The Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel: Introduction, Text, and Commentary by Matthias Henze (Studien Und Texte Zu Antike Und Christentum: Mohr Siebeck) SyrApocDan has gone practically unnoticed by modern scholars. The only recognition of this text of which I am aware is by Miron Slabczyk. Slabczyk recently edited the Syriac text and translated it into Esperanto. His edition provides a valuable tool for the study of The Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel. However, a new, critical edition of the apocalypse is in order for a number of reasons. First, Slabczyk's edition of the Syriac manuscript contains several doubtful readings and omissions that need to be corrected. Second, Slabczyk's translation into Esperanto lacks annotations that identify parallels in cognate literature or point to biblical references. Third, The Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel deserves to be translated into a spoken Western language and to be published in a volume that is widely accessible to the interested reader.

The present edition of The Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel is based upon the sole manuscript known to exist, Harvard Ms Syr 42 [formerly SMH 30]. The manuscript was purchased by Harvard University along with 124 other manuscripts in November of 1905 from the private British collector J. Rendell Harris. The manuscript, which consists of 125 folios, is written in "inelegant Serto"' and is easily legible. Each page is divided into two columns with between 30 and 47 lines in each column. Since there is no colophon the dating of the manuscript has to remain tentative; a date around the twelfth or thirteenth century seems most likely. The manuscript includes a discourse on monastic life by John of Dalyatha (1 recto); fifty‑one epistles by John of Dalyatha (33 recto); discourses on knowledge by John bar Penkaye (67 recto); various epistles and hymns (93 verso); metrical discourses of John bar Penkaye (98 recto); neshana of John bar Penkaye(l0lverso);and homilies by Evagrius (102 verso), Gregory the Monk (109 recto), Simon the Monk (109 recto), Basilius (111 verso), Philoxenus (122 verso), and Chrysostom (114 verso).

The Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel is found toward the end of the manuscript on fols.117 recto through 122 verso. It is followed by some further discourses on the remaining three folios. Only a few words in the apocalypse, all of which are proper names, are partly or fully vocalized. The text of the Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel appears to have been preserved in its entirety. It opens with a superscription, "By the power of God we record the revelation which was revealed to Daniel the prophet in the land of Persia and Elam." Following the superscription, Daniel introduces himself in chapter 1 in the first person by providing some information about the ostensible setting of the book. At the end the text reverts again to the first person plural of the scribe, who, in common fashion, asks to be deemed worthy by Christ "to stand at his right side." The texts closes with a brief postscript that echoes the language of the superscription, "Here ends the wondrous revelation which was revealed to the prophet Daniel in the land of Elam and in Persia."

I have tried to reproduce the manuscript as accurately as possible, including all punctuation and diacritical points. There are a few cases in which I have been unable to make sense of the Syriac text. Henze marked these cases in the Syriac edition and has proposed improved readings in the apparatus. The Syriac edition provides the full basis for the translation.

 The numbering of the chapters is the translators. The division of the text into sentences follows the consistent punctuation of the scribe. Henze added a more general division into chapters, however, which is based on semantic units in the text. Explanations for the chapter divisions are given in the annotations. It should be noted that the manuscript itself does not have any paragraphs or numbers.

The first, "historical," part of the apocalypse is written in prose and printed accordingly. The eschatological part, by contrast, is much more poetic and makes frequent use of parallelisms. The poetic sections of the apocalypse are interspersed with brief pieces of prose to such a degree that the division between prose and poetry is often blurred. Henze presented the eschatological part of the apocalypse in colometric form even though, strictly speaking, it is not consistently metrical.

The translation is, by intention, fairly literal. Apocalyptic language is uncommon and at times difficult to understand, and trying to "improve" its style in the English translation does not make it clearer. Henze noted biblical allusions and quotations in the annotations. Rather than trying to be exhaustive, he limited references to those that contribute directly to the understanding of the apocalypse. Like other apocalypses, the Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel is suffused with biblical language, with very few direct quotations from Scripture. What precisely constitutes an allusion to, or a quotation of, Scripture is not always easily determined and should be decided on a case by case basis. Verse numbers refer to the Peshitta.

