How Do We Know Which Early Christian Writings Are Authentic?

Early Christian literature did not reach us in tidy, signed volumes. It came down through centuries of hand copying, and along the way genuine letters were expanded, anonymous treatises acquired famous names, and a few documents were simply invented. Readers of the Fathers need some way of telling a second-century bishop's own words from a fourth-century editor's improvements.

The question matters for every tradition. Orthodox Christians appeal constantly to the Fathers, Catholics and Protestants argue over what the early Church believed, and skeptics ask why anyone should trust a Church that was taken in by forgeries for centuries. This article sets out how scholars test early Christian writings, then works through five well-known cases.

In brief

Historians test an ancient writing in four main ways: the manuscripts in which it survives; whether and when later writers cite it; its style compared with an author's secure works; and anachronisms, things the supposed author could not have known. None of these methods is modern. Serapion of Antioch, Tertullian, Origen, Dionysius of Alexandria and Eusebius all used versions of them, and St Photios recorded objections to the Dionysian writings that apply exactly these tests. The results are often firm. The long form of Ignatius's letters is a fourth-century expansion; the Apostolic Constitutions are a compilation of about 380 that the Council in Trullo rejected in 692; the writings under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite date from around 500; the Donation of Constantine is a forgery of the eighth or ninth century. Other questions remain open, including whether even the middle form of Ignatius's letters is genuine (long accepted, now questioned by a vocal minority) and how the surviving Gospel of Peter relates to the book Serapion read.

Thesis: The methods for testing early Christian writings are sound and largely ancient, and when they are applied honestly they sometimes overturn cherished attributions, which an Orthodox Christian can accept without anxiety, because the Church's faith rests on the apostolic tradition as a whole and not on any single disputed signature.

The ancient Church already asked this question

It is sometimes assumed that early Christians accepted any book with an apostle's name on it. The sources show otherwise.

Around the year 200, Serapion, bishop of Antioch, discovered that the church at Rhossus was reading a "Gospel of Peter". On a first visit he allowed it, without having read it. When he learned that it was feeding a heresy, he obtained a copy from the successors of its first users, "whom we call Docetae," and found "many things in accordance with the true doctrine of the Saviour, but some things added to that doctrine." His principle, preserved by Eusebius, is worth quoting: "we, brethren, receive both Peter and the other apostles as Christ; but we reject intelligently the writings falsely ascribed to them, knowing that such were not handed down to us."¹ Two tests are already at work: content and transmission.

At about the same time Tertullian, writing on baptism, dealt with people who used the story of Thecla to justify women baptizing. He answered that "the writings which wrongly go under Paul's name" had been composed by a presbyter in Asia who, "after being convicted, and confessing that he had done it from love of Paul, was removed from his office."² The forger meant well, and the Church deposed him anyway.

Style was also tested. Origen observed that the Greek of Hebrews was purer than Paul's and concluded that "the thoughts are those of the apostle, but the diction and phraseology are those of some one who remembered the apostolic teachings." His famous verdict followed: "who wrote the epistle, in truth, God knows."³ In the third century Dionysius of Alexandria compared the Gospel and First Epistle of John with Revelation and judged that the author of Revelation, though he truly "saw a revelation and received knowledge and prophecy," wrote Greek with "barbarous idioms" unlike the Gospel's, so the two were probably different men named John.⁴ He questioned the author, not the book.

Eusebius, writing in the early fourth century, sorted Christian books into the accepted, the disputed and the spurious. Of books such as the Gospels of Peter and Thomas he said that "the character of the style is at variance with apostolic usage," and that their thoughts were "so completely out of accord with true orthodoxy that they clearly show themselves to be the fictions of heretics."⁵ That combines style, content and the silence of earlier writers. On how this sorting shaped the New Testament, see How Was the Biblical Canon Actually Formed?

The tools historians use

Modern scholars refined these instincts into four methods.

• Manuscripts and versions. How many copies survive, how old they are, and how they differ. Often one form of a text can be shown to expand or abridge another. (Compare the New Testament's rich manuscript base in Can We Trust the New Testament?)
• External attestation. Who quotes or names the work, and when. Silence is not proof of forgery, but centuries of silence are a warning.
• Style and vocabulary. Useful but delicate, since authors change style with genre, age and secretaries, as debates over Paul's letters show.
• Anachronism. Names, institutions or controversies that did not yet exist at the claimed date. One clear anachronism can settle a case.

