Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (106 page)

In an analysis that only an inveterate source critic could love, Alistair Stewart-Sykes provides a long and complicated discussion of the multiple redactions of what comes down to us as chapter 21 of the Didascalia, a chapter that discusses passion week and the sequence of days leading up to the celebration of Easter. It is by all accounts a complicated and confusing part of the text, with instructions concerning what to perform on which days in relation to Jesus’ last week and, as well, in relation to the Jewish feast of Pascha:

Thus it is required, brothers, that you investigate carefully in the days of the Pascha and perform your fasting with all diligence, making a beginning when your brothers from the people [i.e., the Jews] are keeping the Pascha. (5.17.1) … Therefore from the tenth, which is the second day of the week, you shall fast in the days of the Pascha. You shall sustain yourselves with bread and salt and water only, at the ninth hour, until the fifth day of the week. However on the Friday and Saturday you shall fast entirely. (5.18.1) … For this reason you likewise are to mourn on their behalf on the sabbath day of the Pascha, until the third hour of the night following. And then, at the resurrection of Christ, rejoice and be glad on their behalf, and break your fast. (5.20.9) You shall observe it in this way whenever the fourteenth of the Pascha should occur, for neither the month nor the day falls at the same time each year, but is changeable. Thus you should be fasting when that people performs the Pascha; yet be careful to conclude your vigil within their (week of) unleavened bread. (5.20.10)

In an attempt to make sense of the various comments of the text, Stewart-Sykes argues that the book originated as a document that embraced a Quartodeciman perspective, but that it was later edited to oppose this perspective.
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The result was a view that supported the observance of Easter on Sunday, but within the Quartodeciman milieu—that is, during the celebration of the Pascha, but always on a Sunday—a compromise position hammered out in the midst of some rather fierce controversy over the celebration of this most important festival in the life of the church.

Several scholars have argued that a particular concern of the Didascalia is to control the activities of women in the church. G. Schöllgen, for example, maintains that the directions given to widows not to engage in pastoral duties, but to do good deeds only in the sphere of the home, represent a polemic against other practices that were being followed, a view supported by Carolyn Osiek and, strongly, Charlotte Methuen.
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The instructions given to and about widows occur in book 3. A widow must be over fifty years of age (3.1.1)
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; she is not allowed to remarry more than once: “After this she is a harlot” (3.2.2). The author is especially concerned about widows who are “talkative or loud, or garrulous, or fond of strife” (3.5.1). Widows are not to instruct in doctrine, since “when a woman speaks of the incarnation and suffering of Christ, [the gentiles] shall sneer and scoff, rather than glorifying the word of the old woman, and she shall be subject to a harsh judgement for her sin” (3.6.1). Women, then, are not to teach, but “solely to pray and beseech the Lord God” (3.6.2). The author’s apostolic logic: when the Lord “sent us, the twelve” to proclaim the gospel, he “did not send with us the women disciples who were with us … to instruct or save the world.” Impeccable logic, of its sort. The author instructs widows not to “wander or go from house to house” (3.6.4), and is especially concerned for widows who go about begging for alms, “caring only for mammon” (3.7.3–4).

In particular he stresses that women are not allowed to baptize, even other women (3.9.1–2). But they may serve as deaconesses who can speak to other women in the houses of pagans and to anoint with oil other women at their baptism, although it must be the man who pronounces the invocation of the divine names at the ceremony (3.12.1–3). Moreover, women are allowed to educate other women who come out of baptism, “so that the mark of baptism may be kept intact in chastity and holiness” (3.12.3).

