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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: DEM-DIO |
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DIDACHE, THE , or Teaching of the (twelve) Apostles,the most important of the recent
which he had previously published the complete form of the Epistle of Clement.' TheDidache, as we now have it in the Greek, falls into two marked divisions: (a) a book of moral precepts, opening with the words, " There are two ways "; (b) a manual
r. The Two Ways.The author of the complete work, as we now have it, has modified the original Two Ways by inserting near the beginning a considerable section containing, among other matter, passages from the Sermon on the Mount
confession , reference to " the church " (iv. 14). No part of this matter is to be found in the following documents, which present us in varying degrees of accuracy with The Two Ways: (i.) the Epistle of Barnabas, chaps. xix., xx. (in which the order of the book has been much broken up, and a good deal has been omitted); (ii.) the Ecclesiastical Canons of the Holy Apostles, usually called the Apostolic Church Order, a book which presents a parallel to the Teaching, in so far as it consists first of a form of The Two Ways, and secondly of a number of church ordinances (here, however, as in the Syriac Didascalia, which gives about the same amount of The Two Ways, various sections are ascribed to individual apostles, e.g. " John said, There are two ways," &c.); (iii.) a discourse of the Egyptian monk Schnudi (d. 451), preserved in Arabic (see Iselin, Texte u. Unters., 1895); (iv.) a Latin version, of which a fragment was published by O. von Gebhardt in 1884, and the whole by J. Schlecht in 1900. When by the aid of this evidence The Two Ways is restored to us free of glosses, it has the appearance of being a Jewish manual
recent
interest
2. The second part of our Teaching might be 'called a church directory. It consists of precepts relating to church life, which are couched in the second person plural; whereas The Two Ways uses throughout the second person singular. It appears to be a composite work. First (vii. 1-xi. 2) is a short sacramental manual intended for the use of local elders or presbyters, though such are not named, for they were not yet a distinctive order or clergy. This section was probably added to The Two Ways before the addition of the remainder. It orders baptism in the three-fold name, making a distinction as to waters which has Jewish parallels, and permitting a threefold pouring on the head, if sufficient water for immersion cannot be had. It prescribes a fast before baptism for the baptizer as well as the candidate. Fasts are to be kept on Wednesday and Friday, not Monday and Thursday, which are the fast days of " the hypocrites," i.e. by a perversion of the Lord's words, the Jews. " Neither pray ye as 1 The MS. was found in the Library of the Jerusalem Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre, in Phanar, the Greek quarter of Constantinople. It is a small octavo volume of 12o parchment leaves, written throughout by Leo, " notary and sinner," who finished his task on the 11th of June 1156. Besides The Didache and the Epistles of Clement it contains several spurious Ignatian epistles. 2 The word twelve had no place in the original title and was inserted when the original Didache or Teaching (e.g. The Two Ways) was combined with the church manual which mentions apostles outside of the twelve. It may be noted that the division of the Didache into chapters is due to Bryennius, that into verses to A. Harnack.the hypocrites; but as the Lord commanded in His Gospel." Then follows the Lord's Prayer, almost exactly as in St Matthew, with a brief doxology" for Thine is the power and the glory for ever." This is to be said three times a day. Next come three eucharistic prayers, the language of which is clearly marked off from that of the rest of the book, and shows parallels with the diction of St John's Gospel. They are probably founded on Jewish thanksgivings, and it is of interest
meal
drawn
confession of sins, "that your sacrifice may be pure . . . for this is that sacrifice which was spoken of by the Lord, In every place and time to offer unto Me a pure sacrifice. Appoint therefore unto yourselves bishops and deacons, worthy of the Lord, men meek and uncovetous, and true and approved; for they also minister unto you the ministration of the prophets and teachers. Therefore despise them not; for they are your honoured ones, together with the prophets and teachers." This is an arrangement recommended by one Who has tried it, and he reassures the old-fashioned believer who clings to the less formal regime (and whose protest was voiced in the Montanist movement
3. It will now be clear that indications of the locality and date of our present Teaching must be sought for only in the second part, and in the Christian interpolations in the first part. We have no ground for thinking that the second part ever existed independently as a separate book. The whole work was in the hands of the writer of the seventh book of the Apostolic Constitutions, who embodies almost every sentence of it, interspersing it with passages of Scripture, and modifying the precepts of the second part to suit a later (4th-century) stage of church development; this writer was also the interpolator of the Epistles of Ignatius, and belonged to the Syrian Church. Whether the second part was known to the writer of the Apostolic Church Order is not clear, as his only quotation of it comes from one of the eucharistic prayers. The allusions of early writers seem to point to Egypt, but their references are mostly to the first part, so that we must be careful how we argue from them as to the provenance of the book as a whole. Against Egypt has been urged the allusion in one of the eucharistic prayers to " corn upon the mountains." . This is found in the Prayer-book of Serapion (c. 350) but omitted in a later Egyptian prayer; the form as we have it in The Didache- may have passed into Egypt with the authority of tradition which was afterwards weakened. The anti-Jewish tone of the second part suggests the neighbourhood of Jews, from whom the Christians were to be sharply distinguished. Either Egypt or Syria would satisfy this condition, and in favour of Syria is the fact that the presbyterate there was to a late date regarded as a rank rather than an office. If we can connect the injunctions(vi. 3) concerning (abstinence from certain) food and that which is offered to idols with the old trouble that arose at Antioch (Acts xv. 1) and was legislated for by the Jerusalem council, we have additional support for the Syrian claim. But all that we can safely say as to locality is that the community here represented seems to have been isolated, and out of touch with the larger centres of Christian life. This last consideration helps us in discussing the question of date. For such an isolated community may have preserved primitive customs for some time after they had generally disappeared. Certainly the stage of development is an early one, as is shown, e.g., by the prominence of prophets, and the need that was felt for the vindication of the position of the bishops and deacons (there is no mention at all of presbyters); moreover, there is no reference to a canon of Scripture (though the written Gospel is expressly mentioned) or to a creed. On the other hand the " apostles " of the second part are obviously not " the twelve apostles " of the title; and the prophets seem in some instances to have proved unworthy of their high position. The ministry of enthusiasm which they represent is about to give way to the ministry of office, a transition which is reflected in the New Testament in the 3rd Epistle of John. Three of the Gospels have clearly been for some time in circulation; St Matthew's is used several times, and there are phrases which occur only in St Luke's, while St John's Gospel lies behind the eucharistic prayers which the writer has embodied in his work. There are no indications of any form of doctrinal heresy as needing rebuke; the warnings against false teaching are quite general. While the first part must be dated before the Epistle of Barnabas, i.e. before A.D. 90, it seems wisest not to place the complete work much earlier than A.D. 120, and there are passages which may well be later. A large literature has sprung up round The Didache since 1884. Harnack's edition in Texte u. Unters. vol. ii. (1884) is indispensable to the student; and his discussions in Allchristl. Litteratur and Chronologie give clear summaries of his work. Other editions of the text are those of F. X. Funk, Patres Apostolici, vol. i. (Tubingen, 19oi); H. Lietzmann (Bonn, 1903; with Latin version). Dr J. E. Odgers has published an English translation with introduction and notes (London, 1906). Dr C. Taylor in 1886 drew attention to some important parallels in Jewish literature; his edition contains an English translation. Dr Rendel Harris published in 188'7 a complete facsimile, and gathered a great store of patristic illustration
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