The intention of Ancient Texts and Translations (ATT) is to make available a variety of ancient documents and document collections to a broad range of readers. The series will include reprints of long out-of- print volumes, revisions of earlier editions, and completely new volumes. The understanding of ancient societies depends upon our close reading of the documents, however fragmentary, that have survived. --K. C. Hanson Series Editor
The Didascalia apostolorum is one of the ancient church orders, setting out the duties and responsibilities of laypeople, bishops and widows, regulating the keeping of Pascha and engaging in polemic with Judaism. It is a work of extraordinary interest for the history of the church in Syria, as a document of social and liturgical history and as a document bearing witness to relations between Christians and Jews. Alistair Stewart-Sykes presents the text in a readable English version which takes full account of the various textual witnesses. Of particular importance is the introduction. The Didascalia is conventionally ascribed to a single hand in third-century Syria, but here an entirely new compositional hypothesis is proposed in which the work is shown to be composite and to include sources of much greater antiquity than the period of final redaction. In the light of the compositional hypothesis there are radically new discussions of ministry (including the ministry of widows), relationships with Judaism, and liturgy (including the penitential process). Beyond this the introduction engages with the social context in which these developments emerged. The work is suitable for a wide audience. The translation will be useful to undergraduate and graduate students whereas the introduction and commentary will be of interest to scholars in ecclesiastical history, historical liturgy, forming Judaism and Jewish-Christian relations as well as Syriac studies. The author, Alistair Stewart-Sykes, is well-known in the field having produced the first critical text for over a century of the Apostolic church order and the first full-length commentary on the Apostolic tradition.
This collection of articles analyzes the formation of antique and early medieval religious identities and ideas in rabbinic Judaism, early Christianity, Islam, and Greco-Roman culture. The authors question the artificial disciplinary and conceptual boundaries between these traditions.
The Qur'ān, emphasizing ritual purity and the role of Jesus as giver of God's positive law, preserves aspects of an earlier Jesus movement that most Christian groups diluted or rejected. The Didascalia Apostolorum, a late ancient church order, records a significant number of the laws promulgated in the Qur'ān, but does not fully endorse them when it comes to purity. Likewise, the Didascalia' legal narratives about the Israelites and about Jesus, as well as the legal and theological vocabulary of the Syriac (Eastern Christian Aramaic) version of the Didascalia, recurrently show kinship with the Arabic Qur'ān, amplifying the apparent affinities between the two texts. The Qur'ān, however, is not "based" on the Didascalia in any direct way; detailed comparison of the two documents illustrates the absence of textual influence in either direction. Both texts should rather be read against the background of the practices and the oral discourse shared by their respective audiences: a common legal culture.
This study examines how early Christian writers drew on ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions to develop their own ideas about purity, purification, defilement, and disgust.
A monumental work that presents a solid introduction to early Christian literature to the English reading public. It is the first work of its kind written originally in English. Reviewers were unanimous in heaping praise upon the publication and looking upon it as a breakthrough in studying the Fathers of the Church.
