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The Festal Letters

St. Athanasius the Great · 4th century

St. Athanasius the Great · image, CC0

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Every year the archbishop of Alexandria wrote to the churches of Egypt to announce the fast and the date of Pascha. St. Athanasius filled his letters with teaching on the feast, even when he wrote them from exile.

The 39th letter, from 367, gives the earliest list of the 27 books of the New Testament exactly as we have them.

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About this edition

From the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 4 (1892), edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace.

This translation is in the public domain. We took the text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library and left out the editors’ footnotes.

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