My previous blog on chronologically dating the first-century Christian writings has proven to be of interest to enough in order to warrant the same treatment of the second-century writings:
Aristides
“Aristides of Athens wrote the earliest preserved Christian apology. According to Eusebius (H.E. 4.3.3), Aristides presented his Apology to the emperor Hadrian ca. 125. The Syriac version, however, addresses the Apology to Antoninus Pius (138-161) early in his reign.”1
“Aristides is among the earliest apologists. . . . His Apologia is addressed to Hardian (117-138) or to Antoninus Pius (138-161) in the first years of his reign.”2
While Eusebius is invaluable for his citations of early works he is known to sometimes be inaccurate in his own surmises. Perhaps circa 138, then, to straddle the reigns of these emperors.
Second Clement
“difficult to date later than the mid-2nd c.”3
Circa 150, then, is as good an estimate as any for the oldest extant extrabiblical sermon.
Justin Martyr
The accepted chronological order of Justin’s extant writings is his First Apology, Second Apology, and finally his Dialogue with Trypho. Narrowing down precise dates requires a good bit of deduction:
“we have Justin’s statement that he is writing 150 years after Christ’s birth—no doubt a round figure—and his reference to a petition recently presented to Felix, the Governor of Alexandria. A Greek papyrus in the British Museum shows that L. Munatius Felix was the successor of M. Petronius Honeratus, who is mentioned on papyri in the years 147-148 C.E., whereas Felix’s name occurs on documents dated 150-151 C.E. He himself was succeeded by M. Sempronius Liberalis, who was prefect of Egypt in 154 C.E. It would seem that Felix held office from c. 150 to 154 C.E.—another papyrus gives his date of accession as 151 C.E. If these dates are correct, Justin would have written his First Apology somewhere between 151 and 155 C.E., which would agree with the internal evidence of the work.
“The Second Apology is more difficult to date but cannot be long after the First. It has references to Antoninus as sole emperor and to the emperor and Marcus Aurelius, who is saluted as the philosopher, the son of Caesar. Continued reference is made to the piety of these two persons and with this coheres the references in the Second Apology to the First as a writing freshly remembered.”4
Finally, the universal estimate for the last work is as follows:
“the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew (which in its final form probably dates from c. 160 C.E.)”5
Thus I date the First Apology to circa 153, the Second Apology to circa 155, and the Dialogue with Trypho to circa 160.
Tatian
“The date of composition [of his Discourse to the Greeks] is uncertain: according to several points of view it is to be placed between 155 (very close presumably to his conversion to Christianity) and 170 (the final, although confused, pieces of information about his activity).”6
Circa 162 as a midrange.
Melito
Almost all of his works have been lost. Scholars have debated whether the extant On the Soul and Body can be ascribed to him, but the following is certainly his:
“The most important work which has come to us almost complete is the homily Peri Pascha (On the Pasch [Easter]), written between 160 and 170.”7
And again:
“on the basis of a notice in Eusebius with which we shall deal below, [S.G. Hall] dates On Pascha uncontroversially, though by no means certainly, between 160 and 170.”8
Circa 165, then, for his treatise.
Athenagoras
“Athenagoras’s Plea is a defense of Christianity addressed to the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. It was probably written ca. 177.”9
And again:
“Between 176 and 180 he wrote a defense of the Christians, addressed to the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus and titled Presbeia (‘embassy, address, supplication’) of Athenagoras, Christian philosopher in Athens, Concerning the Christians. . . . The Presbeia may have been written on the occasion of the visit of the two emperors to Athens in September 176; in any event it is almost contemporary with the persecution at Lyons in 177.”10
While the former scholarship published 1999 notes that, “Athenagoras’s authorship of the work On the Resurrection is disputed,” the latter scholarship published in 2014 notes, “Toward the end (ch. 37 [of Presbeia]), Athenagoras announces a treatise On the Resurrection. And in fact, Paris. gr . 451, the oldest manuscript of the Presbeia, is followed by a work on the resurrection, whose title says that it is ‘by the same’ author. The condition of the text and the style of the two works have led (R.M. Grant, W.R. Schoedel, N. Zeegers, E. Gallicet, H.E. Lona) to the hypothesis of a late copyist being responsible for the attribution to Athenagoras, and for their consequent combination in a single MS. Pouderon has argued incisively in favor of Athenagoras as the author, and his counterarguments seem solid.”
Thus I date the Embassy for the Christians to circa 177, and the subsequently composed On the Resurrection to circa 180 as Athenagoras was supposed to have died shortly thereafter.
