The church orders which aren’t church orders

Whilst we await the bibliographical and other expansions which Dr Daniel Vaucher (he was never congratulated on his doctorate here, which is a severe oversight) has promised for the conspectus of church orders, I have fiddled again and removed the following item (though I, or Vaucher if he has a mind to, may put it back!) The conspectus is, after all, living literature.

Name: Didascalia Domini (title in one MS)
Original language: Greek
Extant languages with principal published editions: Greek (Nau (1907))
Relationship with other orders or documents: Echoes in apocalyptic section of other “tours of hell”, in particular Apocalypsis Anastasiae, Apoc. Virginis Mariae.
Notes: Post-resurrection interrogation of Christ by named disciples. Issues re Lent, Wednesday and Friday fasting, clerical discipline, apocalyptic section. Other MS calls it “apostolic constitutions”, but is it even a church-order? Closest relative is Epistula apostolorum!

I suppose I was answering, in the negative,  the question I posed for myself: “Is it even a church order?” What raised this was reading S. Dib, “Note sur deux ouvrages apocryphes arabes intitules ‘Testament de notre-Seigneur” ROC 11 (1906), 427-430. In spite of their titles, neither of these is, by any stretch of the imagination, a church-order, and they have nothing to do with the Testamentum Domini we know and love (sort of!)

Dib provides summaries of each. One is an exhortation to perseverance. The other ends with such an exhortation, but appears to be a strange and novelistic apocalyptic history. Fascinating, undoubtedly, in its own way, but definitely not in our bailliwick.

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