DAVID FLUSSER, Paul's Jewish-Christian Opponents
PAUL'S JEWISH-CHRISTIAN OPPONENTS
IN THE DIDACHE
DAVID FLUSSER
Jerusalem The aim of the present paper is not to clarify the various facets of enmity between so called "Jewish Christianity" and Paul. The real purpose of our study is to show that Didache 6:2-3 reflects the position of the majority in the Mother Church towards the Gentile
Christian believers while Paul's attitude was more unusual and therefore revolutionary.
Both positions represent two genuine interpretations of the necessary obligations of Gentile God-fearers.
We believe that both factions based their claims upon the Apostolic Decree. Paul's view became victorious but even so it is not without interest to learn what was the opposite view with the help of Didache 6:2-3, a position which was held, among others, by the apostle Peter. The text of Didache 6:2-3, it will be recalled, runs as follows: "If you can bear the whole yoke of the Lord (i.e. of the Law), you will be perfect; but if you cannot, do what you can. Concerning the food, bear what you will be able to bear. But be sure to refrain completely from meat which has been sanctified before idols, for it represents the worship of dead gods."
The Apostolic Decree is quoted three times in the Acts of the Apostles (15:20, 28-29 and 21:25). Already from the beginning of modern scholarship, the question' was asked concerning the actual point of contact between the Apostolic Decree and the so called
Noachic precepts in Judaism, because both contain a list of religious and moral obligations for non-Jews. The Noachic precepts were thus a Jewish non-Christian parallel to the Apostolic Decree, which was issued by a community of Jews believing in Jesus in order to lay upon the Gentile no greater burden than that which is necessary. The first step towards the solution of the problem was taken by the German scholar Adolf Resch already in 1905.! He rightly recognized the eminent value of the so called Western text of the Apostolic Decree. In contrast to the common text, where
Gentiles are obliged to abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, from blood, from what is strangled and from unchastity, in the Western text the prohibition to eat what is strangled is missing. Resch also succeeded in showing that for the most important of the Church Fathers only the three prohibitions—not including the one concerning that which is strangled—formed the text of the 1 A. Resch, "Das Aposteldekret nach seiner ausserkanonischen Textgestalt
Untersucht", (Leipzig: Hinrich's, 1905 [TU ns. 3]) pp. 1-179.
DAVID FLUSSER
Apostolic Decree and that these three prohibitions were originally identical with the three capital sins in early patristic literature, namely idolatry, bloodshed and fornication. He also rightly argued that Paul in reality fulfilled the obligations of the original text and meaning of the Apostolic Decree.
It is not our task here to treat fully the problems of the text and the historical development of the Apostolic decision. This we have already done in another study.2 Here we only have to mention the fact that the three capital sins, idolatry, bloodshed and fornication, are often mentioned in rabbinic literature and that, according to a decision from the beginning of the second century
C.E., a Jew must choose death rather than let himself be coerced to transgress one of these three prohibitions. Some decades later, at the end of the second century C.E., perpetrators of these sins were excluded from the church and their penitence was not accepted. Here the main point which pertains to the present study is that idolatry, bloodshed and fornication are also three of the extant seven Noachic precepts. As has been demonstrated by Resch, the prohibition of the same three crimes formed the original content of the Apostolic Decree. The whole list of seven
Jewish Noachic precepts is attested only from the mid-second century C.E. If so, it is more than probable that in the Apostolic
Age the official Jewish position was to require the Noachites, the God-fearing Gentiles, to abstain from idolatry, bloodshed and fornication. Hence quite naturally this same rule was accepted by the Apostolic Church. I hope to show here that even if the basic rule was then accepted by the church, new problems arose in the interpretation of the Apostolic Decree.
The two divergent approaches concerning the application and interpretation of the famous decree are represented by the Petrine and Pauline parties.
Moreover one discovers some strong indications that the same problem—albeit probably not in such an earnest and clear formulation—also existed among Jews in the politics pertaining to God-fearing Gentiles.
Does Didache 6:2-3 express a "conservative" Jewish interpretation of the Noachic laws? or does the passage represent an analogous Christian position concerning the Apostolic Decree? I think that the function of our passage in the context of the Didache dispels all doubts about the Christian origin of Didache 6:2-3. The passage clearly reflects the Jewish-Christian understanding of the ? David Flusser and Shmuel Safrai, "Das Aposteldekret und die Noachistischen
Gebote", Wer Tora vermehrt mehrt Leben: Festgabe fiir Heinz Kremers zum 60.
Geburtstag (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener-Verlag, 1986) pp. 173-192.
3 This is the opinion of A. Stuiber in his excellent study "Das ganze Joch des Herrn (Didache 6,2-3)", in Studia Patristica 4,1 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1961
[TU 79]) pp. 323-329.
PAUL'S JEWISH CHRISTIAN OPPONENTS
obligations of Gentile Christians towards Judaism, a position which was utterly unacceptable for Paul.
Almost as soon as the text of the Didache* was published in 1882 from a Greek manuscript, it was recognized that the first six chapters of the work are actually a Jewish treatise christianized by the author of the Didache; from chapter seven on, the book is of Christian provenance. It was only as a consequence of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls that it was recognized that the Jewish treatise contained in the first six chapters of the Didache is indeed extant in an old Latin translation.' Its real title was de doctrina
Apostolorum, but today it is commonly referred to as The Two Ways. This Jewish tractate—and not the Christian Didache—was used by the author of the apocryphal Epistle of Barnabas of the first half of the second century C.E. All this can lead only to one conclusion: the Jewish treatise The Two Ways* was already considered to be a manual of Christian ethics in the first decades of Christianity and often it was even viewed as the teaching of the Apostles.
Whether the Didachist was aware of the original provenance of his source is not possible to determine with absolute precision. However it would seem that he was convinced that The Two Ways was a Christian work, and even one of "apostolic" authority because he did not permit himself to change the wording of his source very much. It is reasonable to believe that the Didache was written before the end of the first century
C.E. The Two Ways was written earlier, there are indications that this Jewish treatise was known to Philo of Alexandria."
The Jewish tractate ended' originally with an admonition.
Although the Didachist (6:1) abbreviated it, the text is. more complete in the Latin version of the Jewish source (Doct 6:1-6). Nonetheless it is difficult to reconstruct the precise original wording of the admonition.' Even so, it is evident that the Latin translation of the ending reflects the original content of the conclusion of The Two Ways: "Beware lest anyone cause you to abandon this teach4 The most recent editions of the Didache are Klaus Wengst, Didache (Apostellehre) (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984 [SUC 2]) pp. 3-100;
Willy Rordorf & Andre Tuilier, La doctrine des Douze Apétres (Didaché) (Paris:
Les Editions du Cerf, 1978 [SC 248]). A pioneering book about the Jewish roots of the Didache was the treatise of G. Klein, Der dlteste christliche Katechismus und die judische Propaganda-Literatur (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1909).
5 J.-P. Audet, "Affinités littéraires et doctrines du Manuel de Discipline", RB 59
(1952) pp. 217-238.
; 6 About the Two Ways treatise, see also my study, "The Two Ways," in D.
Flusser, Jewish Sources in Early Christianity (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1979) pp.
235-252 (in Hebrew).
7 See the preceding note.
8 The last sentence of the Latin Doct (6:6) is surely a Christian medieval addition. It seems to me that Doct (6:5b) is a later addition too.
DAVID FLUSSER
ing, otherwise you will be taught apart from the (true) instruction.
If you do these things daily with deliberation,' you will be near to the living God. But if you fail to do them, you will be far from the truth. Store up all these things in your soul and you will not be beguiled from your hope."
This concluding admonition fits admirably well the ethical imperative and the dualistic vein of the Jewish Two Ways, and is an appropriate conclusion of the work. Neither in the Latin Doctrina Apostolorum nor in the paraphrastic Epistle of Barnabas was any other new precept added. Here the Didache differs. After the abbreviated form of the original conclusion and before the Christian "Manual of Discipline" that follows, in Didache 6:2-3 an addition to The Two Ways was inserted.
As has already been noted, the passage was absent from the original tractate of The Two Ways, but the appendix already existed in the copy of the treatise used by the Didachist. Theoretically the passage under question could have been a Jewish addition to the Jewish tractate,!° but this is highly improbable. We hope to show further that, although Didache 6:2-3 was not composed by the Didachist, it was a Christian work, written by a man whose Christian Weltanschauung differed from the approach of the Didachist. On the other hand, the addition differs also from the preceding Jewish text. While the Two Ways is an inner-Jewish ethical treatise, only Didache 6:2-3 is addressed to Gentile believers.
Though The Two Ways is of Jewish origin, it was regarded as apostolic instruction not only by the Didachist,!! but also by the Doctrina Apostolorum. If the apostolic ascription appears from the text's very beginnings in all the witnesses without any exceptions, it follows that from the first decades of Christianity, the Two
Ways was considered a product of the Apostolic Mother Church.
As such, the tractate began to be read also by Gentile believers in Christ, and thus it is no wonder that an appendix was added, reflecting the spirit of the majority of the Jewish Mother Church which sought to stipulate the obligations of Gentile Christian believers.
At this stage the tractate reached the Didachist. For him Didache 6:2-3 belonged to the Vorlage and was an authentic apostolic teaching that carried all the authority of his source. Did
° Was this written under the influence of the famous verse in Joshua 1:8?
10 This is the opinion of A. Stuiber. See above note 3.
'l J even venture that the supposed Apostolic origin of the Two Ways was the main impulse for the Didachist to compose his own book. He believed that the treatise is an apostolic message to the Gentiles. The Two Ways became for him a starting point for his Didache. About the titles of the work see Rordorf & Tuilier, op.cit., pp. 13-17.
PAUL'S JEWISH CHRISTIAN OPPONENTS
he notice that the passage was a child of a spirit different from his own? Even if he had some suspicions, the authority of his Vorlage dissipated them. One passage begins with the words: "If you can bear the whole yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect..." The "yoke of the Lord" means here the "yoke of the Law," but as we will see later, the term "the yoke of the Lord" is also Jewish and has the same meaning.
The Didachist could understand the expression as describing common Christian duties.
But did the Didachist fully understand the passage? Certainly he did not need it when he adopted it from his source. For some of us, the tendency of the whole passage is clear enough, but for many who do not possess historical imagination—or knowledge— it will be easy to miss the central point of Didache 6:2-3. At least after the rediscovery of the Didache not a few modern scholars were misled.!? They believed that the passage taught a Christian ascetic attitude concerning both food and sexual life: those who completely renounce sex are perfect. In this field, as also in ascetic dietetics the Christian believer has to try as far as possible to reach the ideal exigencies. If such a distorted exegesis could arise in modern scholarship, why was the Didachist obliged to understand his Vorlage better, even if its approach was more or less foreign to the Didachist, as it was surely foreign to such cognate contemporary Christian circles in which the three Pastoral
Epistles were composed? The Didachist understood and accepted the general line of argument presented in the passage: try to reach the highest possible standard of Christian obligations! "If you can bear the whole yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect; but if you cannot, do what you can!"!3 A kind of contrast really does exist between the original exigencies embedded in our passage and the later regulations of the Gentile Christian Churches to which the Didache was addressed. Nevertheless, this difference was not felt by the Didachist himself. So he could incorporate Didache 6:2-3 into his treatise and at the same time admonish the Churches not to let their fasts fall on the same day as the hypocrites, who fast on Monday and Thursday, "Rather you should fast on Wednesday and Friday" (Didache 8:1). He also instructs them, "Nor should you pray as the hypocrites, but pray the Lord's Prayer thrice daily" (Didache 8:2-3). Nor does he refer to the Sabbath, but rather to the celebration of the Lord's Day, i.e. Sunday.
In order to proceed further in our investigation, we must make a few remarks concerning some philological questions. Our passage speaks about the bearing of the whole yoke of the Lord
12 12 See A. Stuiber, op.cit., pp. 325-326; and Wengst, op.cit., pp. 95-96, n.
52-53.
13 Naturally also he abhors the meat connected with idolatry.
DAVID FLUSSER
(or of the Law). It is evident that this terminology alludes to the atmosphere of the so called Apostolic Decree. According to Acts
15:10 it was Peter who said in this connection: "Now therefore why do you make trial of God by pulling a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?" And according to Acts 15:28 in the letter which announced the decisions of the Apostolic Church it was written: "For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things," namely, the restrictions of the Apostolic Decree. And it was already recognized that a similar terminology appears also in the message to the church of Thyatira in Rev. 2:24-25. "I do not lay upon you any other burden; only hold fast what you have, until I come." According to Didache 6:2-3 those who are able to bear the whole yoke are perfect, but if anyone is not able to reach perfection, it does not matter: he shall bear what he is able to bear. This implies that those who are unable to fulfill all the commandments are somehow imperfect. I do not know any other good parallel for the use of the term "perfect," but perhaps the closest text is Mt 19:21. I will try to explain the strange attitude of our passage later.'*
As we have seen, although it was recognized that the intended audience of Didache 6:2-3 was the believing Gentiles, the relevance of his unique text to this complex problem has not, as far as I know, been fully appreciated until now. The proposal contained in Didache 6:2-3 is one of the possible solutions to the question regarding the status of believing Gentiles, a problem which was then common to both Judaism and Christianity. The proposed solution is astonishing, but it makes good sense in the context of various trends within Judaism and the early Christian
Church. Although the situation was already known in is broad outlines, Didache 6:2-3 throws light upon it, and thus the passage becomes a substantial help for understanding both Judaism and primitive Christianity.
It is surely not our task to describe the strong attraction of the Jewish faith among the Gentiles. "The masses have long since shown a keen desire to adopt our religious observances and there is not one city, Greek or barbarian, not a single nation to which our custom of abstaining from work on the seventh day had not 14 Tt is an ironical paradox that the only parallel that contradicts the approach is the Pauline Romans 14:1-15:5. According to-Paul, the weak in faith is a believer who is bound by religious and ritual restrictions. "I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean" (Rom 15:14). And Paul says (Rom 15:1); "We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves." In both cases, in aa wa in Didache 6:2-3, the weak or the less perfect has to be fully respected.
PAUL'S JEWISH CHRISTIAN OPPONENTS
spread, and where the fasts and the lighting of lamps and many of our prohibitions in the matter of food are not observed"
(Josephus, Contra Apion 2:282-3; cf. ibid. 2:123). Many Gentiles were fascinated not only by the theological spirituality and the ethical values of Judaism, but also by its "ceremonial law". We know from the sources that levels of observing the Jewish way of life as embraced by Gentiles varied from one person to another, it seems that the Gentile Godfearers were more and more eager to accept and follow further Jewish obligations as they proceeded in learning.'5 Since it was impossible in practice, and from the Jewish point of view even undesirable, for all the God-fearing
Gentiles to become full proselytes, the Gentile "Judaizers" had to decide, how great a burden they desired to assume. In their decisions they necessarily depended upon the advice and the instructions of their Jewish friends.
In this connection the story of the gradual progress of the royal family of Adiabene towards full proselytism (Josephus, AJ
20:17ff) is instructive, but at the same time clearly atypical. The obstacles to becoming full proselytes were far more restrictive for persons of a high social position such as sovereigns of a state than for other Gentiles who were not exposed to public censure. One should moreover not forget that the story is narrated by Josephus from the standpoint of his Gentile readers.
In the process of the full proselytization of the royal house of Adiabene at least two Jews were involved. The first was a certain
Jewish merchant, named Ananias: "He taught them to worship God after the manner of the Jewish tradition" (AJ 20:34), and it happened, moreover, that the Queen, Helena, "had hkewise been instructed by another Jew and had been brought over to their laws" (ibid 35). Finally Izates came to the conclusion, "that he would not be genuinely a Jew unless he was circumcised and therefore he was ready to act accordingly"
(Ibid 38). Then Ananias tried to dissuade the king from this last step. "The king could, he said, worship God even without being circumcised if he had fully decided to be a devoted adherent of Judaism, for it was this that counted more than circumcision"
(ibid 41). The final decision to complete the process of proselytism was caused by "another Jew, named Eleazar, who came from Galilee and who had the reputation of being extremely strict when it came to the ancestral laws"
(ibid 43). The Greek wording that describes Eleazar's Jewish way of life shows that he was a Pharisee.!° In Greek sources the technical term akribeia serves as a definition of 1S See Juvenal, Sat. 14:96-106:1.
16 See Josephus, Ant 20.43 about Eleazar: panu peri ta partia dokon akribes einai. See also n. 21 below.
DAVID FLUSSER
Pharisaic piety: the Pharisees "are believed to interpret the laws with strictness" (met' akribeias, Josephus, BJ 2.162). According to Acts 22:3 Paul was brought up in Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel the Pharisee (see Acts 5:34), "according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers" (kata akribeian tou patroou nomou). And in Acts 26:5 Paul says that he has lived as a Pharisee, "according to the strictest (akribestate) party of our religion."!7 But even if his Eleazar was a Pharisee, this does not mean that his approach represented the opinion of the majority within rabbinic Judaism.
In reality it should be well known already that in general, ancient Judaism neither wished nor required that all the Gentile
God-fearers should become full proselytes. On the other hand, the Jews. had no choice but to try and find, for the sake of the Gentiles, a formula which would establish the minimum of obligations indispensable for the Gentiles to be saved together with the Jews who were required to observe the whole Law. Today the obligations for the Gentiles are the so called seven Noachic precepts and we have shown elsewhere!8 that these seven obligations are the result of a long development. We also tried to show that in. the earliest stage of development, these seven Noachic precepts originally consisted of only three commandments, he same ones as contained in the better reading of the Apostolic
Decree.
Today the Jewish code strictly forbids a non-Jew to observe any Jewish commandment, no matter how minor. A Gentile has to live only according to the Noachic prescriptions and nothing more is required, unless he decides to "become a Jew." Only after passing all the prescribed ceremonies of proselytism and becoming legally Jewish, does he have to observe the whole Law. What happened in later Judaism is a historical paradox: medieval Judaism finally reached a solution not dissimilar to that which Paul more or less endeavored to enforce in Gentile Christian communities, i.e. Gentiles were not permitted to observe the Jewish commandments, but if they became Jews, then they were obliged to observe the whole law of Moses. In both cases, a similar approach led to similar results. Both Paul and the medieval Rabbis wanted to separate the Jews from non-Jews and the most dangerous obstacle in the way of achieving this aim was when Gentiles began to fulfill, even partially, the Jewish law. Such a constellation makes a com- '7 From this small list follows that those who opposed the execution of James,
Jesus' brother, were the Pharisees.
Even if this designation does not appear explicitly in Ant 20:201, they are described there as those who were thought "to be strict in connection of the laws" (peri ton nomon akribeis).
18 See above, n. 2.
PAUL'S JEWISH CHRISTIAN OPPONENTS
plete separation of Jews from Gentiles and vice versa quite impracticable. Thus Gentile "Judaizers" became non desirable for both sides. The question is how far the medieval Jewish separatist solution was stimulated by the ecclesiastical politics of the Church which punished Judaizers and strictly prohibited all proselytism.
Gentile Judaizers and possible proselytes were then a menacing danger for the very existence of the Jewish communities. Thus we cannot completely exclude the possibility that the parallelism between the Church and the Synagogue in their wish to achieve complete mutual separatism also had a hidden, hideous dimension.
Before returning to Didache 6:2-3, we have to make the following remark, though with some hesitation. According to Acts
16:4 Paul and Silas, "as they went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decisions which had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem," i.e. the Apostolic Decree. I do not see any serious cause which would force us to reject this "harmonizing" information as nonhistorical, especially as we believe that the Apostolic Decree contained only the prohibitions against what was sacrificed to idols, bloodshed and unchastity. Another question is how deeply Paul was interested in imposing upon the churches the rule that the Jews believing in Jesus Christ should be forbidden to transgress the Law of Moses that they had been bound to fulfill before becoming Christians.
I am aware of the present tendency of many outstanding Christian New Testament scholars to view Paul as a sincerely observant Jew who never doubted that it was the eternal will of God that all Jews, including naturally those saved by Christ, remain under the holy yoke of the Jewish Law. Personally
I am not sure that Paul's mind was so simple and undialectical, but fortunately for me Paul's position about the Law is not the object of our present inquiry. In any case, in the extant epistles
Paul never says in so many words that there is anything that can release a Jew from his observation of the Law and its works. On the other hand, we also never find an explicit statement by Paul to the contrary, namely that the belief in Christ for the Jew is incompatible with his life according to the ancestral laws. This became the official opinion of the Church only later, some hundred years after Paul's execution. What we read in 1 Corinthians
7:17-24 is: "Only let every one lead the life which the Lord has assigned to him, and in which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Was any one at the time of his call already cir-' cumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision.
Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision... Every one should remain in the state in which he was called. Were you a slave when called? Never mind... So, brethren, in whatever state each was called, there let him remain
DAVID FLUSSER
with God." Happily enough it is not our task to decide how great is the theological weight of this passage. In any case, one 1s at least obliged to recognize from the passage that Paul accepted and delivered to the Churches the rule that Christians from Jewish stock should practise what they did before their call and also that the Gentiles should live as they did before becoming Christians.
Thus we are apparently not wrong when we assume that Paul actually enacted the Apostolic Decree with its implications both for the Gentiles and for the Jews, and we have already seen that this was also the regulation of Judaism concerning the Gentile
God-fearers.
The Apostolic Decree was evidently no more than a confirmation and reinforcement of the Noachic prescriptions as they were then commonly understood. But this did not unequivocally solve the whole "Gentile question." Are these prescriptions the minimum obligations of the Gentiles or are they indeed the maximum rules for the God-fearers, as Paul and later the medieval rabbinism decided? In a famous Jewish homily! from the second century C.E., we read that a Gentile who does the (Mosaic) Law?° is considered to be in the same category as the Jewish High Priest himself. It is not written that God's ordinances and statutes are destined for the priests, Levites and Israelites; it is rather said:
"You shall keep my statutes and my ordinances which the man (adam) shall do" (Lev 18:5). In 2 Sam 7:19, the Law is not given only for the priests, Levites and Israelites, but rather, "This is the Law for man (adam)." Moreover, the prophet Isaiah does not say that God's gates are open for the priests, Levites and Israelites, but he says: "Open the gates that the righteous nation (Hebrew: goy, the Gentile) which keeps faith may enter in" (Is 26:2). So we
19 Sifra to Lev 18:5 (Ahare Moth, Chapter 13, Codex Assem ani, ed. L. Finkelstein [New York, 1936] pp. 373-4); the same text appears in Midrash Hagadol to Lev, ed. A. Steinsaltz (Jerusalem) p. 518. It is clear that the tradent is Rabbi
Jeremiah. W. Bacher, Die Agada der Tannaiten Il (Strassbourg, 1890) p. 31, and n.
2, where he cites other parallels, b.BQ 38a, b.San 59a, where the tradent is Rabbi
Meir. This shows that the saying of a comparatively unknown sage, Rabbi Jeremiah
(see the materials collected by Bacher) was cited in the name of Rabbi Meir.
20 About the Jewish expression, "to do the Law", see S. Abramson, Leshonenu (Jerusalem, 1954) pp. 61-65. The expression occurs already in Sir 19:20 and in 1
Macc 2:67, 13:48, and in the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1QpHab 7:11; 8:1; 12:4-5 and 4 QpPs 2:15, 23, cf. CD 16:8. For the expression "the works of the Law" in the DSS, see E. Qimron and J. Strugnell, "An Unpublished Halachic Letter from Qumran", Biblical Archaeology Today (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1985) pp.
401 and 406 n.5. In the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs "the works of the Law" appear in 7Dan 6:9 and the expression "to do the Law" occurs in TGad 3:2 and 7Jos 11 :1. In the New Testament "to do the Law" occurs in Jn 7:19, Rom
2:12, 14, 25 and Gal 5:3. The "works of the Law" are Pauline. As to the Rabbinic literature see also the preceding note and Abort de Rabbi Nathan, ed. S. Schechter, p. 124, DeutR, Zot Haberakha \\ and the Targum to Is 1:27.
PAUL'S JEWISH CHRISTIAN OPPONENTS
see that even a Gentile who practices the (Mosaic) Law is considered to be like the High Priest.
The author of our homily believes that in principle, the Mosaic Law is destined to be observed by all mankind. Therefore he considers a Gentile who 'does the Law' as having great merit, and it is undoubtedly not a proselyte who is meant. Thus there is no doubt that the circles to which the tradent belonged saw in the Noachic precepts no more than an indispensable prerequisite, a minimal obligation for the pious Gentiles. According to the spirit of the saying, a God-fearing Gentile is to be praised if he fulfills many commandments of the Mosaic Law. On the other hand, according to Paul and to later medieval Jewish legislation, a believing Gentile should not accept upon himself more obligations than the Noachic precepts. Did such a Jewish view exist already in Paul's day at least as a recommended suggestion? Until now I have not found any decisive Jewish text which would explicitly confirm this approach, but this position fits admirably well the divergent tendencies within Judaism of antiquity.
This 'dialectical' unity in Judaism is often inaccurately described as its universalism and particularism. It was an expression of the genuine Jewish universalistic tendency which regarded the Law as destined for all of mankind and thus came to hold the opinion that it is preferable for a pious Gentile to accept upon himself the Jewish obligations. It is superfluous to repeat here that Judaism was not and is not a missionary religion;?! however, as it also has a universal message, Judaism in antiquity mostly welcomed proselytes, but logically this approach was not without some ambivalence. The open mindedness of the school of Hillel towards proselytes, and the reserve shown by the school of Shammai against them are well known.?2 No wonder that the prominent disciple of the school of Shamai, Rabbi Eleazar ben Hyrcanos thought that proselytes tended to possess a bad character.23 Moreover, if sometimes one had to be careful even of full proselytes, how could one ever trust the Godfearing Gentiles? Rabbi Shimeon ben Yochai was pessimistic.24+ When Pharaoh decided to pursue
21 The Pharisees in Mt 23:15 seem to be an exception or the saying has to be understood in the vein of the story of the gradual conversion of the kings of Adiabene. We already assumed that Eleazar from Galilee was a Pharisee (see n. 16 above). Jesus' saying possibly alludes to such Pharisees who "traverse sea and land" in order to convert the Gentile God-fearers to full proselytes.
