4. fornications (πoρνεῖαι)
4. fornications (πoρνεῖαι)
4. hypocrisy (ὑπόκρισις) (11)
5. thefts (κλoπαί)
5. double-heartedness (διπλoκαρδία) (12)
6. idolatries (εἰδωλoλατρίαι) (1)
6. adultery (μoιχεία) (2)
7. feats of magic (μαγεῖαι) (15)
7. murder (φόνoς) (1)
8. sorceries (φαρμακίαι) (14)
8. robbery (ἁρπαγή) (9)
9. robberies (ἁρπαγαί) (8)
9. haughtiness (ὑπερηφανία) (14)
10. perjuries (ψευδoμαρτυρίαι)
10. transgression (παράβασις)a
11. hypocrisies (ὑπoκρίσεις) (4)
11. fraud (δόλoς) (13)
12. double-heartedness
12. malice (κακία) (15)
(διπλoκαρδία) (5)
13. fraud (δόλoς) (11)
13. willfulness (αὐθάδεια) (16)
14. haughtiness (ὑπερηφανία) (9)
14. sorcery (φαρμακεία) (8)
15. malice (κακία) (12)
15. magic (μαγεία) (7)
16. willfulness (αὐθάδεια) (13)
16. covetousness (πλεoνεξία) (17)
17. covetousness (πλεoνεξία) (16)
17. lack of the fear of God (αφoβία θεoῦ)
18. foul speech (αἰσχρoλoγία)
19. jealousy (ζηλoτυπία)
20. audacity (θρασύτης) (2)
21. pride (ὕψoς) ( ~ 3)
22. boastfulness (ἀλαζoνεία)
Note
a. The term is Pauline (Gal 3:19; Rom 2:23, 4:15, 5:14) and Deutero-Pauline (1 Tim 2:14; heb 9:15), which agrees with the Pauline focus of Barnabas noted above.
The Barnabas list is evidently a simplification, rationalization, and revision of the Didache list:
• The three sexual offenses (Did. #2–4) are subsumed under one (Barn. #6)
• Thefts and robberies (Did. #5, 9) are combined as one (Barn.
#8)
• Perjuries and fraud (Did. #10, 13) are combined as one (Barn.
#11)
• Covetousness and jealousy (Did. #17, 19) are combined as one (Barn. #16)
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• Foul talk and boastfulness (Did. #18, 22) are omitted or subsumed as transgression (Barn. #10)
These statements are in the order of both the Didache and Barnabas lists.
in addition:
• Idolatry (Did. #6) is put first (Barn. #1) and framed by the symmetrical want of fear of God (Barn. #17, last) These rearrangements in Barnabas have their logic: the combination of items in the list makes for tidiness, and the framing of the list with “idolatry” and “want of fear of God” gives a nice effect. On the other side, Rendel harris has shown that the Didache version is based on a Jewish list of faults to be avoided or atoned (the Vidui prayer), twenty-two in number, each fault beginning with a different letter of the hebrew alphabet.40 This abecedarius form (found also in the Psalms and suggesting an origin in Jewish practice), which is lost in Barnabas, is undoubtedly the earlier. The directionality then seems to be Didache > Barnabas.41
The Didache version is also earlier than the Barnabas version in content. it is rooted, as is not consistently true of Barnabas, in law observance as the key to eternal life. This is what Mark, the earliest gospel, reports Jesus as saying in Mark 10:19, when asked about “inheriting eternal life: “Thou knowest the commandments.”42 Jesus in Mark does not preach himself; he points to the law, albeit in a simplified version, minus Pharisaic complica-tions, and with the characteristic addition of “fraud.” it is characteristic of what i have above called alpha christianity. i see Barnabas as adapting an alpha document to a Beta context.
2.1.3. The archetype
if we compare the Didache and Barnabas versions as wholes, we find that certain parts of each version have no counterpart in the other. Rearrangement of material in Barnabas, as exemplified above, extends to mixing of 40. harris, Teaching of the Apostles, 82–83.
41. here as elsewhere in this paper, i consider the preceding argument to be definitive and have chosen not to weary the reader by citing scholarship that, sometimes at book length, has reached a different conclusion.
42. for details of the Jesus commandments, see under “Paul” in 1.6, above.
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material from one chapter to another, so that a full two-column comparison becomes hard to read.43 The major sections of the Didache Two Ways that have no counterpart in Barnabas are the following:
• Did. 1.2b–6. The so-called Sectio Evangelica, drawn almost entirely from Matthew and Luke, with verses also from sirach and other texts.44
• Did. 3.1–6, the “fence” passage,45 warns of actions that, though not themselves sinful, may be the occasion of sin. it represents a Jewish development rather than a synoptic extension of the original Two Ways.
• Did. 6.1–2. This ending to the Didache Two Ways is not found in Barnabas, which has its own conclusion in Barn. 21.1–9.46
certain passages in Barnabas, most conspicuously the Beta improvement in Barn. 19.2a (2), “Glorify him who redeemed you from death,” are not in the Didache version, which is consistently alpha in its theology.47
2.1.4. Translation
i conclude this section with a translation of the Didache Two Ways,48
eliminating the passages identified above as not attested by Barnabas and 43. for a specimen, see Kraft, Barnabas and the Didache, 134–62.
44. This section is also lacking in the Doctrina apostolorum version. That it appears in the fourth-century P.Oxy. fragments merely shows that the fragments are later than the first-century formation period of the Didache, and in the specific textual tradition of the Didache version of the Two Ways.
45. Kraft (Barnabas and the Didache, 146) quotes m. ’abot 1:1: “Make a fence around the Torah.”
46. Didache 6.3 is sometimes included in this section. for reasons to be explained below, i regard it as the opening of the second main section of the Didache, none of which finds a place in Barnabas.
47. “Ransom/redeem” appears in the Didache only at 4.6, where it refers to the individual’s good deeds counterweighting or paying the price of evil deeds (for that process, see Jas 5:20, “cover a multitude of sins”). as the Didache eucharist prayers show (Did. 9.2 “revealed”; 9.3 “knowledge revealed”; 10.2 “knowledge revealed”), Jesus only gives knowledge, shows the way of salvation (Mark 12:14, “Way of God”).
consistently, Mark 10:19 shows Jesus in the very act of “showing the way.”
48. Translation and some notes are drawn from Varner, Way of the Didache, revised as seems useful in light of the present discussion. The reader may wish to
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indenting and italicizing one further passage that appears, like the above, to be a later Matthean improvement. Occasional comparison is made to alpha texts such as James or the seemingly earlier strata of Mark, which share sufficient doctrinal and organizational features to be considered witnesses to the same kind of christianity.
1.1
There are Two Ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between the two ways.
1.2a
On the one hand, then, the way of life is this: first, you love the God who made you.
2.1
and the second command of the teaching:
2.2
You will not murder, you will not commit adultery, you will not corrupt children, you will not have illicit sex, you will not steal, you will not practice magic, you will not practice sorcery, you will not murder a child by means of abortion, nor kill one that has been born; you will not desire the things of your neighbor,
[2.3] You will not swear falsely, you will not bear false witness, you will not speak evil of anyone, you will not hold grudges. [2.4] You will not be double-minded or double-tongued, for being double-tongued is a snare of death. [2.5] Your word will not be false or empty, but will be fulfilled in action. [2.6] You will not be covetous, nor greedy, nor a hypocrite, nor spiteful, nor arrogant.49 You will not plot an evil plan against your neighbor. [2.7] You will not hate any one, but some you will reprove, and for others you will pray, and some you will love more than your soul.
3.7
But be meek,
since the meek will inherit the earth [Matt 5:5]
[3.8]
become long-suffering, and merciful, and harmless, and gentle, and good, and one who trembles always at the words that you have heard.50 [3.9] You will not exalt yourself, and you will not compare the reconstruction in huub van de sandt and David flusser, The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and Its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity, cRiNT 3.5 (assen: Van Gorcum; Minneapolis: fortress, 2002), 120–30, which differs at several points. for Did. 6.2–3, see their separate essay at 238–70.
49. compare exod 20:13–17 (Varner, Way of the Didache).
50. compare isa 66:2 (Varner, Way of the Didache).
The DiDache: a MissiNG Piece Of The PuzzLe
give boldness to your soul. Your soul will not be joined with the haughty, but with just and lowly people you will dwell.51
3.10
You will accept the experiences that happen to you as good things,52
knowing that apart from God, nothing happens.53
4.1
My child, the one speaking to you the word of God you will remember night and day,54 and you will honor him as the Lord.
[4.2] and you will seek every day the presence of the saints in order that you may find support in their words. [4.3] You will not cause division, and you will reconcile those who quarrel; you will judge justly, you will not show favoritism when you reprove others for their failings.55
4.4
You will not become double-minded, whether it will be or not.56
4.5
Do not become one who, on the one hand, stretches out your hands to receive, or on the other hand, draws them back from giving. [4.6] if you should have something through the work of your hands, you will give it as a ransom for your sins.57 [4.7] You will not hesitate to give, nor will you grumble when you give, for 51. compare Jas 2:1, “My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus christ, the Lord of glory.” The egalitarianism of James is one of its salient traits. economic egalitarianism in the early churches is depicted, in an obviously legendary way, by Luke in acts 4:32–35. We here see the Didache reflecting a similar situation: it is the “justness” of the community that enables it to be viable, although “lowly.”
52. compare Jas 1:2, “count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.”
53. compare Jas 1:13, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘i am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.”
54. Varner (Way of the Didache) notes the similarity to heb 13:7.
55. in the primitive christian community, each member is in principle liable to judge others. The function of judge has not yet been assigned to a permanent leader.
56. compare Mark 11:23, “and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.” sincerity of belief is the requirement for any result of prayer. so also Jas 1:6–7, “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting.…
for that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.”
57. This is the only appearance of “ransom” in the text. Notice that it is not Jesus who ransoms sinners by his death, but the individual who ransoms himself from his sins by doing good deeds. see Jas 5:19–20 (“My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins”), the final passage in that text.
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you know who will be the good paymaster of your reward. [4.8]
You will not turn away the one in need, but you will share together all things with your brother, and you will not say that such things are your own, for if you are partners in what is immortal, how much more in mortal things?
4.9
You will not take away your hand from your son or from your daughter, but from youth you will teach them the fear of God.58
[4.10] You will not command your male or female slave, who are hoping in the same God, in your bitterness, lest they should never fear the God who is over you both; for he does not come to call
[to salvation] according to social status, but those whom the spirit has prepared. [4.11] and you, slaves, will be subject to your masters as to the image of God in shame and fear.59
4.12
You will hate all hypocrisy, and everything that is not pleasing to the Lord. [4.13] Never forsake the commandments of the Lord, but you will guard the things that you have received, neither adding nor subtracting anything.60
4.14
in church, you will confess your wrongdoings, and you will not go to your place of prayer with an evil conscience. This is the way of life!
5.1
The Way of Death, on the other hand, is this.
first of all, it is evil and full of accursedness:61
1. murders,
5.2
B1. persecutors of the good,62
2. adulteries,
B2. hating truth,
3. lusts,
B3. loving a lie,
4. fornications,
B4. not knowing the wages of righ-
teousness,
58. This clause corresponds to Barn. 19.5d; it may have inspired “lack of the fear of God” at Barn. 20.1d (#17 on that list).
59. Didache 4.10–11 are somewhat reminiscent of col 3:22–4:1 (and its later duplicate, eph 6:5–9). Those who have felt that the Didache is a second-century text naturally conclude that Didache is the borrower, but it may also be that the widely circulated Didache influenced those who composed some of the deuteroPauline material. i tentatively retain Did. 4.10f–11 as original.
60. Varner (Way of the Didache) cites Deut 4:2 or 12:32.
61. This is the original atonement prayer list, repeated from the above discussion.
62. i follow Varner in arranging Did. 5.2 as a B list, parallel to that of 5.1. in the pre-Didache evolution of the Two Ways, it is the final rewrite of the original twenty-two item list. it repeats material from previous passages, and even repeats itself.
The DiDache: a MissiNG Piece Of The PuzzLe
5. thefts,
B5. not cleaving to the good,
6. idolatries,
B6. nor to just judgement,
7. feats of magic,
B7. those who are alert not for good
but for evil,
8. sorceries,
B8. far from being gentle and patient,
9. robberies,
B9. loving empty things,
10. perjuries,
B10. pursuing retribution,
11. hypocrisies,
B11. not showing mercy to the poor,63
12. double-heartedness,
B12. not working for the oppressed,
13. fraud,
B13. not knowing the One who made
them,64
14. arrogance,
B14. murderers of children,
15. malice,
B15. destroyers of what God has
formed,
16. willfulness,
B16. turning away from one in need,
17. covetousness,
B17. oppressing the afflicted,
18. foul speech,
B18. advocates of the rich,
19. jealousy,
B19. unjust judges of the poor,
20. audacity,
B20. totally sinful
21. pride,
22. boastfulness.
6.1
See to it that no one leads you astray from this way of teaching, since he is teaching you apart from God.
6.2
For, on the one hand, if you are able to bear the whole yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect,
but if, on the other hand, you are not able, that which you are able, do this.65
These transitional passages of Did. 6.1–2 are not original to the Two Ways.
They serve as a transition to the following section of the Didache (“Teaching”). They were written at the time when the Two Ways was added and 63. The enmity of rich and poor is a major theme in James.
64. This echoes Did. 1.2a and incidentally confirms that passage as integral in the original Didache.
65. The “what you are able” motif is like that of the first passage in the Didache proper (Did. 6.3), and at the time of its interpolation, Did. 6.2 may have imitated that passage.
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are not part of the Matthean interpolation layer, which on other evidence comes later.
The Two Ways are in effect a Way of Death warning, elaborated in several ways but remaining essentially a list of things not to do (the prescriptions of the Way of Life is also largely negative). The added Matthean layer provided more positive maxims, for the Didache as a whole and also for the Two Ways as its first section. This positive tone was one of the great merits of Matthew as an authority text.
2.2. The Original church Order Document: Did. 6.3–12.1
2.2.1. form
Within the middle part of the Didache, 6.3–12.1 is distinguished by the use of the itemization idiom περὶ δέ (“as for; now concerning”).66 The first such passage, the single verse 6.3, deals with questions of permissible food.
it makes an abrupt beginning for the text, if this was indeed the oldest section of the Didache, but it is reasonable to assume that, as with the sections so marked in 1 corinthians, the ruling dealt with a question concerning which uncertainty already existed in the Didache churches. The context is thus supplied by the concern.67 The last περὶ δέ passage begins at Did.
11.3 (“Now concerning apostles and prophets”), but where does it end?
i suggest that the key discontinuity is the forbidding of long-term resi-66. Περὶ δέ is used as an organizing principle also in 1 cor 7:1 (introducing the topic of marriage), 7:25 (the unmarried), 8:1 (food offered to idols), 12:1 (spiritual gifts), 16:1 (the collection for Jerusalem), and 16:12 (the visit of apollos). some have thought that, as is the case here (1 cor 7:1, “Now concerning the matters about which you wrote”), περὶ δέ occurs only in response to questions raised in a previous letter.
