ArcheTekton Press

Fifteen Study EditionsThe Primitive Christianity Library

The whole first-century library, cross-referenced to itself.

Every one of these books has been printed a hundred times over. Printed against each other, verse by verse, on the same page, with every parallel passage quoted out in full: we have not found that anywhere on the common market. So we are building it.

See How It Reads Tell Me When It Ships

Why It Exists

Read the New Testament closely and you keep walking into a room you were never shown. Jude quotes Enoch by name. Peter has spirits in prison. Paul names Beliar. The Gospels speak of the age to come as though you already know what that is. None of it is explained, because none of it needed explaining. The men who wrote it were writing to people who had already read the other books.

Those other books are all in print. So are the letters of the men the apostles taught. What has never been in print is the join: one page where a verse stands beside the Old Testament passage behind it, the Second Temple book it takes the picture from, the New Testament line that later picks it up, and the disciple of an apostle who repeats it in the next generation.

"A reader should not have to own five books and do the work himself."

That is the whole idea. Not a commentary telling you what to think. The sources themselves, quoted in full, set where you can see them together, and every one of them checked.

The Apparatus

Four witnesses, one page

The verse runs down one column. Beside it, each in its own card, sits every passage that stands behind it, quoted in full and tagged by where it comes from.

A page of the Enoch study edition: verses in the left column, and beside them tagged reference cards quoting Matthew 22:30, the Testament of Naphtali 3:5, and Matthew 12:43 in full.

Swipe across to read · 1 Enoch 15, with its New Testament and Second Temple parallels quoted beside it
from the finished interior of Volume XV

The Old Testament

The law, the prophets and the writings the apostles preached out of, in the King James text.

The New Testament

What the Nine wrote. On a Second Temple page, this is the column that shows you where a New Testament line came from.

Second Temple

Enoch, Jubilees, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Damascus Document, the Apocrypha. The books that were in the room when the New Testament was written.

Disciples of the Apostles

The men the apostles taught, and the generations right after them, from Clement and Ignatius through the writers before Nicaea. One column, not two, because those who kept close to the doctrine of the New Testament are few, and on any single verse neither half would fill a column alone.

How a Reference Earns Its Place

A reference that does not match is worse than a missing one

Cross-reference lists are easy to generate and mostly worthless. This is what has to happen before a single line of one is printed in these books.

The rule

A reference prints, or it does not exist.

Three ways in. It is on a scholar's graded list. It is hand-curated and verified against the source. Or a machine surfaced it and it then passed the qualifier as a quotation or an allusion. Nothing else is ever printed.

The filter

No machine decides what you read.

A word-matching walk will happily tie “raise me up” to “raise up a prophet” and call it a parallel. It is not one. Machine candidates are a worklist, never a page. Every one is graded by hand against a written rubric before it can print.

The proof

Every quotation is fetched from the source.

The words on a reference card are pulled out of the real text when the book is built, never typed in by hand and never stored somewhere they can go stale. The Second Temple and Disciples quotations are verbatim.

One Shelf, Not Fifteen Books

The volumes reference each other

Every edition is built by one engine off one set of sources, so a card in Enoch that points at Jubilees pulls the real Jubilees text out of the Jubilees volume. Open either book at that verse and you are standing on the same join, from the other side.

A two-page spread from the Jubilees study edition, its verses carrying Old Testament, Second Temple and Disciples of the Apostles reference cards.

Swipe across to read · The Book of Jubilees, Volume XIII, showing the Old Testament, Second Temple
and Disciples of the Apostles cards on a single opening

The Shelf

Fifteen volumes

Scripture first, then the men the apostles taught, in the order they wrote, then the books that stood behind all of it. Every volume carries the same apparatus, so the shelf grows into one cross-referenced whole.

