THE APOSTOLIC AGE IN PATRISTIC THOUGHT SUPPLEMENTS TO VIGILIAE CHRISTIANAE Formerly Philosophia Patrum TEXTS AND STUDIES OF EARLY CHRISTIAN LIFE AND LANGUAGE EDITORS J. DEN BOEFT — J. VAN OORT — W.L. PETERSEN D.T. RUNIA — C. SCHOLTEN — J.C.M. VAN WINDEN VOLUME LXX THE APOSTOLIC AGE IN PATRISTIC THOUGHT EDITED BY A. HILHORST BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2004 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The apostolic age in patristic thought / edited by A. Hilhorst. p. cm. — (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, ISSN 0920-623X ; v. 70) English, French and German. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 90-04-12611-2 (alk. paper) 1. Apostolate (Christian theology)—History of doctrines—Early church, ca. 30-600. 2. Theology, Doctrinal—History—Early church, ca. 30-600. 3. Fathers of the church. I. Hilhorst, A. II. Series. BV601.2.A665 2003 270.1’072—dc22 2003065308 ISSN 0920-623X ISBN 90 04 12611 2 © Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................ vii Abbreviations .............................................................................. xiii Theodore Korteweg Origin and Early History of the Apostolic Office .................. 1 Joseph Ysebaert The Eucharist as a Love-meal (agape) in Didache 9–10, and Its Development in the Pauline and in the Syrian Tradition .................................................................................. 11 Ton Hilhorst Romantic Fantasies: Early Christians Looking Back on the Apostolic Period ...................................................................... 28 Peter Van Deun The Notion épostolikÒw: A Terminological Survey .............. 41 Jan den Boeft Miracles Recalling the Apostolic Age ...................................... 51 Gerard Rouwhorst Liturgy on the Authority of the Apostles ................................ 63 Riemer Roukema La tradition apostolique et le canon du Nouveau Testament ................................................................................ 86 Gerard P. Luttikhuizen Witnesses and Mediators of Christ’s Gnostic Teachings ........ 104 H. S. Benjamins Die Apostolizität der kirchlichen Verkündigung bei Irenäus von Lyon ................................................................................ 115 Fred Ledegang Origen’s View of Apostolic Tradition ...................................... 130 vi contents Johannes van Oort The Paraclete Mani as the Apostle of Jesus Christ and the Origins of a New Church .................................................... 139 Arnold Provoost The Apostolic World of Thought in Early Christian Iconography ............................................................................ 158 Adelbert Davids The Era of the Apostles According to Eusebius’ History of the Church .................................................................................... 194 G. J. M. Bartelink Monks: The Ascetic Movement as a Return to the Aetas Apostolica ................................................................................ 204 B. Dehandschutter Primum enim omnes docebant: Awareness of Discontinuity in the Early Church: The Case of Ecclesiastical Office ................ 219 Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen Urbs beata Jerusalem: Saint Augustin sur Jérusalem .................. 228 Indexes Index of References ................................................................ 243 Index of Names and Subjects .............................................. 249 Index of Greek and Latin Words ........................................ 252 Index of Modern Authors ...................................................... 253 INTRODUCTION In March 2001, the Dutch Foundation for Early Christian Studies celebrated its fortieth anniversary with a conference entitled Aetas Apostolica—Tertullian’s term for the founding period of Christianity. As could be expected, the theme proved to be a most rewarding one. Any movement or association will tend to assign a special pres- tige to its starting time, but in the case of nascent Christianity this prestige was plainly due to the divine stature of its founder, Jesus Christ, who had personally commissioned his Apostles and assured them of the unfailing guidance of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, the authority of the Apostolic Age was acknowledged by all who regarded themselves as Christians, no matter whether or not they were accepted as such by a later orthodoxy. It was appealed to in questions of doc- trine, of ritual and conduct, and it mirrored itself in literature and art. Thus, the speakers at the conference could choose from a num- ber of important subjects. Their papers, duly revised and footnoted, are collected in this volume. Below is a summary of the contents. There has been much discussion about the origin of the office of apostle. Korteweg shows that a Jewish precedent is hardly plausible. An apostolos is an unspecific term for someone sent. Paul introduces a specific sense for the word—to him, an apostle is a messenger sent by God from heaven. There may be a connection with an ancient oriental concept, as discussed by G. Widengren and W. Schmithals. After Paul, a horizontal dimension becomes prominent: an apostle is sent by the earthly Jesus, from Palestine and Jerusalem. The apos- tles are identified with the Twelve; the concept of apostolic succes- sion comes into being. Studying the earliest liturgy of the Eucharist, Ysebaert considers that from Homer onwards a sacrificial meal was normally a full meal. This holds well for the Jewish Passover meal, the Last Supper, and all Christian Eucharistic meals. The consecrated bread and wine were consumed together with other food taken from home. The typ- ical order of blessing the wine first continues a Jewish tradition and is still found in Didache 9, 1 Cor. 10.16 and parts of the Syrian tradition. The conflict in Antioch, Gal. 2.11–14, is due to the new situation that Gentile Christians might take unclean food with them. viii introduction The abuse in Corinth encourages Paul to separate Eucharist and love-meal, and to place the blessing of the wine after the meal, 1 Cor. 11.17–34. His appeal to the Lord makes him contradict his own words in 1 Cor. 10.16. Instead of the blessing he makes the institution words the moment of consecration. Hilhorst considers the idealized image of the apostolic age in the Muratorian Canon and in the Letters alleged to have been exchanged between Paul and Seneca. The idea emerging from these texts of the starting time as a period of internal harmony and prestige with the outside world is, however, found not to be restricted to apoc- ryphal and patristic sources but already present in a number of books of the New Testament, notably the Acts of the Apostles. Van Deun sets out to investigate the usage of the Greek term apostolikos. Absent from the New Testament and attested for the first time with Ignatius, it is used in quite a number of contexts, for instance to denote the apostolic origin of a church or a conformity with the doctrine of the Apostles, or also to refer to the Apostle par excellence, Paul. Eusebius is the first author to use it for the notion of an apostolic era. Miracles were a prominent feature of the apostles’ time but lost importance in later periods. Theologians, Den Boeft argues, used to interpret the shift as a sign of divine pedagogy: initially, people had to be won over by visible means, later on, prime importance was attached to ethical and spiritual values. Nevertheless, the importance of miracles remained unaffected in the cult of the saints; and Bishop Ambrose even hailed the miracles accompanying the invention of the bones of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius as a return of the apostolic age. Augustine agreed with such a view, although earlier he had taken the position that miracles belonged to the past. Liturgical customs have always been legitimised by an appeal to the foundational period of Christianity. Rouwhorst works this out for the celebration of Passover/Easter. The Quartodecimans had good reason to celebrate it on 14/15 Nisan, whatever the day of the week, but from the second century onward they were opposed by those who practised Easter on Sunday, the day of the Resurrection. These opponents, who grew more and more numerous, went so far as to claim apostolic authority for their own view and eventually depicted the Quartodeciman claims as those of a sect disturbing the unity of the Church. Roukema examines the previous history of the New Testament introduction ix canon in a number of authors of the late second and early third centuries. Previous, indeed, because in that period there was not yet any such thing as a New Testament canon in the sense of a closed list of books declared authoritative by the Church. Rather, the ques- tion was whether a given book or an orally transmitted teaching was a pure witness of the apostolic tradition as the foundation of faith and ecclesiastical practice. However,