Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/954

 is made, as in I. Cor., only of apostles, prophets and teachers; and of these, apostles are only stranger visitors of the church, and prophets are men endowed with supernatural gifts of the Holy Ghost, who may or may not be found in any particular church. Bearing in mind the account given by Justin (Apol. i. 66) of the share taken by "the president" and the deacons in the Eucharistic celebration, we seem warranted in inferring from the "therefore" at the beginning of c. xv. that it was with a view to the conduct of the weekly stated service that bishops and deacons are described as appointed; and that, though gifted men were allowed to preach and teach in the church assemblies, the offering of the Eucharist was confined to these permanent officers. It is possible that the section on "bishops and deacons" may have been added later when the Didaché assumed its present form, the editor feeling it necessary that mention should be made of the recognized names of the officers of the church in his time.

C. xvi. is an exhortation to watch for our Lord's Second Coming, in order to be able to pass safely through the heavy trial that was immediately to precede it. This time of trial was to be signalized by the appearance of one who is called the "deceiver of the world" (κοσμοπλάνος), who should appear as God's Son and do signs and wonders, and into whose hands the earth should be delivered, so that under the trial many should be scandalized and be lost (cf. II. Thess. ii. 3, 4; Rev. xii. 9; Matt. xxiv. 21, 24, x. 22). But then shall appear the signs of the truth: first the sign of outspreading (ἐκπετάσεως) in heaven (a difficult phrase which need not here be discussed); then the trumpet's voice (Matt. xxiv. 31; I. Cor. xv. 52; I. Thess. iv. 16); thirdly the resurrection of the dead—not of all, but, as was said, the Lord shall come and all His saints with Him. Then shall the world see the Lord coming on the clouds of heaven.

External Attestation.—The sketch just given shews that our document bears marks of very high antiquity. We next ask what ancient writers expressly speak of the Didaché, or manifest acquaintance with it, earlier than the appearance in its present shape of the Apostolic Constitutions, the first half of bk. vii. of which contains an expansion of the Didaché. The forger of this book was plainly acquainted with the whole Didaché; for he goes through it from beginning to end, making changes and additions, the study of which throws interesting light on the development of church ritual during the interval between the two works. Harnack has given good reasons for thinking that the same forger manipulated the Didaché and the Ignatian letters, and that his work may have been as early as 350. Hence the Didaché was by then an ancient document, but one in such small circulation that it could be tampered with without much fear of detection.

It is necessary here to notice the tract professing to contain apostolic constitutions, published by Bickell in 1843 and described D. C. A. i. 123. This is quite independent of and earlier than the work commonly known as the Apostolic Constitutions. The two forms employ some common earlier documents, but there is no reason to think that the framer of either was acquainted with the other. Bickel calls this tract Apostolische Kirchenordnung, and to avoid confusion with the Apostolic Constitutions, we refer to it as the Church Ordinances. It had been translated into various languages, and is the foundation of Egyptian Canon Law. It has so much in common with Bryennius's Didaché that either the Church Ordinances certainly used the Didaché or both drew from a common source. In form they differ; for in the Ordinances the precepts are distributed among different apostles by name, the list being peculiar, Cephas appearing as distinct from Peter; he and Nathanael taking the place of James the Less and Matthias. In substance the two works closely coincide, but only in the section on the "Two Ways."

Writers earlier than the Apostolic Constitutions know of a work which professed to contain the teaching of the apostles, but concerning them we cannot say with certainty whether the work to which they witness is the same as ours. The list of direct witnesses is indeed much shorter than it must have been if the work had obtained any wide acceptance as containing really apostolic instruction. Earliest is Eusebius, who to his list of canonical Scriptures (H. E. iii. 25) adds a list of spurious books of the better sort, recognized by church writers, and to be distinguished from writings which heretics had forged in the names of apostles. Among these he enumerates next after the Ep. of Barnabas, "what are called the Teachings of the Apostles" (τῶν ἀποστόλων αἱ λεγόμεναι διδαχαί). Some years later Athanasius (Ep. Fest. 39) adds to his list of canonical Scriptures a list of non-canonical books useful in the catechetical instruction of converts, viz. the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, the so-called Teaching of the Apostles (διδαχὴ καλουμένη τῶν ἀποστόλον), and the Shepherd. The only obstacle to our supposing our Didaché to be here referred to is the Eucharistic formulae it contains, which Athanasius would scarcely place in the hands of the uninitiated, unless indeed he thought them so unlike the truth as to make no revelation of Christian mysteries. It will be observed that Eusebius uses the plural (διδαχαί), Athanasius the singular. Unmistakable coincidences with the Didaché have been pointed out in writings ascribed to Athanasius, but rejected as spurious in the Benedictine ed., though the genuineness of at least the second of these is still urged: viz. de Virginitate (Migne, p. 266), Syntagma Doctrinae ad Monaches (p. 835), and Fides Nicena (p. 1639). Among the spurious writings printed with those of Athanasius is a Synopsis Sacrae Scripturae, which, because of its coincidences with the Stichometry of Nicephorus, Credner has dated as late as 10th cent. The Stichometry doubtless preserves an ancient list, and there among the apocryphal books appended to the N.T. Canon we find the διδαχὴ ἀποστόλων. Those that precede it are heretical apocrypha; but those that follow, viz. the Epp. of Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, and the Shepherd, are all orthodox. The number of στίχοι attributed to the Didaché is 200; whereas 1,400 are