Friday Scholarly Notes
11/22/24
Bradshaw, Paul F. (2002). Chapter Four: Ancient Church Orders: A Continuing Enigma." In The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy. (pages 73-97). Oxford University Press. (Personal Library)
Bradshaw observes that the nineteenth century saw a spate of discovery and publication of ancient church orders, directions for the morals, liturgy, and organization of churches (Bradshaw 2002, p. 72). Titles and provenance of some of the documents are challenging matters as the works are generally not extant in their original form. The copying and redactional process can create multiple similar documents with different names or different documents under the same name.
Upon consideration of the various works, "it rapidly became obvious that they were more than merely parallel examples of a particular type of literature. Parts of the different documents exhibited such a marked similarity to one another that it clearly pointed to a direct literary relationship" (Bradshaw 2002, p. 75). However, the nature of that relationship is not entirely clear. A proposed relationship has gradually become fairly clear (see picture of fig. 4.2 from p. 76).
11/22/24
Bradshaw, Paul F. (2002). Chapter Four: Ancient Church Orders: A Continuing Enigma." In The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy. (pages 73-97). Oxford University Press. (Personal Library)
Bradshaw observes that the nineteenth century saw a spate of discovery and publication of ancient church orders, directions for the morals, liturgy, and organization of churches (Bradshaw 2002, p. 72). Titles and provenance of some of the documents are challenging matters as the works are generally not extant in their original form. The copying and redactional process can create multiple similar documents with different names or different documents under the same name.
Upon consideration of the various works, "it rapidly became obvious that they were more than merely parallel examples of a particular type of literature. Parts of the different documents exhibited such a marked similarity to one another that it clearly pointed to a direct literary relationship" (Bradshaw 2002, p. 75). However, the nature of that relationship is not entirely clear. A proposed relationship has gradually become fairly clear (see picture of fig. 4.2 from p. 76).
Bradshaw continues with a brief synopsis of the various church orders and of the scholarly evaluation of their texts (Bradshaw 2002, p. 77ff). Because my particular research focuses on the Didache, my review here does as well. The textual history given is very brief, compared to that of Niederwimmer (1998). Bradshaw does state that a comparison of the Didache as used in Apostolic Church Order and Apostolic Constitutions 7 is helpful in determining the correct reading of the text (Bradshaw 2002, p. 77). Bradshaw does briefly consider the possibility that the Didache is very early, possibly antedating the canonical Gospels. However, this speculation is generally built on an assumption that the eucharistic theology is undeveloped (Bradshaw 2002, p. 78). Because theology may have developed along different tracks in different places, Bradshaw does not consider this a definitive analytical method (Bradshaw 2002, p. 78).
Bradshaw goes on to discuss the Didascalia Apostolorum (Bradshaw 2002, p. 78-80), the Apostolic church Order (p. 80), Apostolic Tradition (pp. 80-83), the Canons of Hippolytus (pp. 83-84), Apostolic Constitutions (pp. 84-86), and Testamentum Domini (pp. 86-87).
For the most part, the church orders we know of appear in collections of other similar material. Bradshaw considers evaluation of this context to be a necessary, though neglected, task. (Bradshaw 2002, p. 88). He observes that the orders typically appear in the same sequence across the different collections. For this reason, Bradshaw thinks there must be some literary relationships among the collections, but he rules out direct dependency (Bradshaw 2002, p. 89). The similarity is simply not adequate for such a process to have taken place. Bradshaw details a number of possible explanations for the works being collected in the way they were. The process, however, remains mysterious.
Bradshaw considers the possibility that church orders should be considered "living literature" in which the texts are updated and altered over time. In this mention of the process, he considers the goal as reproducing what was the practice of the time (Bradshaw 2002, p. 91). The question of the "original" or the "correct" reading of a text is therefore quite challenging. Likewise, due to the fluid nature of the works, the actual sources may well be obscured (Bradshaw 2002, p. 92). Bradshaw illustrates this briefly in terms of the challenge inherent in tracking editorial changes of material common to the Didache, the Doctrina Apostolorum, and the Epistle of Barnabas (Bradshaw 2002, p. 92-93).
A final challenge faced by scholars of these works is the term/concept "apostolic." In the earliest usage, Bradshaw considers it to mean "consistent with the teaching of the apostles" while later it came to mean "written by the apostles" (Bradshaw 2002, p. 93). This creates difficulties as one and the same term can be used as an indication of orthodoxy or of specific authorship. Some works have gone so far as to suggest the "apostolic" works are directly from the pens or mouths of the Twelve apostles, though we lack evidence for a sufficiently early date. The claim to authorship by the original apostles is powerful, but Bradshaw does not consider it to be accurate (Bradshaw 2002, p. 95-97).
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