+ In an exhaustive discussion in The Journal of Philology, xix. 184 ff. See also the passage from John Climacus, below.
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446 DIDACHE
Christian ethics,* and so attracted a good deal of subsequent attention and comment. If, then, we may infer that the passage in the Did. is the fountainhead of this maxim in the Fathers and schoolmen, it proves that to some of them at least our Did. was known, down to the 5th cent. and later, and that in the West + as well as the East. It is true that at first sight the maxim, as introduced with eipnro, might seem to come rather from some OT Scripture, especially as Augustine cites it with ‘et alio loco Scriptura dicit : Sudet,’ etc. But the nearest known OT passage is the édy «5 rors, yobs rive roils of Sir 121; while, had a nearer been known to Augustine and others, they would somewhere have given us more than the former’s alio loco. Hence we may conclude that Sir 121 is in fact the ultimate basis of the éipyras in the Didache, but that its phrasing of the maxim is in terms of some current (? Rabbinic) paraphrase of it (cE. Eppéy in Mt 538. 43),
This is so far confirmed by a passage in Nicetas’ catena on Mt 542: ‘We should do alms, yet with judgment and to the worthy, that we may jind a recompense from the Most High.’ t In the words in italics there is a clear echo of Sir 122, so that what precedes is probably based on 121. Thus this passage in Sirach seems to have been the locus classicus for the idea of giving were xpicews xa) cois «£ios,—to use Nicetas’ words; and the more concrete saying under discussion was perhaps a current form of it.§ Whether this maxim was already in the Didache as known to Clement of Alex. is an open question. But if we find him expressing the sentiment in immediate con. junction with the thought with which it is connected in the Didache, there is a presumption that he knew that work to contain it. Now this happens in his Quis dives salvus. || May it not be, too, that the ‘libellus ab apostolis’ known by Origen to contain ‘Beatus est qui etiam jejunat pro eo ut alat pauperes,’ was our Didache expanded in i. 5?
We have yet to consider the relations of Hermas and the Didascalia to our Didache i. 5as a whole. The Didascatlia (as reconstructed from the Syriac and the Verona Latin fragment) has the following in bk. iv. 2, 3: ‘Truly blessed is he who is able to help himself, and so avoid pressing on the place of (relief belonging to) the orphan, the stranger, and the widow. This grace, moreover, is of God. But woe to those who have and hypocritically take, or who take when able to help them- selves. But every one who takes shall give account to the Lord God in the judgment-day, wherefore he took. . . . He who has and takes hypocritically, or through laziness, instead of working and so helping himself and others, shall incur judgment with God. . . . He, then, who gives simply (é7dis) to all, gives well, as far as he is concerned (‘sicut est illi’), and is guiltless (‘innocens’ = &6a0s). He, too, who takes because of affliction (OrsBeweves) .. . takes well, and shall be glorified by God in life eternal.’ Here the words in italics seem simply to make more explicit the middle clauses of Did. i. 5, viz. ‘Woe to him that takes; for if indeed any one having need takes, he shall be guiltless (4@a0c); but he that hath not need, shall give satis- faction (340 dixqv) why and wherefore he took.’ As to the rest of the quotation, it seems to echo our Didache {| in its anti- thesis crnbais mazcépios, obad. . . AcuPévoverv, which is parallel to Did. alone.** On the other hand, Hermas is the probable source of the other matter. For its form follows closely the phrasing of Hermas, Mand. ii. 5f., €.9. ob wdy yep AceeBovoress OrsBopeves . . . 6 ody Oidode (axaas thrice in the immediate con- text, besides réow barepoupetvois didev &rdéis above) &Odiés tory... tvdokos rape rai bed ... 6 ody obtéis aAas Stexovav, +a bed Choeros. Further, the idea of the pious labour and merit of the re- cipient, in praying for the donor, may well come from Sim. ii, 6, 7, just as the idea of the needy as God’s altar, here and else- where (ii. 26, iii. 6, 7, 14) in the Didascalia, goes back to Poly- carp, ad Phil. iv. 3.
* Dr. Taylor is too ready to take the sense put upon the niaxim by Augustine and later writers, specially in the West, as fixing its meaning in the Didache. Its original context in the Didache requires that the stress fall on the pigpis &y gvdis civ 04s, te. the arrest of the impulse to give; while in Augus- tine, Cassiodorus, and Bernard, at any rate, the emphasis is on the justwm which they insert (‘donec invenias justum cut eam tradas’),
t Here the divergences in text are against all being dependent on Augustine.
{The exact parallel to Apost. Const. iv. 3 which follows in Nicetas, with Kae. in the margin, is, in fact, derived from that work, Clement of Rome being its supposititious author. Its attribution to Clem. Alex. is due to a mere guess of Corderius, the first editor of Nicetas’ catena, as is shown by F. X, Funk, Kirchengesch. Abhandiungen, ii. 126 f.