The Apology of Aristides on Behalf of the Christians

This, the very first volume of the TEXTS AND STUDIES monograph series which began publication in 1891, is also the editio princeps of the earliest Christian apologia to have survived in its entirety. The Apology of Aristides was written as a defence of the new Christian way of life against its many rivals and opponents, and details some of its leading ethical precepts. Long thought to have been lost, this early second-century work was rediscovered in a Syriac translation in 1889 in a seventh-century manuscript preserved in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. This volume contains not only the standard edition of the Syriac text with critical notes, but also the first English translation, and a study of surviving fragments in Greek, the original language of the apologia, which were subsequently identified in the ‘Life of Barlaam and Josaphat’ (an early Christian reworking of the life of Buddha). TEXTS AND STUDIES is a series of monographs devoted to the study of Biblical and patristic texts. Maintaining the highest scholarly standards, the series includes critical editions, studies of primary sources, and analyses of textual traditions. J. Rendel Harris (1852 – 1941), was a prolific writer on biblical and patristic texts, and a significant collector of ancient manuscripts, whose colourful life took him from Clare College, Cambridge, to Johns Hopkins University, Haverford College, Leiden University, and eventually to the Friends’ Settlement at Woodbrooke, Birmingham. J. Armitage Robinson (1859 – 1933), the first editor of Texts and Studies, was a New Testament scholar and a Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge. He went on to become Dean of Westminster Abbey and then Wells Cathedral.