Theophilus
“Theophilus of Antioch (second century)
“Bishop and apologist. . . . Theophilus wrote three books To Autolycus (ca. 180)”11
“Theophilus . . . . Bishop of Antioch in Syria, he composed, at the end of the 2nd c[entury], at least four works. The only one that has been preserved, [is] the Ad Autolycum . . . ; when he finished the Ad Autolycum, the emperor Marcus Aurelius was already dead (3,28): he therefore wrote after 17 March 180.”12
And thus circa 180 appears to be the consensus.
Irenaeus
The more well known of the two extant works of Irenaeus is his series of books Against the Heresies:
“It is clear that Irenaeus did not write the work all at one time, and that the period of composition extended over a number of years. . . . From the preface to Book 3 it is certain that he had already sent Books 1 and 2 to his friend. Similarly, the preface to Book 4 indicates that Book 3 had already been sent, and the preface to Book 5 indicates that Book 4 had been forwarded. And since Irenaeus at the end of his Book 1 promises another book, it is probable that he dispatched Book 1 before doing Book 2.
“Some parts of the work give the impression of having been written during a period when the Church was spared from external persecution. There seems to be an indication in 4.30.1 that Christians were at the Emperor’s court; and in 4.30.3 the Christians were enjoying a peace that seems to be credited to the Romans. In fact, the composition of a work of such proportions would almost seem to require a period of cessation from political persecutions. There was such a period during the reign of Emperor Commodus (180-92) . . . . In the famous catalogue of the Roman bishops given by Irenaeus in 3:3:3, Eleutherius is the last one mentioned. It is a safe assumption that Eleutherius was still reigning and that Book 3 was finished before the completion of Eleutherius’s pontification in 188 or 189.
“Some historians believe that Book 2 was written during a persecution, that is, under Marcus Aurelius (161-80), because in 2:22:2 Irenaeus writes of persecutions of the just as if they are then going on. Books 1 and 2, then, may have been written before 180.”13
Regarding the two earliest works, what persecutions under Marcus Aurelius might have precipitated Irenaeus’ composition of these works? Arguably persecution under his own bishopric:
“In 177, mass persecution took place in Vienne and Lyons in Gaul (Eusebius, H.E. 5.1-3). . . . Intense anti-Christian feelings in society emerged in print in the pagan writings of Lucian in 165 and Celsus in ca. 178.”14
Thus a reasonable approximation of the composition of Books 1 and 2 would be circa 177 and 178. If we then average out the bishopric of Eleutherius (see dates in quotation below) and the reign of Commodus, we arrive at circa 182 and 186 for Books 3 and 4. We are simply left to round Book 5 to circa 190.
The other extant work of Irenaeus is his Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching:
“In book 3 of Against the Heresies, Irenaeus mentions that Eleutherius was then the bishop of Rome (AH 3:3:3). As such, this book can be dated with some certainty to the period between 175 and 189. That Irenaeus refers the reader of the Demonstration (chp 98) to his work Refutation and Overthrowal of Knowledge falsely so-called would seem to indicate that the Demonstration was written later, at the end of the second century”15
The late date of circa 195, then, will place us near the end of the century.
Clement of Alexandria
The last two writers we’ll consider straddle the late second and early third centuries. We’ll focus on their earlier writings here, and their later writings in my next blog on patristic chronology:
“Protreptikos, commonly called An Exhortation to the Greeks, the Paidagōgos [The Educator] and the Strōmateis. . . . The Protreptikos, written possibly around 189 . . . . The Paidagōgos was written shortly after, possibly the next year. . . . the Strōmateis was not even meant to be a unified treatise. We are not concerned with this problem here, except to suggest the very likely possibility that the first four books of the Strōmateis were written before the Paidagōgos while Clement was still at Alexandria . . . . The remaining books were probably composed after his flight from Alexandria in 202. This trilogy comprises Clement’s major writings. The Quis dives salvetur [Who is the Rich Man that Shall be Saved?] is a delightful little work, possibly the last from his pen”16
Christ the Educator, then, is placed at circa 190, with his Exhortation at circa 189 along with books one through four of the Stromaties. And while we’ll revisit his later writings, as I noted above, there’s one other writing, a short letter, which I suspect he’d have written while still in Alexandria (say circa 195, an estimated date which is often ascribed for his writings at large); the discovery of which was initially embroiled in heated controversy among patristic scholars, but after the dust of which settled seems to have been accepted by the consensus:
“The Secret Gospel of Mark is an edition of the canonical Gospel of Mark known only from an incomplete letter of Clement of Alexandria discovered by Morton Smith in 1958 at the Greek Orthodox monastery at Mar Saba (near Jerusalem). There has been debate over the authenticity of the letter, but its genuineness appears to be established.”17
