Those known as “Apostolic Fathers” wrote what has become some of the most important literature in the early church—letters and epistolary documents, homilies and theological tracts, documents on church order, and apocalyptic literature. In fact, some texts came close to inclusion in the New Testament canon. Tertullian regarded Hermas as Scripture, Irenaeus treated 1 Clement as canonical, and Origen regarded the Didache as inspired. Barnabas and Hermas were included in Codex Sinaiticus and 1 Clement and 2 Clement were included in Codex Alexandrinus. The near-canonical status of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers in the early church makes their importance for modern study undisputed.
Following the model of other interlinears produced by Lexham Press (Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Septuagint), The Apostolic Fathers Greek–English Interlinear presents two levels of interlinear translation. The first is the lexical value, which is a gloss of the lexical or dictionary form of the word. The second is the English literal translation, a contextually sensitive gloss of the inflected form of the word. The difference in these glosses is subtle, but powerful. The first gloss answers the question, “What does this word mean?” The second gloss answers the question, “What does this word mean here?”
In addition to the interlinear translations, direct links to Louw and Nida's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament based on Semantic Domains are provided for every Greek word, except for those words not present in the Greek New Testament. These links are context-sensitive and connect directly to the appropriate Louw and Nida article. Those familiar with Louw and Nida's lexicon know that one Greek word may have many different entries in the lexicon, one for each semantic sense. These Louw-Nida references jump to the appropriate article when there is more than one option—providing a contextually-appropriate lexicon definition for the word under study. These links also allow for searching the Apostolic Fathers text by Louw-Nida domain and article information.
This new interlinear from Lexham Press makes the Greek text of the Apostolic Fathers more accessible and useful for a larger audience. It features a literal translation for each word, a grammatically-informed context sensitive gloss, and other interlinear features. It also includes morphological tagging, idioms and cross-references, and lexical, text-critical, and translational notes.