JONATHAN A. DRAPER, The Didache in Modern Research:
x PREFACE However, where no English translation exists, quotations are left in the original language. An attempt has been made to stay close to the literal sense of the original language without sacrificing readability, but sometimes one or the other has had to suffer.
Jonathan A. Draper
ABBREVIATIONS
I. Primary Sources ACO ActsJn ActsPaulThec ActsPet AdJud AdNat AdVir AdvHaer Apostolic Church Order Acts of John Acts of Paul and Thecla Acts of Peter John Chrysostom, Adversus Judaeos Tertullian, Ad Nationes Pseudo-Clement, To the Virgins Irenaeus, Adversus omnes Haereses Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae Amos Tacitus, Annales Apocalypse of Moses Apocalypse of Peter Apocalypse of Zephaniah Aristides of Athens, Apologia Justin Martyr, Apologiae Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition Abot de Rabbi Nathan Ascension of Isaiah Babylonian Talmud, tractate Abodah Zarah tractate Bekhorot tractate Berakhot tractate Baba Mesia tractate Baba Qamma tractate Gittin tractate Hagiga tractate Jebamoth tractate Ketubbot tractate Makkot tractate Megillah tractate Menahot tractate Moed Qatan tractate Nazir tractate Nedarim tractate Niddah tractate Pesahim tractate Qiddushin tractate Sanhedrin tractate Shabbat tractate Shebuot tractate Taanit tractate Tamid
ABBREVIATIONS
xii tractate Temurot tractate Yebamot Tertullian, De Baptismo Josephus, Bellum Judaicum Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch Epistle of Barnabas Cairo (Genizah text of the) Damascus Document
1-2 Clement Colossians Origen, Commentarii Josephus, Contra Apionem Origen, Contra Celsum Apostolic Constitutions Comm ConApion ConCels Const 1-2 Corinthians Daniel Eusebius of Caesarea, Demonstratio Evangelica
1-2 Cor Dan DE Decal DeutR Dial Dial Did Dida Doct Dt Ec EcclR EpFest Eph Philo, De Decalogo Deuteronomy Rabbah Justin Martyr, Dialogus cum Tryphone Judaeo
Origen, Dialogue (with Heraclides) Didache Didascalia Doctrina Apostolorum Deuteronomy Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes Rabbah Athanasius, Epistula Festivalis Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians
Ethiopic Apocalypse of Enoch Slavonic Apocalypse of Enoch Esdras Exodus Exodus Rabbah Ezekial 4 Ezra Galatians Gospel of Basilides Genesis Gerim Gospel of Philip Gospel of Thomas Gospel of Truth Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica Hebrews Shepherd of Hermas, Mandates 1 En 2 En Esdr GBasilides Gen Ger GPh GTh GTr Haer HE Heb HermMan
ABBREVIATIONS
xiii HermSim HermVis Hom Hom Hos Hyp In Dan Inst Shepherd of Hermas, Similitudes Shepherd of Hermas, Visions John Chrysostom, Homiliae Pseudo-Clement, Homiliae Hosea Philo, Hypothetica Hippolytus, Commentary on Daniel Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones Isaiah Jerusalem Talmud, tractate Berakhot tractate Ketubbot tractate Kilayim tractate Moed Qatan tractate Qiddushin tractate Rosh ha-Shanah tractate Sanhedrin tractate Shabbat tractate Yebamot James Jeremiah John R Jonah Jubilees Judith Judges Joshua Pseudo-Philo, Liber Antiquitatem Biblicarum
Philo, De Legum Allegoriae Leviticus Leviticus Rabbah Luke Mishnah, tractate Abot tractate Berakhot tractate Babba Qamma tractate Eduyot tractate Hagiga tractate Hallah tractate Megillah tractate Miqwaot tractate Sanhedrin tractate Shabbat tractate Shekalim tractate Sota tractate Taanit tractate Temurot tractate Yadayim
Xiv
ABBREVIATIONS
1-4 Macc 1-4 Maccabees Mal Malachi Mek Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael MidrPss Midrash on Psalms MidrTann Midrash Tannaim Mk Mark Mt Matthew Neh Nehemiah Num Numbers OdesSol Odes of Solomon OfMin Ambrose, De Officiis Ministrorum Orat Tertullian, De Oratione OrGr Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos Paed Celement of Alexandria, Paedagogus Pan Epiphanius, Panarion PE Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica PergMort Lucian, De Peregrini Morte PesR Pesiqta Rabbati 1-2 Pet 1-2 Peter Phid Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Philadelphians
Plant Philo, De Plantatione PolyC Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to Polycarp POx Papyrus Oxyrhynchus Pr :
Proverbs PraescrHaer Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum PRE Pirge de Rabbi Eliezer Protr Celement of Alexandria, Protrepticus Ps Psalms PssSol Psalms of Solomon 4QFlor Florilegium (A messianic anthology) 1QH The Thanksgiving Psalms 1QpHab Commentary on Habakkuk 1QS The Community Rule (Manual of Discipline)
11QT Temple Scroll 4QTestim Testimonia (messianic references) Recog Pseudo-Clement, Recognitions Ref Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium Rev Revelation Rom Romans 2 Sam 2 Samuel Sat Juvenal, Satire SibOr Sibylline Oracles Sir Sirach Smy Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrneans
SpecLeg Philo, De Specialibus Legibus Str Clement of Alexandria, Stromata e
ABBREVIATIONS
xv Methodius, Symposion Tosepta, tractate Berakhot tractate Gittin tracate Hullin tractate Sanhedrin tractate Shabbat tractate Sukkah tractate Taanit tractate Yebamot Testament of Asher Testament of Benjamin Testament of Dan Testamentum Domini Testament of Gad Testament of Joseph Testament of Levi Titus Pliny, Epistulae ad Traianum 1-2 Thessalonians 1-2 Timothy Tobit Ignatius, Letter to the Trallians Philo, De Vita Contemplativa Wisdom of Solomon Zechariah II. Secondary Sources The Anchor Bible Antike und Christentum The Apostolic Fathers, R.M. Grant (ed.) Archiv fiir Liturgiewissenschaft Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute
Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments Anglican Theological Review A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, W. Bauer,
W.F. Arndt, F.W. Gingrich, F.W. Danker Bonner Biblische Beitrage A Greek Grammar of the New Testament, F. Blass, A.
Debrunner, R.W. Funk Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium Biblica Beitrage zur Férderung christilicher Theologie
Beitrage zur historischen Theologie
ABBREVIATIONS
XVi Bulletin John Rylands Library Bibliothek der Kirchenvater Bulletin des recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale
Bibliotheca sacra Biblische Studien Brown Studies in Religion Bulletin de Théologie ancienne et médiévale
Bible et terre sainte Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
Cahiers de la Revue Biblique Catholic Biblical Quarterly Church Quarterly Review Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium
Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum Downside Review Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique Dieu Vivant Etudes bibliques Ephemerides liturgicae Eranos Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses Estonian Theological Society in Exile Fontes christiani Forschung zur Geschichte der Theologie und des innerkirchlichen Lebens Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und
Neuen Testaments Forschung zur Bibel Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten
Jahrhunderte EBib EphLiturg Er EThL ETSE FC FGThIL FRLANT FzB Gottingen Theologische Arbeiten Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte, hg. v. M. Schmaus, J.
Geiselmann und H. Rahner, 1951 ff Handbuch zum Neuen Testament Handbuch zum Neuen Testament. Erganzungsband
Harvard Theological Review Hebrew Union College Annnual Jahrbuch fiir Antike und Christentum Journal of Biblical Literature Jewish Encyclopaedia Journal of Early Christian Studies Jahrbuch fiir Liturgiewissenschaft Jewish Quarterly Review Journal of Religion Journal for the Study of the New Testament
ABBREVIATIONS
XVii Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal of Theological Studies Kommentar zu den apostolischen Vatern Kleine Texte fiir theologische und philologische Vorlesungen und Ubungen
Kerygma und Dogma Leiturgia. Hanbuch des evangelischen Gottesdienstes, KuD Leiturgia 1954ff Lexikon fiir Theologie und Kirche (2nd ed), M. Buchberger
(ed.) Liturgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen Monatsschrift fiir Geschichte und Wissenschaft des
Judentums Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Géttingen. Philologisch-Historische Klasse
New Gospel Studies LThK LOF MGWJ NGG. PH NGSt NHC The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia of Religious Knowl- -edge Ill. 1909
Novum Testamentum Novum Testamentum Supplements Neutestamentliche Abhandlungén New Testament Studies Osterreichische biblische Studien Orientalia Christiana analecta Oriens Christianus Papers of the Estonian Theological Society in Exile
Publications de la Faculté des Lettres de 1' Université de Strasbourg Patrologia graeca, J. Migne (ed.) Patrologia latina, J. Migne (ed.) Le point theologique Reallexikon fiir Antike und Christentum, Th. Klauser (ed.)
Radical Religion Revue biblique Revue de droit canonique Realencyklopddie fiir protestantische Theologie und Kirche
NovTest NovTest.S (3d ed. 1896 to 1913), J. Herzog (ed.) Recherches de science religieuse Revue des Etudes Juives Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart
Revue d'Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses Revue de l'histoire des religions Rivista di archeologia cristiana Rémische Quartalschrift fiir christliche Altertumskunde und
RechSR REJ RGG RHPhR RHR RivAc RQ fiir Kirchengeschichte Religious Studies Review RSR
ABBREVIATIONS
Studien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Studium Biblicum Fransicanorum Liber Annus
Sources chrétienne Scriptores coptici Second Century Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums
Society for New Testament Studies - Monograph Series Sammlung augewahlter kirchenund dogmengeschichtlicher
Quellenschriften Studienhefte zur Altertumswissenschaft Studies in Biblical Theology Studia Liturgica Studia patristica Schriften des Urchristentums ed. Kittel, trns. G. W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
ScrCop SecCent SGKA SNTSMS SQS StAW StBTh StLiturg StPatr SUC TDNT 1964.
Theologische Biicherei Theology Theologie und Glaube Théologie historique Theologische Jahrbiicher Theologische Literaturzeitung Theologische Quartalschrift Theologische Rundschau Theological Studies Theologisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament, G. Kittel
& G. Friedrich (eds.) Theologische Quartalschrift Theologisches Realenzyklopddie, Berlin 1976ff
Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur
Theologische Zeitschrift Vetera christianum Vigiliae christianae Wege der Forschung Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen
Testament Wiener Studien Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Zeitschrift fiir Kirchengeschichte Zeitschrift fiir neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die
Kunde der dilteren Kirche Zeitschrift fiir Theologie und Kirche
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH: AN OVERVIEW
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
Pietermaritzburg 1. The Text In 1873 Archbishop Philotheos Bryennios, metropolitan of Nicomedia, discovered a manuscript in the library of the patriarch of Jerusalem at Constantinople, which contained a number of texts. The first to be published by Bryennios was the First Epistle of Clement in 1875, but it was not until ten years after the discovery of the Jerusalem manuscript that he realized the significance of another of the ancient texts entitled AIAAXH TON AQAEKA
ATIOZTOAQN, which he published in 1883.1 A facsimile of the Jerusalem text was printed by J.R. Harris in his commentary,? but there is essentially nothing to add to or subtract from the transcription of Bryennios. It is a clear and accurate, albeit relatively late, copy made by a scribe and dated precisely to 1056 C.E.
At first the reliability of the text, which was accepted by Adolf von Harnack? in his more accessible and hugely influential edition of the Didache, published within a year of the edition of Bryennios, remained unquestioned. Gradually, however, a body of direct textual evidence accumulated which led to a change in this perspective. A substantial portion of an Ethiopian version, containing 11:3-13:7 and 8:1-2, was found preserved in the Ethiopic Church Order published by G. Horner in 1904.4 A fragment of the Greek text, containing 1:3b-4a and 4:7b-3:2a, was discovered among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri and published in 1922.5
A Coptic version, containing 10:3b-12:2, was published by G.
Horner in 1924,° substantially corrected by C. Schmidt,' and again corrected by L.-Th. Lefort. A--collation of a supposed
! Bryennios, P. Avdaxi trav b@bexa &00T6d\wy (Constantinople: S. I. Boutura, 1883).
2 The Teaching of the Apostles (London: Clay / Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1887).
3 A. von Harnack, Die Lehre der zwolf Apostel (Leipzig: Hinrichse, 1884 [TU 2,1-2]) p. 13.
4 The Statutes of the Apostles or Canones Ecclesiastici (London: Williams & Norgate, 1904).
5 B.-P. Grenfell & A. S. Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 15 (London: Egyptian Exploration Society, 1922) p. 14.
6 "A New Fragment of the Didache in Coptic", JTS 25 (1924) pp. 225-231.
7 "Das koptische Didache-Fragment dere British Museum", ZNW 24 (1925) pp.
81-99.
8 Les Peres apostoliques en copte | (Louvain: Durbecq, 1952 [CSCO 135-136, ScrCop 17-18]) pp. ix-xi.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
Georgian version was published by G. Péradzé in 1932,° but has never been verified and must be discounted from text critical analysis. The text is also largely preserved in the Apostolic Constitutions VII.1-32.
Besides these direct textual sources, there is the indirect evidence of the text of the Two Ways in a number of different recensions. Barnabas was seen alternatively as a source for the Didache or as dependent on it. The Latin text of the Doctrina apostolorum was first published in its entirety by J. Schlecht in 1901.19 There was considerable debate about whether it constituted an abbreviation of the Didache or its source.
The Apostolic Church Order was available already in the edition of O. von Gebhardt in 1884.1! In 1903, T. Schermann published the text of the Epitome. '2
However, it was not until the study of E. Peterson was published in 1959,13 that the reliability of the Jerusalem text was substantially questioned. Peterson begins with the assumption that the text of the Jerusalem manuscript is a corrupt Novatian recension and that the text of the Coptic version and indeed of the Apostolic
Constitution is more reliable. His suspicion has been echoed by J.P. Audet.!4 Both Peterson and Audet make substantial changes to the text in the light of their suspicions.
Audet has allowed his suspicion of the Jerusalem text and his theories of the development of the Didache to strongly influence the critical text in his commentary. For instance, he omits ratra
TavTa TpoernTovTes in 7:1 in favour of Bazzioare in the Apostolic Constitutions, which changes the whole perspective of the text. He also inserts various styles of brackets to indicate supposed subtractions and additions at various stages of the history of the text's development.
K. Wengst!5 has also taken up this suspicion about the value of the Jerusalem manuscript into his
° "Die "Lehre der zwélf Apostel" in der georgischen Uberlieferung", ZNW 31 (1932) pp. 111-116.
