Dialogue with Trypho is an extant second-century Christian apologetic work by the theologian Justin Martyr. Together with his First and Second Apologies, it is generally dated to c. 155–160 CE. The text is commonly understood as an attempt to demonstrate that Christianity constitutes the new law for all humanity and to prove from Scripture that Jesus is the Messiah.Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church: Exploring the Formation of Early Christian Thought; by Ronald E. Heine (Sep 1, 2007) pages 48-52 The work is cast as an intellectual dialogue between Justin and Trypho, a Jew displaced from Judaea following the Bar Kokhba Revolt, and is set in Ephesus, in western Asia Minor.
The work's central claim is that the Hebrew Scriptures properly belong to Christians, who alone apprehend their true meaning—an understanding that, in Justin's view, Jews entirely lack. This argument rests on three propositions: that Christ has superseded the Mosaic Law, rendering Jewish observance obsolete; that the biblical prophecies are fulfilled in Christ; and that the Christian community constitutes the "new Israel," inheriting the status once held by the Jewish people.
The text has also been described as foundational to the nascent tradition of Christian writings "against the Jews". Justin Martyr writes that God never truly wanted sacrifices but legislated them only to distract Jews from idolatry; and what appear to be biblical laws are really allegories about Christ, readable only through "spiritual" understanding. The text also includes a denunciation of Valentinians, Marcionites, and other sects as not genuinely Christian. The work is also cited for Justin's still referring to apostolic writings as memoires rather than scripture, confirming that the idea of a Christian canonical collection had not yet solidified in his time.
Background
Author Dialogue with Trypho was composed by Justin Martyr, a Christian apologist. He was born around 100 AD in Flavia Neapolis (modern Nablus), in the region of Samaria, then part of the Roman province of Judaea (later, Syria Palaestina). Born to pagan parents, he appears to have converted to Christianity in Ephesus before later establishing a school in Rome during the reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius (r. 138–161). In the work, he presents himself as a philosopher. After a period of teaching and writing, he was tortured and executed under the Roman prefect Junius Rusticus, whose tenure ran from 162 to 168 AD.
Justin Martyr is regarded as a "proto-orthodox" writer, part of a broader group that includes Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Origen. Their works were preserved largely because of their usefulness to the 4th-century imperial Church.
In Justin's own day there was no unified Christian movement but rather a landscape of competing movements, some of them holding positions about scripture and salvation that differed fundamentally from Justin's own, including some that had no place for Jewish scripture at all. His thought operates within the same Middle Platonic philosophical tradition also evident in the ideas of Valentinus (from Egypt) and Marcion (from Sinope), two other second-century theologians, although they were his rivals and he was hostile toward them. Nevertheless, all three were highly educated figures who converged on Rome and found themselves confronting the same theological problem: how the divine figure of the Jewish Scriptures relates to the God revealed through Christ. They reached different conclusions, however, reflected in the dualistic theology of Marcionism and the Gnostic school of Valentinianism. Dating Because the text mentions Justin Martyr's First Apology, which was written sometime between AD 150 and 155, Dialogue with Trypho must have been written after it. The date of authorship has been suggested to have been written anywhere between 155 and 167, with some scholars favoring 155–160, or even a more specific date, c. 160.
Identity of Trypho Justin's interlocutor is Trypho, who is described as a "circumcised Jewish refugee from the last war", in reference to the Bar Kokhba Revolt, and is said to live in Corinth. He is also presented as a student of philosophy who was encouraged by his former teacher to converse with other philosophers and now follows that advice. Marc Hirshman, a scholar of rabbinic law, notes that "the purportedly Jewish traditions are almost exclusively contained in Justin's remarks and are almost never raised by Trypho".
Theologian Manfred Hoffman writes that Trypho is portrayed in the work as "the representative of the blind and hard-hearted Jewish people." This view has been challenged by Marc Hirshman, who notes that Trypho is said in Chapter 2.10 to have read the Gospel and been impressed by it. Hirshman characterizes him as "at best incredulous, sometimes wary, but mostly respectful and appreciative of the power of Justin's argument."
The identity of Trypho as Rabbi Tarfon has been proposed, but many Jewish scholars do not accept this notion.Claudia Setzer, Jewish Responses to Early Christians (Nov 1, 1994) , p. 215 They instead consider Trypho a fictional character invented by Justin for his literary purposes.Larry R. Helyer, Exploring Jewish Literature of the Second Temple Period (Jul 5, 2002) , p. 493
Form and structure
Setting The setting is presented as a chance meeting between Justin and Trypho in Ephesus. Justin had just converted to Christianity from a philosophical background and Trypho had just fled the disturbances in Judaea. When Justin suggests to Trypho to convert to Christianity, the dialogue becomes animated. Trypho criticizes Christians on a number of grounds, and Justin provides answers to each criticism.
