Apostolic Constitutions, Book VIII

Presented as the teaching of the twelve apostles, arranged and sent out by Clement of Rome; actual compiler unknown. The Apostolic Constitutions are a Syrian church order of about AD 375-380, in eight books, reworking and expanding older material (the Didascalia, the Didache, and the Apostolic Tradition) in Book VIII from the Apostolic Tradition and the liturgy of the Syrian church. Book VIII: spiritual gifts, the election and ordination of a bishop, the earliest full Sunday liturgy in this family (the bidding prayers, the Eucharist and its prayers), the ordination of presbyters, deacons, deaconesses, subdeacons, and readers, further prayers and laws, and the 85 Apostolic Canons. The Council in Trullo (692) approved all 85 canons for the Eastern churches, while in the Latin West only the first fifty circulated. A church-order text, not scripture in kind.