(b) Contents and structure.—As it stands in our MS, the Didache has real organic unity. A natu- ral development of thought is traceable through- out (save perhaps in one section near the beginning), as will appear from the following summary.
There are Two Ways in this world, one of Life and one of Death—so radically different are they. The Way of Life consists of love, (1) to God our Maker, (2) to one’s neighbour as to oneself: this involves refraining from doing to another what one would not have done to oneself.
‘Now of these words the Teaching is as fol- lows’ :—
The Evangelical precepts which follow in our MS exemplify the thought of positive love to man, flowing from love to God. But the latter idea, the first element in the Great Command- ment, is not formally developed. It is regarded as fulfilled in relation to man as God’s image, whether in the fuller way represented by our MS, or up to the level of the negative form of the Golden Rule, which practically replaces the positive in the exposition or ‘teaching’ of the Way of Life in its original form (see below).
Then comes a section dealing with practical
love to one’s fellow in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, in which forgiveness of wrong and
the relief of physical need by one’s own goods are emphasized. In the latter case a warning to
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the recipient is appended, as to his final account- ability to God, if he take save when in want; likewise he who has whereof to give is bidden to make sure that he finds a fit recipient.
The exposition of the negative form of the Golden Rule opens (ch. ii.) with the words, ‘Now the second precept of the Teaching (is).’ It consists of an expansion of the second table of the Deca- logue, beginning, after Jewish usage, with ‘Thou shalt not kill’; but it also inserts the Third Com- mandment against perjury, in close connexion with false witness. The expansion in question is in terms of vices to which paganism was specially addicted.
The incidence of pagan failings explains the reversal of the order as to homicide and adultery found in the Latin version. This change confirms the view that its text represents Alex- andria rather than Palestine ; Dt 517f LXX, cf. JQR xy. 309 ff.
No mention is made of the Sabbath or of honour to parents. ‘The former seems to be omitted inten- tionally ; the latter may be taken for granted, or may be omitted because pagan parents must be disobeyed. Abstinence from idolatry is naturally assumed: thus in iii. 4, vi. 3, things are for- bidden as leading to or implying idolatry. This section ends with what is its keynote—prohibition of all evil purpose or feeling’ against another. Indeed it goes further: ‘Thou shalt not hate any man; but some thou shalt rebuke, and for some thou shalt pray, and some thou shalt love above thine own life.’
The next section (ch. iii.), which has a unity of its own as regards its first five or six precepts at any rate (indicated by the recurrence of ‘my child’), passes to the subtler sort of sins, which lead on to the grosser kind already dealt with. It makes the moral ideal more searching and exhaustive. In Jewish phrase, ‘it fences the Law’: ‘ My child, flee from every evil, and from everything like unto it.’ Its Jewish colour is very evident; and the cardinal sins to which others lead are homicide, adultery, idolatry, theft, blasphemy. In contrast to the haughty and self-assertive temper, to which the last of these is traced, there follows a series of exhortations to humility of spirit and conduct which have a more specifically Christian ring ; and the section ends with an exhortation meekly to accept the dispensations of Providence as good (which may once have followed the last of the more Jewish precepts, in an oral body of catechesis for proselytes to Judaism),
An easy transition to the last class of duties (ch. iv.), those of life in the religious community and family in particular, is presented by the inculca- tion of reverential docility towards ‘him who speaks the word of God’; ‘for where the lordship is spoken, there is the Lord’ (a truly Jewish maxim). And here follow precepts on consorting with ‘the saints’; on the avoidance of disunion, partiality in judgment, a doubtful mind; on sel- fishness and beneficence—the latter marked bya cheerful spirit, in view of Divine recompense and of the brethren’s fellowship in the greater goods of immortality; on parental discipline and the mutual relations of master and bond-servant (2-11). The whole ends with the summary precepts : * ‘Thou shalt hate all hypocrisy and whatsoever is not pleasing to the Lord. Thou shalt not abandon the Lord’s precepts, but shalt keep what thou didst receive, neither adding nor taking away. In meeting thou shalt openly confess thy trans- gressions (cf. Ja 5!6), and shalt not come to thy pear with a bad conscience. This is the Way of
ife.
The Way of Death (ch. v.) is simply the opposite
* Probably part of the original framework of Jewish oral catechesis ; cf. the re-emergence of ‘my son’ in the Latin ver- sion, which may here preserve an original touch.
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of all this, and takes the form of a List of Vices (§ 1 follows the order of chs. ii.—iii.), a common topic both in classical and Jewish literature.