THE DIDACHE
OR
TEACHING OF THE APOSTLES
AS DISCOVERED IN MANUSCRIPT BY BRYENNIUS
The passages from Barnabas, Hermas, the Apostolic Constitutions, and the Epitome serve as an introduction to the Didache as discovered by Bryennius, and published at Constantinople from the Codex Hierosolymitanus. No other manuscript or version of it has been found, but there is no reason to doubt that it is a genuine manuscript of the eleventh century. It contains, besides the first and second Epistles of Clement, a complete text of the longer recension of Ignatius, "The Epistle of Barnabas," "The Synopsis of St. Chrysostom," and "The Teaching of the Apostles," which comes between the Clement and Ignatius.
After a good deal of consideration, I have come to the conclusion that the Didache is not an original work, but a compilation or series of excerpts from the treatises already quoted. Any one who will compare the Didache of Bryennius with the passages taken from Barnabas, Hermas, the Judicium Petri, and the Apostolic Constitutions, will find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the author of the Didache had these works in his hands, and compiled from them what he supposed to be the primitive doctrine of the Apostles; and the position of his work is not that of an original to an enlarged and completed copy, but that of a condensation and compilation from a number of other works. There seems some reason to suppose that the work thus composed underwent a further abbreviation, and that
the Didache discovered by Bryennius, which was no doubt the same as that mentioned by Nicephorus in the ninth century, was a shortened form of the Didache mentioned by Athanasius, as it does not correspond in length to the works with which he compared it, such as "The Shepherd of Hermas" or "The Book of Wisdom," and some mention of the names of the Apostles themselves would have been expected in it. In my own restoration I have endeavoured to replace what I supposed might have been found in the original Didache by giving the names of the Apostles, and bringing the work a little more into the form used at the assumed period, by supplying a commencement and conclusion in the style of the second century. For this purpose the Epitome or Judicium Petri has chiefly been used, but a complete collation has also been made of the parallel passages in Barnabas and the Apostolic Constitutions.