Margaret Mitchell (“concerning PeRi De in 1 corinthians,” NovT 3 [1989]: 229–56) has shown that instead, περὶ δέ in Greek generally is “simply a topic marker, a short-hand way of introducing the next subject of discussion” (234). it is not limited to a subject previously mentioned; rather, it introduces “a new topic, the only requirement of which is that it is readily known to both writer and reader” (236). Mitchell mentions the Didache at 251 n. 98, but without discussion. The general usage she describes will serve for περὶ δέ in the Didache, but without excluding the possibility, indeed, the likelihood, that authoritative guidance on these subjects, the “difficult cases” under law or custom, was much desired by the leaders of the various early alpha churches.
67. Note that one of the περὶ δέ sections in 1 corinthians also deals with food offered to idols. for considerations of date, see section 3 below.
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dence in Did. 11.5 (“But if ever he should remain three [days], he is a false prophet”), but allowed in Did. 12.3 (“if, on the other hand, he wishes to settle down among you”), which in turn is linked by idiom to 12.2 (“if, on the one hand”), which repeats the substance of 11.5 as a preface to discussing the exception. The original “apostles” guideline then seems to end at 12.1, which has a summative function (“and everyone coming in the name of the Lord”).68
There are several points at which Matthean parallels occur. Most of them can be excised without damage to local continuity. These are italicized and indented on the right. a few (discussed in the notes) are more difficult. some are indeed difficult, and it is not supposed that the last word has here been said on any of them.
2.2.2. Translation
The format of the preceding section is also followed here. The sections beginning with the structural marked περὶ δέ are printed in italics.
food
6.3
Concerning food, bear that which you are able, but from the food sacrificed to idols, especially keep away, for it is the worship of dead gods.
Baptism
7.1
Concerning baptism,69 baptize this way. after you have said all these things beforehand, immerse in the name of the father, and 68. see clayton N. Jefford and stephen J. Patterson (“a Note on Didache 12.2a
[coptic],” SecCent 7 [1989–1990]: 65–75) for an argument, based on the coptic text, that the Didache ended at 12.2a, and compare f. stanley Jones and Paul a. Mirecki,
“considerations on the coptic Papyrus of the Didache,” in The Didache in Context: Essays on Its Text, History and Transmission, ed. clayton N. Jefford, NovTsup 77
(Leiden: Brill, 1995), 47–87.
69. as in 1 Peter, which with francis Wright Beare (The First Epistle of Peter, 3rd ed. [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970]) and others i regard as in origin a baptismal homily, the christian life begins with baptism, considered not only as a symbolic purification (the tradition of John the Baptist) but also as a rite of christian entry. it is thus entirely appropriate as the first part of this section of the Didache, which gives instruction to local church leaders.
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of the son, and of the holy spirit70 in flowing water. [7.2] But if you71 do not have flowing water, immerse in another water, and if you are not able to do so in cold, in warm; [7.3] and if you should have neither, pour out water on the head three times in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit.
[fasts]72
7.4
and prior to the baptism, let the one baptizing fast, also the one being baptized, and if any others are able to do so;73 and order the one being baptized to fast one or two [days] before.
8.1. Rules on fasting [cf. Matt 6:16]74
[Prayer]
8.2–3. Rules on Prayer [Matt 6:9–13]75
70. This formula, which also appears at Matt 28:19, need not imply a Trinitarian theology in the later sense. its origin even in Matthew has been much discussed and remains unsolved. it is not firmly situated in Matthew, and i here take it as an early formula used by the Didache writer, and also, separately and later, by Matthew. father, son, and spirit all play a role in the Didache scheme of things, as a reading of the whole text will reveal, and the formula is thus not locally anomalous.
71. The “you” in Did. 7.1 is singular; in 7.2–4 it is plural. This has been thought to imply a complex history of the Didache baptismal advice (see alan J. P. Garrow, The Gospel of Matthew’s Dependence on the Didache, JsNTsup 254 [London: T&T clark, 2004], 94–95, with reconstruction). it is possible that the difference can be otherwise accounted for, but the matter cannot be pursued in the space here available.
72. There was no original Didache topic for fasts, as is indicated by the brackets around this heading. The rule on fasting before baptism was simply part of the instructions for baptism; it was thus included under the baptism topic.
73. Note the recurrent motif of permissible relaxation of a known ideal procedure, which pervades this part of the text.
74. When the Matthean material was added, this was the obvious place to include a note on fixed fast days (envisioned, but as an institution of the later church, in Mark 2:18–21. The Didache inhabits the situation predicted by that passage). at that point in the history of the text, there was created an implicit “fasts” topic, though without the περὶ δέ marker. The disuse of that marker perhaps suggests that the person in charge of the Didache at the end was not the same as the one who had been in charge at the beginning. apart from its use of Matthew rather than Luke (in all probability the later version), the Did. 8.3 prescription of thrice daily prayer seems also late; for a comparison with the Jewish eighteen Benedictions, see Gordon J. Bahr, “The use of the Lord’s Prayer in the Primitive church,” JBL 84 (1965): 153–59.
75. fasting suggests prayer, and an implicit section on prayer was created at the
The DiDache: a MissiNG Piece Of The PuzzLe
The eucharist
9.1
Now concerning the thanksgiving meal, give thanks this way. [9.2]
first, concerning the cup: “We give you thanks, our father, for the holy vine of your servant David, which you revealed to us through your servant Jesus.76 To you is the glory forever.” [9.3] and concerning the broken bread: “We give you thanks, our father, for the life and knowledge which you revealed to us through your servant Jesus. To you is the glory forever.” [9.4] “Just as this broken bread was scattered over the mountains, and was gathered together and became one,77 in this way may your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom. Because yours is the glory and the power, through Jesus christ forever.”
9.5
and let no one eat or drink from your thanksgiving meal except those baptized in the name of the Lord.
For also the Lord has said concerning this:
“Do not give what is holy to the dogs” [Matt 7:6]78
10.1
and after being filled, give thanks in this way: [10.2] “We give you thanks, holy father, for your holy name, which you have caused to dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which you revealed to us through your servant Jesus. To you is the glory forever.” [10.3] “You, almighty Master, created all things for the sake of your name, both food and drink you have given to people for enjoyment, in order that they might give thanks. But to us you have graciously bestowed spiritual food and drink and eternal life through your servant.” [10.4] “Before all things, we give you thanks because you are powerful; to you is the glory forever.”
10.5
“Remember, Lord, your church, to save her from every evil, and to perfect her in your love, and to gather her together from the four same time the preceding note was added (the prayer in question is the Lord’s Prayer in its Matthean version), thus creating the two bracketed topics shown above. for another argument concerning the interruptive nature of Did. 8, see Jonathan a.
Draper, “christian self-Definition against the ‘hypocrites’ in Didache 8,” in Draper, The Didache in Modern Research, 223–43.
76. This passage, with its omission of the blood of Jesus, is crucial for the present argument; see nn. 6 and 7 above.
77. The comparison is enigmatic, but the ingathering of the saved at the last day is present already in Mark 13:27.
78. a not wholly appropriate later insertion of a striking Matthean phrase.
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winds,79 the sanctified into your kingdom which you prepared for her; Because yours is the power and the glory forever.”
10.6
“May grace come, and may this world pass away! hosanna to the God of David!”80 “if anyone is holy, let him come! if anyone is not, let him repent! come, Lord! amen!”81
10.7
But allow the prophets to give thanks as much as they wish.82
11.1
Therefore, whoever teaches you all these things said previously, receive him. [11.2] if, on the other hand, the one teaching, if he has been turned, and should teach another doctrine for the destroying
[of these things], do not listen to him. But if it is for the bringing of righteousness and knowledge of the Lord, receive him as the Lord!
Visiting apostles
11.3
Now concerning the apostles and prophets in accord with the decree of the gospel,83 act thus:
11.4
every apostle coming to you, let him be received as the Lord,
[11.5] but he will not remain except for one day, and if there is need, also another, but if ever he should remain three, he is a false prophet. [11.6] and when he departs, let the apostle take nothing except bread [that he needs] until he is [next] lodged. if, however, he asks for money, he is a false prophet.84
79. This is usually referred to Matt 24:31, but the “four winds” of Mark 13:27 will suffice.
80. The unmistakable Davidic strand in Mark’s account of Jesus (e.g., Mark 2:25; 10:47–48; 11:10; 12:35–37) is troubling for later exegesis. it is the more remarkable (and perhaps a sign of early date) to find it preserved intact, here and at Did. 9.2.
81. “come, Lord” translates the aramaic ejaculation prayer “Maranatha.” Paul in 1 cor 16:22 has just cursed (anathema) alphas of corinth, who do not in his specific sense “love the Lord.” Paul’s sense of “Maranatha” (16:23) is, “Let the Lord indeed come, and judge all, and condemn you for your errors.” The prayer appears in Greek translated form in Rev 22:20.
82. The new fixed forms prescribed by the Didache are not meant to inhibit the older way, which presumably featured prayer or prophecy by inspired individuals, as we know was the practice also in the churches of Paul.
83. Not here a written text, but the teaching as apostolically preached. so also in Mark 1:14–15; 10:29; 13:10; 14:9.
84. That apostles are not to carry money, but to rely exclusively on local hospital-ity, is laid down in Mark 6:8.
The DiDache: a MissiNG Piece Of The PuzzLe
11.7
and every prophet speaking in the spirit you should not test or judge, for every sin will be forgiven, but this sin will not be forgiven.85 [11.8] But not everyone speaking in the spirit is a prophet, but only if he has the behavior of the Lord. Therefore, from their behavior will be known the false prophet and the prophet.
11.9
and every prophet ordering a table in the spirit, will not eat from it; but if he does, he is a false prophet. [11.10] and every prophet teaching the truth, if he does not do what he preaches, he is a false prophet. [11.11] and every prophet who has been put to the test and is genuine, and who acts for the earthly mystery of the church, but not teaching to do what he himself does, he shall not be judged by you, for he has his judgement from God, for so the ancient prophets also acted.
11.12 But whoever should say in the spirit, “Give me silver” or any other thing, you will not listen to him. But if he should say to give to others in need, let no one judge him.
12.1
and everyone coming in the name of the Lord, let him be received, and then, having put him to the test, you will know, for you will have understanding of right and left.
2.3. The extension: Did. 12.2–15.4
as above mentioned, we here enter an area that is not formally organized in περὶ δέ sections and that substantively goes beyond the original apostolic visit guidelines to include options not previously discussed. What is happening here historically? The system of itinerant teachers undoubtedly obtained from the beginning, whereas we first hear of the resident apostle variant in the mid 50s. Paul in 1 cor 9:3–15 makes much of his supporting himself while at corinth for an extended period, though claiming a right 85. The unforgivable nature of the sin of denying the presence of the spirit is established in Mark 3:29. The wording of Matthew is closer to that of the Didache, which may mark this as after all an interpolation. it also might indicate Matthew’s knowledge of the Didache. if two texts, a and B, are literarily related, and a is a growth text whose timespan includes the date of B, then we have a situation where a is both earlier and later than B. seeming borrowings in both directions then become possible, and the present argument is not entirely incompatible with that of Garrow (Gospel of Matthew’s Dependence), who sees a uniform Didache > Matthew directionality.
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to support if he had asked for it (see also 1 cor 12:28–31). The Didache text is thus moving into new territory: territory partly witnessed by Paul.
2.3.1. Translation
The format of the preceding section is retained.
[The Resident apostle]86
12.2
if, on the one hand, the one coming is passing through, help him as much as you are able. he will not remain, however, among you except for two or three days, if there should be a need. [12.3] if, on the other hand, he wishes to settle down among you, and if he is a craftsman, let him work and let him eat.87 [12.4] if, on the other hand, he does not have a craft, according to your own understanding, plan beforehand how he will live among you as a christian, without being idle. [12.5] if, on the other hand, he does not wish to behave in this way, he is a christ-peddler. Beware of such ones!
13.1
and every genuine prophet wishing to settle down among you is worthy of his food.
Likewise, a genuine teacher is worthy, just as the laborer, of his food [Matt 10:10]88
86. i do not see this as a section subsequent to the previous instructions for apostles and thus dealing with another topic such as ordinary christian travelers (note the reference to “every genuine prophet,” seeming to pick up the ending of the previous section, and the general conformity to the apostolic instructions in Mark). Given further the witness of Paul, noted below, i feel that this material was added precisely to deal with the new situation of prophets taking root in the communities they visited. i do not assume that there were at any one time only twelve apostles, and regard this as a formalism, though it probably has a real history behind it (see e. Bruce Brooks, “The secret history of the Twelve” [paper presented at the annual meeting of the society of Biblical Literature, atlanta, Ga, 21 November 2010]).
87. One senses here the barely self-sufficient community, which must be continually watchful of its collective resources. compare Paul in 1 cor 9:4–14 (mid 50s), who ends by claiming the apostles’ right to “get their living by the gospel.” if the chronology here suggested is correct, Did. 12.2 is more or less contemporary with 1 cor 9:4–14, that is, in the mid 50s. as other statements in this part of the Didache show, and as Paul implies, these questions of support were delicate.
88. The intruded Matthean quote merely echoes the previous line, which probably uses a common saying. The interpolator here seems to be trying to give his production a gloss of support from the widely known and respected Matthew.
The DiDache: a MissiNG Piece Of The PuzzLe
[13.3] so you shall take every first fruits of the produce from the wine vat and threshing floor, of both cattle and sheep, and you will give the first fruits to the prophets, for they themselves are your high priests. [13.4] But if you do not have a prophet, give it to the poor.
[13.5] But if you should make bread, take the first fruits, and give according to the commandment. [13.6] similarly, when you open a jar of wine or oil, take the first fruits, and give it to the prophets.
[13.7] and of silver and of clothing and of every possession, take the first fruits, as it seems good to you, and give according to the commandment.
[a ceremony of Reconciliation]
14.1
and on the Lord’s Day of the Lord,89 when you are gathered together, break bread and give thanks, having before confessed your failings, so that your sacrifice may be pure. [14.2] however, let no one having a conflict with his comrade come together with you, until they have been reconciled,
in order that your sacrifice may not be defiled [Matt 5:23–24]90
[14.3] for this [sacrifice] is that which was spoken by the Lord: “in every place and time, offer to me a pure sacrifice, because i am a great king,” says the Lord, “and my name will be wondrous among the gentiles” [Mal 1:11, 14]91
[appointed Local authorities]92
15.1
appoint then, for yourselves, overseers and deacons worthy of the Lord:93 gentle men, and not money lovers, and truthful and 89. This curious locution is convincingly explained by Neville L. a. Tidwell,
“Didache 14:1 (KaTa KYPiaKKhN Δe KYPiOY) Revisited,” VC 53 (1999): 197–207, who relates it to hebrew superlatives on the order of “sabbath of sabbaths,” and to a christian version of the annual Yom Kippur observance, which emphasized reconciliation with others, as does Did. 14.2.