The ancients also asked whether the content fit what the Church had received. That is a theological test, not a historical one: a book can be orthodox and still not be by the person named on it.

Five case studies

1. Ignatius of Antioch: three versions of the same letters

St Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, wrote letters to churches while being taken to Rome for martyrdom, traditionally in the reign of Trajan. Eusebius names seven: to the Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians and Romans, written from Smyrna, and to the Philadelphians, Smyrnaeans and Polycarp, written from Troas.⁶ Polycarp's own letter to the Philippians says he was sending them "the Epistles of Ignatius written by him to us, and all the rest [of his Epistles] which we have by us."⁷

The trouble is that the letters survive in three forms. The "long recension" expands the seven letters heavily and adds six more in Ignatius's name. In 1644 Archbishop James Ussher published a Latin version matching the letters Eusebius knew without the expansions, and in 1646 Isaac Voss published the corresponding Greek from an eleventh-century Florentine manuscript. In 1845 William Cureton published a much shorter Syriac version of three letters and argued that it was the original.⁸

The tests sorted this out. The long recension's additions share the vocabulary and theology of the Apostolic Constitutions (see below); Ussher noticed the likeness, and the identification of the two editors has long been widely accepted, placing the expansion in the late fourth century.⁹ Theodor Zahn (1873) and J. B. Lightfoot (1885) then showed that Cureton's Syriac was, in the words of one standard introduction, "a rather crude abridgment of the original letters."¹⁰ {{strong: The seven letters of the middle recension are the earliest recoverable form of Ignatius's correspondence, and the long recension is a fourth-century expansion.}}

That is not quite the end. In recent decades Reinhard Hübner, Thomas Lechner and others have argued that even the middle recension is a pseudonymous collection from around 170. A 2018 volume of essays on the question reached, in its reviewer's words, no consensus.¹¹ Many English-language scholars still treat the question as settled by Lightfoot, but the dissent is serious and should be named. It matters because Ignatius is the earliest clear witness to a single bishop leading each local church: "See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father," and "wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."¹² See also what Ignatius actually taught.

2. The Gospel of Peter: a found text and a famous verdict

For centuries the Gospel of Peter was known only from brief ancient mentions, chiefly Serapion's. Then in 1886 or 1887 a manuscript containing a long fragment of a passion and resurrection narrative in Peter's name was found at Akhmim in Upper Egypt.¹³ It contains lines that seem to match Serapion's worry. On the cross the Lord "held his peace, as though having no pain," and his last cry is "My power, my power, you have forsaken me," after which "he was taken up." At the resurrection three men come out of the tomb, two of them supporting the third, "and a cross following them," and the cross answers a voice from heaven.¹⁴

Here the evidence becomes more modest. Scholars quickly identified the Akhmim fragment with Serapion's Gospel of Peter, and that remains likely, but the manuscript itself is no earlier than the seventh century, and Paul Foster has questioned whether small papyrus scraps once claimed as earlier copies really belong to it, urging caution "before too quickly making the conclusion" that the Akhmim text simply is the second-century book.¹⁵ {{debated: That the Akhmim fragment is the same Gospel of Peter that Serapion read.}} Its relationship to the canonical Gospels is also disputed. John Dominic Crossan argued that it preserves an early passion source, which he called the "Cross Gospel," older than Mark.¹⁶ Foster's critical edition argues the reverse: that it depends on the Synoptic Gospels and reflects "second-century popular Christian thought."¹⁷

Whatever its date, the apostle Peter did not write it. Serapion reached that verdict through transmission and content; modern scholars reach it through the text's use of the Gospels and its legendary growth.

3. The Apostolic Constitutions: rejected by a council

The Apostolic Constitutions present themselves as instructions from the apostles, issued through Clement of Rome. In fact they are a compilation in eight books, usually dated to around 380 and placed in Syria, probably Antioch. Books one to six rework a third-century church order, the Didascalia; book seven reworks the Didache; book eight draws on other church orders and ends with the eighty-five "Apostolic Canons."¹⁸ Scholars have debated whether the compiler leaned toward Arian or Apollinarian views.

