The publication of the apocryphal Acts in Greek and Latin by Lipsius and Bonnet as well as Schmidt have opened a large, but very little cultivated field of ancient Christian literature. The oldest of these Acts are those which are treated in the present volume. They give us a picture of Christianity towards the end of the second century. They are important for the history of the Christian cultus in the second and third centuries, and by their description of the divine service in the houses they supplement [the] picture delineated in the Acts of the Apostles. They are also important for the history of Christian poetry which commences among the Gnostics; in short: though these Acts contain both 'truth and fiction,' they cannot be ignored . . . . —from the Preface