Apostolic Fathers

The Apostolic Fathers are a standard scholarly collection of early Christian writings, mostly from the late first and second centuries CE, traditionally associated with figures thought to have known the apostles directly or shortly after them. The collection brings together works such as the First Epistle of Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, the seven genuine letters of Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp's Letter to the Philippians, the Martyrdom of Polycarp and the Epistle to Diognetus. These texts predate or run parallel to the closing of the New Testament canon and cover church order, moral exhortation, martyrdom accounts and catechetical instruction rather than forming a single genre; what unites them as a modern editorial category, first assembled under this name by seventeenth century patristic scholars, is their early date and closeness to the apostolic generation rather than shared authorship or content. None were ultimately included in the New Testament, which places them among the non-canonical texts here even though several, especially the Didache and 1 Clement, were read liturgically in some early churches.