What makes this case instructive is that the Church herself acted. The Council in Trullo (692), whose canons the Orthodox Church holds to have completed the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils, confirmed the eighty-five Apostolic Canons but set aside the Constitutions, saying that "certain adulterous matter was introduced, clean contrary to piety," by "those who erred from the faith": "We therefore reject these Constitutions."¹⁹ In Orthodox teaching these canons carry "the same level of authority as the canons passed by the first four Ecumenical Councils."²⁰ The council used no modern philology, and it kept the canons from the same collection, but it did judge a book bearing an apostolic claim and refuse it. (On how councils are received, see How the Orthodox Church Knows Which Councils Are Ecumenical.)

4. Dionysius the Areopagite: the hardest case for Orthodox readers

Acts 17:34 names Dionysius the Areopagite, a member of the Athenian council of the Areopagus, among those who believed after Paul's speech in Athens. Around 500 a set of writings appeared under his name: The Celestial Hierarchy, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, The Divine Names, The Mystical Theology and ten letters. Their author presents himself as Paul's disciple, even describing the eclipse at the Crucifixion as something he saw.²¹

Doubts are old. At a meeting between Chalcedonian and anti-Chalcedonian bishops in Constantinople in 532 or 533 (the sources differ on the year), the anti-Chalcedonian side cited Dionysius. Hypatius of Ephesus answered that if the works were genuine, St Cyril of Alexandria could not have failed to know and use them.²² St Photios the Great, summarizing a lost defense of the writings by a presbyter named Theodore, recorded four objections that critics were raising: no earlier Father quotes them; Eusebius does not list them; they describe rites "which only became established in the Church gradually and after a long time"; and they refer to a letter of Ignatius, who was martyred under Trajan, long after the Areopagite's time.²³ These are the tests of attestation and anachronism. Photios (see Who Was St. Photios the Great?) simply reports that Theodore "does his best to prove the genuineness."

Despite these objections, the writings won acceptance and shaped Byzantine theology deeply, though their orthodoxy needed repeated defense, for example by John of Scythopolis and St Maximus the Confessor. Lorenzo Valla doubted them in the fifteenth century and Erasmus took up the doubt.²⁴ In 1895 Hugo Koch and Josef Stiglmayr showed independently that a section of The Divine Names on evil uses Proclus, the Neoplatonist philosopher who died in 485.²⁵ Since the first clear citation comes from Severus of Antioch between 518 and 528, the writings are now generally dated between about 485 and the 520s.²⁶ {{very-strong: The Dionysian writings were not composed in the first century; they date from around 500.}}

Here an honest Orthodox article must name a tension. The life of St Dionysius published by the Orthodox Church in America still presents the four treatises and ten letters as his.²⁷ Orthodox scholars have often taken a different route. Archbishop Alexander (Golitzin), a patristics scholar, accepts that the corpus is later than the apostles and reads it as the work of an author formed by the Church's liturgy and monastic life, which is why the Church recognized her own experience in it.²⁸ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy adds that "'forgery' is a modern notion" and that adopting an ancient persona "was a long established rhetorical device."²⁶ Whether that defense works is debated. The date is not.

5. The Donation of Constantine: a forgery that shaped politics

The Donation of Constantine (in Latin, the Constitutum Constantini) claims to be Constantine's grant to Pope Sylvester of primacy over the patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople and Jerusalem, together with the Lateran palace, the city of Rome and the provinces of Italy and the West. It is a forgery, usually dated between 750 and 850; Johannes Fried has argued for a Frankish origin in the middle of the ninth century, and a reviewer judged his evidence "ample."²⁹ {{very-strong: The Donation of Constantine is a forgery of the eighth or ninth century.}}

The forgery mattered to the East as well as the West. Pope Leo IX cited it in his letter of 1054 to Patriarch Michael Cerularius. Byzantine canonists also used it: it appears in the collections of Theodore Balsamon in the twelfth century and Matthew Blastares in the fourteenth, where it supported claims for the clergy of Constantinople.³⁰ Its genuineness was rarely questioned before the fifteenth century, in either East or West.

Nicholas of Cusa questioned it, and in 1440 Lorenzo Valla demolished it. The text has Constantine speak of Constantinople as one of the patriarchal sees, "when it was not yet a patriarchate, nor a see, nor a Christian city, nor named Constantinople, nor founded, nor planned!" It has the emperor deciding things together with his "satraps," a Persian term: "Whoever heard of satraps being mentioned in the councils of the Romans?"³¹ Reginald Pecock in England reached the same verdict independently. Our article on papal supremacy in the early Church deals with the separate question of Roman primacy, which does not stand or fall with this document.