90. The Matthean quote in 14.2b merely underlines what was already complete in 14.1.
91. Notice the recurring echoes of Malachi in the Didache, and recall the frequent echoes of Malachi in Mark.
92. That this topic exists at all is a sign that we (and whoever was in charge of putting together the Didache and keeping it current) have now left the apostolic period and entered the age of independent local churches.
93. compare Phil 1:1 for the existence of these functionaries and 1 Tim 3:2–10 for
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tested, for they likewise conduct among you the ministry of the prophets and teachers. [15.2] Do not then look down upon them, for they themselves are your honored ones, along with the prophets and teachers.
[internal Discipline]
15.3
and correct one another, not in anger but in peace.
As you have it in the Gospel [Matt 18:15–18]94
and to everyone wronging another, let no one speak to him, nor let anyone hear from you about him, until he repents.
15.4
and do your prayers and alms and all your actions as you have it from the gospel of our Lord [Matt 6:1–4, 5–15]95
Didache 15 ends with a clear reference to the Gospel of Matthew (for
“your prayers and alms and all your actions”), these being specified in Matt 6:5–13 (prayers) and 6:2–4 (alms). since this has no relation to the immediately preceding text and is probably meant as a concluding command, it should be regarded as another Matthean addition to the text. its summary directions, referring to Matthew for specifics, probably at one point marked the end of the Didache. Then not even Did. 15 can be said to be a composition of the time of Matthew. it is a pre-Matthean composition to which a concluding Matthean touch was later added. i may add that it is noteworthy that some of the small interpolations proposed above begin with a subordinating introductory word: “for, likewise, however.”
This is a not unreasonable way of appending a comment to a previously existing statement.
most of the qualifications here listed. Didache 15.1 is perhaps less likely to be quoting the deutero-Pauline texts than relying on qualifications generally accepted at the time.
it is wrong to imagine that the producers of early christian texts knew nothing more about christianity than they, or we, can read in other early christian texts.
94. another merely decorative quote from Matthew. The wording in 2 Tim 2:25
is actually closer.
95. This Matthean ending, however, was constitutive: it apparently intended to invoke the authority of Matthew generally or to proclaim the consistency of the Didache with Matthew for all the preceding instructions.
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2.4. The concluding apocalypse: Did. 16.1–11
This final chapter departs from the rest of the text in prescribing neither ceremonial behavior (6.3–12.1), nor institutional structures (12.1–15.4), nor yet rules of personal conduct (the Two Ways, now 1.1–6.2), but in spell-ing out in detail a cardinal point of belief: the expectation of the last days.
Joseph Verheyden, rightly in my opinion, has argued for the Matthean character of this final chapter.96 in Did. 16, as is not the case with the preceding material, the Matthean matter cannot be excised as interpolations, leaving a coherent text behind.
2.4.1. Translation
since the Matthean passages are integral in this final apocalypse, they will here be identified but not separated from the rest of the text.
16.1
Be watchful over your life, do not let your lamps be quenched, and do not let your waists be ungirded [Matt 25:8?], but be prepared, for you do not know the hour in which our Lord is coming [Matt 24:42].
16.2
and frequently be gathered together, seeking what is appropriate for your souls, for the whole time of your faith will not benefit you unless you are perfected in the end Time. [16.3] for, in the last days, the false prophets and corrupters will be multiplied, and the sheep will be turned into wolves, and the love will be turned into hatred. [Matt 24:10]. [16.4]. for, when lawlessness increases, they will hate each other and they will persecute and they will betray each other [Matt 24:12]. and then will appear the world-deceiver as a son of God, and he will do signs and wonders [Matt 24:24], and the earth will be delivered into his hands, and he will do unlawful things that never have happened from eternity.
96. see Joseph Verheyden, “eschatology in the Didache and the Gospel of Matthew,” in Matthew and the Didache: Two Documents from the Same Jewish-Christian Milieu? ed. huub van de sandt (assen: Van Gorcum; Minneapolis: fortress, 2005), 214–15.
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16.5
Then the human creation will come into the fiery test, and many will be led into sin and will perish, but the ones remaining firm in their faith will be saved [Matt 24:10, 13] by the curse itself.97
16.6
and then the signs of the truth will appear [cf. Matt 24:30]: first, a sign of an opening in heaven, then a sign of a trumpet sound
[Matt 24:30; 1 Thess 4:16], and the third, a resurrection of the dead, [16.7] but not all, but as it was said, “The Lord will come and all the holy ones with him” [zech 14:5; 1 Thess 3:13].
16.8
Then the world will see the Lord coming atop the clouds of heaven
[Matt 24:30; 26:64; Dan 7:13],98 with the angels of his power, in the throne of his kingdom, [16.9] to condemn the devil, the deceiver of the world, and to render to every one according to his deeds.
[16.10] Then shall the wicked go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous shall enter eternal life, [16.11] to inherit those things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man, such things as God has prepared for them that love him.99
2.4.2. The completion Date of the Didache
unlike other parts of the text in which Matthean touches are merely supplemental and can be construed as latter decorative additions, Did. 16
97. “By the curse itself,” in that temptation is the opportunity to demonstrate steadfastness. see again Jas 1:2–4, “count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold temptations. Knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience. and let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing.” it may have been in part on some such reasoning that the christians of the late first century and afterward came to seek martyrdom, not to avoid it.
98. from this point on, the defective end of the Bryennios manuscript is supplied, following aldridge (“Lost ending of the Didache”), from apostolic constitutions and canons and Boniface. see n. 33 above.
99. it may now be possible to reconsider the decision reached in n. 33 about the possibility of indebtedness of this passage to 1 cor 2:9. Whatever Paul’s source may have been, the possible awareness of 1 Thessalonians in Did. 16.7 strengthens the case for 1 corinthians as a source in this part of the Didache. a text that knows Matthew is chronologically well situated to know the genuine Pauline epistles as well. for the deutero-Paulines, see further below. Directionality problems that are difficult in the absence of relative dates may become clarified as information about relative dates accumulates. it is also important to remember that not all of the Didache has the same date of composition.
The DiDache: a MissiNG Piece Of The PuzzLe
would appear to have been composed with full knowledge of Matthew. To the time of its composition, we may also reasonably assign the Matthean additions to the earlier material: self-interpolations designed to give the entire text something of the authority of Matthew.100 The apocalypse itself represents a new venture: it adds a doctrinal section to the Didache, giving it representation in all the categories of teaching that Matthew itself provides, though of course in different proportions. it lets the Didache function like something of a gospel on its own, a complete guide to christian behavior, administration, and hopes. This would be not unlike the epistle of Barnabas, which though it assumes the form of an epistle, openly claims to provide everything “bearing on salvation” (17.1). These similarities, these novel intentions of completeness, in a context in which Matthew had begun to assume the preeminent place in christian thinking that the work of Édouard Massaux has shown it to have occupied, would seem to suggest, for this final formative impulse of the Didache group, a date somewhere between 1 Peter (of which it is aware) and 1 clement (ca. 96).
3. The Beginning Date of the Didache
The preceding argument has arrived at the following stages in the evolution of the text:
• The original liturgical handbook, Did. 6.3–12.1, circularized to the alpha churches at large.
• The addition of an ethical or Two Ways section, Did. 1.1–6.1, with a new transition at 6.1–2
• The original handbook was kept current with postapostolic times by adding 12.2–15.3
100. for self-interpolation in the earlier parts of a growth text, to keep it compatible with material added later, see e. Bruce Brooks and a. Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors (New York: columbia university Press, 1998) for the analects of confucius, and Brooks and Brooks, “The Nature and historical context of the Mencius,” in Mencius, ed. alan K. L. chan (honolulu: university of Hawaii Press, 2002), 242–81, for the Mencius. for the interpretation of Did.
16 and the interpolated Two Ways passage Did. 1.3b–2.1 (the so-called Sectio Evangelica) as belonging to the same textual layer, see clayton N. Jefford, The Sayings of Jesus in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, Vcsup 11 (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 113–14.
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• It made itself into a more complete guide to Christian life and expectation by adding an apocalypse, Did. 16, derived from Matthew. at the same time, Matthean passages were added to the earlier parts of the text to enhance its authority in a period when Matthew was rapidly gaining acceptance as the authority.
if the end of this process was reached somewhere around the year 90, where did it begin? Our best guess will come from analysis of its formation process, in which the liturgical section 6.3–12.1 turns out to be the earliest.
it was above suggested that Did. 6.2 (“if you are able to bear the whole yoke”) had in view the whole of the ethical injunctions in the preceding Two Ways (not the whole of the Jewish Torah),101 but that it also imitated the adjacent and original passage 6.3 (“bear that which you are able”). We may now notice this sense of permissible retreat from a perhaps unattain-able ideal runs through the following sections as well:
• Baptism: “but if you do not have flowing water” (Did. 7.2)
• Fasting before baptism: “and if any others are able to do so”
(Did. 7.4)
• Praise after Eucharist: “but allow the prophets to give thanks as much as they want” (Did. 10.7)
• Acceptance of apostles: “but if, on the other hand, the one teaching, if he has been turned” (Did. 11.2)
• Duration of apostolic visit: “But if ever he should remain three
[days]” (Did. 11.5)
That is, every major area for which the earliest Didache prescribes has its qualifications, its accounting for exceptions, and its tolerance of special situations. The impression one gets is that the first recipients of this document (which was presumably recirculated in revised versions, over time) knew early versions of these things: Johannine running-water baptism, a 101. The few and elemental commandments of Jesus, as Jas 2:10 points out, must all be kept (“for whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all”). his examples are adultery and murder. But the much longer Two Ways list contains some lesser offenses, such as arrogance (5.1, #14) and boastfulness (#22), which might be considered tolerable in an otherwise perfect person. it is in this context that the extenuations of Did. 6.2–3 seem to make maximum sense.
The DiDache: a MissiNG Piece Of The PuzzLe
simple eucharist, the routine with itinerant apostles that is symbolized in Mark. But they needed guidance for the exceptional and the unexpected cases, and it seems to be just this sort of guidance that the first form of the Didache was designed to provide.
Which of these areas first experienced growth beyond what might have been primitive practice in the early Jesus movement? On present knowledge, it is difficult to say. But we seem to be informed from two sources (the angry Paul in Galatians, and with equal caution, the revisionist Luke in acts) that the issue of acceptable food came up for central decision somewhere around the year 44 and that it was decided in somewhat the way that Did. 6.3 says. That part of the Didache might then have been functional, as conveying a new ruling to all the alpha churches in circa 45.
The first extensions of apostolic privilege, however, are not reflected until the letters of Paul, specifically until circa 55, about a decade later. The evolution toward increasing local control, which is seemingly the burden of what i have called the Didache extension, seems to have continued in ways that are also attested in the post-Pauline Pastorals, which must be dated somewhat later than Paul’s death in circa 60102 and perhaps also later than the death of Peter, the last of the major apostles, circa 64.
The final increment of the Didache, as was argued above, was from later in the century, perhaps somewhat before the year 90. if so, then the entire growth process of the Didache, from inception to completion as a complete guide to christian belief and practice, may have comprised about forty-five years, from circa 45 to circa 90, or from a time roughly contemporary with the completion of Mark to the period of the wide acceptance of Matthew.
forty-five years is as long a span as one can reasonably attribute to a single person in charge of a text. it is perhaps more likely that the continuity of the Didache was not personal but institutional: that it is the prod-102. Or 62. another tradition is that Paul perished with Peter in the first year of the Neronian persecution (both 1 clem. 5 and eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.1, list Paul after Peter as martyred at Rome under Nero). The present argument is not affected by these alternatives. What might be called the major apostolic period ended ca. 64. it cannot be said that there is a consensus about the date of the Pastorals. i regard the evidence of Gnosticism as indecisive (that tendency can probably be attested earlier than the end of the first century, when a more organized Gnosticism existed). Burton scott easton (The Pastoral Epistles [New York: scribner’s sons, 1947], 91–92) suggests a date shortly after the death of Paul.
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uct of some sort of central authority whose business it was to coordinate apostolic activity and to give approved and standard advice to the local churches founded and at intervals refreshed by apostolic travels. if so, the addition of the Did. 16 apocalypse may well have been the work of a second text proprietor, in succession to the first.103
The first location of such an authority will probably have been in Galilee, where Mark shows the Jesus movement as centered.104 at least some major figures and functions seem to have moved to Jerusalem early in the movement’s history.105 Both Galilee and Jerusalem, though in different ways, were sacred to Jesus history, and from either, the Didache would have been well positioned to have a widespread influence. egypt and syria have been proposed for its place of composition, but the Didache was probably not written for one church, but in principle for all churches.
Given its continued prominence as the ancestor of more than one later church order document, it must from the beginning have carried considerable authority. as between capernaum and Jerusalem, the alpha character of Didache theology suggests the former (Jerusalem, as the site of Jesus’s death, is more likely to have accepted the Beta soteriology based on Jesus’s death). The Galilee alternative may also better account for the continuation of the Didache, and thus of whatever agency produced it, after the year 70.106
4. final considerations
The original Didache was a liturgical reference, meant for the guidance of those in charge of textually fixed observances. in what might have been a second phase, it was extended by adding personal guidance material (the Two Ways) and guidance for new developments: salaried teachers and elected leaders (the extension), the latter reflecting the waning of itinerant or apostolic authority and the beginning of local authority. a similar tran-103. compare n. 74 above.
104. The shift to Jerusalem is increasingly emphasized in the later Gospels (Brooks, “Gospel Trajectories,” 172), which only underlines the importance of the earliest testimony, which is that of Mark among the Gospels.
105. see Brooks, “secret history of the Twelve.”
106. The prominence of sepphoris in Galilee, the former capital of herod anti-pas, as a center of later Jewish learning may also be relevant. sepphoris had remained pro-Roman during the first Jewish War.
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sition occurs between the Paul of the genuine epistles and the churches of the post-Pauline Pastoral epistles. in what might have been a third phase, the text was further supplemented by interpolated material from Matthew, which our text calls “the gospel,” and a Matthean-based apocalypse was added at the end, perhaps to let the Didache function as something like a complete gospel, in competition with the other authority texts of the time.
interest naturally attaches to the earliest form of any growth text, but i wish to conclude by urging that all of a growth text is interesting. The whole extent of the text directly shows the passage of time and reflects events occurring during that period of time. it is an invaluable witness to the happening of history. in the case of the Didache, i believe we see a text with its roots firmly in the soil of alpha christianity during the age of the itinerant apostle, slowly expanding to annex the function of moral instruction (the Two Ways), then gradually accommodating changes that occurred within the apostolic period, as well as those that immediately followed it, and finally accepting the prominence of Matthew and of the second-tier Gospels generally, and attempting to remain valid in an age when those Gospels had transformed the context and practice of christian edification.
The heritage of the Didache was not lost. Though it did not develop further, it did bequeath something of its substance to later church order texts.107 in that final process the Didache itself was transformed, both doctrinally and liturgically, according to the needs and tendencies of those later ages.
