Note: These writings are disputed writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch, but I am including them here because whether or not they were written by St. Ignatius himself or another writer, they still show early Christian thought on the Jewish Question.
Epistle to the Tarsians
Chapter 3. The true doctrine respecting Christ
Mindful of him, by all means know that Jesus the Lord was truly born of Mary, being made of a woman; and was as truly crucified. For, says he, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of the Lord Jesus.
Galatians 6:14 And He really suffered, and died, and rose again. For says [Paul], If Christ should become passible, and should be the first to rise again from the dead.
And again, In that He died, He died unto sin once: but in that He lives, He lives unto God.
Romans 6:10 Otherwise, what advantage would there be in [becoming subject to] bonds, if Christ has not died? What advantage in patience? What advantage in [enduring] stripes? And why such facts as the following: Peter was crucified; Paul and James were slain with the sword; John was banished to Patmos; Stephen was stoned to death by the Jews who killed the Lord? But, [in truth,] none of these sufferings were in vain; for the Lord was really crucified by the ungodly.
Epistle to the Antiochians
Chapter 1. Cautions against error
The Lord has rendered my bonds light and easy since I learned that you are in peace, that you live in all harmony both of the flesh and spirit. I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you, that you walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called,
Ephesians 4:1 guarding against those heresies of the wicked one which have broken in upon us, to the deceiving and destruction of those that accept of them; but that you give heed to the doctrine of the apostles, and believe both the law and the prophets: that you reject every Jewish and Gentile error, and neither introduce a multiplicity of gods, nor yet deny Christ under the pretence of [maintaining] the unity of God.
Epistle to Hero, a Deacon of Antioch
Chapter 2. Cautions against false teachers
Every one that teaches anything beyond what is commanded, though he be [deemed] worthy of credit, though he be in the habit of fasting, though he live in continence, though he work miracles, though he have the gift of prophecy, let him be in your sight as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, Matthew 7:15 labouring for the destruction of the sheep. If any one denies the cross, and is ashamed of the passion, let him be to you as the adversary himself. Though he gives all his goods to feed the poor, though he remove mountains, though he give his body to be burned,
1 Corinthians 13:2 let him be regarded by you as abominable. If any one makes light of the law or the prophets, which Christ fulfilled at His coming, let him be to you as antichrist. If any one says that the Lord is a mere man, he is a Jew, a murderer of Christ.
Epistle to the Philippians
Chapter 4. The malignity and folly of Satan
And indeed, before the cross was erected, he (Satan) was eager that it should be so; and he wrought
[for this end] in the children of disobedience.
Ephesians 2:2 He wrought in Judas, in the Pharisees, in the Sadducees, in the old, in the young, and in the priests. But when it was just about to be erected, he was troubled, and infused repentance into the traitor, and pointed him to a rope to hang himself with, and taught him [to die by] strangulation. He terrified also the silly woman, disturbing her by dreams; and he, who had tried every means to have the cross prepared, now endeavoured to put a stop to its erection; not that he was influenced by repentance on account of the greatness of his crime (for in that case he would not be utterly depraved), but because he perceived his own destruction [to be at hand]. For the cross of Christ was the beginning of his condemnation, the beginning of his death, the beginning of his destruction. Wherefore, also, he works in some that they should deny the cross, be ashamed of the passion, call the death an appearance, mutilate and explain away the birth of the Virgin, and calumniate the [human] nature itself as being abominable. He fights along with the Jews to a denial of the cross, and with the Gentiles to the calumniating of Mary, who are heretical in holding that Christ possessed a mere phantasmal body. For the leader of all wickedness assumes manifold forms, beguiler of men as he is, inconsistent, and even contradicting himself, projecting one course and then following another. For he is wise to do evil, but as to what good may be he is totally ignorant. And indeed he is full of ignorance, on account of his voluntary want of reason: for how can he be deemed anything else who does not perceive reason when it lies at his very feet?
Chapter 14. Farewells and cautions
Let your prayers be extended to the Church of Antioch, whence also I as a prisoner am being led to Rome. I salute the holy bishop Polycarp; I salute the holy bishop Vitalius, and the sacred presbytery, and my fellow-servants the deacons; in whose stead may my soul be found. Once more I bid farewell to the bishop, and to the presbyters in the Lord. If any one celebrates the passover along with the Jews, or receives the emblems of their feast, he is a partaker with those that killed the Lord and His apostles.
The Epistle of Maria the Proselyte to Ignatius
Chapter 3. Examples of youthful devotedness
Moreover, the wise Daniel, while he was a young man, passed judgment on certain vigorous old man, showing them that they were abandoned wretches, and not [worthy to be reckoned] elders, and that, though Jews by extraction, they were Canaanites in practice. And Jeremiah, when on account of his youth he declined the office of a prophet entrusted to him by God, was addressed in these words: Say not, I am a youth; for you shall go to all those to whom I send you, and you shall speak according to all that I command you; because I am with you.
Jeremiah 1:7 And the wise Solomon, when only in the twelfth year of his age, had wisdom to decide the important question concerning the children of the two women, when it was unknown to whom these respectively belonged; so that the whole people were astonished at such wisdom in a child, and venerated him as being not a mere youth, but a full-grown man. And he solved the hard questions of the queen of the Ethiopians, which had profit in them as the streams of the Nile [have fertility], in such a manner that that woman, though herself so wise, was beyond measure astonished.
About this page
Source. New Advent – Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. From Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight.