Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
John Dao
Box 76A
Before doctrine, before “Christian”, before Church structures, and before the canon of
Scripture, there was the Church, the body of believers of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Many
of the resources that we take for granted in the Christian community today were unavailable or
even just being formed to the first believers living right after the death and resurrection of
Jesus, some of whom it was still within their living memory. How then did they live out their
faith?
Going back to the earliest writings of the Church, we begin to see a picture of not only
how the Apostolic Fathers taught and wrote, but also on the kinds of things that were stressed.
There are but a few early Christian writings outside of the New Testament that we possess,
most notably are those of the Apostolic Fathers (Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and
Polycarp of Smyrna), a work entitled “The Shepherd of Hermas” which was popular during the
time of Early Christians, an Epistle to Diognetus whose author is unknown, and a sort of
teaching manual for ethical and liturgical practice referred to as the Didache, or teaching of the
twelve apostles. From the reading of these early documents, three aspects of early Christian
life seem to be emphasized more than any behaviors: obedience to Christ, the practice of
Almost all of it follows the same style of paraenesis. Fergusson writes “Paraenesis is a
broader term for moral exhortation to follow a given course of action or the abstain from a
contrary behavior… Common techniques of paraensis were reminding of what was known,
complimenting what was done that was good, censuring wrong conduct, offering examples for
imitation, stringing together brief precepts and admonitions, and giving reasons for
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recommended conduct.”1 This style was adapted well by Paul (1 Thessalonians being a prime
example) and was thus adopted by many of the early Christian writers following him. These
Early writings did not emphasize orthodoxy (i.e. right belief) as much as orthopraxy, that is,
right living and practice. They all deal mostly with practical concerns and issues arising within
It follows only naturally that obedience be the primary emphasis in the Early Church.
This notion finds itself in Jesus’s teachings as well: “If you love me, keep my commands.” (John
14:15 NIV), “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but
only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21 NIV) as well as Jesus
reinstatement of Peter in John 21:15-25 in his commands to Peter to “feed his sheep”after
asking about Peter’s love for him, among other places. Especially when we consider the
context and exactly who the first believer’s would have been, this issue become expressly
important.
So just who were these first believers? From the letters of Paul as well as from the
Didache and Clement, we see exhortations against long lists of vices. Being that these writings
were largely practical in their concerns, it would not be so farfetched to say that these vices and
warnings were not only precautionary, but also reactionary, that is, they were in direct
1
Ferguson, Everett. Backgrounds of Early Christianity. Third Edition. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 2003.
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For example, the second and fifth chapter of the Didache contain very similar lists of
prohibitions against murder, adultery, the corruption of boys (pederasty), fornication, stealing,
witchcraft and magic, as well as the murder of children born and unborn, and coveting, lying,
maliciousness and hypocrisy (having a double mind or double tongue). It is entirely probably
that the first Church members were murderers, adulterers, fornicators, thieves and sorcerers
among various other things. We can see this plainly in Paul’s rebuke in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11,
“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do no be deceived:
Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers not male prostitutes nor homosexual
offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the
Kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were2. But you were washed, you were
sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God.”
Indeed, it seems that because many of those Paul preached to were not Jews but rather “the
Nations”, they still carried with them the customs of the nations. In the Greco-Roman world,
marriages and sexual relations were completely different from those of today. What was
hedonistic to us was rather commonplace and public in the cities. Perhaps this was why it was
so surprising to Peter that God would extend the gospel to the Gentiles, however without this
open invitation the Church would not have grown. It was mostly from this destitute pool of
immorality that Christianity pulled converts, as Christ came to save sinners, not the righteous. 3
This overarching and completely open acceptance of sinners we today would hardly
want to associate with was one of the things that marked the Christian manner. The epistle of
Mathetes to Diognetus goes into more about the Christian character in Chapter 5 stating, “For Christians
2
Emphasis is my own
3
Mark 2:17; 1 Tim 1:15
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are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they
observe… they love all men, and are persecuted by all… They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified;
they are reviled, yet bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are
punished as evildoers.” The core of this sentiment can be summed up with three words that occur at
the end of the long list of prohibitions in the Didache, “Hate no one”. It seems only to refer directly back
to the previous list4: do not hate the murder, adulterer, or fornicator. Do not hate the thief or witch or
those who kill children. Rather, it tells the community that they should correct some, pray for some,
and some they should love even more than their own lives. It makes no mention to excommunication or
shunning the sinner coming into the Church, or even staring at them until they feel uncomfortable and
leave. Actually, it seems to imply that the worst sinners need the most attention, care, and love, not the
most rebuke and condemnation. For the early Church, it is apparent that their own sins are still fresh in
their minds. In order to grow, they could not afford to turn away even one sinner (unless of course, they
became unrepentant and disobedient to the Lord Jesus Christ.) Imagine if Paul, the self proclaimed
worst sinner5, was turned away from the community of believers? The results would have been
disastrous.