In short, as summarized by Carolyn Osiek, women are not considered empowered subjects in this text; they are “reduced to cloistered ignoramuses who can be trusted with nothing”; they cannot speak to pagans or else they will make Christianity an object of ridicule (3.5); they must stay at home to pray and spin, or they will be spiritually bankrupt (3.6, 7); they can engage in no ministry unless ordered by the bishop or deacon, whom they must obey (3.8); for them to baptize would be dangerous both to themselves and to the ones they baptize (3.9); just as the altar does not move about, so too they must stay at home (3.6.3).
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As indicated, several scholars have suggested that the vehemence with which these injunctions are set forth suggests that the author is trying to prescribe a form of church authority in the face of opposition from another model. Thus Methuen: “The tone and content of these instructions make it likely that they are a polemic against women who do indeed baptize and teach and who in so doing assume a function and authority which the author regards as the exclusive province of the bishop.”
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And Osiek: “The length of texts devoted to the subject and the vehemence expressed are exceptional, however, and seem to indicate a reaction to some real or imagined threatening situation.”
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According to Methuen’s reconstruction of the historical
Sitz
, a group of widows who are accustomed to teaching and baptizing have come into the Didascalia’s community from another group: “The strength of his reaction against the widows suggests that they might come from outside the Didascalia congregation, representing a group which subscribes to a different pattern of ministry and authority, and, moreover, to one which grants freedom and authority to women.”
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In response, it might be pointed out that there is nothing in the polemic to suggest any outside influence. More likely the author’s polemic is directed against what has traditionally happened in the community and what continues to happen in his own day. He is writing to prevent women from engaging in activities they were already involved with.

Osiek puts the matter in a sensible broader context:

The more hierarchically structured Christian churches of the second and third centuries often felt themselves to be in a state of siege because of the threat posed by the more “charismatic” or loosely structured communities that more often than not seem to have allowed a great deal of freedom and responsibility to women, especially in the area of religious leadership.

As a result,

the attempt to restrict severely the activities of widows is, no doubt, part of the well-known reaction against the freedom exercised by women in rival Christian groups. Or, more specifically, it could be a reaction against the very important role played by members of the order of widows in neighboring churches.
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To this extent, the Didascalia would be a kind of counterforgery, in the broad sense, produced, in its final redaction, in the names of the apostles in order to rein in a dominant practice in which women, and especially widows, were exercising considerable authority in their roles in the church.

At the outset of our investigation we saw a number of key aspects of the Apostolic Constitutions.
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The book is a heavily redacted text that combines three otherwise extant documents in order to make a more all-encompassing church order: the Didascalia (in what are now
chs. 1
–
7
); the Didache (
ch. 8
), and the Apostolic
Tradition (
ch. 8
). To the end is added the eighty-five “Apostolic Canons,” which may have had a separate transmission history at some stage, but are now known only in their connection with this larger work.
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Thomas Kopecek has noted that the Greek text of the Apostolic Constitutions was first edited in the sixteenth century by a Spanish Jesuit, Franciscus Turrianus, whose interest in the work, as a Roman Catholic, was to appeal to its apostolic authority in order to refute the Protestant understanding of the church. In the centuries that followed, Anglican divines cited the final book of the work in order to advance their views of the liturgy, as sanctioned by the apostles. As Kopecek points out, “This interpretation died hard.”
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Possibly this late use of the document can provide a clue as to the purpose of its original concoction. For it does indeed appear to have been generated in order to justify certain ecclesiastical structures through the sanctioning power of the pens of the apostles. It was only when the sources of the work were discovered and evaluated that scholars abandoned any claims to its apostolic provenance.

Of the three sources that were used to construct the Apostolic Constitutions, only the Didascalia came to the editor/author (in its final redacted form) as pseudepigraphic; the other two works were anonymous. But when edited into a larger whole, all three works have become pseudonymous, and in fact the compiler of the Apostolic Constitutions has gone well beyond the Didascalia itself in emphasizing his book’s apostolic origins. As noted earlier, the apostolic claim is made, now, at the beginning of each of the major divisions (beginnings of books 1, 7, and 8). On occasion throughout the work the author speaks in the first-person plural as eyewitnesses and disciples of the earthly Jesus, as in 2.55.2:

