then disappeared, and whose writings did not match up to the
standard of doctrinal truth adduced by those authorities who
assembled the New Testament canon. They provide clues to the
ways in which Christianity might have developed – but did not
(Ehrman 2003).The writings of the ‘church fathers’
In the tradition of scholarship on early Christianity, a dividing
line is usually drawn between Christianity as it appears in the
New Testament and that which appears in other writers from
the early centuries. This distinction in scholarship is marked in
various ways, such as different academic journals, conferences,
and shelving arrangements in university libraries. It is also sig-
nalled by terminology: the early Christianity of the New Testament
is often described as ‘apostolic’, whereas that described by
authors writing after c. 100 is termed ‘patristic’. The word ‘patris-
tic’ (and also ‘patrology’, meaning the study of patristic writings)
derives from the Greek word pate ̄r, meaning father. It is used
because early Christian writings outside the New Testament are
attributed to individuals known collectively as the ‘fathers of the
church’, in other words the figures through whose teachings and
books the Christian tradition has been handed down to subsequent
generations.
In many ways, such a designation is quite arbitrary and
unsubtle. Hence there have been efforts to distinguish between
different groups of fathers according to various criteria. They
can be divided chronologically: thus ‘early’ and ‘later’ fathers. Or
they may be categorized according to the language in which they
wrote or their geographical context: thus Greek, Latin, and Syriac
fathers; sometimes desert fathers; also (in a term that smacks of
western cultural bias) Oriental fathers (from Egypt, Ethiopia, the
Middle East, and the Caucasus – not China or Japan!). There are
problems, however, with the very term father (and hence with
patristic), not least because it gives priority to men over women.SOURCES AND THEIR INTERPRETATION
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