Apology of Aristides

The Apology of Aristides was written by the early Christian writer Aristides (fl. 2nd century). Until 1878, our knowledge of Aristides was confined to some references in works by Eusebius of Caesarea and Saint Jerome. Eusebius said that he was an Athenian philosopher and that Aristides and another apologist, Quadratus, delivered their Apologies directly to the Emperor Hadrian. Aristides is also credited with a sermon on Luke 23:43. Aristides remained a philosopher after his conversion to Christianity, and he continued to work as a philosopher in Athens.

In 1878, the Armenian monks of the Mechitarite convent in Venice published the first two chapters, which they had found in a manuscript in their collection in Armenian translation. This they accompanied with a Latin translation. Opinion as to the authenticity of the fragment was disputed, with Ernest Renan particularly vocal in opposition. Later, in 1889, J. Rendel Harris found the whole of it in a Syriac version at the Eastern Orthodox monastery of Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt. 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 about the 6th century entitled The Life of Barlaam and Josaphat. A further Armenian fragment was discovered in the library at Echmiadzin by F. C. Conybeare in a manuscript of the 11th century. But the discovery of the Syriac version reopened the question of the date of the work. "Two very fragmentary third- or fourth-century Greek papyri serve as textual witnesses to the Apology."

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