Reddit mentions of The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations

The Apostolic Fathers by Michael Holmes is what you want. It contains all of the earliest extra-Biblical writings. The Didache, The Shepherd of Hermas, Epistle of Barnabas, etc. It's all in there. There are two versions. The one I have has Greek on one page with the English translation on the facing page. If you know (or have aspirations of learning) a little Greek, get that one. Otherwise there is also a English only version..

No Kindle edition that I can see. If "free on kindle" is important, you can get Lightfoot's translation for free from CCEL. PDF and plaintext only, but calibre can solve that. The Holmes edition is in my opinion much superior, but free is free.

CCEL also has Schaff's Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series. That will give you more than you'll ever want to read.

Paging /u/tbown for more recommendations.

Everyone wants to lay claim to the church fathers, no doubt. I absolutely love this question, as it was the one that I thought would solve my spiritual questions in college. I'm more qualified to comment on the development of theology, but i can at least get an answer started here.

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> . Would they have done so in a manner similar to Catholicism or Protestantism? Or were they completely different from either group?

The biggest thing here to realize is that the church fathers didn't deal with the same questions later/modern roman Catholicism did/does, and definitely not with the issues of Protestantism. Most of the time, theology is a reflective practice, done when an issue arises. So if you really want to get a feel for the early fathers, it would be best to dig into their works. The earliest you could get in touch with is the apostolic fathers. Your statement above would lead me to believe you are at least familiar with this material, but you get a good sense of interpretation there. Most people would find the Apostolic fathers to be concerned with Christian living. The question at hand isn't doctrine but rather what makes Christians Christian?

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The interpretative work of the apostolic fathers is different from even the early fathers. John Chrysostom is probably the most often referred to, as his sermons are written down and widely available on the internet in English even. And yet, it is easy to see how vastly different he is from Arius, Nestorius, Flavian or even Eusebius when you read their commentary. John is highly allegorical in his preaching and interpretation. You see all these mean starting to actually delve into what we would consider dogmatic principles. After all, Arius and Nestorius start to fool around with incarnational theology, and the christian churches finally realize that they need to think about what they actually believe, which affects interpretation of scripture, and lead to Nicaea.

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In reality, all modern Christian interpretation builds on top of the foundational work of the fathers. It isn't until the counter and radical reformations that the fathers become obscured in mainline orthodoxy. The question of the day at the reformation is exactly how the atonement works in the life of the believer, and that is why it becomes a theological question. Really, before then, it isn't even questioned that baptism and participation are the keys to heaven. The simony prevalent at the time of the reformation is what thrusts the question into the discussion of the church.

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This way of interpretation and doing theology haven't really changed either, we experience it in the present day, pondering the questions on ecumenism, women's ordination, and the wave of questions out of the gender/identity movement.

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To sum up what I am driving at: no one interprets like the fathers did, because the questions are different. Many church bodies love to claim the fathers, but the fact of the matter is simply that each body has built on top of their work, in their own way.

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Sure. The first thing I did was read the primary sources and pretty much in chronological order. I began with the Apostolic Fathers (Michael Holmes has this edition with Greek and English). I then read some 2nd century stuff, especially Irenaeus. Cyprian, Tertullian, etc, were all important. The fourth century took me forever to read through. I probably stayed in the 4th century for a year.

For secondary literature, I'd recommend, in no particular order:

Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition

J.N.D. Kelley, Early Christian Doctrines

Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (Chadwick is my doctoral grandfather, so to speak)

Adrian Fortescue, The Early Papacy: To the Synod of Chalcedon

Benedicta Ward's translation of The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Less to do with Church history, but filling in some intellectual gaps:

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Called to Communion

Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (This may shock people that I recommend it, but I do like the nouvelle théologie every now and again)

I also welcome /u/koine_lingua to offer some of his own recommendations to give some balance if he'd like.

Well I just got and am reading Joy to the World and Apostolic Fathers

παιδοφθορησεις

Chapter 2, verse 2. Here's an interlinear you can look at online too: The-Interlinear-Didache.html

Edit: this site has it translated as (literally) "you will do child not sex", whereas other translations have it as "you shall not corrupt children" (such as in The Apostolic Fathers; Micheal W. Holmes ), and others still the more concise word of "pederasty".

Michael W. Holmes' The Apostolic Fathers.

The blessings of the Lord.

This would be a good choice for the Apostolic Fathers.

You've got a lot going on here, but here's my tuppence...

Orthodoxy has spread through the use of the local language, and documents get translated into local languages. So, you don't need to learn another language to read Orthodox writings. If you don't already know the mother tongue of the tradition your church is in (I have no idea where you are), check that one out.

That said, OCA clergy learn Koine Greek in seminary (I have this by word of those who went to St. Vladimir and to St. Tikhon). ROCOR learn Church Slavonic and Russian. It's all kind of what you want to learn there.

The majority of things were written in Koine Greek. The Septuagint is Greek, and much of the New Testament (if not all of it... my coffee hasn't kicked in enough to remember) was originally in Greek. The book The Apostolic Fathers (I have an earlier edition), which has 2nd century Christian writings and letters is in Greek and English.

There are a lot of writings in Slavonic and Russian, though, as well, since the Slavs have had Christianity for over a millennium. Coptic, Ge'ez, or Amharic wouldn't be bad to learn, but most of the writings you'll find there are Oriental Orthodox (Coptic, Ethiopian, Eritrean). If you're looking for a challenge, there's Georgian (EO) or Armenian (OO).

Ranking language by importance is probably not a useful exercise, since different languages will be important to different people. Romanian is more important to Romanians than to the Arabs or Greeks, as a wild example.