Jeremy Hudson has produced an important study on a question even sophisticated scholars may not think to ask: what is at stake when Christian apologists draw on the Hebrew scriptural tradition? Hudson elucidates the question in a study that is erudite, creative, and analytically sound, arguing in a rich concluding chapter that “the appeal to the Jewish scriptures in these apologetic works represents a new and decisive step in the use of such texts by Christian writers” (191). Hudson invites historians to see the appearance of scripture in this literature as an intentional strategy that shaped the discourses––and thus the communities––of emerging Christianity in the second century CE.
Hudson's introduction addresses the way that a Hebrew textual tradition evolved into a scriptural tradition in part through the projects of Christian apologists. This discussion is multifaceted by nature, and it felt at times that Hudson devoted too much space and had to rehash scholarly conversation, especially because he does so in each textual chapter as well. But that was also because I so often agreed with Hudson's approach on many of the issues discussed, such as the importance of intended audience and the broad influence of the Septuagint in Greek intellectual circles and the importance of implied audience. Hudson focuses on three texts that are densely studied: Justin Martyr's First Apology, the Oratio ad Graecos of Tatian, and Theophilus of Antioch's Ad Autolycum. Hudson treats each text in turn to consider the ways that they strategically establish the authority of Jewish scriptures in support of arguments for their Christian convictions.
The chapter on Justin Martyr is at the heart of Hudson's thesis about how Christian apologists magnified Hebrew scriptures in the second century CE. Throughout, Hudson engages Justin's text deeply, but he never loses sight of Justin's context, balancing his focus on the Apology with thoughtful attention to classical authors. His discussion of “son of God” language, for example, raises examples of related formulae throughout the First Apology, but also allows for an interesting side trip through Plutarch and Suetonius, including a hat tip to the expansive literature on emperor worship in the Roman Empire (43–45). In a chapter that argues that Justin's apologetical project entails a careful elevation and separation of Jewish scriptures within a Greco-Roman intellectual context, Hudson explain how Justin positioned scriptural pieces within the complex literary milieu in which he operated (97–99).
Tatian provides an intriguing case for Hudson to discuss the evolving relationship of Christian apologists to Jewish scripture. The Oratio ad Graecos engages with Greek culture in an interesting way, and Hudson notes how the situation with Tatian is much different than Justin's work, which so frequently cites scriptures explicitly. Tatian portrays them as a source of a “barbarian philosophy” that is at odds with Greek ideas. Hudson highlights the autobiographical dimension of Tatian in a way that clarifies how his argument is connected to Justin's apologetical instincts, but it is also unique to Tatian's perspective on how his argument is culturally distinct from Greek philosophy. Tatian's comparative argument is explicit and expansive, and Hudson is equally expansive in his engagement with these Greco-Roman sources, connecting Tatian to his intellectual context in ways that illuminate the Oratio and its argument (122–135). It is easy to lose the thread of what Tatian's “barbarian philosophy” precisely is; –Hudson ensures we understand the stakes of Tatian's argument by situating it in this larger Christian, apologetical discourse.
In his final, text-focused chapter, Hudson considers Theophilus of Antioch's Ad Autolycum through the same lens as Justin's Apology and Tatian's Oratio had been. Again, the implied audience is crucial to Hudson's reading. Theophilus's use of texts like Genesis and portions of the prophetic literature is part of a project of affirming the reliability of the Christian message, necessitating that these texts are in the foreground. Hudson demonstrates how Theophilus develops many elements that were crucial to making the Biblical materials salient to the evolving Greco-Roman constituency of the Christian message. An especially interesting passage discusses the Sibylline Oracles and Theophilus's use of them to, in a sense, bring a non-Hebrew text in to the prophetic conversation (163–165). Hudson takes special care to account for the strands of historical work and historical methodology that Theophilus engages, including Josephus (as a vehicle to the writings of Berossus, Manetho, and Menander) and the Anonymous Commentary on Plato's Theaetetus. For Hudson, Theophilus is a promoter of the nascent scriptural tradition among the Greco-Roman intellectuals to whom he wrote. By giving an account of Genesis that conformed to Greco-Roman expectations about a historical chronology, Theophilus could situate it and the resulting prophetic tradition into dominant literary structures. And for Hudson, this move gives the apologetical dimensions of Theophilus's argument greater legitimacy.
One of the chief accomplishments of Hudson's study is to frame how the continued evolution of the Christian movement in the second century CE did not have a generic relationship to Jewish scriptures; it had a strategic one. As the author notes in his conclusion, “It was not inevitable that these authors should have used scriptural texts to support their arguments; it was clearly a conscious choice on their part, since other apologetic works of the time do not do so” (190). The success of this study is captured in how salient that conclusion seems despite how inevitable this relationship feels to most readings of early Christianity. When I tell friends and colleagues about the important contributions in this book, I will talk about it as an addition to evolving scholarly conversations that see Jewish and Christian intellectual culture as a part of the larger context of culturally rich and strategically creative communities that sought to claim space and influence in the Roman Empire.
