The Didascalia Apostolorum

by Stewart-Sykes, Alistair

• ISBN13: 9782503529936
• ISBN10: 2503529933
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-11-01
• Publisher: Brepols Pub

Summary

The Didascalia apostolorum is one of the ancient church orders, setting out the duties and responsibilities of laypeople, bishops and widows, regulating the keeping of Pascha, and engaging in polemic with Judaism. It is a work of extraordinary interest for the history of the church in Syria, as a document of social and liturgical history and as a document bearing witness to relations between Christians and Jews.Alistair Stewart-Sykes presents the text in a readable English version which takes full account of the various textual witnesses. Of particular importance is the introduction. The Didascalia is conventionally ascribed to a single hand in third-century Syria, but here an entirely new compositional hypothesis is proposed in which the work is shown to be composite and to include sources of much greater antiquity than the period of final redaction. In the light of the compositional hypothesis there are radically new discussions of ministry (including the ministry of widows), relationships with Judaism, and liturgy (including the penitential process). Beyond this the introduction engages with the social context in which these developments emerged.The work is suitable for a wide audience. The translation will be useful to undergraduate and graduate students; the introduction and commentary will be of interest to scholars in ecclesiastical history, historical liturgy, forming Judaism and Jewish-Christian relations, as well as Syriac studies.

Author Biography

Alistair Stewart-Sykes is well-known in the field having produced, the first critical text for over a century of the Apostolic church order and the first full-length commentary on the Apostolic tradition.

Table of Contents

Inroduction	p. 1
The Didascalia apostolorum	p. 3
Da as living literature	p. 5
Interpretative assumptions	p. 7
The validity of the source critical method	p. 7
The conservative use of sources in antiquity	p. 9
A summary of the interpretative assumptions	p. 11
The search for sources	p. 11
The search for redactors	p. 22
The apostolic redactor	p. 22
The deuterotic redactor	p. 25
The uniting of the sources	p. 29
The twenty-first Chapter	p. 33
Conclusions	p. 44
The date and provenance of da	p. 49
The Significance of Observing Redactional Layers in Da	p. 55
Bishops, Presbyters, deacons and widows in the community of DA	p. 56
A conclusion on ministries within DA	p. 69
The opponents of DA	p. 69
DA as a liturgical source	p. 73
Baptism and anointing	p. 73
The Eucharist	p. 77
The penitential process	p. 81
Conclusions	p. 88
Postscript on the Translation	p. 89
Annotated Translation	p. 93
Appendix: Material secondary to DA found in one family of manuscripts	p. 261
Bibliography	p. 277
Indices	p. 283
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