107. for an overview, see Niederwimmer, Didache, 13–18.
The sectio evangelica (Didache 1.3b–2.1) and Performance*1
Perttu Nikander
The relationship between the Didache and the synoptic tradition has been a subject of a long-lasting scholarly discussion. The question is still open, as implied by the recent interest in the subject. One of the most pertinent problems in this discussion is related to the relationship of the passage usually referred as the sectio evangelica (Did. 1.3b–2.1) and its synoptic parallels, Matt 5:44–47 and Luke 6:27–33. The sectio evangelica is generally regarded as a later interpolation in the Didache, because it is lacking from other early witnesses of the Two Ways teaching such as the epistle of Barnabas and the Latin Doctrina apostolorum.
in this essay i will study the sectio evangelica within the framework of oral performance. i will first critique the idea of its literary dependence on other written sources, especially Matthew and Luke. instead, it will be argued that the sectio evangelica owes its origin to oral performances of the Two Ways tradition and the constant interplay of oral and written modes of communication. as a heuristic model, i will refer to the elements of Greek prose composition, such as period and colon, and apply these insights to the study of the sectio evangelica. finally, i will present a sound map of this tradition that supports the idea of the oral provenance of this passage.
*This article is based on a paper read in the Didache in context session at the sBL
2011 annual Meeting. i want to thank my respondent Jonathan schwiebert for his constructive criticism. i am also indebted to Jonathan Draper, who read the first drafts of my paper and offered his valuable criticism.
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1. The sectio evangelica and the
Question of Literary Dependence
The previous discussion on the question regarding the dependence of the Didache on the synoptics can be roughly plotted on a continuum between two poles. While some scholars argue that the sectio evangelica is dependent on the written Gospels of Matthew and Luke,1 other scholars reject this and suggest alternative options such as dependence on the Q source2
or some other tradition, either written or oral,3 and even the priority of the Didache over the synoptic Gospels.4 such widely divergent positions in scholarship indicate that the discussion on the relationship between the sectio evangelica and the synoptic tradition is still wholly open.
The discussion of the relationship between the sectio evangelica and the synoptic tradition usually follows the methodological principle formu-1. Édouard Massaux, The Influence of the Gospel of Saint Matthew on the Christian Literature before Saint Irenaeus (Macon, Ga: Mercer university Press, 1993); Bentley Layton, “The sources, Date, and Transmission of Didache 1.3b–2.1,” HTR 61
(1968): 343–83; christopher M. Tuckett, “synoptic Tradition in the Didache,” in The Didache in Modern Research, ed. Jonathan a. Draper (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 92–128; John s. Kloppenborg, “The use of the synoptics or Q in Did.1:3b–2:1,” in Matthew and Didache, ed. huub van de sandt (assen: Van Gorcum; Minneapolis: fortress, 2005), 105–29. also, the proponents of the so-called “fiction hypothesis” have posited this view; see J. armitage Robinson, Barnabas, Hermas and the Didache (London: sPcK), 1920; R. h. connolly, “The Didache in Relation to the epistle of Barnabas,” JTS 33
(1932): 237–53.
2. Roger Glover, “The Didache’s Quotations and the synoptic Gospels,” NTS 5
(1958): 12–29; clayton N. Jefford, The Sayings of Jesus in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, Vcsup 11 (Leiden: Brill, 1989).
3. helmut Köster, Synoptische Überlieferung bei den apostolischen Vätern, TuGaL
65/5.10 (Berlin: akademie, 1957); Jean-Paul audet, La Didachè: Instructions des Apôtres, ebib (Paris: Gabalda, 1958); Willy Rordorf, “Does the Didache contain Jesus Tradition independently of the synoptic Gospels?” in Jesus and the Oral Synoptic Tradition, ed. henry Wansbrough (sheffield: sheffield academic, 1991), 394–423; Jonathan a. Draper, “The Jesus Tradition in the Didache,” in Draper, Didache in Modern, 72–91; Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache: A Commentary, trans. Linda M. Maloney, hermeneia (Minneapolis: fortress, 1998); huub van de sandt and David flusser, The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and Its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity, cRiNT 3.5
(assen: Van Gorcum; Minneapolis: fortress, 2002).
4. alan J. P. Garrow, The Gospel of Matthew’s Dependence on the Didache, JsNTsup 254 (London: T&T clark, 2004).
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289
lated by helmut Koester in 1957.5 he argued that, if material that is redactional in some text appears in another text, then the former text precedes the latter text. it must be noted that the sectio evangelica shows no traces of Markan material and contains only parallels to the double tradition of Matthew and Luke. Most scholars who have dealt with this problem advocate the Two Document hypothesis. Thus the nucleus of the problem lies in the reconstruction of Q and respectively in the redactional activity of Matthew and Luke.6 The Q text of the synoptic parallels of the sectio evangelica (Matt 5:44–47; Luke 6:27–33) is notoriously difficult to reconstruct, and, although the international Q Project took the task in the 1980s and 1990s, the work that finally resulted as the critical edition of Q in 2000 has not really advanced the discussion.7 at this point, there is no agreement regarding the original text of Q or the extent of the redaction on the part of Matthew and Luke. in fact, the exact reconstruction of Q may be itself an anachronistic task that stems from the influence of the modern print culture, assuming that there must have been a fixed text form of Q. even if Q
existed as a written document, it is possible that there were various versions of this document. it is thus possible (or even likely) that Matthew and Luke may not necessarily have used similar versions of Q.8 if one gives up on the reconstruction of the original wording of Q, the principle posited by Koester is not apt anymore, since the redaction by either Matthew or Luke is no longer detectable. On the other hand, the lack of certainty over the reconstruction of Q naturally weakens the possibilities for any further discussion on the literary dependence of the Didache on Q.
5. a prime example of such methodology is provided by Tuckett, “synoptic Tradition in the Didache.”
6. Garrow is a rare exception, because he omits Q from the discussion and argues that Matthew used Luke.
7. James M. Robinson, Paul hoffmann, and John s. Kloppenborg, eds., The Critical Edition of Q: Synopsis including the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mark and Thomas with English, German and French Translations of Q and Thomas, hermeneia (Minneapolis: fortress; Leuven: Peeters, 2000.
8. see Draper, “Jesus Tradition in the Didache,” 75; Rordorf, “Does the Didache contain Jesus Tradition,” 422. see also Richard a. horsley and Jonathan a. Draper, Whoever Hears You Hears Me: Prophets, Performance, and Tradition in Q (harrisburg, Pa: Trinity Press international, 1999). Recently, the plurality of early christian manuscript traditions has been argued convincingly by David c. Parker, who disputes the conception of “original text form.” see Parker, Living Text of Gospels (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1997).
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The criticism above relates to the problem of the definition of “literary dependence” in the first place. in its strictest form the term refers to a literary operation in which a production of a text is based on direct visual copying of a source document. if it is assumed that the editor of the sectio evangelica copied a source visually, we are facing the problem regarding the identification or reconstruction of the source. Moreover, to assume multiple written sources behind the sectio evangelica is equally problematic.9 On the basis of what we know about ancient book production, such a hypothesis of multiple sources would be implausible. as it has been noted in many studies, ancient text production differed from that of the modern world. in antiquity the actual conditions set certain limitations on the writing process. for example, in the absence of writing desks, it would have been extremely difficult for an author to switch between different source documents such as Matthew and Luke, not to mention the other parallel documents. an image of an ancient author having multiple source books open on the desk simultaneously does not correspond to historical reality.10 in addition, the “book” formats were difficult to use, especially in the case of scrolls, and the lack of indexing and the common practice of scriptio continua made it equally difficult to make random access to certain passages in a source text.11 Moreover, for such a short passage as the sectio evangelica, it is unlikely that the editor would ever consult multiple written sources, picking one saying from here and another from there.
9. in addition to the synoptic parallels, the sectio evangelica contains parallels to the shepherd of hermas (herm. Mand. 2.4–6) in Did. 1.5. The following passage (Did.
1.6) is rather enigmatic and has invoked questions because of its quotation formula ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τούτου δὲ εἴρηται. The most usual suggestion for the parallel is sir 12:1.
Despite these parallels, it seems unlikely that the editor would have used them as literary sources.
10. see the classic study by Bruce M. Metzger, “When Did scribes Begin to use Writing Desks?” in Historical and Literary Studies, Pagan, Jewish, and Christian (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 123–37. More recently, the absence of writing desks in Greco-Roman antiquity and its consequences for early christian text production has been discussed by Pieter J. J. Botha, “‘i am writing this with my own hand.…’: Writing in New Testament Times,” VE 30 (2009): 115–25 (155). see also Botha, Orality and Literacy in Early Christianity, BPc 5 (eugene, OR: cascade, 2012), 62–88.
11. The question about the codex and random access is discussed by Margaret ellen Lee and Bernard Brandon scott, Sound Mapping the New Testament (salem, OR: Polebridge, 2009), 35. see also Robert a. Derrenbacker, Ancient Compositional Practices and the Synoptic Problem, BeTL 186 (Leuven: Leuven university Press; Peeters, 2005), 32.
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instead, as some recent studies argue, the ancient authors usually used written sources only one at the time.12 if the author wanted to add some other material to the text, it must have been recalled from the resources of memory. One could, of course, argue that the editor harmonized multiple sources or used an already harmonized source. This would not solve the original problem, however, because even such a harmonization would not have been merely a literary operation, and the process would have involved oral dynamics.
in recent discussion there has been growing interest to elaborate further the concept of “literary dependence” in the direction of oral transmission of tradition. christopher Tuckett, one of the proponents of the Didache’s literary dependence on the synoptics, has argued on the basis of Koester’s principle that the Didache “presupposes” the written texts of Matthew and Luke.13 This argument was originally rather enigmatic in terms of media culture, and fortunately he has recently cleared up his position by arguing that, while the Didache presupposes these documents, the author did not necessarily use them directly by copying or having them
“set out before him or her on a table.”14 in somewhat similar manner, John Kloppenborg has argued that the compiler of the sectio evangelica knew 12. c. B. R. Pelling, “Plutarch’s Method of Work in the Roman Lives,” JHS 99
(1979): 74–96 (esp. 92). according to Pelling, the ancient authors usually gathered and read their source material before starting the actual writing process. We can easily imagine that the editor of the sectio evangelica could have been familiar with the parallel texts (the synoptic Gospels, shepherd of hermas) in one way or another. The writing process, however, did not require visual contact with the text that was being copied. as istván czachesz has recently noted, both the production and the use of text were seldom “solitary activities.” see istván czachesz, “Rewriting and Textual fluid-ity in antiquity: exploring the socio-cultural and Psychological context of earliest christian Literacy,” in Myths, Martyrs, and Modernity: Studies in the History of Religions in Honour of Jan N. Bremmer, ed. by J. h. f. Dijkstra, J. e. a. Kroesen, and Y. B.
Kuiper (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 425–41 (esp. 430). This, of course, presupposes that the early christian authors followed the same conventions of text production as other contemporary Greco-Roman authors. unfortunately, we know very little about the actual working habits of early christian authors.
13. Tuckett, “synoptic Tradition in the Didache,” 128. Tuckett presents initial possibilities that the author of the Didache had access to the texts of both gospels or a single harmonized text. On this basis, it would be easy to conclude that Tuckett is presupposing traditional views of literary dependence for both options.
14. christopher M. Tuckett, “The Didache and the synoptics Once More: a Response to aaron Milavec,” JECS 13 (2005): 509–18.
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the text of Luke and either Q or Matthew. he also distances himself from the convictions of the previous study by suggesting the possibility that “the harmonization of Luke with Q (or with Matthew) was not a literary operation.” Rather, he sees it possible that it “occurred in oral performance.”15
finally, Dale allison, while arguing for Matthean influence on the sectio evangelica, suggests that this section “incorporates an oral composition” that is influenced by Matthew while not being fully dependent on it.16 unfortunately, despite this fresh perspective on the issue, these scholars stop their analyses at the point where the most interesting questions invoked by their studies begin to emerge. Once strict literary dependence as a result of (at least) exclusive literary activities is rejected, the natural step would be to explore the question of how oral communication influenced the compositional process of the sectio evangelica.
2. Orality and Performance
as argued above, instead of a source critical investigation, one should try to find other ways to define the history and the origin of the sectio evangelica. While it is likely that it is a later interpolation in the Didache, it is not necessarily a literary creation that combines material from multiple written sources. Rather, i would argue that it was shaped (most likely) through multiple oral performances of this tradition. in the following discussion, i will present some ideas regarding orality and performance that are relevant to the current problem.
as it has been argued on many occasions, orality and writing were constantly intertwined in the ancient world.17 The production and use of texts were influenced by oral aspects. Technically speaking, the composition of texts was hardly ever a silent and solitary practice. an oral aspect was present, for example, through the usual custom of dictation.
Traditions were seldom drawn directly from the source books. instead, the background of tradition usually lay in the oral register, from which they 15. Kloppenborg, “use of the synoptics or Q,” 129.
16. Dale c. allison, Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (London: sPcK, 2010), 333.
17. see, e.g., Ruth finnegan, Literacy and Orality: Studies in the Technology of Communication (Oxford: Blackwell), 1988; Risto uro, “Thomas and Oral Gospel Tradition,” in Thomas at the Crossroads: Essays on the Gospel of Thomas (edinburgh: T&T
clark, 1998), 8–32 (esp. 15–19).
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were transformed into the written register with help of memory. This was not, however, merely transcribing or “recording” the tradition but rather a progressive process that included multiple rewritings of the text that were done on the basis of multiple oral performances to the “test audience.”
it is commonly accepted that texts were mostly written to be read aloud in antiquity.18 While this is true, it is also partly a limiting definition. More than just reading aloud, the use of the texts could be better termed as performing.19 in fact, “reading aloud” may evoke modern associations regarding reading, as if the content of the text is just being transformed into orality in the reading process. Rather, in antiquity the performer would not read directly from the paper at the event of the performance. This is due to the book formats themselves, such as scrolls and their layout, which required performers to familiarize themselves with the texts in advance. further, performing may have included some paralinguistic features such as pauses, mimics, and gestures that had to be practiced before the event of performance. Thus, it is evident that performing involved the use of memory.
The role of memory has been discussed in the studies of early christianity on many occasions. in recent discussion, the classic views of fredric Bartlett have been reaffirmed.20 it appears that memory is not just a storage of “frozen” traditions but rather a matter of constantly self-interpreting and constructive processes. in addition to individual memory control and interpretation, traditions can be interpreted socially or even culturally.21 Thus, for example, a community can exercise control over certain traditions through feedback in performances. The concept of constructive memory supports the idea of the relativity of the “original form” or “origi-18. see the often-referred article by Paul J. achtemeier, “Omne verbum sonat: The New Testament and the Oral environment of the Late Western antiquity,” JBL
109 (1990): 3–27. for more references, see William Johnson, “Toward a sociology of Reading in classical antiquity,” AJP 121 (2000): 593–627.
