{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/008/0081496.htm","path":"chr/ecf/008/0081496.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/008/0081496.htm","text":"[a.d. 140.] Aristo of Pella 3534 is supposed to have been a Jew, whose work was designed to help the failing Judaism of his country. Though his work is lost, alike the original and the Latin translation of one \u201cCelsus,\u201d it seems to have been a popular tract among Christians of Cyprian\u2019s time, and the Latin preface is often suffixed to editions of that Father.\nThe work of Aristo is known as the Disputation of Papiscus and Jason, and Celsus tells us that Jason was a Hebrew Christian, while his opponent was a Jew of Alexandria. Now, Papiscus owns himself convinced by the arguments of Jason, and concludes by a request to be baptized. Celsus, who seems to have been a heathen or an Epicurean, derides the work with scornful commiseration; but Origen rebukes this, and affirms his respect for the work. All this considered, one must think Aristo was \u201calmost persuaded to be a Christian,\u201d and deserves a place among Christian writers.\nFrom the Disputation of Jason and Papiscus.\n\u201cI remember,\u201d says Jerome (Comm. ad Gal., cap. iii. comm. 13), \u201cin the Dispute between Jason and Papiscus, which is composed in Greek, to have found it written: \u2018The execration of God is he that is hanged.\u2019\u201d\nJerome likewise, in his Hebrew Questions on Genesis, says: \u201cIn 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 p. 750 Against Praxeas contends, and as Hilarius too, in his exposition of one of the Psalms, declares, that in the Hebrew it is: \u2018In the Son, God made the heaven and the earth.\u2019 But that this is false, the nature of the case itself proves.\u201d\n\u2026And when the man himself 3535 who had instigated them 3536 to this folly had paid the just penalty (says Eusebius, Hist., iv. 6), \u201cthe 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!\u201d So writes Aristo of Pella.\nI have found this expression Seven heavens (says Maximus, in Scholia on 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, 3537 says was composed by Saint Luke.\nThus writes Origen: 3538 \u2026in 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, 3539 and in a manner not unbefitting his Jewish character.\nRouth, R. S., vol. i. p. 93. Westcott, Canon, p. 106. Grabe\u2019s mention. Routh\u2019s discussion, in annotations, is most learned and exhaustive.\n750:3535 750:3536 750:3537 750:3538 750:3539","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol VIII: Remains of the Second and ...","type":"page"}