Volume I · The Nine Architects of the Faith

Primitive Christianity

The Nine Architects of the Faith

Published

Volume II · Luke 1:2

Eyewitnesses From the Beginning

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John

In production

Volume III · Acts 1:8

Ye Shall Be Witnesses Unto Me

Acts, Romans through Jude, the Revelation of John

In production

Volume IV · Revelation 2:10

Be Thou Faithful Unto Death

The Didache, First Clement, the Seven Epistles of Ignatius, Polycarp to the Philippians, the Fragments of Papias, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Apology of Aristides

In production

Volume V · Revelation 3:12

A Pillar in the Temple of My God

The Shepherd of Hermas, Second Clement, the Epistle to Diognetus, the Martyrdom of Polycarp

In production

Volume VI · Revelation 2:13

Thou Holdest Fast My Name

The First Apology of Justin, the Second Apology, the Martyrdom of Justin, Tatian, Address to the Greeks

In production

Volume VII · Revelation 3:10

Kept the Word of My Patience

Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho the Jew

In production

Volume VIII · Revelation 2:23

He Which Searcheth the Hearts

Melito of Sardis, On the Passover. Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians and On the Resurrection of the Dead. Theophilus, To Autolycus

In production

Volume IX · Revelation 2:2

Tried Them Which Say They Are Apostles

Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, Books I and II

In production

Volume X · Revelation 3:2

Strengthen the Things Which Remain

Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, Books III and IV

In production

Volume XI · Revelation 3:3

Remember How Thou Hast Received

Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies Book V, the surviving fragments, the Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching

In production

Volume XII · Revelation 3:8

An Open Door No Man Can Shut

Hippolytus of Rome, On Christ and Antichrist and the Refutation of All Heresies Book X. Victorinus of Pettau, Commentary on the Apocalypse

In production

Volume XIII · Revelation 3:14

The Beginning of the Creation of God

The Book of Jubilees, the Little Genesis, in fifty chapters

Built, in proof

Volume XIV · Revelation 3:18

Gold Tried in the Fire

Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, First and Second Maccabees, the Additions to Esther and Daniel, First and Second Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh

In production

Volume XV · Revelation 3:21

To Sit With Me in My Throne

The Book of the Watchers, the Book of Parables, the Astronomical Book, the Book of Dreams, the Epistle of Enoch

Built, cover done

Covers shown are proofs. Volumes ship as they are finished, not in sequence.

On the Spines

LORD JESUS CHRIST

KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

Every volume but the first takes its title from what Christ says to the seven churches. Stand all fifteen on a shelf and the letters in the upper diamonds read down the row, and the letters in the lower ones read down after them.

Built and In Proof

The first two are on the bench

Both interiors are built to the standard and both reference sets are finished and checked. Neither has been through its final read pass, so neither is on sale yet.

Cover of The Gospel According to Enoch, a Primitive Christianity Library study edition.

Volume XV

To Sit With Me in My Throne

The Gospel According to Enoch

Jude quotes it. Peter echoes it. The Gospels assume it. This edition sets Enoch with a study margin on every page, tying it to the New Testament, the Old, the other Second Temple writings, and the earliest church.

New Testament 96
Old Testament 31
Second Temple 9
Disciples 9
Nine Pillars 16

The R. H. Charles translation, edited by J.D. Murphy

Interior and apparatus built and audited. Cover finished. Final read pass to come.

Cover of Jubilees and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, a Primitive Christianity Library study edition.

Volume XIII

The Beginning of the Creation of God

Jubilees and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs

Genesis retold by a writer of the second century before Christ, and the deathbed charges of Jacob's twelve sons. Between them they carry the Watchers, Beliar, the priest from Levi and the king from Judah, and the star out of Jacob, straight into the vocabulary of the New Testament.

102 references, every one hand-verified

The R. H. Charles translation, edited by J.D. Murphy

Interior and apparatus built. Cover in proof.

The List

Told first, when the first volume ships.

One email when a volume is finished, and the occasional note from inside the build. No spam, no denomination, unsubscribe anytime.

Volume I, Primitive Christianity: The Nine Architects of the Faith, is out now.