19. for example, see Whitney shiner, Proclaiming the Gospel: First-Century Performance of Mark (harrisburg, Pa: Trinity Press international, 2003), esp. 1–35.
20. e.g., John Dominic crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately after the Execution of Jesus (san francisco: harpersan francisco, 1998); John s. Kloppenborg, “Memory, Performance, and the sayings of Jesus” (paper presented at the helsinki seminar on Memory, helsinki, finland, 11
May 2011), esp. 2–3.
21. see the summarizing article on memory by Dennis c. Duling, “Memory, collective Memory, Orality and the Gospels,” HTS 67 (2011): 1–11.
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nal wording” of a tradition. as argued in many studies on orality, each performance is an original by itself.22 Thus, if we discuss the performance of the sectio evangelica or the Two Ways, there is no reason to suppose that each performance would always contain exactly same wording as previous or subsequent performances.
John Miles foley has coined the term “word-power” to characterize performance of oral-derived texts.23 foley’s approach is heavily influenced by the receptionist theories of the literary critic Wolfgang iser.24 While iser studied literary texts, however, foley applies these insights to performances of oral-derived texts.25 The starting point in this approach is to underline the importance of the participation of the recipient in the communication event instead of merely concentrating on the speaker and the message. Performance of oral-derived texts implies that an audience performs certain interpretative tasks, especially filling in the “gaps of indeterminacy” in performance. These gaps are active and important meanings that lie outside the received version or text, and the task for the audience is to use its prior knowledge (tradition) to bridge the gaps. Tradition is thus an enabling referent in the performance of oral-derived texts, whereas the performance itself is an enabling event. foley’s word-power is divided into three aspects: performance arena, register, and communicative economy.
The performance arena is “the locus in which some specialized form of communication is uniquely licensed to take place.”26 in order to achieve a successful oral performance, both the performer and the audience must enter the same performance arena, because each arena is loaded with its own ways of speaking and ways of meaning. Those who are outside a certain performance arena are unable to decode the meanings that are 22. albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales, hscL 24 (cambridge: harvard university Press, 1960), 101; Werner h. Kelber, The Oral and Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul and Q (Philadelphia: fortress, 1983), 30. The written text was not a matter of frozen tradition in the preprint cultures either. it was only the invention of the printing press that generally allowed the production of multiple identical copies.
23. John Miles foley, Singer of Tales in Performance (Bloomington: indiana university Press, 1995), xiv.
24. Wolfgang iser, The Act of Reading (Baltimore: The Johns hopkins university Press, 1978).
25. John Miles foley, Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Epic (Bloomington: indiana university Press, 1991), 6–8.
26. foley, Singer of Tales in Performance, 47.
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encoded and implied in the oral performance. Thus one will be unable to fill in the gaps of indeterminacy.
The language that is used in certain performance arenas can be termed as registers.27 in his model, foley applies Michael halliday’s socio-linguistic theory of discourse register, which consists of three factors: field, tenor, and mode.28 in the study of early christian performances, Jonathan Draper has recently applied halliday’s theory in the context of the Two Ways and the sermon of the Gospel of Luke.29 first, field defines the area of operation of the language activity, in other words, what discourse is taking place and where.30 The fields of the sectio evangelica and the Two Ways fall within the context of baptismal catechesis. secondly, tenor covers the relationships between those who take part in the discourse.
according to Draper, in the context of the Didache the tenor is the “quasi-parental relationship of the teacher to the prospective new members.”31
in addition, tenor could also cover a metonymic link to the teachings of Jesus, especially in the case of the sectio evangelica. The teacher would thus speak with the authority of the Lord Jesus. The wider context of the Two Ways has a clear metonymic reference to the Decalogue, the nucleus of the israelite traditions. Thirdly, mode covers the method of communication. in oral mode this could contain techniques that are used to help communication, especially memorizing and reception of tradition. This will be covered in more detail below.
an important part of the performance of oral-derived texts is communicative economy, especially in the form of traditional referentiality.
according to foley, traditional referentiality entails the invoking of a context with wider meanings than the text itself invokes. Thus, traditional 27. ibid., 50.
28. Michael alexander Kirkwood halliday, Language as Social Semiotic (Baltimore: university Park Press, 1978), 33.
29. Jonathan a. Draper, “Jesus’ ‘covenantal Discourse’ on the Plain (Luke 6:12–
7:17) as Oral Performance: Pointers to ‘Q’ as Multiple Oral Performance,” in Oral Performance, Popular Tradition, and Hidden Transcript in Q, ed. Richard a. horsley, semeiast 60 (atlanta: society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 71–98; “Vice catalogues as Oral-Mnemonic cues: a comparative study of the Two-Ways Tradition in the Didache and Parallels from the Perspective of Oral Tradition,” in Jesus, the Voice, and the Text: Beyond the Oral and the Written Gospel, ed. Tom Thatcher (Waco, TX: Baylor university Press, 2008), 111–13.
30. see foley, Singer of Tales in Performance, 50.
31. Draper, “Vice catalogues as Oral-Mnemonic cues,” 116.
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referentiality is a sort of pars pro toto, “a mode of signification wherein the part stands for the whole.” Tradition is an enabling referent that allows the audience to understand the performance in a way that the performer intended it to be understood. This can be also applied in the context of the Didache and especially the Two Ways. Whatever the original text of the Two Ways may have been, it seems plausible that both the content and the form of this teaching opened (through its performance and reception) wider meanings than just the teaching of a community. for example, the prohibitions in the way of life undoubtedly invoke the Decalogue and its significance for the Jewish people, in fact, the whole spectrum of israelite traditions that are preserved in the collective memory of the community.
The inclusion of the sectio evangelica in the Two Ways could have been due to traditional referentiality. in a literary critical investigation, the sectio evangelica seems a rather awkward passage because it seems to interrupt the flow between Did. 1.3a and 2.2. as it has been argued in previous studies, the editor’s attempt to “hide” the interpolation by adding Did. 2.1 is not particularly skillful, at least in the eyes of a modern scholar.32 Nevertheless, it is safe to assert that the editor knew what he or she was doing when adding the sectio evangelica into the Two Ways teaching.
These materials did not end up in the Didache by accident. it is certain that the editor knew that most of these traditions were already attributed to Jesus, although there is no sign of reference to him on the textual level of the Didache.33 Regarding its placement, the sectio evangelica would fit better topically in the context of the anawim sayings in Did. 3.8–10
and the rules for life and society in Did. 4 and not before the first vice list in Did. 2. i would suggest, however, that its current location could be explained by the occurrence of the negative form of the golden rule in Did.
1.2b, which perhaps worked as a metonymic marker that invoked the Jesus tradition found also in Matthew and Luke. it is possible that the editor knew that these traditions were circulated together elsewhere as well, as in the Gospel of Luke or perhaps even in the Q sermon.34 The Lukan parallels occur in Luke 6:27–30 and 32, which sandwiches the positive form of the golden rule in Luke 6:31. it must be noted, however, that metonymic 32. Niederwimmer, Didache, 86–87.
33. see the Didache’s references to the Gospel in Did. 8.2, 11.3, and 15.3–4, or the words of Lord in 9.5 and 14.3. The other quotation formulas are found in 1.6 and 16.7.
34. in Matthew, the golden rule works as a conclusion for the sermon on the Mount in Matt 7:12.
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referentiality is not a matter of literary dependence. Thus, if we argue that the golden rule invoked the other Jesus tradition, it does not mean that the sectio evangelica would betray literary dependence on the Gospel of Luke.
Whereas the sectio evangelica can be regarded literary critically as an interpolation, it also has a connection to the multiple performances of the Two Ways tradition. following chris Keith’s recent theory on the Pericopae adultarae in the Gospel of John (7:53–8:11),35 i would argue that the interpolation of the sectio evangelica betrays two levels of performances of tradition. first, the editor most probably belonged to the Didache community and was thus a part of the audience during performances of the Two Ways tradition that lacked the sectio evangelica. as i argued above, the sectio evangelica became part of this tradition through traditional referentiality, and, further, the interpolation could be characterized as an interpretation of the existing Two Ways tradition. similarly in the case of the Pericopae adultarae, Keith notes the similar dynamics of oral performance that contain interaction between the audience and the performer.
The interpolation is thus the audience’s response to the original tradition.36
in the context of the Didache, the editor practiced creative control over the tradition by adding the interpolation and continued performing the version of the Two Ways that now contained the sectio evangelica. as a performer, however, the editor had to take the audience into account, because it was not practical to include material with which the audience would have been unfamiliar. Thus the traditional referents in the interpolated material are important, and most probably have invoked familiar ideas among the audience just as the original content of the Two Ways teaching did.
since it is likely that few people in the Didache community had access to the actual written text of the Two Ways while the rest had to rely solely on oral performance and aural reception, the interpolation must be studied in this light as well. as seen above, the concept of original wording was a relative matter in oral performance. actually, even the search for the original wording in the manuscript tradition may be a fantasy of a print 35. see chris Keith, “a Performance of the Text: The adulteress’s entrance into John’s Gospel,” in The Fourth Gospel in First-Century Media Culture, ed. anthony Le Donne and Tom Thatcher, LNTs 426 (London: T&T clark international, 2011), 49–69.
36. ibid., 62.
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culture in itself.37 since each and every performance was an original production in its own right, it is safe to assume that the people in the Didache community did not regard the sectio evangelica as a later gloss of obscure origin but rather a part of “living tradition” in the community.
3. Tracking the Oral Mode of the sectio evangelica 3.1. sound Mapping
Besides these theoretical approaches to the current problem, i wish to study the oral mode of the sectio evangelica, which will make use of more concrete analyses of the text. as we saw in foley’s theory, the oral mode covers the methods that facilitate oral performance. While the Didache exists only in a written register, the oral mode of an oral-derived text such as the sectio evangelica can be studied with an analysis that pays attention to the performative features in the text. as it has been noted above, composition and performance were closely tied together in antiquity, and texts were usually composed in order to be performed and to be heard. Performing did not mean merely reading the text aloud, but rather, in many cases, texts worked as aids for memory, thus giving guidelines for creativ-ity on the part of the performer. even in some cases, texts were composed in performance.38
in their pioneering work Sound Mapping the New Testament, Margaret ellen Lee and Bernard Brandon scott study the aural quality of early christian texts by using a method that they call “sound mapping.” This method is based on the sound analysis of a text, the mapping out of certain phonemes and syllables, vowels and consonants in the text. With this approach, as Lee and scott argue, one is able pay attention to the “sound”
of early christian performances. since oral performance is a highly situ-ational and time bound event, it requires different type of dynamics than modern silent reading. in oral mode, the special repetition of certain sounds are of great importance, because they help a person to memorize 37. This multiformity may be seen even in the sparse manuscript tradition on the Didache. P.Oxy 1782 is a fragment that contains Did. 1.3c, 1.4a, and 2.7b. interestingly, this fragment contains a slightly longer reading for the sectio evangelica in comparison to the Jerusalem manuscript.
38. for example, see the recent study by antoinette clark Wire, The Case for Mark Composed in Performance, BPc 3 (eugene, OR: cascade, 2011).
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traditions and create a structure that can be more easily understood by members of the audience, who do not necessarily have a visual contact with the text and are not able to scan it thoroughly, unlike modern readers.39 it must be noted, however, that sound mapping covers only one dimension of oral mode. Obviously there are limits in this approach, because oral registers can never be captured totally in a graphic chart. charts do not take into account paralinguistic features of a performance, such as volume level, pitch and tone of voice, mimics, and other gestures. While sound mapping does not cover the whole performance event, it may nevertheless take us closer in our understanding to early christian performances.
3.2. Oral units within the composition
Lee and scott approach texts from within the framework of Greco-Roman prose composition, introducing ideas from classical authors and literary critics. for their analyses, the most crucial ideas are the concepts of the period and colon that they apply to the gospel texts. here we may briefly refer to classical definitions of period and colon and to their relationship to the different types of prose composition.
in Greek prose composition, the period is the largest unit of expression within a composition. While classical authors offer varying definitions for it, they all share the common idea that a period is a sentence that conveys a complete thought (e.g., aristotle, Rhet. 3.9.5; Demetrius, Eloc.
10–11; Dionysius of halicarnassus, Comp. 2; Quintilian, Inst. 9.4.125; Rhet. Her. 4.27). The name περίοδος carries with it a meaning of a circular path, which reflects its inner logic: the ideas that are presented in the beginning are completed at the end, either by syntactical or grammatical suspension or rhetorical figures such as antithesis.40 a classic analogy for the period is provided by Demetrius, who compares a speaker ( sic) to runners in a stadium: after running around the circle, runners arrive at the same position that they started from ( Eloc. 11). The main component of a period is the colon (κῶλον), which is prose’s equivalent to the measure 39. Lee and scott, Sound Mapping the New Testament, 135, 141–57.
40. R. Dean anderson Jr., Glossary of Greek Rhetorical Terms Connected to Methods of Argumentation, Figures and Tropes from Anaximenes to Quintilian, cBeT 24
(Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 94; Galen O. Rowe, “style,” in Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period: 330 BC–AD 400, ed. stanley e. Porter (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 121–57 (esp. 152).
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in poetry. Demetrius discusses the relationship between the period and colon by using the analogy of a hand: the period is a hand, while the colon is a finger (Eloc. 2). Thus the latter is subordinated to the former. classical authors disagree regarding the maximum number of cola in a period.
While aristotle speaks of a maximum of two cola (Rhet. 3.9), Demetrius doubles it to up to four (Eloc. 16). he argues that anything beyond four cola would destroy the symmetry of the period. although cicero uses the Latin term membrum in reference to the colon, he states that the period may consists of up to four hexameters (De or. 3.181).41 as Galen Rowe has noted, however, these limits seem to have been sometimes exceeded.42
for example, Quintilian argues that “the average number [of cola] would appear to be four, but it often contains even more” (Inst. 9.4.125). The periods were used in a certain type of compositional style that is called by different names by classical authors. for example, for aristotle there are two types of styles: εἰρομένη λέξις (“strung on”) and κατεστραμμένη
λέξις (“turned down”) (Rhet. 3.9). The former style is continuous and uses parataxis with little subordination. according to aristotle, the continuous style, or running style, can go on until everything has been said on the topic. he finds this type of style unpleasant because of its endlessness. The periodic style again contains periods that make it much easier to follow, because each period should convey a complete thought. hence the periodic style has a beginning and end, whereas in the running style the end was not in sight. Other classical authors have basically adopted aristotle’s distinction between these two styles, although some have modified his theories to some degree (e.g., Demetrius, Eloc. 12; Quintilian, Inst.
9.4.19–22).
Because of the plurality of different definitions of a period in antiquity, modern scholars have summarized the period in rather general terms as well. for example, we can cite George Kennedy, who states that a period
“refers usually to a complex sentence in which grammatical completion is postponed to the end or almost to the end.”43 according to him, periods are rare in early christian prose such as the canonical Gospels. Given 41. Quintilian (Inst. 9.4.125) argues that cicero limits the length of the period to
“four iambic trimeters, or the space between the times of taking breath.”