And again:
“No letters were known until 1973, when M. Smith published a recently discovered document, which must be considered a letter by Clement, in which he mentions a secret and apocryphal gospel of Mark, accepted by deeply orthodox Christian circles as authentic and adhered to by Clement himself. . . . From this it is evident that Clement represents a wider view of canonicity than our own”18
Tertullian
As with Clement we’ll currently only occupy ourselves with his earliest writings, and revisit the bulk of his most prolific body of works (second only to Origen, who will likewise be considered in the third installment):
“From internal evidence it can be determined that the Apology was written toward the close of A.D. 197.”19
“The Testimony of the Soul must be dated shortly after the Apology (197), to which Tertullian refers in Chapter 5”20
“To the year 197 belong his two books To the Heathen (Ad nationes) and his masterpiece, the Apology. A number of scholars are of the opinion that the short address To the Martyrs (Ad martyras) dates from the same year. They interpret Tertullian’s phrase ‘our present days’ in the closing paragraph of the small work (Ch. 6.2) as the time of liquidation and purge following the slaughter of the army of Clodius Albinus, Serverus’ last and most powerful rival to the throne, in the battle of Lyons on February 19, 197. Other scholars, finding the reference too vague, prefer to assign the treatise to the year 202. They think that Tertullian’s addressees are the group of catechumens whose martyrdom at Carthage in the year is so touchingly recounted in the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas.”21
“We . . . are able to date confidently only some of his writings between the years 196/7 and 212. . . .
“Tertullian’s Apology (A.D. 197) . . . . was preceded by an artistically less satisfactory ‘exhortation’ To the Nations. Probably from the same year comes the little literary jewel On the Witness of the Soul, based on the forensic image of the court witness; possibly also the treatise Against the Jews, of which, however, only the first eight chapters are regarded as genuine.”22
“The two most well-known apologetic works date to the year 197, the Ad nations in two books and the Apologeticum . . . . The dating of the Ad martyrs . . . is uncertain. It has placed at the beginning of 197 or over the course of that same year or in 202/203: in this latter case the recipients could be the martyrs known through another ancient document, namely the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis . . . . No less problematic is the dating attributed to the Adversus Iudaeos . . . . dated to 200 or, according to other scholars, before 197. The De testimonio animae . . . seems to have been composed shortly before 200.”23
To recap his earliest writings: The first eight chapters of Against the Jews may be his earliest extant writing, then dated to circa 196, but perhaps 197; I tend to lean in favor of the former. In quick succession he wrote To the Heathen, followed by his Apology, and finally Testimony of the Soul all in circa 197, which may also potentially be the dating of To the Martyrs if not the beginning of the third century; a most busy and industrious year for Tertullian. These are also among his most orthodox and thus arguably most valuable texts, which writing period also extends into the very beginning of the third century and I therefore look forward to reviewing their chronology as well at a later time, though perhaps much later as the third century saw the composition of considerably more treatises and letters than the two prior centuries combined.
Footnotes
1 Everett Ferguson, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 2nd ed., pg. 111
2 Paolo Siniscalco, Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity 1:226
3 Pier F. Beatrice, Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity 1:550
4 Leslie William Barnard, Ancient Christian Writers 56:11
5 Ibid., pg. 4
6 Franco Bolgiani, Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity 3:706
7 Mario Maritano, Encyclopedia of Ancient Cristianity 2:758, brackets in original
8 Alistair C. Stewart, Popular Patristics 55:14
9 Hendrik F. Stander, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 2nd ed., pg. 140
10 Pierre Nautin & Emanuela Prinzivalli, Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity 1:285
11 Frederick W. Norris, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 2nd ed., pg. 1122
12 Pierre Nautin, Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity 3:765
13 Dominic J. Unger, Ancient Christian Writers 55:3-4
14 Robert Lee Williams, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 2nd ed., pg. 897
15 John Behr, Popular Patristics 17:3
16 Simon P. Wood, Fathers of the Church 23:xi-xii
17 David M. Scholer, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 2nd ed., pg. 1043
18 Michele Mees, Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity 1:548
19 Emily J. Daly, Fathers of the Church 10:3
20 Rudolph Arbesmann, Fathers of the Church 10:129
21 Rudolph Arbesmann, Fathers of the Church 40:13-14
22 Robert D. Sider, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 2nd ed., pg. 1107
23 Paolo Siniscalco, Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity 3:717-718
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