The Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles)

A teaching without an author

The Greek word didachē (διδαχή) means teaching; Luke uses it when the first believers "devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching" (Acts 2:42). The only complete manuscript calls this book the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, but the Twelve did not write it. Its unnamed author gathers what a church received as the apostles' teaching, speaking as a teacher to his child, like the father in Proverbs.

It is usually dated to the late first or early second century. Many scholars put it around 100, near the Roman church's letter to Corinth (usually dated c. 96), though some argue for decades earlier or later. Syria is the commonest guess for its home. It is counted among the Apostolic Fathers, whose world is described in After the apostles: the apologists and Irenaeus.

Around 325 Eusebius set it among the books not received into the New Testament Eusebius, Church History 3.25, and in 367 Athanasius named a Teaching of the Apostles among the books outside the canon that the Fathers had appointed for new believers to read Athanasius, Festal Letter 39, which many take to be this book or a form of it. Later the West knew it only by name.

In 1873 Philotheos Bryennios, an Orthodox scholar and churchman, found it in a library in Constantinople, in a manuscript copied in 1056, and in 1883 he published it. Translations followed within a year, among them the one used here, by I. H. Hall and J. T. Napier (1884). Luther and Calvin never saw it, and that manuscript is still the only complete Greek text.

A manual in sixteen chapters

The Didache is not a letter or a treatise but a manual, often called the oldest surviving church order. Six chapters on the Two Ways of life and death come first, from Chapter 1. Then Chapter 7 directs, "Having first said all these things, baptize" 7.1: the Two Ways was what a candidate heard before baptism. Chapters 7 to 10 cover baptism, fasting, prayer and the Eucharist, whose prayers fill Chapter 9 and Chapter 10. From Chapter 11 to Chapter 15 come rules for receiving travelling ministers, meeting on the Lord's day and appointing bishops and deacons; Chapter 16 calls the church to watch.

The library holds the whole work as one part; nothing is left out. But the manuscript stops at "Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven" 16.8, and many scholars think a few closing lines are lost. Many also think the book grew in stages: the Two Ways, found in a similar form in the Epistle of Barnabas, may rest on Jewish moral teaching, and the Gospel sayings in 1.3 to 2.1 may be a later addition.

The way of life

The book opens, "There are two ways, one of life and one of death; but a great difference between the two ways" 1.1. It is the choice Moses set before Israel:

I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life, so that you and your descendants may live

Deuteronomy 30:19

Jesus, too, spoke of "the way that leads to life" (Matthew 7:14). Here it is the two great commandments, "First, thou shalt love God who made thee; second, thy neighbour as thyself" 1.2, with the Golden Rule in the negative form also found in Jewish teaching. Then come sayings from the Sermon on the Mount: bless those who curse you 1.3, turn the other cheek, give to all. Yet the generosity is not naive: "Let thine alms sweat in thy hands, until thou know to whom thou shouldst give" 1.6.

Chapter 2 unfolds the Ten Commandments. Beside murder and theft stand magic and sorcery, and "thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is begotten" 2.2; in a world where exposing unwanted infants was not unusual, it is among the earliest Christian texts to forbid both. No one may be hated, but "some thou shalt love more than thy own life" 2.7.

Chapter 3 speaks as a father to his child, fencing great sins with small ones: "anger leadeth the way to murder" 3.2, as Jesus set anger beside murder (Matthew 5:21-22). Chapter 4 bids them share everything, "for if ye are partakers in that which is immortal, how much more in things which are mortal?" 4.8 Masters must not be harsh to slaves "who hope in the same God" 4.10, but slaves are to obey their masters "as to a type of God" 4.11, much as in Ephesians 6:5-9. The Didache does not question slavery itself, and readers today feel that (Does the Bible approve of slavery?). The way of life ends with confession of sins in the church 4.14.

Water, bread and prayer

Those who had heard this teaching were baptized "into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living water" 7.1, running water, as Jesus commanded:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Matthew 28:19

Other water would do, and if there was not enough, "pour out water thrice upon the head into the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit" 7.3. All who could fasted first 7.4. This is often called the earliest account outside the New Testament of how baptism was given.

Chapter 8 sets the fasts on Wednesday and "the Preparation (Friday)" 8.1, not on the Monday and Thursday of the hypocrites, a word from Jesus' warning not to fast "like the hypocrites" (Matthew 6:16). Many scholars think it means neighbours keeping the Pharisaic fasts; it marks the church off from the synagogue next door, and should not be read as a judgment on a whole people. The Lord's Prayer, close to Matthew's, ends "for Thine is the power and the glory for ever" 8.2, one of the earliest witnesses to a doxology there, and is to be prayed three times a day 8.3.

