tion of a new theological treatise of the Apostolic period. 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. The expression itself, διδαχὴ τῶν ἀποστόλων, "teaching of the Apostles," occurs in Acts xi. 42, and the use of the word διδαχὴ for teaching or doctrine is common in the New Testament,[1] so that it would be the natural title for a collection of sayings or precepts
- ↑ Matt. vii. 28, xvi. 12; Mark i. 27, iv. 2; John vii. 16, xviii. 11; Acts xiii. 12, xvii. 19; Rom. vi. 17; 1 Cor. xiv. 16, 26; 2 Tim. iv. 2; Titus i. 9; Heb. vi. 2, xiii. 9; 2 John 9, 10. The word is always translated "doctrine" in the Authorised Version.