10 Doctrina XII Apostolorum, die Apostellehre in der Liturgie der katholischen Kirche (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1901).
11 "Ein iibersehenes Fragment der Didache in alter lateiner Ubersetzung™ in A. von Harnack, Die Lehre (Leipzig: Hinrich, 1884 [TU 2]) pp. 275-286.
12 Eine Elfapostelmoral oder die Christliche Rezension der "beiden Wege™ (Munchen: Lentner, 1903 [SGKA.E 3)).
13 "Uber einige Probleme der Didache-Uberlieferung", RivAC 27 (1951) pp. 3768, also in Frithkirche, Judentum und Gnosis: Studien und Untersuchungen (Rome:
Herder, 1959) pp. 146-182. dy '4 La Didache. Instructions des Apétres (Paris: Gabalda, 1958 [EBib]) pp. 52- 'S Didache (Apostellehre), Barnabasbrief, Zweiter Klemensbrief,
Schrift an Diognet (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984 [SUC 2]). See especially his remarks on p. 6.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
critical edition of the text. In particular, he has excluded the. gospel section (1:3b-2:1), included the thanksgiving prayer for the myrrh (10:8) and completed the ending of the apocalypse from the witiness of the Apostolic Constitutions (16:8). He has also made a large number of other changes from the Jerusalem text. His work has been essentially affirmed recently by B. Dehandschutter.'6
Most modern critics have preferred to take a more moderate / position, accepting the fundamental integrity of the Jerusalem manuscript in general, but testing it in particular instances. This is
| the line taken, for instance, by A. V6dbus,!7 A. Tuilier,!8 K.
Niederwimmer,'® and G. Schéllgen2° Caution about the text remains and each case must be judged on its merits. The critical text produced by Tuilier in the Sources Chretiennes edition is a particular achievement, providing a clear, cautious and usable text with full notes on the variants.2! Schéllgen has paid Tuilier the complement of adopting his text in its entirety in his commentary.?2
C. N. Jefford and S. J. Patterson23 have recently argued that the Coptic version is from a roll made for liturgical use and indicates an earlier recension than the Jerusalem text, which ended at 12:2a. However, their conclusions havé been challenged in a thorough analysis of the Coptic version by F. S. Jones and P. A.
Mirecki.24* They argue that this text is from a double leaf not a roll, and consitutes a limited scribal exercise by an experienced scribe. The Coptic text seems to be reasonably accurate and indicates that it should be taken seriously as a witness alongside the Jerusalem text. Few today share the confidence of Peterson in the 16 "The Text of the Didache: Some Comments on the Edition of Klaus Wengst", in C. N. Jefford (ed.), The Didache in Context: Essays on its Text, History and Transmission (Leiden: Brill, 1995) pp. 37-46.
'7 Liturgical Traditions in the Didache (Stockholm: Estonian Theological Society in Exile, 1968 [PETSE 16]) pp. 29-33.
18 W. Rordorf & A. Tuilier, La doctrine des Douze Apétres (Didaché) (Paris:
Les Editions du Cerf, 1978 [SC 248]) pp. 102-110.
'9 Die Didache (Géttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989 [KAV 1]) pp. 3536.
20 Didache—Zwolf-Apostel-Lehre.
Einleitung, Obersetzung und Kommentar (Freiburg: Herder, 1991 [FC 1]) pp. 85-94.
21 See Tuilier's introduction in La Doctrine, pp. 102-128; cf. "Une nouyelle édition de la Didaché (Problémes de méthode et de critique textuelle)" in Studia Patristica 15 (Berlin: Adademie-Verlag, 1984 [TU 128]) pp. 31-36.
22 Didache Zwolf-Apostel-Lehre, p. 86.
23 "A Note on Didache 12.2a (Coptic)", SecCent 7 (1989-1990) pp. 65-75. Cf. also Patterson's recent article, "Didache 11-13: The Legacy of Radical Itinerancy in Early Christianity" in Didache in Context, pp. 313-329, esp. 319-324.
24 "Considerations on the Coptic Papyrus of the Didache (British Library Oriental Manuscript 9271)" in Didache in Context, pp. 47-87.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
reliability of the fourth century Apostolic Constitutions, unless it is confirmed by the reading of other witnesses.
2. The Titles The work carries two titles: a shorter title (dudaxn TOV amooTéAwv) and a longer title (6u6ax% Kupiov dia Tav da@deKxa amooTéAwy Toic €veow). Bryennios*> and Harnack?* accepted the longer title as the older and original title of the work, while the shorter title was an abbreviation. For Bryennios it indicated the nature of the Didache as catechesis of the Jewish Christian Church. Harnack, on the other hand, saw it as addressed to pagans newly converted to Christianity. This represented the initial concensus.
However, J.-P. Audet notes that ancient citations of the Didache fluctuate between the singular and plural of didax7 / ddsaxat. The Coptic version of 11:2 also has the plural, and Audet argues that this stood in an original short title dudaxat Tov [email protected] The adjective "twelve", missing in many citations, was seen as a later addition. This for him indicated the nature of the work as a collection of instructions provided by itinerant evangelists / apostles of the primitive church. The long title, on the other hand, refers to the Jewish Two Ways teaching. Rordorf agrees with this assessment, adding the refinement that the reference to the xupiov must have been added at the same time as 1:3b-2:1.28 Wengst goes so far as to banish the long title altogether to the footnotes.29 For Niederwimmer,?° neither title stood in the original text; for him, as for Schdllgen,3! the short title originated as a title for the Two Ways and thus came to be attached to the Didache, while the longer title is a later development.
3. The Early Years of Research Bryennios's thorough notes and discussion of the text set the agenda for early research, noting that it was taken up in the 25 Avdaxi, p. 3.
26 Die Lehre: Prolegomena, pp. 24-37; cf. R. Knopf, Die Lehre der zwolf Apostel; Die zwei Clemensbriefe (Tiibingen: Mohr, 1920 [HNT.E 1]) p. 3.
27 La Didaché, pp. 91-103. The original work had no title, he argues, but came to be referred to in this way.
28 La Doctrine, pp. 13-17.
29 Didache (Apostellehre), p. 66.
30 Die Didache, pp. 81-82; cf. P. Vielhauer, Geschichte der urchristlichen Literatur. Einleitung in das Neue Testament, die Apokryphen und die Apostolischen
Vater (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975) pp. 722-725.
31 Didache Zwélf-Apostel-Lehre, pp. 25-26.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
Apostolic Constitutions and a number of other ancient Christian texts. He also argued that the Didache itself utilized the Two
Ways material from Barnabas and quoted from the Shepherd of Hermas, and for this reason dates the work between 120 and 160
C.E. He sees it as a Jewish Christian work designed for the instruction of catechumens.
Harnack's commentary has been so central in the subsequent history of research, that it is important to set out his perspective in some detail. He also initially accepted the supposed dependence of the Didache on Barnabas and the Shepherd as a starting point for dating the text. Nevertheless, he recognized its early date and importance for the study of the Christian origins. He rather rashly celebrated it as providing clear and uncontroversial evidence for the life of the early Church, in contrast to the problematic nature of most early sources:
Um so erfreulicher ist es, dass wir in der nun publicierten ddax7 eine Quelle erhalten haben, die nicht neue Triimmerstiicke zu den alten fiigt, sondern die sich formell und materiell aufs engste an den Ausschnitt der
Uberlieferung anfiigt, der fiir uns der hellste und zugleich der wichtigste ist.3
Unfortunately, it was not to be the case. The Didache has proved , to be one of the most enigmatic and contested of early Christian writings, and Harnack himself contributed to the controversy in no small manner by seeing in this text the key to settling the quarrel between the Reformation and the Roman Catholic Church on the question of church order.
; The Didache enabled Harnack to put forward a threefold order of apostles, prophets and teachers against the Catholic order of bishops, priests and deacons as the earliest order of ministry.
The Didache, he argues on the basis of 4:1, knew only one class of dignitaries in the community, namely those who were ministers of the gospel, and this vindicated Article V of the Augsburg Confession.33 The Catholic order is the result of a two hundred year development, in which the "service of the Word" degenerated into the ministry of "Priester und Hierarchen":
Der Katholicismus hat Recht, wenn er behauptet, dass alle wesentlichen Elemente seiner Kirchenordnung in der apostolischen Zeit vorgebilded seien, aber cine Fiktion ist es, wenn er daran fest halt, dass in der Kirche urspriinglich nur die selbstandige, nicht von Menschen declarirte Wiirde der \adotvres Tov N6yor Sod Beov, der diakovia Tov Aoyou gegolten hat, und dass alle iibrigen Einrichtungen, die getroffen wurden, die Constitution der Kirche, sofern sie eine éxxAnoia rod Geod ist, nicht berithren,*4
32 Did Lehre: Prologommena, p. 38.
33 Ibid. , pp. 94f.
34 Ibid., p. 157.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
Harnack used the Didache as the fulcrum of his account of the development of the early Church in his major work, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten.25 The oldest Church order consisted of the threefold ministry of apostles (who were engaged in the kerygma) and prophets and teachers (who were engaged in teaching or didache).
In the face of a decline and growing corruption in these ministries, the bishops and deacons originated secondarily within the local communities as a settled order of ministry. In other words, after the publication of Harnack's commentary the newly discovered
Didache was assured a place at the forefront of controversy about the nature of the early Church.
The date of the work clearly has a major import on the relevance and significance of the information it contains and naturally has also been an important feature of debate. Harnack's commentary dates it on the basis, on the one hand, of its use as authoritative text in Clement of Alexandria. A reasonable time lapse from its composition to its use by Clement suggests 165
C.E. as a terminus ad quem, and, on the other hand, on the basis of its supposed dependence on Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas, works whose own dating is disputed, but suggest a terminus a quem of around 135 C.E.
The primitive conditions of community organization are, he argues, unthinkable at such a late date in Asia Minor or Syria, so that he is led to posit a rural backwater in Egypt, where older traditions clung stubbornly on against the trend towards Catholicization.
This corresponds with the fact that external attestations of the use of the text point overwhelmingly towards
Egypt. Internal features confirm this dating in his opinion, especially the lack of a dogmatic regula fidei and of any trace of the extensive schisms (particularly Marcion and Montanism) which characterized the end of the second century.
The text still envisages Christianity as a universal spiritual unity rather than a Church with a common political organization of particular local congregations.
In terms of its nature, Harnack sees the Didache as a collection of ethical teaching and ordinances which were held to derive from the apostles, not as authors of the text but as tradents of its content. Thus the longer title of the work is the more ancient and accurately describes its nature. It was thus not a literary fraud but 35 First published in 1902. For the relevant section, see the English translation,
The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (London:
William & Norgate, 1908) pp. 319-368.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
as particular instruction for Gentile Christians, a short manual for Christians by which they can direct their general life-style. The confession of faith is not found in dogmatic teaching, but is embedded in the cultic worship of the community. The polemic against the hypocrites in chapter 8 is regarded as confirmation that this is a Gentile Christian work heralding the final rejection of any commerce with Jews.
Harnack is particularly impressed by the solidarity of scattered Christian communities, in terms of their hospitality and selfsacrifice. Everyone who comes to a community in the name of the Lord must be received, without the necessity of letters of commendation, simply the requirement that no Christian should live without work.
Christians still regard themselves as mere sojourners on earth, so that wandering brothers are not abnormal but representative. This is a clear indication for Harnack that the Didache belongs to the period of "Christianity" and not to the period of the "Church"—an observation heavy with value judgment and connected to the Catholic—Protestant debate in Germany.
Despite his relegation of the Didache to the mid second century, Harnack is also clear that much depends on the context of the writing. He is only able to argue for 140-165 C.E. on the basis of a backward community in rural Egypt. The ecclesiological conditions portrayed by the text would, he concedes, be inconceivable at such a late date in Asia Minor or Syria. Harnack's position on the date and origin of the Didache has been enormously influential and was substantially affirmed,by two other early critics of the text, namely Adam Krawutzcky** and Adolf Hilgenfeld.3"
A quite different position was taken in the first French commentary by P. Sabatier.3* Sabatier argued from internal evidence that the Didache originated in the mid first century C.E. in Syria.
He argued that the undeveloped baptismal and _ eucharistic liturgies, the emphasis on charismatic leadership, the strong Jewish influence and the eschatological immediacy, could only be possible in the earliest stage of the development of the church.
Whereas Harnack viewed the Didache as deriving from a Gentile Christian community, which had broken completely from its Jewish roots, and read especially ch. 8 in this light, a majority
Krawutzcky, "Uber die sogenannte Zwilfapostellehre, ihre hauptsiachlichsten Quellen und ihre erste Ausnahme", TQ 4 (1884) pp. 547-606. His article provides the variation that the Jesus tradition was derived from the lost
Gospel of the Hebrews.
37 A. Hilgenfeld, Novum Testamentum extra canonem receptum, Evangeliorum 4,2 (Leipzig: Weigel, 1884) pp. 88-94.
38 AIAAXH TON IB' AIIOLTOAQN: La Didaché ou |'Ensignement des douze apotres (Paris: Noblet, 1885).
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
of early critics followed Bryennios in identifying it as the product of a Jewish Christian community. Most English critics in the years immediately following the publication of the Didache, with the notable exception of C. Bigg,?° saw in it a Jewish Christian document from the first century, among them Bishop J. Wordsworth,*°
F. W. Farrar,4! J.R. Harris,42 H. de Romestin,4? and Canon Spence.*4 All argue for a Jewish Christian origin around the end of the first century, as does J. B. Lightfoot in his landmark collection of the Apostolic Fathers.45 The German scholar F. X. Funk in a commentary published in 1887 took a similar position, arguing for a first century composition in Egypt.*°
Charles Taylor'? read the text consistently against the background of the Talmud and found extensive similarities, concluding
39 C. Bigg, The Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles (London: SPCK, 1898). Who argues that it was a romance from the fourth century. His position did not find much support, and indeed it was rejected by A. J. Maclean, whe produced the second edition of his work in 1922.
40 "Christian Life, Ritual, and Discipline at the Close of the First Century" in The Guardian 39/1998 (1884) pp. 422-423. Wordsworth sees in it a Jewish
Christian writing of the last years of the first or early years of the second century from Egypt. This essay, together with the essays by Farrar, Harris and Taylor which follow have been conveniently reprinted by B.
S. Walters, Didaché (AIAAXH TQN AQAEKA ATIOZTOAQN) The Unknown Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles (San Jose: Bibliographics, 1991).