Polycarp in his letter to the Phillipians expresses grief over Valens, who seems to have little
understanding to his position in the Church. He prays that the Lord would grant him “True repentance”,
but his instructions to the Phillipians on what to do with this Church leader gone astray is very telling.
He says “And be ye then moderate in regard to this matter, and “do not count such as enemies,” but call
them back as suffering and straying members, that ye may save your whole body. For by acting so, ye
shall edify yourselves.6” Again, the reaction of the Church is not to be judgment or casting out of such a
4
Jones, Tony. The Teaching of theTwelve. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2009.
5
1 Timothy 1:15
6
Smyrna, Polycarp of. "The Epistle of Polycarp to the Phillipians." In Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Apostolic Fathers,
Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, by A. Cleveland Coxe, 33-36. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004.
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sinner, even a sinner in a prominent position in the Church, but the response and goal is to save the
entire body. How contrary is this attitude to today’s Church which afflicts itself with amputations and
It’s no wonder then that in order to establish a unified holy, catholic, and apostolic
Church, much effort was put into changing the old behaviors still afflicting its body. Repentance
was central to life in the community and Life in Christ. Exhortations to repentance can be found
everywhere throughout early Christian writings, all of which stems from Jesus’s call to sinners
to repentance starting in Chapter 7. He writes, “These things, beloved, we write unto you, not
merely to admonish you of your duty, but also to remind ourselves. For we are struggling on
the same arena, and the same conflict is assigned to both of us.” There is a feeling of a mutual
which have a “I, as your righteous brother, am calling you, the sinner, to higher standards”
sentimentality to them. Clement goes on to point to examples of men and women who
repented, the heroes of the faith, as further support to repentance as the only way to salvation
and in fact the only way to a relationship with Christ. Most remarkably, the examples of
repentance he uses are examples of people being obedient to God. Noah who built the ark and
was saved, Abraham who obeyed God and went to sacrifice his son Isaac and whose trust in
God which led to his obedience was credited to him as righteousness, and Lot who obeyed God
was saved from the destruction of Sodom and whose wife was made an example of the
consequences of disobedience and unrepentance (in this sense, the turning back to the old),
and to Rahab whose faith and hospitality saved the house of this lowly prostitute to show that
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“redemption should flow through the blood of the Lord to all them that believe and hope in
God.”7
It seems that only through obedience to the Word of God, and by corollary to Christ, can
anyone say that they are truly repentant. There is no mention of prayer to ask Jesus into one’s
heart, nor any instruction to read the scriptures everyday (such was impossible for many people
for various reasons: illiteracy and lack of personal copies of scripture as well as for the earliest
of Christians, a lack of a New Testament). To the early Church fathers, repentance is not simply
believing that Christ has died for our sins, but rather allowing yourself to submit to divine
authority and obedience. Clement reminds the Church about the words of David, “The sacrifice
[acceptable] to God is a bruised spirit; a broken and contrite heart God will not despise. 8” The
foundation of the early Christian Church and for every Christian was repentance, in accord with
the immortal words of our Savior, “The time has come, the kingdom of God is near. Repent and
But how does one repent? This is the second emphasis of the Early Christian Church:
the practice of Virtue. Most of what the early Christian writings say about keeping to virtue is
merely for the purpose of being able to be obedient to God’s will. It seems Christian morality
stems from Godly virtues of love, truth, humility, temperance, and reverence (or Godly fear).
7
Rome, Clement of. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. Vol. 1, in Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Apostolic Fathers, Justin
Martyr, Irenaeus, by A. Cleveland Coxe, edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, 1-21. Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson Publishers, 2004.
