and with the precepts worked out at length. There is no reference to any previous treatise, but the doctrine of the Two Ways is given as one of the Apostolic Doctrines; and is supplemented by directions for the administration of the Sacraments and the appointment of church officers, and a prediction of the end of the world follows.
This completes the series of works parallel with the Didache, and by comparing them with the Constantinople manuscript it will be seen that nearly every sentence in the Didache of Bryennius occurs in one or other of the four works cited. So that the question arises whether the Didache was the source from which the other writers drew their sentiments, or whether it was not an epitome or collection made by an anonymous writer, who selected what he considered to be the primitive doctrines of the Apostles, omitting what he considered to be of later date or less importance, and forming out of their teaching a short manual of duty. The shortness of the treatise published by Bryennius seems to suggest the latter view, which will make the work somewhat resemble the Syriac version of Ignatius, which is now acknowledged to be an abridgment of the Greek.[1]
- ↑ Whiston seems to have supposed that he had discovered the missing Διδαχὴ τῶν ἀποστόλων in some Arabic fragments of the Apostolical Constitutions found by him in the Bodleian Library at Oxford; but though he was right in his conjecture that the two works coincided in part, none of his fragments are found in the genuine Didache, being all taken from the first to the fourth book of the Apostolical Constitutions, while the Didache is only found in the seventh, book (Whiston, "Primitive Christianity Revived," p. 81); and Grabe himself was mistaken (cf. Grabe, "An Essay upon two Arabic Manuscripts ") in supposing that it was contained in the eighth book; the fact that it was really contained in the seventh