41 Farrar published two widely read critical articles and a translation of the text in 1884: "The "Teaching of the Apostles' An Ancient Christian Treatise, Discovered and Edited by Philotheos Bryennios, Metropolitan of Nicomedia, 1883", The Expositor series 2, vol. 7 (1884) pp. 374-392; "The Bearing of the 'Teaching' on the Canon", The Expositor series 2, vol. 8 (1884) pp. 81-91; "The Teaching of the Lord by the Twelve Apostles to the Gentiles", The Contemporary Review 45 (1884) pp. 698-706. Farrar argues for 90-100 C.E. from Syria/Palestine.
42 Teaching of the Apostles. In his article, "The Genuineness, Priority, Source and Value of "The Teaching'" (Journal of Christian Philosophy [1885] reprinted in Walters, Unknown Teaching, pp. 115-144), Harris sees it as a Jewish Christian writing from Northern Syria, perhaps Antioch, from the beginning of the second century.
The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.
AIAAXH TQN AQAEKA ATIOLTOAQN With Introduction, Translation, Notes and Illustrative Passages
(Oxford & London: Parker, 1884!). De Romestin makes no suggestion for place of origin but argues for a date in the last quarter of the first century and no later than the first quarter of the second.
44 The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. Avday Tav bdbexx AtooTodwv. A Translation with Notes; And Excursus (I. to IX.) Illustrative of the "Teaching; " and the Greek Text (London: Nisbet, 1885). Spence somewhat fancifully argues for a Jewish Christian origin in Pella under Symeon, the successor of James, about 80-90
C.E., though note the later thoughts of A. Adam below.
45 The Apostolic Fathers (London: Macmillan, 1893) pp. 215-216.
46 Doctrina duodecim apostolorum (Tiibingen: Laupp, 1887).
47 C. Taylor, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Cambridge: Deighton Bell, 1886. The lectures were originally given originally in mid-1885. See also An Essay on the Theology of the Didache (Cambridge: Deighton Bell, 1889).
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
that it is "a genuine fragment of the earliest tradition of the church" from Palestine. He reverses Harnack's position on the sources of the Didache, arguing that it was used not only by Barnabas and the Shepherd, but also Justin Martyr's Apologies.48 Harris provided a thorough-going analysis of patristic parallels to the text, together with further Jewish background material, and emphasized its early and widespread use. However, he argues for the integrity of the text and claims that, if a Jewish original lies behind it, then
"this may very well have covered the same ground as the Teaching (Ethics, Baptism of proselytes, Passover, Day of Atonement,
Signs of Messiah)".4° Exploration of the Jewish roots of the Didache was taken still further by G. Salmon.5°
Although Taylor and Harris argued for the Jewishness of the whole text, their argument was most convincing with respect to the Two Ways and succeeded in persuading Harnack that a Jewish source lay behind the Two Ways in both Didache and Barnabas although he continued to maintain that the former knew the latter.5! Successive studies of the Two Ways>? confirmed the independence of the Latin version of the Two Ways, which must have served as the source of both the Didache and Barnabas, although, as we shall see there was an attempt to view it as an abridgement of the former.
A full summary of the "torrent" of research into the problems of the Didache prior to 1900 is provided by A. Ehrhard.°3
Beginning in 1903, Alfred Seeberg argued in a series of books 54 that the Didache was representative of the earliest
Christian catechesis, which was taken over and appropriated by the earliest Church from Jewish traditions. G. Klein took this further in 1909 in an ambitious book seeking to trace the origins of Jewish propaganda literature and its appropriation by the earliest
Christians.55 He argues that the Latin text of the Two Ways pub48 The question of the relation between Justin and the Didache remains an open one. Cf. M. A. Smith, "Did Justin Know the Didache?", StPatr 7 (1966) pp. 287290.
49 Teaching of the Apostles, p. 92.
50 G. Salmon, A Historical Introduction to the Study of the Books of the New Testament (London: Murray, 1894) 51 A. Harnack, Die Apostellehre und die jlidischen Beiden Wege (Leipzig: Hinrichse, 1886).
Iselin, Eine bisher unbekannte Version des ersten Teiles der "Apostellehre" (Leipzig: Heusler, 1895 [TU 13,1b]); J. Schlecht, Die Apostellehre in der Liturgie der katholischen Kirche (Freiburg: Herder, 1901); L. Wohleb, Die lateinische |, tp Alec der Didache (Paderborn: Schéningh, 1913 [SGKA 7,1]).
53 Die Altchristliche Literatur und irhe Erforschung von 1884-1900 I: Die Vornicdinische Literatur (Freibourg im Breisgau: Herder, 1900), pp. 37-68.
54 A. Seeberg, Der Katechismus der Urchristenheit (Leipzig: Deichert, 1903); Die Beiden Wege und das Aposteldekret (Leipzig: Deichert, 1906).
55 G. Klein, Der Alteste Christliche Katechismus und die Jidische PropagandaLiteratur (Berlin: Reimer, 1909).
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
lished by Schlecht had established the existence of an independent, pre-existent Jewish text, substantially in the form in which it occurs in Didache 1-6, including ch. 16 as its eschatological conclusion.5* Klein saw the Didache as based on oral Jewish ethical and legal tradition explicating the Old Testament tradition of the way of righteousness and love.'7 He attempts to trace its development as Jewish propaganda literature directed towards the Gentile
God-fearers, containing the legal principles applicable to all human beings.*8 By 1920 it seemed that a scholarly consensus had emerged, which is well-represented by Rudolf Knopf in his edition of the text for the Handbuch zum Neuen Testament.5° The first part of the Didache was not taken from Barnabas and Hermas, but from a common source in a Jewish proselyte catechism, which contained chs. 1-6 without 1:3-2:1, and probably also most of ch. 16 as an eschatological conclusion. While many of the community relations point to an early age, others point to a post-Apostolic age, particularly the decline of the charismatic ministry and the emergence of the church spread throughout the world. Hence a date between 90 and 150 C.E. is all that can be stated with confidence. Contrary to Harnack, Knopf argues that it could not have originated in Egypt because of the mention of mountains (9:4), the close, albeit conflictual, relationship with Judaism, and the absence of presbyters.
He allocates it instead to a rural backwater in Syria-Palestine.©° 4. Didache as a Pious Fiction However, 1920 also saw the publication of J. A. Robinson's
Donnellan Lectures on the relationship between Barnabas, Hermas and the Didache, which reshaped scholarly opinion on the text for decades.*! Robinson argued that the author of the Didache was merely imaginatively reconstructing what he considered to 56 Ibid., p. 157. See below for a discussion of ch. 16 as an eschatological warning to conclude the Two Ways.
57 Ibid., p. 160.
58 Klein identifies this with the Derech Eretz, Ibid., pp. 243f.
59 Die Lehre der Zwolf Apostel-Zwei Clemensbriefe (T libingen: Mohr, 1920
[HNT.E 1)).
60 Jbid., pp. 2-3.
61 J. A. Robinson, Barnabas, Hermas and the Didache: Being the Donnellan Lectures Delivered before the University of Dublin in 1920 (London: SPCK, 1920).
Robinson builds on an earlier article on the second half of the Didache published much earlier: "The Problem of the Didache", JTS 13 (1912) pp. 339-356. He defended his thesis again in "The Epistle of Barnabas and the Didache", JTS 35
(1934) pp. 113-146, 225-248.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
have been "the teaching of the Lord through the Twelve Apostles to the Gentiles", derived from Matthew 28:20. Consequently it has little historical value for the reconstruction of the life of the early church. The Two Ways section is founded on Barnabas, the original author of the Two Ways, interpolated from Matthew, who is conflated with Luke to disguise the borrowing. Use is also made by the Didachist of Mandate 2 of the Shepherd of Hermas. At every point, the Didachist is held to have garbled, misunderstood, obscured or grossly distorted the material he borrowed. Final proof of the use of Barnabas is that ch. 16 uses Barnabas 4:9, which is outside the Two Ways teaching.®? The Latin De Doctrina
Apostolorum is an abbreviation of the Didache which has made further use of Barnabas and the Shepherd to supplement the Didache. Robinson dismisses the supposed use of the Didache by Clement of Alexandria and others as "scripture" by seeing both dependent on a third source. With these impediments to a late dating removed, he is able to view it as a third century document intending to construct an "apostolic monument".
Robinson's hypothesis was taken a step forward by the substantial Yale thesis of James Muilenburg in 1927. Muilenburg's careful literary analysis argued that the two parts of Barnabas, namely 1-17 and 18-21, shared the same literary and stylistic traits and undoubtedly came from the same author. Didache, on the other hand, is a compilation from different sources.
Since Barnabas also provides the "clearer and more original form", whereas the Didache provides a more logical, improved form, it follows that Barnabas is simply, the source for the Two Ways in the Didache. In addition, the latter is held to have used material found scattered throughout the epistle. Even the use of the Didache in Clement of Alexandria is disputed and the writing again relegated to the end of the second century.® This position was supported also by the highly respected patristic scholar R. H.
Connolly, who added the refinement that the Didache was a Montanist text.6? The most extreme representative of this growing
62 Barnabas, Hermas and the Didache, pp. 67f.
63 Jbid., p. 82.
64 J. Muilenburg, The Literary Relations of the Epistle of Barnabas and the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Marburg, 1929).
65 Ibid., p. 140.
66 Ibid., pp. 165-168.
67 R. H. Connolly, "The Use of the Didache in the Didascalia", JTS 24 (1923) pp. 147-157; "The Didache in Relation to the Epistle of Barnabas", JTS 33 ( 1932) pp. 327-353; "Agape and eucharist in the Didache", DRev 55 (1937) pp. 447ff,
"Canon Streeter on the Didache", J7S 38 (1937) pp. 364ff; "The Didache and Montanism", DRev 55 (1937) pp. 339-347. The idea that the Didache represented a Montanist theological position was mooted already by Hilgenfeld, Bonet Maury and J. R. Harris (see Ehrhard, Altchristliche Literatur, p. 61).
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
consensus among English scholars that the writing was a late and archaizing fiction designed to support the Montanist heresy was F.
E. Vokes,®8 although he later modified and eventually retracted this position.©? Part at least of this determined assault on the authenticity of the Didache by these Anglican High Churchmen may relate to the use of its evidence to support a Protestant ecclesiology by Harnack, which we have already described. This is the conclusion of their colleague, C. H. Turner, who takes a different position and emphasizes the Jewish Christian origin of the work. Commenting in 1931 on the position of Bigg and Robinson, he writes:
Something odd there must be about the Didache which negatived, in the minds of these two distinguished scholars, the prima facie impression of a very primitive date: but in fact we need not look further than its surroundings for the explanation. It has none of the characteristics of the great
Church at the end of the first century: it is Jewish Christian through and through.
There was, however, a vigorous opposition to this demotion of the Didache from its position of importance in the reconstruction of the development of early Christianity. In 1929 the eminent source critic, B. H. Streeter, contrasted the "high" Alexandrian
Christology of Barnabas with the primitive Christology of the Didache.? He argues for echoes of the text in the letters of Ignatius, for clear dependence on Matthew. He emphasizes the reference to "mountains" in the eucharistic prayers as evidence against Egypt. Streeter also rejects the argument originating with Harnack that the Didache is from an isolated rural area, by pointing to its enormous and widespread influence and authority in the early centuries. He posits an origin about 100 C.E. in Syria and probably Antioch.7! Others continuing to maintain an early date for the work were J. V. Bartlet,72 J. M. Creed73 and T. Klauser.74
68 F. E. Vokes, The Riddle of the Didache (London: SPCK, 1938).
69 "The Didache Re-examined", Theol 58 (1955) pp. 12-16; "The Didache and the Canon of the New Testament" in Studia Evangelica 3 (Berlin: AkademieMer $
1964 [TU 88]) pp. 427-436; "The Didache—Still debated", ChOR 3 (1970) pp. 58f.
70 B. H. Streeter, "Origin and Date of the 'Didache'" in The Primitive Church (London: Macmillan, 1929) pp. 279-287; "The Much Belaboured Didache", JTS 37
(1936) pp. 369-374.
71 "Origin", p. 286.
" J. V. Bartlet, "The Didache Reconsidered", JTS 22 (1921) pp. 239-249.
73 J. M. Creed, "The Didache", JTS 39 (1938) pp. 370-287.
™ T. Klauser, "Taufet in Lebendigem Wasser! Zum religionsund kulturgeschichtlichen Verstaindnis von Didache 7,1-3" in Pisciculi. Studien zur Religion und
Kultur des Altertums (Fst. F. J. Délger), ed.
T. Klauser & Riikker (Minster:
Aschendorff, 1939) pp. 157-164. Also in Gesammelte-Arbeiten zur Liturgiegeschichte,
Kirchengeschichte und Christlichen Archdologie, ed.
E. Dassmann
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
However, Robinson, Muilenburg, Connolly and Vokes had spread sufficient doubt about the historical reliability of the Didache that it dropped off the scholarly agenda. The question of the Two
Ways in Barnabas and the Didache seemed most easily solved by a straightforward dependence of the latter on the former.
5. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Two Ways The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948 has had a profound impact on many areas of early Christian studies. The Didache is no exception. The concrete evidence they provide for at least one form of Jewish life and thought in the first century has provided a benchmark against which other material from the period can be measured.
The Canadian scholar Jean-Paul Audet was the first to recognize the significance of the Scrolls for the debate about the origin of the Two Ways.
His ground-breaking essay, "Affinités littéraires et doctrinales du "Manuel de Discipline""
,75 established beyond dispute that the Doctrina apostolorum could not be an abbreviation of the Didache and that Barnabas could not be the author of the Two Ways material. This changed the nature of the debate and laid the foundation for the modern study of the Didache. It is for this reason that the essay is included in this collection.
Audet points out that the question of the literary unity of Barnabas is not the same as the question of the source of the Two
Ways. He accepts that Robinson and his followers have proved the literary unity of the epistle, but points out that there is nevertheless a tell-tale transition between the second person plural used in chapters 1-18 and 21, where the author is clearly at work, and the second person singular in 19-20 in the Two Ways material. Further, he points to the markedly Jewish character of the material in the Didache, which is even stronger in the Latin
Doctrina apostolorum, which in many points is closer to the Manual of Discipline from Qumran than it is to the Didache, although both share a common literary framework with the Manual. This rules out the possibility that the Doctrina is a translation of the Didache, and indicates that it is an independent source.
Audet has convinced most scholars that the Didache was not dependent on Barnabas but on a source common to both, which is best represented by the Doctrina apostolorum. Few today would
(Miinster in Westfalen: Aschendorff, 1974 [JAC.E 3]) pp. 177-183.
75 " Affinités littéraires et doctrinales du "Manuel de Discipline"", RB 59 (1952) pp. 219-238.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
go so far as to accept his proposition of a literary dependence of the Christian Two Ways tradition on the Manual of Discipline.
