The First Apologies.

As Christianity gradually separated from Judaism and came to feel its individual character as a new faith, competing with various ethnic, philosophic, and mystery religions in the Roman world and meeting objection and persecution, it began to be conscious of itself and to frame answers to the criticisms and attacks that were made upon it. This was the beginning of the Christian apologetic literature that soon took shape in a series of apologies and dialogues in defense of the new religion.

        Christians were mostly persons of little distinction or position, and some things about them and their proceedings aroused suspicion and hostility. They were suspected of incest, cannibalism, atheism, disloyalty to the state, and even setting fire to the capital. Their views, too, were ridiculed, especially their worship of a man who had been crucified.

        Jewish writers, seeking to command their religion to Greek readers, had already produced such books as the Wisdom of Solomon, Philo's treatise On the Contemplative Life, and Josephus' two volumes Against Apion, all written in the first century. Christian gropings toward such expression begin to appear in Luke's account of Paul's address in Athens in Acts 17:22-31. But the earliest Christian book or booklet in this field was the so-called Preaching of Peter.