The Rediscovery of the Didache
Chapter Two The Rediscovery of the Didache When I was privileged to personally examine the only known complete
Greek manuscript of the Didache in 2005, I experienced a real sense of euphoria as I perused its millennium-old parchment leaves. According to the librarian's
"sign in" sheet, I was only the fourth scholar to see the manuscript in recent years, at least in the simple record that he maintains.' Yet, what I felt was probably small compared to the excitement that Philotheos Bryennios must have had when he discovered the work buried in a larger manuscript in 1873. The strange aspect, however, of his discovery was that he did not recognize for years that among the other works he had found was a copy of the lost Didache as well!
The general account is well known and is documented in his subsequent volume, based on the manuscript.'° It has been re-told many times in dozens of works on the Didache. Sometimes, however, we are left wondering if we know all the details of this momentous discovery, as is the case with the romantic "story" told by the Taamireh Bedouin about their accidental "discovery" of the seven initial manuscripts that came to be called the "Dead Sea Scrolls." ®
Perhaps it is best to allow Bryennios himself to relate his own story of his discovery. In an article published soon after the publication of Bryennios' volume, an American scholar teaching in Constantinople named Edwin Grosvenor reported in the Andover Review an interview that he had with the then Metropolitan of Nicomedia. Strangely, I have not found any modern scholar that refers to this interview. I quote it in its entirety along with its original unique punctuation and other eccentric characteristics.
AN INTERVIEW WITH BISHOP BRYENNIOS --
THE DISCOVERY OF THE "TEACHING"
Last Thursday Bishop Philotheos or (as he is more commonly known in America by his non-episcopal and family name) Bishop Bryennios, gave me a
The Rediscovery of the Didache detailed account of his discovery of the AtSayn or Teaching manuscript, and of his subsequent connection with it. Since anything that has to do with that manuscript or with its learned discoverer is of interest, | am inclined to write down what he said, and give the reader the benefit of his remarks. As nearly as possible I shall quote his own words:
"In 1873," said the bishop, "I had been looking over the manuscripts in the Jerusalem Monastery of the Holy Sepulchre at Phanar. I had looked over them many times before, but on this occasion my eye chanced to fall on a small, thick, black volume which had always escaped my notice. Though I was about to go from the library, I said to myself, 'I will give just one glance at that book.'
I found first in it the Synopsis of St. Chrysostom, which did not interest me very much. As I listlessly turned over the pages, I came next upon an epistle of Barnabas. 'What have I here?' I cried to myself; 'is it a treasure I have found? 'I carried the book with me to my house, and at once began to study it further. | thought I could not take my eyes away from the Epistle of Barnabas long enough to look at the other contents; but nevertheless I did. Directly after the Epistle of Barnabas came the first and second Epistles of Clement to the Corinthians, perhaps more precious still. 'Marvelous book! I cried. 'I will edit the Epistles of Clement and the Epistle of Barnabas, and give them to the world.'
But I read on in the manuscript. A short catalogue of the holy books came next, and then immediately after, a little treatise occupying about ten pages, introduced by two inscriptions, one of which was, "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,' and the other 'Teaching of the Lord through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations.' The title made no impression upon my mind, I read those ten pages over; neither did they make any impression, and I passed on to the other contents of the manuscript. But one thing stood out distinctly before me. Wherever
I was, whatever I was doing, I seemed to see, to think, to feel nothing but the Epistle of Barnabas and the two Epistles of Clement. Which should I study and edit first? I could not work on them both at once. I was then Bishop of Serres. I was in feeble health. The labors in my diocese occupied almost every moment of my time. At last I went back to Serres, and studied and worked and wrote every moment that 1 could upon the Epistles of Clement. I thought hungrily of the Epistle of Barnabas: but my comfort was in feeling that as soon as my present occupation was finished I should devote myself to that. Two years I toiled at my work, and at last it was complete; edited as carefully and as faithfully as it was in my power to do. But the Epistle of Barnabas was not yet. For several years I was sick and could only wearily drag myself about. I was promoted to the diocese of Nicomedia, and larger and more responsible cares were overtaxing my feeble strength. In seven years' time, from 1873 to 1880, I barely gave the 'Teaching' a thought. When I did think of that manuscript volume, it was only to recall the Epistles of Clement which I had edited, and to look forward to like work upon the Epistle of Barnabas. During the five years after the publication of my notes on Clement, I was in constant receipt of letters from Germany and from England, urging me to go on with the work which I had promised to do. In a foot-note I had promised, with the help of God, as soon as I was able, to give to mankind not only Barnabas, but the twelve Epistles of Ignatius, likewise contained in the volume, All these letters from Harnack, from Lightfoot, from Funk (I think also from Hilgenfeld) were upbraiding me for my
The Rediscovery of the Didache
delay and inciting me to fulfill my promise.
