1 Accordingly, receive anyone who comes and
11.1-2 1. Transition (11.1-2)
1 Accordingly, receive anyone who comes and teaches you all that has been said above.
2 If the teacher himself turns away and teaches another doctrine so that he destroys [the cor rect teaching], do not listen to him, but [if he teaches] so that justice and knowledge of the Lord increase, receive him as the Lord.
Comment of Christians with one another further motivates the command. Yet there are betrayers at work. How can the genuine teacher be distinguished from the false? The Didachist's answer is, Test the teachers who come to you, to discover whether their teaching agrees with what has just been presented to you.
■ 1 This text is redactional. The Didachist creates a bridge between the liturgical agenda quoted before this and the next piece of tradition available to him, which speaks of itinerant apostles. Hence the phrase 6q uv ovv eXduiv ktX. (v. 1). Tavra Travra ra TtpoeLpripeva ("all that has been said above") appears to refer to chaps.
■ 2 The instruction be^aotie avrov corresponds to the warning that follows. The latter applies to cases in which the <5tbaonaiv does not correspond to the bibaxp as given. I expand OTpa<peiq with and TavTrjq rrjq 5lbaxpq' this refers to someone who has "turned away" from the correct teaching. Such a one teaches a different doc trine, aXXpv bibaxvv-3, 4 To eiq to KaraXvaai ("to destruction") one must mentally add tt)p bibaxvpX but one could also include biKaioovvr)v or yvwaiv, as the continuation shows.5 The positive side is then again con sidered, somewhat awkwardly: eiq be to npoadeivai
1-10,1 that is, the whole of the preceding text. The author intends the hearers to take his writing as a stan dard by which to judge teachers who are unfamiliar to them. Ae^aode avrov ("receive [anyone]") anticipates co£ KvpLoq ("receive him as the Lord"), which the Didachist found in his Vorlage (cf. v. 4). Aex^oi^aL here means, in concrete terms, "receiving" an arriving teacher into the house.2 The key word bex^o^at returns more tharTonce in what follows, at 11.2, 4; 12.1. The sit uation is thus one in which the communities are being visited by traveling teachers. Hospitality requires that they be received politely, and the fraternal/sororal unity bLK0CL0Ovvr)v kocI yvwoLP Kvpiov ("so that justice and knowledge of the Lord increase," v. 2b). This expression
1 Tavra rravra ra 7rpoeipppeva recalls ravra navra irpoeLirovreq in Did. 7.1—both of them redactional.
Ildvra is missing from the Coptic—by mistake?
2 Mark 6:11 par.; Matt 10:40-41; Luke 10:8, 10. Cf.
2 Cor 7:15; Col 4:10. On the acceptance of a bishop in a strange community, see Ignatius Rom. 9.3. On the reception of sisters and brothers, see Ignatius
Phld. 11.1. of 2 John is quite analogous to the Didache in its concern for the question of the attitude of local
Christians toward itinerant teachers. In addition see Ignatius Eph. 9.1: eyvu>v be rrapobevaavTaq nvaq eKeldev, exovraq KaKrjp bibaxw' o'vq ovk eiacrare arreipai eiq vpaq, fivoavreq ra dr a ("I have learnt, however, that some from elsewhere have stayed with you, who have evil doctrine; but you did not suffer them to sow it among you, and stopped your ears").
Here it is already the episcopal officer who, by the power of the office, warns a community (not his own) against itinerant false teachers.
3 Audet (Didache, 70-71, 110-11, 236) adopted the plural a\\aq 6lbaxaq from the Coptic title of the book, in line with his theory. This can scarcely be correct.
4 Harnack, Lehre, 37; materially identical is Funk, Patres apostolici, 1.25-26: ra irpoecpppeua orrr/r bLpaxpv rrpoeipripevriv. For KaraXvetv in the sense of "do away with, abolish, annul," cf. BAGD, s.v.
For the whole, cf. 2 John 10: et nq epxeral irpoq vpaq Kai Tavrrp/ Ti)r bcbaxVP ov <pepei, pr) Xap- (Savere avrov eiq oiKtav Kai xatpetr avru) pr]
Xeyere ("do not receive into the house or welcome anyone who comes to you and does not bring this teaching"). The parallel is not accidental; the causa
In using this formulation, the Didachist is dependent on the segment of tradition to be discussed just below (see
Did. 11.4), but in a broader sense he is relying on the primitive Christian principle according to which the Kyrios himself appears in his messengers.12 The messen ger is to be received like the one who sent him or her; hence the true teacher is to be received as if the Kyrios himself had entered the house. In fact it is literally true that, when such a true messenger enters the house, it is the Lord himself who enters! is clumsy6 but the reader understands that irpoofteivaL is the positive contrast to /taraXveiv.1 We thus find an opposition established between the teacher who "dis solves" righteousness and knowledge and the teacher who "increases" both.8 AiKaioavvrj9 and yvwoLq10 consti tute a characteristic hendiadys ("justice and knowl edge"), and Kvpiov is associated with both. The Kyrios is probably Jesus here.11 Both "righteousness" and "knowl edge" are, for the Didachist, the descriptive terms for the "essence" of the new faith. This new faith brings with it specific knowledge (namely, of the Lord), and that in turn creates the new righteousness that is charac teristic of the new society. Hence, for a teacher who increases righteousness and knowledge, the command is to "receive him as the Lord" (be^aode avtov uiq Kvpiov).
Mio-dog biKQtLoavvqq in Did. 5.2 clearly comes from a different tradition-historical context.
Lehre, 30.
For knowledge as one of the goods of salvation in
npooTvdevccL is already found in the assurance for mula in Did. 4.13, where it is used negatively; here it
Before this clause we should imagine something like eav be bibaoKt],... See Harnack, Lehre, 37; Knopf, the predidachistic liturgical agenda see Did. 9.3 and 10.2. is positive.
For the predication of "Kyrios," see above, p. 134
That is, such a one brings new righteousness and n. 5. knowledge in addition to what is (already) present in the community.
The closest material parallel is Matt 10:40-41; cf. also John 13:20; Ignatius Eph. 6.1.