Archaic Christianity

Decoding Early Christianity: Truth and Legend in the Early Church is a book I was able to pick up off of the new books shelf at DTS. It looked interesting enough, had a cool cover (even if a bit odd for the subject matter), a great title, was short, and fell within my reading interests, so I decided to check it out. In summary, it is a book of inconsistent quality, and will not be the book I end up recommending for a good introduction to early Christianity (despite its cool name).

So what will reading the Epistle to Diognetus (hereafter Diogn as is recommended in the SBL Handbook of Style) tell us about the views of the Apostolic Fathers on authority, revelation, Scripture, etc.? Let's find out.

As I mentioned in a recent post on Ignatius, I am beginning a new series. This series discusses how the Apostolic Fathers viewed viewed authority, revelation, the New and Old Testament documents, tradition, and other related important things. This is ultimately to bring this data, along with the witness of the New and Old Testament writings, in for a discussion of church authority and Scripture in modern Christianity.

Well, he had a σκέπαρνον ("axe") anyway. So I read only one more chapter (#9) in the Protoevangelium of James today. My cold/flu/crud pretty much kept me down today.

So I noticed a link by Jim to Antonio's blog, which led me to an essay on Gnosticism by Gerd Lüdemann. I read it. Here are my thoughts, with snippets.