The Apostolic Fathers: A New Translation (Lexham Classics)

I’m glad I purchased this. The easy translation made these old writings easy to read and made the Bible make much more sense. I think every believer should have this.

I'm working on translating parts of the Apostolic Fathers (using Holmes' edition), and I wanted a second opinion (besides Holmes) against which I could compare my translation. I chose Brannan's translation as an inexpensive option for this purpose. I'm quite happy with my selection. Brannan's translation differs enough from Holmes to be useful for my needs, and where I've found them to differ significantly, I may not always prefer Brannan's choices, but it almost always makes sense to me (not that my expertise compares to these two authors.) I'm quite pleased with this edition.

The writings of the Apostolic Fathers are very important apocryphal writings that could have nearly been added to the holy scripture. The Didache and The Shephard of Hermas and The Martyrdom of St. Polycarp are a few selections that I found great reading on the subject

Good book made me have some “wow” moments. Totally recommend to new people joining the orthodox or Catholic faith.

I am somewhat of a beginner when it comes to early church history. This translation (and honestly the original work) is a very good place to start if looking for works outside of scripture.

I and other Catholic church friends wanted to do a book study on the Apostolic Fathers and we chose this collection. We also wanted the works of Justin Martyr but there wasn't a volume that included the typical collection of the Apostolic Fathers and Justin, the latter whom is later (mid 2nd c) and substantially more voluminous. The Apostolic Fathers works in the present volume are all relatively brief. I was concerned about whether the notes in the book would be appropriate to a Catholic point of view but what I found is their point of view was as neutral as could possibly be, largely confined to Scripture references and information on alternate translation choices. There was not much in the way of interpretive notes, which in one aspect makes the book appropriate to a very wide audience. The text, format, font etc is all attractive and readable and it's well priced. I would never pick a costly book for a book study group where people need to buy a copy.But getting the most out of these works surely requires some background information and interpretive insight. Because of the lack of interpretive notes in the Lexham translation I did get multiple other commentary works to read alongside, the most enlightening for our purposes was Simon Tugwell OP's book which is also titled The Apostolic Fathers (but does not contain a translation thereof, it is commentary). The reading selection we found the most confusing was the Letter of Barnabas and Tugwell's extensive commentary was so valuable. This work and some of the others contain elements that we could call heterodox and since our purpose is the study of the Faith and learning about the Fathers for apologetics purposes that's important to know. We did not find the Apostolic Fathers to be straightforward devotional reading but it was a fascinating window to a time when the Church was young and still sorting out how to think and speak.I find it a little surprising that there's not (to my knowledge) a translation of the Apostolic Fathers collection WITH commentary in the same volume geared to a specifically Catholic popular readership (like myself and my book study friends). But I do recommend Simon Tugwell, OP's the Apostolic Fathers as a way to supply that commentary, it makes a good companion for the Lexham Apostolic Fathers translation. Another invaluable book that I had read in the past was Marcellino D'Ambrosio's When the Church Was Young, a very well written Catholic introduction to the early Church Fathers, both the Apostolic Fathers and well beyond, I have recommended that to many people who also really appreciated it. For lay people educating ourselves, knowing the best books to read goes a long way. The books of Mike Aquilina are also a good resource.

I've never read the Apolstolic Fathers before, but only seen excerpts. This text was affordable and easy to read with helpful footnotes.If you're interested in hearing from some of the voices in the church after the writing New Testament (or in some cases during that period) this is a great read.

The preface and introduction information is well worth the effort of reading. A very useful (beats Wikipedia to the core) writting.

Great format and its nice to have an updated version with useful footnotes for further study.

In my opinion, this edition of the Apostolic Fathers translated by Rick Brannan and published by Lexham Press is one of the best translations available in English. I love pretty much everything about it, the translation is literal and easy to read without being overly-dynamic, the formatting is simple and plain, and the footnotes are extremely detailed and helpful. This edition is also very affordable, I got it for about $20 CAD.I only have two major complaints worth mentioning:- First is that the physical quality of the book is meh. It’s just a regular perfect-bound paperback, but I am aware that most people don’t care about that, and at least that makes this edition slightly more affordable. It would just be nice if the book was available in better physical quality. I personally find it really disappointing that there is no option to get the book in hardback with sewn binding that lays flat like the Holmes edition by Baker Academic is.- My second complaint is that Brannon decided to omit the fragments of Papias and Quadratus. I reached out to ask him why, and he told me he just wasn’t interested in Papias and didn’t feel like going to the trouble of translating him. Oh well. That kinda sucks, but that’s not the end of the world, Papias is pretty much the lowest end of the spectrum of importance anyways. Everything else is at least here, including the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas, which were both glaringly omitted from the Penguin Classics edition.Taking both these flaws into consideration, I cannot give the book a perfect rating. If these two problems were fixed, it would make this edition pretty much perfect as far as I’m concerned. But unless that happens, I’d have to recommend the Holmes edition over this if you’re only going to buy one. Holmes includes the Greek text, Papias, and is very physically well made, none of which can be said about this edition unfortunately.One last thing to note: This edition of the Apostolic Fathers is English only. So if you want the Greek, you’ll have to get the translation by Holmes or Ehrman.Overall, despite the physical flaws and omission of Papias, I think the translation and footnotes alone still make this edition well worth picking up for anyone who wants to seriously study the Apostolic Fathers.