Aristides of Athens

This article is about the early Christian author. For the politician of the 5th century BC BC see Aristeides of Athens .

Byzantine icon of Aristides of Athens

Marcianus Aristides of Athens was an ancient Christian author. He lived in the first half of the 2nd century and called himself a philosopher. He is best known for his apology. Its feast day is August 31 for the Catholic Church and September 13 for the Orthodox Church .

Life

Details from Aristides' life are largely unknown. As a contemporary of Quadratus of Athens , he wrote an apologetic pamphlet like him to the Roman emperor, more to Antoninus Pius than to Hadrian . It is a simple, elegant script in which he explains humanity in terms of the Christian religion and tries to prove to the emperor that Christians revere the true God. He is considered one of the first Christian apologists , his work as the oldest surviving apology of Christianity. The apology was considered lost until the Mechitarists of San Lazzaro published an extensive Armenian fragment of this apology in Venice in 1878, James Rendel Harris discovered its complete Syrian translation in a manuscript in the Monastery of St. Catherine on Sinai and Armitage Robinson proved that the Greek text of the Byzantine conversion novel Barlaam and Joseph , which hardly comes from John of Damascus , contained most of the apology as a speech by a monk.

Text example

“But I maintain that God is ungenerated and unmade, is not encompassed by anyone, but encompasses everything himself, that he is a self-existent form, beginningless and endless, imperishable, immortal, perfect and incomprehensible. When I said: perfect, it means that he has no want and needs nothing, while everything needs him; and when I said that it is beginningless, it means that everything that has a beginning also has an end, and everything that has an end can be dissolved. He has no name; because everything that has a name belongs to what has been created. It has no shape and no composition of members; for whoever has such belongs to the formations. He is neither male nor female. Heaven does not embrace him, but heaven and everything visible and invisible are embraced by him. ”( From the Apology of Aristides of Athens (I, 4) )

Text output

• Bernard Pouderon et al. a. (Ed.): Aristides, Apologie (= Sources chrétiennes 470). Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris 2003
• Kaspar Julius (translator): Des Aristides of Athens Apology (= Library of the Church Fathers 12, 1st volume). Kösel, Kempten and Munich 1913, pp. 3–54

literature

• Jean Pépin, Jean-Pierre Mahé: Aristide d'Athènes . In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques , Volume 1, CNRS, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-222-04042-6 , pp. 366-368
• Michael Lattke: Aristides, Apology . In: Commentary on early Christian apologists (KfA) . Volume 2, eds. Norbert Brox, Kurt Niederwimmer, Horacio E. Lona, Ferdinand R. Prostmeier, Jörg Ulrich. Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-451-29041-1 (German translation with detailed commentary).
• Michael Lattke: The truth of the Christians in the Apology of Aristides. Preliminary study for a comment . In: M. Lang (Ed.): A new gender? Development of early Christian self-confidence . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, pp. 215–235.
• Michael Lattke: The death of Jesus Christ in the Apology of Aristides. A case study with an introduction to research history and a bibliography . In: Early Christianity 1, 2010, pp. 575-601.
• Michael Lattke: Greek Words in the Syriac Text of the Apology of Aristides . In: GA Kiraz (Ed.): Malphono w-Rabo d-Malphone: Studies in Honor of Sebastian P. Brock . Gorgias Press, Piscataway, NJ 2008, pp. 383-403.
• Michael Lattke: Was the apologist Aristides a man of education In: Ferdinand R. Prostmeier (Hrsg.): Early Christianity and culture . In: Commentary on early Christian apologists (KfA) supplementary volume 2, ed. Norbert Brox, Kurt Niederwimmer, Horacio E. Lona, Ferdinand R. Prostmeier, Jörg Ulrich. Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 2007, pp. 35–74.
• Berthold Altaner, Alfred Stuiber: Patrology. Life, Writings, and Teaching of the Church Fathers . 8th edition, Herder, Freiburg 1978, pp. 64-65
• Samuel Raz: Demarcation in Aristides Apology. A contribution to the debate about early Christian identity . aventinus varia No. 42, October 29, 2013, online , accessed November 19, 2014.

Web links

• Text of the apology in German translation