However, the link between the Manual of Discipline and the Two Ways tradition has been further explored by K. Baltzer?, building on the work of A. Végtle"" and S. Wibbing'® on the lists of virtues and vices in the New Testament. Baltzer tries, not entirely successfully, to identify an ancient Covenant formula beneath the various forms of the Two Ways teaching. While his thesis has not been convincing in establishing the precise formal elements, he is undoubtedly right in seeing the background of the Two Ways in covenantal theology and practice. E. Kamlah'? examines the form of the Two Ways teaching in its various sources to demonstrate the way in which the covenantal material has been influenced by Iranian dualism to a greater or lesser extent. The dualistic element is strong in the Manual of Discipline, Barnabas and Hermas, but not in the Didache.
M. J. Suggs® seeks to trace a progressive development in the Two Ways tradition, from the advanced dualism of the Qumran
Literature through the more ethical and individualistic Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs and Barnabas to the purely ethical usage in the Didache, which he regards as standing at the end of the process. He sees the Sitz im Leben of the Two Ways form in the teaching of catechumens to prepare them for imitiation into the community. Its function is to emphasize group exclusiveness and solidarity against non-members.
Hence, the removal of the dualistic elements of the tradition in the Didache represents a retreat from the more sectarian nature seen in the other representatives of the tradition, a sign of a later provenance according to Suggs.
Willy Rordorf's fine study of the Two Ways tradition,®! which is also included in this volume, was published in the same year as that of Suggs. Rordorf has cautioned against a too simplistic solution to the problem of the different forms of the 76 K. Baltzer, Das Bundesformular (Neukirchen: Neukirchner Verlag, 1960
[WMANT 4)).
71 A. Vogtle, Die Tugendund Lasterkataloge im Neuen Testament (Minster:
Aschendorff, 1936).
78 §. Wibbing, Die Tugend-und Lasterkataloge im Neuen Testament und ihre Traditionsgeschichte unter besonderer Beriicksichtigung der Qumran-Texte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1959 [BZNW 25]).
79 E. Kamlah, Die Form der katalogischen Paranese im Neuen Testament (Tiibingen: Mohr, 1964 [WUNT 7).
80 "The Christian Two Ways Tradition: Its Antiquity, Form, and Function" in D. E. Aune (ed.), Studies in New Testament and Early Christian Literature: Essays in Honor of Allen P. Wikgren (Leiden: Brill, 1972 [NovTestSupp 33]) pp. 60-74. oa ; a chapitre d'éthique judéo-chretienne. Les deux voies", RSR 60 (1972) pp.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
Two Ways. For instance, the Manual of Discipline is directed by Jews to other Jews, whereas the Didache is directed towards
Gentiles. Moreover, it is not clear that the Two Ways of the Didache is any closer to the Two Ways of the Manual of Discipline than to the same tradition found in Rabbinic writings.
Using Kamlah, he argues that the dualistic and non-dualistic traditions existed side by side in late Judaism and were both inherited by early Christianity. In the early centuries, the non-dualistic form was used for catechesis given to proselytes to Judaism and subsequently in pre-baptismal catechesis given to Christian converts from paganism. Rordorf also traces the subsequent history of the Two Ways tradition in Christian asceticism through to the Rule of Saint Benedict. This study has been taken further in a recent study by C. Davies.82
My own detailed comparison of the Two Ways material in the Didache with the Manual of Discipline®3 has uncovered a number of interesting parallels in the lists of virtues and vices, e.g. between 3:7-10 and 1QS 4:2-88+ and between 5:1 and 1QS 4:911,85 but never at points where characteristic emphases of the Scrolls emerge. Instead, in important respects, the Didache is closer to remnants of the Two Ways tradition found in the Rabbinic writings, as in links between 3:1-6 and the Derek Eretz, which reflects the five "fundamental laws" of the Noachide Precepts.8° This link with the Derek Eretz has been persued further in a fine study by H. van de Sandt.8? These points of contact between the Didache and Rabbinic writings have increasingly interested Jewish scholars, notably G. Alon*® and D. Flusser,%?
82 "The Didache and Early Monasticism in the East and West", Didache in Context, pp. 352-367.
83 4 Commentary on the Didache in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Documents (Unpublished Cambridge PhD Dissertation, 1983).
84 Commentary, pp. 76-80.
85 Commentary, 116-120.
86 Commentary, pp. 65-76.
87 "Didache 3,1-6: A Transformation of an Existing Jewish Hortatory Pattern", JSJ 23 (1992) pp. 21-41.
88 PONT] Om>wA 3" NMNNIw ADNAN, in Studies in Jewish History in the Times of the Second Temple, the Mishna and the Talmud | (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz
Hameuchad, 1958) pp. 274-294.
89 "The Two Ways", in Jewish Sources in Early Christianity (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalaim, 1979) pp. 232-252; "Paul's Jewish Christian Opponents in the Didache" in S. Shaked, D. Shulman & G. G. Stroumsa (eds.), Gilgul: Essays on Transformation, Revolution and Permanence in the History of Religions: Dedicated to R. J. Zwi
Werblowsky (Leiden: Brill, 1987) pp. 71-90; "The Ten Commandments and the New Testament" in B. Segal (ed.), The Ten Commandments in History and Tradition (Jerusalem:
Magnes, 1990) pp. 219-246; D. Flusser & S. Safrai, "Das Aposteldekret und die Noachistischen Gebote", Wer Tora vermehrt mehrt Leben:
Festgabe fiir Heinz Kremers zum 60. Geburtstag (Neukirchen-Vluyn: NeukirchenerVerlag, 1986) pp. 173-192.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
whose essays have been included in this volume. This is an exciting development for Patristic studies, and promises to unlock further resources for the understanding of early Christian literature.
It seems that the early indications of a Jewish Christian background to the text, which had been eclipsed by the work of Robinson and his colleagues, are being vindicated by modern research into the Judaism of the first century C.E.
The work of Audet and Rordorf on the Two Ways tradition has succeeded in removing any possibility that the Didache is dependent on Barnabas. A major stumbling block in the path of research has been removed and it is no accident that this resulted in a flood of new commentaries on the text, not least by these two scholars themselves, attempting a major re-evaluation of the Didache. However, the question of the relationship between the Didache and Barnabas may not yet be closed. In a recent article?
I have focussed on the question of the Sitz im Leben of the Two Ways teaching in pre-baptismal catechesis and asked whether the transformation of the tradition into post-baptismal gnosis may not have been polemical in origin. A further open question concerns the extent of the Two Ways tradition and whether ch.
originally formed its conclusion, as argued by several scholars.*!
6. The Question of the Gospel Tradition Once the possibility of a dependence of the Didache on Barnabas had been ruled out by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the only other major possibility of sources to be found in the text remained the question of the use of the Synoptic Gospels. This now offered the only secure point of reference for the dating of the work. The earliest commentators on the text usually assumed the use of at least Matthew's gospel, especially since the Didache itself four times refers to "the gospel" in 8:2; 11:3; 15:3, 4. Representative of those who affirm such a dependence is E. Massaux°? in his monumental study published in 1950 of the use of Matthew in Christian literature.
90 J. A. Draper, "Barnabas and the Riddle of the Didache Revisited", JSNT 58 (1995) pp. 89-113. A rather sceptical response to this may be found in J. CarletonPaget, The Epistle of Barnabas: Outlook and Background (Tiibingen: Mohr, 1994
[WUNT ns. 64]) pp. 49-51.
°! Especially E. Bammel, "Schema und Vorlage von Didache 16" in F. L. Cross (ed), Studia Patristica IV (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1961 [TU 79]) pp. 253-262.
See below.
% Influence de l'Evangile de saint Matthieu sur la littérature chrétienne avant faint Irénée (Louvain, 1950); an English translation is now available: The Influence of the Gospel of Saint Matthew on Christian Literature before Saint Irenaeus I: The First Ecclesiastical Writers, trns N. J. Belval & S. Hecht. Leuven: Peeters; Macon,
Ga: Mercer University Press, 1990-1993 [NGSt 5,1-3].
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
The debate was thrown wide open with the publication of the important study of Helmut Késter®} in 1957, which argued that although the reference to the evayyéAov might point to a knowledge of a written gospel by the "compilator" of the Didache, the latter did not himself use such a source. The Didache did not stand after the gospel writers but alongside them, utilizing the same traditions.% A similar, but rather more fanciful conclusion was reached by Audet in his important commentary, published in 1958.95 He argued that the text was written in three phases: 1:1-3a, 2:2-11:2
(D1) was written before the emergence of a written gospel; 11:316:8 (D2) was written by the same author under the pressure of changed circumstances, who now knew of but did not use a written gospel; finally various interpolations made by a single interpolator (1), including 1:3b-2:1, which were made at a later date but still independently of the final form of any of the gospels. This thesis, which allowed Audet to date the composition of the Didache entirely between 50 and 70 C.E., has not won many followers.
Nevertheless, independence of the gospel tradition on the part of the Didache has been affirmed by a growing number of scholars since then, including R. Glover,9° W. Rordorf?? and my own study included in this volume.°® The most recent sustained study of the issue by C. N. Jefford also concludes concerning
1:3b-2:1 that in most cases the relationship between the sayings collection in the Didache and the collection in the Matthew Gospel is best explained by the hypothesis that the Didachist and the Matthean redactor have shared a common sayings source.% 93 Synoptische Uberlieferung bei den apostolischen Vatern (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1957 [Tu 65]), 159-241.
94 Tbid., p. 240.
95 La Didaché, pp. 166-186.
96 "The Didache's Quotations and the Synoptic Gospels", NTS 5 (1958) pp. 1229; cf. "Patristic Quotations and Gospel Sources", NTS 31 (1985) pp. 234-251.
97 Rordorf & Tuilier, La doctrine, pp. 83-91; "Le probléme de la transmission textuelle de "Didaché" 1:3b-2:1", in F. Paschke (ed.) Uberlieferungsgeschichtliche
Untersuchungen (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1981 [TU 125]) pp. 499-513; "Does the Didache Contain Jesus Tradition Independently of the Synoptic Gospels?" in H.
Wansbrough (ed.), Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition (Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1991 [JSNTSupp 64]) pp. 394-423.
98 J. A. Draper, "The Jesus Tradition in the Didache" in D. Wenham (ed.), Gospel Perspectives V: The Jesus Tradition Outside the Gospels (Sheffield: JSOT,
1985) pp. 269-289.
99 The Sayings of Jesus in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Leiden: Brill, 1989 [VigChr.E 11]), p. 91.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
The parallels to the gospel material in 7-16 are attributed to the Matthean, Synoptic or Lucan "traditions" rather than to a direct literary dependence.
There have been a number of attempts to counter this growing consensus concerning the Jesus tradition in the Didache. B.
Layton!°! argued that the structure of the Jesus sayings in 1:3b-2:1 betray secondary rhetorical heightening compared with the Synoptic gospels and that this indicates that the Didache is dependent on them. M. Mees!° countered this by pointing out that the gospels themselves treat the tradition in the same way, and the Didache could simply be using the same tradition differently.
W.-D. Kéhler! and K. Wengst!™ argue for a dependence of the Didache on Matthew and situate it in the region of Syria/
Palestine. The extremely thorough redaction-critical study of C.
M. Tuckett,1°5 which is also reprinted in this book, attempts a case by case analysis of each occurrence of the Jesus tradition and concludes that the Didache is dependent on both Matthew and Luke.
K. Niederwimmer! points out, in a careful and balanced consideration, that references to the "gospel" only occur in passages attributable to the redactor of the Didache, and that the word does not refer to the proclamation of the salvation events but only to the sayings of Jesus from the Synoptic tradition. The "words of the Kurios" become a new law of Christ, to regulate the life and conduct of the community. Yet there is nothing to prove one way or another whether the redactor of the Didache knew and used a written gospel text. Thus the question of the relationship of the Didache to the Jesus tradition must be held to remain unresolved. Its resolution will depend on the dating of the work obtained on other grounds. My own position, argued in a number of papers, is that the Didache and Matthew evolved together in the same community, the former as the manual of discipline of the community and the latter as a record of the Jesus tradition mediated by the prophets. The influence, then, could run
100 See the Table of Sources Jefford provides in Sayings, pp. 160-161.
101 "The Sources, Dates and Transmission of Didache 1:3b-2:1", HTR 61 (1968) pp. 343-383.
102 "Die Bedeutung der Sentenzen und ihrer Auxesis fiir die Formung der Jesuworte nach Didache 1:3b-2:1", VetChr 8 (1971) pp. 55-76.
103 Die Rezeption des Matthdusevangeliums in der Zeit vor Irendus (Tibingen:
Mohr, 1987 [WUNT 2,24]) pp. 29-30.
104 Didache (Apostellehre), pp. 24-32, 61-63.
105 "Synoptic Tradition in the Didache" in J.-M. Sevrin (ed.), The New Testa- -_ be — Christianity (Louvain: Louvain University Press, 1989 [BEThL 86]) pp.
197-250.
106 Die Didache, pp. 71-77.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
in either direction, depending on the redactional layer of the text.107
7. The Didache as "Evolved Tradition"
The re-awakening of interest in the Didache in the years following the work of Audet was characterized by a new emphasis on formcritical analysis.
P. Prigent!°8 argues that the composition of Barnabas is chaotic as a result of an eclectic and undigested arrangement of traditional material. In the same way, R. A. Kraft has described these writings as "evolved literature", in which an author is almost incidental:
He has not consistently digested his materials so that they become part of him; he has not integrated them by means of a perspective which may be called, in a special way, his own. Rather, his tradition speaks through him. /t is of prime importance. He is its vehicle, but the focus remains on the traditional material, not on the author-editor. 1°
Kraft!!° and K. Wengst!!! (following a suggestion of W. Bousset) have proposed that Barnabas is a collection of material from a school of legal interpreters.!!2 On this understanding of the origin of the paraenesis in the text, it would be fruitless to try to identify any concrete purpose or context.
The Didache, meanwhile, is "in the form of an impersonal community manual", so that it is the product of a community and not an individual.'!> It stands in "the church manual tradition" and has a complex and rather haphazard history of accumulation:
107 See J. A. Draper, "Torah and Troublesome Apostles in the Didache Community", NovT 33/4 (1991) pp. 347-372, esp. 372; "The Development of 'the Sign of the Son of Man' in the Jesus Tradition", N7S°39 (1993) pp. 1-21, esp. 14f;
"Christian Self-definition against the "Hypocrites" in Didache VIII", in Society of Biblical Literature: 1992 Seminar Papers (No. 31, 128th Annual Meeting, San
Francisco, November 21-24, 1992), ed. E.H. Lovering. Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1992 pp. 362-377; esp. 372-374.
