Sinodos: The Statutes of the Apostles

Presented as decrees of the twelve apostles, each speaking in turn; actual compiler unknown. The Ethiopic Sinodos of the Apostles (Ludolf's Statuta Apostolorum) is the Ethiopic form of a church order that also survives in Sahidic Coptic and Arabic; its two later parts coincide closely with Book VIII of the Apostolic Constitutions, and the date of the underlying Greek text is disputed. It is preserved here in George Horner's 1904 English translation, in 72 statutes: the Apostolic Church Order (ordination of bishops, readers, deacons, and widows), the order of the Oblation and of baptism, and rules on fasting, first-fruits, trades, the sabbath, and the memorial of the dead. A church-order text, not scripture in kind: it belongs to the Sinodos of the Ethiopian and Eritrean broader canon.