22 See e.g. b.Shab 31a and W. Bacher, Die Agada der Tannaiten | (Strassbourg, 1903) p. 4 and pp. 8-9.
23 See Ibid, pp. 106-107, and about the original evil nature of proselytes, see also tractate Gerim 4:2.
24 24 See the Mechilta de-Rabbi Ishmael to Ex 14:7, ed. S. Horovitz and J.A.
Rabin, (Jerusalem, 1970) p. 87.
DAVID FLUSSER
the children of Israel, he "took six hundred chosen chariots" (Ex 14:7) but where did he get the beasts to pull the chariots? The beasts of the Egyptians and those of Pharaoh had already died during the ten plagues, and the cattle of the children of Israel remained with them (see Ex 10:26). To whom did they belong?
The cattle belonged to the God-fearing Gentiles among the servants of Pharaoh. Their cattle was spared, since they had heeded the warning of Moses. We learn this fact from another biblical verse: "He who feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh, made his slaves and his cattle flee into the houses" (Ex
9:20). So Pharaoh used these beasts which belonged to the Godfearers among his servants against the children of Israel. We thus learn that the God-fearing Gentiles constitute a snare for Israel."
Rabbi Eleazar ben Hyrcanos thought that a proselyte did not cease to be attracted by his pagan past. In addition, Rabbi
Shimeon ben Yochai believed the God-fearing Gentiles possessed an unstable and weak character and that they presented a danger for the Jewish people because one could not be sure that when
Israel was persecuted they would not join their Gentile compatriots. The exaggerated suspicions of the two Jewish sages resulted from the basic ambivalent theological and psychological structure of Judaism which we have already mentioned. As to the God-fearing Gentiles, it is easy to imagine that besides those who welcomed their zeal for Jewish commandments, there were also many Jews in whose hearts the multitude of "half-Jews" evoked an uneasy feeling. Do these Gentiles observe parts of the Mosaic
Law because they understand the Jewish call, or perhaps they perform Jewish customs as an act of superstition? Where is the line separating proselytes from God-fearing Gentiles? All who have experienced modern parallels to these ancient Gentile "Judaizers" will surely understand the ambivalent feelings concerning practising Gentiles: on the one hand, the high appreciation of a Gentile who "does the Law"2°—and on the other, the negative attitude of Rabbi Shimeon ben Yochai against the Godfearing Gentiles.27 In such a state of affairs, it is plausible to imagine that already in antiquity there existed among the Jews a tendency to recommend that Gentiles restrict themselves in their observance only to those prescriptions which are indispensable, namely the Noachic precepts.
It is not too far-fetched even to suppose that Paul's warning to the Gentiles as regards the observance of the Law was
*5 The translation of the last sentence is according to the text in the edition of Horovitz & Rabin.
26 See above, n. 19.
27 See above, n. 24. Rabbi Jeremiah and Rabbi Shimeon ben Yochai were contemporaries (second half of the second century C.E.).
PAUL'S JEWISH CHRISTIAN OPPONENTS
not merely a consequence of his conversion. It is possible that the point of departure for this component of his theology lies in Paul's
"Pharisaic" past. But as we have already. stated, the restriction calling on the Gentiles not to observe more than the Noachic precepts is not explicitly attested in ancient Jewish sources.
'Nevertheless, the view that the believing and already practising Gentiles should be permitted to perform specifically Jewish commandments is also unattested in ancient Judaism.
Shall we therefore accept the view that Didache 6:2-3 is a purely Jewish passage in which an anonymous Jewish maximalist appeals to the God-fearing Gentiles to observe the Mosaic Law as far as they can? This seems to me to be almost impossible.
Already at first glance one has the impression that, if the passage is purely Jewish, its content is a very clumsy proposal. However, if the passage is Christian, then it is a directive addressed to the Gentile Christians and inspired by the position of the right wing of the Mother Church and in that case, Didache 6:2-3 makes good sense. There are two reasons why the passage is Christian and not purely Jewish. The first is decisive, namely the setting of the passage in the midst of the development of the Didache from the Jewish Two Ways towards our actual Didache. The second reason why Didache 6:2-3 has to be considered as a Christian work is that although the question of the Believing Gentiles was also a Jewish problem, it really became an urgent matter in the primitive
Church, whose future and very nature depended upon the manner in which this decisive issue would be resolved.
Let us first requote the passage itself. "If you can bear the whole yoke of the Lord (i.e. of the Law),?8 you will be perfect; but if you cannot, do what you can. Concerning the food, bear what you will be able to bear. But be sure to refrain completely from meat which has been sanctified before idols, for it represents the worship of dead gods." The views expressed in the passage are indeed possible within the framework of ancient Judaism, but it is extremely difficult to imagine that a Jew, or a Jewish authority of the period, would address God-fearing Gentiles and beg them to be perfect and to observe the whole Jewish Law, or at least to observe as much as they can and recommend that their food should be as kosher as possible. I admit that the passage remains somebow grotesque even if it is Christian, but as a 28 The whole yoke of the Lord was probably original. In the tractate Gerim 1:2 there is a varia lectio "if he (the future proselyte) says, "I am not worthy to place my neck under the yoke of Him Who spoke and the world came into being, blessed by He" they receive him forthwith, and if not, he is dismissed and goes his way."
See The Minor Tractates of the Talmud Il, A. Cohen (London: Soncino, 1971) p.
603 n.5. The passage quoted above is also pertinent to Acts 15:10, where the expression "putting a yoke upon the neck" of Gentiles appears.
DAVID FLUSSER
Christian composition it becomes far less strange and incredible.
Both Jews and Christians are sure that Gentiles will be saved under certain conditions, but as soon as Gentiles accepted the faith in Jesus Christ, the question of their unity with the Christian Jews in one Church was no more essentially identical with the original
Jewish religious view about the pious Gentiles. Christians believe that the Messiah has already come and that his expiatory death saves all who believe in him and in this central point there is no difference between Jews believing in Christ and Gentiles. Moreover Christ unites the Jews who believe in him with Christian
Gentiles and removes the Christian Jews from the rest of Jewry.
It is necessary to state these truisms in order to understand that a fast and unequivocal solution of the problem of the Christian
Gentiles for the Church became from its very beginnings unavoidable. There were two possible kinds of solutions for the Gentile problem in the Church, and both were proposed. The points of departure were naturally the Noachic precepts, for which the Gentiles are held responsible. The first solution was obvious.
In order to strengthen the ties of Gentile Christianity with the Jews believing in Christ who were "all zealous of the Law" (Acts
21:20), it was desirable for the Gentile Christian believers to observe all the Mosaic Law as far as they were able to do so. In this manner the difference between the Jewish believers and their
Gentile brethren would be minimized. We have already seen that this solution was based upon Jewish patterns. The other solution was evidently dictated by the suspicion that if Gentile Christians
"did the Law", the common bond with the non-Christian Jews would be so great that there would be a danger that Gentile
Christians would finally become Jewish (non-Christian) proselytes. Therefore Gentile Christians should not be required to observe the special Jewish prescriptions.2° Although no explicit
Jewish parallel from antiquity is available to authenticate this approach, this Pauline solution fits certain tendencies in Judaism.
This has become evident, among other things, from the fact noted above, that Paul's position conforms to the later Jewish legislation concerning Gentiles.
29 For all the questions of the Law in the Church see the personal opinion of Justin Martyr, Dial 47. The whole chapter is very instructive. He says (97:21) that the "good" observant Jewish Christians observe the portions of the law of Moses which may now be observed (cf. possibly expression in Rom 14:1-7 and 1 Cor 8:9).
He opposes such Jewish Christians who compel Gentile Christians to live according to the Law of Moses, Ibid. 47:3; the whole passage is evidently also influenced by Gal 2:11-14). Naturally Justin denies the salvation of those who believed in Christ, began to observe the Mosaic Law and finally abandoned their belief in Christ (Ibid.
47:4). The last category shows that there were really Gentile Christians who "did the Law" and for whom the Christian faith was only an intermediary stage. This happened to the famous proselyte Aquila.
PAUL'S JEWISH CHRISTIAN OPPONENTS
Anyone reading Paul even once knows that he always warns Gentiles not to observe Jewish commandments. During the period, some God-fearing Gentiles evidently underwent circumcision without becoming full proselytes, because they thought that circumcision was only one important component of the Jewish way of life. To those who would adhere to this approach Paul answered, "I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is bound to keep the whole law" (Gal. 5:3).3° Here Paul repeats the current Jewish position. However one cannot be sure that at the time some of the Jewish doctors did not think that for the Gentiles, as for Jews, circumcision was only one of the obligations of the Law. Therefore circumcision would not bind the Gentiles to keep the whole Mosaic Law. If such a view ever existed, it expressed the position of those who thought that Gentile
God-fearers were permitted and even encouraged to live at least partially in the same manner as Jews. Such a demand was probably adopted by the majority of the Jewish Mother Church, because it evidently seemed to its members that it was the easiest solution to the urgent problem of the Gentile Christians. If they observed the Jewish commandments as far as possible, the ties between the Jewish and Gentile members of the Church would be strengthened. Such "Church-politics" did not contradict the so called
Apostolic Decree, as it agreed with the Jewish viewpoint concerning the Noachic precepts.
Our considerations are based upon the general situation in the Apostolic Church. All its members accepted the authority of the Apostolic Decree but is application depended on two possible interpretations of the indispensable obligations of Gentile believers. The question was whether these obligations constituted a minimum or a maximum. Now we should understand Paul's vehement opposition to such Gentiles who wanted to take upon themselves a heavier Jewish burden. On the other hand, the approach of the faction to which Peter belonged no longer looks as absurd as it often used to do. They adhered to another interpretation of the Apostolic. Decree, identical with the Jewish view that the "doing of the Law" by a Gentile is meritorious. Those who tried to persuade Gentile Christians to live more or less like the Jews wanted to reach a high goal, namely the creation of a single
Church, composed of both Jews and Gentiles.
Now we can understand the incident which happened in Antioch (Gal. 2:11-14).3! "For before a certain man3? came from 30 The whole passage of Gal 5:1-6 shows that Paul does not merely repeat a current Jewish opinion but that Gal 5:3 is also a part of Paul's Christological approach to the Law.
31 The latest study about this incident is T. Holtz, "Der antiochenische Zwischenfall (Galater 2:11-14)", NTS 32 (1986) pp. 321-343.
32 *A certain man" and "he came" is the original wording. This can be deduced
DAVID FLUSSER
James, he (Peter) ate with the Gentiles; but when he came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party... I said to Cephas (Peter) before them all, "If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?"" Paul did not blame Peter because he had never before, "eaten anything that is common or unclean" (Acts
10:14) but because he now makes concessions to the Gentiles and at the same time he compels them to live like Jews. We have tried to explain what it meant for Peter and the faction to which he belonged to "compel" the Gentiles to live according to the manner of the Jews. Peter and his tried to persuade the Gentile Christians not to become full proselytes but to do some "works of the law
(see Gal 3:1-5). The argumentation of this faction of the Jewish Mother Church was approximately as follows:
"If you (..e.
Gentile Christians) can bear the whole yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect; but if you cannot, do what you can. Concerning the food, bear what you will be able to bear. But be sure to refrain completely from meat which has been sanctified before idols for it represents the worship of dead gods" (Didache 6:2-3). Incidentally, one of the points that prove that the passage is indeed
Christian is the reference to "what has been sacrificed to idols" which is mentioned in the Apostolic Decree (see also 1 Cor 8 and 10:25-29 and Rev 2:14, 20).33
We are sure that Didache 6:2-3 is of Christian and not Jewish origin. It is a precious document from the first years of Christianity. The passage fits the meagre and incomplete information about the tendencies and aims of the group in the Apostolic
Church which Paul opposed, and thus it enlarges and supplements our knowledge about this trend which was once named the "Petrine" faction. I believe that with the help of our passage one can learn also something about Paul, since it casts light upon the tendencies against which Paul was constrained to fight.
If, however, some doubts remain about the Christian origin of Didache 6:2-3, it is the position of this passage within the final arrangement of the Didache which unequivocally decides the question.
We should like at this stage to repeat the main points of this argument: (1) Didache 6:2-3 is addressed to Gentiles while the preceding tractate the Two Ways is an inner-Jewish ethical treatise. (2) Didache 6:2-3 did not belong to the Jewish treatise, as it can be seen i.a. from the old Latin translation of this Jewish from Martini's edition.
33 See also K. Wengst, op.cit., p. 96, n. 53 and A. Resch, op.cit.. See also Justin Martyr, Dial 34:8-35:2.
PAUL'S JEWISH CHRISTIAN OPPONENTS
source, where this addition is still absent. (3) Already in the first decades of Christianity the Two Ways was considered to be a product of the Apostolic Mother Church. The apostolic ascription of the Jewish source appears in all witnesses without exception.
(4) Under such circumstances it is plausible that at the end of the treatise an appendix was added which regulated the obligations of the Gentile believers in the spirit of the majority of the Apostolic
Mother Church.
(5) The tractate together with the addition reached the Didachist who also believed in the apostolic origin of his Vorlage. He interpolated his source and adjoined it, from chapter 7 on, to his own Christian "Manual of Discipline." (6)
The Didachist was a Gentile Christian similar to the author(s) of the Pastoral Epistles and his pastoral work concerns
Gentile Christian Churches. On the other hand, the author of Didache 6:23 is a Christian Jew. Didache 6:2-3 is a child of a different spirit from the following Christian "Manual of Discipline." But as the Didachist believed that both the Two Ways and the addition are a product of the Apostolic Church, he did not pay attention to the different tendencies represented in Didache 6:2-3. (7) The progressive development of the text of the Didache shows that Didache 6:2-3 was written in a period between the Jewish Two
Ways and the Gentile Christian treatise of the Didachist. Also in this respect, Didache 6:2-3 is not a Jewish but a Christian composition.
We have come to the end of our journey, which has led us through the birth pangs which finally produced the "historical"
Christian church.
There is no doubt that the plan of Paul's opponents was well meant, but in reality it was impractical. How could such a Gentile Christian Church have survived in the long run when it contained a membership of Gentile Christians on various levels of Jewish perfection? Paul was capable of imposing his solution upon the Church. But even the best human decision is potentially dangerous and tends to lead to strange consequences if no strong will exists to avoid the impending evil. So Paul's reasonable arrangement succeeded more or less in keeping Gentile
Christians from observing the Jewish way of life. Later on, however, not only were Gentiles who observed the smallest Jewish commandment cruelly punished, but also Jews who became Christians were forbidden by the Christian Church to live according to the Law of Moses.
BAPTISM ACCORDING TO THE DIDACHE
WILLY RORDORF
Neuchatel The Didache gives the following instructions on the subject of baptism:
1. On the subject of baptism, baptize 7:1 epi 52 vod Baxtiopatoc, ovTw Baxrricate' TavTa TAVTA thus: after having taught all that precedes, baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in living water.
2. If for some reason you do not have living water, baptize in other water; and if you are not able to in cold water, in warm water.
3. If you do not have (enough) of one or the other, pour out water three times on the head, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
4a. Before the baptism, let the bapEpevxovtTec, Bartioate eic TO Svouce TOV TATPOC Ka TOV Vio Kai TOU Gyiov TvEvpaTog ev VdaTE pz:
2. "Eay 58 un Exnc vdwp far, éi¢ GAXo téwp Baxrisov" ei 5 ov divacou év Wuxpe, év Seppo.
3. "Eav 5& apdorepa un Exne, Exxeov eic THY KEoaATY TpIC Vdwp eic Ovopa ZATPOS Kal VLOD Kall aryiouU
TVEVLOTOC.
4a. Ilpo 5é tov Baxriopatos TpovnoTevoaTe 0 Baxtifav Kai o BSax7ifOpevoc Koi el TIVES GAOL dvvavTav 4b. xehevec 6& vnoTevoot TOV BaxrifOpevor Tp0 pac 7 Sv0. tizer, the baptized and others who can, observe first a fast; 4b. as for the baptized, you must enforce a fast before-hand for one or two days.
This text is important since it is one of the first post-canonical texts which teaches us on the rite of Christian baptism. However, though it may be short—or rather because it is short—it creates a certain number of problems which are not easy to solve. It is thus not surprising that it has ever anew aroused the interest of scholars.! If I bend over the text in my turn, it is not that I will pretend to be able to propose an entirely new solution; I aim rather to take my bearings from previous research.
' To mention only the most recent studies: S. Giet, "Coutume, évolution, droit canon. A propos de deux passages de la "Didaché"", in RDC 16 (1966), pp. 118132, republished (with modifications) in L'Enigme de la Didaché (Paris: Ophrys,
1970 [PFLUS]) pp. 192-197; A. Védbus, Liturgical Traditions in the Didache (Stockholm: Estonian Theological Society in Exile, 1968 [PETSE 16]) pp. 17-60.
BAPTISM ACCORDING TO THE DIDACHE
1. Literary Unity of Didache 7?
With this question we are already at the heart of the problem posed by the text. Indeed, Didache 7:1 begins by addressing itself to a group of persons: "You baptize..."; but Didache 7:2-4 is addressed to only one person. How can one explain this change?
The problem becomes still more complex, when one takes account of the context in which the chapter is found. Didache 16:1 presents, without any other introduction, the teaching of the "two ways" of life and of death, teaching which goes back essentially to a Jewish model.? Apart from Didache 1:3b-6—a passage which originates in turn from a source of the teachings of Jesus3
—all the teaching of the "two ways" is given in the second person singular;* in several places (Did 3:1, 3, 4, 5, 6; 4:15) the person to whom it is addressed is called 7éxvov pov. But, curiously, at the end of the "way" of death (5:2), we find a phrase in the plural: pvobeinre, TEKVa, &TO TOUTWY ATaVTwWY.S The end of the "two ways" teaching returns again to the second person singular in Didache 6:1, the same as for the rest of chapter 6. But everything which follows after chapter 7, i.e. Didache 8-16, is written in the second person plural, except Didache 13:3a, 5-7.
Noticing that, Audet' has attributed the whole of the "yousingular passages" of the Didache, which do not belong to the teaching of the primitive "two ways", to the same "interpolator" .8
As far as Didache 6:2-3 and 7:2-4 are concerned, the hypothesis is seductive since it is supported by a supplementary stylistic
2 Cf. W. Rordorf, "Un chapitre d'éthique judéo-chrétienne: les Deux Voies", in RSR 60 (1972) pp. 109-128.
3 Cf. W. Rordorf, "Le probléme de la transmission textuelle de "Didaché" 1,3b2,1", in Uberlieferungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, ed. F. Paschke (Berlin:
Akademie-Verlag, 1981 [TU 125]) pp. 499-513. Reprinted in W. Rordorf, Liturgie, foi et vie des premiers chrétiens. Etudes patristiques (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986 [ThH
75)).
4 Did 4:11, which changes the point of view, must be an addition. In connection with this passage and in connection with Did 4:8b, cf. S. Giet, L'énigme, p. 184.
5 The Doctrina apostolorum reads fili in Did 4:13 also; and the Sermon De centesima, de sexagesima, de tricesima (cf. on this subject
J. Daniélou, "Le traité de centesima, sexagesima, tricesima et la judéo-chretianisme latin avant Tertullien", in VigChr 25 [1971] pp. 171ff) reads the same in Did 6:2!
6 J.-P. Audet, La Didaché.
Instructions des apétres (Paris: Gabalda,
[EBib]) p. 232, wished to emend the text. B. Botte, in his review of Audet's book in BThAM 8 (1958) p. 168, has rightly criticised this conjecture. He is probably right in saying, "It is not exactly true that Doctr. supports the singular. One can not only read abstine te fili, but also abstinete filifij, since fili was frequently written for the plural.
7 Didache, pp. 104ff.
8 We will not discuss this thesis in its entirety; cf. the critical remarks of Giet,
L'énigme, pp. 183f, and my own in the article cited in n. 3.
WILLY RORDORF
indicator: in the two passages we find several phrases constructed with the verb divao@c; the two passages thus breathe the same spirit of concession.
Benge But the problem is more complex.' In Didache 6:3, which is a "you-singular passage", we find the same construction with wept
5€ as in the "you-plural passage" which introduces Didache 7:1: mept 58 TAC Bpaoewc. One has the impression that this is only a pure co-incidence of style. If one compares it to the parallel text of the Apostolic Constitutions (V1I.21), one is struck by the fact that it reads the plural for Didache 6:3: &16 5& T&V eidwrobbTwY gevyere!!9 This shows, it seems to me, that Didache 6:3-7:1 forms a literary unity.
I intend to propose the hypothesis that chapters 9-10 on the "eucharist", where the construction with wepi dé appears three times (in Did 9:1, 2 and 3) belongs to the same literary unity as Didache 6:3-7:1.} The editor of the Didache would then have compiled two literary sources: the "two ways" teaching on the one hand, and several liturgical chapters introduced by mepi 5€ on the other.!?
He would have modified the latter source by adding the concessions made in Didache 6:3 and 7:2-3.!3
Be that as it may, I do not believe that one could deny an important change of perspective between Didache 7:1 and 7:2ff, which is expressed precisely in the fact that the beginning of the chapter is addressed to a plurality of persons, whereas what follows is addressed to one person only. This fact alone proves that the chapter could not have been written by the same hand.
9 R. A. Kraft (Barnabas and the Didache [New York: Nelson, 1965 (AF 3, ed.
R.M. Grant)] pp. 161, 163) has seen this well.
10 The plural is also attested in the Ethiopic version of the Didache (ed. G.
Horner, The Statutes of the Apostles [London: Williams & Norgate, 1904] p. 193).
11 T am less certain with regard to Didache 11:3 where the reading repi 6€ is only attested by the Apostolic Constitutions. As for the prayer contained in Const
VII.27 and in the Coptic version of the Didache, see below, p. [7].
12'S. Giet (L'énigme, p. 203) attributes the phrases introduced by zepi 6é to the redactional work of the "Didachist" himself, which seems at first sight to be the simplest solution. But S. Giet does not explain in a satisfactory way the transition from the second person plural to the second person singular in Didache 7.
13 Obviously one could ask why the editor of the Didache has compiled these two sources. Conscious that I am advancing on the uncertain grounds of pure speculation, I would give the following answer: the editor found in his source a text very close to the apostolic decree of Acts 15-(cf. the Ethiopic version of Did 6:3!) which he "refines" in his own way (and the author of Const VII.20 in his!). He knows, moreover, that the "two ways" teaching was given to converts recruited from the &@yn to which the apostolic decree was addressed; he then joined the two documents (the Western text of Acts has proceeded in a similar way by adding the Golden Rule to the Apostolic Decree! Cf., on this subject, the article of Y. Tissot, in RB 77 (1970) pp. 321-346).
BAPTISM ACCORDING TO THE DIDACHE
ou Didache 7:1 presupposes a situation where, in principle, every believer could baptize, and not just in the case of necessity either; Didache 15 teaches us that the traditional ministers of the local church for the administration of baptism, the bishop and the deacon, had not yet been instituted.
The itinerant apostles, prophets and teachers could not be in mind in Didache 7:1, since chapters 11ff speak of those in the third person plural. Moreover, the same situation is reflected in Didache 7:4a, where the term 6
Banrifwy to designate the one who administers baptism indicates the absence of a specific minister; for this reason, it seems to me a Didache 7:4a is drawn from the same source as Didache
1.14
Didache 7:2-3, 4b, in turn, is addressed directly to the one who administers baptism. It is not specified who it is, but one has the clear impression that it is a matter of one person designated to do it in a regular manner; for it specifies several situations that the person concerned might encounter in carrying out his service (7:23), and the person in question had a certain power to give orders
(7:4b).
The Apostolic Constitutions (V11.22) expresses itself clearly by saying, "On the subject of baptism, oh bishop or deacon,...baptize like this." In the Didache, we are not yet there.
But it seems evident to me that Didache 7:2-3, 4b, compared to Didache 7:1, 4a, makes a stride in this direction.
Can these clues help us to date chapter 7 of the Didache? At the beginning of the Christian mission, it was the apostles and the evangelists themselves who baptized the converts (cf. Acts 2:41;
8:38; 9:18; 16:15, 33; 1 Cor 1:14ff); but later they delegated this task to others (1 Cor 1:16f; Acts 10:48). Didache 7:1, 4a seems to represent this stage of the tradition. But Ignatius of Antioch was already anxious to reserve the right to baptize to the institutional ministers of the local church; he says»in his Letter to the Smyrnians 8:2, "It is not permitted for anyone to baptize or to celebrate the agape without the bishop, but everything which he approves is acceptable to God also." Does Didache 7:2-3, 4b move in this sense? It is difficult to say so with certainty.!>
14 Cf. S. Giet, L'énigme, p. 197, and A. Védbus, Liturgical Traditions, p. 35, n. 19. It would be another way of proving that the criterion of Audet for distinguishing the layers of redaction (you-plural passages and you-singular passages) is not subtle enough.
15 The person in question could also be a teacher (so A. Benoit, Le baptéme chrétien au second siécle [Paris: Press Universitaires de France, 1953] p. 10); in fact, teachers administered baptism in certain regions until the end of the second century (cf. G. Kretschmar, "Die Geschichte des Taufgottesdienstes in der alten
Kirche" in Leiturgia 5 [1970] pp. 64f).
