The Early Christians

How can the first Christians speak to those of us who profess Christ at the dawn of the third millennium? Isn’t the gap between now and then too wide? And even if it could be bridged, why expend the effort; isn’t it difficult enough to interpret the demands of the gospel as we seek to understand them in our own day? Only the reader will be able to answer this question sufficiently. It is our belief, however, that the first believers have a great deal to say to us today, and that the words they have left behind them – though rooted in a long-gone era – are every bit as relevant today as they were when first recorded. That is the reason for this collection. The Early Christians is not merely a volume of historical sayings and recorded events; it reflects a faith and way of life aflame with uninhibited zeal and unwavering devotion. To anyone who has experienced the “first love” born of answering Jesus’s call to follow him, this will be no surprise. For nowhere else, and at no time since, has the world seen a more vibrant, unyielding (and even reckless, when one thinks of the thousands who paid for it with martyrdom) surge of enthusiasm than that shown by the early believers. The texts selected here were originally translated and compiled some seventy-five years ago. We are not unaware of many important discoveries made since then, or of the new light shed on previously discovered documents by recent and ongoing research. Yet for the general reader we know of no other collection of early Christian sources undertaken with the same purpose and perspective as this book. Though thoroughly documented and comprehensive enough to be useful to scholars and lay readers alike, its main focus is not patristics. What mattered to Arnold – and matters to us today – is the challenging legacy of the men and women whose faith is recorded here: