One Physician - Ignatius of Antioch (Bilingual)

One Physician – Ignatius of Antioch

Around AD 107, a bishop by the name of Ignatius was marched under guard from Antioch to Rome to be executed for his faith. Along the way he wrote letters to the churches he passed. In his letter to the Ephesians, he paused to describe Christ in a breathtaking mix of paradoxes: flesh and spirit, begotten and unbegotten, God in man, true life in death.

Modern scholarship is unsure if Ignatius was drawing on an existing hymn or penned his own in the moment, but the result is one of the earliest Christ-hymns outside the New Testament – written by a leader in the church walking toward his own death.

We've taken Ignatius' prose and formatted it to highlight the meditative beauty.

You'll receive one high-resolution digital file:

• English with Greek – each English line paired with its original Greek beneath it; the ancient alongside the modern.

A fragment of the early second century – ready for your study, hallway, or church.

Ignatius of Antioch · Letter to the Ephesians 7:2 · c. AD 107