Apostolic Fathers

The Apostolic Fathers were Christian theologians who lived in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, who are believed to have personally known some of the Twelve Apostles, or to have been significantly influenced by them. Their writings, though popular in Early Christianity, were ultimately not included in the canon of the New Testament once it reached its final form. Many of the writings derive from the same time period and geographical location as other works of early Christian literature that did come to be part of the New Testament, and some of the writings found among the Apostolic Fathers’ seem to have been just as highly regarded as some of the writings that became the New Testament.

The label Apostolic Fathers has been applied to these writers only since the 17th century, to indicate that they were thought of as representing the generation that had personal contact with the Twelve Apostles. The earliest known use of the term “Apostolic(al) Fathers” was by William Wake in 1693, when he was chaplain in ordinary to King William and Queen Mary of England. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the use of the term Apostolic Fathers can be traced the title of a 1672 work by Jean-Baptiste Cotelier, SS. Patrum qui temporibus apostolicis floruerunt opera (“Works of the holy fathers who flourished in the apostolic times”), which was abbreviated to Bibliotheca Patrum Apostolicorum (Library of the Apostolic Fathers) by L. J. Ittig in his 1699 edition of the same.

The history of the title for these writers was explained by Joseph Lightfoot, in his 1890 translation of the Apostolic Fathers’ works:

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Author: Wikipedia

Keywords: Apostolic Fathers, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Ante-Nicene, anti-nicene, Ante-Nicean, anti-nicean, before Nicene, Before Nicean, Before Nicean creed, Nicean creed, Nicene creed, Before Nicene creed, Early church, Early christianity, Prenicene, Pre-nicene, Pre-nicean, Prenicean, early church father, Apostolic Age, Before Nicea, Before Nicaea, Church Father, anti-nicene fathers, anti-nicean fathers, Apostolic Church, Apostolic church father, Papias, Polycarp, Hermas, Tertullian, Athenagoras, Origen, Novatian, Justin Martyr, Cyprian, Clement, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Irenaus, Irenaeus of Lyons, Origen of Alexandria, Nicaea, Nicea

Bible reference(s): 1Ti 4:1, 1Ti 6:3, 2Ti 4:3

Source: This article uses material from the Wikipedia article “Apostolic Fathers,” which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

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