8
Psalms 51:17 as quoted in the First Epistle of Clement
9
Mark 1:15 NIV
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Clement naturally flows into a call to humility, the cornerstone virtue of the repentant
heart. Obedience cannot happen without virtue. Simply, a good tree cannot bear bad fruit and
a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.10 Clement has a large section dedicated to humility in which
he gives plenty of examples of people who have humbled themselves, such as Christ, Moses,
Abraham, Ezekiel, Elisha, and Elijah, Job and finally David. He tells early Christians to follow
after their example in order to strive for peace. He writes “Wherefore, having so many
examples set before us, let us turn again to the practice of that peace which from the beginning
was the mark set before us.” From humility and submission, peace and reconciliation are
possible as well as the restoration of Eden in which man enjoyed a free and unmediated
Polycarp, in his letter to the Phillipians, exhorts them to virtue throughout the entirety
of the letter as well. He emphasizes love as the chief virtue, saying that we are to love the
things that Jesus loved and that “he that hath love is far from all sin.11” Ignatius writes about
love “The beginning of life is faith, and the end is love”12 Love then is the goal of the Christian
faith and of the believers in the first Church. Paul, of course, talks about love in the famous (at
least in Christian circles) 1 Corinthians 13 passage. Love then is an important concept to the
Clement exposits love in his epistle. In addressing recent discord occurring at the
Church in Corinth, he writes, “Let us therefore, with all haste, put an end to this [state of
things]’ and let us fall down before the Lord, and beseech him with tears, that He would restore
10
Matthew 7:18
11
Chapter III of the Epistle of Polycarp to the Phillipians
12
Antioch, Ignatius of. "The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians." In Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Apostolic Fathers,
Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, by A. Cleveland Coxe, 45-58. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004.
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us to our former seemly and holy practice of brotherly love.13” To Clement, reconciliation
through love is of the utmost importance. That one would be brought to tears over division in
the Church to us may seem a completely foreign concept, but it seems love is what drives the
sentiment. At least in this way love can be thought of as harmony with each other.
In the Didache as well, there is heavy emphasis on love. The very first line declares that
there are two ways: a way of life and a way of death, and that a great difference exists between
the two. “The way of life, then, is this: First you shall love God who made you; second, love your
neighbor as yourself, and do not do to another what you would not want done to you… love all
those who hate you, and you shall not have an enemy.” Actually, the entire first chapter seems
to be a recapitulation of the sayings of Jesus. Of course we can see a direct correlation to the
teachings of Jesus here in the greatest commandment: “Love God with all your heart, soul,
mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself”14 Love encompasses both a love for
God leading to the obedience of His commandments and a love for each other despite iniquity.
But in the addition of the practice of virtue, there is also the avoidance of vices. From
both anger and jealousy murder is engendered, so they are to be avoided. Lust leads to
fornication, filthy talking and lofty eyes lead to adultery so they too should be avoided. Lying,
greed, and vanity lead to thievery, and omens, and astrology lead to idolatry so also they
should be avoided. In all, you could sum these up as “Do not put yourself in any situation or
condition from which you will be tempted to sin because you will sin.”
13
Ch. XLVII
14
Mark 12:30; Matthew 36:40; Luke 10:25
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Clement even writes of the many evils that have already arisen from envy: Cain
murdering Abel, Jacob wronging Esau out of his inheritance, Joseph persecuted by his brothers,
and which caused Moses to flee from Pharaoh’s courts. It was envy which causes Miriam and
Aaron to live outside of the camp, and envy which caused Saul to persecute David. In one fell
swoop of biblical exposition, Clement warns Christians of the dangers of vices and to stay away
from them. Sin brings misery and it is only through right living that we can ever truly be at
peace.
And that brings us to one other point emphasized in the early Church: Unity. We’ve
already talked of brotherly love and the grief over discord and of the necessity of edifying the
body. However, both through obedience and the practice of virtue, the unity of the Church
seems to be paramount. For the early Church fathers, maintaining and preserving the Church
were not as important as it seems as to building and establishing the Church. It was from this
material of Gentiles that they would fashion a people set apart for God, to be holy for his
Why are there strifes, and tumults, and divisions, and schisms, and wars among you?
Have we not all one God and one Christ? Is there not one Spirit of grace poured out
upon us? And have we not one calling in Christ? Why do we divide and tear to pieces
the members of Christ, and raise up strife against our own body, and have reached such
15
First Epistle of Clement Chap XLVI
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The image that we as the Church are to be one unitary body is a common illustration
and metaphor to the life of the Church. The issue here is that of breaking down previous racial,
class, and social barriers in order to forge a community that is in the world but not of it. For the
first fathers, establishing the Church. What is really curious, however, is what Clement writes in
Chapter LIV of his letter. He declares that the one who is filled with love and compassion will
incur every loss in order to restore the unity of the Church. He then sites examples from
“heathen cultures”, as if to say, “If the heathens know how to do this, how much more should
Christians?”
