Ante Nicene Fathers

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I’ve been wanting to purchase the volumes of the Ante Nicene Fathers but have only found translations made by Protestants. In the past it was suggested to me to contact the Catholic University of America Press but in going to their website I didn’t find the Ante Nicene Fathers. I have also looked at getting the Father’s on cd but have only found the New Advent website’s Church Fathers and don’t really like how they set up the Father’s alphabetically instead of by year.

Besides, I really prefer the feel of a book in my hands to a laptop.

There are volumes of the Ante Nicene Fathers translated by Alexander Roberts that I have been eyeing at this website…

christianbook.com/the-ante-nicene-fathers-10-vols/9781565630826/pd/30823?item_code=WW&netp_id=133622&event=ESRCG&view=details

Would these volumes be good to get or should I keep looking elsewhere?

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thank you and God bless.
 
The translations were made by protestants, but among them were a fair share of Oxford-movement protestants (the group Cardinal Newman came from) so it doesn’t have an evangelical protestant bias. The translations are pretty good.

The one you linked to are the same translations.
 
While Catholic translations are generally better, there is nothing really wrong with some of the newer Protestant translations. In fact they are probably better than some of the classic versions available on the internet for free given that there has been some new manuscript discoveries of early works and that the Oxford Movement tended to deliberately use an old fashioned style in their translation mimicking the King James Version of the Bible, so much so, that their work can be hard to understand. Michael W. Holmes has produced a very nice bi-lingual version of the Apostolic Fathers with Baker Academic (ISBN-13: 978-0801034688). Andrew Louth has edited the latest Penguin edition of Early Christian Writings: the Apostolic Fathers (ISBN-13: 978-0140444759), which is very economic and Fr. Louth is a former Anglican now turned Greek Orthodox priest. In any case the main thing is to actually read the Apostolic Fathers themselves, which can impart great spiritual nourishment as well as a fantastic help from the sources of our Faith. Nothing in them should contradict the Catholic Faith, as witnessed today in the Catechism, if there are any doubts, you can compare to another translation and with a little research most points of doubt can be easily clarified.
 
The translators may have been Protestants, but they were academics first. I would rather read a translation by a solid Protestant academic than by a Catholic who might not be so solid as an academic.

(This is NOT a rip on Catholic translations; I’m just saying that the fact that the translators were Protestant does not invalidate the translations.)
 
Don’t be too afraid of a Protestant translation. There are Ante Nicean fathers that wrote things no Protestant could ever translate in a way that would make the church seem wrong.
 
Thanks to all of you for your replies. 🙂 I don’t discount all Protestant translations, but after having come across in a flea market of all places some books on the Early Church Father’s written by an Eastern Orthodox writer that pretty much smeared the Catholic Church at every opportunity in their commentaries. I didn’t want to run the risk of investing alot of money in a translation that might be tainted with alot of bias…

It doesn’t matter whether or not one is an academic. There will always be biases in translations that are slight or great. That’s just how it is in life.

Now that I know that the translations of the Ante Nicene Fathers I have my eyes on is not riddled with any great bias I may just invest in purchasing it.

Again, thanks for the replies, they are appreciated.

God bless
 
PeterJohn said:
Don’t be too afraid of a Protestant translation. There are Ante Nicean fathers that wrote things no Protestant could ever translate in a way that would make the church seem wrong.
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Just a little futher info – I am currently slogging my way thru volume 4 of the Ante-Nicenes, and I haven’t found anything (except maybe in the volume/work intros) that would remind me that the translators were Protestants.
 
Protestants don’t mistranslate them they are just selective about the parts of the Ante Nicene Fathers that they choose to translate and publish–

In other words you can’t get proper context if you only read parts of them!

Course the so called Protestant “academics” already know that–if they had read and tried to understand all the Ante Nicene fathers said they would have ceased being Protestants and would have become Catholics years ago.

I don’t have any problem with Protestants that are invincibly ignorant–I was Protestant and invincibly ignorant before I was shown the Catholic faith.

Such Protestants DO exist–that’s where the “New Evangelism” should be aimed at–not at Catholics–they should be taught the TRUTH that they already know from the pulpits every Sunday!

I do have a problem with so called Protestant “academics” because they really aren’t invincibly ignorant–they KNOW the teachings of the Catholic Church and reject them.

What is worse though is the modern refrain from some Catholic quarters that “respects” Protestant “scholarship”. Like wouldn’t it be nice if we would all just get along with HERETICAL"scholarship"?

The last time I checked Arianism was from the devil. Every heresy throughout history was of the devil. The devil is INCAPABLE of scholarship.

How many people have trusted the devil’s scholarship over the last two thousand years?

Protestantism is no different and has NO scholarship!

I wouldn’t trust ANY Protestant translation ever produced.

Why would ANY Catholic EVER trust anything about God that did not contain the “Fullness of Truth”?
 
The content of the volumes that I’m reading are not selective translated; whatever Ante-Nicene work it is, the whole dang thing is translated, including parts that contradict Protestantism. That’s why I said I was "slogging.’
 
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