Print

Preface The goal of this collection of primary texts (from the first through the first half of the fifth century) is both simple and complex. The simple part is to allow the texts of the early Christians to speak for themselves. There are not a lot of textual remains from the Christians in the first and second centuries, but as time goes on, more and more survived, so what had happened becomes easier to understand. The complex part of this book is trying to describe what these texts meant to those ancient people. While this may not seem difficult, numerous issues arise in the study of any historical time period. For example, who was the author and why does this matter? We can sometimes guess the reason why an author wrote what he did if we know something about his life (I refer to “he” mostly because many early Christian texts were written by men). If he is Christian, this may influence what he wants the text to tell us. If he is pagan, then that will more than likely influence what he is writing and the modern reader needs to know these things. It makes a difference in the message if the person is a bishop, a deacon, or a nonbeliever. It may cause issues when the text is interpreted, especially if the details of the authors are not known. Another complex issue is that the original texts are not in English. Early Chris- tians spoke several different languages, including Greek, Aramaic, and Latin. All the early Christian texts from the first century were written in Greek. Later these texts were either translated into Latin or later created in Latin. Texts coming out of Egypt were sometimes written in Coptic, the last stage in the evolution of Egyp- tian language. In many cases, the texts went through multiple translations. It is not an easy thing to translate a text from one language to another, especially if the language is technically dead (meaning it is no longer spoken or written). A transla- tor does not just translate word for word, and just like today, ancient words could have multiple meanings. I have tried to go through every single ancient document in this book to check the translations and have updated the language in all of them. Another issue is how to choose the texts that went into this book. As men- tioned, there are not many in the first century to select. However, starting toward the middle or end of the second century, we have more and more texts—too many to possibly put in one book. I decided that I would try to find early Christian texts (and those related to early Christians) that might be considered “out of the way” or ones that are generally not given in early Christian primary source books. That does not mean that they are obscure in terms of meaning—just rare in terms of being introduced to modern audiences. Many of the texts are organized in chrono- logical order, even if the topic is the same (i.e., the texts on Arianism). This will allow the reader to see how the ancient Christians tackled a topic over time.