The Apology of Aristides: Texts and Studies 1 (1891) pp. 52-64. Selected Notes on the Syriac Version
NOTES ON THE SYRIAC VERSION.
[Note to the online text: the majority of these notes are concerned with or cite copious quantities of the Syriac text. This page includes only a selection of those notes likely to be of use to English-speaking readers]
p. 35, 1. 7. The demonstration of Divine Providence from the contemplation of the heavenly bodies is common to all forms of Theistic teaching: consequently it occurs freely in Christian Apologetics. We may compare the following passages:
Melito, Oration to Antoninus Caesar (Cureton, Spic. Syr, p. 46). "He hath set before thee the heavens, and He has placed in them the stars. He hath set before thee the sun and the moon, and they every day fulfil their course therein... He hath set before thee the clouds which by ordinance bring water from above and satisfy the earth: that from these things thou mightest understand, that He who moveth these is greater than they all, [Syriac] and that thou mightest accept the goodness of Him who hath given to thee a mind by which thou mayest distinguish these things."
Origen, De Principiis, II. 1. 5. "But that we may believe on the authority of Holy Scripture, that such is the case, hear how in the books of Maccabees, |53 where the mother of the seven martyrs exhorts her son to endure torture, this truth is confirmed: for she says, ' I ask of thee, my son, to look at the heaven and earth, and at all things which are in them, and beholding them, to know that God made all these things when they did not exist.'" [2 Macc. vii. 28.]
Id. iv. 1. 7. "The artistic plan of a providential Ruler is not so evident in matters belonging to the earth, as in the case of the sun, moon and stars."
l. 11. Cf. Melito, Oration p. 50. "He made the lights that His works might behold one another, and lie concealcth Himself in His might from all His works."
ll. 14, 15. A comparison with the Armenian suggests that something has fallen out here. The Syriac cannot be translated as it stands. The Greek unfortunately fails us at this point.
1. 19 (r^ 19). The early Christian teachers emphasised strongly this belief that the world was made for the sake of man: consequently we must not assume, if we find the same statement in Justin Martyr, that the idea was borrowed from Aristides, for it is a part of the regular second -century teaching. The following parallels may be quoted:
Justin, Apol. I. 10. [Greek]
Dial. 41. [Greek] .
Ps. Justin, Ep. ad Diogn. 10. [Greek] .
i. 23. Cf. Philo, Fragments, p. 70: [Greek]
Id. de Fortitudine § 3. [Greek] |54
Acta Mar Kardaghi (ed. Abbeloos, p. 30): [Syriac]
l. 28. The same philosophical opinion will be found almost in the same words in Eustathius contra Arianos quoted in John of Damascus, Parallels p. 314, [Greek]
l. 30. We may compare the following passages from Justin and from the Epistle to Diognetus, in view of Jerome's statement that Justin imitated Aristides, and the modern theory of Doulcet as to the authorship of the anonymous epistle to Diognctus.
Justin, Apol. I. 9. [Greek]
Justin, Apol. II. 6.[Greek]
Justin, Dial. 4. [Greek]
Justin, Apol. I. 10. [Greek]
Ep. ad Diogn. 3. [Greek]
p.36, l. 18. 'The head of the race of their religion.' This seems to be a conflation of the two phrases which occur lower down: ' the head of their race,' and ' the beginning of their religion.' It should be simply ' the head of their race,' as we see from the Greek.]
l. 23. The Armenian has ' Kadmus the Sidonian and Dionysus the Theban.' Cf. Herod. II. 91 [Greek]. But Kadmus is a Sidonian in Eur. Bacch. 171 and Ovid, Met. iv. 571.