WILLY RORDORF
2. Pre-baptismal Catechesis I have shown elsewhere!® that I could not follow Audet, who thinks that the words tadra mévta mpoernévte¢ in Didache 7:1 are a later addition of fourth century Egyptian provenance. At the beginning of the second century, a pre-baptismal catechesis of the kind contained in the first six chapters of the Didache would have been nothing surprising. Since we have said that the editor of the Didache has compiled the two sources Didache 1-6 and 7ff, it would then have been him who would have added this remark in Didache 7:1 .17
3. Preparatory Fasting F. J. Délger!® and J. Schiimmer!® have already said what is necessary on the evolution and significance of the preparatory fast for baptism. A remark of J. Schiimmer?° seems particularly pertinent to me: "The custom of fasting with the person to be baptized is possibly even older than the general Easter fast (cf. Didache) and it could in its turn, after the transfer of the time of baptism to the Easter celebration, have contributed to first making the Easter fast into a general practice." The trajectory then passed from the Didache to Justin (JApol 61), to Tertullian (Bapr 19f) and to Hippolytus (ApTrad 21).?!
One could-even ask whether the Didache does not presuppose that baptism is usually administered on Sunday. Didache 14 knows Sunday as the day of the Christian cult. From the second century we have several witnesses for an administration of baptism on Sunday.22
M. Dujarier?? wishes to see in the expression ef tiveg &AAot dtvarvtat a beginning of the practice of sponsorship by god18 "Les deux voies", op.cit. Botte is of the same opinion (BThAM 8, p. 168).
'7 T agree here with the observation of Audet, La Didaché, pp. 60f, on the stylistic awkwardness of this insertion; it seems justified (despite the criticism of P.
Nautin ("La composition de la "Didaché" et son titre", RHR 155 (1959) pp. 191214, esp. 206f).
'8 Der Exorzismus im altchristlichen Taufritual (Paderborn, 1909 [SGKA Il,12]) pp. 80-86.
'8 Die altchristliche Fastenpraxis. Mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung der Schriften
Tertullians (Minster, 1933 [LQF 27], pp. 164-178.
20 Altchristliche Fastenpraxis, p. 169.
2! Let us not forget to mention the text of Pseudo-Clement, Hom 3:73; 13:9; Rec 7:34, 35f; 10:72.
22 Cf. W. Rordorf, Sabbat und Sonntag in der Alten Kirche (Ziirich, 1972 [Traditio Christiana]), p. 139 n. 5. sie parrainage des adultes aux trois premiers siécles de l'Eglise, 1962, pp.
BAPTISM ACCORDING TO THE DIDACHE
parents. This clearly remains hypothetical.
But at any rate I believe that he is right to say that one must consider the participation of several people in the fast as a reality and not as a possibility. I have adopted his translation of the expression in question, "and others who can do it."
4. The Baptismal Formula This is a very delicate problem. In fact we find three different baptismal formulae in the Didache. Didache 7:1 presents the complete trinitarian formula: sig 76 Svoua Tod TaTpd¢ Kal TOD viod kal Tod w@yiov mvevpatoc; Didache 7:3 presents the trinitarian formula without articles: sic Gvoua maTpd¢ Kal viod Kali wyiov mvevpatocg; and Didache 9:5 knows the formula with one member: sic 6voua Kupiov.
When one approaches this problem, it is appropriate to repeat a remark of Cullmann'4; "One must guard against the temptation to read back the later situation into the primitive time and to suppose that the trinitarian construction should be the only one possible from the beginning...One does not then have the right to allow that the writings of the New Testament and the early
Church, where they only speak of Christ, cite only a part of the trinitarian confession."
Without any doubt, Didache 9:5 has preserved the most ancient baptismal formula.?5 At the beginning of Christianity, one baptized "in the name of Jesus."2°
In turn, if the trinitarian formula is the most recent, this does not mean that it only made its appearance in the milieu of the second century as some have tended to think.27 One cannot argue from the textual variants of Matthew 28:19: they only prove that the two traditions existed simultaneously, but does not say anything about the date of their origin. The text of the Didache invites us to caution. In fact, we have seen that Didache 7:1 must be situated in a tradition which probably goes back to the first century. But we must go still further and say that the trinitarian baptismal formula has been imposed after the transition of the passage from the Jewish-Christian mission to the Gentile-Christian mission. In contrast to the Jews who, at their conversion to Jesus
24 La foi et le culte de l'Eglise primitive, 1963, p. 67.
25 Moreover it fits best with the Christology of the Didache: cf. A. Védbus, Liturgical Traditions, pp. 38f.
26 Cf Acts 2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5; 22:16; 1 Cor 1:13; Gal 3:27: Jas 2:7; HermSim 7.6.4; ActsThec 34. It is true that H. von Campenhausen (VigChr 25 [1971] pp.
1-16) is opposed to this consensus, but I do not find his arguments convincing.
27 Cf. G. Kretschmar, Die Geschichte, pp. 18f; 32-36; Idem, Studien zur frihchristlichen Trinitdtstheologie (1956) p. 207; A. Védbus, Liturgical Traditions, pp. 36f.
WILLY RORDORF
received his Spirit with baptism, the Gentiles first had to confess the unique God, Father of Jesus Christ, to be able to be baptized.
This situation is already given in the time of the Pauline mission (cf. 1 Thess 1:9-10), it emerges again in the Didache which is addressed to Gentile converts.?8
5. The Water There is no doubt that the instruction to baptize in "living water" in Didache 7:1 is archaic and goes back to the beginnings of the Christian mission.29 It has a Jewish background*® and was not unknown in the Greco-Roman world.3! Although the expression
"living water" could have taken a symbolic significance,** it does not seem that it had any other sense in the Didache than that of "running water. "33
Didache 7:2-3 adds a series of exceptions to the rule. The first case envisaged is the absence of running water. In other words, there was no possibility of going for baptism to a place where there was running water.>4Then one takes "other water".
One should note: water which is not running, water which is no longer related to its natural source.
If it is not possible to baptize in cold water, one should do it in warm water.36 It seems clear to me that one is speaking here of 28 Cf. also Irenaeus, Haer IV.24:1-2, and U. Luck, in Ev7h 27 (1967) 494508.--A. Benoit, Le baptéme, p. 7; J.-P. Audet, Didaché, pp. 360ff; R. A. Kraft,
Barnabas and the Didache, p. 164. H. von Campenhausen (VigChr 25, pp. 10) is right then not to oppose Did 9:5 to Did 7:1, 3. 1 would say that Did 9:5 nevertheless reflects the situation of the Jewish Christian communities which is now adapted in Did 7:1 and 3 to the new situation of the Gentile Christian mission. One notes the same change of viewpoint in Justin: in Dial 39:2 when he addresses himself to Jews, he speaks of baptism in the name of Jesus alone; in JApol 61:3, 10, 13, when he addresses himself to Gentiles, he uses the Trinitarian formula.
29 Cf Acts 8:36; 16:13 and again Justin, JApol 61. A. Védbus (Liturgical Traditions, pp. 22ff) cites still further texts.
30 Cf. baptism in the Jordan required by John the Baptist! A. Benoit (Le baptéme, p. 16) makes reference, besides, to the baptism of proselytes, and S. Giet
(L'énigme, pp. 193ff) to the Old Testament and to the "baptist movement".
31 Cf. T. Klauser, "Taufet in lebendigem Wasser! Zum religionsund kulturgeschichtlichen Verstaéndnis von Didache 7,1-3", in Pisciculi (1939) pp. 147-164.
32 Cf. J. Daniélou, in RSR 39 (1958) pp. 337ff.
33 Contra E. Peterson, Friihkirche, Judentum und Gnosis (Rome: Herder, 1959) pp. 310-333.
34 The expression &xev t6wp fav is not very well chosen. Apparently it implies "to have in the proximity." One cannot deduce, as E. Peterson (op. cit., p. 159 n.
48) does, that the primitive text spoke of a washing for purification (cf. the justified criticism of A. V6dbus, Liturgical Traditions, pp. 29ff).
35 Note that running water was always preferred: even in the interior of houses and, much later, of baptisteries, one kept to running water.
36 The argument of S. Giet (L'énigme, p. 196), which sees in this phrase an interpolation by a second hand, seems too subtle to me.
BAPTISM ACCORDING TO THE DIDACHE
water warmed for a particular reason.37 It is a measure which would be necessary if baptism was to take place in extreme weather conditions.** It is not necessary to think here of sick people*? and, of course, still less of infant baptism.4°
The third case envisaged is that of baptism per infusionem:4! it anticipates that one should pour water three times over the head of the baptized person. This rule is applied when one has "neither the one nor the other (kind of water)." The two kinds of water are clearly running water, on the one hand, and still water on the on the other. To grasp the sense of the passage, one must take into consideration the Georgian version of the text, which says this:42
"If, however, you do not have enough of either, then pour out some water three times over the head." We learn then that baptism was normally a baptism by immersion;'3 but if there was not a sufficient quantity of water to practice immersion, baptism per infusionem was also permitted.44 In Didache 7:3, the trinitarian
37 A. Véébus (Liturgical Traditions, p. 24) thinks that "the term "cold water" obviously refers to baptism with the use of water from a river or spring, that is, with water at its natural temperature. By contrast, the term "warm water" is not that enigmatic--it seems to be a general characterization for water of a different kind, the kind to be found in cisterns, pools and reservoirs. This is still water which has lost its natural temperature." The difference between cold water and "warm" would then be minimized!
38 So A. Benoit, L'baptéme, p. 8. One thinks about all of the northern Alps (p.ex. from Zurzach in Switzerland), of the baptisteries where one had to warm the water. But the Mandeans also criticized Christian baptism in warmed water (and perhaps in Elchasai: Hippolytus, Ref ix.16:1): "They bury a jug in the earth, steal water out of the Jordan, boil it with fire, pour it in the jug and let men and women go down into it stark naked. They baptized them in water and give them the same water to drink. They speak the name of the dead over them, the name of the Son and the Holy Spirit. They baptize them and speak there the name of Christ over them" (Ginza. Der Schatz oder das grosse Buch der Mandder, ed. M. Lidzbarski
[Géttingen, 1925 (Quellen der Religionsgeschichte 13)] p. 227). In many respects, this baptism resembles that described in the Didache! E. Peterson (op. cit., p. 161) is wrong in thinking that it is a matter uniquely of baptism of a Christian sect in Mesopotamia.
39 Cf. F. J. Délger, in JAC 5 (1936), pp. 175-182, and the critique of E. Peterson, Frithkirche, p. 160f.
40 Cf. the critique of A. Véébus, Liturgical Traditions, p. 23.
41 So S. Giet, L'énigme, p. 196. One must in fact avoid the term "by affusion" which leads to confusion.
42 Ed. G. Péradzé, "Die "Lehre der zwélf Apostel" in der georgischen Uberlieferung" in ZNW 31 (1932) pp. 111-116, esp. 115. Otherwise, one loses one's way in fantastic speculations, as in E. Peterson, Friihkirche, pp. 158ff.
43 Cf. J. Jeremias, Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries (London: SCM, 1960) p. *37.
44 T do not believe that we have here the first example of baptism that was given much later to the sick (clinici) and that, in such a case, was baptism by aspersion. | would rather suggest here the origin of the rite practiced later by the universal
Church: the baptized stands upright in the baptismal font and the baptizer pours water over his head (cf. Christian archaeology and iconography).
WILLY RORDORF
baptismal formula appears for the second time; the instruction to pour water "three times" over the head of the baptized seems to refer to it.
The exceptional situation envisaged by Didache 7:2-3 must have presented themselves very quickly in missionary practice.
Nothing prevents one from saying that the measures prescribed by the Didache were already established in the first century.*
6. Baptismal Unction?
Let us again briefly speak of this question. In fact, R. Reitzenstein*® already believed that the prayer preserved at the end of chapter 10, in the Coptic version of the Didache (cf. the Apostolic
Constitutions VII.27), was a prayer over baptismal oil and that, consequently, the baptismal rite of the Didache knew the practice of anointing with oil.4?7 R. Reitzenstein based his theory on the Mandaean rite which was, in his opinion, the "model" for the Christian rite. Today, we know that the influence was the other way round.48
But recently E.
Peterson*® has accepted the testimony of the Apostolic Constitutions and proceeded to think that chapter 22 of book VII, which is parallel to Didache 7 and which knows the preand post-baptismal unction, is more original than the Codex Hierosolymitanus of the Didache; the latter is supposed to have modified the text to suppress the reference to baptismal oils, which revealed a Novatian tendency*® Both J.-P.
Audet®! and A. Védbus>? have energetically refuted this very audacious thesis of E. Peterson: the prayer in question has not been suppressed in the Codex Hierosolymitanus of the Didache
45 We have already said that the Trinitarian baptismal formula agrees with this viewpoint. It is striking that the three divine names should have been used without definite articles. Is it accidental?
46 Die Vorgeschichte der christlichen Taufe (*Leipzig, 1929) pp. 177ff.
47 Here is the translation of the Coptic text proposed by L.-Th. Lefort, in CSCO
135 (1952) p. 26: "In the matter of perfumes say thanks like this and say: "Father, we give you thanks for the perfume that you have made known to us through the agency of your son Jesus: to you be glory for ever! Amen™."
48 E. Segelberg, Masbuta.
Studies in the Ritual of the Mandaean Baptism (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1958) pp. 148f; K. Rudolph, Die Mander I: Der
Kult (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961) p. 174.
49 Frithkirche, pp. 156ff.
5°He sees in the phrase é&v 58 &udérepa pi Exnc, Exxeor cic Thy xedaddry ap in Did 7:3, the rudiment of the text of Const VII.22: ei 88 pHre PAcuov F pyre
Lvpov, &pxet Td Vdwp!
5\Didache, pp. 67ff. Botte, BThAM 8, p. 168, is in agreement with him.
2Liturgical Traditions, pp. 41-60, in a meticulous study of the whole problem.
Cf. also S. Giet, L'énigme, p. 213, n. 76.
BAPTISM ACCORDING TO THE DIDACHE
but, on the contrary, has been interpolated in the Coptic version of the Didache and in the Apostolic Constitution!
It remains to determine whether the prayer is truly a prayer over baptismal oil. It could also be a matter of oil for the use of the sick.53 A. Adam*4 has even believed it possible to claim that the Coptic prayer goes back to a Syriac original and that it is really a prayer for the agape. One has also tried to reconcile several of these interpretations.°> It seems to me that one must put aside the interpretation according to which the baptismal rite of the Didache knew an anointing with oil: Didache 7 does not say a word, and the prayer at the end of chapter 10 in the Coptic version and in the parallel text of the Apostolic Constitutions is situated in a different context.56
7. The Particular Characteristics of Baptism according to the "Didache"
The text is striking less for what it says than for what it does not say. One can clearly observe that this short text does not transmit the entire formula of the baptismal rite. But only those aspects of baptism which one could not assuredly pass over in silence, if one had known them. Let us try to summarize them.'7 a) The renunciation of Satan is not mentioned. Moreover, one has the impression that this rite would have been included in the kind of work which sanctions the teaching of the "two ways" in Didache 1-6.58 b) The consecration of the water seems to be unknown in the Didache.*° 53 Cf. K. Bihlmeyer, Die Apostolischen Vater (Tiibingen: Mohr, 19563); A.
Benoit, Le baptéme, p. 6.
54 "Frwiagungen zur Herkunft der Didache", in ZKG 68 (1957) p. 8 (=Sprache und Dogma: Untersuchungen zu Grundproblemen der Kirchengeschichte, ed. G.
Ruhbach [Giitersloh: G. Mohn, 1969] pp. 31ff). A. Védbus, Liturgical Traditions, pp. 44f, has critiqued him.
55 R. A. Kraft, Barnabas and the Didache, pp. 167f; G. Kretschmar, Die Geschichte, p. 30 n. 41.
56 One can ask whether one should not study the "sacred meal" of the Jewish Egyptian romance of Joseph and Aseneth more closely, which could provide the background of the prayer in question in the Coptic version of the Didache. Cf. on this subject, M. Philonenko, Joseph et Aséneth (Leiden: Brill, 1968) pp. 89-98.
57 Cf. also A. Benoit, Le baptéme, pp. 30f. He believes that the idea of "remission of sins" is absent from the Didache. But given that Christian baptism probably goes back to the baptism of John the Baptist, and that one prepares oneself for baptism, according to the testimony of Didache 7:4, by a fast, I ask myself whether one can really maintain this view.
58 Cf. on this subject F. J. Délger, Die Sonne der Gerechtigkeit und der Schwarze, 19712; H. Kirsten, Die Taufabsage, 1960.
, 59 It first appears in texts from the end of the second century: Tertullian, Bapt 4;
Hippolytus, ApTrad 21.
WILLY RORDORF
c) There is no trace of the Pauline theology of baptism.® d) What is most striking is the absence of the laying on of hands and of any mention of the gift of the Holy Spirit at the moment of baptism. G.W.H. Lampe®! has shown that this tradition was more widespread, at the beginning of Christianity, than one would think at first sight. The Didache must be linked to that stream of the tradition, which is a sign of its archaic character.
60 This is not surprising. All baptismal theology of the second century seems to more or less ignore the apostle Paul. This is one of the findings of the study of A.
Benoit (Le baptéme).
61 The Seal of the Spirit (London: SPCK, 19672) esp. pp. 64ff; cf. also G.
Kretschmar, Die Geschichte, pp. 23f.
CHRISTIAN SELF-DEFINITION AGAINST THE
"HYPOCRITES" IN DIDACHE VIII
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
Pietermaritzburg
I. INTRODUCTION
While many aspects of the Didache have excited interest and debate among New Testament scholars, chapter 8 has occasioned little comment. It has been only as ammunition for the question of dependence or independence of Matthew's Gospel that it has been explored. The function of the passage within the text of the Didache as a whole is largely neglected. C. N. Jefford, for instance, although his analysis contains some interesting insights, sees the insertion of this material as somewhat arbitrary: "For the redactor, it is the incorporation of authoritative pericopae that is important in these chapters, not a concern for the actual flow of the text".! This assumption seems to me to be mistaken and a close analysis of the function of this chapter in the overall framework of the Didache sheds important light on the question of Christian self-definition against other Jewish groups in the first century of the Christian Era.
While the question of dependence on Matthew is obviously important, it will not be the concern of this paper. I have argued elsewhere," that there is no evidence that the Didache used the text of Matthew as we have it today. On the contrary, there are indications that the gospel may be itself dependent on an earlier form of the Didache?. It is enough for the purposes of this paper, that the Didache is utilizing authoritative Jesus tradition for a particular purpose.
1 C. N. Jefford, The Saying of Jesus in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Leiden: Brill, 1989) p. 105. The use of terminology from literary composition is also anachronistic.
2 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; cf. R. Glover, "The Didache's Quotations and the Synoptic Gospels", NTS 5 (1958-1959) pp. 12-29; contra E. Massaux, The Influence of the Gospel of Saint Matthew on Christian Literature before Saint Inenaeus III, trns. N.
J. Belval & S. Hecht (Macon, Ga: Mercer University Press, 1990-1993) pp. 144176 "a sort of catechetical summary of the first gospel" (p. 180); B. Layton, "The Sources, Date and Transmission of Didache 1.3b-2.1", HTR 61 (1968) pp. 343383; H. Késter, Synoptische Uberlieferung bei den Apostolischen Vétern (Berlin:
Akademie-Verlag, 1957) pp. 159-241, stands somewhere inbetween: Didache knew Matthew but did not use it.
3 J, A. Draper, "Torah and Troublesome Apostles in the Didache Community", NovT 33/4 (1991) pp. 347-372.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
The question of date and origin will also not be directly addressed. The consensus emerging in recent scholarship is that the text was in its present form by the turn of the first century
C.E. and was produced either in Syria or Egypt. My own position is that the text comes from the same community as Matthew, probably the community at Antioch which expelled Paul over the question of the Law, and that it developed in close interaction with the Gospel tradition which eventually replaced it.°
II. THE LITERARY SETTING OF CHAPTER 8
Didache 1-6 represents a block of catechetical instruction designed to be taught to converts to the Christian community before their baptism. As has been often noted, this is the implication of 7:1,
"And concerning baptism, baptize in this way: having beforehand taught all these things, baptize...." (Tatra ma&vTa mTpoermorTeEc,
Bantioate).® These instructions are also characterized by the sub-title of the writing as instruction given by the (twelve) apostles to the Gentiles (Avédax7 Kupiov dua T&v Sadexa GmooTbAwY TotC £Oveo.v). Early commentators often contended that this longer title was the original one and betrayed the milieu of pagans recently converted.?7 More recent commentators, however, argue for the shorter title, without the reference to the "twelve", as the original.
Rordorf® sees the longer title as an amplification of the first after 4 W. Rordorf & A. Tuilier, La Doctrine des Douze Apétres (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1978) pp. 91-99; K. Niederwimmer, Die Didache (GOttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989 [KzdAV 1]) pp. 78-80.
5 J. A. Draper, "Torah and Troublesome Apostles", pp. 269-289; cf. D. Flusser, "Paul's Jewish-Christian Oponents in the Didache", in S. Shaked, D. Shulman, and G. G. Stroumsa, Gilgul: Essays on Transformation,Revolution and Permanence in the History of Religions (Leiden: Brill, 1987) pp. 71-90.
6 Cf. E. F. Harrison "Some Patterns of New Testament Didache". Biblia Sacra 119 (1962) pp.
118-128; Jefford, Sayings of Jesus, p. 104; Niederwimmer, Didache, pp. 158-160; A. Milavec, "The Pastoral Genius of the Didache: An Analytical Translation and Commentary", in J. Neusner, E. S. Frerichs, & A. J.
Levine (eds.), Religious Writings and Religious Systems II (Atlanta: Scholars, 1989
[BStR]) pp. 105-110.
7 P. Bryennios, Arvdax? Tay d@bexa &0076kwv (Constantinople: S. I. Boutura, 1883) p. 3; A. Harnack Die Lehre der zwilf Apostel (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrich's,
1884) pp. 24-37; C. Taylor, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles: With Illustrations from the Talmud (Cambridge: Deighton Bell, 1886) p. 7). Some, however, have argued for dependence on Matthew 28:19f (e.g. J. A. Robinson, Barnabas,
Hermas, and the Didache |London: SPCK, 1920] pp. 82, 87; Massaux, Influence, pp. 144f).
8 "Le baptéme selon la Didaché", in Mélanges liturgiques offerts au R. P. Dom B. Botte O.S.B. de l'Abbaye du Mont César l'occasion du cinquantiéme anniversaire de son ordination sacerdotale (4 Juin 1972) (Louvain: Abbaye du Mont
César, 1972) pp. 499-509; also Doctrine, 15f.
CHRISTIAN SELF-DEFINITION
the insertion of the Gospel section. Audet®, however, rightly points out that xdp.o¢ in these titles refers to Yahweh not Jesus.
Rordorf's claim!°, dependent on Nautin'!, that xip.oc without the definite article always refers to Christ in the Didache, is without foundation, since all his references are outside of the Two Ways
'section (1-6) to which this longer title belongs (i.e. 9:5; 11:2, 4; 14:1). Moreover, Audet's claim is supported by the title used in the Chinese, "Teaching of the Lord of Heaven", which seems to be derived from the Didache,'? since Lord here is unequivocally
Yahweh: "At that time, preaching the laws of Hiu-po (ie Jehovah) who is the Lord of Heaven, the Messiah spoke thus" (The Lord of the Universe's Discourse on Almsgiving 1).
In an important article on the Didache, David Flusser!3 has argued that chs.
1-6:1 are entirely "inner-Jewish" in their provenance. A recent paper by Peter Borgen!4 has also argued that virtue and vice lists were standard Jewish proselyte material leading to circumcision. This makes it likely that the longer title does relate specifically to the Two Ways. Indeed, the sub-title is an important indication that the Two Ways instruction is directed by a Jewish Christian community towards Gentile converts.!5
Its Jewish-Christian nature is underlined by the orientation of the subsequent instructions to the Torah!*.
9 Didaché, pp. 252ff.
10 Doctrine, p. 14 n. 5.
11 P. Nautin, "La composition de la "Didaché" et son titre." RHR 78 (1959) pp.
191-214, esp. 211.
12 J. H. Walker, "An Argument from the Chinese for the Antiochene Origin of the Didache", in Studia Patristica 8, ed. F. L. Cross (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag,
1966 [TU 93]) pp. 44-50.
13D. Flusser, "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.
14 P. Borgen, "Catalogues of Vices, the Apostolic Decree and the Jerusalem Meeting", in J. Neusner, P. Borgen, E. S. Frerichs, R. Horsley (eds.), The Social
World of Formative Christianity and Judaism: Festschr. H. C. Kee (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1988) pp. 126-141.
15 Cf. C. Taylor, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Cambridge: Deighton Bell, 1886), pp. 18-23; G. Salmon, A Historical Introduction to the Books of the New Testament (London, 1894) pp. 551-566; A. Seeberg, Der Katechismus der
Urchristenheit (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1903); G. Klein, Der dilteste christliche Katechismus und die jtidischen Propaganda-Literatur (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1909) p.
184. On the other hand, it is not clear that 6édexa stood in the original text. The textual evidence indicates that the short title originally read AIAAXH (or AIAAXAT)
ATIOZTOAOQN (Audet, Didaché, pp. 19-25; cf. Niederwimmer, Didache, pp. 8182), and the number twelve may have been introduced in both places.
