Early church context: Do we have contemporary texts which add useful context for interpreting the New Testament?

Question

What are the oldest known Christian texts that are not part of scripture, or considered apocryphal text? I'd be interested in brief details of any texts which may aid in our understanding of the New Testament, including their history and where I could potentially find translations of those early texts in English.

I am personally interested in trying to dig a little deeper into the details of the lives of the very-early Christian church. I imagine there have to have been at least a few manuscripts that have been discovered that were either early theological texts from local pastors of the first century, letters amongst Christians about life within Christendom or letters regarding very-early Christian political structure.

In essence, I want to clarify my reading of scripture by better understanding the people to whom scripture was directly written. I ask because I'd like to build a better mental context of who the "average" people of the early church were, based off of early, non-biblical Christian writing.

Such details help to clarify and understand the writings of the New Testament and are useful as they provide additional context as we seek to interpret the biblical text.

Answer 1

The earliest known Christian texts belong to a family known as the Apostolic Fathers, which covers all authors who had lived during the Apostolic era and usually had a direct link with one or more of the Apostles. As Dick Harfield has noted in his answer, the two earliest sources among these are the Didache and the First Epistle of Clement. There are free translations available, but I'd highly recommend the Penguin Classics copy of the texts - this translation is absolutely compelling, easy and fun to read.

Three Earliest Reliable Texts

1. The Didache is the earliest 'handbook' of Christian practises which we know of, and may have been more common than many NT texts for a period. It may surprise you exactly how prescriptive and precise the text is in "do it this way exactly", but it's still fascinating!

2. To Diognetus is my personal favourite text of the early church. It's an anonymous piece written to a Roman official (Diognetus), and is the earliest Christian apology we have on record. This sophisticated letter just brims with wit and a solid defence of Christian doctrine in a pagan culture, and is a very memorable and quotable piece of literature in itself.

3. Clement of Rome was a successor of Peter, and took it upon himself to write a follow up letter to the Corinthians, which feels a bit like gold dust to any Christian well familiar with 1 & 2 Corinthians and itching to hear a bit further in the story. The 'Second Epistle of Clement' is actually an anonymous homily, but has characteristics in common with the synoptic gospels, so is a fairly pleasant read.

Other key reading

4. We know Ignatius the Bishop of Antioch was a disciple of John, and writes in a very energetic and edgy way, filled with incredible imagery and symbolism. However, be warned - here be dragons - the more you read of the various Ignatius letters and scraps, you'll notice clear work of later redactors inserting Roman Catholic theology from many centuries later, and at times he sounds nothing like any other writer of his own time. Depending who you are, it's debatable whether some or all of Ignatius' work has been tampered with in this way, and much of it is likely just not his to begin with anyway. So take him with a pinch of salt.

5. Papias was a highly prolific writer in the early church, and is mentioned by lots of other writers... but unfortunately nothing he wrote survived in bulk aside from a few quotations, so you'll only ever find scraps from him.

6. Polycarp the Bishop of Smyrna was recorded to have known John in his youth, and wrote a letter to the Philippians which has been preserved. There is also a document circulated by the church of Smyrna about his martyrdom, which is possibly the earliest 'martyrdom' themed document we have on record.

7. The Epistle of Barnabas (pseudonymous) is a very interesting take on Christian thought from an eccentrically Jewish angle, as the author digs through many interesting OT texts and prophecies in defence of the Christian faith. His passage on the scapegoat is unforgettable.

8. Justin Martyr is a noteworthy writer from the sub-apostolic era, a Greek philosopher who converted to Christianity. There are lots of large, interesting texts available from him and help fill gaps about life and thought for some on the early church, but due to their size none of these are in the Penguin Classics book unfortunately.

Answer 2

A very important first-century Christian writing is the Didache (Didache ton apostolon), ‘The Teaching of the Apostles’ = subsequently ‘The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles’. The first 6 chapters form a group usually designated Duae Viae, which most scholars see as pre-Christian. The next 5 chapters contain instructions for community services and prayers, then practical advice on the treatment of itinerant apostles and missionaries. In more or less its present form it is dated between 50 and 120 CE.

Another is the First Epistle of Clement, an epistle to the Corinthians that is usually dated to about 96 CE. Authorship by a person called Clement is uncertain but probable. It is unclear who Clement was, but he was certainly a member of the Roman clergy. On the basis of this letter, the Catholic Church has designated him Pope Clement and placed him in the list of early popes, but scholars, including many Catholic scholars, say there was no monarchical bishop of Rome until well into the second century.

Answer 3

What are the oldest known Christian texts that are not part of scripture, or considered apocryphal text?

The problem is, most documentation of the early Christian Church has been deliberately destroyed.

From my answer to Why is there no archaeological evidence that Christians existed for 200 years after 70 AD? - Christianity Stack Exchange:

The lack of evidence of early Christianity has been noted by many scholars.

Edward Gibbon, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, said :"The scanty and suspicious materials of ecclesiastical history seldom enable us to dispel the dark cloud that hangs over the first age of the church.".

William Fitzgerald, in Lectures on Ecclesiastical History said: "Over this period of transition, which immediately succeeds upon the era properly called apostolic, great obscurity hangs ...".

Samuel G. Green in A Handbook of Church History said: "The thirty years which followed the close of the New Testament Canon and the destruction of Jerusalem are in truth the most obscure in the history of the Church. When we emerge in the second century we are, to a great extent, in a changed world.".

William J. McGlothlin, in The Course of Christian History said: "But Christianity itself had been in [the] process of transformation as it progressed and at the close of the period was in many respects quite different from the apostolic Christianity.".

Jesse Lyman Hurlbut, in _Story of the Christian Church, said:"For fifty years after Paul’s life, a curtain hangs over the Church, through which we vainly strive to look; and when at last it rises, about 129 A.D. with the writings of the earliest Church Fathers, we find a Church in many ways very different from that in the days of Peter and Paul.".

Other historians make similar comments about the lack of historical material from that period, and how, after a few centuries, suddenly Christianity is seen to be flourishing, with no evidence of how it got that way.

Whatever happened, it was not a smooth transition.

It is beyond the AD 70-220 range of this question, but the Council of Nicaea provides a good idea of what the process must have been like.

Describing the period immediately after the Council, historian Will Durant wrote, "Probably more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in these two years (342-3) than by all the persecutions of Christians by pagans in the history of Rome" (The Story of Civilization).

The Holy Roman Empire's version of Christianity was very different from the original Christianity spread by the Apostles. Once "Christianity" became the official religion of Rome, anyone practising anything resembling original Christianity was called a Judaizer and persecuted as a heretic.

It is hardly surprising that under such circumstances, any historical records that contradicted the new official version would have been suppressed and destroyed.

One can still make a reasonable estimate of what those documents would have said though, by comparing the state of the Church in A.D. 150 with that of a century before. What caused the Church to change so much during that time will be what the missing documentation must have described.