apostolic fathers
“[T]he authors of the earliest Christian writings which came next after the New Testament.”1
The name [apostolic fathers] was invented in the 17th Century, when scholars believed that these early Christian writers all had direct personal contact with the apostles; most historians today think that only a few of them did… The age of the apostolic fathers stretched only from about AD 95 to 140.
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1From 2000 Years of Christ’s Power by N. R. Needham.
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