Note 214 — Chapter III
Neil Buchanan translation
Footnote 214:
(return)
The only thorough discussion of the use of the Old Testament by an Apostolic Father, and of its authority, that we possess, is Wrede's "Untersuchungen zum 1 Clemensbrief" (1891). Excellent preliminary investigations, which, however, are not everywhere quite reliable, may be found in Hatch's Essays in Biblical Greek, 1889. Hatch has taken up again the hypothesis of earlier scholars, that there were very probably in the first and second centuries systematised extracts from the Old Testament (see p. 203-214). The hypothesis is not yet quite established (see Wrede, above work, p. 65), but yet it is hardly to be rejected. The Jewish catechetical and missionary instruction in the Diaspora needed such collections, and their existence seem to be proved by the Christian Apologies and the Sybilline books.