Monthly Archives: July 2008

[T]he expectation of a restoration of Jerusalem also generated a wave of eschatological fervor among judaizing Christians toward the end of the fourth century. The importance of the city and the temple for judaizing Christians during this period can be seen in the interpretation of prophetic texts that speak of the return of the Jews to Jerusalem. Commenting on Isaiah 35:10, “the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing,” Jerome says that the “Jews and our Judaizers” interpret this text to refer not to the “advent of the Savior” but to the second coming, when the Jews will enter Zion with gladness. Similarly, commenting on Zachariah 14:10–12, “Jerusalem shall be inhabited for there shall be no more curse,” he observes that the Jews and judaizing Christians say that this refers to the building of the city and a time when “circumcision will be practiced, sacrifices offered, all the precepts of the Law observed, so that Jews will no longer become Christians but Christians will become Jews” (Comm. in Zach. 14:10). …

Both the resurgence of judaizing Christianity in the late fourth century and the plan of Julian to restore the city of Jerusalem to the Jews were intimately linked to the existence of vital and visible Jewish communities in the cites of the eastern Mediterranean. Julian’s plan to rebuild the temple is unintelligible unless there were Jewish communities who read the Jewish Scriptures and observed the laws of Moses. Julian’s arguments about the legitimacy of the Law of Moses, as set forth in the Contra Galilaeos, and his claim that Christians had apostasized from the Law of Moses, replacing it with a second law, would have had no force if there were no Jewish communities that did observe the Law of Moses. Unless there was a legitimate inheritor of the patrimony of ancient Israel, it made no sense to argue that Christianity was an illegitimate offshoot, an apostate sect.

In an environment, then, in which Judaism was still very much present, Julian issued his challenge to Christianity. By highlighting the relationship of Christianity to Judaism, Julian attacked Christians at an extremely vulnerable point. His arument was not new. Earlier critics had made a similar point, but what was new was that Julian made it central and supported his religious arguments with the announcement that he would return Jerusalem to the Jews and restore the ancient temple and its sacrifices. And though his efforts were unsuccessful, that such an idea could come so close to realization, that the money, men, and materials to carry out the task were available, and that the work had actually begun on the site of the temple ruins, alarmed Christians. How futile confident appeals to history would appear if the project were successful; what perils lay ahead if the prophecy of Jesus [Matthew 24.2: “Truly, I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another, all will be thrown down.”] could be refuted by the efforts of a Roman emperor, a mere man?

In is attempt to execute this plan, Julian, in the word of John [Chrysostom] had “put the power of Christ on trial” (Pan. Bab. 2.22; [PG] 50.568). The bravado and boasting of Christian writers about Julian’s failure only betrayed how profoundly he had scandalized the Church. This is why John and other Christian writers emphasized the importance of actually seeing the ruins in Jerusalem (Jud. et gent. 16., [PG] 48.834; Jud. 5.11., 901). As late as the middle of the fifth century, Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus north of Antioch and a native of Antioch, traveled to Jerusalem and when he saw the desolation “with his own eyes,” rejoiced in the truth of the prophecies (Affect. 11.71).

Robert Wilken. John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century (University of California Press, 1983), pp 146-148.

The Wilken book comes highly recommended. It’s goal is to make sense of a group of eight anti-Judaizing homilies given by St John Chrysostom while a young presbyter in Antioch, in the years 386 and 387. A complete English translation of the homilies with introduction is available in Paul Harkins, Saint John Chrysostom: Discourses Against Judaizing Christians, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 68 (Catholic University of America Press, 1979). Their original context and import of the homilies is, unsurprisingly, dissimilar to their later usage in medieval times and even into the modern period, when they were entirely improperly used in support of antisemitism. The fourth century was still a pluralistic world: one in which the Christians were by no means certain that the next emperor would be Christian, one in which the old pagan institutions and philosophies still lived, one in which Jewish communities were respected and integrated into the broader culture. In these homilies, Chrysostom utilizes invective, a standard rhetorical format, combined with some unsophisticated appeals to contemporary Christian understandings of prophecy, in order to convince his listeners to persuade their Christian “Judaizing” friends and family members to discontinue attending synagogues, celebrating the Jewish festivals, and so on—essentially leading a double religious life. (Or, as has been suggested by others, were these “Judaizing” Christians simply better neighbors, sharing festivals and events with respected friends, with community, civility, and reciprocal respect held more important than religious intolerance?)

