ABSTRACT
Christians in the second century were still trying to decide exactly what to do with the Jewish scriptures. On the one hand, they were affirming their continued connection to these texts and the traditions they represented. On the other hand, the newness of the Christian message was often in tension with these very traditions. Those who saw themselves in continuity with these texts were compelled to draw upon a wide variety of interpretive techniques in order to achieve the complex task of assimilation. The second-century Greek apologists (a somewhat arbitrary grouping usually referring to Aristides, Athenagoras, Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Theophilus of Antioch) faced the further difficulty of working all of this out in polemical contexts as they defended Christianity against pagan and Jewish detractors.
