your relationship to your neighbor rests on mutual attested in H, Georgian (without 1.5-6), and indirectly in
1.2-3a bor. That means, however, that the fundamental com mandment whose fulfillment leads "to life" is:
2.2-7 (ov ipovevaeiq, ov ixoixevoeig ktA.),22 that is, by a list of prohibitions that, in the context of the source, had the function of expanding and concretizing the basic commandment through special commands.23 The text attested in H, Georgian (without 1.5-6), and indirectly in Constitutions (up to 5a) offers, before this, a rather long insertion (1.3b—2.1) that appears to be specifically
Christian.24 Its great antiquity is demonstrated also by P (for 1.3c-4a).25 There would be further evidence if 1.3d and 5c were really attested by quotations in the Syrian
Didascalia apostolorum l.26 The insertion at Did. 1.3b—2.1 can be described as a "Christian interpolation" or "sectio evangelica." The paired questions of the originality of the sectio and the source of its material are among the crucial problems of the Didache.
1. Love God (demand) who created you (reason).
2. Love your neighbor as yourself (demand), because your relationship to your neighbor rests on mutual avoidance of evil (reason).
The summary may be secondary, but it is, in any case, well thought out. It clearly bears a didactic, catechetical character.
■ 3a The quotation of the "basic commandment" was followed, in the source, by a kind of explication of this demand. It is indicated and introduced by the expression
"This is the teaching20 [that comes] from these words"
(tovtuv de 7W AoytiP rj dtdaxv21 avrr]). In the source, this was followed immediately by the text of commandment and an explication through a series of prohibitions is lacking. Rordorf ("Gebrauch des
Dekalogs," 432-34) has pointed out that in early Christian times there was a tradition of combining the Golden Rule with the second table of the Decalogue. The Didache is the oldest example of this, but we should also note that here the Didache is quoting an originally Jewish source.
24 More precisely: the text fragment (fol. 1) begins with ovx'l xai . . . and ends with oapKetKuip e-ncdvixeiuiP. See above, Introduction, §3b.
25 By contrast, 1.3b—2.1 is lacking in Barnabas, Doctrina apostolorum, Canons of the Apostles, Epitome, and there is nothing corresponding to it in the Life of Shenoute, Syntagma doctrinae, and Ficles patrum.
26 (CSCO 401.41 and 402.12), Latin 2.28-31 (TU 75.4); also Syriac 17 (407.177 and 408.161), Latin
37.25-26 (75.63) and Syriac 17 (407.179 and 408.162), Latin 38.23-25 (75.64): see above,
Introduction, §5.