108 Les testimonia dans le christiniasm primitif. L'épitre de Barnabé I-XVI (Paris: Etudes bibliques, 1961).
109 Robert A. Kraft Zhe Apostolic Fathers III]: Barnabas and the Didache (London: Nelson, 1965) p. 2.
110 Kraft, Ibid., pp. 19-22.
111 Tyadition und Theologie Des Barnabasbriefes (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971).
112 Cf L.W.Barnard ("The Epistle of Barnabas and the Tannaitic Catechism"
[ATAR 41, 1959] 177-190) and M.B.Shukster & P.Richardson ("Temple and Bet Ha-midrash in the Epistle of Barnabas" in $.G.Wilson, Anti-Judaism in Early
Christianity 2: Separation and Polemic (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University
Press, 1986 (Studies in Christianity and Judaism 2)] 17-31).
113 Kraft, Barnabas and the Didache, p. 4.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
Neither simplicity nor straight-line development characterize the production of such church manuals. We are not dealing with a copyrighted document, which is the result of one man's endeavors, but with a conservative, living community tradition which can occasionally (sometimes rather accidentally) be glimpsed in a state of suspended animation, as it were, by means of the various pieces of surviving Christian "literature" which represent these interests.
In this, Kraft has undoubtedly grasped something essential about the nature of the Didache. However, in two respects this perspective is problematic. In the first place, there is no "church order tradition" per se in the period in which the Didache was produced.
It is a dubious procedure to read back into this early Christian document the characteristics of the Didascalia (probably third century) and the Apostolic Constitutions (probably fourth century), both of which know and use the Didache. If any comparison is made, it should be made with comparable Jewish literature, such as the Manual of Discipline.'\+ Secondly, there is no evidence either in the Manual or in later church orders, that they were innocent of theology or intentionality as Kraft contends:
And we must be constantly aware of the fact that the ideas which are simply reproduced from older materials preserved with little change, in the present form of the Didache do not necessarily represent the main interests and beliefs of the community for which this form of the Didache manual was produced. Repetition of traditional beliefs does not always imply oe agreement with which the originators of the tradition had in mind.
This approach to the structure and purpose of Barnabas undoubtedly reflects the influence of Martin Dibelius' form criticial analysis of paraenesis.'16 Dibelius cites as characteristics of paraenesis eclecticism, lack of continuity, repetition of identical motifs in different places within a writing and more generally that "the admonitions...do not apply to a single audience and a single set of circumstances; it is not possible to construct a single frame into which they will all fit."'17 Such paraenesis has no "theology" and, since the units of tradition are simply taken over untouched,
"it is not always possible to deduce from adopted concepts the intellectual environment of the author who appropriates them."!18
114 As I set out to do in my Commentary.
'15 Barnabas and the Didache, p. 65.
116 M. Dibelius, James: A Commentary on the Epistle of James, revised H. ere Sree M. A. Williams, and edited H. Koester (Philadelphia: Fortress
117 Tbid., p. 11.
118 Jbid., pp. 21.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
The author of a paraenetical work is thus "not a thinker, a prophet, or an intellectual leader, but rather a pedagogue, one among many, who appropriates and distributes from the property common to all."!!9 So one should not try to find the allusions to which an actual letter might make to its milieu, to missionary activity, to the life of the community, to controversies over matters of faith or to divisions in the community. Nor can one ask about the addressees. Since more specific information is lacking, one can deal only with the question of what sort of Christians [the writer of paraenesis] expected and wished to read his letter. !2°
A consequence of this position taken by Kraft is that the final form Didache is again dated from the mid second century C.E., even though it is conceded that it contains ancient tradition preserved because of the "conservative nature of the church manual tradition" . 121
Like Kraft, S. Giet!22 in a book which was published only posthumously, but was the fruit of many years of study of the Didache, argues that it is "living literature" which unfolds progressively in response to external circumstances rather than the work of one author. There continue to be interpolations added to the text until its present state, but these are in the nature of organic development rather than corruption of the text.!23 This means that one should think of a different date and context for each layer of the tradition. Giet attempts to unravel a complicated patchwork of sources underlying the present text. On the whole, he argues, the Didache reproduces its sources faithfully. Some of the traditions may even have been used as source material in the New Testament itself, while other material, for example chs. 1416 which he attributes to a second redaction, is held to derive from the first decade of the second century.!24
The somewhat exaggerated view of paraenesis as "decontextualized tradition", arising from form criticisism, has been discounted by recent studies of the function of paraenesis, such as that provided by Leo G. Perdue!5 in a recent collection of 119 hid., pp. 25.
120 Thid., p. 46.
121 Tbid., p. 76.
122 L,'Enigme de la Didaché. Paris: Ophrys, 1970 [PFLUS 149]. Cf. "Coutume, évolution, droit canon. A propos de deux passages de la "Didaché"", RDC 16
(1966) pp. 118-132; "La Didaché, enseignement des douze apdtres?", Melto 3 (1967) pp. 223-236.
123 L'énigme, pp. 257262.
124 Ibid. , p. 262-265.
125 Leo G. Perdue, "The Social Character of Paraenesis and Paraenetic Literature", Semeia 50 (1990) pp. 2-39.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
essays on the genre. Perdue argues that the setting of paraenesis is in periods of liminality, times of marginalization leading to a change of life-style and re-incorporation.'!2° It serves the purpose of either confirming and legitimating the status quo or, alternatively, of subverting it. Either way there is a deliberate theological and practical purpose, utilizing tradition but deliberate reshaping it for particular ends. !27
8. The "Didachist" as a Redactor of Tradition The emergence of redaction criticism in New Testament studies has naturally influenced the study of the Didache also. Several recent studies have focussed less on the question of sources and forms than on the way the underlying tradition has been shaped by the redactor.
The text and commentary of W. Rordorf and A. Tuilier, published in 1978, represents something of a milestone in the study of the Didache, drawing together the research of the preceding decades of scholarship, including many important studies by Rordorf himself.!28 Following the suggestions of Giet, Rordorf argues that an unknown author took an ancient Jewish and primitive teaching and added 1:3b-2:1 and 6:2-3, in order to make if represent the ideal of Christian perfection. To this the same author added the liturgical part, connecting it with 7:1 and adding material on baptism, but including chs. 9-10 from ancient Syrian liturgical usage. The same author again added ancient disciplinary material available to him, but adding material on problems of corruption in his own time. Chs. 14 and 15 were added by a second redactor of the work, and reflects a different situation. Ch. 16 was probably added at the same time and was not the original conclusion to the Two Ways, even though it contains ancient material.
The whole collection was made by the end of the first century CE:
U. Mattioli!29 argues that the Didachist redacted three principal sources: the Two Ways with an Eschatological Conclusion,
New Testament material and the Eucharistic Prayers. The rest is the work of the Didachist. K. Wengst!3° holds to a minimal intervention of the (single) redactor, arguing that the work is constructed out of single blocks of tradition. It is only in 7:2f, and 1115 that the hand and particular interest of the redactor emerges,
126 Thid., 9-11.
'27 Draper, "Barnabas and the Didache Revisited", pp. 90-92.
128 La Doctrine, pp. 91-99.
129 Didache—Dottrina dei dodici apostoli: Introduzione, traduzione e note (Rome: Edizioni Paoline, 19803) pp. 20-29.
130 Didache (Apostellehre), pp. 14-23.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
and that the conditions of the community are visible. However, the redactor is at work in making an orientation to the traditional blocks of material in chs. 1-10 the condition for the reception of itinerant teachers into the community. In any case, the Didachist does not create de novo, but simply sets down as regulations what was the existing practise of his community.!3!
The most thorough-going redaction critical analysis of the Didache is provided by K. Niederwimmer's important new commentary.'32 He argues that a Christian author originating from a Jewish Christian milieu compiled a sort of community rule at the beginning of the second century. A fundamental distinction should thus be drawn between the sources and the redactor. The sources he used were: a superficially Christianized Jewish Two Ways treatise, an archaic liturgical tradition of baptism and eucharist, an archaic tradition on the reception of itinerant charismatics, and a short apocalypse. {The Didachist compiled, added and interpreted this tradition, especially by the addition of chs. 12-15, which he composed himself.) His intention was to compose a rule book for his community, as far as possible from existing tradition. But the tradition needed to be updated to meet the new, altered circumstances of the community.'33 While the Two Ways is taken up en bloc (1:1-6:1), it is also made into a baptismal catechesis (7:1) and Christianized further by the addition of the Jesus tradition in 1:3b6, which is made into a "council of perfection" by 6:2. A special problem is addressed in 6:3. In the liturgical section, only 7:1, 4b,
9:5, 10:7 are redactional.
While 11:1-3 is composed by the Didachist, 11:4-12 is a piece of (written) tradition. The rest of the disciplinary section is also composed by the Didachist, except for a later gloss in 13:4. In the Apocalypse, only 16:7 is from the hand of the redactor. In a recent article,!34 Niederwimmer has provided a helpful text setting out clearly the sources and redaction for which he argues in his commentary.
The work of G. Schéllgen also begins from a redaction critical analysis in broad agreement with Niederwimmer. However he addresses in particular the question of the nature of a "church manual / order", which is raised by Kraft,!9> Wengst!3° and others. In an essay published in this book,!37 and in a series of 131 "Dieser Uberblick zeigt, daB bei der Beschaftigung mit der Didache weniger die Einzelpersénlichkeit ihres Verfassers in den Blick kommt als vielmehr das
Leben der Gemeinde, aus der dieser Verfasser kommt und fiir die er das, was in ihrschon weitgehend Praxis was, kodifiziert hat." /bid., p. PAL
132 Die Didache.
133 [bid., pp. 66-67.
134 "Der Didachist und seine Quellen", The Didache in Context, pp. 15-36.
135 Barnabas and the Didache, p. 60.
136 Didache (Apostellehre), p. 18.
137 G. Schéllgen, "Die Didache als Kirchenordnung", JAC 29 (1986) pp. 5-26.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
other articles,138 Schdllgen argues against the idea that the , Didache is a comprehensive church order, seeking to regulate the _\ whole life of the church. Instead, it is only a selective, collection of rules dealing ad hoc with particular burning issues of the day .
> even if it is often utilizing traditional material. Thus no conclusions may be drawn from what the Didache does not mention, as if this proves its absence in its community. Schdllgen also argues that there are no governing tendencies in the text. There seems to be something of a contradiction here, as if a text could deal with particular burning issues of the day and yet provide no coherent picture of its own situation. Nevertheless, the warning against any argumentum e silentio is a timely one. So too is his focus on the nature of a church order: particularly since we have no evidence for such a genre prior to the Didache.
The ongoing debate between Schdllgen and B. Steimer!39 on the issue of the genre o church orders is to be welcomed.
J Niederwimmer!4° accepts that the Didachist had no models to copy, but that he was no original composer. He takes the basic framework provided by his sources and seeks to compile a rule book for baptism, eucharist and community order, with an eschatological conclusion as suggested by his source. We do not know what occasion led to this compilation, except that the author wishes to apply old tradition to new circumstances in a time 0 transition. It is not intended to be comprehensive. f 9. The Didache and Liturgical Traditions
Baptism From its first publication, the liturgical section of the Didache excited the interest of scholars because of its archaic nature
Although the section on baptism has received less attention than i deserves, a number of particular issues have emerged. t R. Reitzenstein!#! argued that the prayer over the pipoc in the Coptic Version of the Didache and in the Apostolic Constitu
138 G_ Schdllgen, "Die literarische Gattung der syrischen Didaskalie" in H. J.
W. Drijvers et al (eds.) IV. Symposium Syriacum 1984. Literary Genres in Syriac Literature (Rome: Pontifical Institutum Studiarum, 1987 [OCA 229]) pp. 149-159:
"Pseudapostolizitaét und Schriftgebrauch in den ersten Kirchenordnungen.
Anmerkungen zur Begriindung des friihen Kirchenrechts" in Stimuli. Exegese und ihre Hermeneutik in Antike und Christentum: Festschrift Ernst Dassmann. (Munster,
1996 [JbAC Erg.-Bd 23]) pp. 96-121; "Der Abfassungszweck der frithen Kirchenordnungen. Anmerkungen zu den Thesen Bruno Steimers", JbAC 40 (1997) forthcoming.
Steimer, Vertex Traditionis.
Die Gattung der altchristliche Kirchenordnungen (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1992 [BZNW 63]).
140 Die Didache, pp. 13-15.
'41 Die Vorgeschichte der christlichen Taufe (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftlicher Buchgeseloch, 1929) pp. 177ff.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
Ps tions VII.27 was originally concerned with baptismal unction and has been omitted by the Jerusalem text. This thesis was taken up again in E. Peterson's significant, although controversial, study of the liturgical aspects of the Didache.'*2 On the basis of the supposed inaccuracy of the Jerusalem text, he argues that the text originally knew a preand post-baptismal unction, which was suppressed in a Novatian redaction.
The high valuation of running water and the interest in kinds of water (7:1-3) observable in the Didache, which had already interested Harnack,!43 was made the study of a monograph by T.
Klauser.'44 E. Barnikol!45 observed that 9:5 has baptism only eic¢ dvoum xupiov, whereas 7:1 and 3 have baptism in the name of the Trinity. He connected this with the absence of the Trinitarian baptism in the Eusebian form of Mt 28:19,146 to argue that an original baptism in the "name of the Lord [Jesus]" has been redacted by the emergent early catholic church to reflect its Trinitarian theology.
A. Benoit's important 1953 study on baptism in the second century!4? demonstrated a renewed interest in the significance of the Didache for the study of the development of Christian baptism in the first centuries. He argues that 7:1 indicates that catechetical instruction preceded baptism, namely 1-6; agrees that baptism "in the name of the Lord" was the original formula; emphasizes the importance of running water as purificatory and the antiquity of the pre-baptismal fast, and argues that the baptism was followed by the eucharist as its culmination. He finds striking resemblances between the baptismal instructions of the Didache and the Jewish proselyte baptism which he reconstructs, both in form and ideas.
For this reason and also because he considers Mandaeanism a later development than the Didache, he rejects Reitzenstein's hypothesis. Thus baptism in the Didache is seen as having escaped
142 "Finige Probleme", Friihkirche, Judentum und Gnosis, pp. 146-182.
