We praise Him who is God most high;
Glorified and praised is He,
Who founded the world with a single word.[154]
³²Then, when the Psalm is completed, he shall give thanks over the bread, and shall give the fragments to all the believers.
On these sections compare [p. 31]. An evening service, that included bringing in the lamp, is widespread in early Christianity and is eventually derived from Judaism; the particular service described here is a prelude to a congregational agape. There is nothing in sections 18-32 that necessarily implies a date later than Hippolytus, but the ceremony is badly placed between the private agapes and the equally private meals for the widows, and it is followed by a duplication of 26. 2, 10-12.
LAT[31.] ¹The faithful, early in the morning, as soon as they have awaked and arisen, before they undertake their tasks shall pray to God and so may then go to their duties. ²But if any instruction in the word is held, let each give first place to that, that he may attend and hear the word of God, to his soul’s comfort; so let each one hasten to the church, where the Spirit abounds.
[32.] ¹But let each of the faithful be zealous, before he eats anything else, to receive the eucharist; for if anyone receives it with faith, after such a reception he cannot be harmed even if a deadly poison should be given him. ²But let each one take care that no unbeliever taste the eucharist, nor a mouse nor any other animal, and that nothing of it fall or be lost; for the body of Christ is to be eaten by believers and must not be despised. ³The cup, when thou hast given thanks in the name of the Lord, thou hast accepted as the image of the blood of Christ. ⁴Therefore let none of it be spilled, so that no alien spirit may lick it up, as if thou didst despise it; thou shalt be guilty of the blood, as if thou didst scorn the price with which thou hast been bought.[155]
In the Oriental versions the position of chapters 31-32 between chapters 30 and 33 is impossible. Chapter 30 addresses the church’s officers, chapters 31-32 individuals, chapters 33-34 the officers, and chapter 35 individuals again; chapter 31, in addition, is only a condensation of 35. 1-3. But the Hauler manuscript clears up the difficulty. In it chapter 32 is followed immediately by the Latin A form of 37. 1-38. 2a, breaking off at the end of a leaf with “apo” (for “apostolic”). The next leaf begins with “God” in the middle of 36. 5, and the text continues through 36, gives the Latin B form of 37. 1-38. 2a and breaks off this time with “tra” for “tradition”. So two versions of the work were current with different endings; in one chapter 30 was followed by 31-32 and the A conclusion, in the other it was followed by 33-35 and the B conclusion. In the Hauler manuscript both endings were reproduced, although the leaves containing the last two sentences of the first and a considerable part of the second have been lost. In the Oriental versions—or the Greek codex underlying them—the glaring duplication caused by the ending after 32 was suppressed, although the doubling of 35. 1-3 in 31 remained.
Since chapter 34 is unmistakably Roman and consequently Hippolytean, the longer ending is original; chapter 33, moreover, is perfectly in place after chapter 30. So Schwartz[156] and Jungklaus are correct in holding[157] that chapter 32 is not by Hippolytus; the only alternative would be to assume that he issued two versions of his book with different endings—a difficult supposition that would leave unexplained why the very important practice stressed in chapter 32 is omitted in the longer version.
On the other hand it is true, as Connolly argues,[158] that the rules of chapter 32 are truly third-century. The custom according to which each Christian kept the consecrated eucharist in his house and received it each morning is attested in Tertullian’s To his Wife II, 5, and the reason given (Mark 16. 18) for receiving fasting is not that of the later church (compare on [chapter 29]); Connolly observes further that the home reservation of consecrated wine as well as consecrated bread is unknown elsewhere.