Apostolic Tradition

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This article is about the third century Christian text. For the deposit of faith on which some churches' dogma is based, see Sacred Tradition.

The Apostolic Tradition is an early manual of Christian church life and discipline which includes early forms of worship. It was formerly known as the 'Egyptian Church Order' but is now held to be the work of the third century Roman theologian Hippolytus. First published in 1848, it contained a previously unknown church order written in the Bohairic dialect of Coptic. Subsequently other versions have been discovered - in Latin, Sahidic, Arabic and Ethiopic - and a critical edition was produced by Dom Gregory Dix in 1937. In its forty short chapters, it deals with ordinations, with the catechumenate and with baptism, the duties of deacons, fasting, the agape, offerings of fruit, private prayer, care of the consecrated elements and cemetery fees. It may have been written in Rome but has been held to describe the forms of Church life in Alexandria. Wherever it originated it was held to be authoritative in Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt and Ethiopia, where it was copied and re-edited. A version of it is in use in Ethiopia even today.

It has been described as of 'incomparable importance as a source of information about church life and liturgy in the third century'. (G.J. Cuming).It is, by 150 years, the earliest example of a form of service. It has been widely influential on liturgical scholarship in the twentieth century. Those who read chapter four, if they are at all familiar with the Eucharistic Prayers of Catholic, Anglican or Reformed Churches, will recognise in the order, language, and contents the source of those prayers, as well as of some of the disputes about what a Eucharistic prayer can say.