Apology of Aristides

While his edition was passing through the press, it was observed that the work had been extant in Greek the whole time, though in a slightly abbreviated form, since it had been embedded as a speech in a religious novel written around 1000 AD entitled The Life of Barlaam and Ioasaph.

"[2] The Apology has a clear conceptual and ideological dependence on Aristotelianism, Middle Platonism and Stoicism, which he does not criticize at any time, something that must have pleased Hadrian, who was a student of philosophy and had been a listener of Epictetus.

[3] Although its title corresponds to that given by the Armenian fragment and by Eusebius, it begins with a formal inscription to the emperor Titus Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pius.

There are, however, no internal grounds for rejecting the thrice-bested dedication to Hadrian, his predecessor, and the picture of things in it, that it is moved by compulsion:[1][4] Having briefly spoken of the divine nature in the terms of Greek philosophy, Aristides proceeds to ask which of all the races of men have at all partaken of the truth about God.

Idolaters, or, as he here gently terms them in addressing the emperor, "those who worship what among you are said to be gods," he subdivides into the three great world-civilizations: Chaldeans, Greeks and Egyptians.

He begins with a fragment which, when purged of glosses by a comparison of all three forms in which it survives, reads thus:[5][4] This passage contains a clear correspondence with the second section of the Apostles' Creed.

At the close we have a passage which is found only in the Syriac, but which is shown by internal evidence to contain original elements: "Now the Greeks, O King, as they follow base practises in intercourse with males, and a mother and a sister and a daughter, impute their monstrous impurity in turn to the Christians.

From the fragments which survive we know that it contained: These points, except the proof from Jewish prophecy, are taken up and worked out by Aristides with a frequent use of the actual language of the Preaching of Peter.