During those days while staying on Esquiline Hill, Irenaeus and I had spent our time browsing libraries and bookstores in search of religious documents. We collected sacks full of scrolls with all manner of titles, from various sects. But we couldn’t know what a book was about until we later had time to read it.
There were the Adoptionists – who believed that Jesus was a mere man who was adopted by Yahweh as his son.
The Chilianists believed that at the Second Coming, Christ will rule over the earth for 1,000 years (also called Millenianists).
The Docetists denied that Christ was human, but was only a ghost who took on human form.
The Donatists refused to be associated with the Catholic Church, claiming that Catholics were backsliders because they forgave people who had
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He wrote a long treatise called ‘Dialog with Tryphon,’ which is an argument to prove that Jesus was the predicted Messiah. But that consisted mainly of quoting the Jewish Scriptures. In his legal defense to the Roman Senate, Justin mentioned original Christian documents, which he had found somewhere. But nobody seems to know what happened to them. I want to find them, copy them and quote them in my philosophical refutations.”
The pope paced back and forth for several minutes in deep thought, while warming his icy hands with his warm breath. Finally, turning and smiling, he agreed that this was an important project and that the money would be provided. But he warned us that the emperor had recently instituted another crack-down on what he calls atheism, so everyone must be careful to hide their Christian identity.
I told him that we were aware of that, and showed him the fake letter, allegedly from the emperor, giving us protection from harassment.
He smiled and gave his approval, saying, “It’s no sin to lie to