The Alexandrine Sinodos (or ''Clementine Heptateuch'') is a

Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...

collection of Church Orders. This collection of earlier texts dates from the 4th or 5th century CE. The provenance is

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

and it was particularly used in the ancient Coptic and Ethiopian Christianity.

Manuscript tradition

The original text, which was probably written in

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, is now lost. Translations in

Geʽez Geez ( or ; , and sometimes referred to in scholarly literature as Classical Ethiopic) is an ancient South Semitic language. The language originates from what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea. Today, Geez is used as the main liturgical langu ...

, Bohairic Coptic, Sahidic Coptic and

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

remain extant. The Sahidic translation is found in

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

manuscript or.1820, dated 1006, and was published in 1883 by

Paul de Lagarde Paul Anton de Lagarde (2 November 1827 – 22 December 1891) was a German biblical scholar and orientalist, sometimes regarded as one of the greatest orientalists of the 19th century. Lagarde's anti-Semitism, anti-Slavism, and aversion to tradit ...

. A new edition was published in 1954 by Till and Leipoldt. The Sahidic version lacks some prayers found in other manuscripts. The Arabic translation is complete and dates to before 1295 CE. It is found in Vaticanus manuscript ar.149, and was published in 1904 by

George William Horner George William Horner (1849–1930) was a British biblical scholar, an editor of the text of the New Testament in the dialects of the Coptic language. In the Bohairic version, Horner edited in four volumes from 1898 to 1905. In the Sahidic versio ...

. Later editions were published by J. Perier in 1912 and Turnhout in 1971. The Geʽez translation, which dates from the 13th century, is a complete copy of the original with additional interpolations. It is found in British Museum manuscript or.793, and was published in 1904 by George William Horner. The Bohairic translation was made in 1804 from the Sahidic text, and was published in 1848 by Henry Tattam. The more ancient translations are the Sahidic and Arabic versions (probably both coming through a common lost Sahidic version of about 500 CE). The Geʽez version is derived from the Arabic one.See the table at page 42 of

Content

The ''Alexandrine Sinodos'' is a collection of Church Orders, usually divided into seven books. It is so composed: * Book 1 includes the Apostolic Church-Order * Books 2 and 3 include the ''Egyptian Church Order'' (better known as

Apostolic Tradition The ''Apostolic Tradition'' (or ''Egyptian Church Order'') is an early Christian treatise which belongs to the genre of the ancient Church Orders. It has been described to be of "incomparable importance as a source of information about church lif ...

) * Books 4 to 7 include the ''eighth book of the

Apostolic Constitutions The ''Apostolic Constitutions'' or ''Constitutions of the Holy Apostles'' (Latin: ''Constitutiones Apostolorum'') is a Christian collection divided into eight books which is classified among the Church Orders, a genre of early Christian litera ...

'', without the last chapter (

Canons of the Apostles The Apostolic Canons, also called Apostolic canons (Latin: ''Canones apostolorum'', "Canons of the Apostles"), Ecclesiastical Canons of the Same Holy Apostles, or Canons of the Holy Apostles, is a 4th-century Syrian Christian text. It is an Anc ...

) and without the liturgical prayers. The numbering of the chapters is different in each version. The Sahidic and Bohairic versions divide the ''Apostolic Church-Order'' into 30 chapters, while the Arabic and Geʽez versions divide it into 20 chapters. The Sahidic and Bohairic versions have the ''Apostolic Tradition'' from chapters 31 to 62, while the Arabic and Geʽez versions from chapters 21 to 47.

Notes

{{Reflist, 2

External links

G.W. Horner, ''The statutes of the apostoles or Canones Ecclesiastici'', 1904
English text of the Ge'ez version (at pages 127–232), of Arabic version (at pages 233–293) and of the Sahidic version (at pages 295–363)
Henry Tattam ''The Apostolical Constitutions, or Canons of the Apostles'' 1848
English text of the Bohairic version Ancient church orders 5th-century Christian texts

Manuscript tradition

Content

See also

Notes

External links