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Freebies for Students of Early Christianity

Free resources, early church, early Christianity

Introduction

As there is today, there were various expressions of Christianity in the first few centuries of the church, and there were various models, and developments, in how congregations organised themselves. Discovering the beliefs, practices and policies of the early Christians, as well as the challenges they faced, is a fascinating pursuit. To help with this, here are some resources that are freely available online. Take a look in the comments section (below) too. (Disclaimer: I don’t agree with everything stated in the following resources, even the ones I highly recommend.)

Saints and Stuff: Theology and Church History Resources

Getting started? This Youtube channel contains beautifully made 5-6 minute videos on Polycarp, Ignatius, Felicity and Perpetua, the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, First Clement, Second Clement, Fragments of Papias, the Apology of Quadratus, and more.

Early Christian Writings

This website contains the most complete collection on the internet of Christian texts written before the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. These include the New Testament, Christian Apocrypha, Gnostic writings, and pre-Nicene Church Fathers, etc. Commentary, as well as English translations, are provided. I visit this site every week as it’s a goldmine.

Writings of the Church Fathers

Many writings of the pre- and post-Nicene church fathers can be found on the New Advent. See here.

Roger Pearse has compiled and edited writings of early church fathers that were not included in the well-known, 38 volume collection of Ante-Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. See here.

Patristic Bible Commentary

This website contains many Bible commentaries written by Church Fathers such as Ambrosiaster, Augustine, Chrysostom, Jerome, and much more.

Greek Downloads

Ελληνική Πατρολογία contains patristic writings, and more, as downloadable PDFs. The font is clear and easy to read.

Fourth Century Christianity

This website contains research tools and texts for the study of the Church and its environment in the fourth century. is sponsored by the History Department of Wisconsin Lutheran College and by Asia Lutheran Seminary, under the direction of Dr Glen L. Thompson.

Ruslan Khazarzar’s (Руслан Хазарзар) Website

There are numerous ancient Jewish and Christian documents, some in their original languages (e.g., Greek and Syriac) as well as essays, etc, about early Judaism and Christianity on this website. (Use Google translate, or a similar tool, to help read the titles if needed.)

Non-Canonical Writings at The Wesley Center

The Wesley Center, attached to Northwest Nazarene University, has links to English translations of various ancient Christian documents that can be helpful in understanding early Christianity. See here. Many of these documents can also be found on the Early Christian Writings website (see link above).

The Wesley Center also has links to both the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. However, I recommend the Common English Bible’s translation of the Old Testament Apocrypha. This modern translation can be read on the Bible Gateway website. (Scroll down the Bible Gateway page, past the New Testament books.)

Early Christian Commentary

This website contains a useful topical dictionary. A verse-by-verse New Testament commentary derived from the early Christian sources is in the pipeline.

This brilliant tool allows you to search all the scripture references in the Early Church Fathers (Schaff’s) at ccel.org.

Find out what early church fathers have said about certain Bible verses at Catena Bible, here.

Eusebius’ Church History

Eusebius (260-339) was the bishop of the church at Caesarea Maritima and a prolific author. He is especially known for his Church History. Many of the documents Eusebius quotes from in his history, and some quotations are lengthy, have since been lost, so his history is an invaluable resource. Eusebius, however, wasn’t always discerning of the veracity of his sources, so we can’t take everything he says at face value. But his history is itself an ancient document and, as such, I love it. It can be read online, here.  A pdf of the original Greek is here. (Some of my articles that draw information from his history are here.)

Christian History Magazine

Back issues of Christian History magazine are available as free PDFs on the Christian History Institute website here. Some topics covered are Women in the Early Church (Issue 17), Worship in the Early Church (Issue 37), Gnosticism (Issue 96), Early Christianity in Africa (Issue 105), and more. Many contributors to the magazine are top scholars in their fields.

Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church

All eight volumes of this work can be found on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library website (CCEL). The first three volumes are about the early church. This work was published over 100 years ago and was for many years a standard reference on church history. It still has value, but I much prefer newer books that rely on recent research and incorporate new discoveries. Have a look at Google Books for extended previews of more recent books on early church history.

Internet Sourcebook on Christian Origins at Fordham University

This amazing webpage functions as a portal to numerous articles on various subjects related to early Christianity.

