Dialogue with Trypho 1.3 · Sophia Scriptura

Greek text · Archambault

Τίς δὲ σύ ἐσσι, φέριστε βροτῶν; Οὕτως προσπαίζων αὐτῷ ἔλεγον. Ὁ δὲ καὶ τοὔνομά μοι καὶ τὸ γένος ἐξεῖπεν ἁπλῶς. Τρύφων, φησί, καλοῦμαι· εἰμὶ δὲ Ἑβραῖος ἐκ περιτομῆς, φυγὼν τὸν νῦν γενόμενον πόλεμον, ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι καὶ τῇ Κορίνθῳ τὰ πολλὰ διάγων. Καὶ τί ἄν, ἔφην ἐγώ, τοσοῦτον ἐκ φιλοσοφίας σύ τʼ ἄν ὠφεληθείης, ὅσον παρὰ τοῦ σοῦ νομοθέτου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν; Τί γάρ; Οὐχ οἱ φιλόσοφοι περὶ θεοῦ τὸν ἅπαντα ποιοῦνται λόγον, ἐκεῖνος ἔλεγε, καὶ περὶ μοναρχίας αὐτοῖς καὶ προνοίας αἱ ζητήσεις γίνονται ἑκάστοτε; Ἢ οὐ τοῦτο ἔργον ἐστὶ φιλοσοφίας, ἐξετάζειν περὶ τοῦ θείου;

English · Claude translation

“And who are you, best of mortals?” I said, jesting with him. And he told me his name and his race simply. “I am called Trypho,” he said, “and I am a Hebrew of the circumcision, who fled the war that has lately taken place, and spend most of my time in Greece and in Corinth.” “And how,” I said, “could you gain as much from philosophy as from your own lawgiver and the prophets?” “Why not?” he said. “Do not the philosophers make their whole discourse about God, and are not their inquiries always about his sole rule and providence? Or is not this the work of philosophy, to inquire about the divine?”

About this passage

Source

Archambault · Georges Archambault, ed., Justin: Dialogue avec Tryphon, 2 vols., Textes et documents pour l'étude historique du christianisme 8, 11 (Paris: Picard, 1909) · Greek text: G. Archambault, Justin: Dialogue avec Tryphon (Paris, 1909), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library and published by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-26 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Archambault (1909); made independently of existing English translations.

Extrabiblical texts

Homer, Il. 6.123 (Homer, Iliad) · quotation, high confidence

Notes

Translation notes

“Best of mortals” is a line from Homer (Iliad 6.123; 15.247), used playfully.
“The war that has lately taken place”: the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135).
Trypho has sometimes been identified with the rabbi Tarphon of the Mishnah; the identification is not accepted by most scholars.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (digitization slip against Archambault's printed text (wrong breathing)): Ἣ οὐ τοῦτο → Ἢ οὐ τοῦτο.

Cite this passage

Justin, Dial. 1.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/justin-dialogue/1/3/).

Plain text

Justin, Dial. 1.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/justin-dialogue/1/3/).