apology · c. 125, or under Antoninus Pius · 2nd century Christian text
One of only two second-century apologies to survive entire, and the story of how is better than most: it was lost in Greek altogether, recovered from a Syriac version and an Armenian fragment in 1889, and then found to have been sitting in plain sight the whole time — the Greek text embedded almost complete inside the medieval romance of Barlaam and Josaphat, put in the mouth of a character. The argument is the one from the four races: barbarians, Greeks, Jews and Christians, each measured by what they say God is and by how they treat one another.