To Diognetus
Epistle to Diognetus
Unknown
More about The author of the Epistle to Diognetus →
Anonymous, elegant, unanswerable.
- Catch rate
- 170 / 255
- Base research
- 60
- Stat total
- 178
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
No ancient writer ever mentions the Epistle to Diognetus, and it slept unread for a thousand years. A thread that thin means thin Stamina.
The letter’s elegant case for the faith is genuinely hard to answer — Contend is Diognetus’ best number.
The ONLY manuscript of Diognetus burned at Strasbourg in 1870; today’s text depends on copies made before the fire, and its last two chapters may come from a different book entirely. An uncertain text means weak Defend.
Cited for this book
Survived antiquity in a single manuscript — Codex Argentoratensis — which burned in the bombardment of Strasbourg, 1870. The text now rests on early-modern transcriptions. No ancient author so much as mentions it.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Soul of the World | Ethics | Argument | 50 | 100% | 20 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 6 | Steelman | Rationality | Type shift | — | — | 10 |
| 9 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 15 |
| 12 | Martyr’s Witness | History | Argument | 65 | 100% | 10 |
Read it: The Sweet Exchange
The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Koine Greek.
“They dwell in their own countries, but only as sojourners… Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and every fatherland is foreign. They marry like all other men and they beget children; but they do not cast away their offspring… Their existence is on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They love all men, and they are persecuted by all.”
Epistle to Diognetus 5.5–11 (trans. Lightfoot, public domain, lightly modernized).
“In a word, what the soul is in a body, this the Christians are in the world. The soul is spread through all the members of the body, and Christians through the divers cities of the world. The soul has its abode in the body, and yet it is not of the body; so Christians have their abode in the world, and yet they are not of the world.”
Epistle to Diognetus 6.1–3 (trans. Lightfoot, public domain, lightly modernized).
“The soul is enclosed in the body, and yet itself holds the body together; so Christians are kept in the world as in a prison-house, and yet they themselves hold the world together.”
Epistle to Diognetus 6.7 (trans. Lightfoot, public domain, lightly modernized).
“He sent him, as sending God; he sent him, as a man unto men; he sent him, as Saviour, as using persuasion, not force: for force is no attribute of God. He sent him, as summoning, not as persecuting; he sent him, as loving, not as judging.”
Epistle to Diognetus 7.4–5 (trans. Lightfoot, public domain, lightly modernized).
“He himself parted with his own Son as a ransom for us, the holy for the lawless, the guileless for the evil, the just for the unjust, the incorruptible for the corruptible, the immortal for the mortal. For what else but his righteousness would have covered our sins?”
Epistle to Diognetus 9.2–3 (trans. Lightfoot, public domain, lightly modernized).
“O the sweet exchange, O the inscrutable creation, O the unexpected benefits: that the iniquity of many should be concealed in One Righteous Man, and the righteousness of One should justify many that are iniquitous!”
Epistle to Diognetus 9.5 (trans. Lightfoot, public domain, lightly modernized).
Anonymous. The author calls himself only Mathetes — "a disciple." Written to an inquiring pagan of rank named Diognetus, whom nobody has ever identified. Dated anywhere from c. A.D. 130 to c. 220.
"O the sweet exchange" — ὢ τῆς γλυκείας ἀνταλλαγῆς. The sins of many hidden in one righteous man; the righteousness of one counted to many unrighteous. That is imputation, stated in the second or third century.
Not one ancient or medieval writer mentions this letter. It survived in a single manuscript at Strasbourg, which burned in the bombardment of 1870. Every copy since rests on transcriptions made before the fire.