The Orthodox position

The Orthodox Church has no dogma about the authorship of any patristic text. Her dogmas are the faith confessed in the Creed and defined by the Ecumenical Councils. That a particular name belongs to a particular writing is common tradition, which evidence can correct without loss to the faith. Whether a given Father is right on a given question is theological opinion, weighed by the consensus of the Fathers and the Church's reception.

Three points follow. First, the Church has corrected herself before: Trullo rejected the Apostolic Constitutions, and the Dionysian writings were questioned in the sixth century. Second, the Dionysian writings were received because the Church found in them her own faith and worship, read through interpreters such as Maximus; that reception does not prove apostolic authorship and should not be presented as if it did. Third, hymns and saints' lives preserve older attributions, and reading them devoutly does not require treating every attribution as history. For the Fathers and their works, see the Church Fathers Explorer.

The strongest objections

"If the Church accepted forgeries for centuries, why trust its judgment on the New Testament?"

This is the skeptic's best argument, made most fully by Bart Ehrman, who holds that ancient readers regarded false authorship as deception and that early Christians produced many forgeries, including several that entered the New Testament.³² One admiring reviewer still judged him "relatively maximalist" in identifying forgeries in the New Testament.³³ The cases above show that the Church did accept some false attributions, sometimes for a thousand years. They also show that the tests were applied early to the books that mattered most. The four Gospels and Paul's letters head Eusebius's "accepted" books, while the Gospel of Peter and the Acts of Paul were set aside. The Dionysian writings and the Donation were never Scripture. Disputes over particular New Testament letters are real, but the record shows a Church that tested, not one that swallowed everything.

"This proves tradition is unreliable, so only Scripture can be trusted"

A Protestant reader may see here the danger of relying on tradition, and that is fair against careless appeals to "the Fathers." But Scripture reached us through the same copying, citation and judgment, and the Church that set aside the Gospel of Peter is the Church that received the four Gospels. Orthodox Christians do not claim that every text called patristic is genuine or every Father correct; they claim that the Church has kept the apostolic faith, and they expect historical study to sharpen rather than threaten it.

"Western forgeries were used against the East"

Some Orthodox writers treat the Donation as proof that papal claims rest on forgery. A Catholic reader can rightly object. Catholic scholars, including Nicholas of Cusa, later a cardinal, exposed it, and Catholic arguments for Roman primacy rest on Scripture, the Fathers and councils, not on this document. Byzantine canonists used it too when it served Constantinople. Honesty cuts both ways.

"Pseudonymity was an accepted convention, so these are not really forgeries"

The Stanford Encyclopedia's authors argue that writing in an ancient persona was an accepted rhetorical device.²⁶ Ehrman argues the opposite. The early Christian evidence leans toward caution: Tertullian's presbyter was deposed, and Serapion rejected writings "falsely ascribed." Neither side should claim a consensus it does not have.

What we can say confidently

• Testing authorship by transmission, citation, style, anachronism and content is an ancient Christian practice, visible in Serapion, Tertullian, Origen, Dionysius of Alexandria, Eusebius and the critics Photios reports.
• The long recension of Ignatius is a fourth-century expansion, probably by the compiler of the Apostolic Constitutions; the short Syriac recension is an abridgment.
• The Apostolic Constitutions are a compilation of about 380, and the Council in Trullo (692) rejected them while confirming the Apostolic Canons.
• The writings under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite date from around 500, not from the first century.
• The Donation of Constantine is a forgery of the eighth or ninth century, used in both East and West before Valla exposed it in 1440.
• No apostle wrote the surviving Gospel of Peter.

What remains disputed

• Whether the seven letters of the middle recension are by Ignatius himself (the long-standing view) or a pseudonymous collection of about 170 (Hübner, Lechner and others).
• Whether the Akhmim fragment is the same Gospel of Peter that Serapion read, and whether it preserves any source older than the canonical Gospels.
• Who wrote the Dionysian writings, why he adopted the Areopagite's persona, and whether "forgery" is the right word for it.
• The exact date and place of the Donation of Constantine (Rome or the Frankish realm).
• How ancient readers judged pseudonymous writing in general, and what that means for disputed New Testament letters.

