Apostolic Tradition

The text was found in the late 5th century Latin manuscript known as Verona Palimpsest, where it is the third item in the collection. An earlier and more complete Ethiopic version of the text, which was translated directly from the original Greek between the fourth and sixth centuries, was discovered in Ethiopia in 1999 within a 13th-century manuscript known as the Aksumite Collection. This manuscript is a compendium of synodical materials covering topics like canon law, liturgy, historiography, etc. It includes selected additions from the Didache and Didascalia before the concluding chapter 43. The text transmitted in the Aksumite Collection lacks the Anaphora of the Apostolic Tradition from Chapter 4. In 2025, the Ethiopic text was translated into English. Chapter 36 of the probable Greek original text was identified in 1975 as one item in a florilegium of patristic fragments. == Editions and publications ==

The first comprehensive critical editions were those of Gregory Dix in 1937, and then in 1946 by Bernard Botte. == Date and place of composition ==

Recent scholarship, such as that by Bradshaw and Johnson, has called into question the degree to which the liturgical texts witnessed in the Apostolic Tradition may be taken as representing the regular forms of worship in Rome in the 3rd century. They propose that, over the centuries, later and non-Roman liturgical forms have accumulated within an older, and substantially Roman, Church Order. == Title ==

None of the manuscript versions carry a title, and so there is no direct evidence as to how the 'Apostolic Tradition' was originally known. The quotation of chapter 36 in the Ochrid fragment is labelled, Diataxis (Ordinances) of the Holy Apostles: Given through Hippolytus; and this has been plausibly suggested as the probable title under which the whole text of the Apostolic Tradition circulated in Syria. ==Attribution to Hippolytus==

sculpture, maybe of Hippolytus of Rome, found in 1551 and used for the attribution of the Apostolic Tradition The section of the Alexandrine Sinodos, rediscovered in the 19th century, which was given the name of Egyptian Church Order, was identified with the lost Apostolic Tradition attributed to Hippolytus of Rome by Edward von der Goltz in 1906, and later by Eduard Schwartz in 1910 and by R.H. Connolly in 1916. This attribution was unanimously accepted by the scholars of that period, and became well-recognized through the works of Gregory Dix, in particular his famous The Shape of the Liturgy (1943, 1945). In addition to the above, according to Paul Bradshaw, the attribution to Hippolytus was based on the following data: • the name Hippolytus is present in later Ancient Church Orders clearly derived from the text of the Apostolic Tradition, the Canons of Hippolytus and The Constitutions through Hippolytus. • the term "apostolic tradition" itself is found on both the first and last page of the text. • in 1551 Pirro Ligorio found an ancient Roman marble statue of a seated figure near Campo Verano in Rome and moved it to the Vatican Library where it still is. On one surface of the chair was a calendar carved in Greek paschal cycle, which remembered the one attributed to Hippolytus, and on another surface the titles of numerous writings, some of them by Hippolytus, and one named "On the charismata—Apostolic Tradition". This brought the scholars to presume the existence of a writing named Apostolic Tradition by Hippolytus. More recently, the attribution of the Apostolic Tradition to Hippolytus of Rome has come under substantial criticism. According to several scholars, the Apostolic Tradition is a work written by another priest named Hippolytus, but who probably lived in Alexandria, or it contains material of separate sources ranging from the middle second to the fourth century. • the title engraved on the statue refers to charismata also, but the Apostolic Tradition does not deal with this topic; ==Content==

The Apostolic Tradition, as the other Church Orders, has the aim to offer authoritative "apostolic" prescriptions on matters of moral conduct, liturgy and Church organization. It can be divided in a prologue (chapter 1) and three main sections. ==References==