The Didache
An argument for its Apostolic origin
The Didache (Greek for “teaching”, pronounced something like did-a-khay1) is a short early Christian document which begins with the title “The teaching of the Lord to the nations by the twelve apostles.”
St Athanasius (Festal letter 39) placed the Didache in the same category as the books of Wisdom, Sirach, Greek Esther, Judith, Tobit and the Shepherd of Hermas – books that should be read, but are not to be received as part of the canon of scripture. But the book slowly became rare and was not made available to the world of scholarship until the late 19th century.
When it did become available to the world of scholarship, scholars weren’t quite sure what to make of it, but generally assigned its authorship to the second century, or around one hundred years after the time of the apostles. A small number of people have argued for an apostolic date and authorship, and I am going to try to make that case myself.
Jewish Christians writing for Gentile Churches.
The Two Ways
The “two ways” at the beginning of the Didache seem to be based on a now lost set of instructions given by Pharisees to proselytes. It is easy to see what the Pharisee model looked like. It started with the basic commandments to love God and to love thy neighbour as thyself and went on to use the first table of the ten commandments from I am the Lord your God to Honour thy father and thy mother to explain what it meant to love God, and used the second table from do no murder to thou shalt not covet to explain what it meant to love your neighbour.
This pattern is obvious because it is followed quite closely in the second chapter where our duty to humans is explained by the second table of the law. I think we are meant to notice that the first table of the law has been replaced here by Jesus’s teaching on how to be a child of God. The way we show our love for God is not through correct religiousity, but by becoming God’s mercy to others. Jesus said, “learn what this means: I desire mercy not sacrifice.” What Jesus understood this to mean is that God rejects our religious acts unless we put an effort into being merciful as our father in heaven is merciful.
This is a very tall order, and the Didache explains that this begins with bless those who curse you and includes if someone strikes your right cheek, turn the other also and ends up with give to everyone who asks you, and don't ask for it back. It is such a tall order that verse 1:6 moderates this by pointing out that you really should be a bit choosy about to whom you give alms so they will do the most good.
You may have noticed that the “two ways” begins with including the negative form of the golden rule as another form of the command to love your neighbour as yourself. It isn’t that the writer has forgotten the positive form, but that the Pharisees use it as a summary of the Law. Jesus’s teaching allows that it may be a good summary of one’s duty to other humans, but that it falls short of what is required for loving God.
The Fasting Days
The reason given for why Christians fast on the fourth day of the week and the day of preparation (Wednesday and Friday) is not to fast at the same time as the actors (Pharisees) who fast on the second and fourth days (Monday and Thursday). I think this is not just an attempt to differentiate, but also so that the Pharisees may not notice that Christians do fast and have a slightly harder fasting regimen with only a one day break between fasts.
The Eucharistic Prayers
Gentile Christians ask God to bless the food. Jews don’t do this. They bless God who makes the bread come from the earth. They bless God who makes the vine and the grapes grow. Gentile Christians never got the memo on this one so it tends to be a dead giveaway for distinguishing Jew from gentile.
The prayers are more than just thanksgivings for the wine and the bread. The vine is the vine of thy servant David (9:2) by which we are joint heirs with Christ and also sons of God. The bread stands for the life and knowledge made known to us by Christ. The bread from the ground is also made to remind us of the bread gathered up after the feedings of the four and five thousands and from that is made to be an image of the company of all Christians.
It seems to me that the order of the prayers of thanksgiving are meant to bring us back to the description of the way of life at the beginning of the Didache. The cup is first because we are to love God by being God’s children, and the bread is second because the love that we are supposed to have for one another makes us one body.
Gentile Christians often have had antipathy to other Christians they call “judaizers” who they think are doing Christianity the wrong way. And they have often had outright hatred for Jews who they see as having rejected Christ despite having the Old Testament as their bible so they should know better. What we have here is quite different - a writer who thinks the Pharisees are doing Judaism the wrong way quite apart from their attitude to Jesus.