Conclusion

The history of early Christian texts is not a story of naive believers finally rescued by modern critics. It is a long conversation in which bishops, historians, councils and scholars kept asking whether a book had really been handed down. Sometimes they got it wrong for centuries, as with the Donation and the Areopagite. Sometimes they saw clearly and early, as Serapion did with the Gospel of Peter and Trullo did with the Constitutions.

For an Orthodox Christian, none of this is a threat. The Church confesses Christ crucified and risen, the Holy Trinity, and the life of grace in her mysteries, a faith handed down through many witnesses and not hung on one signature. When a cherished attribution falls, we see more truly how God kept His Church through fallible people. A Church that once deposed a well-meaning forger has every reason to welcome honest scholarship today.

Notes

1. Eusebius, Church History 6.12.3-6, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, NPNF2 vol. 1 (1890). ↩
2. Tertullian, On Baptism 17, trans. S. Thelwall, ANF vol. 3 (1885). ↩
3. Origen, Homilies on Hebrews, quoted in Eusebius, Church History 6.25.11-14, McGiffert trans. ↩
4. Dionysius of Alexandria, On Promises, quoted in Eusebius, Church History 7.25.7-27 (quotations from 7.25.26), McGiffert trans. ↩
5. Eusebius, Church History 3.25.6-7, McGiffert trans. ↩
6. Eusebius, Church History 3.36.5-10, McGiffert trans. ↩
7. Polycarp, To the Philippians 13, trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, ANF vol. 1 (1885). ↩
8. Cyril C. Richardson, ed., Early Christian Fathers, Library of Christian Classics 1 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953), introduction to the letters of Ignatius, section "Manuscripts" (ccel.org). ↩
9. John Bertram Peterson, "Apostolic Constitutions," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1907), which says the identification of the compiler with "the interpolator of the Ignatian Epistles" is "now generally admitted" and that Ussher first suggested it. ↩
10. Richardson, Early Christian Fathers, "Manuscripts." ↩
11. Judith Lieu, review of Thomas Johann Bauer and Peter von Möllendorff, eds., Die Briefe des Ignatios von Antiochia: Motive, Strategien, Kontexte (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2020.10.39. Lieu reports Lechner's view of the letters as "a pseudepigraphical collection from c. 170 CE." See also Reinhard M. Hübner, "Thesen zur Echtheit und Datierung der sieben Briefe des Ignatius von Antiochien," Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 1 (1997): 44-72 (not opened; cited from bibliographies). ↩
12. Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 8, trans. Roberts and Donaldson, ANF vol. 1. ↩
13. Paul Foster, The Gospel of Peter: Introduction, Critical Edition and Commentary, Texts and Editions for New Testament Study 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), publisher's description ("Since its discovery in 1886/87"). ↩
14. Gospel of Peter 4, 5 and 10, trans. J. Armitage Robinson, ANF vol. 9 (1896), as revised at newadvent.org. ↩
15. Paul Foster, "Are there any Early Fragments of the So-Called Gospel of Peter?" New Testament Studies 52, no. 1 (2006): 1-28, abstract (dates the Akhmim codex palaeographically to the seventh to ninth centuries). ↩
16. John Dominic Crossan, The Cross That Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988). ↩
17. Foster, The Gospel of Peter, publisher's description. ↩
18. Peterson, "Apostolic Constitutions," which gives "about the year 380, without excluding the possibility of a date two decades earlier or later," and points to Syria and Antioch. ↩
19. Council in Trullo (692), canon 2, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14 (1900). ↩
20. Orthodox Church in America, "The Council of Trullo or the Quinisext Council," The Orthodox Faith, vol. 3, Church History, oca.org. ↩
21. Joseph Stiglmayr, "Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 5 (1909), citing Letter 7.2 on the eclipse. ↩
22. Stiglmayr, "Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite," summarizing the report of Innocent of Maronia (dates the meeting to 533). Others, including Alexander Golitzin, give 532. ↩
23. Photios, Bibliotheca, codex 1, trans. J. H. Freese, The Library of Photius, vol. 1 (1920), online at tertullian.org. ↩
24. Stiglmayr, "Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite"; Kevin Corrigan and L. Michael Harrington, "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (rev. 2023), section 1. ↩
25. Stiglmayr, "Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite," with bibliography: Hugo Koch in Philologus (1895) and Stiglmayr in Historisches Jahrbuch (1895). ↩
26. Corrigan and Harrington, "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite," section 1. ↩
27. Orthodox Church in America, "Hieromartyr Dionysius the Areopagite, Bishop of Athens" (3 October), Lives of the Saints, oca.org. ↩
28. Alexander Golitzin, Mystagogy: A Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita, ed. Bogdan G. Bucur, Cistercian Studies 250 (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2013), as described by the publisher (litpress.org). ↩
29. Johann Peter Kirsch, "Donation of Constantine," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 5 (1909) ("between the years 750 and 850"); Johannes Fried, Donation of Constantine and Constitutum Constantini: The Misinterpretation of a Fiction and its Original Meaning (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), as reviewed by Jan Nelis, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2008.02.21. ↩
30. Kirsch, "Donation of Constantine." ↩
31. Lorenzo Valla, Discourse on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine, trans. Christopher B. Coleman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1922), online at the Hanover Historical Texts Project. Date and Pecock: Kirsch, "Donation of Constantine." ↩
32. Bart D. Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013; released November 2012). ↩
33. David Lincicum, "Lies, Damned Lies, and Patristics," review of Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery, The Marginalia Review of Books (themarginaliareview.com). ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Eusebius of Caesarea. Church History. Translated by Arthur Cushman McGiffert. NPNF2 vol. 1. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1890. newadvent.org.
• Tertullian. On Baptism. Translated by S. Thelwall. ANF vol. 3. Buffalo, 1885. newadvent.org.
• Ignatius of Antioch. To the Smyrnaeans; Polycarp. To the Philippians. Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. ANF vol. 1. Buffalo, 1885. newadvent.org.
• The Gospel According to Peter. Translated by J. Armitage Robinson. ANF vol. 9. Buffalo, 1896. newadvent.org.
• Council in Trullo (692). Canons. Translated by Henry Percival. NPNF2 vol. 14. Buffalo, 1900. newadvent.org.
• Photios. Bibliotheca, codices 1-165. Translated by J. H. Freese as The Library of Photius, vol. 1, 1920. tertullian.org.
• Valla, Lorenzo. Discourse on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine. Translated by Christopher B. Coleman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1922. history.hanover.edu.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Orthodox Church in America. "Hieromartyr Dionysius the Areopagite, Bishop of Athens" (3 October). Lives of the Saints, oca.org.
• Orthodox Church in America. "The Council of Trullo or the Quinisext Council." The Orthodox Faith, vol. 3, Church History. oca.org.
• Golitzin, Alexander. Mystagogy: A Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita. Edited by Bogdan G. Bucur. Cistercian Studies 250. Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2013.