"In 1880 I again chanced to read over the Διδαχη. Something seemed to strike me like lightning. It appeared to me very different from what it did when
I saw it before.
Surely I had read this once, but then it did not seem the same thing as it did to me now. 1 was all of a tremble. This! this! this! this!' "I wish I could give the rising emphasis, the gesture, the fire in Bryennios' eye as he dwelt on the moment of realization of what he had found. " 'This must be the Διδαχη, the book that so many ancient fathers quote, the book that was lost, that the church mourns over to this day, the foundation of part of the Apostolic
Constitutions. ὕρηκα εἴρηκα εἧρηκα!᾽ | shouted like Archimedes. From that hour I began to pore over the Teaching. Every spare moment was in some way devoted to it, until it appeared from the press in 1883. Then the letters began to flow in again faster and more numerous than they did after I had finished the Epistles of Clement; most of them flattering letters, and some of them full of gratitude at what I had done. One man who has a great name over Europe wrote, 'Hail, thou equal of the church fathers!'
"But the translations of some scholars have been so badly made and their comments so erroneous that I have gone to work again on the Teaching, and am preparing a new volume to refute and correct them. If one wants to understand it and get the spirit of it, he must feel like a Greek.
Only in that degree in which one does feel like a Greek can he breathe the soul of the Teaching. And now,"' said the bishop, with a smile half humorous, half sad, " now that they are making me work again on this book concerning which I thought that my labors were all done, when shall I ever get to the Epistle of Barnabas? Barnabas must wait!"
Edwin A. Grosvenor.
ROBERT COLLEGE, CONSTANTINOPLE, Sept. 10, 1884.'7
The spontaneity evident in the above interview along with its personal emotional touches certainly convey to the modern reader something of the sheer excitement that animated Bryennios and others who learned of his "discovery."
The interview also informs us of some other important matters. Bryennios reveals that originally he intended to publish both an edition of the Two Epistles of Clement and the one of Barnabas which were in the precious manuscript that he had discovered. His important edition of the Clements did appear in 1875. It was a welcome publication because the only previously known Greek manuscript of those works was that of Codex Alexandrinus, where they appear at the end of the manuscript, after the Apocalypse." Bryennios expresses frustration that his plan to publish Barnabas had been delayed. He never was able to publish his own edition of Barnabas, although the readings of this manuscript are referenced in subsequent editions of Barnabas and the Apostolic Fathers.
~ Bryennios also expresses his frustration over the "poor" translations and inter- « _pretations of the Didache that had appeared in the last year since his publication
\ of the work in 1883. He wanted to publish a second edition of the book to corἀξ these errors. Alas, there is no record of any subsequent books by Bryennios before his death in 1914. Perhaps the ill health to which he referred in the interview made it impossible for him to fulfill his further literary goals. One last comment about the discovery is also in order.
The Rediscovery of the Didache Many writers (too many to mention) have noted the fact at least two scholars in the early part of the nineteenth century catalogued the contents of the monastery library and missed the presence of the Didache. My own handling of the manuscript in 2005 and the recognition that it composes only five leaves in the midst of two hundred leaves has helped me to understand how that might possibly happen. The tone of naiveté displayed by Bryennios, however, makes us wish that we knew even more details about his early experience with the manuscript. We also wonder how Bryennios, by his own admission, read through the Didache initially without it making any "impression" on him. What did he think it was? He says only that he did not recognize it until after he published the Clement letters. And why did it hit him later like an Archimedean revelation that it was the long-lost Didache? Such speculation is the stuff that feeds popular conspiracy theories and novels. Since we only have Bryennios' word for it, we had best be content with his explanation and leave it at that.
