The Testament of the Lord: Worship & Discipline in the Early Church - Christian Life - Church History - Book

Popular Patristics Series Volume 58

The Testament of the Lord is one of several ancient “Church Order” texts. Written in the first four centuries of the Church, they direct Christian conduct and morality, ecclesiastical organization and discipline, and the Church’s worship and liturgical life. Beginning with an apocalyptic section in which the risen Lord himself addresses the reader, The Testament then describes the building of a church, the mode of appointment for clergy and monastics, and the conduct of daily prayers and of other liturgical services.

The text is newly translated from the extant Syriac (with an eye to Ethiopic manuscripts), and the introduction makes the case for a fourth century Cappadocian redactor who gave the work its present shape, though much of its material goes back at least to the third century.

About the Author:  Alistair Stewart is a leading scholar of Christian liturgical origins. The author of numerous books on early Christianity and its liturgy, he is also a vicar in the Church of England. Many of his translations appear in the Popular Patristics Series (PPS 29, 41, 49, 54, 55, and 58).

Those who are interested in early Church Orders will also find the Didache and St Hippolytus’ On the Apostolic Tradition in the Popular Patristics Series (PPS 41 and 54).