These sermons do not read at all well today, certainly not as well as Chrysostom’s later, more theologically astute writings and homilies, for which he is quite renowned. Contemporary rhetoric doesn’t care for the over-the-top, no-holds-barred quality of invective that was acceptable and understood in the fourth century, the heyday of the Second Sophistic. Similarly, the appeal to prophecies as understood in the fourth century falls on different ears. These days, it’s much more common among Christians to hear prophecies bandied about to support the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, rather than its perpetual desolation. In that sense, these homilies truly are relics of a lost world. Wilken’s book brings the most important aspects of that lost world back to life, situating the homilies clearly in the context of their original hearing.

Continuing from here, a presentation of R. Hugh Connolly’s material on deuterosis from the introduction to his translation of the Didascalia Apostolorum, pp lxii-lxix

I do not think this is too strong a statement of the case. And yet it is probably that some allowance is to be made for the practical issues with which the author was faced, and for the fact that he speaks in the Didascalia as a preacher rather than as a theologian. We must note also that he allows a typical or figurative value to certain institutions of the Old Law—the tabernacle with its ministry and sacrfices, the Sabbath and circumcision. Whether for him these institutions formed a special subdivision of the Deuterosis there is no means of telling: we shall see that they constituted a separate class of typica in at least one Gnostic discussion of the Law. Yet when all is said, we cannot resist the impression that our author’s attitude to the ceremonial law of the Old Covenant was one of hostility rather than of piety and reverence.

How different is his tone, and his whole treatment of the problem, from that which we are accustomed to in the reverent words and solemn periods of the Epistle to the Hebrews. “The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews [I cannot do better than quote the words of Dr. Armitage Robinson] addressed himself to Jewish readers, who had accepted Christianity, but under the pressure of some great crisis were looking wistfully back to the religion of their fathers. With passionate earnestness he warned them against apostasy. And he brought them a great message of hope. He bade them see that the Christ was more than they had ever supposed, even in the enthusiasm of their first acceptance of Him. He was the Fulfiller of the past—that sacred past in which fragments of the eternal truth had been enshrined in temporary ordinances, whose only abrogation lay in their complete fulfilment. One great thought he was inspired to give them—the Eternal High-priesthood of Christ. The sacred past was theirs because it was a part of their loyalty to the Fulfiller.” [Note: Barnabas, Hermas, and the Didache (S.P.C.K., 1920), p. 3.] To the author of the Didascalia the Deuterosis was something of which the only fulfillment lay in its complete abrogation. He definitely excludes it from fulfilment.

Another early effort to grapple with the same problem is found in the “Epistle of Barnabas”. This is an obscure and disorderly treatise, and its root idea is that a special gnosis or spiritual enlightenment is needed to understand the ceremonial ordinances of the Law. It is not merely that the things commanded had a spiritual as well as a literal meaning: some at least of them were not even spoken in a literal sense, but were parabolic utterances which required to be spiritually translated before they could be obeyed at all. [Note: See especially the tenth chapter, in which the author deals with the distinction of clean and unclean animals; and compare also the fifteenth, on the Sabbath, a chapter which I have no doubt was used by the writer of the Didascalia.] In a word, the Law needed to be allegorized from the first. Unlike the author of the Didascalia, “Barnabas” makes no distinction of higher and lower standards within the Law; all its ordinances are high and spiritual, but the Jews had not the spiritual endowment to discern their true meaning.

