Apostolic Church-Ordinance

3rd century Christian text; church order

The Apostolic Church Ordinance (or Apostolic Church Order, Apostolic Church Directory or Constitutio Ecclesiastica Apostolorum) is an anonymous Oriental Orthodox Christian treatise which belongs to the genre of the Church Orders. The work can be dated at the end of 3rd century CE. The provenance is usually regarded as Egypt, or perhaps Syria. This text served as a law code for the Coptic, Ethiopian Orthodox and other Oriental Orthodox churches. It superseded in authority and esteem the Didache, under which name it sometimes went.

The full and original text, in Greek, was found in a 12th century manuscript discovered in 1843 at Vienna and published in the same year by Johann Wilhelm Bickell, which named it Apostolische Kirchenordnung. Only other four fragmentary Greek manuscripts are extant. A complete Syriac ancient translation, with English translation, was published in 1901 by John Peter Arendzen. The Ge'ez version was first published in 1691 by Hiob Ludolf. The Apostolic Church Ordinance usually is found also in ancient collections of Church Orders. It is the second book in the Verona Palimpsest, it is the first book in the Alexandrine Sinodos and in the Bohairic version of the Clementine Octateuch, while the Arabic version of the Clementine Octateuch has it in the second place, and the Syriac version of it has it in the third place. Thus many early translations of the Apostolic Church Ordinance survive in Latin, Ge'ez, Bohairic Coptic, Sahidic Coptic, Arabic and Syriac. The titles found on the manuscripts can be different, so the Bohairic Alexandrine Sinodos version is entitled "Canons of our Fathers the Holy Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, which they appointed in the Churches", while the Syriac version has "Third book of Clement, Teaching of the twelve Apostles".