Do you know the first account of a Christian martyr -- the actual narrative of his trial and executio -- from outside the New Testament?  It's one of the Apostolic Fathers, and for many readers one of the most intriguing:  The Martyrdom of Polycarp. Here  is a nutshell summary of the work, an edited version of my Introduction to the translation I made for my collection, The Apostolic Fathers (Harvard University Press) ****************************** The Martyrdom of Polycarp has long occupied a place of special intrigue for readers of the Apostolic Fathers.  This is an account, evidently based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, of the trial and execution of a prominent church leader of the early and mid-second century, Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna.  Known already from the letter addressed to him by Ignatius, an earlier martyr (whose own death is recounted only in later legends), and from the letter that he wrote to the church in Philippi (see the Letter of Polycarp), Polycarp was an important figure in the development of proto-orthodox Christianity. Tradition held [...]

What does our earliest Christian sermon outside the New Testament look like?  It is found in one of the apostolic fathers, in a book called 2 Clement, allegedly (but not really) written by the early bishop of Rome, Clement, and historically associated with another book of the Apostolic Fathers, 1 Clement. The following is an edited version of the Introduction to my translation of the text in The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1 (Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003) ****************************** Second Clement is probably the most overlooked and least appreciated of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers.  This is somewhat to be regretted, as it is in some ways a historically significant work. As with 1 Clement, the book is misnamed – even more so, as in addition to being written by a different author, who cannot be identified as Clement of Rome, it is not even a letter.  Readers have long recognized that the book appears in fact to be an early Christian homily, a written exposition of Scripture with an accompanying set [...]

Did Jesus tell Peter that his "sheep" (followers) did not need to worry about being torn to shreds by the wolves (persecutors), since, well, when they were, they'd be dead anyway? Celebrating our 14th anniversary of the blog (starting April 2012), I have been posting 14 favorite posts from previous Aprils.  This one is from April 2024, on one of my all time favorite Gospel fragments that may be from the otherwise-partially-known Gospel of Peter.  It records an intriguing conversation between Jesus and Peter, if nothing else... ****************************** One of the most captivating tiny fragments of a lost Gospel discovered in modern times came from a trash heap excavated from the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, one of many thousands of manuscript fragments found there, some of them Christian but most of them non-Christian (most of which were non-literary texts, that is, personal letters, land deeds, divorce certificates, bills of sale, etc.). Did this fragment come from Gospel of Peter? The "Gospel of Peter" we have today, which was discovered in 1886, is, unfortunately, [...]

There are lots of Christian apologists among us today, who defend the Christian faith on rational grounds rather than purely theological, arguing not only that it is not intellectually problematic but that in fact there are “proofs” that it is true.  The Greek word “apologia” literally means “defense,” rather than, well, “saying you’re sorry”; it is used not only for religious “defenses” but also to refer to the arguments of a defendant in a court case, most famously for the stunning account of the trial of Socrates written by Plato, and simply called “The Apology.” I don’t recall ever hearing one of our modern apologists refer to their ancient forebears, but the academic study of ancient Christian apology is very interesting indeed.  I took a PhD seminar in my grad program (we started by translating Plato’s Apology. Terrific!) and have been interested in it ever since.  Among the most famous ancient apologists are Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Origen, authors very much worth reading and studying. Few people, however, have ever heard of the very first [...]

Here is my second post dealing with a highly ironic early Christian text, which tells its readers not to be led astray by authors forging books in the names of the apostles, even though this book itself is forged in the names of the apostles.  This again is taken from my book Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford Press), edited a bit.   ******************************   The alleged authors of the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions– the apostles of Christ, including Paul and James -- explicitly claim that the books of the New Testament were theirs:  διαθήκης (8.47.85). And so the author gives a list of which books those are, a list that includes all of the books that eventually became the New Testament, with the exception of the book of Revelation. Strikingly, after listing the Gospels and the letters of Paul, James, John, Jude, and Peter, the author indicates that the New Testament is also to include the his own book, the Apostolic Constitutions themselves! But the author of the Apostolic Constitutions is not only a deceiver; he is also [...]

