7 - Justin Martyr, First Apology 23, 30–32, 46, 63 and Second Apology 10, 13

Summary

Justin hailed from the city of Flavia Neapolis, the modern West Bank city of Nablus, in the Roman province of Syria Palestina. According to his own account in the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, Justin became a professional philosopher of the Platonist school before adopting Christianity as the true philosophy. From his pen, we have a few surviving works: the First and Second Apologies, which some scholars believe to have been originally a single treatise, probably written in the first half of the 150s, and the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, written perhaps around 160. He also wrote a refutation of Marcion, which has not survived. Since antiquity, the philosopher Justin who authored these texts has been identified with the Justin who was martyred in Rome, as described in the Acts of Justin. According to that text, Justin was a Christian philosopher who taught in the city of Rome for many years prior to his execution, perhaps in the middle of the 160s.