The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and Its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity by Huub Van De Sandt, David Flusser (Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum Ad Novum Testamentum, 5: Fortress) , a first‑century Christian manual probably composed in Syria‑Pales­tine, is a goldmine of information on the nascent Christian church and early Judaism. Because it offers rules for ecclesiastical praxis one might characterize the Didache as a handbook of church morals, ritual and discipline. To a certain extent, these rules obviously reflect local reality. The manual offers a glimpse of the earliest details with regard to the actual practice of the catechumenate, baptism,

and the Eucharist in a specific Christian community (Did 1‑10) and provides us with data about the functioning of leadership in that primitive community (Did 11‑15).

The booklet does not, however, merely preserve archaic traditions of a particu­lar Christian locality in patristic times. Anybody who consults the text will observe that it is profoundly Jewish. The traditions embodied in the earliest layers of the Didache text partly originate from a Jewish milieu and partly emerge from Jewish Christian circles, that is, from Jews who believed in Jesus and were seen as part of the Jewish community. Of course, those who made Jesus the core of their understanding of Judaism were aware of their being distinct in some sense. In the manual's developing process, however, the lines of demarcation were still fluid and the borders so fuzzy that we are not allowed to speak of `Judaism' and `Christian­ity' as single entities yet unless it regards the last layer of composition. Therefore, a study of the Didache will not only benefit Christian research but, conversely, may also contribute to our knowledge of first‑century Judaism.

These observations are meaningful for the approach adopted in the present study. Two methodological features characterize our research. First of all, instead of looking at the Didache only as an independent unit (belonging to Patristic Studies) we will see it as part of a larger environment of Jewish and Christian religious and cultural history. As the world of biblical studies expanded and segmented itself into specialized fields, the work has on the whole been carried out in separate, watertight compartments. We will attempt to maintain a broad perspective and relate the findings of the distinct areas (for example the New Testament, Second Temple Judaism, Liturgy, Patristic Studies) to one another.

Second, this study utilizes historical methodology‑being historical, the ques­tions are answered on historical grounds. There is a broad scholarly consensus that the document is a compilation of several older sources which already had a separate existence and a corresponding meaning before their incorporation into the Didache. A more exact understanding of the text thus requires a critical historical study, which must examine in each case the extent, age, origin, and meaning of the unit of tradition. We must make proper historical distinctions and thus sufficiently differentiate between the Didache as the result of an author's (here: the Didachist's) redactorial activity, the actual materials used by the Didachist, and the traditions behind these materials. Form Criticism and Redaction Criticism will prove important for the analysis of the various sections. Form Criticism sets itself the task of studying the formation of the various sections of the Didache prior to the writing of the manual. We will be looking for constant elements, phenomena which recur repeatedly in all sorts of documents. By a comparative analysis of `forms' we will attempt to disentangle the traditional materials embodied in the Didache and to find the real‑life situation (Sitz im Leben) of each particular literary form. Redaction Criticism attempts to determine how the composer used and reshaped these traditions within the document.

This monograph consists of two major parts. After a general Introduction in the Didache as a whole, the "ethical" section of Did 1:1‑6:1, the Two Ways, is dealt with in Part 1. The main concern of this first Part lies with the Jewishness of these chapters. The Two Ways, occurring here in a Christian post‑apostolic writing, represents a document which is almost en bloc Jewish. For the most part, it was taken over from a Jewish original which is lost. In search of the earliest form of this moral instruction, we will compare the Two Ways in the Didache with other early Christian versions (Chap. 2). In the subsequent chapter (Chap. 3), it will be shown that a Two Ways document remained in existence as a separate model for baptismal instruction up to and including mediaeval times. Once we have observed the independent circulation of the Two Ways tradition in a form similar to the one underlying the Didache and other early Christian versions, an attempt is made to reconstruct the lost Greek prototype of the Two Ways (Chap. 4). What remains to be discussed in a next chapter, however, is the Jewish life situation of the Two Ways. Although a consensus has been reached about its Jewish character in the last few decades, scholarly opinion is still divided about the genre and provenance of the Two Ways. The hypothetical reconstruction, also designated as the Greek Two Ways (GTW), will be the basis for determining the milieu in which the Two Ways was composed and transmitted originally (Chap. 5).

