[24] Art. Acts in Encyc. Bib., citing iv, 20; xiv, 22; xx, 24; xxi, 13; xxiv, 16. [↑]
[25] Egyptian Magic, 1899, pref. [↑]
[26] Comparative Religion, 1912, p. 57. [↑]
Appendix A
THE “TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES”
(Nov. 1 and 8, 1891.)
[The following is a revised translation of the Διδαχὴ τῶν δώδεκα ἀποστόλων, discovered by Philotheos Bryennios, Metropolitan of Nicomedia (then of Serres), in 1873, in the library attached to the Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre, in the Phanar, or Greek quarter, of Constantinople. It was part of a manuscript containing several ancient documents, including two Epistles of Clement of Rome, which Bryennios published in 1875. Not till 1883 did he publish the Didachê.
Of the genuineness of the MS. there can be no reasonable doubt. That there was current in the early Church a “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” appears from Eusebius (H. E. iii, 25) and Athanasius (Festal Epistle 39, C.E. 367). There were very good reasons why the Church, as time went on, should desire to drop the Teaching from her current literature. It is obviously in origin a purely Jewish document, and the first six chapters show no trace of Jesuism. We have already stated the reasons for concluding that the primary “Teaching” was the official doctrine of the twelve Jewish apostles of the High Priest to the Jews dispersed through the Roman Empire; that the Gospels borrowed from it, and not the converse; that Judaic Jesuists adopted it, and gradually interpolated it; and that it is the real foundation of the legend of the twelve Jesuist apostles. The sub-title: “Teaching of [the] Lord through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations” may have been the original. “Lord” here has the force of “God.”
On a first study, we found reasons[1] for deciding that the Epistle of Barnabas, which in part closely coincides with the “Teaching,” borrows from it, and not the converse. That view, though naturally opposed by many orthodox scholars, who want to date the Teaching as late as possible, was from the first, we find, put by Farrar and by Zahn, and is convincingly maintained by the American editors, though of course they take the conventional view that the document is of Christian origin. Yet its Græco-Jewish origin, we feel certain, will be plain to every open-minded reader at the first perusal. That view was maintained by the Rev. Dr. C. Taylor, of St. John’s College, Cambridge, in two lectures given at the Royal Institution in 1886; and it has been accepted by Dr. Salmon in his Introduction to the Study of the New Testament. It was admitted to be probable by the Rev. A. Gordon, in the Modern Review, July, 1884, but rejected by the American editors (1885).