The Catholic writer who in his treatment of the Law comes nearest to the ideas expressed in the Didascalia is St. Irenaeus. And this is but natural, for I have no doubt at all that our author used and was much influenced by him. Irenaeus too makes a clear distinction between the Decalogue and the ceremonial Law: there were on the one hand the “naturalia praecepta” given directly by God Himself, eternal, and needing only to be “fulfilled”, that is developed, extended, enlarged by Christ (superextendi, augeri, dilatari); and on the other hand there were the “uincula seruitutis” which were afterwards delivered through Moses and imposed upon the People for sin, and which when they had served their purpose had perforce to be abrogated and removed (“necesse fuit auferri”). Irenaeus’s formal discussion of the Law is to be found in the fourth book of the Heresies, chapters xxiv–xxix, from which I have quoted some phrases in the notes. There is one feature, however, in Irenaeus’s treatment of the ceremonial Law which finds no parallel in the Didascalia, and which the author has either neglected or rejected as unsuited to his own purpose. As already said, the Didascalia seems to leave no room for the Deuterosis as a factor in the spiritual education of the People: it was a punitive measure, and whether intended at first to be corrective or not, it proved in effect to be the opposite. The People went from bad to worse, until (apparently as a second instalment of the Deuterosis) that word in Deuteronomy, “Cursed is every one that is hanged upon a tree”, was set down “for their blinding” and as a positive obstacle, that when Christ was come they might not be able to recognize Him but should suppose that He too was one of the accursed. We must say, I think, that the author finds no place for the Deuterosis as an educative factor. It is otherwise with Irenaeus, as two passages will suffice to show:

Etenim lex, quippe servis posita, per ea quae foris erant corporalia animam erudiebat, uelut per uinculum attrahens eam ad obedientiam praeceptorum, uti disceret homo servire Deo. Uerbum autem liberans animam, et per ipsam corpus uoluntarie emundari docuit. Quo facto necesse fuit auferri quidem uincula seruitatis, quibus iam homo assueuerat et sine uinculis sequi Deum (IV xxiv 2).

And again:
Sic autem et populo tabernaculi factionem et aedificationem templi et Leuitarum electionem, sacrificia quoque et oblationes et mundationes, [Note: The current text has “et monitiones”; Dr. Armitage Robinson informs me that the Armenian version has “and purifications”, which is far more suitable in the context, and from which I venture to adopt the above emendation—I do not know whether the form “munditiones” would be possible.] et reliquam omnem legis statuebat deseruitionem. Ipse quidem nullius horum est indigens; …faciliem autem ad idola reuerti populum erudiebat, per mutas uocationes praestruens eos perseuerare et seruire Deo: per ea quae erant secunda ad prima uocans, hoc est per typica ad uera, et per temporalia ad aeterna, et per carnalia ad spiritalia, et per terrena ad caelestia…. Per typos enim discebant timere Deum et perseuerare in obsequiis eius. Itaque lex et disciplina erat illis et prophetia futurorum (IV xxv 3).

The contrast here with the Didascalia is striking; but we must not forget the different situations in which the two writers were placed. Irenaeus had to defend the Church’s view of the Old Testament against the heretic Marcion, who rejected it as unworthy of the Supreme God and as the work of some inferior Being. The author of the Didascalia had to meet a danger from the opposite side, and to remind Christians that for them the ceremonial ordinances of the Old Law are gone irrevocably, and may not under any pretext be revived. It was natural for him therefore to stress, and even over-stress, the shortcomings of the Deuterosis, and, representing it as historically a failure, to ascribe the failure, not indeed to its Author, but to the circumstances which made such a legislation possible and necessary.

