ABSTRACT
Christians developed an apologetic devised to meet Judaism; it began with Paul, is developed in the synoptic gospels, gains emphasis in the Fourth Gospel, is advanced in Justin Martyr's Dialogue against the Jew Tryphon and continues throughout the whole history of the early church and even beyond. At certain times, notably in the Johannine Apocalypse, persecution produced a resurgence of eschatological sentiment, and in a more general way the feeling regained strength that the faith and the church had their true foundation and purpose, not in the present world but in the world beyond. Clement used the memories of the persecution of Nero as a text for a moral exhortation presenting the Christian athlete and reduced the persecution of Domitian to a simple incident because he did not want the church to take a blind alley by assuming a hostile attitude towards the Empire.
