THE APOSTOLIC TRADITION
For a list and description of Hippolytus’s works reference must be made to the treatises on patrology; he was a prolific writer on exegetical, doctrinal and practical themes, who published at least fifty books and probably many more. But after he had been consecrated bishop of his separatist congregation, his first task was to provide treatises to perpetuate the principles for which he was contending so bitterly. One of these was Of Gifts, to which he alludes in [1. 1]; it has not been preserved, although traces appear to be incorporated in Constitutions VIII, i-ii. And it was followed immediately by the Apostolic Tradition.
Its introduction fixes its date and purpose. A “lapse or error” had “recently occurred” ([1. 4]), and Hippolytus undertakes to guard against its effects by setting forth the true doctrine “which has continued up to now”. And he recurs to the same theme at the close: “the many heresies have increased because their leaders would not learn the purpose of the apostles”, but “over all who hear the apostolic tradition and keep it, no heretics or any other man will prevail” ([38. 2]-3). The date accordingly must be close to 217 and the purpose is to cleave to the old ways, rejecting every innovation; the tradition which Hippolytus received from the presbyters before him ([36. 12]) must be maintained inviolate.
In content the book consists mainly of laws for church organization and the conduct of worship, but these are interspersed freely with comment and explanation. The source of the laws themselves is not doubtful: they represent the normal practices at Rome in Hippolytus’s younger days, and he is quite sincere in believing that they are truly apostolic and therefore unalterable. And that they actually are rules of real antiquity is shown by the corroboration they receive from other early Christian writers, among whom Tertullian in particular describes usages extraordinarily like those expounded by his Roman contemporary. The Apostolic Tradition, consequently, is more than a source for Roman customs at the beginning of the third century; it may with equal safety be invoked for the practice of thirty or even fifty years earlier. In the words of Harnack:[54] “Here is the richest source that we in any form possess for our knowledge of the polity of the Roman church in the oldest time, and this Roman polity may, in many regards, be accepted as the polity held everywhere”.
The same, naturally, cannot always be said of the material in Hippolytus’s comments. Here too, unquestionably, much is inherited; it is for one of his explanations that he appeals to the presbyters in [36. 12]. But it is occasionally evident—[chapter 9] is an instance—that the ceremonies he faithfully describes do not fully accord with his interpretations, and that he himself does not invariably understand his material. Some of the wording of his prayers, moreover, is unmistakably his own, but in his day ([10. 4]-6) each Christian leader still felt free to frame prayers as he would.
Hippolytus designed his work for “the churches” ([1. 3]), a phrase most naturally understood of Christendom at large. His own church of Rome appears to have appreciated his work the least, for the majority of Roman Christians gave their allegiance to his rivals and accepted their legislation; it was the reforms of Callistus and not the conservatism of Hippolytus that directed subsequent Roman polity. Probably, too, despite his canonization, his memory was always slightly suspect; the Roman church certainly managed to forget very quickly who he really was. By the middle of the third century, moreover, his church finally abandoned Greek as its official language and became wholly Latinized, so that his writings were no longer accessible. And what was true of Rome was true of the West in general.
In the East, however, especially in Egypt and Syria, Hippolytus’s work was accepted as possessing high authority. It was of course not treated as infallible, for later legal writers do not hesitate to amend or omit laws disagreeing with local usage. Yet the title Hippolytus chose for his work was taken really seriously,[55] and he, more than any other Church Father, gave the laws and the liturgy of the Eastern Church their permanent form.
