Some people really don’t like the concept of Apostolic Tradition, even though, in ancient times, every rabbi and every philosopher expected their students to memorize their habits and ways as well as their sayings.
St. John warns us in his Gospel, that, if he had written down everything that Jesus did, it could not be contained by all the books in the world. This explicitly says that John knows a whole bunch of things that we don’t know from the Gospel… but he undoubtedly passed those things along, as they had been passed on to him. And that means orally and experientially.
Again and again, we are told that use of the ancient Sign of the Cross was taught by the Apostles themselves, as was being buried toward the East, praying toward the East, and saying Mass toward the East, and as was singing the Psalms at certain times of day. Usages and forms change; but the traditions continue to be passed along.
We know a few non-Gospel sayings of Jesus that all the Fathers seem to have known, from Papias and from their own teachers. Acts 20:35 infallibly says that Jesus had said “It is better to give than to receive.” St. Clement of Alexandria and others say that Jesus told His disciples to “Be good moneychangers” (or bankers, if you want to translate it that way).
And then there are the things floating around, which seem to be hinted at and then written about later, which seem to be stuff the Church was almost afraid to talk about, or which was only found in lost books like Papias’. We only know about the general format of the earliest Masses because St. Justin Martyr spills the beans, in the full awareness that he will be criticized for talking about it to pagans and the uninitiated. He explains that he’s only reporting this to the world to reduce rumors and scandal. Centuries later, St. Cyril of Jerusalem still does not explain most of the Mass or the Sacraments until after the new catechumens are baptized. Things that are holy are to be left mostly unspoken, and this is called the “disciplina arcani.”
Mary’s ever-virgin status is another example, and the circumstances of her death. St. Epiphanius doesn’t seem to know hardly anything about it, at first, in the chronologically earlier chapters of the Panarion; and then in later chapters, he seems to know a great deal but is keeping his mouth shut, just drawing more and more analogies with big implications.
Another example is a tradition that made its way into some early, early variant editions of the Gospel of Matthew, in Chapter 3, inbetween verses 15-16 (or more likely, inside verse 16). It is quoted by the Fathers, including by St. Justin Martyr, who came from Palestine and Syria, and who would have known the earliest Hebrew and Aramaic versions of the Gospel of Matthew. This might have been a gloss added early to the text, because local eyewitnesses added it in, unless it was added by St. Matthew himself at their demand. Because it was an event that would have had a lot of local eyewitnesses.
Here’s one version of that additional line, from the Codex Vercellensis, an Old Latin translation:
“And when He was baptized, a gigantic light shone from the water all around, so that all who had come were full of fear.”
“Et cum baptizaretur, lumen ingens circumfulsit de aqua, ita ut timerent omnes qui advenerant.”
Well. Doesn’t that explain a great deal about the Easter Vigil? Doesn’t that explain a lot about Baptism, and the hallowing of the waters with a lit candle? Doesn’t that explain the insistence that Christ is our Light, and the Light of the World? Does that explain the paralleling of the Lord’s Baptism with His Transfiguration? And as Father Hunwicke pointed out, doesn’t this explain the insistence that the Three Kings’ star and the Baptism are somehow connected?
So it was something everyone knew. But given all the Gnostic junk, and the Adoptionism, and the Docetism, it might have been something that the Apostles were reluctant to talk about too much in public, while it would have been way too obvious to those who had been there and seen.
There is a lot of this stuff which goes unsaid, but it obviously underlies a lot of what we do and say, and how we think. Now that I know it, it seems to have been on the tip of the Church’s tongue all along, and as if I myself had known it but just had not been thinking about it. Very strange.
What Justin Martyr said to Trypho, in Chapter 88 of Dialogue with Trypho, was “When Jesus was gone down into the water, fire was kindled in the Jordan.” Tatian’s Diatessaron quotes Matthew’s Gospel as saying: “A light rose upon the waters.” Apparently there’s an “Ebionite Gospel” which adds a lot about John’s reaction to the light, and the Father responding to John. Epiphanius quotes it as saying, “Immediately a great light shone all around the place.” Ephrem talks about John seeing “an unwonted luster” upon Jesus’ body when being baptized.
So it really looks (to me) like everybody was adding explanatory detail that they knew to be true, and which possibly St. Matthew had preached orally. Or maybe it was in that lost Hebrew version of Matthew, which we know was still kicking around in St. Jerome’s time.
I find this info to be very helpful even if non-canonical; and I hope you do, too.
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St. Justin Martyr does a fun thing in Chapter 69 of Dialogue with Trypho – he connects the Septuagint version of Isaiah 35:1-2 (which specifically mentions the River Jordan) with the Lord’s Baptism and His forty day fast in the wilderness:
“Be glad, o thirsty wilderness, exult, o wilderness, and blossom like the lily. And the wildernesses of the Jordan shall bloom and exult… and my people shall see the glory of the Lord and the high exaltation of God.”
The Septuagint version continues in Isaiah 35:8-9 that “There shall be a pure Way (hodos katharos), and it shall be called a holy Way; and no impure person shall pass there, nor shall an impure way be there. But the scattered ones shall walk on it, and they shall not go astray… and the redeemed shall walk on it.”
Obviously Jesus is the Way, and that was the first name given to Christianity. So it’s pretty apposite.