42. Rowe, “style,” 152. Rowe posits two examples, the opening statement of cicero’s For Archias and Demosthenes’s On the Crown.
43. George Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (chapel hill: university of North carolina Press, 1983), 30.
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this definition, it could be asked whether one can find real periods from the gospel tradition as Lee and scott do, because instead of containing complex sentences and subordinated clauses, they consist of paratactic cola, structures of grammatical parallelism. On the other hand, Lee and scott offer a broader definition for periods. according to them, periods can consist of several cola combined either paratactically or by means of grammatical subordination.44 Their broad definition of period and especially its application in their method, however, do not match with the classical (although varying) ideas of period. further, it could be debated whether an early christian author such as the editor of the sectio evangelica would have been familiar with the periodic style, since it is found mostly in sophisticated texts by classical Greco-Roman authors. The problem is related to larger questions about the educational level of the early christian authors in general. Nevertheless, it is hardly likely that one could have achieved full Greek literacy without any connection to the common educational processes that included certain exercises and compositional training that provided familiarity with the periodic style.45 in this sense we should not be surprised to find echoes of these elements in early christian texts. against this background, it seems that a number of the examples in the study by Lee and scott are not technically periods but should be termed in some other way.46 The periodic structure (a sign of an elegant style) could be regarded as some type of ideal topos for early christian writers who themselves applied more basic approaches in their composition processes. in order to avoid further confusion, it may be better to refer to these “periods,” as presented by Lee and scott, by the alternative designation “units.”
Despite some problems with their theory, Lee and scott have demonstrated that the idea of the periodic structure serves the study of the early christian texts. The central idea of the periodic structure in this discussion lies in its relation to the performance event: oral delivery and aural 44. Lee and scott, Sound Mapping the New Testament, 171.
45. see f. Gerald Downing, “compositional conventions and the synoptic Problem,” JBL 107 (1988): 69–85 (71).
46. for example, see Matt 6:9–10, 6:11–13, and 6:14–15. see Lee and scott, Sound Mapping the New Testament, 181–82. The category of period was not entirely clear in antiquity either. interestingly, augustine regards Ep. 5.5 as a period, although it is not really one. i owe this reference to R. Dean anderson Jr., Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Paul, cBeT 18 (Leuven: Peeters, 1996), 18 n. 1.
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reception. for example, cicero states that “a speech which is easy for lungs is also pleasant to listen to” (De or. 3.181).47 according to him, the periodic structure (clausula) also makes the reception easier for the listener.
hence, in classical definitions the length of the period was connected to breathing. for example, aristotle famously states that the period is “easy to repeat in a breath.” (Rhet. 3.9.5).48 as it was referred above, however, the length of the periods (as well as cola) could vary quite remarkably from very short ones to very complex ones. as a result, the matter of whether the period was always uttered in a single breath remains uncertain. for Lee and scott, it is the colon, instead of the period, that constitutes a breath unit within performance. as a result, they have presented colometric divisions of the cola in their example texts.
3.3. Oral units in the sectio evangelica
Whereas the materials in the sectio evangelica do not fit in the category of the classically defined periods, the section still consists of similar structures to many examples provided by Lee and scott in their study. its structure contains units that betray features such as rounding and suspension and resolution of thought that are usually linked with the periods. They lack grammatical suspension and contain paratactic clause structures, however. This excludes the possibility for labeling them as periods in the classical sense. The remarkable feature of these units, though, is the fact that each of them appears to be topically as well as aurally structured.
The boundaries of the units are relatively easily defined in terms of their content and aurality, as the material contains an abundance of repetitions of certain sounds and patterns. These are clearly structured into separate units of few cola.
While the performative features of the Matthean and Lukan versions of the Q sermon have been covered in previous studies,49 it is fascinating to 47. see also Quintilian, Inst. 9.4.125. The breathing obviously depends on the length of the cola and period.
48. The connection between periodic structured and breathing is discussed also by other classical authors. Demetrius (Eloc. 1) argues that the cola give rest for the speaker, because otherwise the speaker would run out of breath. Dionysius of halicarnassus again uses breath as a meter for the period in his analysis of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War (Comp. 22).
49. for Matthew, see Bernard Brandon scott and Margaret e. Dean, “a sound
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notice similar types of features in the sectio evangelica as well. if we take a closer look at the sectio evangelica, we can find five units that are linked with one another by similar topics, catchwords, and common aural features.
in the following, each of these units will be presented with the parallels in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. first, let us investigate the first unit found in Did. 1.3b–d, as well as its Matthean parallel (5:44b–48). for the sake of convenience, the text will be presented with colometric divisions.50
Did. 1.3b–d
εὐλογεῖτε τοὺς καταρωμένους ὑμῖν
καὶ προσεύχεσθε ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ὑμῶν
νηστεύετε δὲ ὑπὲρ τῶν διωκόντων ὑμᾶς
ποία γὰρ χάρις, ἐὰν φιλῆτε τοὺς φιλοῦντας ὑμᾶς
οὐχὶ καὶ τὰ ἔθνη τοῦτο ποιοῦσιν
ὑμεῖς δὲ φιλεῖτε τοὺς μισοῦντας ὑμᾶς
καὶ οὐχ ἕξετε ἐχθρόν
Matt 5:44b–48
ἀγαπᾶτε τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ὑμῶν
καὶ προσεύχεσθε ὑπὲρ τῶν διωκόντων ὑμᾶς
ὅπως γένησθε υἱοὶ τοῦ πατρὸς ὑμῶν τοῦ ἐν οὐρανοῖς
ὅτι τὸν ἥλιον αὐτοῦ ἀνατέλλει ἐπὶ πονηροὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς
καὶ βρέχει ἐπὶ δικαίους καὶ ἀδίκους
ἐὰν γὰρ ἀγαπήσητε τοὺς ἀγαπῶντας ὑμᾶς
τίνα μισθὸν ἔχετε
οὐχὶ καὶ οἱ τελῶναι τὸ αὐτὸ ποιοῦσιν
καὶ ἐὰν ἀσπάσησθε τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς ὑμῶν μόνον
τί περισσὸν ποιεῖτε
οὐχὶ καὶ οἱ ἐθνικοὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ποιοῦσιν
ἔσεσθε οὖν ὑμεῖς τέλειοι
ὡς ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος τέλειός ἐστιν
There is clear correspondence between the Didache’s and Matthew’s versions. Both begin with a set of exhortations to love your enemies, and after Map of the sermon on the Mount,” in SBL Seminar Papers 1993, ed. eugene h. Lovering, sBLsP 32 (atlanta: scholars Press, 1993), 672–725. for Luke, see Draper, “Jesus’
‘covenantal Discourse’ on the Plain,” 80–86. for the Q sermon, see horsley and Draper, Whoever Hears You Hears Me, 212–17.
50. The colometric division for Matthew follows the one posited by scott and Dean, “sound Map of the sermon on the Mount,” 690–91.
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that they move on to rhetorical questions. Overall, the Matthean rhetoric differs from that of the Didache in that, whereas Matthew underlines the importance of becoming sons of the heavenly father, the Didache contains more practical rhetoric about everyday life. after the three exhortations that employ the rhetorical figure of auxesis,51 the Didache introduces rhetorical questions that give further motivation for the preceding exhortations.52 finally, the Didache’s unit is resolved with a general exhortation to love your enemies, the activity that will eventually lead to the situation in which one has no enemies at all.53 The rounding of the unit in the Didache is not totally perfect, but it can be detected, for example, in the occurrence of “enemy” as a catchword in the second and final cola.
as for the Lukan parallel (6:27–28), it is close to the Didache in its choice of vocabulary. There are instances of verbatim agreement, and they both contain four cola of exhortations. The Lukan passage has a straightforward quadripartite structure, however, that lacks (in my opinion) the Didache’s or Matthew’s rhetorical genius.54 On the other hand, the Lukan quatrain contains other signs of elegant style, such as total avoidance of hiatus and homoeoteleuton with occurrence of the personal pronoun ὑμεῖς: ἀγαπᾶτε τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ὑμῶν
καλῶς ποιεῖτε τοῖς μισοῦσιν ὑμᾶς
εὐλογεῖτε τοὺς καταρωμένους ὑμᾶς
προσεύχεσθε περὶ τῶν ἐπηρεαζόντων ὑμᾶς
although the Didache shares elements with both Matthew and Luke, i consider it unlikely that the Didache’s unit presented above is a conflation of these two texts. While it is definitely related to the traditions preserved 51. Layton (“sources, Date and Transmission,” 353) mistakenly regards it as a climax and as a “deliberate ‘improvement’ of the Lukan text … which has no climactic ordering.” for climax, see Quintilian, Inst. 9.3.54; Rhet. Her. 4.34. for an example of christian text employing climax, see Rom 5:3–4.
52. Matthean and Lukan parallels for these rhetorical questions occur in slightly different contexts in Matt 5:46–47 and Luke 6:32.
53. a similar idea is found in P.Oxy 1224, Didascalia apostolorum (syriac and Latin), Justin Martyr (Apol. 1.14.3), and the Stromata of clement of alexandria (2.19.102.4).
54. a similar quatrain is found in Justin, Apol. 1.15.9. allison (Constructing Jesus, 340) regards it as a harmony of Matthew and Luke.
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in Matthew and Luke, its structure strongly points towards oral development of similar tradition, any literary operations notwithstanding.
The next unit in the sectio evangelica consists of Did. 1.4, excluding the commandment to abstain from bodily passions, which may be a post-Didachist insertion and belongs most likely to the later textual history of the Didache.55 This unit deals with the theme of nonretaliation and contains parallels in Matt 5:39b–42 and Luke 6:29–30. Both Matthean and Lukan quatrains contain parallelism between the first and the third cola, as well as the second and fourth cola. This structure can be termed as aBaB:56
Matt 5:39b–42
ἀλλ’ ὅστις σε ῥαπίζει εἰς τὴν δεξιὰν σιαγόνα σου
στρέψον αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν ἄλλην
καὶ τῷ θέλοντί σοι κριθῆναι καὶ τὸν χιτῶνά σου λαβεῖν ἄφες αὐτῷ
καὶ τὸ ἱμάτιον
καὶ ὅστις σε ἀγγαρεύσει μίλιον ἕν
ὕπαγε μετ’ αὐτοῦ δύο
τῷ αἰτοῦντί σε δός
καὶ τὸν θέλοντα ἀπὸ σοῦ δανίσασθαι μὴ ἀποστραφῇς
Luke 6:29–30
τῷ τύπτοντί σε ἐπὶ τὴν σιαγόνα πάρεχε καὶ τὴν ἄλλην
καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ αἴροντός σου τὸ ἱμάτιον
καὶ τὸν χιτῶνα μὴ κωλύσῃς
παντὶ αἰτοῦντί σε δίδου
καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ αἴροντος τὰ σὰ μὴ ἀπαίτει
Didache 1.4 again employs a different structure from Matthew and Luke.
here we find a quadripartite of conditional clauses that are balanced with the main clause:
ἐάν τις σοι δῷ ῥάπισμα εἰς τὴν δεξιὰν σιαγόνα
στρέψον αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν ἄλλην καὶ ἔσῃ τέλειος
ἐὰν ἀγγαρεύσῃ σέ τις μίλιον ἕν
ὕπαγε μετ’ αὐτοῦ δύο
ἐὰν ἄρῃ τις τὸ ἱμάτιόν σου
δὸς αὐτῷ καὶ τὸν χιτῶνα
55. Thus also Niederwimmer, Didache, 20; Layton, “sources, Date and Transmission,” 375–76.
56. for allison’s analysis of the aBaB structure, see Constructing Jesus, 335–37.
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ἐὰν λάβῃ τις ἀπὸ σοῦ τὸ σόν
μὴ ἀπαίτει·οὐδὲ γὰρ δύνασαι
The use of conditional clauses may echo the rhetorical question in Did.
1.3, which also contains ἐάν + subjunctive. it must be noted that all three versions, despite their different structures and wordings, have interesting features: after specific examples of nonretaliation, the last colon universalizes the case with a general admonition not to ask or require anything back.
interestingly, Did. 1.5a begins with the material παντὶ τῷ αἰτοῦντί σε
δίδου καὶ μὴ ἀπαίτει, which parallels closely Luke 6:30b. These sayings have different functions in their respective contexts, however: whereas the Lukan saying works as a conclusion to the unit dealing with nonretaliation (Luke 6:29–30), the Didache’s rhetoric employs it in the context of almsgiving that is the topic of the next unit:
παντὶ τῷ αἰτοῦντί σε δίδου καὶ μὴ ἀπαίτει
πᾶσι γὰρ θέλει δίδοσθαι ὁ πατὴρ ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων χαρισμάτων
μακάριος ὁ διδοὺς κατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν·ἀθῷος γάρ ἐστιν
The inner logic of the unit is rather simple. The unit starts with an exhortation of unconditional almsgiving, which is followed by a motivation (imitatio dei). The unit is concluded with a maxim that is related to the beatitudes of the Q sermon.
The following unit turns the focus on the receiver, who should not receive any alms in vain:
οὐαὶ τῷ λαμβάνοντι
εἰ μὲν γὰρ χρείαν ἔχων λαμβάνει τις, ἀθῷος ἔσται
ὁ δὲ μὴ χρείαν ἔχων δώσει δίκην, ἵνα τί ἔλαβε καὶ εἰς τί
ἐν συνοχῇ δὲ γενόμενος ἐξετασθήσεται περὶ ὧν ἔπραξε
καὶ οὐκ ἐξελεύσεται ἐκεῖθεν, μέχρις οὗ ἀποδῷ τὸν ἔσχατον κοδράντην
The material of the unit consists of 1.5b. it starts with a woe that is addressed to the unjustifiable receiver, which builds a contrast with the previous unit.
One could argue that the woe belongs together with the previous maxim.
as we can see below, however, the sound analysis suggests that they belong to different units. The following two cola are structured with the particles μέν and δέ, which underline the opposite cases of receiving. The consequences of unjustifiable receiving are spelled out in the fourth and fifth cola, which again have Matthean and Lukan parallels but occur in totally
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different contexts (see Matt 5:25–26; Luke 12:58–59). again, we cannot presume a literary dependence on the synoptics, but rather a creative performing of the tradition.
The quotation in Did. 1.6 is difficult to interpret, and it seems that it would fall out of the structure of the sectio evangelica. although Did. 1.6
continues the theme of giving, it stands in tension with the earlier commandments that promote giving without any conditions (Did. 1.5a) and underlines the responsibility of the one who receives (Did. 1.5b). The exhortation to consider to whom to give may reflect a different socioeconomic situation in the Didache communities. changed circumstances may have forced the members of the communities to reconsider the ideal of unconditional almsgiving. One could see also link with Did. 11.5–6 and 12.1–5, which warns the community of false teachers who seek only economical profit.
