The striking verbal agreement with the very phrasing of the Two Ways (as found in Didache, CO, and L), conjoined with great freedom of treat- ment,—involving changes in thought, as well as insertions and omissions, —all this points to use of a document rather than to quotation from a familiar stereotyped tradition. For an author would be less inclined to upset the order and wrest the sense of a body of teaching which he had learned by long use.
In the case of Barnabas, moreover, the use of such a fixed tradition is the less likely in view of the writer’s sense of superiority to the religious ideal embodied in the ‘Teaching,’ which he aims at adapting to a higher level of spirituality. He finds it a form of instruction for would-be Chris- tians in the rudimentary principles of the new Way of Life: he turns it into a vehicle for impart- ing ethical ‘insight’ (gnosis) even to mature Christians, to whom he is ever saying, ‘Let us become spiritual’ (iv. 11). That is not the way a man treats the catechism of his own church,t a formulary engraven verbatim on his memory by constant use. It is rather the way of one who, finding a terse and time-honoured body of precepts current in a community of somewhat different traditions from his own, seizes on it from the out- side, as it were, and adapts it with sovereign freedom to the edification of his own spiritual kith and kin. This, of course, involves a special view as to the genesis of Barnabas—a theory which
_ *In view, however, of the fact that the maxim 3 cd ices erépw jan rorqons iS attributed to Cleobulus (one of the Seven Sages of Greece), and that this form is close to that found in To 415 (6 puweis wndevd rormons) and in Philo (& cis xeeleiy enc Doel pes fe Toeiy evry), one is led to suspect that this form was first adopted by the Diaspora as a maxim already current among those they wished to convert (cf. Hillel’s use of it). This assumption would account for its interpolation in the ‘Western’ text of Ac 1520-29, and in a somewhat different form.
t The evidence of literary dependence, on the one side or the other, is weakened when we restore the text of Barnabas to its original form, by allowing for the reflex influence of the Didache on the Sinaitic MS (cf. Harris, 55 f.).
{ This goes against the Two Ways being already in use in Egypt. Indeed, if Barnabas is addressed to Alexandria, the way in which the author cites and quotes verbatim this ‘Teaching’ excludes such an hypothesis,
takes its personal references seriously, and sees in its author a more or less itinerant teacher (cf. Did. xiii. 2). Yet it is a theory which also emerges naturally out of due analysis of that author’s handling of the Two Ways.
Provisionally, then, we assume that Barnabas presupposes a written Two Ways, perhaps known simply as ‘The Teaching’ (cf. ai évrodal ris Oday js, xvi. 9) or ‘ Doctrine of the Lord’; but that this was only in the hands of certain church teachers, or was written down for the first time at his re- quest and for his benefit. Thus the question of a written form at this stage is of very slight moment in the place where our author wrote his Epistle. In any case, it is probable that it was about the date of Barnabas that the Zwo Ways, after an oral career of some duration, passed into written form. It may be that in this form it speedily followed the Epistle itself to Alexandria, possibly to satisfy a demand for fuller knowledge of it cre- ated by the latter. Thus would begin the Egyp- tian line of tradition, which is best represented by the Latin version, and in which it seems always to have been known as ‘ Teaching of the Apostles.’
As to the contents of the ‘Teaching’ as known to Barnabas, there is good evidence that it embraced the bulk of Did. i.-v. (i.e. except i. 3>-ii. 1, missing also from L, OO, Sch, etc.). The highly Jewish ‘fencing of the Law’ in iii. 1-6 would not commend itself to Barnabas, any more than the related iy. 1, which he modifies in a bold way (as zopuy cod cpbaruod for as zbpiov). But did he know ch. vi.? If so, in what form?
Immediately after the Way of Death in Barnabas we read: ‘It is good, therefore, having learnt the ordinances (3:za:ducre) of the Lord, as many as have been written, to walk in them. For he that doeth them shall be glorified in the kingdom of God : he that chooseth those others (ézivz) shall perish together with his works. For this cause is resurrection, for this cause recompense. . . . Near (is) the day wherein all things shall perish along with the Evil One. Near (is) the Lord and his reward. Again and again I entreat you: to each other (eurdiv) be good lawgivers; to each other (écvréy) continue faithful counsellors (cvPovro); take away from among you all unreality (éxéxpiorv).’ This is certainly nearer to the line of thought in the Lat. than to our Did. vi. 2, 3. Nor should one overlook the parallelism between the ievrav wivers ciuBovrcr and L’s ‘in consulendo.’ But if Barnabas implies L’s ending, what mean the points of contact which exist between Did. vi. 2 and Bar- nabas? Probably a common atmosphere (see below (d)).