This page has been validated.

Introduction

An addition was unexpectedly made to the scanty remains of the Apostolic period when, about the year 1873, Bryennius, now Bishop of Nicomedia, discovered in the library of the Holy Sepulchre at Constantinople a manuscript of the eleventh century, containing, besides other works, a complete text of the First and Second Epistles of St. Clement to the Corinthians, which had only existed previously in a mutilated state in the Codex Alexandrinus, and a lost work called "The Didache, or Teaching of the Apostles," which, though mentioned in Athanasius[1] and Eusebius[2] among the Apocryphal books of the New Testament, had not, since the time of Nicephorus in the ninth century, been known or quoted. The publication of the text by Bryennius soon led to the discovery that, although new as a work with the title of "The Didache, or Teaching of the Apostles," it was already substantially known, nearly the whole of it being contained in three works that had already been published—"The Epistle of Barnabas," "The Apostolical Constitutions," and a recently discovered treatise called "The Epitome of the Holy Apostles." This, though it does not affect the genuineness of the discovery, affects a good deal the importance that was supposed to attach to the publica-

  1. Athanasius, Epist. Fest. 39.
  2. Euseb., H, E. iii. 25, 4, 5.