Ante-Nicene Fathers

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Introduction to Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to AD Three Twenty-Five.

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Introduction.

Our aim in these translations has been to give a rendering of the original as literal as possible, and to this we have adhered even in cases, and they are not a few, in which the Latin or the Greek is not in strict accordance with grammatical rule.

Amen.

And so it was a novel theory that he was po- postulating as a possible alternative.

Now, what's interesting is that position none of the other Ante-Nicene Fathers took.

You have to go to the Post-Nicene Period, where it was, it was picked up by Ephraim, it was picked up by, uh, John Chrysostom, uh, Civil of Alexandria, and ...

But the ground zero here is Augustine.

A lot of time.

Uh, but does it really line up with scripture, okay? Now, I want us to examine Genesis 6:1-4.

"When Man began to multiply on the face of the land and their daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose, and the Lord said, 'My spirit shall not alwa- abide, abide with forever, for he is flesh and his sta- days shall be 120 years.' The Nephilim were on, were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them, these were the mighty men of renown, of old, the men of renown." Now, I wanna read it from the Septuagint, because the Septuagint is during the Second Temple period that the rabbis translated, uh, the Hebrew into Greek text, and th- this is actually, uh, the Bible of the early church, the Ante-Nicene Fathers.

Now, listen to this.

In the 2nd century, you had the early apologists of the faith, these defenders of Christianity, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian.

And then you begin to get into the Anti-Nicene and Nicene Fathers, dated in relation to the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.

Cyprian, Athanasius, Basil, on to Augustine, Leo the Great, and others.

All of these men were defenders of the Church, and many of their writings have been translated into English.

In some instances, efforts were made to reconcile the evident truths of paganism with Christian revelation.

Eminent among the Ante-Nicene Fathers were St. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Justin Martyr.

In the Post-Nicene period, more emphasis was placed upon the unfoldment of Christian philosophy along Platonic and Neoplatonic lines, resulting in the appearance of many strange documents of a lengthy, rambling, and ambiguous nature, nearly all of which were philosophically unsound.

The Post-Nicene philosophers included Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Cyril of Alexandria.

It feels good to GEICO.

Introduction to Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325.

This is a LibriVox recording.

All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325 by Alexander Roberts, Editor.

Introduction Our aim in these translations has been to give a rendering of the original as literal as possible, and to this we have adhered even in cases, and they are not a few, in which the Latin or the Greek is not in strict accordance with grammatical rule.

It was thought advisable in all cases to give the reader the means of forming an accurate estimate of the style as well as the substance of these curious documents.

Amen.