chapter 32 is omitted in the longer version.

On the other hand it is true, as Connolly argues,[158] that the rules of chapter 32 are truly third-century. The custom according to which each Christian kept the consecrated eucharist in his house and received it each morning is attested in Tertullian’s _To his Wife_ II, 5, and the reason given (Mark 16. 18) for receiving fasting is not that of the later church (compare on chapter 29); Connolly observes further that the home reservation of consecrated wine as well as consecrated bread is unknown elsewhere.

Very curious, too, is the phrase “when _thou_ hast given thanks” in section 3, for the section as a whole is addressed to the laity. Is there here some reminiscence of earlier corporately celebrated eucharists, like the agapes in chapter 26? Or are 3-4 a later addition, addressed to the clergy? Or is there textual confusion?

NOTES

1

Characteristic of Hippolytus’s style are his frequent summaries of the progress of his treatises; compare 16. 25; 23. 13; Philosophumena, Proem.; i, 23. 4, etc.

The opening sentence is obscure, but Connolly’s explanation (pp. 161-162) appears the most likely: Man, made in God’s image, went astray, but through the Incarnation God restored humanity by presenting to Himself Christ, the perfect Man.

2. On the phrase translated “most important theme” compare Connolly, p. 161; the original Greek word was presumably κορυφή.

3. If the “churches” are the different Roman congregations—an unusual sense—Hippolytus speaks simply as a bishop; if the meaning is “at Rome and elsewhere” he speaks not only as a bishop but as a teacher of eminent authority.

4. The “lapse or error” is the Zephyrinus-Callistus “schism”. As Hippolytus speaks of it as a recent event, the date of the treatise cannot be far from 217.