16 J. A. Draper, A Commentary on the Didache in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Documents (Cambridge Dissertation, 1983), pp. 11-142; also
"Torah and Troublesome Apostles", pp. 347-372.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
Chapter 7 gives instructions on the method of baptism, which is strongly concerned with the ritual purity of water understood in a Jewish fashion. It must be running water and cold to be ritually pure!" except in special circumstances, but otherwise it should be poured over the head three times. The regulations have their parallels in Jewish halakic debates about ritual washing.'* There is no theological explanation beyond the Trinitarian baptismal formula, repeated twice in slightly different form: eic 70 6vopa Tod
MATES Kai TOD viod Kal TOD G&ytov mvEebpaTos (7:1) and ei¢ 6vopa maTpoc Kai viod Kai dryiov mvebmatos (7:3). The modified repetition and the use of a different formula altogether in 9:5, ei¢ 6vowa xupiov, indicates that the words have been changed repeatedly to bring them into line with changing community praxis.'° Finally, the baptismal instructions provide for a compulsory pre-baptismal fast by the baptizer and baptized for one or two days, and a voluntary fast on the part of any others who can (7:4). Again, these instructions have been extensively edited.2°
The mention of the baptismal fast then introduces the subject of the so-called stationary fast in 8:1. This is followed by instruction on prayer in 8:2-3. 9:1 signifies a complete change of subject with the formula wepi 5é....0o07Tw Toujoate as in 6:3, 7:1, 9:1,
17 T, Klauser, "Taufet in Lebendigem Wasser! Zum religionsund kulturgeschichtlichen Verstandnis von Didache 7,1-3", in T. Klauser & Riikker (eds.), Pisciculi. Studien zur Religion und Kultur des Altertums (Fst. F. J. Délger) (Minster:
Aschendorff, 1939) pp. 157-164; A. Véébus, Liturgical Traditions in the Didache (Stockholm: ETSE, 1968 [PETSE 16]) pp. 22f; Niederwimmer, Didache, p. 161)
18 Draper, Commentary, pp. 156-158. Niederwimmer (Didache, pp. 161-162) argues that the "redactor" of the Didache tradition has left this Jewish understanding behind in 7:2f, but this may be disputed, since what follows refers to the definition of "other water", the different kinds of water which, although not running, may yet be held to be used for ritual washing (m.Migw 1:1-8; CD 10:10-13; cf.
Draper, Commentary, pp. 158-159).
19 The same thing probably occurred in the transmission of Matthew 28:19, where Eusebius preserves what may be an earlier form of the text F. C. Coneybeare, "The Eusebian Form of the Text of Matthew 28,29". ZNW 2 (1901) pp.
275-288; E. Lohmeyer, "Mir ist gegeben alle Gewalt!", in W. Schmauch (ed), Jn Memoriam Ernst Lohmeyer (Stuttgart:
, 1951) pp. 22-49; H. B. Green, "The Command to Baptize and Other Matthaean Interpolations" SE 4 (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1968 [TU 102]) pp. 60-63; H. Kosmala, "The Conclusion of Matthew",
ASTI 4 (1965) pp. 132-147; Védbus, Liturgical Traditions, pp. 36f; contra E. Riggenbach, Der trinitarische Taufbefehl Matth.
28,19 nach seine urspriinglichen Textgestalt und Authentie untersucht (Giitersloh, 1903 [BFCTh 7]); K. Kertelge,
"Der sogenannte Taufbefehl Jesu (Mt 28,19)", in Zeichen des Glaubens. Studien zu
Taufe und Firmung (Fst B. Fischer) (Freiburg im Breisgau: Einsiedeln, 1972) pp.
29-40; G.
Barth, Die Taufe in Frihchristliche Zeit (Neukirchen-Vluyn:
Neukirchener-Verlag, 1981) pp. 13-17.
20 They are given first in the imperative third person singular (xpovnotevodTw), and then in the second person singular (xeNeverc), even though the introductory formula in 7:1 is in the second person plural (Gamricate).
CHRISTIAN SELF-DEFINITION
[10:8].2! This is important, since it shows that the context of Didache 8 remains that of initiation into the community. Jefford argues that chapter 8 is part of a discussion on a "second institution", namely the community meal, and that the material on prayer thus "does violence to the flow of the text".22 There is no doubt that ch. 8 presents a hiatus in structure, but not because it belongs to the material on the eucharist. Rather, the instructions
On initiation in chapter 7 have called up the question of boundary definition of the community, in a time of change. The instructions in chapter 8 address the problem by reworking authoritative tradition. A. Milavec?3 includes Didache 9-10 with 8:2, under the rubric: "How to pray unlike the hypocrites", but his structure is open to the same objections. In particular, the absence of any reference to the "hypocrites" in the context of the instructions concerning eucharist is an important indication that they derive from a different context.
The Position of Chapter 8 in the Tradition As has already been observed, this chapter appears to be an interruption to the logical progression of the liturgical section of Didache, in which baptism is followed by the Eucharist.24 It surely represents a later stage in the evolution of the work. The Ethiopic version of the Didache puts 8:1-2 after 11:3-13, and this also indicates its uncertain status in the tradition, although the dislocation may reflect the work of an eclectic compilator. In any case, the chapter presents close parallels to the synoptic tradition and an appeal to the authority of the "gospel". Didache 8 thus belongs with the other sections of the work which refer to the gospel tradition, 1:3-2:1 and 15:3-4, probably representing the latest stage in the redaction of the work.
This section is clumsily joined to what precedes by the conjunction 6é¢, while the context is quite different. 7:4 describes the baptismal fast of the candidate, officiant and any others who are able, for one or two days before the event. 8:1 talks of the socalled "stationary fast" kept by pious Jews and now enjoined on Christians, albeit on different days of the week?>.
21 Draper, "Torah and Troublesome Apostles", p. 351; cf. M. M. Mitchell, "Concerning ITEPI AE in 1 Corinthians". NovT 31/3 (1989) pp. 229-256.
22 Jefford, Sayings of Jesus, pp. 104-105.
23 Milavec, "Pastoral Genius", p. 104.
Knopf, Die Lehre der zwolf Apostel.
Die zwei Clemensbriefe (Tiibingen:Mohr, 1920) p. 23; Rordorf & Tuilier, Doctrine, pp. 36f; Niederwimmer, Didache, p. 165.
25 Note that the reference to fasting is in the plural du 6&8 vyoreicu bya, although the Ethiopic version gives the singular. The tendency to cite the topic in the singular appears to be later (cf. the variants at 6:3; 7:1).
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
The Reason for the Insertion of New Material According to Victor Turner,"6 initiation into a new community is achieved by so-called "rites of passage" in three temporal and spatial phases: separation, margin and aggregation.
In the marginal or liminal situation, ritual actions and symbols are oriented first towards the "death of their previous social identity and its governing norms". "Paraenesis given in this first phase is subversive, designed to undercut the validity of the prior social world and to produce anomy, at least temporarily"
.?" In a second phase actions and symbols are oriented towards experiences of new birth.
The paraenesis in Didache 1-6 functions primarily to cut the convert off from her/his previous social identity, namely that of pagan Graeco-Roman society, by means of the Two Ways instruction. The vices of this society are set out both in the Way of Life, where they are incorporated into a vice list (2:2-7) and into the "Fence about the Law" (3:1-6) and in the Way of Death in a further vice list (5:1-2). Accusations of sexual license?8, homosexuality and pederasty2®, magical practices?° astrology and omens?!, abortion and exposure of infants3?, constitute a Jewish perspective on that pagan society.33 This is the life-style from which converts are to cut themselves off: "My child, flee from every evil person / deed and from all like her / him / it" (3:1f); "You shall not associ26 V. Turner, The Ritual Process (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1967); cf. L. Perdue, "The Social Character of Paraenesis and Paraenetic literature", in L. G. Perdue & J. G. Gammie, Paraenesis: Act and Form, Semeia 50 (1990) pp. 5-39, esp.
9-11.
27 Perdue, "Paraenesis", p. 10.
28 Cf. b.San 57b-58a on prohibited sexual behaviour associated with the socalled "Noachic Precepts".
29 Eg. Philo, VitCon 50-52; Jos. ConApion 11.199; 11.273; 11.275; AJ II.275. In Rabbinic writing, b.Nidd 13b links proselytes and pederasts: "Proselytes and those that play with children delay the advent of the Messiah" (Cf. b. Yeb 47b).
30 Eg. PsPhilo, LAB XXXIV.1-4. Such magical practice was widespread in Hellenistic society (N. G. L. Hammond & H. H. Scullard, The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 19702] pp. 637f), and also common in certain Jewish circles (L. Blau, Das altjiidische Zauberwesen [Budapest, 1898}).
31 Rabbinic tradition concerning the Noachic Precepts tended to elaborate on such pagan practices in the same way as Didache 3:4, showing that prohibition of sorcery in all its forms was considered to be a priority (b. San 56a; m. Sot 9:13).
32 Which is usually equated with murder. See Josephus, ConApion 11.202; Philo, Hypothetica 7.7; Ps.-Phocylides, 183f; Tacitus, An V.5 (who sees a refusal to comit infanticide as wickedness on the part of Jews). Cf. b.San 57b, "On the authority of R. Ishmael it was said: He is executed even for the murder of an embryo".
33 Cf. Rordorf, "Le baptéme", p. 117.
CHRISTIAN SELF-DEFINITION
ate yourself with the proud, but conduct yourself with the righteous and humble" (3:9); "May you be delivered, children, from all these (people)" (5:2).
In the second phase of this initiatory process, the paraenesis is orientated towards reaggregation, and emphasizes inner community relationships: "some you shall love more than your life"
(2:7); "seek daily the presence of the saints, so that you can rest in their words; do no seek schism but reconcile those who are in conflict" (4:2-3); share material goods with other community members, withholding nothing (4:5-8).
What is significant in both of these phases, is that no specifically Christian motivation is given, which would not equally serve a convert to Judaism. There is evidence that the outward movement of Judaism in the conversion of proselytes continued well beyond the first and second centuries C.E.,34 so that it would have continued to be in competition with the growing Christian movement.
In fact, it is not unlikely that the Two Ways material originates in Jewish proselyte instruction, though this cannot be proved.%> It is only with the insertion of the Jesus material in 1:3-6 that any Christian emphasis emerges, and this is clearly a late stage in the development of the text, probably the same stage as that represented by chapter 8. The material is absent from the various recensions of the Two Way tradition outside of the Didache
(e.g. De doctrina apostolorum, The Epistle of Barnabas, The Epitome and the various Church Orders).3¢
The instructions of 1-5 are largely haggadic expansion of Old Testament material, especially the Ten Commandments and the Holiness Code of Leviticus 1719.37 This is re-enforced in 6:2 with a reference to attempting to take on the whole yoke of the Lord, in my opinion a reference to the Torah.38 If the whole
34M. Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (135-425) (Oxford: Littman Library, 1986) p. 271-305.
35 J.-P. Audet, "Affinités littéraires et doctrinales du "Manuel de Discipline"",
RB 59 (1952) pp. 219-238; D. Flusser, "The Two Ways", in Jewish Sources in Early Christianity (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalaim, 1979) pp. 232-252.
36 Indeed Wengst removes this passage from the text and relegates it to the critical aparatus in his recent edition (K. Wengst, Didache (Apostellehre), Barnabasbrief, Zweiter Klemensbrief,
Schrift an Diognet {Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984 (FC 1)] p. 66). This, however, misses the point, in that it is part of the final form of the Didache, which has taken up the Two Ways and modified it. It is found in also in Const and POx1782.
37 Draper, Commentary, pp. 50-62; cf. P. Carrington, The Primitive Christian Catechism: A Study in the Epistles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940) ch. 6; E. G. Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter (London: Macmillan, 19582) pp.
369-375; D. Flusser, "The Ten Commandments and the New Testament", in B.
Segal (ed), The Ten Commandments in History and Tradition (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990) pp. 219-246).
38 Draper, "Torah and Troublesome Apostles", pp. 347-372; cf. Flusser, "Paul's Jewish Christian Opponents", pp. 71-90.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
Torah proves too much, at least the food laws and prohibitions on idolatry are mandatory (6:3), the common ingredients of the socalled Noachic code.
All of this material provides strong motivation for separation from the surrounding Graeco-Roman society, but provides a model of aggregation with strong links to Jewish law and tradition. Clearly, the original community of the Didache saw no need to differentiate itself from the Jewish community. They differentiated themselves not from Jews but from pagans.*° The thanksgiving prayer of the community sees the soteriological work of Jesus in terms of "making known the vine of David your son"
(9:2), bringing pagans into the eschatological community of Israel.
The paraenesis of 1-5 provides no hint of animosity towards Jews or the Torah, nor any sign of Christian self-definition over against them. A catachumen instructed in this way would see her/ himself joining a particular Jewish community with a strong apocalyptic hope. It would be one among several Jewish groups, and such Jewish proselytism was probably common in the first century C.E., at least in Pharisaic Judaism, as the jaundiced comment in Matthew 23:15 suggests.4° Even baptism was probably a part of proselyte initiation to Judaism;+! The Jewish Christian community was accommodating on the question of circumcision and Torah for Gentiles, but remained-a faithful, Torah-observant
Jewish community. The question of its relationship to the wider Jewish society is not raised in the chapters 1-7.
All of this makes the sudden intrusion of material against the "hypocrites" in ch. 8 all the more surprising and instructive. It clearly reflects the emergence of new social tensions and exigencies. The fact that it emerges in the context of baptism is also instructive. Members of the Didache community are now being required to separate themselves not only from the pagan
Graeco-Roman world, but also from another Jewish community.
One should hesitate to say "separate themselves from Jewish society as a whole", since Jewish society was at this stage a very amorphous and multi-faceted affair. Ethnic Jews in the Diaspora could be observant or non-observant; they were also probably
3° Cf. Borgen ("Catalogues of Vices", pp. 126-141) who sees this as the root of the conflict in Galatians.
40 Schiirer, E., Vermes, G. & Millar, F. 1973 (rev.ed.). The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.-A.D. 135) Ml (Edinburgh: T &
T Clark, 1986) pp. 158-176; G. G. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era | (New York: Schocken) pp. 323-353.
Benoit, Le Baptéme Chrétien au Second Siecle (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1953) pp. 5-19; Moor, Judaism, pp. 331-341; Simon,
Verus Israel, pp.286-287; Schiirer-Vermes, History, pp. 173-174.
CHRISTIAN SELF-DEFINITION
eal responsible for the development of strands of Gnosticism which rejected both the Torah and the God of Torah.42 There was, at this
Stage, no single overall authority able or competent to determine who was or was not a Jew! Not, at least, until the Council at Yavneh towards the end of the first century C.E. Even then, one must
'question the assumption that the authority of the Rabbis was accepted immediately or without question.
At any rate, it appears that the community of the broxpirou was close and attractive enough to members of the Didache community to warrant this kind of attack. Isaac of Antioch is moved to preach vigorously against Christians who have received Christian baptism and go on to receive proselyte baptism of the Jews in addition (Hom. de mag.; in Simon 1986:356-238). Chrysostom preaches against similar practices in Antioch in the fourth century
(Jud 5 & 6).43 Flusser44 argues that Didache 6:2-3 sets out the position of the (Petrine) Jewish Mother Church on the observance of the Torah by gentile converts, a position which was ultimately undermined by the attraction of full conversion to (non-Christian)
Judaism. It seems that he is not so wide of the mark.
II]. THE IDENTITY OF THE "HYPOCRITES"
Streeter*> sees Didache's reference to the troxpiTGpy in 8:1 as in agreement with the written letter of Matthew 6:16, but "in flagrant discord with the spirit".
R. Glover* is surely right, however, in rejoining that it is not according to the letter but breaches "letter as flagrantly as spirit". The only thing the passage has in common with Matthew is the word toxpitv and even there, weT& Tv vToKpiTGy gives a different focus from the éi¢ of the Gospel, (inserted by the Ethiopian version at this point also in the Didache). The focus is not on the manner of the fast, but only on the timing of it, which is intended to delineate Christians from Jews.
Even the sense of taoxpitdy is different. Matthew 6:16 attacks some Pharisees for doing things for the sake of appearances only. Such a meaning would be absurd in the context
42 B. Pearson, "Friedlander Revisited:
Alexandrian Judaism and Gnostic Origins", in Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1990 [Studies in Antiquity and Christianity) pp. 10-28.
43 Cf. W. A. Meeks and R. L. Wilken, Jews and Christians in the First Four Centuries of the Christian Era (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars, 1978).
44 Flusser, "Paul's Jewish-Christian Opponents", pp. 71-90.
45 B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (London: Macmillan, 1936) p. 508; cf. K. Lake, The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1905) p. 28.
46 "Didache's Quotations", p. 18.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
of the Didache. Massaux*? sees the sequence of the whole block of Jesus material in 8:1-2 as proof of such a dependence.
Koster sees it as a free use of the tradition represented also by Matthew and "eine nicht mehr verstandene Reminiszenz".** This assumes that Matthew's usage is the earlier one. Certainly it seems more likely that the Didache uses boxpirng in a different sense to Matthew.
In the LXX, the word group can render the root *3n*° or 739, both in very general senses of impiety or ungodliness.°° It is certainly wrong to translate these passages automatically with the sense of the English "hypocrisy", as is done in various modern translations.
1QS 4:10 shows that 317 29 can be used as a very general accusation in a vice-list against opponents. The sense of 15137 is very. general also in 4QTestim (/75) 28. 15139 can mean either
"hypocrisy, dishonesty, flattery" or "faithlessness to religion, apostacy" (Jastrow 1950:482). It is thus likely that its Greek equivalent iaoxpitn¢ could also be used in this general sense of ungodliness, as an accusation one might level against religious opponents (cf. PssSol 4:7). On the other hand, no doubt, the object of characterizing religious opponents in this way is to question their bona fides. They may appear to be behaving piously, but their motives are all wrong. This would be the way in which the transition was made to the use of the word to characterize them as doing things for outward show. Moshe Weinfelds! has shown that "preaching well but not practising well" was a common charge in Rabbinic admonitions against unworthy Pharisaic teachers, and may be described as 7710 530.52
In Greek, taoxpitn¢ can mean "interpreter" or "expounder", although it is usually used to mean "actor" or "hypocrite", especially in the Apostolic Fathers.53 The Didache, however, does not seem to be using the word with reference to "play-acting", but rather in a general sense to characterize its opponents as ungodly and to question their good faith.
47 Influence, pp. 154-155.
48 Koster, Uberlieferung, p. 203.
4° P. Jouon, "YPOKRITES dans |'Evangile et hebreux HANEF", RSR 20 (1930) pp. 312-316; Audet, Didache, pp. 344, 368f; cf. Did 4:12; 5:1.
5° E. Hatch and H. A. Redpath, A Concordance to the Septuagint and the Other Greek Versions of the Old Testament II (Oxford: Clarendon, 1897) p. 1414.
51M. Weinfeld, "The Charge of Hypocrisy in Matthew 23 and in Jewish Sources", Immanuel 24-25 (1990) pp. 52-58.
5? E.g. Ecclesiastes Rabbah 4:1; Weinfeld, "Charge of Hypocrisy", pp. 57-58.
33H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, (rev. H. S. Jones) A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968) p. 1886; G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1961) p. 1450.
CHRISTIAN SELF-DEFINITION
Rordorf and Tuiliers4 see a reference to a group of Judaizing Christian dissidents, but this is unlikely. The Didache nowhere else condemns Judaism, but everywhere shows its own closeness to Jewish roots. Their hypothesis has not found much acceptance, and most scholars continue to see the reference to Jews.55
Harnack,>° Audets? and more recently Niederwimmer®® think that there is no need to see Pharisees in particular in this expression, but pious Jews in general, who refuse to accept the Gospel. It seems to me more likely to refer to Pharisees in particular, since there is no evidence that pious Jews "in general" kept the Monday and Thursday fast and prayed three times a day. The Essenes do not seem to have madea special point of regular fasting, since no mention is made of this, but seem to have prayed twice a day as a matter of principle.*?
On the one hand, the targeting of Pharisaic Jews as Umoxpito is a measure of the closeness of the community of the Didache to its Jewish roots (because it accepts the act itself but questions the motives). As Weinfeld®° has shown, it is a feature of inner-Jewish debate. On the other hand, no justification is given for the accusation of impiety or insincerity. It is simply stated as an unconditional, accepted fact. This indicates that the breach may be beyond repair. This must represent one further step in the gradual alienation of Christianity from its parent Judaism.®!
IV.
THE NATURE OF THE DIFFERENTIATION
The "Stationary" Fast The characterization of the opponents of the Didache community as fasting on Mondays and Thursdays (vnoretovar yap devTépe oaBBatwv kai téunTn) matches the evidence of the Rabbinic texts e.g. m.Meg 3:6; 4:1.°2 Some fasted on these days throughout the 54 Rordorf & Tuilier, Doctrine, pp. 36f.
55 Wengst, Didache, p. 34; Jefford, Sayings of Jesus, p. 106; Niederwimmer, Didache, pp. 165-166; G. Schdllgen & W. Geerling, Didache Zwélf-Apostel-Lehre /
Tradition Apostolica Apostolische Uberlieferung (Freiburg: Herder, 1991 [FC 1}) p.
47 n. 94.
56 A. yon Harnack, Lehre der zwélf Apostel nebst Untersuchungen zur dltesten Geschichte der Kirchenverfassung und des Kirchenrechts (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrich'se,
1884) pp. 24f.
57 Didache, pp. 367f.
58 Didache, p. 166 n. 4.
59 A. R. C. Leaney, The Rule of Qumran and its Meaning (London: SCM, 1966).
60 "Charge of Hypocrisy", pp. 52-58.
61 Cf. Schéllgen, Didache Zwolf-Apostel-Lehren, p. 48.
62 Schiirer-Vermes, History II, pp. 483-484.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
year according to b.Taan 12a. In m.Meg 1:2, 3; 3:6 instruction about the correct timing of the fast follows after the instruction to read the blessings and curses of Leviticus 26:3-46 on fast days.
The two things may well be linked.63 The men of the lay order or Maamad, who supported their priestly course on duty in Jerusalem with worship in the synagogue, also fasted from the second to the fifth day according to m.Taan 4:2 and b.Taan 12a
(cf. 10a). Such fasting would be a public and visible witness to a person's piety, but also to their adherence to the Pharisaic party.
Jewish fast days were observed in public in open places according to m.Taan 2:1, a practice recorded also by Tertullian: Judaicum certe ieiunium ubique celebratur, cum omissis templis per omne litus quocumque in aperto aliquando iam precem ad caelum mittunt (De ieiunio 16; cf. Ad Nationes i.13). The public nature of the solemn fast is also characterized by the blast on the shofar during droughts. People would stop work to worship and resume their work at this signal.6+ Matthew 6:16 attests the public nature of this
Pharisaic practice, although he impugns their motives and requires members of his community to fast in secret. No such instruction to secrecy is given in Didache 8:1. In the light of the function of the text, it is more likely that it was intended to create a public differentiation between its community and the Pharisaic community.
For the Jewish Christian community to cease to join in the public fasts of the Pharisaic Jewish community would be a sign of secession, especially if they celebrated their own fasts publicly on different days. Matthew's insistence on secrecy might be seen as conciliatory.
The Didache asserts an alternative fast on Wednesdays and Fridays (revp&da kai tapaoKeviv), which looks as if it might have been compulsory, since it is couched in the imperative (ipetc¢
5& vnotevoate).© Fixed days or "stations" are attested in Hermas, Similitude V.1, where their value without a life of good works is rejected. Later attestation is provided by Clement of Alexandria,
Stromata VII.12; Tert. De ieiunio 14; Origen Homily on Leviticus X.2. The Apostolic Constitutions (Const VII.23) require the fast on Wednesday and Friday as a symbol of the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus.6° Didache, however, remains silent on the reasoning behind the choice of days, except that they were in Opposition to the "hypocrites". They marked off the Christian
63 Cf. H. L. Strack & P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum NT aus Talmud und Midrasch Il (Miinchen: C. H. Beck, 1926+) p. 241; Ibid IV, p. 89.
64 Schiirer-Vermes, History Il, pp. 446-7).
6° Schéllgen (Didache Zwolf-Apostel-Lehre, p. 48 n. 99) is more cautious, arguing that the goal of the passage is not to make the fast a binding duty, but to replace the Jewish fast with a Christian one.
66 Cf. Didascalia (Lagarde p 89, II 13-15).
CHRISTIAN SELF-DEFINITION
community from its Jewish rivals.6? Audet argues that the fast on Friday represents a deliberate flouting of the Sabbath (cf. m.Taan
4:2) but this is not clear.
Connolly® makes the rules for fasting in Didache a major plank in his theory of the Montanist origin of the Didache, since
Tertullian in De ieiunio attacks the "Catholic" Church for having an optional fast, whereas the Montanists have a compulsory fast.
However, Montanism was essentially a reactionary movement, and may well be re-asserting the tradition found in the Didache.
Moreover, the genuinely ascetic Liber Graduum, which regards the Didache as "Scripture", rejects the stationary fast twice a week in favour of a continual fast (VII.20). Rather, the purpose for the instruction on fasting was to distinguish the Christian com munity from other Jewish groups with which it was in close contact and rivalry, as Niederwimmer points out:
Die scharfe Polemik gegen die iroxpitai und die Notwendigkeit, sich von den Fastensitten der jiidischen Frommen durch the Wahl anderer Fastentage zu unterscheiden, setzt--auf der einen Seite--noch einen engen
Kontakt der hier in Erscheinung tretenden Gemeinden mit der jiidischen Umwelt voraus.
7° The Lord's Prayer The prohibition against praying wc oi UmoxpiTai also implies a close contact with Jewish groups. The instruction tpic Tij¢ nugpas ovTwW Tpocevxeoe sets the Lord's Prayer in the context of the regular Jewish practice of prayer.7! The obligation to recite the Shemas in the morning and the evening was laid on all men and boys from the age of twelve, and combined with the prayers three times a day, which were laid even on women, children and slaves
(b. Ber 26b; t.Ber 3:6). The practice is justified from Daniel 6:10; Psalm 55:17.72 The content of the daily Tephilla had crystallized by the end of the First Century at least into the Shemoneh ¢Esreh, the Eighteen Benedictions. Thus the Lord's Prayer is here laid on Christians as a replacement for the recital of the Shemoneh ¢Esreh which is prayed by the iaoxpita.73 Audet' sees it as a later
67 Cf. Taylor, Teaching, pp. 58-62.
68 Audet, Didaché, p. 369.
69 R. H. Connolly, "The Didache and Montanism", Downside Review ns 36 (1937) pp. 339-347, esp. 343-346.
70 Didache, p. 166.
71 Moore, Judaism I, pp. 291f; Ibid. Il, pp. 212-238; cf. J. Jeremias, The Prayers of Jesus (London: SCM, 1967) pp. 66-72; Schiirer-Vermes, History Il, pp.
