ABSTRACT
By the time Justin wrote the Dialogue, he had been long engaged in attacking other Christians who regarded the Jewish God as an inferior Demiurge. The First Apology (c. 150 CE) is often regarded as an attempt to end the prosecution of Christians in general, but in fact Justin is only seeking reprieve for his kind of Christians, and actively undercuts the judicial position of Christian “demiurgists.” These same Christians also bore the brunt of the attacks in the lost treatise “against the heresies” mentioned in 1 Apol. 26, which, against recent scholarly claims to the contrary, Justin likely authored.
