Talk:Ante-Nicene Fathers

Information about this edition
Edition:	see below
Source:	http://www.ccel.org/fathers.html/
Contributor(s):	Quadell and his trusty sidekick Polbot
Level of progress:	50%: not proofread or standardised.
Notes:	see below
Proofreaders:	Needed

Notes

The series was originally created by the presbyterian publishing house of T. & T. Clark in Edinburgh as the Ante-Nicene Christian Library and published serially from 1867 to 1885. The volumes were translated and edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

In 1885 a U.S. firm, the Christian Literature Company, began to issue the volumes in a reorganised form, edited by A. Cleveland Coxe. This was in fact piracy of the ANCL, and treated as such by T. &. T. Clark at the time. However there was little recognition of overseas copyright in the USA at this date, and Clark's were obliged to accept the situation. Coxe gave his series the title The Ante-Nicene Fathers.

These Ante-Nicene Fathers volumes were "carefully proofed and converted to ThML by CCEL staff and volunteers", according to the Christian Classics Ethereal Library website. That site provides these volumes in many different formats: images of pagescans, PDFs, plain text, MS-Word, and an XML format they call "ThML" (or Theological Markup Language). This Wikisource version was parsed by User:Polbot from the ThML into Wiki-markup. I did my best to format the work carefully, but some artifacts of the ThML have crept in. Since there are over five thousand individual pages in this collection, I have been so far unable to go through every page and fix formatting issues. Although the formatting problems are relatively minor, I still deemed this work to have a progress of 50%.

The proofreading done by Christian Classics Ethereal Library is, on the whole, excellent, and I doubt there are many errors in their transcription of the original documents. Proofreaders can use the pagescans at ccel to check for errors and fix the formatting. In a few places I have shortened the names of chapters given so as to better adhere to Wikisource style, but I have otherwise refrained from changing the text in any way. —Quadell (talk / swapmeet) 13:39, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Is Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II coming soon? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 01:07, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'll be on it shortly. I'm taking a breather, but I'll dive back in soon enough. The more compliments/praise/flattery I get, the quicker I work. :-D —Quadell (talk / swapmeet) 02:15, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Titles

I'd like to make a suggestion and it's about the titles. For example, this title is Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume V/Hippolytus/The Refutation of All Heresies, but the work is most known as The Refutation of All Heresies. And now which should e main title and which should be the redirect? Rafael, o Galvão 19:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you. I think the subpages should stop after the third level (in your example, it should stop after "Hippolytus") and that the works of Hippolytus should be stand-alone (that is, The Refutation of All Heresies instead of Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume V/Hippolytus/The Refutation of All Heresies). My reasoning for this is that Ante-Nicene Fathers is just a collection and compilation of works which were not organized in this fashion. It is merely just a way of collecting the whole compendium of ancient Christianity into one work for ease of the reader/scholar. But long before this collection was created, the works were all known by the title given them by their writer, and not as being a part of an overall collection. Also, by putting giving the works their own title, it helps better keep track of different translations of the same work (as no one might ever bother checking Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume V/Hippolytus to see if The Refutation of All Heresies exists yet.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 19:38, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

• But these works are already existent on Wikisource, under various translations. See, for instance, 1 Clement. Since there are so many translation, the page for the individual article is basically a disambiguation page that links here (among other places). —Quadell (talk / swapmeet) 20:12, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Ah, I see. Then nevermind; I think that's a good way of organizing all of these thing.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 21:45, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
    • I understand, but what will we do with the works that doesn't have more translations? Rafael, o Galvão 00:47, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
      • Create redirects, and list the works on the appropriate author pages. I have recently run into this same problem at Apology, which didnt list the two by Author:Justin Martyr. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 01:05, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
        • OK. Rafael, o Galvão 12:35, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Chapters are too short to be divided

Do some of these actually have to be divided into chapters? Take Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Tertullian: Part Fourth/On the Veiling of Virgins for instance. The chapters are quite short, definitely not long enough to justify each having their own page. Is there some way to change this? Arlen22 (talk) 02:26, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I think the chapter subdivision is original, i.e. from Tertullian himself, and then we cannot change it, because a reference to a certain chapter/verse will then not be possible to follow. Rursus (talk) 11:30, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

But they don't have to be on separate pages. We never do that for any of the Bible translations. Furthermore, it doesn't use verses, and the chapters are easily marked out with sections. Arlen22 (talk) 18:30, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

See Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Tertullian: Part Fourth/On the Veiling of Virgins/Print for an example. Arlen22 (talk) 18:45, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I did it on Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Tertullian: Part Fourth/On the Veiling of Virgins and it looks good. Arlen22 (talk) 20:32, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Quoting in Irenaeus

There are some pretty long quotes in Irenaeus' Adversus Haereses, such as f.ex. in Chapter XXIII verse 1. My fingers itches to add a <blockquote>. May I? ... Please? Rursus (talk) 11:35, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Page move notice

I've noticed some incorrect numbering of chapters in at least one of the works here, which I will clean up. Not sure how extensive the problem is, but see: Talk:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume V/Hippolytus/The Refutation of All Heresies. Happy to explain further if there's any concern. —Spangineer (háblame) 16:48, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Future of this work under discussion

This work, which was originally imported over 10 years ago, has many formatting problems that are likely to become worse due to technical upgrades of Wikimedia software. See WS:Scriptorium for a current discussion of whether to simply delete the work entirely, or whether to complete the transcription of a different edition, Ante-Nicene Christian Library. -Pete (talk) 01:52, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: I know this is somewhat after your post, but I've only just seen it. Unfortunately, the two editions are different enough to mean that we do need both. I'm in the gradual process of proofreading through ANCL. As I transclude a section or a work, I'm collapsing the AN Fathers version down from the overly split chapters. When I started on ANCL, it was with the intention of replacing the text-dump edition. However, I hadn't realised how different it was, and so have built it alongside. At some stage we do need to replace this import with proofread transclusions, but I'm not sure I have the will or energy to wade through it all twice. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:12, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I trust your judgment, I don't know the work well. -Pete (talk) 17:09, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Ad Nationes

Ad Nationes by Tertulian is wrong the link does not appear the two books. Tuxzos22 (talk) 04:12, 12 September 2021 (UTC)