Who Chose the Gospels?: Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy by Hill C. E

Author:Hill, C. E. [Hill, C. E.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2010-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

Crescens

In what is known as Justin’s Second Apology we are introduced to the name of Crescens, a self-professed philosopher and opponent of Christianity in Rome who pursued a public and personal campaign against Justin. Crescens’ antagonism to Justin was public enough that even Justin’s one-time student Tatian mentioned the feud, and Crescens’ efforts to get Justin and himself killed (Tatian, Oration 19). Justin even wrote that he expected that such aggression would eventually lead to his own arrest and burning at the stake (2 Apol. 3). Justin turned out to be wrong, however. He was not burned at the stake but beheaded.1

Now here is where the mention of Crescens matters for our investigation. Justin criticizes Crescens for charging Christians with atheism and impiety, as Justin says, either ‘without having read the teachings of Christ’ or, ‘if he has read them… [he] does not understand the majesty that is in them’ (2 Apol. 3.3). But where, we must ask, was Crescens expected to read the teachings of Christ? Would just any Gospel do? Obviously not. Justin’s criticism of Crescens hardly makes sense unless the teachings of Christ were readily obtainable in some kind of generally acknowledged, written form. This in itself implies that the sources commonly associated with the Christian church in Rome, and the Gospels in particular, those ‘apostolic memoirs’ which contained Christ’s teachings, must have been fairly well known. And this is confirmed more extensively by the next co-conspirator.

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