Dr. Bunsen calls it “a good but dull novel,” and reminds us of a saying of Niebuhr (Bunsen’s master), that “he pitied the Athenian3 Christians for being obliged to hear it read in their assemblies.” —F. Crombie, “Introductory Note to the Pastor . . . Continue reading →
Shepherd of Hermas
Why Do Good Men Approve Of Bad Texts?
One of the more interesting questions we face each semester arises when we get to the Shepherd of Hermas, which was a wildly popular but almost certainly heretical text from (probably) the mid to late-second century A.D., is why it was so . . . Continue reading →
A Cure For Romanticism About the Second Century
Each fall I teach a course on the ancient church and a seminar on patristics. For the first half of the seminar, we use Michael Holmes’s third edition of the Apostolic Fathers, a collection of texts mainly from the second century. It did . . . Continue reading →