Skip to content
Wellsprings
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.

See Athenagoras’s journey on the map →

Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→Trace on the map →

Stop 1 of 1

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 (al-Iskandariyya) is the great Mediterranean port-city of northern Egypt, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE and a leading centre of learning in antiquity. After the Muslim conquest of Egypt (642) it remained a major commercial and scholarly hub; the Shadhili Sufi Ibn Ata Allah al-Iskandari (d. 1309) took his nisba from the city, and the modernist reformer Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) was active in Egypt's intellectual life there and in Cairo.

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)