In 1887 the manuscript was transferred to the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Monastery Library in Jerusalem, where it remains until today. It is catalogued as Kw6. Παρτ. 54 and is usually referred to as "The Jerusalem Manuscript" or "H" (Hierosolymitanus 54). The manuscript consists of two hundred forty
"pages" on one hundred twenty "leaves" (or folios) containing a careful minus- . cule script on both sides of each folio "leaf" (the recto and verso). The writing is careful but also utilizes many of the tachygraphic signs prevalent in the manuscript styles of the eleventh century. The scribe's own colophon informs us that he was named Leon (Aéwv), adding, in good monastic humility, that he was a "scribe and sinner." He also provides the date when he finished copying the manuscript: the Greek dating is equivalent to Tuesday, June 11, 1056 A.D.
Leon's careful transcription of the ancient texts included not only the Didache, but also a number of other previously known writings attributed to various patristic authors or to people who knew them. Those works, in the order in which they are found in the Jerusalem manuscript, are as follows:
Synopsis of the Old and New Testaments attributed to Chrysostom: folio (BO 38°:
Epistle of Barnabas: folio 39"°-51°°; First Epistle of Clement: folio 51%°-70"; Second Epistle of Clement: folio70"-76";
A list of the "names of books used by the Hebrews." The titles of the books are transliterated from Hebrew into Greek with the Greek equivalents written in red ink: folio 76°.
Didache: folio 76-80"°; 7.
A Letter by Maria of Cassoboloi to Ignatius of Antioch: folio 81-82":
Twelve letters by Ignatius of Antioch in the secondary, longer version: folio 82°°-120":
The colophon is followed by a treatise on the genealogy of Jesus: folio Rw 120-120".
The first line title in each work is also written in red ink, including that of the Didache: Διδαχὴ τῶν δώδεκα ἀποστόλων. J. Rendel Harris rendered the
The Rediscovery of the Didache
scholarly world a great service in 1887 when he published an exact transcription of the Jerusalem manuscript along with a photographic reproduction of the pages where the Didache is located."° Unfortunately the black and white photographs do not indicate the red color of the ink in the title. Furthermore, Harris cut the photograph of the first and last folio at the place where Didache begins and ends. This obscures the fact that the Didache and each work in the manuscript begins on the next line after the previous work ends (Jectio continua).
Also, one cannot clearly discern that at the end of the Didache Leon left six additional blank lines, each with the scribal "scoring" for the straight line, but with no text hanging from those lines! The significance of Leon's scribal activity is that he is indicating to the reader that he knows that this is not the original ending of the Didache, but that he is reproducing what he sees in his exemplar.
More will be said later about the speculation by scholars on what the original ending of chapter 16 may have been.
The History of the Didache Bryennios finally realized that the five leaves of his precious find contained an ancient book that was known to the early church but of which no manuscript had survived. What can be known about the book in the first millennium of church history? While some of the references may be legitimately contested, the evidence of the footprints left by the Didache is as follows.
Seon after its publication, scholars recognized that the first five chapters of the Didache were strikingly similar to three chapters in the well known writing generally known as the Epistle of Barnabas.
The earliest scholarly view was that this section of the Didache showed dependence on Barnabas. This led
Bryennios, therefore, to conclude that the Didache should be dated from 120160 A.D."' He was joined in this opinion by the influential work of Adolf Harnack."" Other early scholars either saw the dependence in the other direction or that neither was dependent on the other but that they both went back to a common source."? Because of uncertainty about the relationship between the two works, it is best not to confidently assert that Barnabas is the first patristic document to refer to the Didache—although that is the view of this writer.
Clement of Alexandria is usually mentioned as the first father to cite the Didache, although he does not do it by name. He rather refers to a statement of "scripture" (ypadn) that calls one a thief: "Son, become not a liar, for lying leads to theft." This agrees almost word for word with Didache 3.5, with only a few changes of synonymous words.