Even Ignatius picks up on this same language of unity. A good portion of his letter to the
Ephesians is concerned with a call to unity and its merits. In fact, every single one of his written
letters16 contains an exhortation to unity! Now Ignatius wrote all these letters while on the
road to Rome to be martyred, so of course he would write some of the same things in each of
his letters. Common to all of them is a call for their Church to be unified, with Bishops,
deacons, elders and laity all under the one divine will of Christ. In one beautiful passage in his
Give ye heed to the bishop, that God also may give heed to you. My soul be for theirs
that are submissive to the bishop, to the presbytery, and to the deacons: May I have my
portion with them from God! Labor together with one another; strive in company
together; run together; suffer together; sleep together; and awake together, as the
stewards, and associates, and servants of God. Please ye Him under whom ye fight, and
from whom ye shall receive your wages. Let none of you be found a deserter. Let your
16
With exception to the Letter to the Romans which is more concerned over his impending martyrdom
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Baptism endure as your arms; your faith as your helmet; your love as your spear; your
patience as a complete panoply. Let your works be the charge assigned to you, that you
may obtain for them a most worthy recompense. Be long-suffering, therefore, with one
another, in meekness, and God shall be so with you. May I have joy of you forever! 17
Here we see for the first time in writing a hierarchical structure forming within the Church, but
above all that is a beautiful picture of the Body and Bride of Christ made perfect. In a sense,
the Body had gone through a terribly traumatic fall, and was dying until that Great Physician
came to do his healing work. This focus on Unity no doubt stems from Jesus’s prayer for the
future disciples in John 17, that is the Church, which states that it is by the unity of the Church
The Didache itself gives a different picture of communal living. As an early manual for
Christian community living written for and by Hellenized gentiles, the Didache points to a
simpler Christianity that lacks much of the nitpicky details that the Church today splits itself
over; things such as what is a sacrament, what is the right way to baptize, and so on. It
emphasizes the oneness of God and thus the oneness of all those who are under God. If the
Didache was written around the same times as the earliest Gospels, it could have very well
been the first thing a new believer would have read. It could have served as a training manual
doesn’t say anything about the nature of God or of Christ, and there is also not a single word
17
Antioch, Ignatius of. "The Epistle of Ignatius to Polycarp." In Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Apostolic Fathers, Justin
Martyr, Irenaeus, by A. Cleveland Coxe, 93-96. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004.
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about evangelism, or even sharing one’s faith. Actually, there is no mention of anything akin to
the evangelism of today mentioned anywhere in the letters of the Apostolic Fathers or the
Didache. It is hard for us to imagine today a course for new believers that did not stress the
sharing of one’s faith and why, and yet evangelism doesn’t even seem to be an issue for new
believers, however we of course know evangelism was taking place through Paul and others,
else the faith would not have spread, but Ignatius points out “It is better for a man to be silent
and be [a Christian] than to talk and not be one.” Early Church writers put the emphasis on
doing, not simply teaching. It exhorts teachers like Paul to also be doers.
unto the world, “what the soul is in the body, that are Christians in the world… The soul dwells
in the body, yet is not of the body… the soul loves the flesh that hates it, and [loves also] the
members; Christians likewise love those who hate them. The soul is imprisoned in the body,
yet preserves that very body…”18 In essence, Christians are to be the preservers of the world, to
keep it from dying, or to be the salt of the Earth.19 The only gospel present in early Christian
writings is the social gospel. Thus, it is the way one lives that truly was the work of evangelism.
Some have been gifted with the task of teaching and are appointed to that task. Coming back
to Clement, we read that “There is a kind of mixture in all things, and thence arises mutual
advantage… so let everyone be subject to his neighbor, according to the special gift bestowed
upon him.”20 We all have a specialized task, and it is only through unity that the body can
function. As Clement points out, a general is nothing without his soldiers and vice-versa
18
Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus Chapter VI
19
Mark 9:50
20
Ch. XXXVII
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Why is it that the Church of today stands in stark contrast to the Early Church? Even
when we read in Acts 2 about the earliest gathering of the disciples, it is still remarkably striking
to the ekklesia of today. What can studying the early church teach us about living as Christians
today? I believe there to be three areas upon which it would behoove the Church today to
It seems that the power of the Early Church dwelled in the closeness of the community.
