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Dialogue with Trypho / Chapter 60

Dialogue with Trypho 60

1 verses • Goodspeed Greek (Die ältesten Apologeten, 1914)

Translator's Introduction

What This Chapter Is About

Justin engages a specific Jewish counter-reading of the burning-bush theophany. Some of Trypho's contemporaries argued that the bush figure was a created angel acting on behalf of the supreme God — not a distinct divine being. Justin's rebuttal: even on the angel-only reading, the figure addressing Moses as 'I am the God of Abraham' cannot simply be a creature. The scripture identifies the speaker with God-titles and divine-action verbs; if there are two figures (angel + God), it is the one called 'God' who is the proper subject of the bush narrative, and that figure is the subordinate Logos previously established. The chapter is Justin's most explicit pre-Nicene articulation of the principle that scriptural divine titles entail divine status — what cannot be predicated of a mere creature must be predicated of a divine being.

What Makes This Chapter Remarkable

Dial. 60 contains one of Justin's clearest pre-Nicene statements that the bush-figure 'is not the Maker of all things, but the one who has been shown to have manifested himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' The chapter completes the move begun at §56 — from Mamre to Bethel to Peniel to the bush, the same Logos-figure speaks and acts. The pre-Christian Hellenistic Jewish parallel is Philo's habit of identifying the angelic-divine speaker of each Pentateuchal theophany with the Logos (Mos. I.65-70; QE II.13 — preserved in Armenian; Heres. §§201-206).

Translation Friction

The Jewish interlocutor whom Justin engages here is a specific exegete (or school) advancing a 'two-figures-not-one' reading. Justin's reply does not refute the two-figures reading directly; instead, he absorbs it: if there are two figures, one is divine and one is angelic, and Justin's argument concerns only the divine one. The move is generous (Justin doesn't insist on a one-figure reading) and rhetorically effective, but it does not close every interpretive gap.

Connections

Exodus 3:6 LXX (ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ θεὸς τοῦ πατρός σου — 'I am the God of your father'); Philo, On Dreams §230 (the same grammatical pattern Justin is exploiting — the speaker says 'I am the God' with one article, 'in the place of God' with another); Philo, Who Is the Heir §205 (Logos as boundary/mediator); Philo, On the Cherubim §28 (Logos between divine Powers — relevant to the two-figures reading); Acts 7:30 (Stephen's speech naming 'an angel'); Origen, Against Celsus V.39 (similar exegetical strategy for theophanies).

Dialogue with Trypho 60:2

ὁ τοίνυν τῷ Μωυσεῖ ἐκ τῆς βάτου διαλεχθεὶς θεὸς οὐχ ὁ ποιητὴς τῶν ὅλων ἐστίν, ἀλλὰ ὁ τῷ Ἀβραὰμ καὶ τῷ Ἰσαὰκ καὶ τῷ Ἰακὼβ ὀφθεὶς ἀναπεφασμένος, ὃς καὶ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τὰς ἐντολὰς τοῦ τῶν ὅλων πατρὸς καὶ ποιητοῦ ἐκφαίνει.

The God who spoke to Moses from the bush is not the Maker of all things. He is the same one shown to have appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob — and the one who delivers to humanity the commandments of the Father and Maker of all things.

REF The God who communed with Moses from the bush was not the Maker of all things, but the one who has been shown to have manifested himself to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob — who also publishes to men the commandments of the Father and Maker of all things. (Schaff, ANF I, p. 227, paraphrased)

Notes & Key Terms 3 terms

Key Terms

ἀναφαίνω anaphainō
"to manifest / to show forth" — to make visible, to bring to light, to display openly

The verb of theophanic manifestation. ἀναφαίνω is one rank stronger than the bare ὁράω ('to see') / ὤφθη ('was seen') of the Septuagint — it carries the sense of intentional showing-forth. Justin's choice of the perfect participle ἀναπεφασμένος locks the Logos's manifesting role in continuing-effect aspect.

ἐκφαίνω ekphainō
"to publish / to disclose openly" — to announce, to make public, to bring forth from concealment

The verb for the Logos's communicative office: he publishes the commandments of the Father. Same function Philo names πρεσβευτής ('ambassador') at Heres. §205. The Logos is the one who carries the Maker's word out of God's transcendence and into human discourse.

ἐντολαί entolai
"commandments" — commands, instructions, ordinances; in Septuagintal usage, especially the divine commands of Torah

Septuagintal vocabulary for the Mosaic commandments. Justin's claim — that the Logos publishes the Father's commandments — implies that the Torah itself is the Logos's speech-act. The same conceptual move runs into John 1:17 ('the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ') and Hebrews 1:1-2 ('God spoke long ago through the prophets... has now spoken to us through the Son').

Translator Notes

  1. Goodspeed, p. 161 (Dial. 60.2); Schaff, ANF I, p. 227. Justin's argument here completes the Logos-figure identification across the Pentateuchal theophany sequence: Mamre (Dial. 56) → Bethel/Peniel (Dial. 58) → burning bush (Dial. 59) → and now §60 names the through-line. The same Logos-figure appears in all four; the Maker remains transcendent throughout.
  2. The two clauses ('not the Maker of all things' + 'publishes the commandments of the Father and Maker') articulate Justin's pre-Nicene structural Christology in compact form: the Logos is distinct from the Maker, AND the Logos is the Maker's communicative agent. Philo's parallel at Heres. §205 (TCR /philo-heres/1/205) is the πρεσβευτής τοῦ ἡγεμόνος πρὸς τὸ ὑπήκοον — 'ambassador of the Sovereign to those who are governed.' The conceptual identity is exact.
  3. ἀναπεφασμένος ('manifested, made apparent') is a perfect-tense participle from ἀναφαίνω. The choice of the perfect signals continuing visibility: not 'once-shown' but 'shown and continuing to be the visible one.' The Logos's revelatory role is durative — every theophany manifests the same figure.
  4. Cross-reference Philo, On the Cherubim §28 (TCR /philo-cher/1/28) for the framework of a mediating Logos who stands between divine attributes. Philo's flaming-sword imagery and Justin's bush-flame imagery — both fire-figures — are conceptually adjacent, though Justin does not exploit the parallel explicitly here.
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