Against Heresies (Books I-III) cover art

Against Heresies (Books I-III)

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About this listen

St. Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon, France, wrote Against Heresies in 180 AD. It is a collected work made up of five books, in which Irenaeus examines the many schools of Gnostic thought of his day, in addition to various heretical Christian sects. He contrasts these with the orthodoxy of Christianity. This version of the work contains the first three books, which, before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, were the best surviving description of Gnosticism. The early authorship of the document gives a rare window into the doctrine of the early church, and what scriptures were considered genuine.

Public Domain (P)2021 Steven Burger Christianity
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This is one of the most important texts of early Christian apologetics and it is really helpful to have it on audio, even if the reading is not always quite clear: many of Irenaeus’ targets have difficult names but Iliad zI not known some of them their pronunciation would have eluded me.
The general introduction seeks rather heavy-handedly to emphasise that Irenaeus got his jnformation from Africa rather than from Rome, which sounds like a crude denominational slur: where it came from hardly matters as long as we all understand that the early church was not only under occasional persecution, but that misinterpretation and alternative narratives didn’t’t help either.
Having this important text together with Justyn’s ‘Dialogue with Trypho’ is very useful.

Another seriously useful project.

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