3.4. The sound Map of the sectio evangelica
after defining the units within the sectio evangelica, we may move on to perform a sound analysis of these units based on the pioneering work of Lee and scott. in the following analysis special attention is given to the repetition of certain sounds (syllables and phonemes) throughout the cola. as has been noted, repetition helps both performing and reception of oral-derived tradition.
as for the sectio evangelica, one can clearly see how the tradition is structured throughout by the sound. in the following sound maps i have marked the recurring “sounds” with bold letters: 1 εὐλογεῖτε
τοὺς καταρωμένους
ὑμῖν
2 καὶ προσεύχεσθε
ὑπὲρ τῶν
ἐχθρῶν
ὑμῶν
3 νηστεύετε δὲ
ὑπὲρ τῶν
διωκόντων
ὑμᾶς
4 ποία γὰρ χάρις, ἐὰν φιλῆτε
τοὺς φιλοῦντας
ὑμᾶς
οὐχὶ καὶ τὰ ἔθνη
τοῦτο ποιοῦσιν
5 ὑμεῖς δὲ
φιλεῖτε
τοὺς μισοῦντας
ὑμᾶς
καὶ οὐχ ἕξετε
ἐχθρόν
in this unit one immediately notes the repetition of second person plural personal pronouns at the end of the cola. in fact, the second person plural dominates the whole unit with the occurrence of similar endings of the finite verb forms. Of course, it can be debated whether these end-
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ings should be taken as intentionally structured sounds. it may be that they stem only from syntactic requirements of the sentence. in any case, here we may find an instance of repetition that helps to create a structure in the performance.
another notable feature is the repetition of common sounds in the fourth and the fifth cola, although τοὺς φιλοῦντας/τοὺς μισοῦντας and τοῦτο ποιοῦσιν represent totally different grammatical forms and thus have different syntactical functions. The correspondence between οὐχὶ
καί and καὶ οὐχ is also interesting, because they are aurally similar but syntactically different.
1 ἐάν
τις
σοι δῷ ῥάπισμα εἰς τὴν δεξιὰν
σιαγόνα
στρέψον
αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν ἄλλην καὶ ἔσῃ τέλειος
2 ἐὰν ἀγγαρεύσῃ σέ τις μίλιον ἕν
ὕπαγε μετ’
αὐτοῦ δύο
3 ἐὰν ἄρῃ
τις τὸ ἱμάτιόν
σου
δὸς
αὐτῷ καὶ τὸν χιτῶνα
4 ἐὰν λάβῃ
τις ἀπὸ
σοῦ τὸ σόν
μὴ ἀπαίτει· οὐδὲ γὰρ δύνασαι
This unit is a heavily patterned passage that is built on balanced cola. The repetition of certain sounds is evident: ἐάν, τις, αὐτοῦ /αὐτῷ, σου / σοι /
σε. This sound pattern is a prime example of how the repetition has helped performing as well as reception of the tradition.
1 παντὶ τῷ αἰτοῦντί σε
δίδου καὶ
μὴ ἀπαίτει
2 πᾶσι γὰρ θέλει
δίδοσθαι ὁ πατὴρ ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων χαρισμάτων
3 μακάριος
ὁ διδοὺς κατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν ἀθῷος γάρ ἐστιν
in this unit we find a link to the previous one. The repeated expression μὴ ἀπαίτει builds a link with the preceding occurrence of μὴ ἀπαίτει. in addition, the unit is structured with an occurrence of πα-/-α-sounds in the beginning of each colon. The aural nucleus of this unit is, however, the repetition of διδου-/διδο- in the middle of each colon. finally, the phrase ἀθῷος γάρ ἐστιν anticipates similar sounds in the following unit: 1 οὐαὶ τῷ
λαμβάνοντι
2 εἰ μὲν γὰρ
χρείαν ἔχων
λαμβάνει τις
ἀθῷος ἔσται
3 ὁ δὲ μὴ
χρείαν ἔχων δώσει δίκην, ἵνα τί
ἔλαβε καὶ εἰς τί
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4 ἐν συνοχῇ δὲ γενόμενος ἐξετασθήσεται περὶ ὧν
ἔπραξε
5 καὶ οὐκ ἐξελεύσεται ἐκεῖθεν, μέχρις οὗ ἀποδῷ τὸν ἔσχατον κοδράντην
This unit contains a repetition of sounds that forms a climatic structure. it appears that each colon is linked with the other by common sets of sounds.
especially the aural links between ἔλαβε/ἔπραξε and ἐξετασθήσεται/
ἐξελεύσεται are interesting phenomena.
finally, the last unit is linked with the previous one with the ending
-ηται and the reoccurrence of the catchword μέχρις. The second colon also includes repetition with certain sounds σου, -ας, and γνῷς/δῷς: 1 ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τούτου δὲ εἴρηται
2 Ἱδρωσάτω ἡ ἐλεημοσύνη σου εἰς τὰς χεῖράς σου, μέχρις ἂν γνῷς, τίνι δῷς
On the basis of this short investigation, it is clear that the sectio evangelica is full of aural repetition of certain sounds and links. it would be unnatural to suggest that the sectio evangelica is merely due to literary redaction by a later editor. Rather, aurality must have played a certain role in the formation of the sectio evangelica. More than being just a written text that imitates “oral style,” i would argue that the sectio evangelica becomes a text through oral performing. importantly, the sound map can be detected even in a unit such as Did. 1.5b, which does not have a clearly patterned structure. This increases the likelihood for the formation of tradition through oral performance.
4. summary
This article started with an argument that the traditional methods for studying the tradition history and source criticism of the sectio evangelica in the Didache have led to an impasse for two reasons: first, the uncertainty of the reconstruction of Q and the redaction of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke downplay the possibility of establishing any literary dependence between the synoptics and the sectio evangelica; second, the concept of literary dependence as a matter of visual copying is not supported by what we know about the conventions of ancient text production. instead, it was argued that the composition and origin of the sectio evangelica should be studied in its own right, as an oral-derived text that was formed through multiple performances. as a heuristic model, i referred to the elements of the Greek prose composition, the period and colon. although the units in the sectio evangelica are not totally comparable with the periods in Greek
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prose, they serve a common purpose, that is, oral performing. Regarding the methodology, i applied sound mapping in order to point out the aural structure of the sectio evangelica. The sound map revealed repetition of certain sounds and patterns within the units, which strongly suggests an oral provenance for this passage. interestingly, these two aspects support each other, since the units were structured topically as well as aurally.
These examples may bring us closer to the performances of this tradition and further give us a more realistic view of early christian transmissions of tradition.
Nancy Pardee
The stimulus for this study was a paper presented by Perttu Nikander in November 2010 for the “Didache in context” section of the society of Biblical Literature. Nikander’s paper, entitled “Orality and Writing in the context of the Two Ways Teaching and the Didache,”1 made a first attempt at bridging the gap between the recent emphasis on understanding the Two Ways and the Didache overall as fundamentally oral texts and the traditional view that focuses on the Didache and its components as written communication. When looking in particular at the Two Ways, Nikander, in my opinion correctly, stated, “both media—orality and writing—should be studied at the same time as interacting phenomena.” But how does one do this for the Two Ways, for the Didache as a whole, and for early christian texts in general? What is the balance between the two media? Does the acknowledgment that these texts were created in societies that were still very much oriented toward the oral transmission of tradition2 make illegitimate any attempt to derive from them information on the historical development of the church via comparative and redactional textual stud-
* This study is a revised form of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the society of Biblical Literature, san francisco, 21 November 2011.
1. Perttu Nikander, “Orality and Writing in the context of the Two Ways Teaching and the Didache” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the society of Biblical Literature, atlanta, 21 November 2010). i am exceedingly grateful for his willingness to share with me a written copy of his oral presentation.
2. Joanna Dewey, e.g., using the oft-cited terminology of Walter Ong, characterizes the first century as “a manuscript culture with high residual orality”; see Dewey,
“Textuality in an Oral culture: a survey of the Pauline Traditions,” Semeia 65 (1994): 37–65 (39), with reference to Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (York, uK: Methuen, 1982; repr. Oxford: Routledge, 2002). see, e.g., Ong, Orality and Literacy, 38, 125.
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ies? Nikander suggested both that the Two Ways had been influenced by oral performance prior to its inclusion in the Didache and that the Didache as a whole continued to be “influenced by oral performing, feedback and adaptation of new traditions.” at the same time, he theorized that the writing of the Didache showed the expansion of influence and subsequent
“decontextualization” of the Two Ways tradition and suggested, based on the work of J. Peter Denny, that the reference in Did. 7.1 to reciting chapters 1–6 in the context of baptism was “an attempt to explain the function of the Two Ways teaching to an audience that did not share the same performance arena with the original community.”3 The questions remained, however, as to the precise purpose of this “decontextualization” and the extent to which oral performance might continue to influence the use of the tradition. in my 2002 dissertation, i had suggested that at its earliest stage the Didache had been created through the “overt christianization of a TW text … by the addition of 1.3b–5 (6) as well as chapter 16” and that a second stage of composition saw “its development into a basic outline for a gentile community … of the two necessary christian rituals, baptism and eucharist.”4 if this reconstruction be correct, would such rituals continue to be open to the influence of oral performance? Thus my goal in this paper is to pick up where Nikander in his very interesting preliminary study left off, expanding on some of his comments, clarifying and evaluating the ways in which i see oral theory being applied to the Didache, and raising questions regarding its role in understanding the form, contents, and function of the text.
The concept of orality, of the oral transmission and “performance” of texts, and of the ancient Greco-Roman world as a primarily oral culture has been an important avenue of investigation for the texts of the New Testament. how texts were “performed,” how they would be perceived by their audiences, and what their function would have been have all been 3. Nikander cites as his basis the observation by J. Peter Denny that, “the general cause of decontextualization … is the growth of human societies beyond a size where all members share a common background of information”; see Denny, “Rational Thought in Oral culture and Literate Decontextualization” in Literacy and Orality, ed. D. R. Olson and N. Torrance (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1991), 72.
4. Nancy D. Pardee, “The Genre of the Didache: a Text-Linguistic analysis”
(Ph.D. diss., The university of chicago, 2002), 195–96. see now also Pardee, The Genre and Development of the Didache, WuNT 2/339 (Tübingen: Mohr siebeck, 2012), 184–85.
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illuminated by the concept of these works as texts that would be spoken and heard rather than simply written and read. Beyond this, however, was the impact such a realization had on the search for “original” sayings of Jesus. The early studies of Milman Parry and then albert Lord5 on the way in which epics were transmitted in oral form showed, among other things, that while the inclusion of essential themes and formulae kept the stories recognizable, other variations in the performance of these texts were not only acceptable but expected and considered artistic. as Walter Ong summarized it,
originality consists not in the introduction of new materials but in fitting the traditional materials effectively into each individual, unique situation and/or audience.… The fixed materials in the bard's memory are a float of themes and formulas out of which all stories are variously built.6
in these situations there were no “original” texts but rather a variety of similar, yet different, performances, indeed each performance was unique.
if true, however, this created problems for scholars endeavoring to recapture the historical Jesus from data provided by his “original” sayings and for those attempting to reconstruct the early christian communities through studies of the redaction of “original” texts, since in both cases oral theory threatened the very foundation of their methodology: if there were no “original” traditions, the significance of “variations” was much harder to determine, if not entirely undermined.
Of course the possibility of oral transmission has often been raised with respect to the tradition that the Didache shares with the synoptic Gospels. indeed, as Nikander pointed out, this had been the primary focus in the past for orality studies on the Didache. Beyond that, however, such ideas have increasingly been brought to bear on other aspects of the Didache, with studies appearing in essentially two categories: (1) those that see the overall oral character of the Didache as helping to provide a way out of the scholarly impasse over the question regarding the presence of redactional layers in the text and (2) those that apply such concepts of orality to particular sections of the text. examples of the first category 5. Milman Parry, L’Epithète traditionelle dans Homère (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1928); albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales, hscL 24 (cambridge: harvard university Press, 1960).
6. Ong, Orality and Literacy, 59–60.
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would be the commentary of aaron Milavec and the work of ian henderson, both of whom maintain the compositional unity of the Didache and see the text’s primarily oral character as a way to explain what others have cited as evidence of the use and redaction of sources. examples of the latter include publications of Jonathan Draper, the commentary by Milavec, and the work on the eucharistic prayers by Jonathan schwiebert.
Nikander criticized briefly and to varying degrees the work of Milavec, Draper, and henderson, while also acknowledging the usefulness of their approach to the Didache from the perspective of oral performance. i believe, however, that these studies require a more in-depth evaluation if one is to achieve a more precise understanding of the composition and function of the Didache, and it is to such an evaluation that this study will now turn.7
among the basic premises of Milavec’s 2003 commentary8 is that the extant Didache represents the “comprehensive, step-by-step program used for the formation of a gentile converting to christianity,”9 that it is a “pastoral manual”10 created by “senior mentors,”11 and that it had “circulated on the lips of the members of this community for a good many years before any occasion arose that called for a scribe to prepare a textual version.”12 in Milavec’s opinion, when one looks at the text as a step-by-step process of training, one recognizes that it exhibits a unity both “marvelous” and
“holistic.”13 Moreover, such unity is even more evident when the Didache is viewed from the perspective of orality:
7. for my earlier critique of the work of Milavec, see Pardee, review of The Didache: Text, Translation, Analysis, and Commentary,” by aaron Milavec, JECS 13
(2005): 525–27; for my evaluation of henderson, see Pardee, “Genre of the Didache,”
53–58; on both now, see Genre and Development of the Didache, 53–62.
8. aaron Milavec, The Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life of the Earliest Christian Communities, 50–70 CE (New York: Newman, 2003). The premises are the same in the epitome version of the larger commentary, The Didache: Text, Translation, Analysis, and Commentary (collegeville, MN.: Liturgical Press, 2003).
9. Milavec, Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life, xvii.
10. ibid., vii.
11. ibid., xi.
12. ibid., vii.
13. ibid., xii.
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When the residual clues of orality are … noted in the Didache …, it becomes possible to understand that its oral creation and oral recitation marked its internal structure long before it was ever a written text.14
such clues Milavec finds in the many references to “words” and “speaking” within the text,15 as well as oral patterns, key words, and associations, indeed an “oral logic” that lends itself well to memorization and performance.16 Resorting to source and redaction criticism to explain the text of the Didache is, in his view, unwarranted.