While there were communities of Jewish Christians into the fifth century and later before they were eventually hounded out of existence by gentile Christians who derided them as judaizers, the window for a plausible time for Jewish Christians to be writing basic manuals for gentile Christians is quite short.
The New Testament Parallels.
The Didache obviously has a very close relationship to the Gospel of Matthew and nearly all of the textual parallels with the New Testament are from Matthew. But 1:5 is very closely related to Luke 6:30 – the Greek to the first part of each is so close to identical as to make textual dependence certain. Either one copied from the other or they both copied from an earlier source. It is also interesting that 1:5 also contains the closest thing we have anywhere to a parallel to Acts 20:35 “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” If the author of the Didache had copies of both Matthew and Luke and used them both, it is very strange that he used Matthew so much and Luke so very little. It seems much more plausible that Luke possessed either the Didache or a source document that went into the Didache.
There is another interesting possible parallel. In Luke’s account of the Last Supper (Chapter 22), the elements are presented in a curious order: first the cup, then the bread, then the cup again. Some old manuscripts omit the second half of verse 19 and verse 20; this makes the order cup first, then bread. Most critics consider this a non-interpolation, perhaps on the difficult reading preferred rule, but it seems interesting to me that this sometimes omitted section is the only part of Luke-Acts I am aware of which shows a clear textual relationship to anything in the Pauline corpus. If Luke originally had a cup then bread last supper this might also show some influence of the Didache on Luke.
Instructions concerning apostles.
The instructions in chapter 11 assume that your congregation will sometimes be visited by a person introducing himself as an apostle. If he stays three days or more (presumably at the congregation’s expense) or takes anything more than bread for his journey or asks for money he is false, but other than this is to be received the same as Jesus would be received. While there were wandering prophets into the second century, and there may have been revivals of visiting prophets, there is no indication of there being apostles after the generation old enough to have seen Jesus died off. The first Epistle of Clement at the end of the first century (1 Clement 42) speaks of the era of the apostles as belonging to the past. If the Didache were written after the time of the apostles, but as if it were an apostolic document, then it is extremely unusual in having a completely unromantic view of apostolic visits. There is no sense of nostalgia for a time when apostles could be expected to visit your church.
The power and the glory
In the eastern church, both Greek and Syriac, it is universal or near universal for the Lord’s Prayer used in the liturgy to end with for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory unto the ages. This is not found in the older greek manuscripts of Matthew, nor is it found in Latin bibles whether the Old Latin or Jerome’s Vulgate. Because it was used in the Greek liturgies, it found its way into medieval Greek manuscripts which were the basis for the first protestant translations in thus into protestant liturgy.
The Didache has the Lord’s Prayer end without for thine is the kingdom, but with for thine is the power and the glory unto the ages. It also contains other prayers which end with to thee be the glory unto the ages, and for thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ unto the ages, and again for thine is the glory unto the ages making this ending characteristic of prayers in the Didache and making it probable that it originates there. And if it does, it points to the Didache having a central importance in the development of Christian liturgy.
Points against
To be fair, I should point out a couple of points which I think tell somewhat against an early date. One in the recommendation for both baptizer and baptized to fast for one or two days before baptism (7:4). This contrasts with the practice recorded in the Acts of the Apostles of baptizing immediately. The other is the use of the word “gospel” to mean a document containing both Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer and something like the story in Matthew 25:31-46 - I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. The gospel in the New Testament is the announcement of the Kingdom of God, or the victory of Jesus Christ as king and lord, or the implications following from this. Except perhaps in the title section of the Gospel of Mark, it does not seem to be a name used for the first four books of the New Testament. Justin Martyr in the second century calls them “the memoirs of the apostles” rather than “the gospels.” I don’t think either of these points are actually fatal, but I think it only fair to mention them.
Greek speakers must have always made a clear distinction between the sound represented by chi and and the sound represented by kappa, but the difference is subtle to non-existent when pronounced by English speakers.