447-463.
72 Cf. Klein, Katechismus, p. 215.
P. Drews, "Untersuchungen zur Didache", ZNW 5 (1904) pp. 53-79, esp.
74ff; Klein, Katechismus, p. 215; Knopf, Die Lehre, p. 23; Rordorf & Tuilier,
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
imitation of the Jewish practice. Dugmore'> denies the origin in Jewish prayer practice and claims it comes from the "hours on the Cross". This is unlikely. Later Christian tradition required a thrice daily recitation of the Lord's Prayer by catechumens in the preparation for baptism (Hippolytus Ap7rad 18, 19).
The Apostolic Constitution VII1.44 (cf. III.18) envisages the recital of the Lord's Prayer by the newly baptized on their arising from the water.
Schiirer suggests that the recital of the Shemac was more in the nature of a confession of faith than a prayer, and thus was not "prayed" but "recited" (yaw MN°7/?).7° The recital was also a very public affair, since the Mishnah provides rules for the circumstances in which someone reciting the Shemac in the street should act (m.Ber 2:1-2; cf. Matthew 6:5).77 This would underline the need for a confessing Christian community, concerned to differentiate itself from Pharisaic Judaism, to find an alternative form of prayer, which was also in the nature of a confession. The prayer would be prayed aloud, perhaps also in the street if business required that (cf. Acts 3:1). In ancient "residually oral society" it is spoken words which are dynamic and infused with power. Silent reading was not as yet practised and one should imagine that silent prayer in words was also not known.78 The whole point of Matthew's insistence on prayer in the inner chamber, is that the sounds of spoken prayer should not be heard by others. There is no suggestion that one could pray secretly in silence in a public place. Matthew's version sounds like a modification at a secondary level after the event.
It seems, then, that some Christians were still using the Jewish daily prayers, the Shemoneh cEsreh and the Shemac, for which the Didache urges the Lord's Prayer as a replacement.79
This is cited as authoritative tradition, commanded by the Lord (wo éxéAevoev 0 KdpLog év TH ebayyediw avtod). This need not refer to a written gospel, but could refer to the oral material which constituted the Kerygma.® It should, however, be noted that the Doctrine, p. 175. Schéllgen, Didache Zwélf-Apostel-Lehre, pp. 48f.
74 Didache, p. 371.
13 C. W. Dugmore, The Influence of the Synagogue upon the Divine Office (London: Alcuin, 19642) pp. 59-70.
76 Schiirer-Vermes, History Il, p. 449.
77 Cf. Schiirer-Vermes, History II, p. 482.
78 W. J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word (London/ New York: Methuen, 1982) pp. 32f, 74f, 117ff. With reference to the culture of late antiquity, see P. J. Achtemeier, "Omne Verbum Sonat: The New Testament and the Oral Environment of Late Western Antiquity", JBL 109/1 (1990) pp. 3-27.
79 Knopf, Die Lehre, p. 23; W. D. Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount (Cambridge: Cambridge Universityf Press, 1966) pp. 309-315.
80 Késter, Uberlieferung, pp. 203f; Audet, Didaché, Do las:
CHRISTIAN SELF-DEFINITION
evayyéduov in this case is rather a matter of paraenesis than of "kerygma". If this chapter forms part of the latest redactional stage of the Didache, it may also attest the beginning of an authoritative written Gospel in some form. Audet's hypothesis®! that the emergence of a written Gospel intervenes between the first and second redactions by the same author, is an unnecessary elaboration.
If, as is likely, the Didache is a composite work which has undergone several redactions, the latest redaction would be in a different situation with regard to the developing Jesus tradition.
The important question is whether one of the canonical Gospels had emerged and attained an authoritative position in the Didache community by the time of the final redaction. Nothing allows such an assertion to be made without reservation. Audet sees Didache 8 as part of the first redaction, but it is more likely that it represents the latest stage of redaction. In any case, the function of the insertion of the "gospel" tradition is to lend the authority of the Lord to the new wording of the thrice daily prayer in opposition to the prevailing practice of the "hypocrites", the Jewish opponents of the community.
Although the texts of the Lord's Prayer in Didache and Matthew agree so closely, it is unnecessary to suppose literary dependence. According to Didache 8:3, the Prayer is repeated three times a day by every Christian, and it is absurd to imagine that the Didache would need a written source for a prayer so familiar to his community. The Prayer would already have had a fixed and tenacious liturgical form'? such that even minor variations would be significant.%
The liturgical use of the Lord's Prayer in the community is indicated by the presence of the doxology (671 ood éo7v N dtvapuLS
Kat ) 56€a eic Tods ai@vac).8+ The textual variants which add a doxology in varying forms to Matthew's text of the Lord's Prayer show how widespread and ancient this usage was.
T. W.
Manson®> has shown that from earliest times the Lord's Prayer was linked to the reception of candidates into Church membership. In the teaching of Cyril of Jerusalem (AD 350), the Lord's
Prayer is recited in the part of the eucharistic prayers reserved for the participation of the baptized, the missa fidelium. The Apostolic
Constitution VII.44 envisages the newly baptized candidate rising from the water, facing East and reciting the Lord's Prayer. This
81 Didache, p. 176.
82 E. Lohmeyer, The Lord's Prayer (London: Collins, 1965) p. 16; Késter, Uberlieferung, p. 205.
83 Lake, New Testament, p. 29; Glover, "Didache's Quotations", p. 19.
84 T. W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus (London: SCM, 1949) p. 171; "The Lord's Prayer", BJRL 38 (1955-1956) pp. 99-113, esp. 107f.
85 "]_ord's Prayer", pp. 99-113; cf. Jeremias, Prayers of Jesus, pp. 82-85.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
agrees with the position of the Lord's Prayer in the Didache, after baptism and before Eucharist. The teaching is thus post-baptismal and the use of the prayer may have been reserved for full church members.® Liturgical rubrics also seem to require such a situation, as Jeremias has pointed out.8? Particularly important is the presence of "audemus dicere" in the Western rite and a similar sentiment in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
Thus the presence of the text of the Lord's Prayer in the Didache at this point is far from accidental. The indications are that it serves to encapsulate a specifically Christian theology, which would be memorized by the catechumens and then recited publicly at her/his baptism. The significance of repeating the prayer three times a day would then serve in part as a continuing reminder of this act of initiation and differentiation.
Social Pressures Reflected in Liturgy In both these cases, of instructions on fasting and on prayer, it is clear that the practices are not new. The community was already fasting twice a week, in solidarity with other Jewish groups, or the Pharisees at least. The community was already using the Lord's Prayer liturgically, as the doxology and amen shows. What the instruction does is to use these two existing practices to differentiate between the Christian community and its opponents,
Pharisaic Jews. The days are changed for fasting, and the Friday fast indicates that traditional observation of the Sabbath may also be under attack, perhaps because the community was already observing Sunday as the Lord's Day (kaTt& kupiaxny dé Kupiov ovvaxdévtTes KXaoaTe &pTov Kai evxapioTnoate Didache 14:1), the new sabbath for Christians.88 The prayer to be recited daily three times to replace the prayers of Pharisaic Judaism is the Lord's Prayer, thus providing a daily re-affirmation of the community's difference from other Jewish groups.
V. THE EFFECT OF THE INSERTED MATERIAL
The effect of the insertion of the material on fasting and praying into the framework of the instruction to catechumens, is to heighten a sense of the unique identity of the group. It could be termed an exclusion rule: this is the condition on which new members of the community are baptized. This in turn must have
86 Manson, "Lord's Prayer", p. 102.
87 Prayers of Jesus, p. 85.
88 Cf. R. J. Bauckham, "The Lord's Day", in D. Carson (ed), From Sabbath to Lord's Day (Grand Rapids: Academie, 1985) pp. 221-250.
CHRISTIAN SELF-DEFINITION
impacted on the normal table fellowship of the community.
Didache 9:5 limits participation in the ebxapiotia or Berakah of its members to those who have been baptized. The terminology of the instruction indicates that this was originally directed against the admittance of unbaptized Gentiles, characterized as "dogs":
Kal yap Tept TovTO eipnKer 6 KbpLoc' ph STE Td Ky.ov Toic Kvot.
This short saying has far-reaching implications in its present context. It refers to the bread and wine as 76 &y.ov. The use of the singular shows that it has not yet become simply a formula to denote the eucharistic elements as in later liturgies. Knopf8° claims that 76 Gyov refers to the eucharistic elements in the later liturgies, but the later liturgies use r& & yu, and Knopf seems to have missed the importance of this difference.
Cyril of Jerusalem writes in his Catechese mystagogicae, "After this the Priest says,
"Holy things to holy people (7& &yva Toig wyiowc)"". With this can be compared the Liturgy of James 40; Liturgy of St. Mark 20;
Liturgy of the Holy Apostles 19; Chrysostom, Homily on Matthew vii.7. In all these instances, it is the elements themselves which receive emphasis, and not the cultic state of holiness, as in the Didache.
The strength of the liturgical tradition is such, that it has interfered with the text of Matthew 7:6, where the Miniscules
118, 157, 209, 243, 245, 1689, and the text in Ephraem of Edessa have substituted t& [email protected] for 76 &ytov.
Methodius, Symposium IV.4, has t& &y:a even though he interprets the saying to refer to the word of the Gospel.%° TO Gyvov in Didache refers to the condition of cultic holiness as in LXX, where it is used for food offered in sacrifice which only the priests may eat (Ex. 2933; Lev. 2:2f; 22:10-16; Num.
18:8-19).
Leviticus 22:10 is especially pertinent: kai mac addoyeryng ov dayeTau Gyia....6Tt &y@ Kvplog 0 ayiafwv avTodc.
(Cf. also PssSol 1:8; 2:3; 8:12). Because the meal is eaten in a state of cultic purity, those who have not been purified and sanctified by baptism are excluded. Holiness entails separation.
The unbaptized are here described as xivec, a word commonly used by Jews in the First Century AD to describe Gentiles, because dogs, like swine, were regarded as especially despicable and unclean animals.®! (For examples see 1 Enoch 56:5; b.Meg
15b; b. Bek 20b; GenR 81:3; LevR 5:6; MidrPss 4:11.) A particularly apposite parallel to the Didache is provided by Pirge de
89 Die Lehre, p. 27.
90 Cf. also TestDom 1.18, 31. Const alters the whole section and omits the saying altogether, so that unauthorized communion is seen as a breach of Law, not of holiness (@¢ ob 6ép¢).
91 Q. Michel, "KYQN, KYNAPION", ZDNT Ill, pp.
1101-1104; StrackBillerbeck, Kommentar 1, pp. 722-726; O. Biécher, "Wélfe im Schafspelzen: zum religionsgeschichtlichen Hintergrund von Matth. 7,15", TZ 24 (1968) pp. 405-426.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
Rabbi Eliezer 29, "One who eats together with an idolater is like one who eats together with a dog" (cf. also Mt 9:11 (=Lk 15:12);
Acts 10:28; 22:15; Phil 3:2, and POx840).
While the saying appears verbatim in Matthew 7:6, it has a quite different context, which applies it to the teaching of Jesus, which must be safeguarded from abuse. However the pericope sits uneasily in this context.°? Bultmann® argues that it is among the sayings which "belong to the secular meshalim which have been made into dominical sayings in the tradition", and "do not have a specific meaning until they appear in a concrete situation". When the saying about holy things and dogs is combined with another saying about pearls and swine, it is given a new meaning. For, while 76 &yov refers primarily to what is ritually pure, 6 papyapirns refers to something very precious, usually a precious saying or Biblical word given to those unworthy of it.° The Babylonian tractate Qiddushin 39b has the saying "The mouth which produced pearls must now lick the dust" (Cf. b.Hag 3a).
Jewish preaching with its stringing together of Scriptural citations was compared to a string of pearls.
Later Gnostic texts make much of the saying to refer to secret wisdom, eg. Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles 6:1; Gospel of Philip (NgH I1,3) 62:18f.
The combination of the saying about holy things and the saying about pearls turns the former saying into a metaphor: although the Gospel is to be preached to all men, there must be a certain reservation with respect to those who reject and despise it, since it is holy and precious (cf. Mt 10:14). The effectiveness of the saying as a metaphor depends on its prior reference to cultic purity, so that Didache 9:5 seems to be using it in its more primitive and original sense.°5 Both interpretations of the saying continued to be current in the Church. The Gnostic Gospels according to Basilides and Thomas relate the saying to the Gospel, as do Cyprian,
Pseudo-Clement, Methodius and Origen.°* Tertullian teaches the necessity for excluding the unbaptized from communion (PraescrHaer 41:2). Testamentum Domini 11.13 also contains a * P. Gaechter, Das Matthdusevangelium (Innsbruch, 1962) pp. 236f; P. Bonnard, L'Evangile selon St. Matthieu (Neuchatel: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1970) pp.
97f; Koster, Uberlieferung, p. 299.
°3.R. Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition, trns.
J. Marsh (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1972) pp. 102f.
°4 ~~ Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar 1, pp.
447f F.
Hauck, 1967.
"MAPY'APITHL", in TDNT IV, op. cit., pp. 472-273, esp. 472f.
°5 Audet, Didaché, pp. 173f; Rordorf & Tuilier, Doctrine, p. 87; contra K6ster, Uberlieferung, p. 199.
%6 GBasilides (Pan XXIV.5:2); GTh 93; Cyprian, Test 3; Recog IIl.1:5f; Origen, peti XIII.1; Methodius, Symp IV.4; GPh (NgH II.3) 80:30-81:13; 82:20-
CHRISTIAN SELF-DEFINITION
form of the saying to justify the exclusion of non-members from any meal eaten by believers, although the reference here is to wolves not dogs. The Pseudo-Clementine writings repeatedly forbid Christians to eat even their common meals with the unbaptized
(Hom 1.22; VIII.22, 24; XIII.4-5; Recog. 1.19, 22; AdVir 11.6; cf.
Justin Apol 1.66).
Sayings concerning holy things and dogs are found also in Rabbinic sources. Haninah b. Antigonus (T3) says, "All animal offerings that have been rendered terafah may not be redeemed, since animal offerings may not be redeemed in order to give them as food to the dogs (072999 Jo°DNA> OwsIpATAN OTD PR"
(m.Tem 6:5). Here the relative & implies the citation of a generally accepted principle. This offers a very close parallel to Didache both verbally and in the cultic ritualistic application of the saying (cf. b.Bek 15a; b.Tem 30b; b.Sheb 11b; b.Pes 29a).
The parallels are discussed in Strack-Billerbeck (1926a:447). Ritual purity, especially of foodstuffs and drink, was a major preoccupation of the Rabbis' and led to a complex system of graded purity well exemplified in the Mishnaic tractate Hagiga 2:7. It is likely that the Pharisees maintained these purity laws in their communal Haburah meals.%8
The inclusion of such a rule in the Didache shows both a very Jewish concern with ritual purity and also a sectarian concern to exclude non members of the community. Initially, the exclusion was aimed at Gentiles, but the insertion of ch. 8 as a test for initiation turns this exclusion against other Jews as well. The process of differentiation between Jewish and Christian communities now seems complete.
V. RELATIONSHIP TO MATTHEW 6:1-18
A detailed study of the relationship between Didache 8 and Matthew's Gospel would be a labour beyond the scope of this essay.
Nevertheless, some reference to the problem is inevitable and cries out for comment. Whereas the main concern of the material as it is arranged in the Didache lies in differentiation between Christians and the izoxpirar, the main concern of Matthew 6:1-18 lies in the need to avoid public display, as its preface suggests:
97 H. Danby, The Mishnah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933) pp. 714, 800-804.
Seidensticker, Die Gemeinschaftsform der religidsen Gruppen des Spétjudentums und der Urkirche (Jerusalem: Franciscan Press, 1959 [SBFLA}) pp.
116f; M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism (London: SCM, 1974) p. 170; J. A.
Draper, "The Social Milieu and Motivation of Community of Goods in the Jerusalem Church of Acts", in C. Breytenbach (ed), Church in Context (Pretoria:
NG Boekhandel, 1988) pp. 77-88.
JONATHAN A. DRAPER
mpooéxeTe O& THY SiKcLoobYnY LUGV wN ToLEty Eumpoovev TOV vOpaTwr TpdC TO DeaOhvou avToic (6:1).
In the Didache, it is indeed the very public nature of fasting and prayer, identifying marks of adherence to a particular religious community within the broader Jewish society, which have resulted in their being targeted for differentiation. If the days of public fasting and the words of the public prayers are changed, then it provides a clear witness to adherence to the Christian community, without changing the essence of religious practice. The Christian and Pharisaic Jewish communities are at the parting of the ways, without as yet having clearly defined any theological rationale for a separation. It heralds public confrontation between the two communities. voxpira is a general and conventional religious accusation of ungodly conduct levelled at a rival community within Jewish society.
In Matthew 6:1-18, a theological principle is at work: doing religious works to earn earthly rewards must be avoided, because the goal of religious behaviour is to earn treasure in heaven (6:1921).99 Works of piety must consequently be done in secret: to do otherwise is to imitate the baoxpi7ax who love to do their pious works in public (6:2, 5, 16). Parallels can be found in Jewish and pagan literature for such sentiments.!°° It is noteworthy, however, that it takes no account of the public communal witness of fasting and prayer, on which the Didache seems to depend. Almsgiving is added to the list of activities which must be kept secret to avoid doing as the tmoxpitoucg (6:2-4). Almsgiving plays a prominent role also in the Didache, where it relates to inner communal relations (1:5-6; 4:5-8), and is thus only indirectly concerned with differentiation. While the Lord's Prayer is again presented in the context of prayer "not like the hypocrites", it is more specifically related to avoiding the verbose repetitive prayer (GatTadoyia) of the Gentiles (6:7-8). The difference between the fasting of the Christians and the hypocrites is now a question of outward appearances against secret fasting, not a question of days.
There is clearly a close relationship between the two texts.
The question of literary dependence cannot easily be settled, since the great verbal similarity is accompanied by a different ethos.
The direction of dependence between two such texts will depend on prior assumptions. The Sitz im Leben of the passage in the Didache is clear and understandable, but it is theologically undeveloped. On the other hand, Matthew shows clear theological ban H. D. Betz, Essays on the Sermon on the Mount (Philadelphia: Fortress, p. 6l.
100 Ibid, p. 62; U. Luz, Matthew 1-7: A Commentary (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1989) p. 358; Weinfeld, "Charge of Hypocrisy", pp. 52-58.
CHRISTIAN SELF-DEFINITION
development and includes the passage in an ordered collection of general paraenesis which shows signs of his own redactional concerns.!0! If there is a schema underlying Matthew's choice of material, which is not unlikely, then it is not unlikely that it would resemble Didache 8! Betz! entitles this section in Matthew a ""cultic-didache", specifically citing the Didache as the rationale for this title, but tantalizingly does not comment on his choice beyond a despairing conclusion, "for want of sources, we can discover nothing more about this form of Judaism and Jewish Christianity"
.!°3 This study contends that the Didache constitutes just such a "source" and is intended to call for further comment.
VI. CONCLUSION
This study of the redactional process at work in the Didache has revealed a community which started by defining itself primarily against the Gentiles. The material was originally collected for the catechesis of Gentile converts. Differentiation of the Christian community from the pagan world was a key part in preparation for initiation. However, the lack of clear differentiation from other
Jewish groups seems to have caused problems for the community at a later stage, perhaps under attack from the Pharisees. Detailed study of the text shows the Didache to be closer to Pharisaic
Judaism than to any other Jewish group.'% This is confirmed in a negative way by the terms of the attack on the tmoxpitar. No defence is given for their characterization as ungodly, nor are any possibilities of reconciliation left, open. Instead, the instructions provide for Christian behaviour in the crucial and public areas of fasting and prayer which would differentiate them from their opponents. The insistence of Matthew's gospel that these things be done "in secret" marks a subsequent development, as does its understanding of the term tvzoxpirau in terms of insincerity and play acting.
101 M. D. Goulder, Midrash and Lection in Matthew (London: SPCK, 1974) pp.
262-263; R. H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on his Literary and Theological Art (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1982) pp. 101-111; R. A. Guelich, The Sermon on the Mount (Waco: Word, 1982) pp. 316-320; contra Betz Essays, pp.
55-69; W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew | (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988) pp.
572-575.
102 Essays, p. 57.
103 Tbid., p. 69.
104 Commentary, p. 329.
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
7 JOHANNES BETZ
Maria Laach Since its discovery in 1873, the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles has posed questions to research, the discussion of which has lasted until the present time and still has not led to any assured, generally recognized finding. Above all, the circumstances of its origin remain problematic.
Scholars have argued, ever more insistently, that it originates in Syria/Palestine.!
But a more precise date of composition remains contested. Until recently the dominant viewpoint, which is still represented today, was that the Didache originated in the second century C.E., with many researchers arguing strongly for the second half or even later.?
Meanwhile, however, the researches of A. Adam? and J. P.
Audet? have introduced a turn-about.
If Audet's early dating around the years 50-70 C.E.5 has found few supporters, neverthe1 Many researchers try for an even more far-reaching precision. A. Adam
("Erwagungen zur Herkunft der Didache™, ZKG 68 [1957] pp. 1-47) argues for Pella; the following authors argue for the spiritually alive church in Antioch, which was active in mission and important for the development of the liturgy: J. -P.
Audet, La Didaché. Instructions des Apétres (Paris: Gabalda, 1958 [EBib]) pp.
209f; J. Daniélou The Christian Centuries IThe First Six Hundred Years, ts. V.
Cronin (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1964) pp. 49, 52.
2 It is above all English researchers who argue for the second half of the second century, eg. R. H. Connolly, "The Didache and Montanism", DR 55 (1937) pp.
339-347; F. E. Vokes, The Riddle of the Didache (London: SPCK, 1938); W. Telfer, "The Didache and the Apostolic Synod of Antioch", JTS 40 (1939) pp. 133146, 258-271; M. H. Shepherd, "Smyma in the Ignatian Letters", JR 20 (1940) p.
155); further E. Massaux, The Influence of the Gospel of Saint Matthew on Christian Literature before Saint Irenaeus IThe First Ecclesiastical Writers, trns
N. J. Belval & S. Hecht (Leuven: Peeters; Macon, Ga: Mercer University Press, 1990-1993 [NGSt 5,1-3]) pp. 3-6; Ibid. III: The Apologists and the Didache, pp.
144-189.
E. Peterson ("Uber einige Probleme der Didache-Uberlieferung" in Frithkirche, Judentum und Gnosis [Freiburg: Herder, 1959] pp. 146-182) considers our Greek Bryennios text, which comes from a manuscript of the eleventh century, to be a late revision, under the influence of ascetic circles, of an original text which can no longer be reconstructed. Among those who date the Didache earlier, namely in the first half of the second century, are J. Quasten, Patrology I: The Beginnings of Christian Literature (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1950) p. 37; J. Schmid, RAC Ill (1957) p. 1010; E. Molland, RGG I (1957) p. 508; B. Altaner, Patrology, trns. H. C.
Graef (Freiburg: Herder, 1960) p. 51.
3 Adam ("Erwagungen", p. 46) earlier placed the composition soon after 70 C.E., most probably shortly after 90 C.E-:-in his Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte
I: Die Zeit der alten Kirche (Gitersioh: Mohr, 1965) p. 83, he now specifies the date as about 95 C.E.
4 His work (Didaché) represents the most extensive research into the Didache.
5 Loc cit.; Daniélou (First Six Hundred Years, p. 37) follows-Audet: so too J. ss de Urbina, "Review of Audet, La Didaché, Paris, 1958", OChrP 25 (1959):
186-7.
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
less an ever growing number of authors put the origin of the text at the end or at the turn of the first century.6 However, it is important to remember that this date, which has now been accepted, only applies to the final and overall editing of the text. It is well known, however, that the text is a compilation from different components: the first ethical section offers for the most part materials from the Two Ways teaching taken over from Judaism
(chs. 1-6), followed by liturgical instructions (chs. 7-10), rules of church order (chs.
11-15), and concluded by a fragmentary apocalypse (ch. 16). Thus the overall date for the final redaction means very little. The individual elements already had an independent existence before their incorporation into the Didache, their own Sitz im Leben and corresponding meaning.? And so a more exact understanding of the text requires a tradition-historical study here also, which must examine in each case the extent, age, origin, sense of the unit of tradition, together with the way the meaning has been changed by its incorporation into the present text.
The famous Meal Prayers of chapters 9 and 10 are also among the most difficult and contested problems of Didache research.
Their main content consists of prayers which are certainly older than the writing as a whole. That they already originated early and derive from the pre-Didache Aramaic community, is indicated by their formal and material proximity to Jewish formulae (Berakoth), from the Aramaic cries of Hosanna and Maranatha, from the baptism into the Lord (Jesus) attested here, from the ancient Pais-Christology, as generally from their
Jewish Christian theology.
The' whole stands under the title "eucharist". In any case, what exactly is meant by this is, to this day, a contested question and a problem which continues to be osed. r Chapter 14 also concerns the eucharist. Here it is beyond doubt a matter of the sacramental Lord's Supper on the Lord's day, which is introduced by a confession of sins. It is described as 6 So H. Lessig, Die Abendmahlsprobleme im Lichte der ntl. Forschung seit 1900
(Diss. Bonn, 1953) p. 173; P. Cayré, Patrologie et Histoire de la Théologie. | (Paris: Desolée, 1953) p. 91 (c 90-110 C.E. ); R. Stahlin, Die Geschichte und
Lehre des evangelischen Gottesdienstes (K. F. Miiller-W. Blankenburg [eds.], Leiturgia 1 (Kassel: Stauda, 1954] p. 16); the reviews of Audet's work by P.