The Early Middle Ages, 284-1000 CE (Videos)

I love this course of twenty-two 40-minute lectures. These lectures were given in 2011 by Dr Paul Freedman and are offered by Yale University via Youtube, here. The course covers major developments in the political, social, and religious history of Western Europe from the time of the Roman Emperor Diocletian onwards.

While many of the topics may not appear to be about church history, this series is very helpful in understanding the context of the development and spread of Christianity in Western Europe. Moreover, some lectures are very much focused on key Christian people, such as Constantine and Augustine, and Christian practices such as monasticism. I highly recommend this series.

Early and Medieval Church History (Videos)

This resource is a series of fifty-four half-hour lectures created in 2016 by Dr Ryan Reeves who earned his PhD at Cambridge University in the field of historical theology. Each of the videos contains a graduate-level lecture that forms the backbone of Dr Reeves’ lectures at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary where he is an associate professor. Check out his YouTube page Historical Theology for Everyone for more goodies, here.

After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers

Audio files of twenty-four 30-minute lectures on the Apostolic Fathers given by Bart Ehrmann are here. I realise that some Christians find Dr Ehrmann, an agnostic, a controversial figure. I disagree with some of his views about Jesus Christ, but there is good stuff in his lectures.

And More

Other website’s of interest include Larry Hurtado’s blog, Roger Pearse’s blog, Centre for the Study of Christian Origin’s blog (University of Edinburgh), and EarlyChurch.org.uk. See the comments section below too.

What resources on early church history do you recommend?


Image

Relief depicting a Christian banquet, 300-350 AD, held in Museo Pio Christiano, Vatican, inv. 31445. © William Storage and Laura Maish (Source: Rome101.com)

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Freebies for Students of the New Testament
Freebies for Students of New Testament Greek
I have articles on Early Christian Women, Early Christian Letters, and Early Syrian Christianity.

5 thoughts on “Freebies for Students of Early Christianity

  1. Thanks, Margaret, for these links! It’s a tremendous help to have them all listed in one location.

    1. Thanks, Jack.

      I hope some readers will come up with others that I haven’t found yet.

  2. Here are a few free resources recommended by my friend Dr Lyn Kidson. Some of these sources are dated, so use them with caution.

    W.M. Ramsay’s The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia (1897) contains a wealth of information about early Christians and the development of the church in Central Asia Minor. Please note that some of his information has been proven faulty by more recent evidence, but it is still a good resource.
    http://archive.org/stream/citiesandbishop00ramsgoog#page/n6/mode/2up

    Adolf Deissmann’s Light from the Ancient East (1910) looks at a huge amount of translated papyri that relates to the New Testament. It should be noted, however, that Deissman’s categories of ‘private’ and ‘public’ letters have been superseded by a more nuanced approach.
    https://archive.org/details/lightfromancient00deis

    Here is a good beginner’s guide to the Talmud:
    http://www.come-and-hear.com/editor/whatis.html
    And this translation of some of the Babylonian Talmud may be useful:
    http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/talmud.htm

    And a few more resources from me.

    Adolf von Harnack’s The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (1908): http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rak/courses/535/Harnack/bk0-TOC.htm
    Or here: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/harnack/mission.toc.html

    Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (1934, 1961, 1971, 1993): http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rak//publics/new/BAUER00.htm

    W.M. Ramsay’s The Church in the Roman Empire (1904) can be downloaded as a PDF here:
    https://earlychurch.org.uk/blog/ramsay-church-roman-empire/

    Robert Kraft’s, “Barnabas and the Didache,” Volume 3 of The Apostolic Fathers: A New Translation and Commentary: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rak//publics/barn/barndidintro.htm

    Lectures given by Dr David de Silva (Ashland Theological Seminary) on the intertestamental Apocrypha and on the social dynamic of honour-shame.
    See here: http://biblicalelearning.org/authors/dr-david-desilva/

    Lectures given by Dr Gerald Bay (Beeson Divinity School) on the life and thought of the Christian church from the apostolic period to the eighth century.
    https://www.biblicaltraining.org/church-history-1/gerald-bray/

    These downloadable PDFs of Loeb’s Classics that are in the public domain may be useful too: http://ryanfb.github.io/loebolus/

    An index to Migne’s’ Patrologia Graeca (in Google Books) is here:
    https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/patrologia-graeca-pg-pdfs/

  3. The website for Saints And Stuff is dead (and the domain is available).

    The youtube channel is still active though: https://www.youtube.com/c/SaintsandStuff

    1. Thanks for this, Hashim. I’ve updated the information.

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