Christian Writings After the Apostles

First Clement is the starting point: a letter from the church at Rome to the church at Corinth, generally dated to around 96 CE, written because younger members had deposed established presbyters. It was valued enough to be bound with New Testament books in the fifth century Codex Alexandrinus.

The Odes of Solomon is the earliest known Christian hymnbook, forty two lyrics surviving mainly in Syriac and dated by most scholars between 70 and 125 CE. Its first person voice of union with the divine shares vocabulary with both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel of John.

Seven letters written by Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, around 107 to 110 CE while under guard on the road to execution in Rome. They press for unity around one bishop in each city and warn against teaching that denied Christ's physical suffering.

The anonymous Epistle of Barnabas, dated roughly 70 to 135 CE, reads Hebrew scripture allegorically as always pointing to Christ. Its last chapters set out the Two Ways, the Way of Light and the Way of Darkness, which parallel a section of the Didache.

Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, wrote to the church at Philippi in the first half of the second century, prompted by a presbyter named Valens accused of financial misconduct. The letter echoes Pauline epistles, First Peter and First Clement, which makes it early evidence of how widely those texts circulated.

The Shepherd of Hermas, composed in Rome in the first half of the second century, offers Visions, Mandates and Similitudes centered on a single opportunity for repentance after baptism. It appears bound with New Testament books in Codex Sinaiticus, yet was finally excluded from the canon.

This account was written about Polycarp by others, as a letter from the church at Smyrna to the church at Philomelium describing his arrest and burning. It is widely regarded as the earliest genuine martyrdom account to survive outside the New Testament.

The Epistle to Diognetus defends Christian life to an unidentified pagan inquirer and compares Christians to the soul within the body of the world. Its author and date, placed somewhere in the second or third century, remain unresolved, and no ancient writer names it before its rediscovery in the thirteenth century.