Benoit, RB 66 (1959) p. 600; J. A. Fischer, ThLZ 85 (1960) p. 525; cautiously also
J. N. D. Kelly, J7hS, n. s. 12 (1961) pp. 332f. The following also argue for the above named period of composition: T. Camelot, LThK III? (1959) p. 369; L. Goppelt, Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Times, trns. A. Guelich (London: Black, 1970) p. 132; K. Baus, Handbook of Church History I: From the Apostolic Community to Constantine, ed. H. Jedin & J. Dolan (London: Burns & Oates, 1965) p. 139.
7 For the details cf. Audet.
JOHANNES BETZ
a "pure sacrifice" and as the salvation historical fulfillment of Malachi 1:11, 14.
Our research here concerns the two chapters 9 and 10 on the Meal. To facilitate the understanding of what follows they are offered in translation:® 9:1 Concerning the eucharist you shall give thanks as follows: 2. first concerning the cup: We give you praise and thanks, our Father, for the holy vine of your servant David, which you have revealed to us through Jesus, your servant. To you be the glory for ever! [Amen]. 3.
But over the broken bread thus: We give you praise and thanks, our Father, for the life and the knowledge, which you have revealed to us through Jesus, your servant. To you be the glory for ever! [Amen]. 4. As this bread was scattered over the mountains and gathered together became one, so let your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom. For yours is the glory and the power for ever! [Amen]. 5. But none shall eat or drink from your eucharist except those who are baptized in the Name of the Lord. For the Lord has also spoken concerning this, "You shall not give what is holy to the dogs!"
10:1 After the repletion, you shall pronounce thanks in the following way:
2. We give you praise and thanks, holy Father, for-your holy Name, which you have allowed to dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality, which you have revealed to us through Jesus, your servant. To you be the glory for ever! [Amen]. 3. You, almighty Ruler, have created all things for the sake of your Name. Food and drink you have given to human beings for refreshment, so that they might pronounce praise and thanks to you. But to us you have graciously granted spiritual food and spiritual drink and (by this means)? eternal life, through Christ, your servant.
4. For!® everything we pronounce praise and thanks, because you are mighty. To you be glory for ever! Amen. 5. Remember,
Lord, your church, to rescue it from all evil and to perfect is in your love, and to gather it from the four winds, the sanctified, into your kingdom, which you have prepared for it! For yours is the power and the glory for ever! Amen. 6. Let grace come and let this world pass away! Hosanna to the house!! of David! Whoever is holy, let that person come here!
Whoever is not, let that person do penance! Maranatha! Amen. 7. Let the prophets be permitted to pronounce thanks in whatever manner they wish.
I. THE MORE SPECIFIC LITURGICAL CHARACTER OF
THE CULT MEAL OF THE DIDACHE
The first question which confronts us is this: What kind of a meal is it that these prayers frame? What is its peculiar character,
8 We follow the critical text of Audet (Didaché, pp. 234-236). His conjectures stand in []. Departures from Audet's text are in nn. 9 & 10.
° Previous studies read kat twhv aidvoy, but Audet reads eic (wi aidnov. ae the latter is confirmed by a manuscript or is conjecture is not clear from udet.
10 T consider the reading mepi of the Coptic version to be the more probable, along with M. Dibelius ("Die Mahl-Gebete der Didache", ZNW 37 [1938] p. 39) and Peterson ("Probleme", p. 171).
'l Here Audet follows the Coptic version. See n82.
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
which can be recognized on the basis of the text? In answering this question however, opinions diverge widely. It is sometimes seen as a) a simple, even though sacral, meal (agape)!2; b) a sacramental eucharistic meal!3; c) both in one, so that the enjoyment of a meal in the community is also experienced as a sacramental eucharist'*. d) A more nuanced exegesis rightly finds in the cultic meal of Didache 9-10 a combination of a fellowship meal (9:1-10:5) with the sacramental Lord's Supper (10:6), and indeed in the order of agape-eucharist mentioned above.'5 ¢)
Meanwhile, by rearranging 10:6 before 9:5, one idiosyncratic theory finds the succession of eucharist (9:2-4; 10:6) followed by agape (10:1-5).'° f) Finally the opinion has also been expressed that the texts as we have them in Didache 9-10 today, are simply table prayers utilized in ascetic circles, although reworked out of originally eucharistic prayers.!7 This large number of interpretations shows the uncertainty of the state of the research, the hypothetical character of the explanations and the difficulty of the question.
An interpretation which seeks to be as unbiased as possible will begin from the present text form and not from a reconstruc- !2 J. Jeremias (The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (London: SCM, 1966] p. 118) names the following representatives of this perspective: P. Ladeuze, F. Kattenbusch, P. Drews, Ermoni, van Crombrugghe, E. Baumgartner, P. Cagin, R. Knopf,
T. E. J. Ferris, W. Goossens, J. Brinktrine, R. H. Connolly, F. J. Délger, F. L.
Cirliot, G. Dix.
13 Jeremias (Eucharistic Words, p. 118) numbers older authorities, i. e. P.
Batifoll, J. Bricout, K. Vélker, A. Greiffy O. Casel. Further representatives see n. eA 14 Cf. B. Reicke, Diakonie, Festesfreude und Zelos in Verbindung mit der altchristlichen Agapefeier (Uppsala: Lundequistska Bokhandeln, 1951) p. 13; H.
Lilje, Die Lehre der Zwolf Apostel? (Hamburg: Furche, 1956).
'5 The importance of this opinion already held by Th. Zahn was re-emphasized by M. Dibelius ("Mahlgebete", pp. 32-41). Jeremias*(Eucharistic Words, p. 118) also follows them; he cites as authorities also E. v. d. Goltz, E. Hennecke, R. Stapper, R. Hupfeld, J. Quasten, A. Arnold, R. Bultmann, A. M. Schneider. Further representatives are Lessig, Abendmahlsprobleme p. 172; G. Stahlin in K. F. Miiller
& W. Blankenburg (eds)-Leiturgia. Handbuch des evangelischen Gottesdienst | (Kassel: Staude, 1954) p. 16; J. Betz, Die Eucharistie in der Zeit der griechischen
Vater I: Die Aktualprisenz der Person und des Heilswerkes Jesu im Abendmahl nach der vorephesinischen griechischen Patristik (Freiburg: Herder 1955) pp. 75f;
Audet, Didaché, pp. 410-416, 423; J. A. Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia> | (Freiburg: Herder, 1962 = The Eucharistic Prayer: A Study of the Canon Missae, trns. R. L. Batley [London: Challoner, 1956]; The Mass: An Historical, Theological and Pastoral Survey [Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1976]) p. 16; Goppelt, Die apostolische und nachapostolische Zeit, p. 31, 145; Daniélou, First Six
Hundred Years, p. 73; Adam Dogmengeschichte 1, pp. 83, 117.
16 H. Lietzmann, Mass and Lord's Supper: A Study in the History of the Liturgy, trns. D. H. G. Reeve (Leiden: Brill, 1953-1964) pp. 189-194.
17 Thus Peterson, "Probleme", pp. 169, 170, 181.
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tion made by re-arranging it, and will seek to explore its sense. A quick overview of the two chapters provides the following chief points of procedure for the meal: in each case a blessing over cup and bread (9:2f), prayer for the gathering of the church (9:4), exclusion of unbaptized from the eucharist (9:5), meal (10:1), prayers after the meal which take up and expand the prayers before the meal (10:2-5). There follows (in 10:6) an emphatic call for the return of Christ and the instruction to the "holy, to come", i.e. to come forward to an act, which is clearly connected to the coming of the Lord referred to in Maranatha. In a strange manner, the conditions for admission in 9:5 and 10:6 are in conflict with each other.
If one looks at this composition as a whole, then only the interpretation d) which considers the cultic meal of the Didache as a combination of a proper meal and the sacramental Lord's Supper does justice to it: the words of 9:2-10:5 referring to the first and 10:6 to the last. The eucharistic celebration proper is only referred to in 10:6 in fragmentary fashion, not in its full course.
The action of 10:6 is therefore often understood as a rite of entry or transition!' to the full eucharistic sacrament. This basic viewpoint today rightly has many supporters.!9 Most regard the preceding meal proper as an agape, some try to characterize it more precisely. So Audet sees in it a phenomenon sui generis, a "breaking of the bread" only found in Jewish Christianity and disappearing with it, whose meaning would have been a liturgy of vigil, a feast of expectation of the coming basileia.2° Daniélou speaks of a Christianized Passover meal in the framework of an Easter baptismal celebration during the Easter Vigil.21 These attempts at a more exact characterization remain, however, questionable.
The commonly held theory, according to which we have in Didache 9-10 a combination of meal proper and eucharist, rests on the following grounds: the order cup-bread, found only here, is unusual for the sacramental Lord's supper, however more readily conceivable for an agape.22 The blessing formula itself for the two elements does not lack a eucharistic colouring, to be sure, about which we will speak later, but reveals a clear disparity with the New Testament words over the bread and cup. The typical concepts like body (flesh), blood, covenant, together with an explicit
18 Dibelius ("Mahl-Gebete", p. 40) speaks of "entry"; Audet (Didache, p. 415) of "rite of passage".
19 See under n. 15.
20 Didaché, pp. 405-407.
21 First Six Hundred Years, p. 72f.
22 One can compare the (later) Sabbath Kiddush; see Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, p. 28f.
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
reference to the death of Jesus typical there, are missing in the Didache. Of particular importance is the expression EuTANOOHVaL in 10:1. It is a rubric, and so cannot be taken in an extended sense, but must rather be understood literally; but then it points to the preceding food and drink as a genuine meal. In the same way
'the command in 10:6, that only the holy should come while the unholy must do penance, presents the eucharist as only now happening, not as already having happened.
These are now weighty arguments for the above thesis. They concern, however, primarily the instructions over the external ritual sequence of the general celebration. On the other hand, up to now we have scarcely taken the theological peculiarities of the agape material in verses (9:2-5 and 10:2-5) into account. But if we consider these, the picture changes somewhat, or at least takes on new colours. That is, the sayings in these verses offer a pronounced eucharistic colour which can hardly be ignored. Thus the fact that the bread and cup, the specific eucharistic elements, are blessed, though not conclusive in itself, is nevertheless noteworthy. If, however, the text speaks of the holy "vine" of David, of kAcoue, of life and immortality, of spiritual food and (likewise) drink, then it not only alludes distantly to the eucharist which only appears in 10:6, but reveals a close and immediate reference to a such a kind of sacramental Lord's meal. Although they show less contact with the Synoptic Lord's Supper proclamation, they still have an unmistakable material and verbal relationship with the Johannine tradition,23 and remind one in certain respects of the sayings concerning the new Passover in Luke
22:16-18, which must be understood eucharistically.24 In addition, the instruction in 9:5, which disagrees completely with 10:6, that only the baptized must eat and drink from the "eucharist", must be seen as old tradition, not first composed by the redactor of the Didache but taken over, and thus needs to be interpreted with reference to the sacramental communion.?5 Finally the origin of the prayers (in 9:2ff; 10:2-5) out of a eucharistic celebration is,
23 See further below p. 255.
See H.
Schiirmann, Der Paschamahlbericht Lk 22,(7-14) (Miinster:
Aschendorff, 1953 [NTA 19,5]) pp. 15-18.
25 Audet (Didaché, pp. 414f) explains the instruction 9:5 as a redactional note of the Didachist and as his innovation, which disrupts the usual custom prevailing until then and excludes the unbaptized from the fellowship meal, the "breaking of the bread". Audet has only expressed his opinion in this thesis, but provided no evidence. Materially it seems questionable to me that one excluded all unbaptized guests, thus including novices, from the agape at such an early date. But this exclusivity then developed—perhaps under the influence of Didache 9:5; cf. Recog I 71
(CGS 93); ApTrad 25 (46 Dix). In Qumran according to 1 QS 6:16f, 20, novices were excluded from certain meals.
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perhaps, corroborated by their later history: the blessing formulae for cup and bread were understood and explained sacramentallyeucharistically by the Apostolic Constitutions (VII.25f)(attesting
Antiochene tradition), and the prayer for gathering (9:4) is found in Egyptian anaphorae.?° If one considers the texts as isolated units, in terms of their content and development, not according to their external place in the framework of the Didache's celebration, then it leads to the conclusion that they are genuine eucharistic prayers and that the meal ordered by them is a genuine Lord's meal. They have also been evaluated in this way by a row of reputable researchers for a long time.?7
Thus a more exact examination leads to two divergent conclusions: the prayers and the corresponding meal of Didache 9:210:5 belong in one respect to an agape, and in another respect to a sacramental Lord's supper—apart from vv.10:1, 3a, with which we will busy ourselves later. For each of these points of view well respected scholars have taken their stand, for each point of view there are reasons which cannot be overlooked. So the question arises: do the two conclusions exclude each other? Or can they be harmonized? Can both be affirmed in a broader perspective?
In fact, many researchers have already attempted such a settlement.
According to one account, the meal proper was identified with the Lord's supper.28 Yet each constitutes a fundamentally distinctive part inside one all-embracing general celebration. According to the testimony of the New Testament, they may not be identified; the oldest report of the institution, 1 Corinthians
11:23f, already separates the eucharistic gifts from the meal. Also the attempt of H. Lietzmann, by means of major re-ordering of the text, specifically through the removal of 10:6 to 9:2-4, to con26 Euchologium Serapionis 13:13 (Il 174, 17-22 Funk); Euchologium of DérBalizeh (26 Roberts-Capelle); Eth. Gregorius-Liturgy (26 Lofgren-Euringer).
Rauschen, Eucharistie und Bufsakrament in den ersten sechs Jahrhunderten} (Freiburg: Herder, 1910) p. 96 (here older representatives); P.
Batiffol, Etudes d'histoire et de théologie positive II: L'Eucharistie (Paris: Lecoffre,
1920); K. Volker, Mysterium und Agape (Gotha: Klotz, 1927) 105ff; C. Ruch, La Messe (DThC 10, 1 [1928] p. 867); O. Casel, Prophetie und Eucharistie (JLw 9
[1930] pp. 1-19 = The Mystery of Christian Worship and Other Writings, trns. B.
Neunheuser (Westminster, Md: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1963]); M. Goguel, L'Eglise primitive (Paris: Payot, 1947) p. 366 = The Primitive Church, trns. H. C.
Snape (London: Allen & Unwin, 1963); Quasten, Patrology I, p. 32; G. RietschelP. Graff, Lehrbuch der Liturgik? (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1951) pp.
232ff; Reicke, Diakonie, Festesfreude und Zelos pp. 13f; Cayré, Patrologie I, pp.
92f; Lilje, Die Lehre der zwélf Apostel, pp. 63ff. —That in Didache 9-10 "it is a matter of a eucharistic Lord's supper", Lietzmann also recognized (Mass and Lord's Supper, pp. 189-194), who in any case solved the problem in his own way by re-ordering the text.
28 So Reicke and Lilje; cf. n. 14.
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
stitute a complete eucharistic act as the beginning of the celebration and to allow an agape to follow after29, must be judged to have failed. The New Testament sources provide a different picture. According to 1 Corinthians
11:23f, there existed at the beginning the sequence bread-meal-cup; then according to 1 Corinthians 11:21, 34, Mark 14:22 the sequence meal-bread-cup appears. The sequence eucharist-agape meal is on the other hand hardly attested.2° The point of view that the prayers were indeed spoken at an agape, but reflected the sacramental eucharist which followed, also remains unsatisfactory.3! In reality they directly qualify the things to which they immediately relate, and indeed eucharistically, i.e. cup and bread, as a detailed exegesis will plainly confirm.
There is, however, a better solution to our dilemma, in my opinion. That is, on closer examination the two divergent interpretations largely result from viewing the same tradition at different stages of its development, and are not different interpretations of the tradition at the same moment in time, if one ignores
9:5. Indeed, on this view, the same prayers appear once to have belonged to an agape, and on the other occasion to have belonged to a eucharistic celebration. What makes the difference to the point of view, however, is that the material is considered on the one occasion in the overall framework of the two chapters, while on the other occasion loosed from this context, isolated by itself.
If we keep these two things separate, we seem to have a useful solution based upon an analysis of the layers of tradition. The prayers cannot be simultaneously eucharistic and agape prayers, but they can be both of these sidé by side. They were previously and originally texts for a Lord's Supper and are now in the composition of the Didachist used at a meal proper. So we come to our thesis: the prayers of Didache 9:2-10:5 were transformed and revalued from original eucharistic prayers to mere agape prayers.32 We will now explain how this happened.
This point of view, which is intended for the moment only to be considered as a working hypothesis, now makes one feature of the two chapters more readily understandable (and so demonstrates its usefulness). Perhaps it explains the introduction
29 Mass and Lord's Supper, pp. 188-194.
30 To my knowledge only the Coptic text of the Epistula Apostolorum (140/170 C.E.) has this sequence; cf. Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, p. 116.
31 Thus Daniélou, First Six Hundred Years, p. 72.
32 The further development in many places, eg. in Egypt, tended to reduce them completely into house table prayers in ascetic circles. That is clear in Athanasius,
Aéyoc owrtnpiac mpdc Thy maphévov (TU 29/2a [1905] p. 47). Peterson incorrectly concludes from this that even our present Bryennios text may have been such a late version.
JOHANNES BETZ
of the cup before the bread, unusual for the Lord's Supper. One could think that this goes together with the "degradation" of the prayers. Originally the sacramental bread was blessed and distributed first as shown by 1 Corinthians 11:24, while the cup was blessed and shared after the meal. Then when the originally eucharistic prayers were used for the agape, the passage 9:3-4 remained as the tightly composed unit which it was, while the cup was put before it. The observation that the same sequence appears in 9:5 and 10:3 speaks for an original sequence bread-cup.
Our theory also makes a satisfactory explanation of the saying in the prayer after the meal possible: "You, almighty Lord, have created all things for the sake of your name, you have given food and drink to human beings to enjoy" (10:3a). The half-verse is striking and rather out of order inasmuch as it breaks the previously uniform eucharistic orientation and gives thanks for the creation of everything and for the natural food and drink provided for all human beings. The continuation (3b) links immediately back into the eucharistic track, however, and gives thanks again for the spiritual food and drink offered to Christians alone (yptv
6€).33. This shows verse 3a to be a development of the old (eucharistic) Vorlage, as an insertion which takes account of the character of the introductory meal section, which now has more the character of an agape. A stylistic peculiarity also strengthens the case that v.3a is an insertion, namely the striking expression é6gom0Ta TavToKpaTop instead of matep judy (9:2f) or taTEp
@ye (10:2) in the ancient Vorlage. The mention of the "spiritual" food and drink could be left intact, so that a backward look at the past eucharist becomes indeed a look ahead to what is still to come
(in 10:6). The old, pre-Didachist rule for the Lord's Supper, which excluded the unbaptized, could and probably did become the command in 9:5, and sounds like the exclusion from worship which appears already in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians
16:22 and Revelation 22:15. The formula of address ("your" eucharist) lets us recognize the editorial hand of the Didachist. So the eucharistic sayings of the verse group 9:2-4 distinguishes itself as ancient tradition, indeed also 9:5 and 10:2, 3b-5.
If one now takes the parts mentioned above as previously eucharistic texts which have been changed into an agape, then one can ask the question as to why the Christians of the oldest time—whether the Didachist himself or someone else before him?—at a certain point in time changed the pre-Didachist Lord's
Supper prayers for the development of the agape meal. A plausible, if not certain, reason could be that the agape originally had no strict rule; from 1 Corinthians 11:21 one sees how freely
33 The term xapiteoGou is chosen carefully and seems to refer to the eucharist.
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
and unliturgically it could be conducted, surely not just in Corinth but also elsewhere. The development, according to a general principle of growth of the church, pressed towards consolidation and defined ritual even for the fellowship meal. So one grasped at the old eucharistic formula, since this for its part did not describe the essence of the Lord's meal clearly and completely enough, and in this respect and function was no longer satisfactory. This formula was not simply discarded, but used for a better ritualization of the agape meal and, in so doing, used to order it more clearly in relation to the eucharist. The sentences have more to do with the confession of the community as a whole than the role of the liturgist.
If our thesis is correct, then the texts of Didache 9:2-5 and 10:2, 3b-5 had its original setting in life in a sacramental Lord's
Supper; in this case, however, they are interesting witnesses for the early history, indeed reach back into the Aramaic epoch of the church in the earliest time. They are, however, interesting not only in the history of liturgy but also in respect of the history of dogma. We will understand their content better if we report and observe their theological standpoint more precisely.
Il. THE POSITION OF THE DIDACHE PRAYERS IN THE
HISTORY OF IDEAS
The old eucharistic celebration which, in our opinion, is still reflected in Didache 9:2-5; 10:2, 3b-5, has its own theological stamp and gives the impression at first sight of a striking intellectual distance from the eucharistic celebration of the New
Testament accounts of its institution. Not that we have before us in Didache 9-10 a completely different action. Besides the above mentioned differences, the commonalities must also be emphasized. Even the celebration in the Didache revolves around bread and cup; the two elements are provided with a characteristic blessing, brought into particular connection with Jesus, are valued as holy and spiritual; the celebration effects the presence of the "Name" of God in the heart. Even if in veiled form, the institution of the meal by Jesus is reflected in the referral back of the stated mediums of salvation to revelation through Jesus as servant/son
(pais) of God (9:2f; 10:2, 3b). Above all, however, the common eschatological direction binds the celebration here and there, like a strong bracket—like a common womb; it is the outstanding mark of the Didache meal, as appears in 9:4—about which more below—and 10:6; it is however also a particular and essential foundation of the Synoptic and Pauline eucharistic meal, as Luke
22:15-18, Mark 14:25 and 1 Corinthians 11:26 testify.
At the same time the difference from the New Testament eucharistic proclamation remains considerable.
For its central
JOHANNES BETZ
thought, the reference of the action to the death of Jesus and the inauguration of a new covenant, the qualification of the gifts as the body of Jesus given for us and his blood poured out for us, are not mentioned in the Didache. Indeed, for this reason H. Lietzmann wants to find in the Didache a witness for an independent "Jerusalem" type of the eucharistic meal, which did not contain a report of the institution, which was not a repetition of the Last
Supper of Jesus and memorial of his death, but was a continuation of his earthly table fellowship with the disciples, joy over the spiritual presence of the Exalted One and expectation of his return.3+ Today this type is held to be the earliest stage of the whole development of the Lord's Supper.35 But the eucharistic chapter of the Didache does not justify such conclusions at all. It is improbable that the pre-Didache community celebrated a meal in which they took account of Jesus as God's pais, but ignored the particular institution of the meal which was already expressly stamped by the pais Christology, according to the oldest recognizable tradition.36 The texts of the Didache in no way exclude the report of the institution. They indeed only offer a part, not the whole, of what was spoken at the celebration, and draw more from the prayer response of the community than the liturgy which recited the account of the institution. The Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles in 10:7 expressly authorizes the prophets as appropriate cultic officials for a thanksgiving going beyond the extent of the accompanying formulae, and thus also leaves room for the recitation of the account of the institution, indeed considers it as the duty of the prophets, "who add to the righteousness and knowledge of the Lord" (11:2). On the other hand even the pericopes on Lord's Supper in the New Testament point back, for their part, clearly enough through their extensive Aramaic and their liturgical stylization'' to the cultic usage in the primitive Palestinian community.38 This all speaks against Lietzmann and for the assump34 Lietzmann, Mass and Lord's Supper, p. 195. Its basis is said to be the "breaking of bread" of the primitive community in Jerusalem. E. Lohmeyer ("Vom urchristlichen Abendmahl", 7hR 9 [1937] pp. 302ff; 7hR 10 [1938] pp. 92ff) provides a variation on Lietzmann's thesis and proposes a similar "Galilean" type, based above all on John's Gospel.
35 Cf. e.g. W. Marxsen, "The Lord's Supper as a Christological Problem" in The Beginning of Christology, trns. P. Achtemeier & L. Nieting (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1979).
36 On this see J. Betz, Die Eucharistie in der Zeit der griechischen Vater. 1.1:
Die Realprdsenz des Leibes und Blutes Jesu.im Abendmahl nach dem Neuen Testament (Freiburg: Herder, 1964) pp. 26-35.
37 Cf. Betz, Die Eucharistie 1.1, pp. 5-13; 16f; Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, pp.
111-115; 173-186.
38 Luke (22:15-20) and Paul (1 Cor 11:23ff) attest the liturgical usage of the words of Institution even for Syria and Antioch, which many see as the homeland of the Didache (cf. note 1). Luke is already closely linked with Antioch by his birth
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
tion that even the community of the Didache knew the account of the institution.2° However, it did not emphasize and elaborate it in its Lord's Supper theology. The Didache offers no independent
Lord's Supper type, but an independent Lord's Supper theology.
The latter relates more closely to the Johannine tradition.
Typical concerns of this tradition echo, when our eucharistic chapter describes Jesus as the revealer, when it speaks of the vine, when it brings the bread into connection with life and immortality and reckons it to the spiritual world, and when it prays for the sanctification and gathering of the church (cf. John 11:52).
Beyond material parallels*? the striking terminological agreements deserve particular attention. A list of the material and verbal analogies give the following picture:+!
Didache 9 compared with John Didache 10 compared with John evyaploreiv 6:11
EUTAN DORVAL
6:12
Qptedoc tek
TATED WYLE
7d yrwpivev 15:15; 17:26 dvopa LT: Goklye26 k\aona 6:12
KATQAOKNVODY
1:14 fan 6:35, 48 yaoi Kai mioTLc 6:69 faq Kai yr@ouc 17:3 fan aiavioc 6:54 dveoxoptiopévoy-ev 11:52
TVEVLATLKH TPOPH
6:63 év iets) 21 ptoacbat aTd Tovnpod 17:15 ouvaryewv 11:52
TENELODY EV AYATN
17:23 hn 25 enar 12. ayia few L717 AL9 This concordance, which does not show direct citations but instead a close relationship, justifies the conclusion that the two texts feed on the same eucharistic tradition, even from a common local tradition,42 which we might look for in North Palestine/
Syria. Now many of the roots, or at least influences, which also (according to the old Prologue to the Gospel and according to Eusebius, HE III.4,
6), both are linked to it by their life history. Cf. Acts 11:25; 13:1; Gal 1:21; 2:11.
