The Didache, Hermas, and the Anonymous Witnesses

Around the three named bishops stands the anonymous half of the Apostolic Fathers corpus: the Didache, lost for centuries and rediscovered in Constantinople in 1873; the Shepherd of Hermas, the most widely read non-biblical book of the early Church; the fragments of Papias; the Epistle to Diognetus, preserved into modernity by a single manuscript that burned in 1870; and the border texts, 2 Clement and Barnabas. This file surveys these witnesses with their dates and manuscript histories, and describes the critical editions through which the whole corpus is read today.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Didache: The Lost Church Order Found

The Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is the most dramatic rediscovery in the history of patristic scholarship. Known to the ancients — Eusebius lists the “so-called Teachings of the Apostles” among the disputed books, and Athanasius commends it for catechumens (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History III.25; Athanasius, Festal Letter 39, of 367) — it vanished from view until the Greek Metropolitan Philotheos Bryennios found it in 1873 in an eleventh-century manuscript (the Codex Hierosolymitanus, copied in 1056 by the scribe Leon) in the library of the Jerusalem Patriarchate’s metochion in Constantinople, publishing it in 1883 to scholarly sensation (Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, 3rd ed., Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007, introduction to the Didache, on Bryennios and the manuscript; Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1, Utrecht/Westminster: Spectrum/Newman, 1950, on the Didache).

The little book falls into four parts: the moral catechesis of the Two Ways of life and death (chs. 1–6, closely related to the Jewish two-ways tradition also found in Barnabas); liturgical instructions — baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” in running water if possible, fast Wednesdays and Fridays, pray the Our Father three times daily, and the eucharistic prayers over the cup and the broken bread with the great petition “as this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains and being gathered became one, so let your Church be gathered from the ends of the earth into your kingdom” (Didache 7–10; trans. Holmes); a church order regulating apostles, prophets, and the appointment of bishops and deacons (chs. 11–15), including the instruction to “confess your transgressions in church” and the citation of Malachi’s “pure sacrifice” of the Eucharist (Didache 14); and a brief apocalypse (ch. 16). Its date is genuinely open: the compilation draws on first-century material, and scholarly datings run from c. 50–70 for parts of it to the early second century for the whole [Disputed: Audet and others argued for a very early date (mid-first century); the mainstream places the compilation c. 90–120; see the survey in Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 2007, and Niederwimmer, The Didache, Hermeneia, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998]. For Orthodox liturgical theology the Didache is a primary witness that fixed fasting days, baptismal practice, and eucharistic prayer belong to the Church’s earliest stratum, not to later accretion (cf. Holy Tradition).

The Shepherd of Hermas: The Penitent’s Apocalypse

The Shepherd, composed at Rome by one Hermas — a freedman and failed merchant on his own account — is a sprawling work of visions, mandates, and similitudes centered on one pastoral question: is there repentance for sin after baptism? Its answer — yes, once, for the Church is still building like the tower of the first vision — made it the great book of the second-century penitential crisis (Hermas, Visions 1–4; Mandates; Similitudes; trans. Holmes; Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1, on the Shepherd’s penitential teaching). Its popularity in the early Church was enormous: it is quoted as “scripture” by Irenaeus, treated reverently by Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and stands — complete except for the loss of the ending — after the Apocalypse in the fourth-century biblical Codex Sinaiticus; the Muratorian fragment, however, already rules it out of the canon, saying it was written “quite recently, in our times,” by the brother of Pius, bishop of Rome (the Muratorian Canon, lines 73–80; Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 2007, introduction to Hermas). Its date is correspondingly disputed between the late first century (if the Clement named in Vision 2.4.3 is Clement of Rome) and c. 140–150 (if the Muratorian notice is right); many scholars accept composition in stages across that span [Disputed: single early date vs. Muratorian date vs. stage-composition; survey in Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 2007, and Osiek, Shepherd of Hermas, Hermeneia, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999].

Hermas’ theology is unpolished — his Christology is expressed in categories (the Son and the “glorious angel,” the Spirit and the Son imperfectly distinguished) that later dogma would have to correct — and this is itself instructive: the corpus shows the Church’s faith lived and preached before its grammar was settled, which is why the Fathers of the fourth century are needed (Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1, on Hermas’ doctrinal peculiarities; see The Cappadocian Settlement).

Papias: The Fragments of a Hearer

Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in the early second century, wrote five books of Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord; every copy has perished, and he survives only in quotations — chiefly in Irenaeus, who calls him “a hearer of John and companion of Polycarp” (Adversus Haereses V.33.4), and Eusebius, who preserves his famous preface preferring “the living and abiding voice” to books and his notices that Mark wrote down Peter’s preaching “accurately but not in order” and that Matthew composed “the oracles in the Hebrew language” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History III.39; trans. NPNF II/1). Eusebius, who disliked Papias’ vivid millenarianism, famously judged him “a man of very small intelligence, as one may say judging from his own words” (Ecclesiastical History III.39.13) — a verdict scholarship treats as tendentious, since Papias’ testimony on the origins of the Gospels remains among the earliest and most discussed data in New Testament studies (Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 2007, introduction to the Papias fragments; the fragments are collected there and in Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, LCL 25, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). The loss of Papias is the corpus’s standing reminder of how thin the thread of transmission is — the theme of Section 08 (see Manuscripts, Migne, and the Critical Editions).