143 Die Lehre, pp. 22f.
; 44 "Taufet in Lebendigem Wasser! Zum religionsund kulturgeschichtlichen Verstindnis von Didache 7,1-3" in T. Klauser & Riikker (eds.) Pisciculi. Studien zur Religion und Kultur des Altertums (Fst. F. J. Délger) (Miinster: Aschendorff,
1939) pp. 157-164 (now also in E. Dassmann (ed.) Gesammelte Arbeiten zur Liturgiegeschichte, Kirchengeschichte und Christlichen Archdologie (Minster in Westfalen: Aschendorff, 1974 [JAC.E 3]) pp. 177-183.
145 "Die triadische Taufformel:
Ihr Fehlen in der Didache und im Matthdusevangelium und irh altkotholischer Urspring", ThJ 4-5 (1936-1937) pp. 144152, 146 Cf. F. C. Conybeare, "The Eusebian Form of the Text Matth. 28,19", ZNW
2 (1901) pp. 275-288.
147 Le Baptéme Chrétien au Second Siécle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953) pp. 5-33.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
the Pauline current and remained within the Jewish milieu. In his view it may well attest the earliest stage of Christian baptism.148
Benoit apparently did not have access to Peterson's essay, but his findings refute it. Very vociferous in his condemnation of Peterson is the monograph of A. Védbus.!49 In particular, V6dbus argues that the prayer for the pipoc is originally a prayer for the "aroma [of myrrh]" and that it was constructed by analogy with the eucharistic prayers of 9-10, although it misses the spirit of the latter in that the prayer is said over the vehicle of the spiritual gift rather than for the gift itself.15° W. Rordorf's study of baptism in the Didache is included in this volume as a sober evaluation of the current findings of research.
While most studies conclude that the material in ch. 8 is a secondary addition to the baptismal instructions, occasioned by the mention of fasting in 7:3, my own study included here!>! asks whether there is not a structural and functional connection between initiation, the stationary fast, thrice daily Lord's Prayer of ch. 8 and the ritual process of baptism in the Didache.
Eucharist Unlike the paucity of studies on baptism, there have been numerous major studies of the eucharist in the Didache.
Harnack!52 considered that the eucharist was celebrated inside the agape. He also considered the absence of any reference to the death of Christ to be a sign of its post-apostolic provenance. The similarity of the prayers in chs. 9-10 to Jewish Berakoth was observed already by Taylor and Turner. E. von der Goltz!53 made a full study of the Jewish tradition behind these prayers. G.
Klein!54 pointed to the influence of the Sabbath Kiddush prayers on chapter 9 and of the Birkath Ha-Mazon on chapter 10.
The problem posed by the double reference to the eucharist in chs. 9-10 and 14 soon drew the attention of scholars.
Drews!55 and M. Goguel'!5® argued that these two sections referred to different kinds of celebrations. The former reflected communal
148 Benoit, Baptéme Chrétienne, p. 32f.
149 Titurgical Traditions, 30-33.
150 bid. , pp. 56f.
151 "Christian Self-Definition against the "Hypocrites" in Didache 8", in E. H.
Lovering, Society of Biblical Literature 1992 Seminar Papers (Atlanta, Ga.:
Scholars, 1992) pp. 362-377.
182 Die Lehre:, pp. 28-36; Ibid.: Prolegomena, pp. 58-60.
153 Tischgebete und Abendmahlsgebete in der altchristlichen und in der griechischen Kirche (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1905).
154 Alteste Christliche Katechismus, pp. 214-219.
'55 "Untersuchungen zur Didache", ZNW 5 (1904) pp. 53-79, esp. 76.
156 [,'Eucharistie des origines 4 Justin Martyr (Paris: Fischbacher, 1910).
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
meals in private homes on any day of the week, while the latter describes the formal eucharistic liturgy of the whole church on the Sunday presided over by the bishop and deacons. Drews and Goguel suggest that ch. 14 deliberately attacks the practise of private house eucharists in chs. 9-10. This opposition between the different sections of the Didache cannot really be substantiated, as W. Rordorf rightly points out.'57
While early critics like P. Sabatier recognized the primitive nature of the liturgy, it was the major study of H. Lietzmann'5* which set the Didache at the centre of the study of the origin of the Christian eucharist as the "oldest extant formulary"
.!59
Lietzmann made a comprehensive and detailed study of the ancient liturgies and sources for the eucharist. The Didache is the key text in his construction of a theory of two types of the eucharist, a Pauline type which emphasizes the sacrificial nature of the eucharist as a sharing in the body and blood of Christ,!6 and an Egyptian tradition, in which the Didache also stands, which did not have a narrative of the institution and did not mention the death of Jesus, and emphasizes eschatological expectation.'¢! Based on his analysis of other liturgical texts, Lietzmann argues that the Didache envisages a eucharist followed by an agape meal, and that the sentences in 10:6 have been misplaced from their original position before 9:5. They are a responsive dialogue between celebrant and people before the communion.
!® The thesis of Lietzmann was rejected in an article in 1938 by M. Dibelius!® on the basis of both the Coptic text and also of an analysis of Jewish table prayers., Dibelius argues that the prayers over the cup and fragments depend on a spiritualized form of the Jewish prayers current in the Hellenistic Jewish synagogues.
Likewise the prayers after the meal, which end with 10:4. There follows a new Christian prayer in 10:5, followed by a short liturgy in 10:6 of the coming of the Lord, who was conceived not only as returning at the end but also approaching in the eucharist proper, which now follows but is not described. This is the eucharist described as @voic in 14:1-2.
The position of Lietzmann was strongly opposed by a number of Anglican high churchmen, who were also associated with 187 "The Didache" in W. Rordorf et al (eds.) The Eucharist of the Early
Christians (New York: Pueblo, 1978) pp. 1-23, esp. pp. 4-5.
158 Messe und Herrenmahl: Eine Studie zur Geschichte der Liturgie (Bonn:
Marcus & Weber, 1926); Eng. translation Mass and Lord's Supper: A Study in the History of the Liturgy, trns. D. H. G. Reeve. Leiden: Brill, 1953-1964.
159 Mass and Lord's Supper, p. 188.
160 [hid., pp. 172-187, 204-208.
161 [bid., pp. 152-160.
162 Tbid., pp. 192f.
163 "Die Mahl-Gebete der Didache", ZNW 37 (1938) pp. 32-41.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
the assertion that the Didache was a late and unreliable witness.
R. H. Connolly and F.E. Vokes.'®, following the suggestion made by Drews and Goguel, argued that these prayers are remnants from the ancient Christian agape and not the eucharist proper.
They are followed in this by their colleague, Dom Gregory Dix, in his influential work on the structure of the eucharist first published in 1945.16 The Didache would not fit his reconstruction of an original fourfold action of the eucharist—take, give thanks, break and distribute—but fortunately can be relegated to the status of agape.!6?7 For him ch. 14 represents the authentic eucharist of the second century Didache community, regarded as a sacrifice and celebrated on Sunday by ordained officials of the church, whereas 9-10 represent prayers at everyday fellowship meals which may be said by the laity, or even varied at will by lay prophets. Secondly, the word evxapioTia, evxapioteiv does not refer to the eucharist proper, but is used interchangeably with evAoyia, evdoyewv.1 The work of Dix was developed further by L. Bouyer in terms of Jewish influence on the genesis of the eucharist.1° In line with his mistrust of the Jerusalem text of the Didache and his higher valuation of the Apostolic Constitutions, E. Peterson argued that this "Novatian recension" changed prayers which were originally eucharistic into everyday table prayers.!7° This thesis was taken up and argued in detail by J. Betz, in the essay included in this volume.!7!
The strong indications of a Jewish basis for the eucharistic prayers of the Didache were again investigated by J.-P. Audet.!72
Audet sought to formulate the underlying rules governing the Jewish Berakoth: first the short exclamatory "benediction proper", then the elaboration of the particular divine act which 164 "Agape and Eucharist in the Didache", DR 55 (1937) pp. 477-489.
165 Riddle of the Didache, pp. 177ff.
166 The Shape of the Liturgy (Westminster: Dacre, 1945).
167 Ibid., p. 48.
168 Jbid., pp. 90-93.
169 T,eucharistie. Théologie et spiritualité de la priére eucharistique: Spiritualité d'hier et d'aujour'hui (Tournai: Descleé, 1966 [BiblTh]}); English translation by C.
U. Quinn, Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968).
170 "Einige Probleme", Friihkirche, Judentum und Gnosis, pp. 169, 170, 181.
171 "Die Eucharistie in der Didache", ALW 11 (1969) pp. 10-39.
172 "Esquisse du genre littéraire de la~bénédiction juive et de l'eucharistie chrétienne", RB 65 (1958) pp. 371-399; also "Literary Forms and Contents of a Normal Eixapcoria in the First Century", in Studia Evangelica (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1959 [TU 73]) pp. 643-662; La Didaché, pp. 643-662; "Genre littétaire et a de I'Eucharistie. "Nova et Veteras'", EphLiturg 80 (1966) pp.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
evoked the cry of wonder, then an encapsulating return to the original benediction. Like Dix, however, his thesis depends on treating evxapioretv, evdoyety and &ouodoyetoOau as synonyms.
This position cannot be sustained in the light of more detailed study of Jewish sources, especially the Dead Sea Scrolls, as the work of R. J. Ledogar,!3 T. J. Talley,!7* and my own study!75 have shown. Talley argues that the Didache is a Christianizing of the Jewish Birkath Ha-Mazon by means of deliberate insertions and deviations.'76 A similar position is taken by J. W. Riggs,!77 who also draws conclusions from "absence",
"additions" and structural deviations from Rabbinic texts. The problem with this trend in research is that the Rabbinic text of the Birkath Ha-Mazon is only available from the ninth century and can scarcely be considered to be a rule applicable to first century Jews, however much it may reflect ancient traditions.
Audet also argued that the prayers of chs. 9-10 were not those of the agape nor the eucharist "major", but a novel form called the "breaking of the bread", a kind of eucharist "minor" which included a full meal, a celebration of the coming of the kingdom and the return of the Lord.'78 This "breaking of the bread" was then followed by a transition to the eucharist proper in another room, introduced by the "rituel de transition a l'eucharistie majeure" in 10:6: "If anyone is holy, let him come; if anyone is not, let him repent. Maranatha! Amen!"!79 This view of the matter is essentially confirmed by W. Rordorf in his article on the eucharist in the Didache,'®° which takes up again the study of von der Goltz on Jewish table, prayers. The Didache represents
173 Acknowledgement: Praise Verbs in the Early Greek Anaphoras (Rome: Herder, 1968).
174 "De la "berakah" a l'eucharistie, une question 4 réexaminer", La MaisonDieu 125/1 (1976) pp. 11-39, Eng. translation in "From Berakah to Eucharistia: A Reopening Question", Worship 50/2 (1976) pp. 115-137); "The Eucharistic Prayer:
Tradition and Development" in K. Stevenson (ed.) Liturgy Reshaped (London:
SPCK, 1982); "The Literary Structure of Eucharistic Prayer", Worship 58 (1984) pp. 404-420.
175 Commentary, pp. 182-188.
176 "De la 'berakah' a l'eucharistie", pp. 126f.
177 Riggs, J. W. 1984. "From Gracious Table to Sacramental Elements: The Tradition-History of Didache 9 and 10", Second Century 4 (1984) pp. 83-102. Cf.
"The Sacred Food of Didache 9-10 and Second Century Ecclesiologies", Didache in Context, pp. 91-101.
178 La Didache, pp. 406f.
179 Audet, La Didaché, pp. 410-424. Audet appeals, rather unconvincingly, to evidence from the archaeological discoveries at Dura-Europos.
180 "Teucharistie selon la Didaché" in L'eucharistie des premiers chretiens (Paris: Beauchesne, 1976 [PoTh 17]) pp. 7-28. Eng. translation, "The Didache" in W. Rordorf et al (eds.), The Eucharist of the Early Christians (New York: Pueblo,
1978) pp. 1-23.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
a transition between the Jewish table prayers and the preface of the Christian anaphora. Rordorf sees ch. 14 as describing the same event, so that the eucharist is seen as preceded by confession of sins. The use of "sacrifice" to describe the eucharist is seen as a reference to thanksgiving, in contrast to blood sacrifice, and should not be taken in a later theological sense with reference to the eucharist.
K. Wengst!8! returns to the position of Dibelius, as far as the influence of the Greek-speaking Hellenistic synagogues is concerned, but rejects the idea that the prayers of chs. 9-10 are a prelude to a eucharist proper. They describe a real meal designated a eucharist, which is the same as what is described in ch.
14. The thanksgiving prayers differentiate the meal from everyday meals, but it does not stand in the tradition of the Lord's Supper in Paul or the Last Supper tradition of the Synoptics at all. Instead it is a lightly Christianized Jewish meal. The problem posed to such a theory by 10:6 is resolved by the suggestion that this was originally a piece of genuine tradition from the Last Supper, which is now in a different context.!82 In his commentary, K.
Niederwimmer'!® rejects this rather contorted explanation and returns to the theory that 10:6 introduces the eucharist proper.
Nevertheless, he considers the absence of the words of Institution to remain an open problem.
The most recent work on the eucharist in the Didache by E.
Mazza has argued for a very early date for the prayers. In a paper published here,!8* Mazza argues that the term "holy vine of David" implies a Christology prior to the Council of Jerusalem.
The eucharistic prayers in chs. 9-10 are not for an agape, but derive from a time before the eucharist and the meal were separated. Thus the meaning of the prayers must be found within the Jewish thought world of the Berakah. Word and act in the blessing combine into a new sacral reality, in which God is present at the meal. Mazza explores the absence of the account of the institution in the prayers, which is often used to argue that they do not constitute a eucharist proper. He finds in various ancient liturgies
(e.g. Addai and Mari) a similar absence of any account of the last supper, and concludes that it is not the account of the Last Supper which constitutes the sacramental validity of the eucharistic anaphora, but rather the intention to fulfill the command of the Lord, "Do this in memory of me". He finds this intention in 10:3,
181 Didache (Apostellehre), pp. 43-57.
182 Tbid., pp. 46-47.
183 Die Didache, pp. 173-209, esp. 179-180.
184 "Didaché [X-X: Elementi per una interpretazione Eucaristica", Ephemerides Liturgicae 92 (1979) pp. 393-419.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
where thanks is given for the "grace of spiritual food and drink and eternal life through your Servant", which replaces the constitutive element of the Jewish sacral meal in Deuteronomy 8:10.
In a subsequent essay, Mazza argues on the basis of 1 Corinthians 10:1-4, 16-17 that Paul was familiar with the Cup-Bread-Unity sequence of ch. 9.185 He thus dates the prayers in 9-10 to between 50-52 C.E. These conclusions form the keystone of Mazza's recent book on the origins of the eucharist.!8° They are certain to stimulate a new look at the questions related to the Didache.
