The Apostolic Fathers (I Clement. II Clement. Ignatius. Polycarp. Didache) [1] 9780674996076, 0674990277

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THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY FOUNDED BY JAMES LOEB,

LL.D.

EDITED BY fT. E. PAGE, E. j.

CAPPS,

A.

POST,

L.H.D.

E. H.

C.H., LITT.D.

fW. H. D. ROUSE,

PH.D., LL.D.

WARMINGTON,

LITT.D.

M.A., F.B.HIST.SOC.

THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS I

fit.

THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY

KIUSOPP LAKE

I

CLEMENT II CLEMENT IGNATIUS DIDACHE POLYCARP BARNABAS

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD MCMLXV

First published September 1912 Reprinted July 1914 and December 1919, 1925, 1930, 1916, 1949, 1952, 1959, 1965

Printed in Great Britain

CONTENTS PAGE I

CLEMENT

1

H CLEMENT

123

IGNATIUS

165

POLYCARP

279

DIDACHE

303

BARNABAS

.

335

INTRODUCTION THE name

of

"Apostolic

established by usage that

abandoned title

but

it

Fathers"

is

will certainly

so firmly

never be

not altogether a satisfactory for the collection of writings to which it is ;

it is

It means that the writers in question may be supposed to have had personal knowledge of some of the Apostles, but not actually to have belonged

given.

to their

number.

and and

for instance, Clement as disciples of St. Paul,

Thus,

Hennas are reckoned

Polycarp as a disciple of St. John. It is not, however, always possible to maintain this view :

Barnabas, to whom one of these writings is ascribed, was not merely a disciple of the Apostles, but belonged to their actual number, and the Didache claims in

to belong to the circle of It should also be rioted that the

its

Twelve."

title

does not represent any ancient tradition no traces of any early collection of Fathers,"

:

"

the

title

there are

"

Apostolic

and each of them has a separate

literary

history.

There

is

very

text of any of the

little

important difference in the but various ;

more recent editions

vii

INTRODUCTION discoveries of

new MSS. and

versions enable the

text to be improved in detail from time to time. This is especially the case with I. Clement and

Hennas. For the purposes of the present publication the text has been revised, but it has not been possible critical notes unless the evidence was so balanced that more than one reading was capable of defence.

to give

viii

THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS THE

FIRST EPISTLE OF

CLEMENT

TO THE CORINTHIANS

THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS THE

FIRST EPISTLE OF

CLEMENT

TO THE CORINTHIANS THE writing which name is clearly, from

has always been

known by

this

internal evidence, a letter sent by the church of Rome to the church of Corinth in consequence of trouble in the latter community which

had led to the deposition of certain Presbyters. The church of Rome writes protesting against this deposition, and the partizanship which has caused it. The actual name of the writer is not mentioned in the letter itself: indeed, it clearly claims to be not the letter of a single person but of a church. Tradition, however, has always ascribed it to Clement, who was, 1 according to the early episcopal lists, the third or last decades of the fourth bishop of Rome during the first century. There is no reason for rejecting this tradition, for though it is not supported by any corroborative evidence in its favour there is nothing

whatever against it. Nothing certain is known of Clement but from the amount of pseudepigraphic literature attributed to him it is probable that he was a famous man in his ;

time. Tradition has naturally identified him with the Clement who is mentioned in Philippians iv. 3.

own

1

See Harnack, Chronologic,

i.

pp. 70-230.

THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS A Clement

is also mentioned in the Shepherd of Herrnus, Vis. ii. 4, 3, in which it is stated that it was This certainly his duty to write to other churches. points to a Clement in Rome exercising the same functions as the writer of I. Clement but Hermas is probably somewhat later than I. Clement, and the reference may be merely a literary device based on knowledge of the earlier book. More complicated and more interesting are sug gestions that Clement may be identified or at least connected with Titus Flavius Clemens, a distinguished Roman of the imperial Flavian family. This Titus Flavius Clemens was in 95 A.D. accused of treason ;

or impiety (dfooT???) by Domitian, his cousin, owing, according to Dio Cassius, to his Jewish proclivities. He was put to death and his wife, Domitilla, was banished. There is no proof that he was really a Christian, but one of the oldest catacombs in Rome is supposed to have belonged to Domitilla, and

was connected with this family. It is not probable that T. Flavius Clemens was the writer of I. Clement, but it is an attractive and not improbable hypothesis that a slave or freedman of the Flavian family had the name of Clemens, and held a high position in the Christian community at Rome. The date of I. Clement is fixed by the following considerations. It appears from chapter 5 to be later than the persecution in the time of Nero, and from chapters 42-44 it is clear that the age of the apostles is regarded as It can therefore scarcely be past. older than 75-80 A.D. On the other hand chapter 44 speaks of presbyters who were appointed by the apostles and were still alive, and there is no trace of any of the controversies or persecutions of the second certainly

I.

