[sword-devel] EarlyFathers Genbook

[Peter von Kaehne]

Brian J. Dumont wrote:
> We should really be careful here.  These volumes seem to contain both
> orthodox and non-orthodox documents; including a number of heretical
> texts: see in particular volume 8.

Some of the texts are more than doubtful - all that pseudoepigraphic
fake NT stuff in Vol 8 is just silly.

Others were declared as heretical at one stage but most certainly are
not - or at least not more doubtful than a lot of "orthodox" stuff- I
consider the Syriac writings mostly bang in the middle of the road.
Tertullian is another one considered at a later stage of his life to be
a heretic, when he appears to have been largely perfectly straight in
hindsight.

> Should the document have some sort of disclaimer?

I would think that someone who reads the Fathers knows some of it or is
willing to find out. And a general disclaimer on 91Mb of text for a few
pages of awful stuff is simply overkill + damages the perception of huge
amounts of perfectly valid text.

The other aspect is that there will be lots of divergent opinions among
us wrt validity of some of these authors - and accepting the
contemporary judgements on orthodoxy appears to me wrong in so many ways
too.

Maybe the way forward is to split the material as I suggested along
author/book lines and then add some specific introduction, giving life
details and theological markers. But given the size of the material this
appears to be a job for a lifetime.


Peter