Apologistswriter
Who he was
- He seems to be the first Christian apologist who defends Christianity in written tract against Judaism.
- The dialogue is represented as taking place between a Judaeo-Christian named Jason and an Alexandrian Jew named Papiscus, and became the model for a whole series of such Jewish-Christian dialogues.
- The discussion ends with the Jew Papiscus acknowledging Christ as the Son of God and asking for baptism.
What he wrote
- This apology was attacked by the pagan philosopher Celsus in his work The True Discourse, but Origen defended it.
- According to Origen, this apology describes, “how a Christian supported by Jewish writings (the Old Testament) carries on an argument with a Jew and goes on to prove that the prophecies pertaining to Christ find fulfillment in Jesus, while the opponent in a plucky and not unskilled fashion takes the part of the Jew in the controversy.”(Contra Cels. 4,52).