My Edition of the Apostolic Fathers

[00:00:01] My edition of the Apostolic Fathers, written by Bart Ehrman, read by Mike Johnson. [00:00:07] Since I often get asked about topics I've written about, I've been doing a long thread discussing the various books I've published. For the next several posts, I'll talk about my edition of the Apostolic Fathers for the Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 2003 the Loeb series provide bilingual editions of ancient greek and latin writings. Bilingual means that the original greek or latin text of the writing is on one side of the page, with an english translation on the other side. These are designed for students and scholars who know the ancient languages, at least to some extent, as a way of helping them study the texts, even if their knowledge of the languages is not as good as it could be. When is it ever so? These volumes are probably not for most blog readers, but the general introduction I provided to the two volumes is reasonably accessible and explains what these writings are, where they came from, and why they are important. So I thought I'd give an excerpt here for those interested. They are indeed interesting writings, and regrettably not as widely known among general readers as they should be. This is the first part of my introduction to give you a sense. As you'll see, it goes at the topic at a deeper level than most blog posts, for good or ill, depending on your predilection. [00:01:33] The apostolic Fathers General Introduction the apostolic Fathers represent a disparate collection of early christian writings whose authors were traditionally believed to have been followers or companions of the apostles of Jesus and who were thought then to have produced their works soon after the books of the New Testament were completed. These historical judgments are no longer widely held, but the collection continues to serve a valuable purpose in providing the earliest non canonical writings of authors who were forebears of what was to become, some centuries after their day, christian orthodoxy. Even so, the utility and contents of the collection continue to be matters of debate among scholars of christian antiquity. [00:02:23] The term apostolic father first occurs in the hagidos of Anastasius, the 7th century anti monophysite abbot of St. Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai, who spoke of the writings of the apostolic father, Dionysius of Areopagite. Somewhat ironically, the works of this Dionysius the Areopagite, allegedly the convert of the apostle Paul, have never been included in modern collections of the apostolic fathers since the 16th century. They have been recognized as forgeries of later times, possibly the early 6th century. In any event, neither Anastasius nor any other author prior to the 17th century referred to an entire corpus of writings or authors as the apostolic fathers. [00:03:14] Collections of non canonical proto orthodox writings were made, of course, even in antiquity, long before the canon of the New Testament itself had reached its final form. Already in the early second century, Polycarp of Smyrna wrote his letter to the Philippians to serve as a kind of COVID letter for a collection of the writings of Ignatius, which Polycarp had himself assembled in response to a request from the Christians of Philippi see introduction to the letter of Polycarp. This collection probably formed the basis for the manuscript tradition of Ignatius's letters that circulated in expanded form down through the Middle Ages see introduction to the letters of Ignatius. [00:03:59] Evidence of other collections of early christian authors appears sporadically through the historical record. Both the shepherd of Hermas and the epistle of Barnabas, for example, are included in the famous fourth century biblical manuscript Codex sinaiticus, and one and two clement can be found in the slightly later Codex Alexandrinus. In these cases, however, the books were not reproduced as important non canonical christian works. On the contrary, the scribes of both codices evidently considered these writings to form part of the sacred scriptures. Many of the oldest discussions of the apostolic fathers in fact involve just this issue of whether one or another of their writings should be included in the canon. [00:04:48] Like the books that were eventually canonized, the apostolic fathers were written and circulated as separate texts. Since they were not widely accepted into the canon, however, they continued to be copied and read for the most part not as a corpus of writings but individually. Some, of course, were more popular than others. The epistle to Diognetus is never mentioned by any ancient source, whereas the shepherd of Hermas was widely read and distributed in the early christian centuries, more so even than several of the general epistles that came to be included in the christian canon. There is some evidence, on the other hand, that several of the apostolic fathers were occasionally transmitted together down through the Middle Ages. The famous Codex Hierosolimitanus, for example, written in 1056 and discovered by Philotheus Bryennius in 1873, includes the texts of one and two Clemente, the epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, and the long recension of Ignatius. [00:05:55] Despite such occasional collections prior to the 17th century, anyone interested in writings produced in the generation after the books of the New Testament were completed would have been severely handicapped. On the one hand, few copies of these early second century authors were available. Even more problematic, the most popular of the allegedly sub apostolic writings were in fact, as now recognized later forgeries, including Pseudodionysus, mentioned above. The long form of the letters of Ignatius, which included severely interpolated versions of the seven authentic ignatian letters along with six other forgeries from the fourth century and the entertaining fictional narratives concerning clement of Rome. The clementine homilies and recognitions an interest in the Church fathers did emerge in western Europe among humanists of the Renaissance, many of whom saw in the golden age of patristics their own forebears, cultured scholars imbued with the classics of western civilization concerned with deep religious and philosophical problems. No wonder, then, that the humanists focused their attention on the writings of the great fathers of the church, such as Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, the Cappadocians, and the like, while showing virtually no interest in their comparatively primitive and uncultured predecessors such as Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome, Barnabas, and Hermas, who on no reckoning were cultured scholars or brilliant thinkers. When a most ancient church father like Irenaeus, who in fact wrote decades after most of the so called apostolic fathers was mentioned, it was usually in order to show the unrefined nature of his theology and to censure his aberrant doctrinal views, which failed to reflect the more mature and nuanced statements of later times. [00:08:01] The reformation provided some impetus for the study of christian writings immediately after the New Testament period, but even then few scholars evinced an extensive interest in or knowledge of authors of the early second century. For reasons that in hindsight may seem obvious for many protestant thinkers, the notion of sola scriptura precluded the need to appeal to books immediately outside the canon, whereas most catholic theologians were far more invested in the great theologians, councils and creeds of later times. [00:08:37] It was not until the 17th century that the terms of the discussion shifted dramatically as all sides began to recognize the importance of the earliest non canonical authors for establishing the antiquity of their own views, Protestants of various kinds and Catholics taking their arguments beyond exegesis of the New Testament texts and the formulations of later church councils into the early years of the christian movement. This burgeoning interest in the earliest fathers was intensified by significant manuscript discoveries, which provided a means of revising commonly received notions of christian antiquity.