The Dialogue with Trypho is a puzzling text – long, complex and unshapely. D.D.'s volume offers a key to unlock some of its puzzles. The text was, he argues, written ‘in response to, and with a constant eye on’ (p. 139) opponents whom he labels ‘Christian demiurgists’, by which he means ‘those early Jesus-followers who posited a Demiurge separate from the First or Supreme Being’ (p. 4).
The case is assembled systematically – forensically, even. The first chapter maintains that these demiurgists were already in view in the (First) Apology. Chapter 2 turns to the Dialogue and argues – convincingly – that it was written primarily for an internal Christian audience, ‘perhaps especially members of Justin's school’ (p. 45). D.D. then applies these conclusions (Chapter 3) and seeks to show that many of the issues raised in the Dialogue make sense only, or especially, if read in the light of Justin's confrontation on home soil with the demiurgists. Chapter 4 claims that a genuine effort to convert ‘a non-Jesus-believing audience’ (p. 6) had relevance to Justin's campaign against the demiurgists, since they could produce the argument that, if the Jewish scriptures had indeed contained clear prophecies of Jesus, more Jews would have recognised this and converted. Finally, the fifth chapter, ‘In Favour of Heresy’, discusses the explicit references in the Dialogue to heretical groups, while also arguing, as the title of the chapter is meant to imply, that Justin is defending the very notions of heresy and heresiology against softly-softly Christians who maintained a more tolerant attitude.
There is a lengthy appendix on ‘Justin Martyr and Acts of the Apostles’, arguing persuasively that ‘Justin was indeed aware of and made use of Acts’ (p. 145). The slightly tenuous relevance of this to the argument is that heresy and heresiology are Christian, not Jewish, inventions (pp. 109–18), which entails demolishing Justin's list of seven Jewish ‘heresies’ in Dial. 80.4. That is accomplished by tracing them to his reading of Acts.
Taking the book as a whole, D.D. has produced a clear and coherent case. Does it work? Can ‘the Dialogue in its entirety … be read as an extended argument against demiurgical forms of Christianity’ (p. 63)? Before turning to that question, I will raise two general points relating to procedural decisions that D.D. has made, one regarding text and the other his use of the term ‘demiurgist’.
D.D.'s base text is E.J. Goodspeed's Die ältesten Apologeten (1914) (p. 10 n. 22), though emendations from other editions are at times noted and discussed. Goodspeed has rendered yeoman service as a textus receptus of the Apologetic corpus for over a century, but it is surely time now to let it rest in genteel retirement. For the Dialogue, P. Bobichon (2003) would seem the obvious choice.
The text of the Dialogue (like that of the Apologies) rests on only one manuscript, Parisinus graecus 450 or A. Goodspeed is nearly, but not quite, a transcript of A with standardised orthography. That D.D. refers to A as ‘our main manuscript’ (p. 10 n. 22) and speaks of ‘the manuscript tradition’ (p. 30 n. 26) does not necessarily inspire confidence: the only other manuscript is an apograph of A from 1541, of no independent standing.
The other point concerns the term ‘demiurgists’. Neologisms are often problematic: a host of labels that have been experimented with in connection with the ‘Arian’ controversies can attest to that. D.D. is fully cognisant of the problem and justifies his choice of terms as ‘descriptive and heuristic devices’ (p. 11 n. 24). I can see that, as a heuristic device, ‘demiurgist’ allows ‘Marcionites’ to be lumped together with groups like ‘Valentinians’ and ‘Basilideans’.
But ‘Demiurge’ and its cognate verb are always used in a positive sense by Justin (eleven times in the Apologies) to refer, for example, to ‘God the Father and Demiurge of all’ (1 Ap. 8.2). And they are never used in the Dialogue. I am not sure that Justin would have been too happy with the term ‘demiurgists’.
In fact, I am not sure he would have readily understood it. D.D. has to work quite hard to argue that Simon, Helen and Menander are linked with Marcion in 1 Ap. 26.5 because ‘Justin observed a degree of theological continuity between Simon [with his entourage] and Marcion’ (p. 21). What links them, he suggests, is a shared ‘demiurgism’ (p. 22), though Justin had introduced them as examples of ‘some’ who had been put up by the demons to say that ‘they were gods’ (1 Ap. 26.1), and Simon's ‘demiurgism’ (likely enough in itself) has to be inferred from Justin's reference to him as ‘the first god’ and to Helen as ‘the first thought that came to be from him’. In Dial. 35.6 (the only passage where the ‘heretics’ are name-checked) Marcionites, Valentinians, Basilideans, Satornilians and ‘others’ are brought on stage as examples of those who ‘in various ways teach to blaspheme the Maker of all things and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the Christ of whom it was prophesied by him that he would come’. That makes them, I suppose, textbook ‘demiurgists’, but Justin neither uses the word ‘Demiurge’ nor does he home in specifically on that charge. D.D. is careful to say that his terminology should not ‘be understood as implying a distinct sociological formation (as opposed to an intellectual current)’ (p. 11 n. 24). But there must be a danger of reification.
The case D.D. constructs in his five chapters is strong – in some ways, too strong, in the sense that he sometimes overplays his hand. The argument in Chapter 2 for a primarily or initially internal audience is both persuasive in itself (‘On purely practical grounds, then, it is implausible that the Dialogue was written specifically for an external audience, since there was no good way to reach such an audience’ [p. 44]), but also has explanatory power. He imagines ‘students at Justin's school poring over this long text’, which could help to explain its ‘repetitive nature … as a didactic device’ and allows for the possibility of the text being expanded or supplemented, ‘thus further contributing to the complex and convoluted structure of the work’ (p. 45).
The weakest chapter, in some ways, is 4, where D.D. argues that Justin is trying to blunt the ‘demiurgical’ claim that the failure of Jews to convert exposes the weakness of the proof-from-prophecy argument. The only evidence he can adduce for this as a claim made by demiurgists is the (not totally identical) argument in Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem 3.6.1–2.
At times in the chapter, D.D. appeals to a priori argument. ‘It is difficult to imagine that the failure of Jews to convert would not have been cited by demiurgists …’ (p. 75; but he does then adduce Adv. Marc.). Or, ‘it is unlikely that when Justin criticized philosophy in general and Plato in particular … he would have been unaware of the fact that …’ (p. 85). One way to make a key fit is to construct the lock around it.
On the other hand, D.D. is far from regarding anti-Jewish debate as a mere smokescreen, a ploy in the anti-demiurgical war (pp. 69, 87), and his argument does, once again, have explanatory power. In particular, it can help to explain the curious ending of the Dialogue: the possibility of conversion is left open. And it can help to explain the odd combination of malleability and docility on Trypho's part with strong vituperation on Justin's: Jewish refusal to hear is obstinate and obtuse, but once the Jews listen, they find the scriptural arguments irresistible.
This is an important book that will have to be taken into account in all future discussion of the Dialogue, and indeed of Justin's project as a whole. D.D. ends the introduction by saying that ‘the Dialogue emerges as a surprisingly rich and inventive text’ (p. 8). The same can be said of his book.
