The Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans

Editions

• Lectio Reading Edition, 2026 (translated from the Greek)All 10 chapters and the prescript, translated from the Greek original.The Greek original is in the public domain. This English translation is © Lectio Studies, all rights reserved.
  Edition & attribution

  Translator

  Lectio Studies. Translated from the Greek original under the Sacred Translation Standard; editor of record Cory Savit, who signed every one of the eleven units.

  Series

  Lectio Reading Edition

  Editor

  Cory Savit (editor of record)

  Publisher

  Lectio Studies

  Year

  2026

  Revision

  Translated from the Greek of Lightfoot and Harmer 1891 (the MIDDLE recension, the seven letters Eusebius lists at H.E. III.36; not the interpolated long recension and not the abridged Curetonian Syriac). Drafted from the Greek alone with no English translation in context, fidelity-checked against the Greek by two further models, read for voice by the editor of record while still blind to any English witness, and only then compared against the public-domain witnesses (Lake 1912, Roberts and Donaldson 1885); no line was conformed to a witness. Lightfoot's own apparatus is carried into the English rather than smoothed away: his square brackets around words of uncertain attestation are kept as square brackets where the bracketed word has an English reflex, and his obeli at 7.2 mark the phrase his apparatus flags as corrupt. Two marks are the translator's, both ruled on by the editor of record: the supplement [hold out] at 1.1, where the Greek has a bare infinitive and the verb of endurance is a reading; and the gloss (24 August) at 10.3, where the Roman inclusive count would otherwise be miscomputed. The prescript, which the received English edition on this platform does not carry, opens Chapter 1 as an unnumbered section.

  Source

  https://archive.org/details/apostolicfathers00lighuoft

  Rights

  Greek original: public domain. English translation: © Lectio Studies, all rights reserved.

  Accessed

  2026-08-21

  License

  public-domain-base-with-reserved-lectio-translation

  Public-domain basis

  The Greek base is public domain: published 1891, which clears the US pre-1930 line by more than a century; Lightfoot died 1889 and Harmer in 1944, so life-plus-seventy expired in 2014 at the latest. The photographic scan of a two-dimensional public-domain work carries no new right. The reserved copyright covers this English translation only, never the Greek.

• Kirsopp Lake, 1912 (Loeb Classical Library) (shown by default)All 10 chapters of Lake's English translation, plus the prescript printed before chapter 1.Public domain.
• Greek original, Lightfoot and Harmer 1891 (middle recension)All 10 chapters and the prescript, in Lightfoot's revised Greek text.The Greek original is in the public domain.
  Edition & attribution

  Translator

  None. GREEK TEXT ONLY. This is the original-language edition and carries no English. The received English on this work is Lake 1912; the Lectio Reading Edition is a separate, reserved translation made from this Greek.

  Series

  The Apostolic Fathers: comprising the Epistles (genuine and spurious) of Clement of Rome, the Epistles of S. Ignatius, the Epistles of S. Polycarp, the Martyrdom of S. Polycarp, the Teaching of the Apostles, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle to Diognetus, the Fragments of Papias, the Reliques of the Elders preserved in Irenaeus: revised texts

  Editor

  Joseph Barber Lightfoot and John Reginald Harmer

  Publisher

  Macmillan and Co., London

  Year

  1891

  Revision

  Lightfoot's own revised Greek text, printed in Harmer's one-volume comparative edition of 1891 and drawn from Lightfoot's critical edition, The Apostolic Fathers Part II: S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp, 2nd ed., 1889. This is the MIDDLE recension, the seven-letter set Eusebius lists at H.E. III.36, established by Lightfoot and Zahn; the interpolated long recension and the abridged Curetonian Syriac were both positively excluded by direct textual comparison before any of this text was used. To the Romans occupies printed pages 119 to 123, chapters numbered I to X. Every line was read directly from the page images of the dated scan rather than transcribed from its OCR, whose Greek character recognition is unreliable, and was cross-checked against a second independent digital Greek text. Lightfoot's apparatus marks are preserved as he printed them: square brackets around words of uncertain attestation, and the obeli at 7.2 around the phrase his apparatus flags as a crux. His one marginal cross-reference, at 5.2, is editorial annotation rather than Ignatius's Greek and is not printed inline. The prescript, which the received English edition on this platform does not carry, opens Chapter 1 as an unnumbered section.

  Source

  https://archive.org/details/apostolicfathers00lighuoft

  Rights

  Public Domain

  Accessed

  2026-08-21

  License

  public-domain-base

  Public-domain basis

  Published 1891, which clears the US pre-1930 line by more than a century. Lightfoot died in 1889 and Harmer in 1944, so life-plus-seventy expired in 2014 at the latest, whichever contributor's death governs. The photographic scan of a two-dimensional public-domain work carries no new right.

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