The Didache

Sam Harrelson

In Partial Fulfillment of:

Church History 1

Prof Stepp

Gardner-Webb University

18 November 2008
 The Didache is a curious work that supplies more questions than answers about

itself, its conext in the first or early second Christian movement and its place within what

came to be known as the canon. After a first reading, the text appears to be little more

than a collected sayings of a popular teacher, or group of teachers, addressed to one

particular community wondering how best to continue the ministry of Jesus while waiting

for the second coming. However, there is a great deal of information and questions to be

gleaned and discovered within the text itself. By focusing on the questions of authorship

and background, how the Didache compliments or contradicts the recognized canon of

the New Testament and how the document informs us on the subjects of ancient

christianities as well as modern christianities, we’ll arrive at a deeper understanding of

this pivotal work and recognize its proper place, if not in the canon, at least in the

received wider tradition of the early church.

Authorship of the Didache is a particularly complicated subject. Where and when

one places the creation of the Didache relies on how one sees the Didache in relation to

texts such as the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that can be (for the most part) adequately

dated. Generally, dating has relied on the acceptance of the idea that the Didache

borrows from texts such as Luke and Matthew. Both of these Gospels can be reliably

dated to at least post 70 C.E. and closer still to the end of the first century considering the

development of theologies and the received tradition of Jesus stories (along with other

parallels to contemporary texts and reliance on Mark and perhaps variants of Q). This

would place the composition of the Didache somewhere in the late first, but most

probably early-to-mid second century. However, scholars such as Aaron Milavec who are

tackling the Didache with a renewed emphasis on its place in the received tradition and
how the text itself was shaped (or not) by more reliably dated works, have cast doubts on

this dating scheme. At the heart of this renewed look at the Didache’s dating is whether

or not the text is actually reliant on Matthew or Luke. Milavec argues that instead of

being reliant on these auxillary and more reliably dated texts, the Didache actually

represents a teaching manual for new converts (primarily gentile) to the Jesus movement.

In Milavec’s assessment, the text is not bound to relational dating to the Gospels but is

instead independent of those traditions and dates somewhere closer to the halfway mark

of the first century1

The question of the Didache’s authorship is also a difficult question to tackle

since there is so little information regarding the transitory period of the first and even

second centuries of the Jesus movement. Much of the knowledge we do have of this time

period is focused on Paul and his letters to communities in Asia Minor and around the

Mediterranean. What we lack is a solid understanding of what the religious communities

of Syrio-Palestine that would become the early church looked like in regards to social,

economic or even religious makeup. The Didache’s placement in the mid point of the

first century, if Milavec’s early dating scenario holds up to the data, would fall in line

with a sense of Jewish-Christianity that would become less and less popular after the fall

of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. and in the second revolt of the 130’s C.E. and eventually border

on heresy in the patristic period afterwards. According to Milavec, the Didache can be

seen within this transitory period of the first century when the earliest notions of what

would eventually coagulate into “the Church” as a text to inform new members of the

Jesus group of how to best observe the rituals and teachings of the group and how to

1
Aaron Milavec, The Didache (New York: The Newman Press, 2003),
xvii.
eventually become baptized and then join in the celebration of the Eucharist. Milavec

sees the Didache as a document that has an inherit sense of unity and purpose and is not a

thrown together collection of teachings representing despondant communities. Instead,

Milavec holds that the Didache is an anonymous but purposeful and whole text meant to

provide a path for gentiles to enter into fellowship with the earliest of Jewish-Christians

in Syria-Palestine in the mid-first century.2 However, Milavec represents just one of the

scholarly views on the topic of authorship. Klaus Wengst sees the document as a

collection of sayings and writings with numerous insertions.3 Kurt Niederwimmer argues

that the Didache has an eventual redactor that was probably an “influential bishop” hopes

to preserve the traditions of his own time while passing on to the next generation a sense

of identity.4 Jean-Paul Audet and Clayton N. Jefford argue for a three part construction

with distinct stages of compostion.5 Stanislas Giet and Willy Rordorf both call for two

stages of composition and eventual redaction by different editors. 6

Since its rediscovery in a manuscript compliation in 1873 by a monk in

Nicomedia outside of Istanbul, Turkey, the text has had a complex relationship with the

canon of the New Testament. While we can reconstruct the popularity of the text in the

first and second centuries as the Jesus movement was transforming from an transitory

movement held together by wandering prophets into something more organized with

presbytrs, bishops and deacons, we also can reasonably assume that the structure the
2
Ibid, xi.
3
Klaus Wengst, Didache (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftiliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1984), 106.
4
Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 228.
5
Ibid, 42.
6
Georg Schollgen, The Didache as a Church Order: An Examination of
the Purpose for the Composition of the Didache and its onsequences
for its Interpretation, ed. Jonathan Draper (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), 67-
70.
document helped to create in some sense was the ultimate reason for its place outside of

what would become the canon since the need for a training manual such as the Didache

was eventually replaced by hierarchy and more rigid structures of catechisms. For

theological reasons, there is little room for a document with such a practical emphasis as

the Didache, regardless of how important the text might have been to early communities

in and around Syria-Palestine in the first and second centuries. While there have been

cursory attempts to link theologies present in the Didache with New Testament texts or

emerging theologies present in canonical texts, it is dubious at best to ascribe or hang

what would become accepted Church teachings on the Didache because of its practical

nature and usage.

In my own opinion, scholars and lay members of churches have a great deal to

gain from reading, studying and reflecting upon the received text of the Didache. If the

text does date from the mid point of the first century as Milavec asserts, there is an

incredible amount of importance in its words and teachings given its close proximity to

the historical Jesus in time and place. While close historical proximity should not be the

sole determiner of a text’s “worth” to a community (especially a community removed by

two thousand years), having a description of teachings and attempts at preserving the

tradition of these early members of the Jesus movement is beyond valuable and should be

seen as precious by modern church members. Whether we have room theologically in the

modern context of Jesus worship is a moot point when it comes to the actual scholarship

of the document since the Didache only has just over a century of scholarship ascribed to

it, and most of that has been trying to make the text conform to the 19th and early 20th

century German Protestant hegemony of “early catholic” studies that sought to rediscover
a more authentic early Christianity absent of the fossilization of later imposed hierarchy.

Instead, the Didache remains a tempting lens to look into the past and hear the authentic

words of first or second century followers (or potential followers) of Jesus who should be

heard in their own voices, as closely reconstructed as possible.