This is may be why arguments and lawsuits within the Church were such a big deal to Paul and
Clement and the other Church fathers. There was much hard work poured into growing
churches in places where such things had not even been heard of. Divisions in the church
threatened all of that. Jesus wisely said that a house divided upon itself cannot stand 21. It
almost pained me to read the exhortations to unity when today the church in itself is splintered
into many denominations. It could do us some good to find universal ground, if after all we
share in one baptism, one grace given to us by God, and are under one Authority, namely that
of Christ.
The documents of the Early Church seemed expressly concerned with practical concerns
more than theological debates about the nature of God or atonement. Today it is easy for
Christians the profess and believe all the right things, and even to teach the faith to others
without ever having to practice the faith. This stress on orthodoxy has left us with Christians
fully versed in the Bible and training up others just like themselves but never knowing salvation
personally. Not to say that we should quit teaching the faith. By no means! But rather there
This also effects the way we should view evangelism. As I mentioned before,
evangelism is hardly mentioned, if at all, in the writings of the Apostolic era of the Church.
Today evangelism takes all sorts of forms: TV, Radio, door to door, tracts, magazines, movies,
newspapers, blogs, as well as what we call “evangelistic outreaches” which may include
handing out coats, or groceries, or throwing a block party. None of these things are bad, but
they all portray evangelism as an event. You go out to evangelize, and when you are done you
go back to normal Christian life. To the early Christians, evangelism was a way of life. It was all
in how you treated other people, to react in love instead of anger, to react with joy to
persecution, and to turn the other cheek. In a way, it’s as if the church today doesn’t take
Christ seriously when he talks about the kind of radical lifestyle a righteous person should have.
We have traded the Greatest Commandment which has been prevalent throughout early
Christian writings for the Great Commission, which doesn’t really get a mention. We have lost
sight of the core of Judaism as well as the power of deep relationships and community.
Lastly, discipleship today is completely lacking when compared to such heavy emphasis
in training up the Church to practice virtue and to do God’s commandments. Ironically, the
Great Commission was never to make converts to Christianity, but rather to make disciples.
Common practice of the day is that when someone becomes a believer, you pray the sinner’s
prayer, hand them a Bible, tell them to read it every day and pray, and then send them on their
way. This in no way fulfills the great commission to make disciples. Early church goers would
have to be trained first as catechumens before they could be baptized. They were assigned
mentors to help them as they learned what it meant to be a Christian because it is in these
crucial moments that someone can slip right back into their old habits. Now some churches do
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a good job with discipleship, however most are completely lacking in this area. There is a huge
disconnect with youth in our churches today for this very simple reason: no one has connected
with them. We live in a society which thousands of people leave the church every year because
they’ve not experienced anything genuine within its walls. What I am getting at is real deep
relationships, that very thing which powered the early Church and was one of the main driving
forces behind its growth. Love cannot be expected to thrive in communities in which the
members do not share with each other their needs. The hand may think that it only needs the
head to be able to move, and thus neglects the arm, but it is not so. In the same way have we
So if we could learn anything from the example of the earliest Christians, it’s that life in
Christ was meant to be shared. It is only when we draw closer to each other that we are able to
draw closer to Christ Himself. It is only in close community in which we learn to love. There is
no such thing as a Christian outside the Body, just as the vine is attached to the branches. Just
exactly how we came so far from these early Christian societies is the subject of another study,
but they were the first to have to figure out what it meant to be a Christian in the world.
Ironically, many of us today are looking to the past for a more authentic Christianity in order to
We disagree on how to appropriately serve God, but one thing we can be certain: We
are wrong on some major doctrine somewhere. No one has it perfect, but we should all act
with grace. To end with a quote from the Didache, “For if you are able to bear the entire yoke
of the Lord, you will be perfect; but if you are not able to do this, do what you are able.”
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Antioch, Ignatius of. "The Epistle of Ignatius to Polycarp." In Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Apostolic Fathers,
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Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, by A. Cleveland Coxe, 45-58. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers,
2004.
Apostles, The Twelve. "The Didache." In Early Christian Fathers, by Cyril Richardson. Philadelphia, PA;
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Ferguson, Everett. Backgrounds of Early Christianity. Third Edition. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans
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Jones, Tony. The Teaching of theTwelve. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2009.
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Donaldson, 1-21. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004.
Smyrna, Polycarp of. "The Epistle of Polycarp to the Phillipians." In Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Apostolic
Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, by A. Cleveland Coxe, 33-36. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers,
2004.
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984
by International Bible Society. Used by Permission of Zondervan. All rights Reserved.