Justin Martyr’s Hermeneutic of True Israel in Dialogue with Trypho

Abstract

This paper examines how Justin’s hermeneutic of true Israel drives his interpretation of the Jewish Scriptures. The second century socio-historical and ecclesiological situations shaped Justin’s hermeneutical conviction that not the Jews but the Gentile Christians are true Israel. For Justin, God’s salvation history has reached its climax at the coming of the Gentile Christians, which was clearly visualized in the second century when the church became predominantly gentile. Methodologically, this paper focused on Justin’s use of Scripture used in Paul’s Romans and Galatians. This enabled us to examine how Justin transformed Paul’s arguments with Scripture. Even in the use of the same scriptures, Paul’s first century apocalyptic, covenantal concern over shaping one universal faith community composed of Jews and Gentiles is radically replaced by Justin’s concern to protect and continue the identity of the Gentile Church. Justin’s hermeneutic of true Israel demonstrates both positive and negative aspects. Negatively, Justin will not be able to be free from the criticism of substitution theology and antisemitism. Positively, however, Justin demonstrates a missional hermeneutic in his efforts to introduce the Jewish Scriptures as the story about “we Gentiles.” He also demonstrates an ecclesiological hermeneutic in his efforts to transform the old Abraham and Jacob narratives into identity-shaping narratives for Gentile Christians. Further, Justin demonstrates an apologetic hermeneutic through his tripartite division of the Mosaic Law, by claiming that historical aspect of the law is only for the Jews, and thus that the whole Jewish Scriptures is now for Christians. In terms of interpretive methods, Justin uses diverse methods, which we find in the New Testament authors, from atomization or pesher type technique to free addition, omission, or adaptation. Justin employs these interpretive methods usually to retell the old Jewish Scriptures in a way relevant to his contemporary people and events, and thus to achieve the goal of his hermeneutic of true Israel.