1, public domain).

“But lest some one say to us, ‘Go then all of you and kill yourselves, and pass even now to God, and do not trouble us,’ I will tell you why we do not so… We have been taught that God did not make the world aimlessly, but for the sake of the human race.”
Justin Martyr, Second Apology 4 (trans. Dods & Reith, ANF 1, public domain).

Notes

The Second Apology was written to the Roman Senate after three Christians were executed under the prefect Lollius Urbicus, c. A.D. 150–157. Some scholars think the two Apologies were one treatise to begin with.

Chapter 12 is Justin telling you what actually converted him, and it is not an argument. He was a Platonist; he heard Christians slandered; he watched them go to their deaths unafraid — and concluded the slander could not be true of people like that.

Hold chapter 13 and chapter 10 together. Yes, whatever is truly said anywhere belongs to Christians — and no, the seed is not the same as the thing itself. Justin is generous to the philosophers without conceding anything.