I am coming to feel that the author of the Didascalia was not quite so unsophisticated and isolated a writer as parts of his book are apt to suggest, indeed that on the whole, and for his time, he was well informed and well read. Since, then, the great question of the Old Law was one to which he had evidently given much attention, it seems that we ought to reckon with the possibility that his reading on this subject had led him beyond the circle of Catholic writers, and that his unfriendly attitude to the Deuterosis may be due in part to an unconscious bias derived from other influences. Whether this be so or not, it will not be out of place here to give some account of yet another early attempt to solve the problemof the Law—the attempt this time of a writer who was not of the Church. The Letter of Ptolemaeus to Flora (a lady otherwise unknown) has the uniqe interest that it gives us at some length, and in the form of a complete document, the ipsissima verba of a member of one of the great Gnostic sects. The writer was of the Italian branch of the Valentinian school of Gnostics, and his letter is thought to have been writter about the year 160. [Note: The letter is preserved by Epiphanius, Haer. xxxiii, and may be read in Migne P. Gr. xli 555. There is a handy edition by Harnack in Lietzmann’s Kleine Texte (Bonn), no. 9.]

After a short introduction he explains to Flora that the whole legislation of the Pentateuch needs first to be sorted out into three component parts: (1) that which comes from God; (2) those things which Moses set down of his own authority and devising (as the permission of divorce); and (3) the additions of the Elders (Corban is cited as an instance). Then, passing over (2) and (3), he further explains that even (1), the portion of the Law which comes from God Himself, is likewise to be distinguished into three elements. First there is the pure Law unmixed with evil, “which also is properly called the Law” and which the Saviour “came not to destroy but to fulfil”. Secondly there is that which has an admixture of evil and unrighteousness, which the Saviour abolished as being foreign to His own nature. And thirdly there are certain things which are merely typical and symbolical, being ordained as figures of better and spiritual things.

The first of these elements consists of the Decalogue, the Ten Words disposed on the two tables. These, though pure and unmixed with evil, yet came short of perfection, and had need therefore of fulfilment (πληρωσεως) by the Saviour. As examples of the second element are adduced the lex talionis and the command to slay a murderer. As to the latter, the writer says that He who has condemned murder by the command “Thou shalt not kill”, by making a second law (δευτερον νομον) that the slayer should be slain shows that He has allowed Himself to be forced into inconsistency. To the third, or typical, element belong the laws regarding sacrifices (προσφοραι), circumcision, Sabbath, fasting, Passover, unleavened bread, and the like. “All these, being images and symbols, were changed when the truth was made manifest”; that is to say, their outward and material observance was abolished, but in their spiritual content they were carried on, the names remaining the same, but the things undergoing a change: “For the Saviour also commanded us to offer oblations, but not by means of dumb animals or with incense of this sort, but with spiritual praises and doxologies (δοξων) and thanksgiving, and by liberality and beneficience towards our neighbours.” And the other typica are similarly explained.

Then the writer comes to the crucial question: “Who then is this God who gave the Law?” It could not be the Perfect God, for the Law at its best was not perfect; neither could it be the Devil. It must therefore have been one who stood midway between, and who, being neither good nor bad, nor yet unjust, may properly be called Just and the arbiter of such justice (or righteousness) as is according tho himself. And this is the Demiurge and maker of this universe with all that is in it, who is still other in nature than the universe itself.