The Apostolic Tradition was first made known to the Western world in 1691 by Job Ludolf in Ad suam Historiam Aethiopicam Commentarius; in this he published in incomplete form the Ethiopic work containing it, to which he gave the title—still in use—of Statuta Apostolorum. But he naturally was unable to identify the author. It was not until 1848 that the next contribution was made, Tattam’s The Apostolic Constitutions or Canons of the Apostles in Coptic,[56] which gave the Bohairic text with an English translation. The Sahidic text appeared thirty-five years later on pp. 248-266 of Lagarde’s Aegyptiaca, and this is still the standard edition. A German translation (by Steindorff) was published in 1891 by Achelis in his Die ältesten Quellen des orientalischen Kirchenrechtes:[57] this monograph opened the really critical study of the material and is not yet wholly obsolete. But Hauler’s discovery of the Latin text was the most important event of all. He published his find in 1900 but did not appreciate the full importance of what he describes only as “Aegyptiorum reliquiae” at the end of his long title.[58] And even such an intensely able scholar as Funk, in making his own Latin version of “The Egyptian Church Order”, still preferred to follow the Sahidic.[59] Horner’s Statutes of the Apostles (1904) finally supplied critical Ethiopic and Arabic texts, with scientifically literal translations of these and of the Sahidic as well.
The basic significance of the Latin version was glimpsed by Cooper and Maclean in their edition of the Testament[60] (1902); their use of “Hauler” is often penetrating. In 1906 Baron Eduard von der Goltz[61] finally identified certain sections as definitely Hippolytean, and four years later Dr Eduard Schwartz reached the definite conclusion:[62] the Latin text represents substantially what Hippolytus wrote. Dr Schwartz’s monograph, however, was brief and left many problems unexplored; the detailed demonstration was the—wholly independent—work of Dom Connolly in 1916.
In 1928 Dr Jungklaus published a German translation of Hippolytus’s work, with an elaborate introduction; in some regards it proved unsatisfactory but it should on no account be neglected.
The textual evidence is as follows:
The original Greek of chapters 3 and 12 is preserved in the Epitome, and that of 25. 1-2 in the Vienna fragment printed (e.g.) by Funk (II, p. 112). The Constitutions also give some aid in reconstructing the Greek text elsewhere.
The Latin codex, now in Verona, is a palimpsest,[63] probably of the sixth century, over which some two centuries later three books of Isidore of Seville’s Sentences were written. The translation itself appears to have been made in the fourth century, and is a rendition of a Greek book of church laws, in which Hippolytus’s book is preceded by portions of the Didascalia and the complete Apostolic Church Order. The translator, who presumably had no idea of the authorship of the closing portion, made his version pedantically literal; a great advantage to the modern student. Unquestionably neither the sixth-century copyist, the translator nor the Greek text used was infallible; the last certainly contained duplications.[64] But the version is incomparably the best guide that we have. It includes 1. 1-9. 11a, 21. 14-24. 12a, 26. 3b-38. 2a.
The Oriental manuscripts, all comparatively modern,[65] are fairly numerous,[66] and are likewise collections of laws. The Sahidic—known also as the Egyptian Heptateuch, from its seven Books—begins with the Apostolic Church Order. Then (Book II) comes Hippolytus’s work, in which chapters 1, 3, 4. 4-13, 5-6, 8. 2-5, 9. 9-12 are omitted and chapters 11-14 are arranged in the order[67] 12, 14, 11, 13; there are also minor variations to which attention is usually called in the translation and notes. Books III-VI are parallel to Constitutions VIII; Book VII contains the Apostolic Canons. Like other Coptic ecclesiastical writings it teems with transliterated Greek words, so that the original terms are obvious. But the first translator was evidently often in doubt as to the meaning of the original, and his indecisions have not been clarified by later copyists.
The Bohairic was made from an inferior Sahidic manuscript in the early nineteenth century. All readings of any consequence are listed by Horner.
The Arabic was made from the Sahidic, which it follows in most regards, although chapters 11-14 are not disarranged; it was therefore made from a manuscript other than the archetype of the known Sahidic codices and has a certain independent textual value. Otherwise its features are just about those to be expected in a secondary version.
