INV. 123 · Artwork
Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho)
This is a modern artwork. It shows how a later age imagined the past, not how the past was.
The Dialogue with Trypho is a classic source for contacts and borders between Christians and Jews in the second century, when heresiological inventories of Jewish believers also take shape.
Editorial note: Later artistic interpretation; illustrates the author, not a Dialogue manuscript.
- Type
- Artwork
- Nature
- Modern artworkA later artistic interpretation; not a document of the period.
- Date of the object
- unknownModern portrait of Justin; not a second-century document.
- Depicts
- Justin Martyr, author of the Dialogue with Trypho.
- Image
- See Commons page
- Licence
- Domínio público
- Retrieved
- Commons API, 2026-10-15
Sourced historical context
Most of what is known about Ebionites and other groups of Jewish believers comes from heresiological surveys in the church fathers, beginning with Irenaeus in the late 180s CE. The stereotyped character of those sources requires caution: they arrange theological opponents more than they describe living communities with neutrality. In the second century Ignatius condemned Christians who 'Judaized', treating Judaism and Christianity as communities that must not mix. That kind of rhetorical boundary is evidence of contact and dispute, not of complete isolation.