Book · 12 chapters · 1 hr 15 min read · Accessible
The Epistles of Ignatius and His Life's Story
Seven Letters from the Road to Martyrdom
Ignatius of Antioch · 35–108
About this book
The seven letters of Ignatius of Antioch — written around AD 108 as he was carried under armed guard across Asia Minor to be thrown to the wild beasts at Rome — are the earliest Christian letters we have after the New Testament. In them a bishop on his way to death pleads for the unity of the church, defends the reality of Christ's flesh against those who denied it, calls the Lord's Supper “the medicine of immortality,” and longs to be “the wheat of God.” Five short chapters tell his life and set the stage; then the letters themselves, in J. B. Lightfoot's translation.
In the first century, in the great city of Antioch in Syria, there lived a man who signed his letters with a strange and beautiful name. He was called Ignatius. But when he took up his pen, he wrote himself down another way: Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus — the God-bearer, one who carries
Contents
- 1 Antioch and the God-Bearer 4 min
- 2 Condemned to the Beasts 4 min
- 3 The Road to Rome, and the Ten Leopards 4 min
- 4 The Heart of His Letters 4 min
- 5 The Wheat of God 3 min
- 6 The Epistle to the Ephesians 13 min
- 7 The Epistle to the Magnesians 8 min
- 8 The Epistle to the Trallians 7 min
- 9 The Epistle to the Romans 8 min
- 10 The Epistle to the Philadelphians 7 min
- 11 The Epistle to the Smyrnaeans 8 min
- 12 The Epistle to Polycarp 6 min
More like this
Public domain. Source text from the original edition.