Fathers of the Church

From the Disputation of Jason and Papiscus

Description

Celsus, the translator of this work, said that Jason was a Jewish Christian, while Papiscus was an Alexandrian Jew. Jason converts Papiscus, who ends by expressing his desire for baptism.

Provenance

Taken from a collection of fragmented writings of the second and third centuries.

by Aristo of Pella in 140 A.D. | translated by Rev. B. P. Pratten

"I REMEMBER," says Jerome (Comm. ad Gal., cap. iii. comm. 13), "in the Dispute between Jason and Papiscus, which is composed in Greek, to have found it written: 'The execration of God is he that is hanged.'"

(FROM THE SAME WORK):

Jerome likewise, in his Hebrew Questions on Genesis, says: "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth. The majority believe, as it is affirmed also in the Dispute between Jason and Papiscus, and as Tertullian in his book Against Praxeas contends, and as Hilarius too, in his exposition of one of the Psalms, declares, that in the Hebrew it is: 'In the Son, God made the heaven and the earth.' But that this is false, the nature of the case itself proves."

(PERHAPS FROM THE SAME WORK):

. . . And when the man himself who had instigated them to this folly had paid the just penalty (says Eusebius, Hist, iv. 6), "the whole nation from that time was strictly forbidden to set foot on the region about Jerusalem, by the formal decree and enactment of Adrian, who commanded that they should not even from a distance look on their native soil!" So writes Aristo of Pella.

(FROM THE SAME WORK):

I have found this expression Seven heavens (says Maximus, in Scholia an the work concerning the Mystical Theology, ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, cap. i.) also in the Dispute between Papiscus and Jason, written by Aristo of Pella, which Clement of Alexandria, in the sixth book of the Outlines, says was composed by Saint Luke.

(CONCERNING THE SAME WORK):

Thus writes Origen: . . . in which book a Christian is represented disputing with a Jew from the Jewish Scriptures, and showing that the prophecies concerning the Christ apply to Jesus: although his opponent addresses himself to the argument with no common ability, and in a manner not unbefitting his Jewish character.

Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in 1867. (ANF 8, Roberts and Donaldson). The digital version is by The Electronic Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

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