Milavec’s reconciliation of seeming inconsistencies/disruptions in the text by resorting to its oral character, however, is altogether unconvincing. One example, and a crucial one of course, is his explanation for the problematic juncture of the text at Did. 7.1 mentioned by Nikander. here, with the beginning of the new section “concerning baptism” (περὶ δὲ τοῦ
βαπτίσματος), the text not only issues the command to recite everything that has been stated in the text heretofore (ταῦτα πάντα προειπόντες), that is, the material on the Two Ways in the previous six chapters, but unexpectedly moves from the singular form of address found just prior to this point in 6.1–3 (and predominant in the Two Ways overall) to a plural form (βαπτίσατε). Given the independent witnesses to virtually the same Two Ways tradition in the Doctrina apostolorum, the epistle of Barnabas, and the apostolic church Order, most scholars have viewed Did. 7.1 as a somewhat awkward editorial seam connecting a preexistent Two Ways text, now apparently used by this community as part of the baptismal ritual, with the material that followed. clearly the change in verbal form signals a change in audience that otherwise goes completely unacknowledged in the text. Milavec, however, denies that the Two Ways existed in written form within the community prior to its inscription as part of the Didache and considers the various textual witnesses to the Two Ways as transcrip-tions of independent oral productions of the same basic oral text found in Did. 1–5.17 While agreeing that the change from singular to plural in 7.1
signals a different audience, he simply explains the disruption by saying that the audience all along had been the mentors of the community (not their catechumens) and that the text took this form, because “the trainers 14. ibid., 718.
15. ibid., 719.
16. ibid., xxxiii.
17. ibid., 717–18.
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need to hear the specific rules in the form in which they will use them to train their novices.”18 such a solution is problematic on many counts.
first, that the true audience would only become clear so far into the text, whether oral or written, seems highly unlikely, especially if the text as a whole had been honed orally over so many years prior to its transcription.
secondly, Milavec’s explanation does not account for the fact that a change from singular to plural is also found in the verbs of Did. 1.3b, a passage closely related to Matt 5:44, 46–47 and Luke 6:27–28, 32–35, where the same verbs occur in the second person plural (εὐλογεῖτε, προσεύχεσθε, ἀγαπᾶτε). indeed, 1.3b is the beginning of a passage (1.3b–2.1) that presents material shared by both Matthew and Luke, which is absent from all other versions of the Two Ways and which of necessity must be deemed a later addition to the shared, preexisting Two Ways source. finally, the idea that the text would have to be given in the exact form in which the mentors were to present it to catechumens flies in the face of his suggestion that the catechumens themselves would likely have memorized the Two Ways:19
why would the form used by all not be rendered in indirect speech?
indeed the “interpolation” of 1.3b–2.1 is another example of Milavec’s attribution of a problematic juncture to the oral character of the Didache.
in Did. 2.1, one meets with the announcement, “the second command of the teaching is,” a surprising statement in light of the fact that nothing heretofore had been designated as a “first command.” again, the fact that this section is missing from other Two Ways texts has led most scholars to see 2.1 as another, awkward, redactional seam created by an editor to incorporate the new material. Milavec, however, based on his premise that the Two Ways is a training program delivered orally, suggests the following explanation:
Within the progression of a training program … it would have been natural for the spiritual master to give the “rule” of Did. 1.5 first and to discuss it at length without making any reference to there even being a “second rule”—a topic that would be taken up at the next training session.20
18. ibid., 245.
19. ibid., 93, 267.
20. ibid., 118.
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apart from the fact that no data is offered to support such a hypothesis, there is the more difficult problem of reconciling the idea that such a specific cutoff point would be dictated within an oral text.
from the opposite view, Milavec’s belief that the Didache is primarily an oral production is difficult to maintain given the potential for confusion that exists in the text as it stands. One example is found in the Two Ways, again a text that catechumens would, according to Milavec, likely have committed to memory, and thus one would expect to find it extremely simple to understand. Yet instructions regarding the giving of charity are found in two places in the Two Ways: 1.(4)5–6 and 4.5–8.21
The first passage, part of the “interpolated section,” occurs within material parallel to Matt 5:39–42 and Luke 6:27–30. in Did. 1.4, one finds the same stance of nonresistance to the seizure of property and person as in Matthew and Luke:
if someone gives you a blow on your right cheek, turn to him the other as well and you will be perfect. if someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles; if someone takes your cloak, give him your tunic also; if someone takes from you what belongs to you, do not demand it back, for you cannot do so.
following this in Did. 1.5, there is a sort of summary statement where, as also in the synoptic parallels, what Milavec terms a “milder alternative”22
is presented:
Give to everyone who asks you, and do not demand it back, for the father wants something from his own gifts to be given to everyone.
here the literal sense is that one should give freely to all without question.
in Did. 1.6, however, the text continues:
But it has also been said concerning this: “Let your gift sweat in your hands until you know to whom to give it.”
21. Milavec seems to begin the first passage on giving in 1.4 (Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life, 99).
22. ibid., 183.
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This of course raises the question as to whether one should give “freely” or not? Many scholars see here a later insertion that retreats from the unfet-tered charity advised in 1.5. Milavec, however, citing the parallels to Did.
1.6 in augustine, notes how the early father himself dealt with precisely the same contradiction.
My brethren, it is both said and read, “To everyone who asks, give,” and in another place scripture says, “Let alms sweat in your hand until you find a righteous person to whom to give [it].” One person begs of you, another you ought to seek out. But do not leave empty the person who begs of you, “To everyone who asks, give,” but there is another you ought to seek out: “Let alms sweat in your hand until you find a righteous person to whom to give [it].”23
The precise source from which augustine drew the first tradition is uncertain, given the parallels in Matthew and Luke. The source of the second, cited as scripture, is today still unsatisfactorily identified but bears a resemblance to sir 12:1–7.24 for Milavec, however, the fact that augustine can, in his opinion, successfully reconcile the two instructions shows that they are also not contradictory in the Didache, but rather, the second supplements the first: “The Didache can be understood as saying that giving to those who ask of you (Did. 1:5) does not suffice; at times one must let the alms sweat in our hands until one finds someone in need of it.”25 in fact Milavec sees the Didache as even less contradictory in this matter, since it does not make explicit that the recipient must be “righteous,” as does the rendition of augustine. for Milavec, both 1.5 and 1.6 advocate giving to all without discernment.26
Yet what is more likely the case is that augustine is himself trying to make sense of the contradiction posed by these teachings. indeed, he was not the first to do so. Matthew’s own insertion of “lending” into the text in 5:42 may have been to moderate the indiscriminate giving advocated in Q (see Luke 6:30) at a time/place when even the first-century christians realized this was not practical. interestingly, none of the other witnesses 23. Translation follows Milavec, Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life, 186–87.
24. On the identification of this tradition, see Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache: A Commentary, trans. Linda M. Maloney, hermeneia (Minneapolis: fortress, 1998), 83–86.
25. Milavec, Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life, 187.
26. ibid., 187–88.
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to the Didache include 1.6: P.Oxy. 1782 breaks off before that point; the Georgian translation completely lacks 1.5–6; and the apostolic constitutions and canons essentially lacks 1.5b–2.1, although for 1.5a it has substituted the version found in Matthew along with Matt 5:45 and has drawn in Did. 4.6 adding that fellow christians take priority (7.2.6–7). exactly when Did. 1.6 crept into the text is unclear, but that augustine believed it to be “scripture” and that he discussed it in the same context that is found in the Didache, namely, in the face of a command to give to all freely, may illustrate the widespread knowledge of this tradition.
But the second passage on charity in the Two Ways makes a consistent interpretation even more difficult. Didache 4.5–8 reads: Do not be one who stretches out the hands to receive but withdraws them when it comes to giving. if you earn something by working with your hands, you shall give a ransom for your sins. You shall not hesitate to give, nor shall you grumble when giving, for you will know who is the good paymaster of the reward. You shall not turn away from someone in need, but shall share everything with your brother or sister, and do not claim that anything is your own. for if you are sharers in what is imperishable, how much more so in perishable things.27
here the text advocates giving freely, but only to a christian “brother or sister.” Of course, as with 1.5, both are contradictory to the statement in 1.6.
Milavec reconciles these inconsistencies by contrasting the use of the imperative in 1.4–6 with the presence of the future indicative in 4.5–8: the first, in his view, is what is required of catechumens immediately upon conversion; the latter will be required in the future after baptism and full admission to the community. While stating that the future indicative here
“could function as a mild imperative,” he believes that “this would leave the awkward situation whereby two diverse rules of giving are provided and no attempt is made to harmonize them.”28 instead, citing specifically the instruction of Did. 4.3 that calls for reconciling conflict and making just and impartial judgments among community members, he maintains that the context of 4.5–8 is clearly postbaptismal, and thus it would be obvious 27. unless otherwise indicated, the english translations of the Didache are taken from Michael W. holmes, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker academic, 2007).
28. ibid., 99.
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to all that the verbs should be understood as pointing to a future point of time. That this would be easily understood in an oral delivery, however, is dubious. indeed the same future indicative form is found in Did. 2, 3.9–
10, and virtually all of chapter 4. exactly when does the context change from immediate action to a future time? is the command to “remember
[μνησθήσῃ] night and day the one who preaches God’s word to you and honor [τιμήσεις] him as though he were the Lord” (4.1) or to “seek out
[ἐκζητήσεις] daily the presence of the saints, so that you may find support in their words” (4.2) to apply only after admission to the community?
To interpret 4.3 in a future sense in contradistinction to the surrounding material that would seem to require an immediate application is arbitrary.
Moreover, not simply a “mild imperative,” the negative οὐ + future imitates the hebrew אֹל + imperfect which, according to e. Kautzsch, denotes “the strongest expectation of obedience” and is “especially used in enforcing the divine commands,” for example in the Decalogue.29 That this is more likely the result of the juxtaposition of sources/later redaction is supported by the fact that the future tense in 4.5–8 is also attested in the parallels in the Doctrina apostolorum and Barnabas, while the imperative in 1.3b–6 is found in the synoptic parallels of Matthew and Luke.
But even beyond the fact that oral theory does not provide a convincing explanation for these individual difficulties within the text of the Didache is the problem that Milavec’s characterization of the text as “oral”
is not well defined.30 While suggesting that the Didache would “have been created as a scribal transcription listening to an oral production being recited by someone who had mastered it”31 and asserting, as noted above, that it is both “comprehensive” and detailed, he elsewhere describes the Way of Life section as “a bare-bones training outline”32 and suggests, based on the work of Parry and Lord, that, “it could be supposed that the same 29. e. Kautzsch, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, trans. a. e. cowley, 2nd ed. (Oxford: clarendon, 1983), 107o. Odd is Milavec’s statement that the “simple future … functions as a mild imperative and imitates the language of the Decalogue found in the septuagint” (Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life, 102).
30. here Nikander also sensed a lack of clarity, briefly stating, “When Milavec argues that the Way of Life was recited from memory, he clearly presupposes that the process of memorizing does not involve a use of any text, but stems rather from oral tradition. in this light, the relationship between the written text and oral performances seems unclear.”
31. Milavec, Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life, 718.
32. ibid., 92.
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teacher/mentor introduced small variations and pastoral expansions every time he/she recited the Way of Life.”33 But if what one has in the Didache is a transcription of one of these oral productions, it is no longer the “bare-bones” outline that Milavec envisions. The same contradiction can be seen in his view of the prayers found in Did. 8–10 where, again, seemingly opposed to the idea that the written text is a transcription of an oral production, Milavec states: “none of the prayers given in the Didache was ever read or recited word for word from memory. Prayer leaders were expected to be entirely familiar with the prayer synopsis that guided the opening phrases, the thematic flow, and the concluding refrain(s).”34 is what we have in the text a “synopsis” or a transcription of an oral performance of the text? Part of the problem is the failure on the part of Milavec to make a distinction between narrative traditions, such as those studied by Parry and Lord, and a “manual,” like the Didache: would the variations found in oral storytelling in the ancient world apply to a text providing ritual instruction as does a significant portion of the Didache (1–10)?
another study that sought to maintain the compositional unity of the Didache by pointing to its oral characteristics was published in 1992 by henderson, with a later article appearing in 1995.35 henderson maintained
“that the symbolic, formulaic, and argumentative unity of the Didache can fruitfully be reconciled with its evident episodic and stylistic disunity if we recognize and understand the deliberate, oral quality of the text.”36 in the Didache, “the frequency of speech words (λέγω, λαλέω, διδάσκω, κελεύω, ἐλέγχω, εὐχαριστέω, etc.) and their even distribution contrast vividly with the complete absence of specifically literate symbols.”37 Moreover, henderson states that, “The Didache argues for the complementarity of diverse authorities by receiving them conversationally and pragmatically rather than ideologically, as διδαχή/ἐντολή/δόγμα.”38 in his view the unexpected repetitions and contradictions of the Didache and the seeming disruption 33. ibid., 718.
34. ibid., xiv.
35. ian henderson, “Didache and Orality in synoptic comparison,” JBL 111
(1992): 283–306; “style-switching in the Didache: fingerprint or argument?” in The Didache in Context: Essays on Its Text, History and Transmission, ed. clayton N. Jefford, NovTsup 77 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 177–209.
36. henderson, “style-switching in the Didache,” 177.
37. henderson, “Didache and Orality in synoptic comparison,” 295.
38. ibid., 304.
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of the text at various junctures are not due to one or more subsequent redactions but are characteristics of its “oral sensitivity.” Recurring symbols of “verbal, spoken authority,” in his opinion, provide an overall structure to the text and communicate the intentions of the author to “provide an interpretative framework within which to harmonize conflicting norms”39
and to “frustrate any interrogation about its specific tradition-historical loyalties and connections.”40 considering again Did. 7.1, henderson cites as recurring and thus structurally enhancing features the περὶ δέ of 7.1
that recurs in 6.3, and 9.1, 3 and, in his first study, the “λέγω-citation formula” also found in 1.6, 11.1, 14.3, and 16.7.41 in his view, ταῦτα πάντα in 7.1 denotes more than chapters 1–6 but is
understood nonsequentially to imply also ταῦτα πάντα of 11.1, the ἐντολὰς κυρίου of 4.13, 14 and the πάσας τὰς πράξεις … ὡς ἔχετε ἐν τῷ
εὐαγγελίῳ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν of 15.4: Didache understands even its own textuality not only as the sequence of monologue and reading but above all as the presence and flexibility of conversation (cf. 4.1).42
indeed, ταῦτα πάντα is
protreptic not just for baptism but for an indefinitely extended chain of expectations, partly met within the text itself, partly overflowing into the situation of the readership.… ταῦτα πάντα become explicit and actual only in the whole imagined conversation in which tradition, text, and readership all have decisive voices (4.1–2; 6.1–7.1; 11.1–3; 14.1–16.2).43
in my opinion, henderson’s attempt to rescue the unity of the Didache is also unconvincing. first of all, the oral terminology found in the text is not part of a “normative hermeneutical strategy”44 but rather the natural 39. ibid., 302.
40. henderson, “style-switching in the Didache,” 178.
41. in his later publication, henderson included Did. 9.5 among examples of this formula, but redefined 7.1 and 11.1 as “marked self-allusions” (“style-switching in the Didache,” 206–7).
42. henderson, “Didache and Orality in synoptic comparison,” 303. Noted also in Pardee, “Genre of the Didache,” 56; Genre and Development of the Didache, 61. Nikander also criticized henderson on this point, noting that “henderson’s ‘oral-poetic reading’ interprets the text in a way that the plot of the text itself does not endorse.”