First & Second Apology
Justin Martyr, First and Second Apology
Justin Martyr
Two apologies bound as one. Philosophy answered in its own dialect.
- Catch rate
- Not found in the wild
- Base research
- 150
- Stat total
- 230
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.
Both apologies now, addressed to emperor and senate — the case for the faith argued on the philosophers’ own ground, with more force than the First alone.
Still resting on essentially one late manuscript — famous, but thinly witnessed, so Defend stays modest.
Development
A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | Evil Is From Demons | Presupposition | Argument | 55 | 100% | 15 |
| 14 | Two Ways | Ethics | Argument | 40 | 100% | 25 |
| 16 | Plato’s Timaeus | Rationality | Argument | 55 | 100% | 15 |
| 18 | Passover Fulfilled | Christology | Argument | 55 | 100% | 15 |
| 20 | None But One | Rationality | Argument | 88 | 90% | 5 |
Read it: What Convinced Him
The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Koine Greek.
“For I myself, too, when I was delighting in the doctrines of Plato, and heard the Christians slandered, and saw them fearless of death, and of all other things which are counted fearful, perceived that it was impossible that they could be living in wickedness and pleasure.”
Justin Martyr, Second Apology 12 (trans. Dods & Reith, ANF 1, public domain).
“For what sensual or intemperate man, or who that counts it good to feast on human flesh, could welcome death that he might be deprived of his enjoyments…?”
Justin Martyr, Second Apology 12 (trans. Dods & Reith, ANF 1, public domain).
“Whatever things were rightly said among all men, are the property of us Christians… For all the writers were able to see realities darkly through the sowing of the implanted word that was in them. For the seed and imitation impacted according to capacity is one thing, and quite another is the thing itself.”
Justin Martyr, Second Apology 13 (trans. Dods & Reith, ANF 1, public domain).
“For no one trusted in Socrates so as to die for this doctrine, but in Christ, who was partially known even by Socrates… not only philosophers and scholars believed, but also artisans and people entirely uneducated, despising both glory, and fear, and death; since He is a power of the ineffable Father, not the mere instrument of human reason.”
Justin Martyr, Second Apology 10 (trans. Dods & Reith, ANF 1, public domain).
“But lest some one say to us, ‘Go then all of you and kill yourselves, and pass even now to God, and do not trouble us,’ I will tell you why we do not so… We have been taught that God did not make the world aimlessly, but for the sake of the human race.”
Justin Martyr, Second Apology 4 (trans. Dods & Reith, ANF 1, public domain).
The Second Apology was written to the Roman Senate after three Christians were executed under the prefect Lollius Urbicus, c. A.D. 150–157. Some scholars think the two Apologies were one treatise to begin with.
Chapter 12 is Justin telling you what actually converted him, and it is not an argument. He was a Platonist; he heard Christians slandered; he watched them go to their deaths unafraid — and concluded the slander could not be true of people like that.
Hold chapter 13 and chapter 10 together. Yes, whatever is truly said anywhere belongs to Christians — and no, the seed is not the same as the thing itself. Justin is generous to the philosophers without conceding anything.