The Church Fathers · c. 640; survives in fragments
Apology Against the Jews
Leontius of Neapolis · c. 590 – c. 650
What it is
An answer to the charge of idolatry, arguing that Christians do not worship wood but honour what it depicts, as a man kisses a letter from an absent son and honours the son rather than the paper — and pointing to the cherubim God himself commanded for the ark.
Why it lasted
The earliest sustained Christian defence of images, written a century before iconoclasm made it urgent. The Second Council of Nicaea read it into the record in 787, and every later argument for icons uses its distinction.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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