10. Didache and Itinerant Radicalism As early as Harnack'8? and Knopf!' Didache 6:2-3 was given an ascetic interpretation.
The ascetics were those who kept the "whole yoke" of the Lord and became "perfect", while ordinary
Christians did the best they could. This was combined with speculation about the homeless radicalism and possible spiritual marriage of the charismatics in 11:3-12. Harnack also, as we have seen, saw a threefold order of itinerant charismatics—apostles, prophets and teachers—as the earliest form of Christian ministry, which was gradually replaced by local bishops and deacons as the earlier order became corrupt. This set the scene for a continuing interest in asceticism and itinerant radicalism.
E. Peterson's 1951 study of the Didache'*®® argued that the Jerusalem text was a late recension influenced by the Novatian heresy and relied heavily on the Apostolic Constitutions in establishing the original text. He also, re-orders the text, arguing that ch.7 is a dogmatic revision of a prayer originally over prebaptismal ointment, which was removed by the Novatian redaction. This rather dubious procedure has rightly been criticized by most subsequent scholars.!9° However, Peterson also argued that the original text of the Didache stands within the stream of Syrian asceticism, something which has found resonance with a number of critics.
He sees a twofold development of asceticism: a philosophical dualistic asceticism in the West, which had already been taken up within Western diaspora Judaism, and an eschatological asceticism in Syria and the East, which sees the
"T*Bucaristia di 1 Corinzi 10:16-17 in rapporto a Didache 9-10,"
Ephemerides Liturgicae 100 (1986) pp. 193-223. my & 186 The Origins of the Eucharistic Prayer (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1995 [Pueblo]).
187 Die Lehre, pp. 19-22.
188 Tbid., pp. 20-21.
189 "Finige Probleme", Frihkirche, Judentum und Gnosis, pp. 146-182.
190 Eg. A. Védbus, Liturgical Traditions, pp. 17-60.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
kingdom as already in the process of realization in the present world. 19!
; Although he was not concerned with the Didache at this point, A. Védbus also gave an impulse to a revival of interest in the origins of asceticism in Syria in a number of publications, beginning in 1951.12 Védbus argues that Syrian Christianity is a product of the mission of the Palestinian church. He sees the developmental of asceticism as passing from Essenism through Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christianity into the Syrian Church, strengthened in the time of Tatian and Marcion by ascetic trends coming from the West. However, Védbus sees the Didache as a product of Egyptian Christianity, thus excluding it from his consideration of the development of Syrian asceticism.!%
In 1957, a year before the publication of Audet's commentary, A. Adam published an important and influential essay taking up again the question of the ascetic origins of the Didache.'9+ He argued that the Coptic version of the Didache was a translation exercize from a Syriac original. Linguistic evidence in the Greek text also, in particular the term xpoTéumopoc, as well as the instructions on the stationary fast, indicate that the Didache originates from some part of the Syrian region. This suggestion is further supported on the basis of Didache 11:11, which Adam sees as referring to the ancient ascetic practise of "spiritual marriage". The Coptic text has xoopixdy mapc&dooig in place of the Jerusalem text's pvorip.oyv Koopik6v, and the Coptic also does not have the ny duddoxwv 5 toteiv Goa abtTo¢ Tovet. Lying behind the word tapd&dooig Adam sees the Syriac word 'Slem linked to the concept of syzygy, the spiritual union between Christ and the church, which is present in Ephesians 5:26-32. The prophets were those who realized on earth this heavenly reality, by an ascetic marriage.!95 This concept is understood by Tatian Oratio ad
Graecos (esp. 15:1) as referring to the reunion of the human body and the (female) holy spirit forfeited at the Fall, and allegorized
"Einige Beobachtungen zu den Anfangen der christlichen Askese", in Friihkirche, Judentum und Gnosis, pp. 209-220.
192 "Celibacy a Requirement for Admission to Baptism in the Early Syrian Church", ETSE 1 (1951); See also History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient 1 (1958
[CSCO 184 = subs. 14]).
193 He specifically rejects Adam's thesis (Liturgical Traditions, p. 13) because the Didache is silent about Paul and his work. This may not be so, if my own hypothesis about chapters 11 and 16, in an essay included in this volume, is valid.
See J.A. Draper, "Torah and Troublesome Apostles in the Didache Community", NovT 33/4 (1991): 347-372, esp. 372.
_ 1% "Erwagungen zur Herkunft der Didache", ZK 68 (1957) pp. 1-47. Adam's interest is in the origin of monasticism; cf. his "Grundbegriffe des Monchtums in sprachlicher Sicht", ZKG 65 (1953/4) pp. 209-239.
195 "Erwagungen", 20-25.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
by Hermas in Similitudes 10:6-11:8.
Since this practise was rejected at an early time (e.g. Ps. Clement, Ad. Virg.), Adam dates the Didache between 70, or more likely 90, and 100 C.E. and places it in Adiabene. He speculates that it was composed as a manual for this young Christian church by the Jerusalem church, which had been driven out to Galilee or Pella.
Adam's work has been taken further by an essay of G.
Kretschmar's in 1964.!9° Kretschmar emphasizes the diversity of ascetic origins in different areas. He believes that the ascetic impulse was earlier in Syria than the West, since abstinence from marriage or virginity within marriage came to be a requirement for baptism in some circles in the second century C.E. He tests the hypotheses of Peterson and Adam, by bringing into the picture the itinerant prophets and ascetics, which Peterson had seen as aberrations from the great church.!9?7 He sees syneisactum, the spiritual cohabitation of prophet and prophetess already in Didache 11:11, and finds chs. 11-13 as evidence for itinerant apostles, prophets and teachers, whom he sees to be self-evidently ascetics.!98 These three groups are subsumed under the designation "prophets". In the period of the Didache, he argues, these itinerant charismatics were supported by "settled" Christians in the villages, for whom they constituted the pastors and community officials. While the text allows for the possibility that a prophet may wish to settle, they are expected from outside. This is very different from the Pauline communities, where the charismatics were local and settled. It is only at the end of the developmental process of the text that the communities become self-sufficient and appoint their own officials in the bishops and deacons, who gradually replace the declining order of charismatics.!%
Kretschmar sees the Two Ways, despite its undeniable Jewish origins, as a Christian composition, the oldest Christian rule of life disseminated by charismatic teachers through the villages of Galilee, Samaria and Judaea. These teachers are still to be regarded as "charismatics", although the spirit is receding in the face of the didactic emphasis as in Matthew. Kretschmar seeks to trace this development from the first circle of disciples, for 196 "Fin Beitrag zur Frage nach dem Ursprung friihchristlicher Askese", Z7hK
61 (1964) pp. 27-67; now also in: Askese und Ménchtum in der alten Kirche, ed.
K. §. Frank. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975 [WdF 409] pp.
129-179: cf. "Das christliche Leben und die Mission in der friihen Kirche" in H.
Frohnes & U. W. Knorr (eds.) Kirchengeschichte als Missionsgeschichte I: Die Alte
Kirche (Miinchen: Kaiser, 1974) pp. 94ff.
197 "Fin Beitrag", pp. 32f.
198 While asceticism is not expressly described, it is, he argues clearly implied
("aber es versteht sich wohl von selbst", Ibid., p. 36).
199 Tbid., p. 36ff.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
whom personal union to Jesus means following him in a life of wandering. He sees in the question as to what discipleship means in the post-Easter time the origin of the Syrian form of early
Christian asceticism.2° In the connection between following (&koAovdeiv) and the "Way" as a binding rule of life, we see the importance of a Two Way teaching. The Christian response to the breaking in of the Eschaton is a new way of "walking" or conduct. This walking is seen as "perfection" (7éAeto¢), as in the Dead Sea Scrolls. However, discipleship as "perfection" is contrasted with keeping the law as fulfilled in the Double Love Command in Mt 19:16-26 (cf. Didache 1:2 and 6:2). This means ultimately that there is a double way to life: law and discipleship, in which discipleship is irreversible progress to the fulfillment of the law in the "perfection" of discipleship. Matthew remains strongly still within the Jewish community. However, the Didache presupposes the separation of church and synagogue and seeks to order the life of the settled local Christian communities which now emerge. The "disciples" of Matthew live on in the itinerant apostles, prophets and teachers of the Didache, but the settled members of the local communities are no longer called to this life of "discipleship" in this narrow sense. The Didache merges the double way of Matthew into one: the way of the Double Love
Command is merged with and explicated by the teaching of Jesus and the Decalogue as a first and second ddax%. Didache 6:2 is not a two tier ethic, but rather preserves the gospel freedom.
However, since perfection is something which can be gradually learnt and achieved, it is understood quantitatively and not qualitatively. "Perfection" does not yet seem to have an ascetic colouring in the Didache, though it is understood that way in the Liber
Graduum.2
Kretschmar essentially affirms the thesis of Adam that the origin of Syrian asceticism lay in a continuation of primitive
Christian itinerant discipleship among the charismatic prophets and teachers who worked as missionaries in the Palestinian-Syrian
Jewish communities under the new apocalyptic conditions inaugurated by the Messiah. Thus the thesis of Peterson is also largely confirmed by his research. After the separation of church and synagogue, Syrian Christianity sought to reshape the call of Jesus to discipleship into a rule of life, which in the end produced a destructive tension between radical asceticism as a requirement for all Christians and the compromise of a two tier ethic. This tension was never resolved in the Syrian church; indeed there is no 200 Ibid., pp. 41-49.
201 Ibid. , pp. 49-62.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
a5 answer, according to Kretschmar, and it remains a "healthy troubler of the church" .202
This work of Kretschmar lies behind the much more wellknown and enduringly influential work of G. Theissen.2 Theissen uses the sociological theory of Max Weber? to develop a typology of the Jesus movement, in which Jesus is viewed as a model of charismatic authority: the "bearer of revelation", who initiated a movement of "wandering charismatics", who were dependent on and pastored a network of "local communities"
.2% These wandering charismatics continue the itinerant ministry of Jesus and manifest the tpémov¢ rod xupiov of which the Didache speaks (11:8). This lifestyle of ethical radicalism is characterized by itinerancy, renunciation of marriage and property. Theissen links this life-style with the "Q"-tradition, and argues that the prophets mentioned here were the mediators of the Jesus tradition, in a way analogous to the work of itinerant Cynic philosophers.2
The thesis of Theissen has been criticized by a number of recent scholars for his selective use of sources, most recently by W.
Stegemann2" and R. A. Horsley.2°8 Theissen also neglects to distinguish the redactional layers of the Didache, which distorts his use of this text as historical evidence for the earliest period.
202 Jbid., pp. 63-67.
203 Theissen acknowledges that his thesis is a "Weiterentwicklung" of the work of Kretschmar in his "Wanderradikalismus.
Literatursoziologische Aspekte der Uberlieferung von Worten Jesus im Urchristentum", Z7hK 70 (1973) pp. 245-271, esp. p. 86 note 20; this paper is reprinted in Studien zur Soziologie des Urchristentums (Tiibingen: Mohr, 1979 [WUNT 19]) pp. 70-105, English translation, "Itinerant Radicalism: The Tradition of Jesus Sayings from the Perspective of the Sociology of Literature", trans.
A. Wire, RadRel 2 [1976] pp. 84-93); Soziologie der Jesusbewegung (Miinchen: Kaiser, 1977), English translation, The First Followers of Jesus: a sociological analysis of earliest Christianity, trans. J.
Bowden (London: SCM, 1978). The American edition.has a different title: Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978).
See "Zur forschungsgeschichtlichen Einordnung der soziologischen Fragestellung", in Studien zur Soziologie, pp. 3-34, esp. 23f; cf. his further use of the three forms of legitimation in Weber in "Legitimation and Subsistence: An Essay on the Sociology of Early Christian Missionaires", in The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth by Gerd Theissen, trans. J. H. Schiitz
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982) pp. 27-67.
205 This thesis is first developed in "Wanderradikalismus", pp. 245-271, and then more substantially in Soziologie der Jesusbewegung.
206 "Wanderradikalismus", pp. 83-92.
207 "Vagabond Radicalism in Early Christianity?: A Historical and Theological Discussion of a Thesis Proposed by Gerd Theissen" in W. Schottroff & W.
Stegemann (eds.), God of the Lowly (Maryknoll:
Orbis, 1984) pp. 148-168.
Stegemann also questions the underlying desire/dream of the West for voluntary renunciation of property, arguing that the Jesus movement was property-less because of economic disintegration and not by choice.
208 Sociology and the Jesus Movement (New York: Crossroad, 1989) pp. 15-64.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
However, it could also be criticized for an inappropriate use of Weber, in that Weber himself envisaged the period of radicalism as only occurring during the life-time of the charismatic leader.
What happens immediately after the death of the leader is not a continuation of radicalism but routinization, including settling in one place and control over the financial resources of the movement.?
The influence of Kretschmar and Theissen is clear in the important paper of K. Niederwimmer on itinerant radicalism in the Didache which is included in this volume.?!° However, unlike
Theissen, Niederwimmer utilizes the insights of redaction critical analysis to distinguish the ancient tradition he finds in Didache
11:4-12 from the redactional material in 11:1-3 and 12:1-13:7
(and a later gloss in 13:4). He observes that the standpoint of the redaction is that of the local communities and not that of the itinerant radicals. The ancient tradition points to a time when two different kinds of itinerant charismatics moved.from one community to another in a dense network of local Christians, dependent on their support. The apostles in the text are a larger group than the "twelve" and are itinerant missionaries pledged to homelessness, renunciation of possessions and marriage. The prophets are also itinerants whose task is ecstatic speech in the Spirit. They may have been accompanied by a prophetess in a spiritual marriage. However, the rules in this ancient tradition are not so much intended to describe their function as to provide criteria to correct abuses.
In other words decay had corrupted the institution of itinerant charismatics.
According to Niederwimmer, the material provided by the redactor provides a different picture. The local hosts for the itinerant charismatics are solidifying into formally constituted local communities who elect their own officials (15:1f). Ordinary
"non-charismatic" itinerant Christians are also now visiting the communities (12:1ff), often with the intention of settling. Apostles fade from the scene, and while prophets continue to visit the community, alongside teachers (13:1-7), they are now in the process of settling also and in need of provision. This means that tensions between the local emerging bishops and deacons and the prophets and teachers need to be resolved. The solution is that both groups are engaged in the same /eitourgia and should receive the same honour (15:1-2). In other words, the leadership of worship which _ 20° T have argued this in a paper presented to the 1989 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Anaheim, "Weber, Theissen and the Wandering Charismatics of the Didache" .
