"What Is Your Philosophy?:" Defining "The Jew" in Justin's Dialogue with Trypho

In the mid-first century C.E. Justin Martyr wrote a dialogue that described a conversation between him and a fictional Jewish character, Trypho. In doing so, Justin co-constructed the figure of the "Jew" alongside notions of Christian identity. Justin used originally Jewish concepts for his project of Christian identity formation, and in doing so put forth his idea of the Jew. Through his interactions with and his descriptions of Trypho, we can see that Jewish identity is polythetic, even from a Christian perspective.