Whether or no the author of the Didascalia had read this letter it is impossible to say; but it is likely enough that he was acquainted at first hand with analogous discussions of the Old Law. Thus he speaks of “those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit, those who lightly and in hypocrisy blaspheme God Almighty, those heretics who receive not His holy Scriptures, or receive them ill, in hypocrisy with blaspheming, who with evil words blaspheme the Catholic Church which is the receptacle of the Holy Spirit” [Note: p. 212.]: words which have every appearance of being aimed at Marcion or other heretics who either rejected the Old Testament or refused to regard it as coming from God Himself. It may not be altogether idle therefore to note that there are one or two points in the language of the letter of Ptolemaeus that are apt to recall the Didascalia. When the writer says of the best portion of the Law, the Decalogue, that is it that “which is also properly called the Law” (ος κει κυριως νομος λεγεται), we are reminded of a puzzling expression in the Didascalia (pp. 218-19) where the Latin reads: “Lex ergo est decalogus et iudicia … Nam lex uocata est specialiter propter iudicia.” For “specialiter” the Syriac has “truly”, but I suspect that these are both renderings of κυριως. The original therefore may have been νομος γαρ κυριως λεγεται δια τας κρισεις. [Note: In Apost. Const.: the passage is written: νομος δε εστιν η δεκαλογος … οyτος δε δικαιος εστιν, διο και νομος λεγεται δια το φυσει δικαιως τας κρισεις ποιεισθαι.] Now our author has said again earlier (p. 14) that the Law consists of “the Ten Words and the Judgements”, and I take these “Judgements” to mean the formally legal enactments in Exod. xxi-xxiii, which in the LXX are called the δικαιωματα, but in the Hebrew simply “the judgements”. [Note: But the word used in Didasc. was apparently not δικαιωματα but κρισεις, as in Apost. Const.; the former would more probably have been rendered “iustificationes” in the Latin. The note on p. 14 is therefore to be read with this qualification: though in that passage Apost. Const. omits “and the Judgements.”] The Didascalia, then, pointedly attaches these laws to the Law proper and excepts them from the Deuterosis. But by Ptolemaeus they are expressly classed with that portion of the Law which has an admixture of evil, being thereby distinguished from the Decalogue; and from them he takes his two examples of this inferior element in the Law, viz. the law of retaliation and the command to slay the murderer. This it seems possible to read the above words in the Didascalia as a direct retort against Ptolemaeus and his assertion that the Decalogue alone “is properly called the Law”. Not only is the command to slay the murderer good, but it is a necessary sequel to the commandment “Thou shalt not kill”; this and the other “Judgements” in fact justify the term “law” as applied to the moral precepts of the Decalogue, which are not strictly legal in form and content.

Again, the writer of the Letter admits that the sacrificial ordinances of the Law were figures of the “spiritual praises and doxologies and thanksgiving” [Note: πνευματκιων αινων και δοξων καυ ευχαριστιας.] which were the oblations that the Saviour commanded His followers to offer. And in the Didascalia we read: “instead of the sacrifices which then were, offer now prayers and petitions and thanksgivings”. [Note: ευχαι και δεησεις και ευχαριστιαι Apost. Const. without “offer” (and so Lat.).]

If it be asked what parts of the Pentateuch constituted the Deuterosis, the answer is not easy to give; nor do I imagine that the author himself could readily have supplied it. Large portions of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy ought logically to be excluded from “the Law”. But Law and Deuterosis were interwoven, it would seem, in all the books, and we are told that it is one of the first qualifications of a Christian bishop to be able to separate the one from the other: “But before all let him be a good discriminator between the Law and the Second Legislation, that he may distinguish and show what is the Law of the faithful, and what are the bonds of them that believe not” (p. 34).

The word δευτερωσις at first puzzled the Latin translator. On its first appearance (see p. 13, l. 14) the clause containing it is passed over, though perhaps only by a clerical error. Then at l. 17 we find an untranslatable “bis”, representing only part of the word, i.e. δευτερος. A few lines on (l. 20) there appear “secund legatio” and “repetita alligatio” (? for “legatio”). But on p. 15, l. 7, we meet with “secundatio legis”; and this, or “secundatio” alone, is henceforth regularly employed.

The Syriac translator has no hesitation: he adopts from the outset tenyān nāmōsa, “repetition (or double) of the Law”. This is really the Syriac title of the book of Deuteronomy, which was taken no doubt from the Greek δευτερονομιον. [Note: In the Hebrew the fifth book of Moses is called by the words with which it begins, “These are the words”. The Greek name Deuteronomy appears to have been derived by misunderstanding from a phrase in xvii 18, where it is directed that the future kind “shall write him a copy (mishneh not mishnāh) of this law in a book.” This is rendered in the Greek και γραψει αυτω το δευτερονομιον τουτο εις βιβλιον.] He nowhere uses tenyāna alone in the way the Latin translator uses “secundatio”; and indeed it would hardly be intelligible in Syriac. I have adopted the rendering “Second Legislation”, not because it is a real translation of the Syriac, but because it conveys to the reader with fair accuracy the author’s own interpretation of the Deuterosis.

