Wednesday Evening On-Line Course and Discussion: After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers
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Please join us for a weekly lecture and discussion following the Wednesday evening service (virtual, via zoom link). The Wednesday evening service begins at 7:30. The lecture begins at 8:00 PM and concludes by 9:00 PM at latest. We will be listening to Dr. Bart Ehrman's course, After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers. There are 24 lectures in the course. You may wish to participate in the entire course or join as your schedule allows; following the entire sequence isn't necessary. There are no books and there is no cost. The zoom link will be the same as the link for the Wednesday evening service. Everyone is welcome! We have good conversations after the lecture.
Here is the course description:
At the very foundation of the Christian religion stand the writings of the New Testament, a collection of 27 books that represent the earliest surviving literary productions of the burgeoning Church and that eventually came to be regarded as sacred Scripture. The writings produced by Christians after the New Testament are also important, however, as they can reveal to us how Christianity changed, developed, and grew after the first Christian century had passed.
The writings of the Apostolic Fathers are the most important books for understanding these developments in Christianity immediately after the New Testament period. The term Apostolic Father was coined by scholars who believed that the authors of these books were companions or followers of the apostles of Jesus. Scholars today do not accept this older view, because the books in the collection appear to have been written in a later generation. But most of them do date from the early to mid-2nd century, and as such, they are among the earliest Christian writings from outside the New Testament.
There are 10 (or 11) authors who are traditionally included in the collection of the Apostolic Fathers. Some of the works are by well-known figures of the early 2nd century (such as Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna); others are anonymous. Together, they represent the early writings of proto-orthodoxy: that is, they represent the views that eventually came to influence and inform the shape of Christianity as it was to grow into a world religion that eventually converted the Roman Empire and became the major religious (and political, social, cultural, and economic) force of the Middle Ages.
In this course, we will examine the various writings of the Apostolic Fathers, both to see what each of the surviving books has to say and to see how these books can instruct us about the emerging Christian Church of the 2nd century.
In rough outline, the lectures of the course are set up in "pairs," in which the first lecture discusses the writing of one of the Apostolic Fathers and the next deals with the broader implications of the writing for understanding key issues in the early history of Christianity. We will begin with the letter of 1 Clement, written by the Christians of Rome to quell an uprising in the church of Corinth around A.D. 95; our examination of this letter will lead us, in the next lecture, to consider the development of a Church hierarchy in the early Christian communities.
Next, we will consider the Letters of Ignatius, one of the earliest Christian martyrs, whose writings urge adherence to the one bishop of each church and warn against false teachers. These letters will serve as a springboard to consider various kinds of "heresies" in early Christianity. Then, we will look at the letter written by Polycarp to the church in Philippi, which had experienced some turmoil when one of its elders was caught red-handed in some kind of shady dealings; this letter quotes numerous earlier Christian writings and, thus, will allow us, in the next lecture, to consider how Christians began to appreciate earlier writings as canonical Scripture.
Another writing of the Apostolic Fathers is an account of Polycarp's own martyrdom; this eyewitness report will lead us to consider how, why, when, and where Christians were persecuted for their faith in the early years of the religion. Also significant among these writings is a book called the Didache, which contains ethical instructions for Christians and indicates how the Christian rites of baptism, eucharist, prayer, and fasting were to be practiced; this work will lead us then to consider the emergence of distinctively Christian rituals in the Church.
Next, we will turn to the so-called Letter of Barnabas, which was written to show the superiority of Christianity to Judaism. This letter will allow us to explore the nature of early Jewish-Christian relations and the rise of Christian anti-Semitism. From there, we will move to a study of a book (mis-)named 2 Clement, which in fact, is the earliest surviving Christian sermon from outside the New Testament. Because 2 Clement uses an allegorical approach to interpreting Scripture, it will enable us to consider more fully, in the next lecture, the various methods of interpretation used by early Christians in understanding their sacred texts.
This matter of interpretation is equally important for the next author we examine, Papias, whose works have come down to us only in fragments. Papias tells us that he prefers oral traditions to written texts in trying to understand what happened during the life of Jesus. This will bring us, in the next lecture, to a consideration of the importance of the oral transmission of early Christian tradition.
Next, we will turn to one of the earliest surviving apocalyptic writings of Christianity, The Shepherd of Hermas, which will, in turn, lead us to consider the importance of apocalyptic thought for the earliest followers of Jesus. As Christians moved away from an apocalyptic worldview, they began to have increased interactions with outsiders who were suspicious of their religion. The next writing we will consider is the anonymous Letter to Diognetus, which will serve as a springboard for considering the early apologetic movement, in which Christians defended themselves against charges of atheism and immorality and argued that their religion was, in fact, the only true one.
We will conclude our course by seeing how the Apostolic Fathers can instruct us concerning the development of Christianity in the early 2nd century, in the years between the foundation of the Church by Jesus and his disciples and the emergence of the Catholic Church of later times.