In a previous post I talked about a forger from the ancient Greek world who was duped by another forger who intentionally tried to deceive him (with remarkable success and to his great chagrin).  As it turns out we have comparable instances within early Christianity, as I discuss in my book Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford University Press).  Here's what I say there, edited a bit:   ******************************   This ironic phenomenon of a deceiver being deceived has rough parallels in the Christian tradition. One case to consider is the late fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions, a so-called “church order” allegedly written by none other than the apostles of Jesus (hence its name), but in reality produced by someone simply claiming to be the apostolic band, living three hundred years after they had been laid to rest in their respective tombs. This book is patched-together composite of three earlier writings that we still have, the third-century Didascalia Apostolorum, which makes up books 1-6 of the  text; the Didache (one of the Apostolic Fathers), which is found in book [...]

In my previous post on the Shepherd of Hermas (in a nutshell) I talked about some of its major themes and characteristics.  It's a long book with lots of parables and moral injunctions; one of its major themes has to do with charitable giving, how important it is that those in the church with resources should share with those in need. Jesus himself told his followers to "sell everything and give to the poor."  A century or so later, Hermas had a different view -- related, but much softened from Jesus's radical demand.  Here's how I talk about it in my book Love Thy Stranger (coming out soon: pre-orders available on Amazon or wherever).   ******************************* The idea that Christians should give of their resources generously is one of the major themes of the second-century apocalypse known as the Shepherd of Hermas, a book sometimes considered canonical Scripture in the first four centuries.[i]  Hermas instructs his Christian readers to give “simply to all those in need, not wavering about to whom you should give or [...]

I have taken a hiatus in a thread I was doing on the “Apostolic Fathers in a Nutshell.”  In case you need a reminder: the Apostolic Fathers are a group of early proto-orthodox Christian writers/books, most of them from the first half of the second century (a couple were contemporaneous with New Testament writers; a couple were later in the second century).  These writings were originally gathered together because the authors were thought to have been companions with the apostles, though now it’s clear none of them was. I have discussed in several posts each the writings of 1 Clement, the Didache, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, the Epistle of Barnabas – all of them striking on their own terms and quite different in many ways from one another. I now turn to the longest and apparently most widely read writing in the collection, called The Shepherd, written by an otherwise virtually unknown Christian named Hermas.  Like the book of Revelation in the New Testament, it is an apocalypse, but it is [...]

Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians, which I began discussing yesterday, consists largely of general moral exhortations. The Philippians are to love one another and to pray for one another and to give alms whenever possible; their wives are to love their husbands and to educate their children in the fear of God; their widows are to be discreet and devoted to prayer; their deacons are to be moral and upright; their younger men are to avoid passions of the flesh; and so on. Many readers of the letter have found these guidelines somewhat uninspiring, or at least uncreative. Indeed, Polycarp devotes almost the entire letter to quoting or alluding to other early Christian authorities. Rather than formulating views of his own, he has produced a kind of pastiche of earlier traditions. To get an idea of just how thoroughly immersed Polycarp was in Christian writings produced earlier, consider the following passage drawn from the fifth chapter of his letter to the Philippians. I have placed possible echoes and citations of earlier Christian writings [...]

The next “Apostolic Father” we will consider is Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, a friend of Ignatius, who like him came to be martyred on account of his Christian faith (see chapter 26), Polycarp was himself the recipient of one of the surviving letters of Ignatius around 110 c.e., some forty-five years or so before his own death. Soon after he received this letter, he wrote to the Philippian Christians, evidently in response to their requests on several matters (Pol. Phil. 3:1). Here is what I say about him and his writing in my textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press). **************************** The Philippians had requested from Polycarp a copy of “the letters of Ignatius, including both those he sent to us [in Smyrna] and any others which we had by us” (13:2). Polycarp complied with this request, sending his own epistle as a kind of cover letter for the collection. Polycarp indicates that both Ignatius and the Philippians had requested that he, or one of [...]

In some respects, the most interesting of Ignatius’s writings is the letter to the Romans, where he deals explicitly with his upcoming martyrdom. We might expect that Ignatius would want to find some way to avoid having to pay the ultimate price for his faith, if he could do so without compromising his convictions. Ignatius, however, goes to his death eagerly, longingly. He writes to the Romans to urge them not to interfere, for he believes that only by suffering a glorious and bloody martyrdom will he become a true disciple of Christ, only by imitating Christ’s own Passion will he be able to “get to God.” Most of the surviving Christian writings from antiquity take a positive view of Christian martyrdom, urging Christians to go willingly to their deaths for the faith and to endure all the tortures that humans can devise. By doing so, Christians would imitate the Passion of their Lord, Jesus. [SIDENOTE: Not everyone agreed. We know from the letters of Pliny and the writings of several Christian authors, [...]

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 [...]