The Apostolic Tradition.

        Recent research has restored to us still another lost work of Hippolytus and revealed another side of his literary activity. In the list of Hippolytus' works on the chair, one line reads: “The Apostolic Tradition About Gifts” (charismata), which probably covers two works, one the Apostolic Tradition, and the other About Gifts. These have long been reckoned among his lost writings. But a series of discoveries and researches has now resulted in the recovery of the Apostolic Tradition, which is identified with the socalled Egyptian Church Order. This work came to be so named because it first came to modern notice brought from Egypt and published by Tattam in 1848. But, in igoo, Hauer discovered and published, from a palimpsest at Verona, a Latin form of it much nearer to the original Greek and strongly suggesting that the work was in substance not Egyptian at all. The investigations of Schwartz (1910), and others mdependently carried on by Connolly (1916),[83] showed that the book lying back of these versions or revisions was none other than the long lost Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, and in this view scholars have generally concurred.[84]

        The book tells how bishops, presbyters, and deacons are to be ordained, giving the prayers to be uttered; tells of confessors, widows, virgins, new converts, crafts forbidden to Christians, of baptism, confirmation, church observances, fasts, prayers, and so forth-all in a most concise and practical fashion. It is clear that Hippolytus has the distinction of having been the leader in codifying church procedure. The book is a small compact manual, written probably about A.D. 215, in the last part of the episcopate of Zephyrinus, of whom Hippolytus complained that he was ignorant of the rules of the church (Refutation ix. 11).

        The Apostolic Tradition was later rewritten and worked into the Apostoliccrl Constitutions, viii. 4-32. From these the so-called Constitutions through Hippolytus were epitomized. The so-called Canons of Hippolytus, preserved in Arabic and Ethiopic, also reflect the Apostolic Tradition, much altered.