210 "Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Wanderradikalismus im Traditionsbereich der Didache", WSt 11 (1977) pp. 145-167, esp. 10 notes 1 & 2.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
was in the hands of the charismatics is now shared by the local functionaries. A process of integration and stabilization between the itinerant charismatics and the local officials is taking place, which is none other than the process of early catholicization. The thesis of Harnack is re-affirmed!2!!
In another essay included in this book,2!2 A. de Halleux attempts to roll back the influence of Harnack by a fresh examination of the evidence in the Didache. De Halleux proposes to read the text as it stands as the product of the same historical situation.
Most importantly, he challenges the assumption that the prophets are itinerant by nature, rather than simply occasionally coming from outside as guests.2!3 He sees the "ones teaching" of 11:1-2 as none other than prophets. The instructions concerning apostles are more concerned to warn the community against impostors than to describe their nature and ministry. While the rules pre-suppose some degree of travel and poverty for apostles, they do not need to be interpreted as requiring asceticism and permanent vagabondage. As with the titles "teacher" and "prophets", the title
"apostle" does not so much describe an office as a function.
Indeed, the absence of the definite article before tpo@nr@r in 11:3 indicates that the Didache does not envisage two groups here but one group designated in two different ways. Thus there is no ministerial trilogy of ministers: apostles, prophets and teachers.?!4 de
Halleux also denies that the prophet is an ecstatic, but rather concerned with prayer, teaching and charity. The rules of ch.13 do not show an order of itinerant charismatics settling down, although in the case of the apostolic function of the prophet this might be so, but are only concerned to ensure sustenance for the prophets. Nothing suggests that the bishops and deacons are a new institution.
In a recent article reproduced in this book,?!5 I have argued that a form and redaction critical analysis should be taken in a different direction. Based on a form critical analysis of the rules
21! This position is affirmed also by W. Rordorf and A. Tuilier, La Doctrine, pp. 49-64. The influence of the work of Kretschmar, Theissen and Niederwimmer continues in the modern quest for the historical Jesus in the work of scholars such as J. D. Crossan (The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant
(San Francisco: Harper & Rowe, 1991]), esp. 345ff. It merges with the popular theory that Jesus was a wandering Cynic teacher or prophet.
212 "Les ministéres dans la Didaché", /renikon 53 (1980) pp. 5-29. I have been informed by Dom Emmanuel Lanne, the colleague of the late Fr. de Halleux at Louvain, that he was no longer entirely convinced by the thesis he defended in this paper. Nevertheless, it presents important insights and its challenge should continue to be heard.
213 Ibid., p. 10.
214 Ibid., pp. 22f.
215 "Torah and Troublesome Apostles", pp. 347-372.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
introduced by the wepi 5é formula, the rules concerning apostles in 11:3-6 are seen to be the oldest core of the material, which is modified by the insertion of 11:1-2 in the face of the emergence of "false" apostles from within the community who advocate the abandonment of the requirement of Torah observance. This is later again redacted by the insertion of kai mpodnT@v KaTa& 70 d6ypua Tod evoryyedov in 11:3 and the material on prophets in 11:7-12 at a period when these had begun to dominate the community. The false teaching against which a warning is given in 11:1-2 is linked to the nature of "perfection" and the "whole yoke of the Lord" in 6:2-3, as referring to the acceptance of the Torah by Gentile converts, or at least as much of it as they could bear.
The minimum requirement was to observe the prohibition of eating food sacrificed to idols. This is linked to indications in the eschatological conclusion in ch. 16 that the final trials were associated with false teaching emerging from within the community and causing division and "lawlessness".
This thesis is taken further in and essay in Didache in Context,2!6 where I utilize models from Mary Douglas's anthropological theory of witchcraft in order to analyze the nature of the conflict in the community of the Didache. | argue that the strong community boundaries, together with weak and ambiguous social structure, creates the condition for the emergence of a so-called
"witch-believing" society, where individuals within the community are believed to be agents of demonic forces seeking to destroy it, and are driven out. The conflict between the untestable charismatic prophets coming from outside the community and the local patrons of the community, the bishops and deacons, is ameliorated and resolved by the production of text from the words and tradition mediated by the prophets, but collected by the teachers, by which they can be tested. This developing situation is linked to the development of the text of the Didache itself and its submission to and gradual replacement by the "gospel".
In the same volume, S. J. Patterson also addresses the question of radical itinerancy in the Didache, utilizing this time the Coptic version to argue that the text originally ended at 12:2a.217
At this redactional stage the text was concerned to regulate aspects of the behaviour of teachers, apostles and prophets, which were felt to be problematic. It is written from the perspective of the
"Social Ambiguity and the Production of Text:
Prophets, Teachers, Bishops,and Deacons and the Development of the Jesus Tradition in the Community of the Didache" , Didache in Context, pp. 284-313.
217 "Didache 11-13: The Legacy of Radical Itinerancy in Early Christianity", in Didache in Context, pp. 313-329. Patterson takes up the thesis elaborated earlier in C.N. Jefford & S. J. Patterson, "A Note on Didache 12.2a (Coptic)", SecCent 7
(1989-1990) pp. 65-75.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
settled community and views the behaviour of the itinerants as the source of the problem, whether false teaching, greed or false prophecy. Patterson suggests that the original response of the community was to exclude these itinerants, but that the rules admit them now under strict conditions. Later, in a time of social dislocation, the problem of refugees forces the community to add
12:2b-13:7. Apostles have disappeared now, and prophets and teachers are more welcome than before. In 15:1-2, a new set of officials is introduced, the bishops and deacons, whose legitimacy and equality is established. They represent the new order, while the prophets and teachers are a nostalgic reminder of the bygone era of radical itinerancy, which survived on the fringes in the West but more strongly in the East. Patterson thus essentially reaffirms the position of Theissen and Kretschmar. However, the textual reconstruction based on the Coptic manuscript has been challenged by F. S. Jones and P. A. Mirecki as we have seen and Patterson's theory remains unsubstantiated.2!8
11. Eschatology in the Didache It is regrettable that the short apocalypse in Didache 16 has not received much attention from scholars. The main interest has been in whether or not this forms the original conclusion to the Two
Ways. This was suggested already by P. Savi,?!9 P. Drews,22° G.
Klein, J. M. Creed?2! and taken up by E. Bammel in the essay included in this volume. There have, however, been strong objections from P. Vielhauer,?22 T. H. C. van Eijk and223 Rordorf.224
Bammel, in the essay included here, argues that collections of Jewish paraenesis invariably end with an eschatological warning to re-inforce the ethical imperative. Even if Bammel is right that such a warning originally stood at the end of the Two Ways, it may not have been the same as ch. 16. Niederwimmer concedes that the Two Ways probably concluded with an eschatological warning, but that the Didachist has replaced this original conclu218 "Considerations on the Coptic Papyrus of the Didache (British Library
Oriental Manuscript 9271)", The Didache in Context, pp. 47-87.
219 La dottrina degli apostoli. Richerche critiche sull'origine del testo con una not intorno all'eucharistia (Rome, 1893) pp. 55f; cited by Ehrhard, Altchristliche
Literature, p. 51.
220 "Untersuchungen", p. 68ff.
221 "The Didache", JTS 39 (1938) pp. 370-387, esp. 379.
222 Geschichte der urchristlichen Literatur. Einleitung in das Neue Testament, die Apokryphen und die Apostolischen Vater (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975) pp. 730433.
223 La Résurrection des Morts chez les Perres Apostoliques (Paris: Beauchesne, 1974 [ThH 25]) pp. 20-21.
224 Rordorf & Tuilier, La Doctrine, pp. 80-83
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
sion with tradition obtained from elsewhere, since ch. 16 shares no material with the eschatological ending of Doct.?*
A second focus of interest in the text has been its relation to the apocalyptic tradition in the Synoptic Gospels. While some have seen a dependence on Matthew and/or Luke,"°, H. Koster has argued that the Didache reflects the Ur-text of a Jewish apocalypse used also by Mark.?27 Glover?28 argues that "Q" is the ancient source lying behing ch. 16. J. S. Kloppenborg??? has demonstrated that the Didache only uses material found in Matthew's special source "M" and does not cite Matthew where Matthew can be seen to be using Mark. For him the Didache represents an independent tradition under whose influence Matthew altered his Markan source.230 My own study of the "sign of the Son of Man" in 16:6 comes to the same conclusion on the basis of development of the symbol.?!
A number of studies have taken up the question of resurrection in the Didache. An unpublished thesis by G. Ladd?32 takes up again Harnack's contention that the Didachist is a millenarian.?39
A. P. O'Hagan?34 concedes that this may be possible, especially on the basis of the prayers for the gathering of Israel in chs. 9-10.
Even in 'a Christian framework, this hope would have a materialistic sense of the re-establishment of the land of Israel centred on Jerusalem. However, as he rightly points out, this hope in itself does not consitute millenarianism unless there is also the expectation of the one thousand year reign. This can certainly not be derived from the text of the Didache, as van Eijk points out in his thorough study.?35 In continuity with Jewish tradition, the Didache envisages a resurrection of the righteous only, justified on the basis of Zechariah 14:5, probably to share in and witness the judgment of the world.23¢ 225 Die Didache, pp. 247-248.
226 E.g. B. C. Butler "Literary Relations", pp. 265-283.
227 Uberlieferung, pp. 187-189.
228 "Quotations", pp. 25-28.
* paki 16:6-8 and Special Matthean Tradition", ZNW 69-70 (1978-1979) pp.
54-67.
230 "Tradition", p. 63. A reservation concerning Glover's conclusion needs to be made, in that the Didache may reflect at this point an underlying Jewish tradition rather than the Jesus teaching in particular, which may draw on the same tradition.
231 J.A. Draper, "The Development of the "Sign of the Son of Man" in the Jesus Tradition", NTS 39 (1991) pp. 1-21.
232 The Eschatology of the Didache (Unpublished Harvard Thesis, 1949).
233 Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte | (Tiibingen: Mohr, 19094) pp. 186-187.
234 Material Recreation in the Apostolic Fathers (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1968 (TU 100}) pp. 18-30.
235 La Résurrection, pp. 25.
236 Ibid., pp. 25-28. The Jerusalem text ends abruptly and is probably to be reconstructed on the basis of Const.
THE DIDACHE IN MODERN RESEARCH
Wengst?3' argues that ethics are given the first place in the way of salvation offered by the Didache, as in the Jewish proselyte catechesis from which it derives. Ethical behaviour or "perfection" in the present moment is the key to salvation in 16:2, and the return of the Lord is for judgment according to works
(according to the ending reconstructed from Consf). Eschatology thus becomes a subordinate aspect of ethics, a simple piece of instruction about the "Last Things".
This, he maintains, represents a significant shift over against Jesus and earliest Christianity, where the expectation of the end included the hope of worldwide, fundamental upheaval, while ethics were an interim arrangement overshadowed by the eschatological horizon. The apocalypse of the Didache is half-way towards the kind of accommodation to the pressures of the world found in later Christian literature, although its community has not completely surrendered its Christian identity.
A number of recent articles have indicated a renewed interest in the eschatological section of the Didache. H. R. Seeliger,?38 in a study included in this book, has shown that the apocalypse of the Didache does not match the definition propounded by recent research into apocalyptic as a genre. The spatial element of a transcendent world has fallen away and only the temporal element of imminent catastrophe remains.
Since this time of trouble revolves around false prophets, and 11:6, 9 also envisages such false prophets, he suggests that ch. 16 preserves an important part of the content of the apocalytic prophecy of the early church, to guard against imposters and to,supply material to those communities which did not have prophets (13:4). Two studies in Didache in Context by A. Milavec?39 and N. Pardee?4° take up the study of the time of testing in 16:5. In response, I have taken up again the question of the resurrection of the righteous only in a recent paper,4! and argued that it relates to the so-called "martyrcult" theology emerging after the Maccabean revolt, and that this was already associated with Zechariah 14:5 in Jewish tradition.
237 Didache (Apostellehre), pp. 59-61.
238 "Erwagungen zu Hintergrund und Zweck des apokalyptischen Schlusskapitels der Didache" in E. A. Livingstone (ed), Studia Patristica 21: Papers presented to the Tenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1987
(Leuven: Peeters, 1989) pp. 185-192.
239 "The Saving Efficacy of the Burning Process in Didache 16.5", Didache in Context, pp. 131-155.
240 "The Curse that Saves (Didache 16.5)", Didache in Context, pp. 156-176.
241 "Resurrection and Zechariah 14.5 in the Didache Apocalypse", forthcoming in JEC.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
12. New Currents in Research into the Didache The collection of essays in The Didache in Context indicates that the proliferation of methods which have recently been applied to the New Testament are now being turned towards the Didache.
Sociological or anthropological studies, begun already in the work of G. Theissen and M. J. Suggs mentioned above, include recent work by R. S. Ascough,?42 A. Milavec,243 J. W. Riggs*44 and myself.245 Literary analyses influenced by the theory of orality or rhetoric have been undertaken by I. H. Henderson,"4° J. Reed,?47 and J. S. Kloppenborg.?48 It remains to be seen to what extent these new methodologies will transform our understanding of this much debated writing. Research into the Jewish roots of the Didache also continues to develop, as we have seen, and this promises to be an important area for further work in the light of new discoveries and understandings.?49
242 "An Analysis of the Baptismal Tirual of the Didache", StLiturg 24 (1994) pp. 201-213 (utilizing the initiation model of Victor Turner).
243 "The Social Setting of "Turning the Other Cheek" and "Loving One's Enemies" in the Light of the Didache", BTB 25 (1995) pp. 131-143 (utilizing a variety of models, especially Theissen).
244 "The Sacred Food of Didache 9-10 and Second Century Ecclesiologies", in The Didache in Context, pp. 256-283 (utilizing Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown and Mary Douglas).
245 J. A. Draper, "Christian Self-Definition", pp. 362-377; "Social Ambiguity and the Production of Text: Prophets, Teachers, Bishops,and Deacons and the Development of the Jesus Tradition in the Community of the Didache", Didache in Context, pp. 284-313 246 "Didache and Orality in Synoptic Comparison", JBL 111 (1992) pp. 283306; "Style-switching in the Didache: Fingerprint or Argument", Didache in Context, pp. 177-209.
247 "The Hebrew Epic and the DIDACHE",, Didache in Context, pp. 213-225.
248 "The Transformation of Moral Exhortation in Didache 1-5", Didache in Context, pp. 88-109.
249 Besides the authors mentioned above on pp. 15, see M. del Verme, Giudaismo e Nuovo Testamento: Il Caso delle Decime (Naples: D'Auria, 1989) pp.
216-228 (on tithes); "Medio giudaismo e Didaché: il caso della comunione dei beni", VetChr 32 (1995) pp. 293-320 (on community of property).