Joseph Barber Lightfoot (1828–1889) was an English Anglican scholar who became Bishop of Durham. A Cambridge professor of divinity, he defended the historic faith against the anonymous Supernatural Religion with exact, patient scholarship. His commentaries on Galatians, Philippians, and Colossians set a standard for their generation, and his edition of The Apostolic Fathers (1890) — the work in our library — with its translations, introductions, and notes on Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp, remains a monument of early-church study.
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The writings of the Apostolic Fathers in the translation of J. B. Lightfoot, the great nineteenth-century bishop and scholar, with his notes. These are the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament, from Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch to Polycarp and the Didache. They show the church of the generations immediately after the apostles, in its own words.