The Ethiopic is divided into seventy-two “Statutes”, of which the first twenty-one are the Apostolic Church Order. Statute 22 = Hippolytus’s chapters 2-5, concluding with communion prayers. Chapter 6 of Hippolytus is omitted. Statutes 23-27 = chapters 8-15, with no changes in order. Statutes 28-35 = chapters 16-24, concluding with a brief additional section on the regular weekly eucharists ([p. 58]). Statutes 36-38 = chapters 25-26, followed by sections on the communion of the sick and on evening services ([p. 58]) and a repetition of chapter 26. 2, 10b-13. Statute 39 = chapter 27. Statute 40 is a long baptismal office, containing reminiscences of chapters 21-23 but opening with chapter 1, which is not in the Sahidic or Arabic. Statutes 40 (end)-48 = chapters 28-38. The remaining Statutes parallel Constitutions VIII, like the other versions, but there are certain variations; Statute 52, for instance, contains a considerable section of the Didache, a little of the Didascalia, and a bit (38. 4) of Hippolytus. At the end there is a collection of prayers.
The Ethiopic is a tertiary version, made from the Arabic. Statute 40, which gives chapter 1, was evidently derived from a different source which used the Apostolic Tradition independently, and its inclusion here was more or less accidental. But the presence of the other chapters not in the present Arabic texts is best explained by assuming that the Ethiopic was derived from an older Arabic form—which in turn presupposes an older Sahidic form; in these the omissions to avoid conflict with local usages had not yet taken place.[68]
The additional material in Statutes 5, 35 and 37-38 is printed by both Connolly and Jungklaus, although both[69] recognize the liturgical prayers in 5 to be post-Hippolytean; it is consequently not included in the present edition. But neither do the other two sections appear to be genuine. The rules in Statute 35 are so general and unobjectionable that their omission in the Sahidic and Arabic would be difficult to explain, while the reverence deacons must pay to presbyters seems to point to a later date. Similarly the description of the care of the sick and of the evening service in Statute 37 presents nothing that could have troubled the Sahidic and Arabic translators; the insertion of such widespread usages is easier to understand than their omission. And the repetition of earlier matter at the end of Statute 37 and in all of Statute 38 shows a bad textual tradition.
In general, then, the evidence of the Ethiopic is of minor consequence. In the only place where it stands alone (9. 11-12) it has a text that does not appear to be possible.
Summarizing: The original Greek of the Apostolic Tradition has not been recovered, except in small fragments. The Latin is generally trustworthy, but is incomplete. The only other primary version, the Sahidic, is likewise incomplete, and the results of the moderate abilities of its translator have been further confused in later transmission. The Arabic is a secondary text, offering little that the Sahidic does not contain. The only practically complete version,[70] the Ethiopic, is tertiary and is otherwise unreliable. All four of these versions presuppose a common Greek original, in which two different endings have been conflated. The other sources, the Constitutions, the Testament and the Canons, are frank revisions, in which the original is often edited out of recognition or even flatly contradicted. Under these conditions the restoration of a really accurate text is manifestly impossible.
None the less the material is abundant and independent enough to warrant confidence that the substance and in most cases even the original wording of Hippolytus’s rules have really been preserved: only the ordination prayer for deacons presents difficulties that appear insuperable.
The chapter divisions are those of Jungklaus, altered only at chapter 22. To facilitate reference the sentences have been numbered as “verses”.
THE APOSTOLIC TRADITION OF HIPPOLYTUS
TRANSLATION
LAT[1.] ¹[We] have duly completed what needed to be said about “Gifts”, describing those gifts which God by His own counsel has bestowed on men, in offering to Himself His image which had gone astray. ²But now, moved by His love to all His saints, we pass on to our most important theme, “The Tradition”, our teacher. [³And] we address the churches, so that they who have been well trained, may, by our instruction, hold fast that tradition which has continued up to now and, knowing it well, may be strengthened. [⁴This] is needful, because of that lapse or error which recently occurred through ignorance, and because of ignorant men. ⁵And [the] Holy Spirit will supply perfect grace to those who believe aright, that they may know how all things should be transmitted and kept by them who rule the church.