Chapter 8 - A Formation of a Christian Archive?

Summary

Justin Martyr’s Apologies cite an imperial letter. Scholarly debate has usually focused on whether this letter is real. This chapter argues instead that the rescript associated with Justin’s Apologies, and the Apologies themselves, evoked known cultural and adminstrative practices – practices of hanging papyrus libelli and their subscriptiones in Rome at the Temple of Apollo or the Baths of Trajan, practices also known from the ‘publication’ of rescripts epigraphically in cities far from Rome. Justin’s rescript was thus made real in part through engagement with broader practices of documents in the built environment of cities. The reference to an imperial letter shows Christian citation and/or imitation of imperial documents, a practice that fits within a larger, shared culture of composition, collation, and publication of local complaint and imperial response. An investigation of the rescript associated with Justin provides a focal point to consider larger issues: how minoritized groups in antiquity responded to Roman imperial power, how political power was experienced in urban spaces, and how legal(ish) documents, whether real or invented, could be used to assert rights and resistance.