Part II deals with materials coming from Jewish Christian circles. We will see how the knowledge of Jewish traditional materials in the Didache benefits an understanding of first‑century Christianity. This, of course, holds true for Chaps. 1­6 in the Didache in the first place. Once we have reconstructed the Jewish form, conclusions can be drawn concerning the editorial activity of the Christian composer of the manual. But the Jewish Two Ways may also contribute to finding a way out of redactional critical problems appearing in other Christian texts. A number of scholars have noticed significant agreements between a part ofthe Two Ways documents and the antithetical section in Matt 5:17‑48 as they both share structure and argument (see below, Chap. 6, n. 3). Unanimity has not been reached as yet as to what precisely is tradition and what are interpolations and later expansions in Matthew. If we take the Jewishness of the Two Ways document seriously, however, ‑‑ ‑ in ‑ position to determine what is redactional and what is source material in this gospel section and thus restore the text in its fuller Jewish meaning (Chap. 6).

Once Jewish Christians who were responsible for the composition ofthe earlier layers of the Didache had adopted the Two Ways, the instruction primarily came to serve as an instruction to gentile converts. This becomes apparent in the addition of the remarkable passage in Did 6:2‑3. These verses represent a considerable shift in focus as compared with the Jewish prohibitions that were offered in Did.1:16:1. There is strong evidence that the passage reflects a separate tradition of the Apostolic Decree mentioned in Acts 15:20.29; 21:25. In this context, the Noachide laws and their (pre‑) rabbinic equivalents become particularly relevant (Chap. 7). Jewish traditions are also significant in the Didache's handling of Baptism, the Lord's Prayer and the Eucharist. Special attention will be paid to the account of the Eucharist in Did 9‑10 because it hardly harmonizes with the evidence of the New Testament traditions. It will become clear that the specific nature of the eucharistic prayers is ultimately shaped after Jewish models (Chap. 8). In Did 11-15, the focus will primarily be upon the character and functioning of the teachers, apostles and prophets within the Didache community. We will see how the Jewish impact on the function of these figures is still clearly recognizable (Chap. 9). 

The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary by L. Edward Phillips, Paul F. Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson (Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible: Fortress) The anonymous early church order that became known as The Apostolic Tradition and conventionally attributed to Hippolytus of Rome has generated enormous scholarly discussion since its discovery in the nineteenth century. Surprisingly, however, there has never before been a comprehensive commentary on it such as there is for other patristic works. The authors have here attempted to remedy this defect, and at the same time they have offered the first full synoptic presentation in English of the various witnesses to its text. They also develop the argument that it is neither the work of Hippolytus nor of any other individual. Instead, they believe that it is a composite document made up of a number of layers and strands of diverse provenance and compiled over a period of time, and there­fore not representing the practice of any one Christian community. In spite of this conclusion, however, for the sake of convenience the authors have chosen to continue to refer to it by the familiar designation "Apostolic Tradition."

Furthermore, the process of comparative analysis is to be undertaken carefully. Too many previous attempts at comparison of parts of The Apostolic Tradition with other ancient sources have been carried out with such superficiality as to render their results virtually worthless, and insufficient attention has generally been paid to differences as well as similarities between passages in The Apostolic Tradition and the alleged parallels. Above all, there has been a common failure to distinguish those that may also be found in a number of different authors, and often in different geographical regions and temporal periods, from those that are unique to one particular author, region, or time period. The test of exclusivity is vital to the value of the data adduced.  It is not enough, for instance, to show that phrases and vocabulary similar to those in parts of the Apostolic Tradition can also be found in the writings of Hippolytus or Irenaeus or whomever. It is essential to demonstrate that they can be found there and nowhere else for the data to have some value in determining either authorship or source or region or time period of composition of that section of the church order.

Because of limitations such as these, it has rarely been possible for the authors to suggest a particular date or provenance for the various strata that we discern in the church order. Nevertheless, we offer a tentative proposal for what might have been the contents of the core document, perhaps from the mid‑second century, to which the rest was later added. One must take care to note, however, that just because something is judged to be a later addition to the text does not mean that it is necessarily a later composition. Although in many cases this may be so, in others the material may be as old as the core itself, but only added to it at a later date. The authors believe  that the core had three basic parts (or, alternatively, that three short collections of material were combined to form the document), although the various sections may not have been in precisely their present form: directives about appointment to ministry.

Headline 3

insert content here

WT Main | About WT | Review Links | Contact | Review Sources | Search