After His passion [we] the twelve apostles, and Paul the chosen vessel.… We therefore, who have been vouchsafed the favour of being the witnesses of His appearance, together with James the brother of our Lord, and the other seventy-two disciples, and his seven deacons, have heard from the mouth of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by exact knowledge declare “what is the will of God, that good, and acceptable, and perfect will.”
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Or in book 6, when speaking of the Jerusalem Conference of Acts 15:

But because this heresy did seem the more powerful to seduce men, and the whole Church was in danger, we the twelve assembled together at Jerusalem.…
We deliberated, together with James the Lord’s brother, what was to be done.… And when one said one thing, and some another, I Peter stood up and said to them [etc.] … (6.12)

In Book 8, “we, the twelve apostles of the Lord,” (8.4) along with Paul and James (the brother of Jesus), give instructions, individually by name: “I, Peter, say that a bishop to be ordained is to be … chosen by the whole people …” (8.12); “And I James, the brother of John, the son of Zebedee say, that the deacon shall immediately say …” (8.12); “Concerning the ordination of deacons, I Philip make this constitution” (8.17). And so on. The apostolic band contained in the first-person plural is not always the same throughout that text. Thus, for example, 6.12 mentions the Eleven, Matthias, and James, but does not include Paul among the “we” who are speaking. Yet, in addition to the twelve, Paul, James, and Clement all elsewhere speak in the first person.

Sometimes the author alludes to the lives of individual members of the twelve in the first person, as they occasionally speak out to say something to identify themselves, for instance, Matthew, who calls himself the tax collector (2.24.4); Thomas, the one who was lacking in faith (5.19.1); and especially Peter, who recalls his conflicts with Simon Magus (4.7.2, 6.7.4). At other times the author quotes the writings of the New Testament as if the apostles themselves were simply speaking the words (as opposed to him, the author, quoting texts); or he speaks of personal episodes rather than quotations of Scripture, as in 2.46: “It is also a duty to forgive each other’s trespasses,… as the Lord determined when I Peter asked Him, ‘How oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him’”; or 5:7: “He … sent a piece of money out of a fish’s mouth by me Peter….”

The point of all this heightened first-person narrative is occasionally hammered home, in case readers are too dull to figure it out for themselves: “We who have eaten and drunk with Him, and have been spectators of His wonderful works, and of His life, and of His conduct, and of His words, and of His sufferings…. We teach you all these things which he appointed us by His Constitutions” (5.7).

Scholars have long questioned whether the final document was compiled over time by a number of editors, or instead was the product of a single redactor’s work. An early proponent of multiple redactors was Johann Sebastian von Drey in 1829;
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the consensus today, however, leans toward a single redactor, for compelling reasons that are, however, of little moment for our present concerns.
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There is also a strong consensus that the final product was made in Syria, probably Antioch, at the end of the fourth century. That date would accommodate the discussion of the minor church offices (subdeacon, reader, singer, deaconess, etc.) in 8.12 and, in particular, the list of festivals that includes Christmas in 5.13, since
Chrysostom indicates in a homily of 386
CE
that the Christmas festival in Antioch began to be celebrated ten years earlier.
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There have been long, hard, protracted, and occasionally pointless arguments over the inclination of the author/final editor of the Apostolic Constitutions, especially of his theological proclivities.
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The concern is not merely a modern one, as shown by Canon 2 of the Trullanum (692–93
CE
), which was quoted at the outset of this study, but which is of sufficient relevance to warrant quoting again:

It has also seemed good to this holy Council, that the eighty-five canons, received and ratified by the holy and blessed Fathers before us, and also handed down to us in the name of the holy and glorious Apostles should from this time forth remain firm and unshaken for the cure of souls and the healing of disorders. And in these canons we are bidden to receive the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles [written] by Clement. But formerly through the agency of those who erred from the faith certain adulterous matter was introduced, clean contrary to piety, for the polluting of the Church, which obscures the elegance and beauty of the divine decrees in their present form. We therefore reject these Constitutions so as the better to make sure of the edification and security of the most Christian flock; by no means admitting the offspring of heretical error, and cleaving to the pure and perfect doctrine of the Apostles.
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