Frank Edward Brightman

“ The book is important, therefore, as the earliest liturgical collection on so large a scale, and as belonging to Egypt, where evidence for 4th-century ritual is scanty as compared with Syria.
The rites form a link between those of the Egyptian Church Order (a 3rd- or early 4th-century development of the Hippolytean Canons, which are perhaps Egyptian of c. 260) and later Egyptian rites-marking the stage of development reached in Egypt by c. 350, while exhibiting characteristics of their own. I. The Mass has the Egyptian notes—a prayer before the lections, elsewhere unknown in the East ”

“ Among the special characteristics of Serapion are the simplicity of the Sanctus, and of the Institution, which lacks the dramatic additions already found in Ap. Const.; the interpolation of a passage containing a quotation from Didachē 9 between the institutions of the bread and of the chalice; the form of the ἀνάμνησις; and the invocation of the Word, not of the Holy Ghost, to effect consecration. That the Lord’s Prayer before communion is not referred to may be only because it is a fixed formula belonging to the structure of the rite. ”

“ Syria or Egypt; and certain theological phrases (ἀγέννητος, ἐπιδημία, μόνη καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία) characteristic of the old Egyptian creed, and the liturgical characteristics, indicate Egypt; while the petition for rains (23) , without reference to the Nile-rising, points to the Delta as distinguished from Upper Egypt. ”