It is therefore

century.

than

CLEMENT

1 00 A.D.

If it be

probably not

much

assumed that chapter

1,

later

which

speaks of trouble and perhaps of persecution, refers to the time of Domitian, it can probably be dated as but we know very little about the alleged c. 96 A.D. persecution in the time of Domitian, and it would not be prudent to decide that the epistle cannot be another ten or fifteen years later. It is safest to say but that it must be dated between 75 and 110 A.D. within these limits there is a general agreement among critics to regard as most probable the last decade of the first century. The evidence for the text of the epistle is as ;

;

follows:

The Codex

Alexandrinus,

a Greek uncial of

century in the British Museum, contains whole text with the exception of one page. It be consulted in the photographic edition of whole codex published by the Trustees of fifth

the the can the the

Museum. The Codex Conslantinopolilanus, a Greek minuscule written by Leo the Notary in 1056 A.D. and British

discovered by Bryennius in Constantinople in 1875 it also contains the second epistle of Clement, the epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, and the interpo lated text (see pp. 167 ff.) of the epistles of Ignatius. A photographic edition of the text is given in Lightfoot s edition of Clement. The Syriac version, extant in only one MS. written in 1169 A.D. and now in the Library of Cambridge University (MS. add. 1700); the date of this version is unknown, but it is probably not early, and may A perhaps best be placed in the eighth century. collation is given in Lightfoot s edition, and the text ;

THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS has been published in full by R. H. Kennett (who took up the material of the late Prof. Bensley) in The Epistles of St. Clement to the Corinthians in Syriac, London, 1899. The Latin version, also extant in only one MS which formerly belonged to the Monastery of Florennes, and is now in the Seminary at Namur. The MS. was probably written in the eleventh cen tury, but the version which it represents is extremely It seems to have been used by Lactantius, ancient. and may perhaps be best regarded as a translation of the late second or early third century made in Rome. The text was published in 1894 by Dom Morin in Anecdota Maredsolana vol. 2 as S. dementis

Romani ad

Corinthios versio latina antiquissima. version is extant in two MSS., neither complete, in the Akhmimic dialect. The older and better preserved is MS. orient, fol. 3065 in the

The Coptic

This is a beautiful Konigliche Bibliothek in Berlin. Papyrus of the fourth century from the famous White monastery of Shenute. It was published in 1908 by C. Schmidt in Texte und Unlersuchungen, xxxii.

1

as

Vbersetzung.

Der The

erste

Clemensbrief in altkoptischer

later

and more fragmentary MS.

Strassburg and was published in 1910 by F. Rosch as Bruchstucke des I. Clemensbriefes ; it probably was written in the seventh century. Besides these MSS. and Versions exceptionally valuable evidence is given by numerous quotations in the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria (flor. c. 200 A.D.). It is noteworthy that I. Clement appears to be treated by Clement of Alexandria as Scripture, and this, especially in connection with its position in the codex Alexandrinus and in the Strassburg is

in

I.

CLEMENT

Coptic MS., where it is directly joined on to the canonical books, suggests that at an early period in

Alexandria and Egypt I. Clement was regarded as part of the New Testament. The relations subsisting between these authorities for the text have not been finally established, but it appears clear that none of them can be regarded as undoubtedly superior to the others, so that any critical text is necessarily eclectic. At the Scime time there is very little range of variation, and the readings which are in serious doubt are few, and, as a rule, unimportant. The symbols employed in quoting the textual evidence are as follows :

A = Codex Alexandrinus. C = Codex Constantinopolitanus. L = Latin Version. S = Syriac Version.

Version (Kb = the Berlin MS., Strassburg MS.). Clem = Clement of Alexandria.

K = Coptic

Ks=the

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rj

rrapoiKOvaa

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Oeov $ia

^Irjaov

XpicrTOV

ir\r)-

I

1.

Ata ra?

al(f>vi&Lov