Apostolic Church-Ordinance

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The Apostolic Church-Ordinance (or Apostolic Church-Order, Apostolic Church-Directory or Constitutio Ecclesiastica Apostolorum) is an anonymous

Church Orders. The work can be dated at the end of 3rd century CE. The provenance is usually regarded as Egypt, or perhaps Syria.[1]

This text served as a

Oriental Orthodox churches. It superseded in authority and esteem the Didache
, under which name it sometimes went.

Manuscript Tradition

The full and original text, in Greek, was found in a 12th-century manuscript discovered in 1843 at Vienna and published[2] in the same year by Johann Wilhelm Bickell,[3] which named it Apostolische Kirchenordnung. Only other four fragmentary Greek manuscripts are extant.

A complete Syriac ancient translation, with English translation, was published in 1901 by John Peter Arendzen.[4] The Ge'ez version was first published in 1691 by Hiob Ludolf.[5]

The Apostolic Church-Ordinance usually is found also in ancient collections of

Arabic and Syriac
.

The titles found on the manuscripts can be different, so the Bohairic Alexandrine Sinodos version is entitled "Canons of our Fathers the Holy Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, which they appointed in the Churches", while the Syriac version has "Third book of Clement, Teaching of the twelve Apostles".

Content

As usual in genre of the Church Orders, this texts purports to be the work of the

Twelve Apostles, whose instructions, whether given by them as individuals or as a body. In antiquity this text was sometime mistakenly supposed to be gathered and handed down by the Clement of Rome
.

The names of the Apostles are so listed:

Cephas, Bartholomew and Judas. The presence of both Peter and Cephas, and the first place given to John, is found also in the more ancient Epistula Apostolorum
.

The content can be so summarized:

  • chapters 1-3 include a short introduction inspired by the Epistle of Barnabas
  • chapters 4-14 are an evident adaptation of the first six chapters of the Didache, the moral precepts of which are attributed severally to the Apostles, each of whom, introduced by the formula "John says", "Peter says", etc., is represented as framing one or more of the ordinances
  • chapters 15-30 treat in similar manner of the qualifications for appointment and
    presbyters, reader, deacons and widowers, and this section treats also of the duties of lay male and female and of deacons.[1]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ .
  2. ^ Geschichte des Kirchenrechts, Giessen, 1843, I, 107-132.
  3. ^ Johann Wilhelm Bickell was professor of canon law at the University of Marburg, and died (1848) as minister of justice of Hesse-Kassel. He was the father of Gustav Bickell.
  4. ^ Journal of Theol. Studies, October 1901.
  5. ^ In the "Commentarius" to his "Historia Ethiopica" (Frankfort 1691).
  6. .

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainHerbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Apostolic Church-Ordinance". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

External links