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Athenagoras

Athenagoras

133 CE–190 CE · Alexandria

Athenagoras (c. 133-190 CE) was a Christian philosopher, traditionally called 'of Athens' though later associated with Alexandria, who addressed his 'Plea for the Christians' to the Roman emperors around 177 CE. With philosophical skill he refuted charges of atheism, cannibalism, and immorality leveled at believers, and defended monotheism. A second work, 'On the Resurrection of the Dead,' argues for bodily resurrection. He represents the cultured apologetic tradition that sought to make Christianity intelligible to educated Greco-Roman readers.

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AlexandriaEgypt

What they did here

Associated with Alexandria.

Alexandria in this era

Under Roman imperial rule, Alexandria hosted the Catechetical School (Didascaleion), where Clement and then Origen turned the city into early Christianity's foremost theological workshop, pioneering allegorical Scripture interpretation and systematic theology in the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries.

About Alexandria

Alexandria is the main Mediterranean port of northern Egypt and the country's second city. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, it became the capital of the Ptolemies, whose Museum and Great Library made it the leading centre of Hellenistic learning. It also held one of the largest Jewish communities of antiquity, where the Greek Bible translation known as the Septuagint was produced and Philo wrote. Church tradition traces its patriarchate to Mark the Evangelist, and its catechetical school was led by Clement and Origen. Arab forces under Amr ibn al-As took the city in 641, and it remained a commercial and scholarly hub of the Islamic world; the Sufi master Ibn Ata Allah al-Iskandari was born there.

In Alexandria at the same time

Valentinus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, St.

Across the traditions, in Alexandria at the same time

See other sages who lived in Alexandria→

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Athenagoras’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

In the same tradition

Valentinus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, St.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Athenagoras’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(4)