The letters of Ignatius of Antioch are among the most fascinating earliest Christian writings from outside the New Testament.  I’ve long been fascinated by them and would like to introduce you to them in a series of three posts in this thread presenting the “Apostolic Fathers” in a nutshell. The “Apostolic Fathers,” as I have indicated before, are a group of ten or eleven (depending how you count) books/authors who have long been understood to stand in the “orthodox” Christian camp before the major theological views later considered orthodox had become the overwhelmingly dominant form of Christian belief and practice some time in the third century or so – and so we call these write “proto-orthodox”; they were collected into a group of writings only in the modern period, and called “apostolic fathers” because they were each believed to have been acquainted with the apostles of Jesus themselves.  In almost all instances, as it turns out, that turns out to be wrong, but we still give them this name. They are (for the most part) [...]

Among the most fascinating elements of the Didache are the prayers it records, one (the Lord’s Prayer) which it presents in a form more familiar to people today than the forms found in the New Testament (!), and others connected with the Eucharist – that is, the “Lord’s Supper” as celebrated in church.  These prayers are nothing like most churches say today. I start with the Lord’s Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer is not found in the Gospels of Mark or John, and Matthew and Luke word it differently.  Luke appears to represent the oldest surviving form of the prayer, possibly the form that was original to Q. Matthew’s Gospel expands this version by adding some additional petitions, as seen below. One of the many intriguing features of the Didache is that it also presents the Lord’s Prayer but in a slightly different form from what can be found in either of the canonical Gospels, and, as I said, the Didache’s version is closest to the form of the prayer familiar to most Christians [...]

In my previous post I started to discuss one of the most important of the Apostolic Fathers, the Didache. I indicated there that it consists of three parts, the first of which is an ethical treatise on the "Two Ways" one can live. Now I continue with describing the even more unusual next two parts, a set of instructions about ritual activities and wandering apostles and prophets, and an apocalyptic prediction of what is yet to come..  This description is principally taken from my book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.   ******************************   Like the “Teaching of the Two Ways,” the second portion of the Didache may be drawn from one or more earlier sources, or it may represent the anonymous author’s own composition. It is a kind of “church order” in which instructions are given for various kinds of church activities. For example, Christians are to perform their baptisms in cold running water (i.e., in an outdoor stream) whenever possible, although standing or warm water is [...]

In my posts on Barnabas I indicated that it was probably written sometime in the 130s CE; I often get asked how scholars come up with dates like that? The first thing to stress is that it's is very difficult to date ancient writings.  But scholars who have worked on such matters (for nearly 300 years now, in some instances) have marshaled pretty good evidence in case after case, although in many instances there continue to be substantial debates. There are several ways to establish parameters, which are fairly commonsensical. If a writing is quoted by an author whose dates are relatively certain (his dates too need to be established on independent grounds! But in lots of cases there is almost no doubt), then obviously the writing is earlier than that. So that’s a beginning. Second, if the writing itself quotes a dateable writing or author then it must be written later than that. And third, relatedly, if the writing refers to a dateable event, then it must be later. Much of the [...]

In my last post  in starting to explain why early Christians may have attributed the anonymous Letter to Barnabas to Barnabas, best known as a one of the closest companions of Paul.  That post was a set up to this; in it I explained some of the key things we know about the mid-second century philosopher/theologian-eventually-branded-arch-heretic Marcion. Here I explain the relevance of that. It is important to recall that the letter of Barnabas is stridently anti-Jewish, claiming that the Jews never were the people of God because they had broken the covenant as soon as God had given it to them on Mount Sinai (by worshipping the Golden Calf); they misunderstood the law, taking it literally, when it was meant figuratively. Even though Jews never realized it, the OT was not a Jewish book but a Christian book, that not only anticipated Christ but proclaimed the Christian message. The first explicit reference to this anonymous letter is in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, writing around 200, who quotes it and claims [...]

Here I continue my discussion from the previous post of the major themes and emphases of one of the best know of the Apostolic Fathers, The Epistle of Barnabas, which embodies strong attack on Jews for misunderstanding their own religion and misinterpreting their own Scriptures. ****************************** According to this anonymous author, Jews are also wrong to take the dietary laws of the Old Testament literally. God did not mean that his people were not to eat pork or rabbit or hyena, all of which are proscribed in the Torah. The injunction not to eat pork means not to live like swine, who grunt loudly when hungry and keep silent when full. People are not to treat God in this way, coming to him with loud petitions when they are in need and ignoring him when they are not (10:3). Not to eat rabbit means not to live like those wild creatures, who with every passing year increase their sexual appetites and add an additional orifice to their body, allowing them to propagate at [...]

I’ve indicated that the book of 1 Clement is rather long and seems a bit rambling in places to many of its readers, when its only real goal is to tell some usurpers in the church of Corinth to give the reins of power back to the duly appointed church leaders. I read it differently.  I think that it makes rather marvelous connections between things that one would normally think of as unrelated in an extended effort to show the wayward upstarts in Corinth that they have taken over the church illicitly. Who woulda thought that the sun, moon, and stars, the seasons ,the boundaries of the sea, and the winds reveal that God wants the original leaders given their authority back? Or that the Myth of the Phoenix (first discussed in the western tradition six centuries earlier by Herodotus) would have any relevance? This author thinks so! Here are two passages that make the point.  The first (ch. 20) expounds on the regularity of nature as established by God, in order to [...]

This will be my final post on the book of 1 Clement.  Now that I’ve summarized what the book is about and said something about its author, I can turn to the question of when it was written.  The time of its writing is an important question, for a reason you might not suspect. It is almost always said – I myself regularly say this, as a kind of simple “short hand,” knowing that it’s probably not literally true -- that the books of the New Testament are the “earliest” Christian writings we have.  In fact, if, as is often thought, Revelation was written around 95 CE, and 2 Peter around 120 and Acts possibly (?) around them as well, then a couple of other Christian books may have ante-dated them, including 1 Clement and the Didache, two of the apostolic fathers.  The letters of Ignatius of Antioch were almost certainly written around 110 CE. So, the big question here is: when did this anonymous author from Rome write the book of 1 Clement?   This [...]

Now that I’ve completed the “New Testament in a Nutshell” series, with posts summarizing each of the twenty-seven books, explaining their major themes and emphases; when, why, and by whom they were written; giving suggestions for further reading; questions to reflect on; and summaries of the summaries – it is time to move on. And where better to move than to the early Christian writings from outside the New Testament – some of which were considered to belong to the New Testament by various church leaders and authors, for centuries.  Really? Yup.  One of our earliest manuscripts of the New Testament (codex Sinaiticus; from around 375 CE) includes the Shepherd of Hermas and the letter of Barnabas; another (codex Alexandrinus; from around 400 CE) includes 1 and 2 Clement. Some church fathers thought the Didache should belong; or the Apostolic Constitutions, or the Apocalypse of Peter; or …. But what are these books?  One thing we can say about all of them: they are less well known among the general populace than [...]