This prayer is evidently Hippolytus’s, somewhat enlarged and slightly revised, and the only real difference is that the bishop no longer associates himself with the presbytery. The Constitutions merely expand the Epitome’s prayer still further with a recital of God’s attributes. In the Testament there is an independent expansion of Hippolytus’s form, but again without significant variations. Sarapion has still another paraphrase, but one equally centred about the presbyter’s teaching office.
The Sahidic and the Arabic, however, provide that the prayer used for the consecration of a bishop shall also be used at the ordination of a presbyter. With this the Canons agree, reading: “When a presbyter is ordained, let all things take place for him as take place for the bishop, with the exception of the word ‘bishop’. The bishop is in every regard like the presbyter, apart from the throne and the ordination, for to the latter no power to ordain is given”. This evidence is in accord with the well-known fact that the introduction of the monarchical episcopate came later in Egypt than elsewhere.
[9]
DEACONS
The development of the diaconate in the first century is extremely obscure, but in the Pastoral Epistles and 1 Clement “presbyters” are divided into “bishops and deacons”—in these works the three terms are never used together—indicating specializations within the presbyterate. Some presbyters were especially concerned in “overseeing” the community and others with “serving” it—particularly in charitable works; compare the “governments” and “helps” in 1 Corinthians 12. 28. When monarchical episcopacy was introduced, the now more or less supernumerary “overseers” were less important than the “servers”, who became the personal assistants of the bishops. The respective status in the third century is set forth in Didascalia, chapter 9 (= Constitutions II, 26, 4-7): “Let the bishop ... be honoured by you as God.... The deacon is with you as a type of Christ, so let him be loved by you. Let the deaconess be honoured by you as a type of the Holy Spirit. Let the presbyters be looked on by you as a type of the apostles”.
1. The reference is apparently to [chapter 2], with no explanation how choice by the people is reconciled with [3. 6]. The Sahidic, the Testament and the Canons agree with the Latin, but the Arabic, Ethiopic and the Constitutions speak only of the bishop. But the close relations between the bishop and the deacons would seem to make his freedom of choice necessary.
Does the absence of any provision for election in [chapter 8] indicate that the presbyters were still chosen by the presbytery?
2-4. Any (surviving?) remnant of the conception of deacons as “serving presbyters” is dismissed summarily.
5-8. Hippolytus is attempting to reconcile a ceremonial survival of the days when presbyters ordained with the doctrine that ordination is the prerogative of bishops. The result is incoherent; if a presbyter has no power to “give”, what is said of the “common and like Spirit” is pointless. And, although the passage appears intact (or expanded) in the other versions, 7-8 read like a later addition. But perhaps these are a theory of Hippolytus’s, glossed on a traditional phrase.
10-12. The original text of this passage is very uncertain. The Latin breaks off with “offere”, and the following words in the Ethiopic and the Testament stress what in Hippolytus is a minor and not characteristic function of the deacons ([4. 2]), while their chief duties are ignored. Moreover, neither the Constitutions, the Canons nor Sarapion have anything corresponding; all three—in widely different terms—petition for “faithfulness” and “wisdom”; all three, incidentally, quote Acts 6. It is worth noting that none of the sources call the deacons “Levites”; this title[191] appears to come in a later age when—through the change from local to diocesan episcopacy—the deacons became the assistants of the presbyters.
The Ethiopic[192] and the Constitutions speak of the diaconate as a preparation for the presbyterate: this conception belongs to the fourth, not the third, century.