Chapters 9 and 10 call the meal the Thanksgiving, eucharistia (εὐχαριστία), from which the Lord's Supper is called the Eucharist. The cup comes first, as in 1 Corinthians 10:16, with thanks "for the holy vine of David Thy servant" 9.2. Then the bread:

Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy kingdom

9.4

Paul says the same: "Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body" (1 Corinthians 10:17). Only the baptized may eat, for "Give not that which is holy to the dogs" 9.5. The thanksgiving said "after ye are filled" 10.1 prays, "Let grace come, and let this world pass away" 10.6, and ends with the Aramaic maran atha (μαρὰν ἀθά), which Paul wrote too: "Come, O Lord!" (1 Corinthians 16:22). Because the prayers lack Jesus' words at the Last Supper and follow a full meal, scholars differ on whether they belong to the Eucharist itself or to a meal held with it.

Chapter 14 gathers the church every Lord's day to break bread after confessing their sins, "that your sacrifice may be pure" 14.1, those at odds being reconciled first (Matthew 5:23-24). It hears in this sacrifice 14.3 the "pure offerings" (Malachi 1:11) that Malachi foresaw among the nations. Chapter 15 bids the church appoint "bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, men meek, and not lovers of money, and truthful and proved" 15.1, as Paul greeted "the overseers and deacons" at Philippi (Philippians 1:1).

Every tradition finds roots here. Catholics see an early witness to the reading of Malachi's pure offering as the sacrifice of the Mass, and the Orthodox still keep the Wednesday and Friday fasts. Both, with Anglicans, see in its bishops and deacons the beginnings of the ministry that by Ignatius's day had one bishop at its centre. Many Protestants read its sacrifice as the "sacrifice of praise" (Hebrews 13:15) offered with a clean conscience; Presbyterians note that its bishops are plural, like the New Testament's elders, and Congregationalists that the church appoints them itself.

On baptism, churches that immerse note that pouring was the exception when water was short, and churches that pour or sprinkle that it was allowed even then. Those who practise believers' baptism note that teaching and fasting came first; those who practise infant baptism, that the Didache speaks of adult converts and is silent about children. See Baptism and the Lord's Supper.

Reading it well

The Didache is not Scripture; the early church set it outside the canon. Read it with Matthew open beside it, as a window on a church a generation after the apostles living by the Lord's words: praying three times a day, fasting, breaking bread every Lord's day, caring for the poor and the stranger. Its first chapters were spoken to candidates for baptism and bear reading aloud. In Hall and Napier's English, thank (1.3) means credit, to impress (1.4) is to force into service, pitiful (3.8) is full of pity, and words in round brackets are the translators' notes or other readings.

In Chapters 11 to 13 an apostle is a travelling missionary, not one of the Twelve. He is to be received as the Lord, but if he stays three days or asks for money, "he is a false prophet" 11.6. Prophets speaking in the Spirit are not to be put to the test 11.7, yet "not every one that speaketh in the Spirit is a prophet; but only if he hold the ways of the Lord" 11.8. As Jesus said, "By their fruit you will recognize them" (Matthew 7:16). A visitor who will not work is "a Christ-monger" 12.5, one who makes a trade of Christ. A few lines, such as 11.11, are still obscure.

The book says little of the cross and resurrection and nothing of justification by faith. Many scholars explain this by its purpose: it is a manual for a church that already has the gospel, and it sends its readers there, to do all things "as ye have it in the Gospel of our Lord" 15.4.

Some lines need care: "If thou hast aught, through thy hands thou shalt give ransom for thy sins" 4.6. Proverbs, too, says, "By loving devotion and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for" (Proverbs 16:6). The Catholic Church teaches prayer, fasting and almsgiving as the forms repentance takes, and counts love, which "covers over a multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:8), among the ways forgiveness is received. Many Protestants read such giving as the love of the forgiven, not the price of forgiveness, which Christ alone has paid.

Chapter 16 calls the church to "Watch for your life’s sake" 16.1. False prophets will multiply, and "then shall appear the world-deceiver as the Son of God" 16.4. After the fire of trial come a sign spread out in heaven, the trumpet, and the resurrection of the dead, "yet not of all" 16.7, but of the saints who come with the Lord. Then the world sees him coming, and the text breaks off. On the second coming, see Christ's return and the millennium.

The table prayer ended with maran atha, and the book's last page looks for the Lord. So does the last page of the Bible:

He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Revelation 22:20