However, because Clement does not mention his "scripture" source by name, there have been some who are not positive about his specifically citing the Didache.™ It should also be noted that in Quis dives salvus 29 Clement uses the phrase "Vine of David" which does not occur in any earlier work except in Didache 9:2.
Origen, the pupil of Clement, although again citing his source only as "divine scripture," in De Princpiis 11.2.7, quotes Didache 3:10: "You will accept the experiences that happen to you as good things, knowing that nothing happens apart from God." Origen in Homily VI on the Book of Judges likewise used
The Rediscovery of the Didache the designation of Jesus as the "Vine of David."
It can legitimately be debated whether or not these two early third century "citations" are undoubtedly from the Didache.
From the fourth century, however, there are at least three clear references to the Didache. The first is from the church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea (d.
340). In Ecclesiastical History, Book III, 25 as he is discussing the books that are acknowledged as scripture, he classifies among the ecclesiastical yet uncanonical and "spurious" (νόθοις) books "The so-called Teachings of the Apostles."
He uses the plural and omits the number twelve. The description "so-called,"
(καλούμενα) which appears also later in Athanasius, qualifies the book's apostolic origin as being only indirect, even as we speak of the "Apostles' Creed."
In this same category he places The Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas. These books were read in some churches, but were not important enough to be classified among the undoubted "Homologoumena" nor even among the seven "Antilegoumena" which eventually came to be recognized as part of the New Testament canon. '
The second clear reference from the fourth century is from the famous Festal Letter of Athanasius (367). In defining what books are canonical (κὰ νονίζομενα), he mentions the "So-called Teaching(s) of the Apostles along with the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, and the Shepherd of Hermas. Although these books were not canonical, they were "appointed by the fathers to be read by those who are now coming to us and desir- 'ing to be instructed in the doctrine of godliness." This catechetical function of the Didache described by Athanasius describes how the book came to be used in the churches, certainly by the fourth century when there was a great influx into the church of converts from paganism.
The third clear reference to the Didache in the fourth century comes to us as a result of the discovery in 1945 of a cache of Coptic papyrus codices found in Thoura, Egypt. Most of these works are commentaries on various Biblical books written by the great head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, Didymus the Blind. In his commentary on Psalms (227:26), Didymus is commenting on the verse, "Because they are speaking peaceably to me" (Ps. 34:20). He further references Matthew 5:9 and then elaborates on the word "peacemaker." "For this is what is said in the catechetical book of the Didache, 'bring peace to those who quarrel" (ev ty Διδαχη τη βιβλιω τῆς κατηχησεως, ἑειρηνευσεις μαχομενους.
᾽).
This is a clear reference to Didache 4:3. In another commentary on Ecclesiastes, he quotes the same verse and refers to the source as "the Teaching of the Apostolic Cathechesis" (ev tn Διδαχη τῆς κατηχεσεως). In both these references the Didache is tied into an apostolic provenance.
Bart Ehrman thinks that these references indicate that the NT canon of Didymus includes Didache."? However, these references and others in his commentaries that treat the Shepherd of Hermas as a catechetical book are consistent with the role that his patron Athanasius had assigned to these books—profitable for catechetical instruction of new converts, at least in Alexandria.
The Rediscovery of the Didache
These are the clearest patristic references to the Didache through the fourth century. The last reference to the little book by someone who had personal knowledge of it is from the ninth century by the Patriarch of Constantinople,
Nicephorus (died 828). In his Stichometry, he refers to a book named the Teaching of the Apostles (Διδαχη αἀποστολων) as among the New Testament apocrypha and that is consists of two hundred lines (στιχοι). From Bryennios on, many authors have noted that in the Jerusalem manuscript the Didache consists of two hundred and three lines. This, however, may not be as obvious as it may appear.
When we compare the size of the Didache in the Stichometry with some of the other works that are mentioned, some serious questions are raised. For example,
Nicephorus mentions that the combined length of the two Epistles of Clement as 2,000 lines, while in the Jerusalem manuscript they comprise 1,120 lines. Also, the length of Barnabas is given as 1,360 lines, which would make the Didache's length as about 14% that of Barnabas. In actuality, Didache is about 34% its lengih! Obviously, the length of Nicephorus' "stichos" is not the same as that of the Jerusalem manuscript's "line" of text. But there is another fact worth noting.
