Apostolic Tradition - Attribution To Hippolytus

Attribution To Hippolytus

The section of the Alexandrine Sinodos, rediscovered in the 19th century, which was given the name of Egyptian Church Order, was identified with the lost Apostolic Tradition presumed by Hippolytus of Rome by Edward von der Goltz in 1906 and later by Eduard Schwartz in 1910 and by R.H. Connolly in 1916. This attribution was unanimously accepted by the scholars of that period, and became well-recognized by the works of Gregory Dix, in particular his famous The Shape of the Liturgy 1945. The attribution to Hippolytus was based on following data:

• in 1551 Pirro Ligorio found a ancient Roman marble statue of a seated figure near Campo Verano in Rome and moved it to the Vatican Library where it is up to now. On one side of the seat was carved in Greek a paschal cycle, which remembered the one attributed to Hyppolitus, and on the other side the titles of numerous writings, some of them by Hippolytus, and one named "On the charismata - Apostolic Tradition". This brought the scholars to presume the existence of a writing named Apostolic Tradition by Hippolytus. Recent research on this statue arrives to a different conclusion.
• the name Hippolytus is present in later Ancient Church Orders clearly derived by the text of the Apostolic Tradition, the Canons of Hippolytus and The Constitutions through Hippolytus.
• the term "Apostolic Tradition" itself is found in both the first and last page of the text.

The attribution of the Apostolic Tradition to Hippolytus of Rome have been recently under heavy attack. Thus according to recent scholars the Apostolic Tradition is, or a work written by an other priest named Hippolytus but lived probably in Alexandria, or it contains material of separate sources ranging from the middle second to the fourth century. The reasons given to support this understanding are the following:

• the statue found in 1551 was without head, and the present bearded head was added later by Ligorio himself. The statue was very probably carved as a copy of a famous statue of Themista of Lampsacus, a woman. The list of engraved titles includes many works which aren’t by Hippolytus, while it lacks most of the works surely ascribable to him. This sculpture was probably placed in the ancient library of the Pantheon personifying one of the sciences and the engraved list could be the catalog of volumes kept nearby, a common use in Ancient Rome;
• the title engraved on the statue refers to also to charismata, but the Apostolic Tradition doesn’t deal with this argument;
• the name “Hippolytus” is found in transmission of the Church Orders only about one century and half after his death;
• the reference to Hippolytus and to a tradition coming from the Apostles in later Church Orders can be easily explained with the high level of pseudepigraphy typical of this genre;
• the probable original title of this treatise was discovered in 1975 on a Greek fragment and it is not the one engraved in the statue's basement;
• the form of liturgy it describes are quite different from the other information we have about the Christian uses in ancient Rome and are by far more in line with the forms of Church life in Alexandria or in Syria.