39 The east Syrian Nestorian Liturgy of the Apostles Addai and Mari in any case contains (in the manuscripts and editions originating from later centuries!) no account of the institution. Its absence is an unsolved problem, but could be secondary, perhaps arising out of a fear of profanation of the holy words, perhaps also out of a valuation of the Epiclesus as a form of consecration; for further information see Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia® Il, p. 243.
40 For the eucharistic colouring of John 13, 15 and 17, cf. Betz, Die Eucharistie
11.1, pp. 169f.
41 Cf. W. von Léwenich, Das Johannesverstindnis im zweiten Jahrhundert (Berlin: Tépelmann, 1932) pp. 19f.
42 yon Loéwenich, Johannesverstdindnis, pp. 20-22, rejected by Audet, La Didaché, p. 175.
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stamp the fourth gospel, reach back to Syria.' If one seeks to define the relationship between Didache 9-10 and John's Gospel more exactly, then the early dating of the Didache eucharistic chapters does not permit a priori a literary dependence of this on John, nor does it establish its a-posteriority.44 On the contrary, one should say that the Fourth Gospel knew and used the eucharistic prayers and formulations of the Didache tradition, even if from the oral stream of tradition. It cannot be shown that he had the Didache as a literary entity before him and used it, even if this could not be completely excluded. The relationship between the Didache and Johannine sayings can be expressed as follows: What the Didache says preliminarily and briefly, is amplified, clarified, and more strongly Christologized in the Fourth Gospel. We should not, however, without more ado, read back into the Didache the temporally later and amplified insights of the Fourth Gospel.
The theological principle of interpretation, with whose help the community represented by the Didache tradition made their cult meal understandable—how could it be otherwise—is the Old
Testament. So they understood their eucharistic meal as the fulfillment of the Old Testament pronouncements and promises. In this context one can immediately point out that Scripture often refers to revelation and its gift with the picture of food and drink*5, the longing for these things as hunger and thirst**, their reception as eating and drinking,4? and so the existential meaning of these things is expressed. Even eschatological salvation is described as a rich and universal feast.48 The observation, that in the late period of the Old Testament revelation was categorized as Wisdom and viewed as a meal, leads us still closer to the Didache. Wisdom appears as the embodiment of revelation: it is, on the one hand, identified with the Torah (Sir 24:23; Bar 4:1), but is, on the other
43 Cf. R. Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St John I (London: Burns & Oates, 1968) p. 152: "The Johannine tradition, originating in Palestine, was subjected to Syrian influences before it reached Asia Minor (Ephesus), where it was fixed and edited".
44 Schnackenburg, Gospel of John I, p. 198: "There are undoubtedly formal similarities of language (e.g. between Did. 9:4, and Jn 11:52), but whether they are enough to prove direct knowledge of John remains questionable".
45 According to Jeremiah 15:16, God's commands are food of the prophets; according to Isaiah 55:1-3, God's promises are an unusually given meal of bread and water; according to Psalm 16:5, Yahweh is the "portion of the cup".
46 Am 8:11, 14; Sir 24:21; Mt 5:6.
47 Sir 24:21.
48 Ts 25:6; 65:13; Ez 34:13f; 1 En 62:14f; 2 En 42:5: ApocBaruch 29:3-8: for the Rabbinic material see H. L. Strack & P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum NT aus
Talmud und Midrasch IV (Miinchen: C. H. Beck, 19264) p. 840, pp. 1154ff. NT:
Mt 8:11; 22:1-14; Lk 22:15-18, 29f; Mk 14:25; Rev. 3:20; 19:7, 9.
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
257. hand, seen as proclaimer and revealer (Pr 1-9; Sir 24:8f; Bar 3:38) and personified (Wisd 7-9). If an oriental myth indicates that wisdom comes from above, seeks a resting place among human beings, gives up and returns,49 nevertheless the Old Testament declares that the pre-existent Wisdom abiding with God seeks and finds a home in Israel (Sir 24:8-11; Bar 3:37f), as it is identical with the Torah. Its role is thus descent. Secondly, Wisdom, like revelation, is expressed in terms of meal. On one occasion it is itself presented as food and drink (Sir 24:23); another time it is the provider of true sustenance, namely the "tree of life" (Pr
3:18). In Sirach 24:13-17 it is further compared with other trees, among which are even the "vine, which brings yd&pic" (24:17
LXX). Finally it emerges also as host and provider of a meal.
According to Sirach 15:3 it feeds the wise with bread and gives water to the insightful.
Proverbs 9:1-6 sounds particularly emphatic. There Wisdom gives a feast, invites the simple and the unlearned to it, offers them their bread and their wine, provides life, knowledge and wisdom (9:6 LXX: év yvdoer obveo.v).5°
If appearances do not deceive, the pre-Didache community took over these ideas and with their help, freely and not in verbal dependence, expressed their eucharistic meal which derived from Jesus, indeed considered it as the fulfillment of the wisdom meal mentioned in the Old Testament. It thus developed the Old Testament sophiological motif further, saw in the wisdom meal expressed there not only an allegorical entity, not only a literary form of expression,>! but a true sacramental reality, which the servant/son of God, Jesus, had disclosed (Didache 9:2f; 10:2f). For it is most easily understood against the background of wisdom ideology if the liturgy of the Didache gives thanks especially for the "vine" (9:2, cf. Sir 24:17), for "life and knowledge" (9:3; 10:2, cf. Pr 9:6). Even the characteristic thought of the descent of Wisdom and its dwelling down below with human beings, together with the corresponding term xataoxnvodv echoes in Didache
10:2; it is then further developed in John 6, and so the eucharist is proclaimed as sacramental incarnation (Jn 6:57f). The theology coming to expression in Didache 9-10 thus has—this provides further support for our interpretation—done the same in the case of the eucharistic meal as also is to be confirmed for the most ancient
Christology: in both a secret is illuminated by means of Old Testa49 Cf. 1 En 42:1-2; for further attestations see G. Fohrer, "aodia", TDNT VII, pp. 490ff; U. Wilckens, TDNT VII, pp. 508f.
50 If one may point to the Song of Solomon on the relationship of Wisdom to the soul, then Song of Songs 5:1 could also count as evidence for the Wisdom meal.
— 51 One could only raise the question as to whether the Christian community could build on the foundation of an actual Jewish cultic meal in honour of Wisdom, but not prove it; there were religious meals in Judaism, cf. e.g. at Qumran.
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ment Wisdom teaching, in the one case the sacrament, in the other case the person of Jesus; so a Wisdom Christology is also developed and with its help, for example, the pre-existence of Jesus is brought to consciousness.°*?
This background in the history of ideas prevents one from taking the meal prayers of Didache 9f as a product of Hellenistic thought, as has often happened, on the basis of the concepts of life, knowledge, immortality which occur here. How typically
Jewish Christian these texts are will become still clearer if we examine their dogmatic content.
Ill. THE EUCHARISTIC-DOGMATIC CONTENT OF THE
TWO MEAL CHAPTERS
If, according to our thesis, the expressions in Didache 9:2-5; 10:2, 3b-5 go back in their original usage to the eucharistic meal, like the old call to repentance in 10:6, then the.two text groups can complement and illuminate one another and can be used for mutual interpretation.
The general character of the celebration, its basis and essence, come to expression already in the concept which penetrates the whole like a Leitmotiv and stands in its substantive form as a title over the whole: evyapiotetvy. The term possesses considerable dogmatic relevance. It is, like its equivalent in meaning evdoyetv, with which it alternates in the Biblical institution accounts, a translation of the Hebrew 972 (berak, Aramaic: 4?73) and must be interpreted on that basis from the berakah concept.%3
The Hebrew verb indicates on the one hand the blessing of human beings by God and understands by this the empowerment of human beings by him. It is however also used of the "blessing" of God by human beings. The human "blesses" God, in that s/he recognizes him as author of her/his well being and salvation and confesses in praise God's history-making power as decisive for him/her. From the spontaneous cry of praise to God the berakah developed in Israel to a reflected fixed doxological blessing used above all in the cult. At the time of the Didache it was used as such for different occasions; it governed also the official Jewish
52 Cf, Mt 11:19; 12:42; Mk 6:2; Lk 11:49; 1 Cor 1:24-30; Col 2:3; on this see U. Wilkens, "copia" (IDNT VII, PP. 514-525); E. Schweizer, Neotestamentica
(Ziirich-Stuttgart: Zwingli, 1963) pp. 105-109.
%3 For the following see J. P. Audet, "Literary Forms and Contents of a Normal Evxaprotia in the First Century", in Studia Evangelica (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag,
1959 [TU 73]) pp. 643-662); also Didaché, pp. 276-402; L. Clerici, "Einsammlung der Zerstreuten. Liturgiegeschichtliche Untersuchungen tiber die Vorund Nachgeschichte der Fiirbitte fiir die Kirche in Did 9,4 und 10,5", LOF 44 (1966) pp. 5-47.
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
chief prayer, the Shemone Esre.5+ The particular "thanksgivings" of the Didache are Christianized developments of such Jewish blessings, from which they take over the formal structure, function and meaning. Like the Jewish berakah the Christian eucharist is an acknowledging praise of God for his beneficent power in history, a memorial of the redemptive activity of God and praise for that, anamnesis and confession, which break out at the existential wonder of God's deed. This existential moment comes up in particular in the Greek term evxapioreiy, since translated literally it means: "to behave as one who has received much". It expresses on the one hand praise for God's gracious act, and on the other hand the human's wonder at it and his answer to it.55 The one giving thanks understands her/his concrete existence from the gracious power of God, s/he thinks not anthropocentrically nor individualistically but theocentrically.5¢
Besides the formal proximity, the material proximity of the Didache eucharistic prayers to the Jewish table blessing has already long been observed. The Jewish blessing for the cup is:
"Blessed are you, Yahweh, our God, King of the World, because you created the fruit of the vine".57 Over the bread the Israelite prays: "Blessed are you, Yahweh, our God, King of the world, who brings forth bread from the earth."58 The prayer of thanks after the meal has the following content: (1) "Blessed are you,
Lord, our God, King of the world, who provides the whole world with goodness, grace, mercy. (2) We thank you, Lord, our God, that you have given us for possession a good and wide land. (3)
Have mercy, Lord, our God, over Israel, your people, and over Jerusalem, your city, and over Zion, the dwelling place of your glory, and over your Temple and over your dwelling and over the kingdom of the house of David, the messiah of your righteousness
(of your righteous messiah). Blessed are you, Yahweh, God of David, who builds Jerusalem."5? The thanksgiving for knowledge
54 The "Eighteen Prayers", also called the Tefilla.
55 We try to hold both aspects together when we translate ebxapiorety with "give thanks and praise" (see above).
56 Audet, "Literary Forms", p. 644; Didaché, 378f, allows as the proper sense of evyapioreiv only the praise and the anamnesis of the action of God and rejects the rendering "thanksgiving", because this is only anthropocentric conduet; he is mistaken in this. C. Westermann (Das Loben Gottes in den Psalmen?} (Gottingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963] p. 23), and in conjunction with him also indeed Clerici (Einsammlung der Zerstreuten, p. 15), similarly considers the thanksgiving for an individualistic activity and mere sentiment.
57 m.Ber 6:1; O. Holtzmann, Der Tosephtatraktat Berakot (GieBen: Tépelmann, 1912) p. 73; Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar IV, p. 616.
58 m. Ber 6:1; Holtzmann, p. 73; Strack-Billerbeck Kommentar I, p. 685.
59 14. Berakoth of the Palestinian recension (Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar IV, p. 213).
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in Didache 9:3 and 10:2 reminds one of the fourth prayer of the Tefilla: "O favour us, our Father, with knowledge from you and with understanding and discernment from your Torah. Blessed are you, O Lord, gracious Giver of knowledge".® Here as everywhere the Jewish Berakah does not speculate abstractly over God's essence, but reflects on Yahweh's all-powerful might which works itself out in history. In the same way the Jewish Christian prayers in the Didache give thanks for salvation-historical blessings, which only are made known through the revelation of Jesus
(9:2f; 10:2) and belong to revelation.
Exegesis of particular parts of the text, to which we now turn, must bear this in mind. It is not the simple natural gift of wine (which the Israelite could even consider as a salvationhistorical gift because it is a product of the God-given land) for which thanks are given in the blessings over cup and bread, nor is it "hellenistic" ideal gifts like knowledge and immortality: rather these are concrete redemptive gifts based on salvation-historical revelation. As far as the present sequence is concerned it is indeed secondary.®! Since, in our context, we are reading Didache 9-10 as a previously eucharistic text, we keep to the old order and begin with the thanksgiving for the bread (9:3).
Particularly striking here is the terminological peculiarity, kAg@oua, in the introductory remark.
Even this will have originated from the Didachist as a rubric, it is nevertheless already found in the vocabulary of the prayer, as 9:4 shows. The word hangs naturally together with the typically ancient Christian usage of the "breaking of the bread". The expression xAcoucg Tod
@pTou serves in the New Testament time, on the one hand, as an expression for the combined general meal and sacramental cult meal of the Christians (Acts 2:42, 46), indicating the breaking of the bread in the wider sense, on the other hand, it becomes a special term for the nucleus of the celebration, the sacramentaleucharistic act,®? indicating the breaking of the bread in the narrow sense. The latter sense occurs also in Didache 14:1. We do not exclude the possibility that the word kAdopa, which means the agape bread in the present text of Didache 9:1-4, was already used for bread of the Lord's Supper. Then it would share the double meaning with xAcotcs Tod &prTov.
The blessing over the bread gives thanks for "the life and knowledge" which have been revealed through the servant Jesus.
The naming of these salvation goods can lead to the assumption 6° Palestinian recension (Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar IV, p. 211).
61 See above p. 254.
62 So Acts 20:7, 11;.1 Cor 10:16; above all Mk 14:22; Mt 26:26; Lk 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24; dubious Lk 24:30, 35; cf. E. von Severus, RAC II (1954) pp. 620-626.
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
that hellenistic religiosity comes to expression here.6? But these concepts do not only play an important role in hellenism but also in the Old Testament, and it is in the latter that the point of connection is to be sought. The predicate "life", as embodiment of God's gift, is identified especially with the Torah in the Old Testa- 'ment as also in the Rabbis,® which is identified with Wisdom.
This Torah is allegorized as the bread and wine of its dependents—especially in connection with Proverbs 9:5f.66 The above mentioned passage in Proverbs 9:5f (LXX) promises life and knowledge to partakers in the meal of Wisdom. In Proverbs 3:18 this functions as "tree of life". Behind this as the immediate reference point for Didache 9:3 lies that Old Testament passage in which the two salvation gifts of life and knowledge are expressly cited, indeed as real food: Genesis 2:9 tells of the tree of life and the tree of knowledge in Paradise, of those ominous trees on which the course of salvation history turned. The forbidden taste of the tree of knowledge led human beings to death (Gen 2:17;
3:19); the taste of the tree of life, which was intended but unfulfilled, should have brought them immortality (Gen 3:22).
Significantly "immortality" appears together with "knowledge" and "faith" now also in Didache 10:2 as the fruit of the cult-meal.
Through the naming of these salvation gifts in 9:3 and 10:2 the eucharist is presented as the renewed gift of paradise in Genesis
2:9. Their description as "holy" in 9:5 and as "spiritual food" in 10:3 confirms this interpretation. While it might at first seem surprising, it is supported by the following consideration.
The understanding of the Lord's Supper as a gift of paradise is rooted particularly in its eschatological character. The primitive community considered their Lord's Supper as the paradisal gift of salvation, because it considered it primarily as eschatological event and gift of salvation. Since, indeed, according to ancient belief, the end time repeats the first time, the Didache meal as an event of the end time repeats the gifts of the first time. The eschatological orientation comes most clearly into focus in the cry of 10:6
"Let grace come and let the world pass away!
Maranatha!" By the "grace" which is implored is meant the com63 M. Dibelius ("Mahlgebete", ZNW 37 [1938] pp. 34-41) postulates as the prototype of our Didache prayer (and the intermediary between this and the Hebrew table prayers) prayers of Hellenistic Judaism. L. Clerici (Einsammlung der Zerstreuten, p. 37) considers the salvatory blessings of life, knowledge, faith, immortality as "stark hellenistisch gefarbt".
64 Sir 17:11; 45:4; Pr 8:35; cf. Acts 7:38.
65 Attested by Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar Ill, pp. 129ff. Cf. also P. Borgen, Bread from Heaven (Leiden: Brill, 1965) p. 148.
66 Attested Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar Il, pp. 482ff: (ExR 25c); 483f (GenR 70, 44d, 44; GenR 54, 34c; Pesigta 178a; 614 (Pesigta 102b).
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pleted eschatological salvation, which the Lord will bring with his return. The prayer for the gathering and uniting of the church in the coming kingdom also implores, intends and actualizes the eschatological state of consummation. The one bread made out of the many grains of corn is already a natural symbol for the present unity of Christians in the Church. It points, however, still more to the future perfect unity, because it is itself in its real essence already a foretaste of the paradisal future gift.
What is new and unheard of in the belief of the Christian community is that the end time has already started in Jesus. Corresponding with this is the idea that the paradisal gifts of life, knowledge and immortality are being given as food in the eucharist, which is only the translation of a late-Jewish apocalyptic expectation into a Christian one. In other words, apocalyptic considered the end time salvation as the recurrence of paradise or as the re-emergence of a paradise which has been hidden and kept in readiness until now.*7 In this expectation the tree of life already played an important role. The Ethiopian Enoch knew of a secret tree, which stood in the eschatological world (24), invisible for the mortal and preserved for the final judgment, but then given over to those who have been judged and saved. "Its fruit serves then as food for the elect; it will be planted in the holy Place, in the Temple of the Lord, of the everlasting King" (35:4). According to 4 Ezra 8:52 "paradise is opened, the tree of life planted, the future world prepared, the blessing made ready" for the elect. The Apocalypse of Moses promises its hero that the gift of the tree of life, immortality, would be given to him at the time of the resurrection (28:4). Finally the Testament of Levi 18:10 says of the new priest-king: "He will open the door of paradise and take away the sword which threatened Adam. And he will give the holy to eat of the tree of life, and the Spirit of holiness will rest on them." If here eating from the tree of life fills the partaker with the Spirit of Holiness, then this reminds one of the "spiritual food" of Didache
10:3. The passage cited, and indeed according to many the whole book of the Testament of Levi, probably comes from JewishChristianity.
The New Testament also shows in a few texts of secret revelation that the expectation of receiving a share in the tree of life was really alive in primitive Christianity also. In Revelation
2:7 the promise goes: "To the victor I will give to eat of the tree of life, which stands in the paradise of God." Above all in Ch. 22 the tree of life is mentioned three times (v.2, 14, 19). We have good reason to believe that the reference to the tree of life in 67 Besides the examples cited above, the following texts:
2 En 65:9-10; 4 Ezr 7:36, 123; ApocBar 4:6; ApocMos 13:2.
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
Revelation 22 is nourished by the liturgy,®8 especially as this was considered to be a pre-enactment of the end time salvation. On the other hand the brief formulation of the benediction of Didache
9:3, the brief proclamation of "life and knowledge", requires explanation and interpretation. Revelation 22 allows one to recognize, or at least to assume, that the tree of life really played a role in the liturgy, in a liturgy close to the Didache.® But then one must assume that the Didache's salvation gifts of life, (knowledge) and immortality stand in connection with it, that the eucharistic bread was believed to be a gift of the renewed paradise.
A certain support for this understanding of the bread formulae of the Didachist could perhaps be offered by an early
Christian writing. It concerns a eucharistically coloured homily in an appendix handed on with the Letter of Diognetus numbered as its eleventh and twelfth chapters. It introduces itself as from a (pseudepigraphal) pupil of an apostle and purports to offer traditional material.
It also contains genuine elements of tradition, which one meets in the Didache prayers, but extensively reinterprets them. Its chief theme is the ever new birth of the Logos, which was from the beginning and appears anew in the hearts of Christians. This may be an echo of Didache 10:2. The words which the Logos preaches, through whom he chooses and when he chooses (11:7), remind one of Didache 10:7. Further, the inside of the participant is seen as a blissful paradise, because in him the tree of knowledge and the tree of life have been planted. And this is seen as the sense of the text of Genesis 2:9, that in the beginning God planted the tree of knowledge and the tree of life in the middle of paradise, by which he indicates that life is through knowledge. Gnosis is placed in connection with the heart, and life is placed in connection with the Logos. The value of these sayings for us lies in the fact that the sermon names knowledge and life as cultic fruits of salvation and bases this on Genesis 2:9. Here the tradition of Didache 9:3 may, circumstances permitting, be at work, but it is de-eschatologized and interpreted in a spiritualmoralizing way in the manner of Philo.7° This composition could be perhaps a further Alexandrian development of old tradition in the manner of Didache Of.
The blessing of the cup gives thanks for the "holy vine of David", which Jesus has proclaimed as a reality (9:2). The con68 Cf. A. Hamman, "La Priére" (in Le Nouveau Testament [Tournai, 1959] pp.
348ff). O. Cullmann (Salvation in History (London: SCM, 1967] p. 319) makes the claim that, "The whole book [Revelation] could and should be explained in the light of early Christian worship."
69 In Rev 22:20 we find the translated Maranatha of Did. 10:6; the "shoot of David" in Rev 22:16 is closely related to the "vine of David" in Did. 9:2.
70 Philo already allegorizes in a similar sense; cf. LegAll 111.59; Plant 8-9.
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cept of the "vine" is directly bound up with the contents of the cup, the eucharistic element in the cup, but names the causa pro causato, the cause instead of the fruit. It is, however, not only a matter of the natural product found in the cup, but of a salvationhistorical quantity, which is clearly used in connection with the cup. The term "vine" is found also in the Jewish Berakah formula for the wine. In the Old Testament the vine stands as a picture for Israel,7i but also for the royal house (Ez 19:10-14) and for the (royal) representative of the people of Israel (Ez 17:6-10; Ps
80:16, 18). Wisdom is praised in Sirach 24:17 as a vine which produces lovely shoots or, according to the LXX, xa&puc. The picture of the vine is also found in the environment of the Didache.
In the roughly contemporaneous Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (c.100-130 C.E.), it describes the Messiah.72
Occasionally, Mandaism also uses the predicate "vine" for its heavenly sent Manda de-Hayye.73 Above all, however, John's Gospel should be named in this context, where Jesus proclaims himself as the true vine (15:1-10). Over against this Didache 9:2 offers no open comparison of the vine with Jesus, but only proclaims him as the revealer of the vine. In any case, we cannot simply carry the clear
Johannine identification over into the Didache, but must rather seek to bring out the peculiarity of the Didache's understanding of the picture. It is characterized by the genitive qualification "of David". But what is to be understood by the "vine of David"? The Christians of that time knew it or introduced it into the homily; we must try to find an interpretation carefully.
A first interpretation' treats the mention of "David" as a reference to the author [of Psalms], who gives us an explanation of the vine cited here. David is seen as the composer of the Psalms?>, and he speaks in Psalm 80 (79):8 of a vine which Yahweh brought out of Egypt and planted, but which now is laid low; by this Israel is meant. In conclusion to this, the Psalmist prays for Yahweh's protection for the son (LXX Son of Man), whom this refers to (v.16, 18).
This passage was messianically understood.
From Psalm 80, so many interpreters say, the Didache community understood the "holy vine of David" as the new Israel in itself, as well as the messiah Jesus. In this inter71 Ts 27:2-6; Jer 2:21; Ez 15:6; Hos 10:1; Ps 80:9. In LAB 12:8f Israel is interpreted as a cosmic vine; cf. TDNT VII, p. 1071.
72 ApocBar 36:6f; 37:1; 39:7 with 40:1.
73 On this cf. esp. R. Borig, Der wahre Weinstock. Untersuchungen zu Jo 15,110 (Miinchen: K6sel, 1967 [SANT 16]) pp. 135-198.
7 In opposition to A. Harnack represented by Lietzmann, Mass and Lord's Supper, p. 190; R. Eisler, "Das letzte Abendmahl", ZNW 25 (1926) pp. 6-12. ne Cf. Mk 12:35f Acts 2:25, 34; 4:25; Rom 4:6; 11:9; (perhaps also 2 Macc
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
pretation the material understanding of the concept "vine" remains noteworthy; against this, it is less satisfactory that David here is seen primarily as literary author.
A second attempt at the interpretation of Didache 9:2 also considers David as author, but this time as guardian of belief in the resurrection. For primitive Christianity he was regarded, on the basis of Psalm 16:8-11, as the supreme prophet of the resurrection of Jesus. In Acts, Peter (2:25-28) and Paul (13:34f) point to the resurrection of Jesus with the help of the prophecy in Psalm
16:8-11, in that they relate to Christ the saying that the flesh does not remain abandoned in the underworld and the holy One need not see corruption. The resurrection of Jesus means, according to Acts 13:34, the realization of the salvation gifts promised to David in Isaiah 55:3. Connected to this idea many authors see in the Didache's "vine of David" a remembrance of the resurrection.76
This interpretation is right, if it begins with the evaluation of the David-figure in the primitive community and emphasizes the salvation event bound up with this name. That corresponds also fully to the anamnesis meaning of a primitive Christian eucharist.
Certainly the oldest meal fellowship was also deeply touched and determined by the resurrection of Jesus. (Even the "immortality" mentioned in the post-communion thanks is according to 1 Cor
15:33 a resurrection gift.) It is only unclear how the thought of the resurrection hangs together with the pictorial representation of the vine. The two interpretations set out above correspond more closely to the viewpoint of modern people, who occupy themselves in a literary way with the ideas of the Didache than the viewpoint of the oldest Christians, who lived in them.
