Denis Minns and Paul Parvis, after years of fruitful collaboration, have produced a very valuable and welcome critical edition of the Apologies of Justin Martyr to add to Henry Chadwick's enduring legacy, the Oxford Early Christian Texts series. Despite the fact that, as they demonstrate, we only have a single MS (dated 11th September 1364!) on which we can totally rely, the deficient state of that MS and the existence of copies and of ancient testimony from Eusebius and the Sacra Parallela, amply justify their critical labours.
Their brief but pertinent introduction to the text deals first with the textual tradition and most significant editors before discussing the vexed question of how many Apologies there were; one, two, or one-and-a-half (i.e. First Apology plus an appendix, a popular solution). As they point out, the real question is what kind of a text is the so-called ‘Second Apology’. While they accept the modern understanding of the First Apology as a libellus submitted to the emperor Antoninus Pius, their novel suggestion is to see the Second Apology not as an appendix but as most likely ‘clippings from the cutting room floor’, material perhaps excised from the First Apology plus random notes, the whole collected and preserved by pupils. On this basis, supported by appeal to codicological and other evidence, they are led to transfer the last two sections of the Second Apology, which employ the technical language of submitting a libellus, to the end of the First. They consider such a hypothesis does best justice to the rather different character, tone and content of the Second Apology, and the way it alludes to the First.
After a useful summary of the plans of both Apologies, making clear the lacunae in the First, they consider Justin's world, with valuable discussion of Justin's philosophical and theological views in their context. Here their work on the text leads them to criticise the views of earlier scholars on the mediatorial role of Justin's Logos in creation and the claim that Justin presents a distinction between the logos endiathetos and the logos prophorikos. As regards Justin's knowledge of the New Testament they accept the claims that he knew John's Gospel in written form and that he was familiar with Paul's letters, despite nowhere referring to them by name. But no attempt is made to explain the omission, e.g. in terms of a reaction to Marcion's powerful appeal to Paul.
The rest of the book contains the text and translation. They have carefully examined the key MS (Parisinus graecus 450) and the other textual evidence as well as the work of earlier editors, and in their very detailed apparatus and sometimes lengthy footnotes, have discussed the most plausible conjectures of their predecessors. Their own suggestions are based on an intimate knowledge of Justin's style and usage and wide acquaintance with classical parallels, supplemented by use of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae to trace the meaning and frequency of particular terms. What they do undoubtedly demonstrate is the often corrupt and lacunose state of the text, denied by some editors, and the skilful attempts of some unknown scholar to try to improve matters and make sense of what was before him. Like him, they have felt it better to try to deduce the original sense rather than, as with earlier editors, admit defeat and print only the textus receptus with conjectures consigned to the apparatus. On the other hand, their conjectures seem more conservative and defensible than e.g. those of Marcovich, if their appeals to scribal misreading are not always entirely convincing. Only rarely do they give up and obelize the text. If one feels that the attempt to make sense of a lacunose MS such as this one is justified, and thus that conjectures are inevitable, then one must welcome the labours of Minns and Parvis and allow that they have done the best they can. In this case two heads do seem to have been better than one. Their own translation coheres nicely with their approach to the text, being focussed on trying to render as faithfully as possible what they think Justin meant. There are a few minor errors but overall their edition of Justin's Apologies is likely to become the definitive one, certainly in the English-speaking world.
My one reservation concerns their interpretation of the Second Apology and their transfer of its closing two sections. They were clearly aware of the odd and unsatisfactory character of that work and the problems of seeing it as an appendix, when it appears to introduce the First Apology as an appeal to the emperor. But their codicological argument, while ingenious, seems a little forced, and in the event, unnecessary. For, driven to look more closely at the evidence of the MS and of Eusebius, it struck me that the Second Apology was indeed designed as an introduction to the First, as Justin himself makes clear. He speaks of having made a collection (syntaxis) of works (logoi) (cf. 2 Apol. 1.1 and 15.2), while Eusebius refers to ‘the first apology’ while actually quoting from the Second (H.E. 4.17.1). That latter is evidently, despite the unfortunate lack of a proper title and introduction, addressed to Antoninus Pius and his son, Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher, hence the philosophic content and critique of Stoic ideas and the lack of scriptural citations. It introduces the reason for Justin submitting his First Apology as a libellus, picking up the allusion to the dedicatees as ‘pious and philosophers’ (cf. 1 Apol. 2.1 and 2 Apol. 15.5). That Lucius in the Second Apology makes the same punning allusion to ‘a pious emperor and philosophical Caesar, his son’ (2 Apol. 2.16) is surely best explained by the fact that he, as a pupil of Justin, was recalling Justin's First Apology. I would suggest that Justin wrote the latter as a defence of Christianity for his school of Christian philosophy in the early 150s, but that he did not actually submit it as a libellus till later, under the stimulus of the death of his pupil and the attacks of Crescens. Thus the First Apology was indeed written first. Moreover, this would mean that the MS was entirely justified in putting the Second Apology first, and that Grabe was mistaken in reversing the order, a mistake that has tended to distort our interpretations ever since.
