DCHindley wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 12:24 pm
IMHO, I don't think we can safely assume we have the works of actual Patristic Fathers in the letter(s) attributed to "Apostolic fathers" like Clement (of Rome), Barnabas, Mathetes to Diognetus, Ignatius, and Polycarp. I would not even dare to attribute these books to hard and fast dates of composition.
Cheers, Dave. That's a good point about letters attributed to Apostolic Fathers (and it also raises the issue of definitions of 'Apostolic' and 'Patristic' Fathers).
Justin Martyr, at least his Dialogue with Trypho, I'll accept as original to that person, but not the "Aplogies" he supposedly addressed to various Roman Emperors. Even then I am not sure whether the dialogue actually occurred, if it occurred at all, after the 1st Judean rebellion, or the uprising in Egypt and Cyrene, or the one under Bar Kochba. It may have been based on dialogues from the 1st war or Egyptian uprising, and recycled for a later conflict.
That they mention only bits and pieces of Matthew's (Gk) gospel, and maybe something from the major letters of Paul, may just be the intent of the authors to remain true to the memories of these folks in the popular Christian consciousness, and not include intentional anachronisms. If we look hard enough, though, unintentional anachronisms probably do exist in them, if they are really the products of pious story-telling (myth making) and moral admonitions from later times and projected back.
I wonder how much Justin knew, and how much is later tradition ie. due to 'editing'.
Irenaeus, it seems to me, is the very first Christian father who exhibits knowledge of virtually every canonical NT book, and claims at least a minor association with Polycarp (sat at the man's feet1, but I don't know if he was teaching adults as Irenaeus listened in, or was recounting stories for kiddies, or was even reading aloud from his published canons of NT sacred scripture). While I realize SA has his own take on the historicity of Irenaeus, I think that it is more likely that he did exist, right around the middle of the 2nd century.
1 Adv Haers 3.3.4.
I wonder how much of the texts of Irenaeus are real: I recently presented an argument he might have lived in Galatia, Asia Minor, rather than in Gaul, Lyons (which is really only asserted by Eusebius). See
http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... f=3&t=3526
Since it seems unlikely that the actual authors of the "Apostolic fathers" or even Justin were aware of most of the books that Irenaeus knew about, I'd have to put the dates of their composition before the books popularized by Irenaeus became commonly known. Earliest decades of the 2nd century?
You'd put the dates of composition of the the books popularised by Irenaeus as 'earliest decades of the 2nd C?
I am guessing along with others, particularly David Trobisch, that Polycarp was the one to first publish sets of books for devotional use, from his hometown of Smyrna, Asia Minor, although I am not sure how many of the "big 4" collections this included
- (e = four gospels Mt, Mk, Lk & Jn;
- a = Acts of the Apostles & General letters i.e., James, Jude, John, but not of Paul;
- p = 13 letters of Paul +/- Hebrews; and
- r = Revelation of Jesus Christ to his Slave John),
or
whether the earliest editions of these sets of books were different than what ended up being preserved.
Yes, that's hard to know. That leads to considering memoirs or proto- or ur- texts.
eta: Can you elaborate on 'e', 'a', 'p', and 'r', Dave?
.