The salvation-historical meaning of David is not exhausted by the fact that he speaks of the vine and prophesies the resurrection of Jesus. He is much more pre-eminent in himself, in his réle as a salvation figure chosen by God and a:sign of salvation, i.e. as the ancestor of the Messiah.7' To this extent the messianic salvation derives from him and, where this is realized, David comes into view as a consequence (cf. Lk 1:69). The Old Testament presented the Messiah as the sprout of David, as the heir to David's throne or as the new David.78 To this extent the New Testament also knew of the Davidic sonship of Jesus? as a factor, even if not 76 So Audet, Didache, pp. 425f.
77 Cf, 2 Sam 7:12; Acts 2:30.
78 Sprout of David: Is 11:1ff; Jer 23:5; Davidic claimant to the throne: Is 9:5; new David: Jer 30:9; Ez 34:23f; 37:24; Is 55:3f.
79° Rom' 1:3; 15:12; Mk 10:48; 12:35, 37; Mt 1:1, 6; 9:27; 12:23; 15:22; 20:30f; 21:9, 15; Lk 1:32; 1:69; 2:4, 11; 3:31; Acts 13:22f; Jn 7:42. On this see
W. Michaelis, "Die Davidssohnschaft Jesu als historisches und kerygmatisches Problem" in H. Ristow-K. Mattiae (eds), Der historische Jesus und der kerygmatische Christus? (Berlin: Evangelische-Verlagsanstalt, 1962) pp. 317-330.
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the essence, of his messiahship.8° This fact can also be expressed in a picture, that comes closer to the expression "vine of David" in Didache 9:2: the Book of Revelation, which is bound up with the Didache tradition, twice calls Jesus the "root/sprout of David"
(5:5; 22:16). From this it is a short step to the conclusion that the (pre)Didache description of the cup as "vine of David" is to be explained as a modification and concretization of the idea of Davidic sonship, as its translation into the Eucharist, conditioned by the particular character of the Lord's Supper. At the same time the description of Wisdom as a vine in Sirach 24:17 can also have conditioned the choice of the expression. This would then mean that the function of Wisdom has realized and fulfilled itself in the Davidic descendent Jesus and in the Lord's Supper proclaimed as a reality by him. To this extent the pre-Didache Lord's Supper acknowledges with its benediction of the cup that in Jesus the expected Davidic messiah and Wisdom have come, and that he makes present his coming sacramentally in the eucharistic drink; since the benediction is indeed said over the cup.
Our interpretation of the expression "vine of David" as the messianic son of David, Jesus, has indeed another support in the Hosanna cry of 10:6, which takes up the Davidic motif. Of course the exact form of this latter has not been unanimously handed down from a text-critical point of view.8! The oldest reading, because it is the most difficult, would appear however to be the Coptic version: "Hosanna to the House®? of David!" The content of this formulation fits well with the "vine of David", as it has been interpreted by us. The cry of praise is valid for the family of David because God "has erected in it a shield of salvation" (Lk
1:69), has chosen it as the way and means of his salvation plan.®3 Even the other readings "son of David" and "God of David" preserve at least the reference to David as salvation-historical figure.
80 Cf. Mk 12:35-37.
81 The Greek and Georgian version read 6e@, the coptic otk, Const VI. 26:5 reads vid.
82 So also Audet, Didaché, p. 236; grounds for this pp. 62-67; cf. also p. 420.
The reading @e@ can be explained as an explanatory change or carelessness, vi@ as (consciously or unconsciously) parallelism to Mt 21:9. Audet (ibid., p. 63) makes the further observation that Origen's reads otkw in Mt 21:9 (cf. the ed. of Tischendorf). The Shemoneh Esreh also calls on God for the kingdom of David
(Palestinian edition fourteenth benediction) or for the sprout of David (Babylonian edition fifteenth benediction). Beyond Audet's reasons the reading ofxw receives a support through our exegesis.
83 Audet's further proposal, that by the House of David is intended not only the family but also the Temple and in our case the interior space in which the eucharist
Seat (pp. 420-423), derives more from fantasy than from critical historical inking.
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Finally, in interpreting the image of the "vine", it must be still considered and taken into account that it has predominantly a collective meaning in the Old Testament and refers to the people of Israel, and further that the Jewish Christians who used it still preserved and kept this aspect in mind, even if they understood it primarily in a Christological sense. So it should be supposed that it referred at the same time both to Christ and to Christians. This assumption is all the more probable since the Lord's Supper is already the place where the one Christ unfolds to the multitude of Christians and draws this multitude back again into unity in himself. In Pauline terms, the one bread, the eucharistic body of Christ, is extended to the manifold ecclesial body of Christ and again drawn together (cf. 1 Cor 10:17). In fact our eucharistic prayers speak of the unification and "gathering of the church into the kingdom" (9:4 and 10:5) and at the same time see a symbolic representation of this event in the unification of the many grains into the bread (9:4). This present sense means at the same time a foretaste of the eschatological unification. So the ecclesial unification of Christians is thus expressly brought into connection with the bread in 9:4, while in 10:5 in any case it is referred generally to the meal event. But a collective, ecclesial note intrudes even in the image of the vine of David, 1.e. the inclusion of the Christian in Christ. The Gospel of John brings this explicitly to expression when it speaks of the branches on the vine (15:2, 5).
Our study leads to the conclusion that the anamnesis thanksgiving for the "holy vine of David" refers primarily to the person of Jesus as the Davidicy Messiah, but secondarily also to the meal fellowship constituted and actualized by him. So we come in fact close to the Johannine understanding of the vine,* without having started from this clear expression as a history of religions proof text. The Didache speaks in veiled form, John expresses the same conviction openly. The characterization of the vine as Davidic interprets the actual historical passage of the salvation event; it emphasizes that the messianic salvation which came in Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise given to David. The realization of this in the Old Testament, however, is represented as the constitution of a divine covenant, as an everlasting covenant in Isaiah 55:3, as a covenant of peace in Ez 34:25. So lines can also be drawn from the Davidic motif to the covenant thought, which the New Testament cup formula expressly and explicitly declares, though the accounts of the institution base the new covenant in the shed blood of Jesus and thus in the death of Jesus.
For the pre-Didache liturgy, on the other hand, the messianic 84 Cf. Borig, Der wahre Weinstock, pp. 248f.
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event in general stands in the foreground; the death of Jesus echoes only softly in the concept of the servant of God.
We must come back once more to the expression "vine".
This time we need to observe the peculiarity that the messianic event conjured up by the word is specifically expressed in this picture. It is clearly chosen with reference to the content of the cup, wine. In itself it allows other metaphors to be thought of also. The Messianic event remembered in the benediction is thus in conscious approximation to the contents of the cup, expressed in sacramental clothing, eucharistized. In view of this fact one can scarcely escape the conclusion that, even at that time in the Aramaic community, there was believed to be an ontic correspondence between the salvation event expressed in the word and the meal elements. The saying over the bread also gives just such a close ontic relation between the proclaimed gift of salvation and the meal element, even if this can also not be seen at first sight. That is, if "the life and knowledge" really are to be understood as the paradisal gifts according to Gen 2:9 and now are said over the bread, then everything suggests that those gifts were believed to be renewed here and that the present meal elements mediate those salvation gifts, even if in a more particularly qualitative fashion.
The particular ontic nature of the elements of the sacramental meal is revealed further in the instructions in 10:6 and 9:5.
Certainly the command in 10:6, that only the holy may enter while the unholy must do penance, relates to the eucharist and shows this to be a numinous quantity. The command to be holy here is often understood from baptism, the warning to penance correspondingly to the command to receive baptism.®> If, however, one considers the Pauline deliberations in 1 Corinthians 11:27-31 and the Didache instruction of 14:1 to confess sins before the eucharistic celebration, then it is more probable that in 10:6 the ethical holiness of the already baptized is required. In any case the eucharist appears itself as "holy" food, which places demands on the receiver.
We have a parallel to 10:6 in 9:5, according to which only baptized may eat from the "eucharist", because it is a matter of "the holy". Now of course the difficult question arises as to what then is meant by "eucharist" here. In the present framework of the Didache meal chapters the saying 9:5 stands inside the meal proper. That leads to the conclusion that the term evxapiotian refers here to the agape meal, which is thus given a highter value because it is reserved to the baptized.8* Only that is not certain; it
85 So Audet, Didache, p. 415.
86 This proposal is presented by Audet, Didaché, p. 415.
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
could also be that the injunction in 9:5, pronounced in the sequence of the agape, does not refer to the agape itself but serves as a prior warning for the following sacramental offering.
The fact that it is valued as "the holy" speaks rather for the second interpretation.
In addition the term edxyapioria has the tendency in the history of language to move from a wider meaning to an ever more technical term for the sacramental Lord's Supper.
Is it likely that the Didachist at the end of the first century would have introduced the word expressly for the agape? However that may be, even if the term evxapiotia and the whole saying of 9:5 relates to the sacrament or to the agape in the present text, nevertheless, according to our theory developed above, the present text of the agape of Didache 9:1-10:5 contains earlier eucharistic sayings. If this is correct, then Didache 9:5 is also an early witness for the Lord's Supper and enlightens its essence: it presupposes baptism, that is membership of Christ; it is itself "the holy" and as evxyapiotia is the objectivation of the remembered salvation event.
Furthermore, the Prayer after the Meal casts light on the eucharistic faith of the Didache tradition, also on the rest of its sayings, which bring further essentials to prominence. It begins with the thanks to the Father for his holy Name, which he has allowed to take up residence in the hearts of participants. This fact, pulled into the foreground, is clearly considererd to be a decisive aspect. Here it needs to be asked first of all what is to be understood by "holy Name". The qualifying ood identifies it as belonging to the Father. What is meant, however, is hardly the personal name "Father" itself, with which we should address God according to the instruction of Jesus (Mt 6:9; Did 8:2) and consequently also not the indwelling of the "Father" personally, as proclaimed in John 14:23. This interpretation would break out of the otherwise consistent Christo-centric thought process. Rather the concept "the Name" in Didache 10:2, as also in many other primitive Christian sayings, serves as a circumlocution for Jesus the Son. This usage grew out of the Biblical Name-ideology. Here the Name stands for the person, insofar as s/he reveals her/himself, or becomes apparent. The "holy Name" for which the preDidache liturgy gives thanks relates now not to the person of the Father as such8' but to the other person who reveals him, in whom he is recognizable and visible in the sense of the Johannine Jesus:
"He who sees me, sees the Father" (John 14:9). The term "the'
Name" used in an absolute sense appears also in the New Testament, especially in old Palestinian layers of tradition, in Acts,%
87 Audet (Didache, p. 431) affirms this.
88 Cf. Acts 4:18 v.1; 5:41; probably also Acts 4:17; 5:28; further 1 Pet 4:16 (?);
3.0
JOHANNES BETZ
further in early Christian writing in Ignatius of Antioch,® also in the Gnostic literature.°° Of particular importance for us is the witness of Irenaeus of Lyon, because he uses it in the eucharistic context. He interprets the saying about the Name which would be glorified among the peoples in Malachi 1:10f, the early Christian locus classicus for the Lord's Supper, as "no other than that of our Lord, through whom the Father is glorified and the human being. Because it is the name of his own Son, however, and because he has made human beings, so he names him with his own Name".%! One would not be much in error if one sees in this exegesis of the Church Father an old exegetical tradition, which reaches back into Didache 10:2. It is further noteworthy that the prophecy of Malachi in abbreviated form occurs also in Didache
14:3, but in the context of the mention of the Name marveled at by all peoples also. So it seems to us sufficiently justified to understand the "holy Name" in Didache 10:2 as the person of the Son Jesus.92 This interpretation fits—and that. also speaks for it—perfectly into the eucharistic context.
The xataoxnvody of the Name mentioned in the text also points in the same direction. The term is significant. With it the Old Testament expresses the particular dwelling of the Name of God in a particular place.%3 It is also a key concept of the Old
Testament theology of Wisdom and allows us to see this as the theological background of the Didache prayers. According to Sirach 24, Wisdom had its home in heaven, but then found its particular dwelling and rest in Israel (v. 8) in the realization of salvation history. Identical with the Torah (Bar 4:1), she became visible in Israel (Bar 3:37: &@n). The root oxnvody describes the incarnate existence of the Logos in John 1:14, so that (kaTa)oxynvody reveals an incarnationally oriented perspective. On the basis of Didache 10:2, the eucharist®4 is recognizable as the sacramental descent and indwelling of Jesus in the heart of human beings, and indeed, since the saying serves as thanks for the meal,
89 Eph 3:1; 7:1; Phid 10:1.
Re 80:6f; 81:25f (M.Malinine-H.C.Puech-G.Quispel [Ziirich, 1956] pp.
38-40).
°1 AdvHaer IV.17:6 (11.200 Harvey).
* This interpretation of "the Name"=Jesus is also represented by J. Daniélou, A History of Early Christian Doctrine Before the Council of Nicaea I: The Theology of Jewish Christianity (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1964) pp. 155ff, but rejected on unconvincing grounds by Audet (see n. 86) and J. Ponthof ("La signification religieuse du "Nom" chez Clément de Rome et dans la Didaché", EThL
35 [1959] pp. 359ff).
93 Cf. 2 Esdras 11:9 (LXX); Jer 7:12; Ez 43:7.
°4 The interpretation of the saying in Did. 10:2 as referring to baptism by W.
Michaelis, TDNT VII, p. 389 is off course.
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
by means of the food. That is exactly the position of the Gospel of John, which also speaks more clearly than the Didache: "This is the bread which has come down from heaven" (John 6:58). "As the Father who sent me is living and I live through the Father, so everyone who eats me lives through me" (John 6:57). This verse proclaims the eucharist as the sacramental realization of the previous incarnation of Jesus.°° In the Didache the present eucharistic indwelling of Jesus is fairly clearly expressed (10:2); the reminder of his previous coming recedes but is echoed in a veiled way in the reference to the "vine of David" (9:2) and in the hosanna cry of 10:6 at least.
The Didache liturgy is all the more clearly directed towards the future Parousia. The prayer for the gathering of the Church into the kingdom (9:4 and 10:5) and for the hastening of the Parousia in 10:6 attest this. There the community implores: "Let grace come and let the world pass away!" Further "Maranatha!"
These prayers/cries relate primarily to the future event of the fulfillment of salvation, but nevertheless still have a second dimension of meaning, which even though it is not overt should still not be mistaken: they indicate that the future Parousia event, the future coming of Jesus, experiences a foretaste and anticipation here and now in the event of the Lord's Supper. The coming of grace implored for in 10:6 has in mind the eschatological fulfillment of salvation.
It should not be overlooked, however, that xa@ptc in the ancient church could be on the one hand a title of Christ9° and on the other hand also an equivalent for eu-charist.°7
The word is perhaps already chosen with respect to the latter. If we take all of this into account and further add the fact that the prayer for the coming of grace happens in the context of the Lord's Supper, then it can be concluded concerning the conviction of faith that the coming of the fulfillment of salvation, and more precisely the future coming of Christ, is experienced beforehand in this sacramental meal.
Similarly, a double meaning should' be recognized in maranatha.°* Even grammatically it allows for two meanings. The °5 Cf. Betz, Die Eucharistie I1.1, pp. 173-180.
°6 The Coptic version reads, "Let the Lord come!" As a title for Christ xa&pi¢ also appears in Acts of John 94 and 98, as well as in the Odes of Solomon 19. On this matter see F. J. Délger, Sol salutis (Miinster: Aschendorff, 1920) pp. 154ff;
Lietzmann, Mass and Lord's Supper, p. 193 fn. 2.
97 Cf. Heb 10:29; 12:15; 13:9; on this Betz, Die Eucharistie 1.1 Index; for Patristic attestations see J. Betz, "Der Abendmahlskelch im Judenchristentum" in M. Reding (ed), Abhandlungen tiber Theologie und Kirche (Festschrift far K. Adam)
(Diisseldorf: Patmos, 1952) p. 133.
98 See K. G. Kuhn, TDNT IV, pp. 466ff; W. Kramer, Christos Kyrios Gottessohn (Ziirich: Zwingli, 1963) pp. 95-103.
JOHANNES BETZ
imperative, "Our Lord, come!" (manana tha) is suggested by the parallel line, "Let grace come!", and is shown to be certainly—but not necessarily exclusively—a primitive Christian conception. The indicative "Our Lord has come" or "is here" (maran atha) is philologically also possible and is attested by the Coptic version. One would not be wrong in the assumption that the oldest community could have consciously intended this double meaning and made it serve the purposes of their belief concerning the Lord's Supper. But even if one only allows the imperative as the grammatical clarification of the cry, it still retains its reference to the sacramental event.°° For maranatha is indeed the answer of the community to the warning of the liturgist that only the holy should come to the sacrament.
The coming of the Lord is anticipated in the elements of the meal. The eucharist functions as the bridge between the first and the second Parousia.
So the eschatological world is projected into and works in this sacrament and qualifies its elements. They are thus acknowledged as "spiritual food and (spiritual) drink" in an old formula attested also in 1 Cor 10:3 and so related to that sphere in which the Resurrected One lives (cf. 1 Cor 10:45). So it is not surprising if "life in the new aeon" is ascribed to it as its consequence. It all leads however to a significant conclusion in the history of dogma: It was not hellenistic thought about substance which first accorded the sacramental elements a particular ontic character, but already Jewish Christian belief.
The eschatological tendency of the pre-Didache Lord's Supper also shows itself, as we have already seen, in the repeated prayer for the gathering of the church into the kingdom (9:4 and 10:5). Jesus had proclaimed the latter in the picture of a universal festal meal uniting all the elect (Mt 8:11; 22:1-14) and the Lord's
Supper as the foretaste and anticipation of the same (Lk 22:16-18; Mk 14:25). This eschatological outlook and prayer has however still other roots. The thought of the gathering of the church is bound up with the Old Testament expectation of salvation, that the Diaspora of Israel would be gathered. This idea penetrates the Old
Testament since Jeremiah!® and also has a firm place in Jewish prayers.!©2 Also the prophet says of the sprout of Jesse, that is of °° Cf.
Lietzmann, Mass and Lord's Supper, p.
193; Dibelius, "Die Mahlgebete", p. 40; O. Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament? (London:
SCM, 1963) pp. 208-216.
100 Audet's text cic fwiy aiévoy attributes the life of the new aeon as a direct consequence of the spiritual gifts of the meal. Even if one had to read xai ¢. @., nevertheless this formulation, that the life should follow on the gifts of the meal, still suggests the idea that the latter follows out of these.
"i There is a good summary in Clerici, Einsammlung der Zerstreuten, pp. 65102 Cf. the tenth benediction of the Shemoneh Esreh, "Sound the great horn for our freedom; lift up an ensign to gather our exiles (Balyolonian recension "from the
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
the Davidic messianic Son of David, that he will gather the scattered of Israel and bring together the dispersed of Judah (Is 11:1012). So there is a connection between the thought of the benediction of the cup and the prayer for gathering. More immediately still, and more clearly, this is bound up with the prayer over the 'bread in 9:4, and it does this in two respects. First, inasmuch as the eucharistic bread is the renewed gift of paradise and so the partial and preliminary outworking of the end time salvation. The beginning however calls for fulfillment, the partial for the total realization of the eschatological salvation, the sign for the genuine thing. The urgent cry uvjoOn7 in 10:5 also brings to expression thoughts of the fulfillment of the beginning. It is a formula already coined in Judaism and reminds Yahweh of the fulfillment of his previous redemptive acts, of the complete realization of his promises.1°3 Secondly, the prayer for gathering in 9:4 utilizes the natural symbolism! of the bread inasmuch as it is made into one out of many grains scattered over the mountains. This unity of the bread is a sign of the eschatological unity of the church. What is even more interesting in this comparison is that the metaphorical aspect of the image (Bildhdlfte) of bread is already provided by the terminology of the content of the image (Sachhdilfte), since the expressions used of the bread d:acxoprifew and ovveéyery are not the technical terms of agriculture, but of Jewish Diaspora theology for the gathering in of the scattered of Israel.!° This terminological peculiarity is indeed hardly accidental, and makes it more probable that the eucharistic bread is already the foretaste and anticipation of the end time unification of Christians. It is however still also a representation of their already existing unity, inasmuch as the community prepares and shares in this bread. The Didache does not expressly mention this thought, but Paul does. For him the sharing in the eucharistic bread is not only a sign but the reason for the present unification of the many participants in the one body of Christ (1 Cor 10:17). In the Didache, however, the perspective is directed much more strongly towards the coming four corners of the earth"). Blessed are you, O Lord, who gathers the banished ones of your people Israel." (cf. Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar IV, p. 213).
103 See Clerici, Einsammlung der Zerstreuten, pp. 48-64.
104 E.R. Goodenough, "John a Primitive Gospel", JBL 64 (1945) pp. 145-182; C. F. D. Moule, "A Note on Didache 9,4", JTS ns 6 (1955) pp. 240-243. L. Cerfaux ("La multiplication des pains dans la liturgie de la Didaché", Bib 40 [1959] pp. 943-958) understand the picture in 9:4 not as a natural symbol of bread, but as a reference to the gathering of fragments left over in the miraculous multiplication of loaves by Jesus into one place. This thesis is refuted by H. Riesenfeld (see below note 105).
105 ncaa by H. Riesenfeld, "Das Brot von den Bergen. Zu Did. 9,4", Er 54 (1956) pp. 142-150, esp. 145f.
JOHANNES BETZ
unity.
"The post-communion prayer (10:5) takes up this concern again, underlines its importance and shows how much the eucharist was experienced as an essential fulfillment of the church on its pilgrimage to final perfection. One prays God to save the church from all evil,!% to perfect it in his love,!°7 to gather it from the four winds into his kingdom, which he has prepared for it, that is has determined in his predestination. That is realized in the Parousia of Christ which 10:6 so emphatically proclaims.
We come to the end. Previous research has arrived at the reasoned conclusion that the two meal chapters Didache 9-10, in their present form, refer to a primitive Christian celebration in which a sacramental eucharist (10:6) follows an agape (9:1-10:5).
However a closer examination led us to the conclusion that the bulk of the present agape text, except for 10:1, 3a, was itself originally intended as an independent eucharistic celebration. Only a eucharistic interpretation will really do justice-to them. In conclusion, however, the question has now to be asked: What were the motives which led to the revaluation of the original eucharistic prayers into agape prayers? In answer to this question we have to rely on simple conjectures. One can first of all question whether the change of meaning in the text was caused by the change of ritual which the primitive Christian cultic meal had already undergone in the first decades. It is well known that it quickly abandoned the original sequence bread-meal-cup, drew the two eucharistic acts of bread and wine together and put them at the end of the celebration. This sequence is reflected in the present general conception of the two meal chapters.1°8 But why did it not apply the old eucharistic material to the eucharistic part of 10:6 but instead to the agape part? A plausible interpretation cannot be provided only by the changes in the ritual, which in the Didache still shine through when it places the cup first. The reason must therefore be sought elsewhere.
A different consideration, starting from the theological content of the prayers, may well claim more probability. These describe the eucharistic event in Old Testament categories and are, in terms of soteriology, directed towards the coming of Jesus in the incarnation and above all in the Parousia; they are silent however about the death of Jesus, about his body given and his blood poured out. The latter are, however, the decisive perspectives and 106 There is a parallel to this in 2 Tim 4:18.
107 Two explanations are possible: God should perfect the Church in its love for him (Gen. object.) (as in Clerici, Ensammlung der Zerstreuten, pp. 65-102) or: God in his love (Gen. subject.) should perfect the Church.
108 Just as in Mk 14:22-25 and Mt 26:26-29.
THE EUCHARIST IN THE DIDACHE
content of the accounts of the institution. The Didache prayers are formed by a preference for Old Testament motifs; they refer too little to the New Testament special material, to the facts declared in the institution words of Jesus, namely the memorial of his death and his resurrection. The old prayers are thus too one-sidedly eschatological in their direction towards the Parousia, too little informed by anamnesis looking back to the salvation-historical act of redemption. This forces us to the conclusion that these texts were found to be insufficient in the long run, because they did not describe the eucharistic events broadly and extensively enough.
This conviction could gain all the more ground, when Paul found a hearing for his theology of the cross. From there on it can be understood that the original Lord's Supper prayers though not swept from the table were nevertheless forced out into the agape.
So the history of the Lord's Supper in this respect only shares in the general development of the oldest church: a conduct and theology all too strongly and one-sidedly directed towards the Parousia was more and more completed and balanced by the reference to the work and word of the historical Jesus.
Moreover a similar development to that found in the Didache appears also to lie before us in the Lukan report of the Lord's
Supper in Lk 22:15-20. H. Schiirmann has shown it to be probable that verses 15-18, originally not directed to the Jewish but to the Christian Passover, were eucharistic sayings, as shown particularly by the terminology of the cup in verse 17.1° This group of verses is likewise quite eschatologically orientated, and also does not mention anything about the body and blood and death of Jesus.
So it did not, argues Schiirmann, express the deepest.and unique essence of the eucharist clearly enough, and was found to be insufficient. It was then completed and interpreted by an insertion which spoke clearly of the body and blood of Jesus. The combination arising in this way, however, now gives the impression that verses 15-18 refer to the previous Jewish Passover meal and only verses 19-20 to the new eucharist. According to this interpretation the old, now unsatisfactory, text was not completely erased, but applied to the description of the analogous Passover Meal. That would then provide a parallel to the fate of the Didache text.
For the preservation of the primitive eucharistic texts in the Didache we cannot be thankful enough. They provide us with a deep insight into the early history of the Lord's Supper in its liturgical form and also into the belief and piety of the oldest com-' munity. They open a wide salvation-historical horizon from Paradise to the Parousia of Christ. Their pronounced eschatological orientation can also be useful for our understanding of faith.
109 Schiirmann, Der Paschamahlbericht Lk 22,(7-14), pp. 15-18.