Veracity of the Christian church's Early [Apostolic] Fathers

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Peter Kirby
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Re: Veracity of the Christian church's Early [Apostolic] Fat

Post by Peter Kirby »

How reliable or true is the information about these characters: Irenaeus, Polycarp, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, etc.

Could the information about them be subject to later redaction and embellishment?

For example, Polycarp's most significant work is said to be his 'letter to the Phillipians', & the most significant work about him is the 'Martyrdom of Polycarp'. There is little to verify these works or Polycarp's roles.
Something I've noticed is that the people who pour over the New Testament texts (in order to understand them and possibly find anything new to talk about) sometimes just don't work very much with the non-canonical texts. And when coming to the apostolic fathers particularly, the discussion about when they were written, by whom, and so on, just doesn't get developed as much. This is changing, but it is something I've noticed.

I don't know about most significant. It's just the one work attributed to Polycarp that survives.

I once did some lexical analysis with the apostolic fathers, and the letters of Ignatius neatly clumped themselves. I thought that was interesting. (Nope, doesn't answer who the one author might be, if there is one author of them.)
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stephan happy huller
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Re: Veracity of the Christian church's Early [Apostolic] Fat

Post by stephan happy huller »

I have never understood why people won't acknowledge the short Syriac texts as the original and the long and longer texts as continuing forgeries.
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