Methodology
How this library makes English, and how to trust a page.
Why this exists
Fathers is a free public library for study: teaching by topic, whole works in edition order, and an Explore timeline. It is not a complete critical edition. The aim is readable English that stays honest about its sources.
What you will find
Topics answer “what did they teach about X?” Works let you read a treatise straight through. Explore shows how writers line up on a claim across time. The catalog is always moving — new treatises and excerpts land as they finish. Status and era labels live on each work page. The works catalogue shows the current reading selection.
How to read a work
Each work opens as a continuous reader. Contents lists one line per thought in plain English, not one line per edition slice. Jump links land on the first section of that thought. Greek or Latin, when loaded, sits under the reading text. Cite pages still exist for a single section; use “Read continuously” to return to the reader at that place.
The reading column stays clean. Apparatus — copy-text, other prints checked, supplied stretches, confidence notes — lives in the collapsed About this text rail, not beside every paragraph.
Sources and witnesses
Each work should identify the Greek or Latin edition used for its English. The listed witnesses record the claimed sources; their presence alone does not prove that every section has been checked against the print. Some works have only one listed witness.
The reading text follows one named copy-text. Other prints are checks, not silent merges. Where a stretch is missing in the copy-text and is supplied from another witness, it is marked. We do not call the result a manuscript, and we do not claim a combination that was not done.
Review status
This is an AI-assisted study library. A recent audit found incomplete translations and draft material presented as finished work; those records are withheld. Remaining legacy passages are still under review. Some older topic excerpts derive from earlier English collections. Consult each passage’s source details.
New or changed passages require comparison with the named source for meaning, omissions, attribution and Bible references. Sample checks help find defects, but do not certify every passage in a work.
Two passes for new translations
Pass A is a literal sense gloss with key lemmas from the locked source block only. Unreadable places stay marked; nothing is invented to fill a gap.
Pass B is the reading English — modern literary prose in the author’s voice. It may not add a concept that is not already in Pass A. Pass A is not pasted as Pass B. Modern copyrighted English is never the source of either pass.
Original English Translation
The badge Original English Translation means there was no previous English translation of the complete work — no complete prior English of that treatise. It does not mean “this page is in English,” and it is not a claim about “free English.”
First-English claims are withheld until a bibliographic review supports them. Absence from ANF, absence of a public-domain English edition, and creation of a new translation do not establish that no earlier English translation exists.
What opens next
When opening a new whole work, priority runs from the earliest untranslated texts forward — works with no previous English translation first. Source repair and review of existing work take priority over adding titles. The public catalog still moves as pieces ship; it is not a fixed roadmap page.
What we never claim
- A complete critical edition of every Father.
- That the reading text is a manuscript.
- Silent merges of competing recensions.
- That Explore stance tags are rankings of who was right.