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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,
