Christian Texts and History • Re: The Didache [of Bryennius] is not an original work

(moved the followups to the thread because the Didache is in the canon.)

From what I can gather from Wikipedia (search made in 2019), the Apostolic Constitutions drew from the following five main sources:

• Books 1 to 6 are a free re-wording of the Didascalia Apostolorum
• Book 7 is partially based on the Didache.
• Book 8 is composed as follows:
o chapters 1-2 contain an extract of a lost treatise on the charismata
o chapters 3-46 are based on the Apostolic Tradition, greatly expanded, along with other material
o chapter 47 is known as the Canons of the Apostles and it had a wider circulation than the rest of the book.
• Books 7 & 8, besides that which derives from the sources indicated above, are interspersed with 16 prayers that bear striking similarity to Jewish Synagogal prayers: Book 7.26.1-3 (1); 33.2-7 (2); 34.1-8 (3); 35.1-10 (4); 36.1-7 (5); 37.1-5 (6); 38.1-8 (7); 39.2-4 (8); Book 8.5.1-4 (9); 6.5-8 (10); 9.8f (11); 12.6-27 (12); 15.7-9 (13); 16.3 (14); 40.2-4 (15) and 41.2-5 (16).

Unfortunately, like all things Wiki, there is confusion.
• When I [at that time, went] to to the Wiki pages for the Didascalia Apostolorum and the Apostolic Canons, they were both said to derive from the Didache in some way.
• The Apostolic Tradition seems to have not survived in Greek, only Syriac and Ethiopic.
• What passes for the Ethiopic of the Didascalia may be a "Readers' Digest" version of the Greek Apostolic Constitutions. [Some of this has been reformatted since original BC&H post in 2019]

Unfortunately, like all things Wiki, there are agendae. If the Bryennios manuscript is as fake as Sinaiticus is then you can expect Wickedpaedia to peddle the establishment fraud and censor anything contrary. They seem to have reduced the Codex Hierosolymitanus page to a bare minimum.

A standard translation of the Didache is by Charles Holland Hoole (1836?-1902) who was an English divinity student who translated a number of Early Christian writings including:

1. The Shepherd Of Hermas (1870)
2. The Epistles Of St. Clement, St. Ignatius, St. Barnabas, St. Polycarp: Together With The Martyrdom Of St. Ignatius And St. Polycarp (1872)
3. The Didache Teaching of the twelve apostles restored to its original state from various sources with an introduction and notes 1894)
   [

The choice of works is significant as this covers almost all of the Codex Hierosolymitanus (H) (Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistles of Clement) and the non-NT parts of Sinaiticus (Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd Of Hermas); this translation was done shortly after S and H were published, So Hoole essentially specialized in S and H and was well aware of the Didache and Apostolic Constitutions link.

He writes:

An examination of the text as published by Bryennius, printed at the end of the introduction, with the passages not previously known marked with brackets, will show that practically the whole of the treatise, with the exception of a few of the directions given for the reception of apostles and prophets, was already known, and had been in the hands of scholars for some time; so that the chief importance of the discovery would seem to be its enabling us to identify the passages in the "Epistle of Barnabas" and the "Apostolic Constitutions," and to refer to their proper period and source what had hitherto been doubtful.

What, then, was the source from which the various writers, whose work we find in the "Epistle of Barnabas," "The Shepherd of Hermas," "The Apostolic Constitutions," and "The Epitome of the Holy Apostles," drew the doctrines and regulations which we find for the first time collected in the "Didache" of Bryennius? And the answer would seem to be this: There existed at a very remote period, most likely before the end of the first century, a work handed down by oral tradition which was supposed to embody the verbal teaching of the first Apostles...

At a period a little later, the compiler of the "Apostolic Constitutions" included this traditional work, which had already partly appeared in writing, in his collection of precepts supposed to have been given by the Apostles themselves, so that in the seventh book of the "Apostolic Constitutions" we find the doctrine of the Duæ Viæ [Two Paths of the Didache] worked out at length, with precepts for the administration of the Sacraments and the appointment of Christian ministers. ...

This completes the series of works parallel with the Didache, and by comparing them with the Constantinople manuscript it will be seen that nearly every sentence in the Didache of Bryennius occurs in one or other of the four works cited. So that the question arises whether the Didache was the source from which the other writers drew their sentiments, or whether it was not an epitome or collection made by an anonymous writer, who selected what he considered to be the primitive doctrines of the Apostles, omitting what he considered to be of later date or less importance, and forming out of their teaching a short manual of duty. The shortness of the treatise published by Bryennius seems to suggest the latter view, which will make the work somewhat resemble the Syriac version of Ignatius, which is now acknowledged to be an bridgment of the Greek. 1

Hoole's conclusion is very clear:

After a good deal of consideration, I have come to the conclusion that the Didache [of Bryennius] is not an original work, but a compilation or series of excerpts from the treatises already quoted. Any one who will compare the Didache of Bryennius with the passages taken from Barnabas, Hermas, the Judicium Petri, and the Apostolic Constitutions, will find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the author of the Didache had these works in his hands, and compiled from them what he supposed to be the primitive doctrine of the Apostles; and the position of his work is not that of an original to an enlarged and completed copy, but that of a condensation and compilation from a number of other works. There seems some reason to suppose that the work thus composed underwent a further abbreviation, ...

So it looks like Bryennius' Didache was a compendium or meddley of major components of the codicies that just happened to be in H and S, the author of the Didache had these works in his hands when he wrote the Didache, leaving open the possibility that it was authored by the same team or techniques that produced the S & H.

This vindicates the great quote by Donaldson

It might well be urged that if a Tischendorf were inclined to forge a manuscript, ... we cannot therefore but think it a grave error both in Tischendorf and Bryennius that they have not adduced external testimony to the history of their manuscripts.

So I suspect that the Codices Hierosolymitanus and Sinaiaticus were produced at about the same time, and perhaps in the same place. And we note that neither has been AMa C-14 dated.

Unlike Tischenduper and Bryennius, I trust Whiston, so I'll go back to his Apostolic Constitutions, but maybe I'll avoid the version "improved" by Donaldson. But we still don't know what manuscript Whiston was working from, although he includes the greek that he translated in his book. Unfortunately the version on the Internet Archive is a poor version to OCR, because of the middle English font and dual=greek columns.
Does anyone know of an OCRed version of Whiston's Apostolic Constitutions?

Statistics: Posted by ebion — Tue Jan 09, 2024 11:40 am

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