The following is a section from the Introduction by R. Hugh Connolly in his Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments (Oxford, 1929), pp lvii-lxii. I have previously posted the full text of Connolly’s translation of the Syriac here. This selection from the introduction covers in particular the unusual usage of deuterosis in the Didascalia, a term which elsewhere in Patristic writings denotes the Mishnah and/or Oral Torah of Rabbinic Judaism. Considering the timing of the writing of the Didascalia, early to mid third century, and the appearance in the same time period of the Mishnah of Rabbinic fame, one would be hard put to recognize in the Didascalia a connection of some sort, whether of polemic (more likely) or miscomprehension (less likely). In light of this, it’s also interesting to note that the author of the Didascalia does place the origin of the deuterosis as Sinai, though in a less than flattering context (see below). This could be the earliest attestation, external to Rabbinic Judaism, of the belief that the Oral Torah originated at Sinai, though polemically distorted.

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The reader will meet many times in these pages with the terms “Second Legislation” and, in the Latin version, secundatio or secundatio legis. The Greek word of which these are renderings was δευτερωσις, as is shown by passages retained in the Apostolic Constitutions. This Deuterosis was something about which our author had cause to be deeply concerned, and about which also he has much to say. An attempt must be made therefore to trace the use of the term, to explain in what sense it is here employed and to indicate the part it plays in the author’s exegesis of the Old Testament. For its Hebrew or Aramaic background I can do little more than follow what Schürer and other writers have to tell us, as I have no direct acquaintance with the Rabbinic literature. [Note: For this I make use especially of Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes in Zeitalter Jesu Christi; H. Hody, De bibliorum textibus originalibus (1705); Schechter’s article ‘Talmud’ in the extra volume of Hastings’s Dictionary of the Bible; and Stephanus’s Thesaurus under δευτερωσις, δευτεροω, δευτερωτης.]

We are familiar with the word Mishna (properly mishnāh, fem.) as the general title of certain post-biblical Jewish treatises of a legal character. It is formed from the verb shānāh, to do something a second time, repeat. But the kind of repetition commonly implied by this verb (at least in the Aramaic form tĕnā) was the oral repetition employed in teaching or learning; and hence it came to mean simply to teach or to learn.

The substantive mishnāh correspondingly denoted oral teaching, and particularly that of the traditional law as distinguished from the miķrā, that which was read, the Scripture text. But it also denoted the tradition itself, or what is called in the Gospel “the tradition of the elders”. This tradition, codified and reduced to writing somewhere between 160 and 220 A.D., is the Mishna. “The Mishna”, says Dr. Schechter, “meaning a ‘teaching’, a ‘repetition’, is a designation most appropriate for the work generally looked upon as the main depository of the contents of the Oral Law, which (in contradistinction to מקרא, reading matter, or the Scriptures) could be acquired only by means of constant repetition”. [Note: Op. cit. p. 60.] He tells us, however, in a footnote that there is another explanation of the name, also represented in Rabbinic literature, which connects it wih the masculine noun mishneh, a double or second, and that according to this the Mishna is “second to the Torah”—in other words, as I understand it, a second or secondary Law. And this explanation, he says, is supported by the patristic rendering δευτερωσις.

The Greek verb answering to shānāh was δευτεροω, which also means to do or say a seond time, to repeat. And in technical Jewish language it meant particularly to teach the traditions. The substantive corresponding to mishnāh was δευτερωσις (more often found in the plur.) which likewise denoted especially an oral teaching of the traditions, or the traditions themselves. And a teacher of the traditions was a δευτερωτης. These meanings were fixed and clear before the end of the fourth century A.D. They admit of abundant illustration, chiefly from the writings of SS. Jerome and Epiphanius, but the following examples may suffice for the present purpose.