The Epistle to Diognetus: The Jewel and the Fire

The Epistle to Diognetus is an anonymous apology addressed to an inquiring pagan — possibly of the late second century, though datings range into the third [Disputed: no ancient author cites it, so dating rests wholly on internal evidence; proposals run c. 150–310; see Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 2007, introduction to Diognetus] — and contains the most quoted page of the whole corpus, the description of Christians in the world: “They live in their own countries, but only as sojourners… every foreign land is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign… What the soul is in the body, that Christians are in the world” (Diognetus 5–6; trans. Holmes). Its survival was by a single thread: one manuscript, the thirteenth/fourteenth-century Codex Argentoratensis, found in 1436 reportedly in a fishmonger’s shop in Constantinople, eventually reached the municipal library of Strasbourg — and was destroyed there by fire during the Prussian bombardment of 24 August 1870, so that the text now rests entirely on earlier transcriptions and editions (Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 2007, introduction to Diognetus, on the manuscript’s history and destruction). Strictly the work is an apology rather than an “apostolic” writing; it entered the corpus by editorial convention, and it bridges directly to the Apologists of Section 03.

The Border Texts: 2 Clement and Barnabas

Two further texts travel with the corpus. The homily called 2 Clement — transmitted with 1 Clement in Codex Alexandrinus and the Bryennios manuscript, but by common scholarly consent not Clement’s and not a letter — is the earliest complete Christian sermon outside the New Testament, usually dated c. 120–160 (Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 2007, introduction to 2 Clement). The Epistle of Barnabas, an anonymous treatise of c. 70–135 that reads Israel’s Scriptures as a Christian book by relentless typology and denies that the covenant belongs to the Jews according to the flesh, was attributed to Paul’s companion by Clement of Alexandria and stands in Codex Sinaiticus after the New Testament; the attribution is universally abandoned, and its supersessionist rhetoric is read historically, as a document of the parting of the ways (Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 2007, introduction to Barnabas; Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1). That both texts hovered at the canon’s edge — copied in the great Bibles, then sifted out — shows the canon and the patristic corpus being distinguished by the same ecclesial judgment (see The Orthodox Church and Holy Scripture).

The Critical Editions: From Cotelier to Holmes

The corpus as a collection is an editorial artifact with its own history. Jean-Baptiste Cotelier’s SS. Patrum qui temporibus apostolicis floruerunt… opera (Paris, 1672) first gathered Barnabas, Clement, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp under one cover; the label “Apostolic Fathers” stuck, and the contents grew — the Didache entering only after 1883 (Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 2007, general introduction, on the history of the collection). The scholarly foundation remains J. B. Lightfoot’s monumental five volumes (The Apostolic Fathers, Part I: S. Clement of Rome; Part II: S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp; London: Macmillan, 1885–1890), whose texts, translations, and essays settled the Ignatian question and set the standard for all subsequent work; Lightfoot’s one-volume abridgment, completed by J. R. Harmer (1891), became the ancestor of the modern student editions.

Today two bilingual editions serve as the standard instruments, and the repository cites the corpus through them: Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd ed. (Baker Academic, 2007) — a revision, ultimately, of Lightfoot–Harmer, with full introductions and the current scholarly apparatus; and Bart D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library 24–25 (Harvard University Press, 2003), which replaced Kirsopp Lake’s 1912–1913 Loeb. For Orthodox readers a caution attaches not to the texts but to some framing: Ehrman’s introductions are written from a self-consciously non-confessional standpoint; the texts themselves are common property, and per this repository’s method the standpoint of an edition’s editor does not disqualify his scholarship (METHODOLOGY §4.1; cf. The Fathers in English).

See Also

References

  • Holmes, Michael W., ed. and trans. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007. (Introductions and texts for every work treated: Bryennios and Codex Hierosolymitanus; Hermas datings; the Papias fragments; Codex Argentoratensis and the 1870 fire; 2 Clement; Barnabas; Cotelier and the history of the collection.)
  • Ehrman, Bart D., ed. and trans. The Apostolic Fathers. 2 vols. Loeb Classical Library 24–25. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. (The current Loeb edition.)
  • Lightfoot, J. B. The Apostolic Fathers. 5 vols. London: Macmillan, 1885–1890; one-volume ed. with J. R. Harmer, 1891. (The foundational edition.)
  • Quasten, Johannes. Patrology. Vol. 1: The Beginnings of Patristic Literature. Utrecht/Westminster, MD: Spectrum/Newman Press, 1950. (Didache, Hermas, Barnabas, Papias: works and doctrine.)
  • Niederwimmer, Kurt. The Didache: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998. (The dating debate and composition history.)
  • Osiek, Carolyn. Shepherd of Hermas: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999. (Stage-composition and date of Hermas.)
  • Eusebius. Ecclesiastical History III.25, III.39. Trans. NPNF II/1. (The Didache among the disputed books; the Papias fragments and Eusebius’ verdict.)
  • Athanasius. Festal Letter 39 (367). Trans. NPNF II/4. (The Didache commended for catechumens.)
  • Irenaeus. Adversus Haereses V.33.4. Trans. ANF 1. (Papias as hearer of John.)
  • Primary texts cited: Didache 7–10, 14, 16; Hermas, Vision 2.4.3; Epistle to Diognetus 5–6; the Muratorian Canon, lines 73–80 (all in Holmes).