If we remove chapters 7-16 of the Didache, the length of chapters 1-6 then is about 14% of the length of Barnabas. My conclusion is that whatever was the length of Nicephorus' stichos, the length of the Didache which he measures is not that of the book that has come down to us. I suggest that by the ninth century, the latter liturgical section of Didache 7-16 had become separated from the more ethical earlier section of Didache 1-6 and comprised the work that is referred to in Nicephorus' Stichometry.
In the fourth century the Apostolic Constitutions incorporated most of the Didache into its seventh chapter. Furthermore, the book's liturgical sections seemed a bit out of date with the emergence of a multileveled church hierarchy and a more ornate liturgical practice than what is described in ch. 7-15. By the ninth century the book had been evidently stripped down to its earlier ethical section. Some further confirmation of this is found in the Latin Doctrina Apostolorum, whose existence came to light in the late nineteenth century. It consists of only the earlier chapters of the Didache.
A growing number of modem scholars now believe that this Latin version most closely represents the original
"two ways' document that is the common source of Didache 1-6 and Barnabas 18-20."° While this is possible, it should also be considered that this Medieval
Latin document could have been an adaptive translation of this abbreviated Didache that is referred to in the Stichometry.
We also have ancient translations of the Didache, such as the Coptic and Georgian versions. These are taken into consideration in the critical texts, although none of them really represents a radical departure from the Greek text of the Jerusalem manuscript. One more "remnant" of the Didache exists from ancient times. It is a tiny leaf from what was a miniature papyrus codex, dated to the fourth century and found among the Oxyrhynchus papyri at the end of the nineteenth century and published in 1922.7' The leaf is written on both recto and verso in rather large letters for its size (only five by six centimeters). One side has the words of 1:3c-4a and the other has 2:7b-3s2a."* I believe that this tiny
The Rediscovery of the Didache fragment may help us to discern how the Didache came to be used in Egypt in the fourth century. This miniature codex is actually the smallest example of this type of codex that has ever been found." It could have easily fit into one's hand!
In other words, it was probably part of a literal "handbook." The Greeks referred to such a miniature codex as an enchiridion (ἐγχειριδιον).᾽ Ὁ The word "manual" reflects the same Latinized root.
An Origination Hypothesis Markus Bockmuehl has written about how the "effective history" of an interpretation can help us to ascertain the originally intended meaning of the passage interpreted.*' This is similar to tracing the history of how the passage has been understood in the history of the church. "Effective history" can serve as a guide in helping interpreters to recognize if their interpretation has also made sense to interpreters who were in the Biblical writer's future and who are a part of the modern interpreter's past. What was the "effect" that the passage had in church history? While no method is an infallible guide (what is?), the effective history of the interpretation of a non-canonical text like Didache can also be helpful in our arriving at an "origination hypothesis" for the original Didache. In other words, can the effect that the Didache had on the fathers who used it up until the fourth century be helpful in understanding what its original function was intended to be?
Many writers have noticed that the command to baptize in 7:1 indicates that the baptism was to take place "after you have said all these things beforehand."
In other words "all these things" must refer to the instruction that had already been given in the first six chapters. It seems evident, therefore, that the first six chapters are a compendium of pre-baptismal catechetical instruction that was to be taught to recent converts from paganism to prepare them for that decisive act by which they entered the Christian community. If that was indeed the effect that the text had on later generations, it will help to confirm our explanation of why the book originated. Our brief survey of the references to the Didache, by such writers as Eusebius in Caesarea and Athanasius and Didymus the Blind in Egypt in the fourth century seem to confirm such an origination hypothesis.
Therefore, in light of the patristic references to the Didache combined with the evidence of the miniature papyrus codex, I propose that this little book was literally placed in the hands of young converts as the first "manual" of guidance for their new life. Thus I believe that we can safely conclude that the Didache was the first Christian Handbook of which we have written knowledge.