1. Δευτεροω.— “Uidetur igitur obseruationes Iudaicae apud imperitos et uilem plebeculam imaginem habere rationis humanaeque sapientiae. Unde et doctores eorum σοφοι, hoc est sapientes, uocantur. Et siquando certis diebus traditiones suas exponunt discipulis suis, solent dicere οι σοφοι δευτερουσι, id est, Sapientes docent traditiones” (Jerome). [Note: Ep. cxxi 10, ad Algasiam.]

2. Δευτερωσις.— “Quantae traditiones Phariseorum sint, quas hodie vocant δευτερωσεις, et quam aniles fabulae, euoluere nequeo” (Jerome). [Note: Ibid.]

“Hic (Papias) dicitur mille annorum Iudaicam edidesse δευτερωσιν” (Jerome). [Note: De uiris illustr. xviii.]

Αι γαρ παραδοσεις των πρεσβυτερων δευτερωσεις παρα τοις Ιουδαιοις λεγονται (Epiphanius). [Note: Haer. xxxiii. 9.]

“Nescit (sc. adversarius) habere praeter scripturas legitimas et propheticas Iudaeos quasdam traditiones suas, quas non scriptas habent sed memoriter tenent et alter in alterum transfundit, quas deuterosin uocant” (Augustine). [Note: Contra adversarium Legis et Prophetarum lib. ii c. 1 § 2.]

3. Δευτερωτης.— Ναι μην και των πρωτων μαθηματων δευτερωται τινες ησαν αυτοις (Eusebius). [Note: Praep. evang. xi 5.]

Ιουδαιων αιρεσεις επτα· γραμματεις, οιτινες νομικοι μεν ησαν και δευτερωται παραδοσεων των παρ’ αυτοις πρεσβυτερων, κτλ. (Epiphanius). [Note: Rescript. ad Acacium et Paulum, Migne P. Gr. xli 172 A.]

“Audiui Liddae quemdam de Hebraeis, qui sapiens apud illos et δευτεροτης uocabatur, narrantem huiusmodi fabulam” (Jerome). [Note: In Habac. ii 15.]

Many more passages are cited by Hody (pp. 233 ff.), Schürer and Stephanus, but no reference is given to any writer earlier than Eusebius. In Rufinus’s translation of Origen’s Commentary on the Canticle, however, I find the following:
“Sed et illud ab eis accepimus custodiri, quoniamquidem moris est apus eos omnes scripturas a doctoribus et sapientibus tradi pueris, simul et eas quast δευτερωσεις apellant, ad ultimum quattuor ista reseruari” (sc. the beginning of Genesis, the beginning and end of Ezekiel, and the Canticle). [Note: Berlin ed. vol. viii p. 62.]

It seems improbably that the use of δευτερωσις to denote the oral traditions of the Jews was only a development of the fourth century; and hence there can be little doubt that the author of the Didascalia was familiar with that sense of the term. It is surprising therefore to find that he gives it an entirely different content. He does not employ it to describe any “tradition of the elders”, whether written or oral, but comprises under it the whole ceremonial legislation of the Pentateuch—as to sacrifices, the Sabbath, circumcision, clean and unclean animals, ceremonial defilement and purification.

