[5]-6
This blessing at the eucharist of food other than the bread and wine is a remnant of the primitive custom when the rite included a meal; in Hippolytus’s day, presumably, the cheese and olives were eaten at the service and part of the oil was sipped, the remainder being reserved for anointing the sick.[176] Perhaps only Hippolytus’s exaggerated reverence for the past preserved the usage, which at any rate soon disappeared. None of the other versions of his treatise retain [chapter 6], for which the Canons[177] substitute a blessing of first-fruits. In the Testament the oil is blessed solely for the sick,[178] and this is probably the conception in the Ethiopic and the Canons. The Sahidic and Arabic replace all of [4-6] with a note that the bishop should follow “the (local) custom”.
The usual Old Testament background to these prayers need hardly be pointed out.
The prayer at the blessing of the oil has real affinities with the prayer still used in the Roman church for blessing the “oil of the sick” at the bishop’s Maundy Thursday eucharist.
[6]
2. This ingeniously worded prayer has no parallel.
3. Compare Zechariah 4. 12.
4. Compare the Jewish use of fixed initial clauses in benedictions.
[8]
PRESBYTERS
“Presbyter” is a technical term in Judaism, which early Christianity took over.[179] The Jewish conceptions at the beginning of the Christian era are best seen in the Mishnah tractate Sanhedrin:[180] the presbyters, in virtue of their divinely instituted office (Exodus 24. 9), preserved, interpreted and applied the received tradition of God’s revelation, and so were the divinely appointed rulers of Israel. In consequence, every Jewish community, even the smallest, had its presbytery,[181] which exercised all local governmental functions. When a vacancy occurred, the presbytery elected a new member; if he had served as a presbyter elsewhere, he was simply caused to “take his seat”; if not, the presbytery ordained him by the imposition of hands. Individual presbyters had no authority, which was possessed solely by the body as a whole; this principle was maintained so rigorously that there were not even regular presiding officers.[182] If a priest was elected as a presbyter, he was ordained like anyone else.[183] The same seems to have been true of the Rabbis[184] before A.D. 70; after that year they took over what was left of the presbyters’ duties and were always ordained.