Phanar (Fener) District of Istanbul
In 1873, the Metropolitan Bishop of Nicomedia, Philotheos Bryennios, "discovered" an 11th-century Greek manuscript in the library of the Jerusalem Monastery of the Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople (Istanbul). Known as Codex Hierosolymitanus (named for the monastery, not the city of Jerusalem), the Greek codex contained a variety of early Christian materials, many of which were already known: 1-2 Clement, letters of Ignatius of Antioch, the Epistle of Barnabas. The most explosive discovery was a text called the Teaching of the Lord to the Nations Through the Twelve Apostles (Διδαχὴ Κυρίου διὰ τῶν δώδεκα ἀποστόλων τοῖς ἔθνεσιν; Didachē kuriou dia tōn dōdeka apostolōn tois ethnesin, or Didache for short), a moral treatise with a small and seemingly primitive "church order" appended to it. Bryennios, who had received theological and philological training in German universities before becoming a bishop, published the Didache in Istanbul in 1883 and it was quickly transmitted to the "West" and republished throughout the later 19th century. Scholarship on the Didache since then has often viewed it as a very early witness to the Jesus-movement, with sources perhaps even older than the canonical gospels. (Other scholars date the sources and the text to the late first or early second century.)