Moreover, the Deuterosis of which he speaks is distinctly a “second legislation”: it is not the Law, but was added after the Law. The Law “is that which the Lord God spoke before the People had made the calf and served idols, which consists of the Ten Words and the Judgements. But after they had served idols, He justly laid upon them the bonds, as they were worthy.” [Note: p. 14; cf. 224.] The Deuterosis was added as a punishment for sin, and laid as a grievous yoke upon those who had shown themselves unfaithful. It was not this that Christ came to fulfil, but only the moral Law enshrined in the Decalogue, in which He had set His own Name: for Iota stands for ten, and is also the first letter of the Name of Jesus. [Note: pp. 216-19.] “For in the Gospel He renewed and fulfilled and affirmed the Law; but the Second Legislation He did away and abolished. For indeed it was to this end that He came, that He might affirm the Law and abolish the Second Legislation.” [Note: p. 224.] The abrogation of the Deuterosis was foretold by the prophets: “If, then, even before His coming He made known and revealed His coming, and the disobedience of the People, and spoke of the abolition of the Second Legislation, much more, being come, did He fully and completely abolish the Second Legislation.” [p. 226; cf. 224-5.]

It was for a punishment, then, that the Deuterosis was laid upon the People, as a bondage and a burden and a hard yoke: “Therefore the Lord was angry; and in His hot anger—(yet) with the mercy of His goodness—He bound them with the Second Legislation, and laid heavy burdens upon them, and a hard yoke upon their neck”. [Note: p. 222.] But not even so were they brought to obedience, and there was added to them further a blindness and hardening of their heart: “For because of manifold sins there were laid upon them customs unspeakable; but by none of them did they abide, abut they again provoked the Lord. Wherefore He yet added unto them by the Second Legislation a blindness worthy of their works, and spoke thus: If there be found in a man sins worthy of death, and he die, and ye hang him upon a tree; his body shall not remain the night upon the tree, but ye shall surely bury him the same day: for cursed is every one that is hanged upon a tree; that when Christ should come they might not be able to help (?) Him, but might suppose that He was guilty of a curse. For their blinding therefore was this spoken.” [Note: Ibid.] And again: “Hence also the word aforesaid in the Second Legislation was for the blinding of a blind people, to wit: Cursed is every one that is hanged upon a tree…. Wherefore…that word was set down for the blinding of the People; and it was a bar that they might not believe and be saved…. For by this word, because of their works, their eyes were blinded, and their ears made deaf like Pharaoh’s.” [Note: p. 230.] To this text of Deuteronomy (xxi 23: cf. Gal. iii 13) the author returns again and again. A Christian who meddles with the Deuterosis, imagining himself to be bound by any of its ordinances, is said to “affirm the curse against our Saviour”, that is to deny Christ, and to take upon himself the idolatry for which the Second Legislation was imposed: “for if thou take upon thee the Second Legislation, take (or thou takest, Lat.) also idolatry, for because of idolatry the Second Legislation was imposed.” [Note: p. 250.]

The author’s treatment of the problem of the Old Law is doubtless influenced by St. Paul, and especially the Epistle to the Galatians. But he is more daring and explicit in his formulation of it. St. Paul would not indeed have included the moral precepts of the Decalogue in “the Law” which he rebukes the Galatians for clinging to: by “the Law” or “the works of the Law” he means the ceremonial ordinances; but he does not expressly draw the distinction. The author of the Didascalia, on the other hand, sharply divides the ceremonial from the moral law, and brands it with a distinctive and ominous name. But he differs more widely from St. Paul in his estimate of the purpose and value of the ceremonial law. It would probably be unjust to him to say that he had no conception of the formative purpose of that legislation, as a factor and stage in the spiritual education of the race; but this aspect of it is not developed, and is barely even indicated, in the Didascalia. Moreover, the emphasis on the punitive and repressive character of the Deuterosis is here so strong that it hardly leaves place for the thought that the Law, even in its ceremonial ordinances, was “our tutor unto Christ”, or par of a progressive revelation which was to reach its goal in the Gospel and the Church. It may almost be said that in the author’s mind the Didascalia was nothing more than an interim measure, forced as it were on the Divine Legislator, and no part of His own plan. It admitted of no fulfillment or perfection, and waited only to be clean swept away. A praeparatio evangelica is to be sought only in the Law properly so called and in the Prophets.

(to be continued)