According to Matthijs den Dulk, the book is "the oldest preserved literary dialogue between a Jew and a Christian". However, because Trypho's role is largely limited to posing questions and listening to Justin's responses rather than actively engaging in debate, Marc Hirshman observes that the work functions more as a "soliloquy" than a true dialogue. Throughout much of the text, Trypho's questions serve primarily as prompts for Justin’s extended arguments. Sections approaching genuine debate are largely confined to chapters 45–49, on whether Jewish law remains binding, and chapters 67–68, on the Virgin Birth. Beyond these, and particularly after chapter 90, Trypho recedes into the role of an attendant listener.
Length The Dialogue is a work of extraordinary length. No surviving Christian text from the first 150 years is longer, surpassing even the three Synoptic Gospels taken together. Its original form was apparently even longer than what survives, since scribes appear in places to have shortened long scriptural quotations, a fact detectable when Justin refers back to passages of which only a portion now remains in the text.
Structure Although the work presents itself as an effort at persuasion, it ends after two days of discussion with neither Trypho nor his fellow Jews persuaded.
Theological content The Dialogue with Trypho's central contention is that the Hebrew scriptures are the property of the Christians, because they alone grasp their true meaning – a comprehension that Jews, in Justin's view, lack entirely. This idea is already found earlier, though in a less developed form, in the Epistle of Barnabas, written around 130 AD. His argument rests on three foundations: that Christ had replaced the Law of Moses, rendering Jewish observance obsolete; that the biblical prophecies find their fulfillment in Christ; and that the Christian community is the "new Israel", inheriting the status once held by the Jewish people.
Justin also accuses Jews of being blind, fleshly beings who cannot see beyond the text of religious law: "'For your ears are closed, your eyes are blinded, and the heart is hardened,' Jeremiah has cried; yet not even then do you listen. The Lawgiver is present, yet you do not see Him; to the poor the Gospel is preached, the blind see, yet you do not understand. You have now need of a second circumcision, though you glory greatly in the flesh." This concept finds its origin in the New Testament: Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:13-15 that "to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed."
In the Dialogue, Justin also wrote, "For I choose to follow not men or men's doctrines, but God and the doctrines [delivered] by Him. For if you have fallen in with some who are called Christians, but who do not admit this [truth], and venture to blaspheme the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven; do not imagine that they are Christians."Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 80 This passage is sometimes cited as evidence that the early church subscribed to the doctrine of soul sleep, though some claim that Justin's emphasis is on saying that denial of the resurrection of the dead is what makes them non-Christian, especially considering that he claims that "even after death souls are in a state of sensation" in Chapter 18 of his First Apology.First Apology, Chapter 18
God of the Hebrew Bible Justin Martyr states that the divine figure encountered throughout the Hebrew Scriptures is not God the Father, who is identified in the Dialogue as "the Father of All". Instead, it is the pre-incarnate Christ—whom he calls "the other God"—who acts as the demiurge, actively creating, speaking, and commanding in the Hebrew Bible. In his view, God the Father never spoke directly to the people of Israel; rather, it was the pre-incarnate Christ who communicated with Moses, David, and other biblical figures.
Fredriksen notes that this argument served a double purpose: it allowed Justin to counter the claims of Valentinus and Marcion, who also distinguished the god of the Jews from the highest God but drew different conclusions, while simultaneously advancing his case against Jewish readers of scripture. Jewish resistance to Justin's reading, in his own presentation, only confirmed his argument, one directed as much against his Christian rivals against Jewish interpreters.
The Law and Covenant In chapter 16, Justin presents a negative reading of the Jewish practice of circumcision as a punitive sign, given so "that you alone may suffer that which you now justly suffer; and that your land may be desolate, and your cities burned with fire; and that strangers may eat your fruit in your presence, and not one of you may go up to Jerusalem." Justin weaves together prophetic texts from Isaiah with warning passages from the Torah, directing the resulting argument at the devastation of Judea, the displacement of its Jewish population, and Hadrian's decree restricting Jewish entry to Jerusalem, all consequences of the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Circumcision thus separates the Jewish people from the Christians, while simultaneously designating them for retribution.