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Richardson, Cyril C., ed. Early Christian Fathers. Library of Christian Classics 1. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953. ccel.org.
• Bauer, Thomas Johann, and Peter von Möllendorff, eds. Die Briefe des Ignatios von Antiochia: Motive, Strategien, Kontexte. Millennium-Studien 72. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018. Reviewed by Judith Lieu, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2020.10.39.
• Corrigan, Kevin, and L. Michael Harrington. "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. First published 2004; substantive revision 2023.
• Crossan, John Dominic. The Cross That Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988.
• Foster, Paul. "Are there any Early Fragments of the So-Called Gospel of Peter?" New Testament Studies 52, no. 1 (2006): 1-28.
• Foster, Paul. The Gospel of Peter: Introduction, Critical Edition and Commentary. Texts and Editions for New Testament Study 4. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
• Fried, Johannes. Donation of Constantine and Constitutum Constantini: The Misinterpretation of a Fiction and its Original Meaning. With a contribution by Wolfram Brandes. Millennium-Studien 3. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007. Reviewed by Jan Nelis, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2008.02.21.
• The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton, 1907-1909. Articles: Peterson, J. B., "Apostolic Constitutions" (vol. 1); Stiglmayr, J., "Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite" (vol. 5); Kirsch, J. P., "Donation of Constantine" (vol. 5). newadvent.org.

Skeptical sources

• Ehrman, Bart D. Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
• Lincicum, David. "Lies, Damned Lies, and Patristics." Review of Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery. The Marginalia Review of Books. themarginaliareview.com.