§ Compare the Rabbinic saying, ‘He that receiveth alms without needing the same, shall come to want before he dies’ (Keéthabéth, 68a).
|| Oh. xxxi. ad jin., where he says that the principle in Mt 1041f., as to making friends by the worldly Mammon, is even more divine than say} 7H alroivei o¢ didov, since it teaches one not to wait to be asked, 2aa’ aicde avatnrey oorig “E105 ed wabsiv, That he has Did. i. 5 in mind, is suggested by his adding deed yap OvTas 4 roLmbry PirAodapia. to THT, z.7.A., aS Did. adds, zéor ye DéAes di8c0boxs 6 mari tx ray idioy Kupionerwy,
4] The Didascalia is certainly dependent on our Didache elsewhere (cf. Holzhey, Die Abhdngigkeit des syr. Didaskalia von der Didache, Munchen, 1898).
** The nearest known parallel is the sentiment in Ac 2035, which the interpolated Apost. Const. iy. 38, actually substitutes here, in the form iwe} za} 6 xbpIOs pecercdepioy élaev Elves Tov diDbvToe Ne Ep Toy Anu Pdvov Ta.
DIDACHE
As to the relative priority of our Didache and Hermas, the case seems here as clearly in favour of the former as elsewhere.* But if so, it is probable that Hermas’ repeated 2} diord low CGrexpivwy) vis dds 4 tiv wh dais is a protest against the Menpis ay yas cin dws of Did., and that consequently ‘Tdparera, etc., stood in the Didache as known to Hermas, and is, in fact, per- haps echoed in é% ray zozrwy cov. . . didov. It seems, indeed, that Hermas’ protest is twofold. He protests, first, against trying to distinguish the good and bad; it is enough that they be needy ; that, he says, is God’s own principle (cf. Mt 54), Then he goes further, and protests against trying to distinguish be- tween real and apparent need; that, he says, is the receiver's look-out. But whatever Hermas may or may not have in mind, Did. i. 5 jfin., in writing 2a2% ze} wEpi Tobrov dy EipnToel, prob- ably means to apply what follows only to the need of dis- tinguishing real from feigned need : so Apost. Const. iil. 4, xn yup eo roy wdvras cvOpwrous, ih GiAoxpivoivras Todroy boris H 4 sxelvoy" 6 yeep xipros Gnot, Maver) rh airovvel o¢ didov* SHroy Ds os C27) xpncoves xaer wrAGberoy.
But we can hardly imagine the ‘Teaching’ proper, at any stage, to have opened age aa with a section on giving; and, in fact, we observe in what immediately precedes in our MS that the phrase xal éoy réXevos has its parallel in vi. 2. Nor is the parallel merely verbal. The idea of the phrase is probably the same in both cases, and belongs to the same mode of thought as meets us in Ja 1% 2" 32, touching a vépos éevdepias and a TéXevos avyp in relation to it (cf. Mt 5% 19*1).
The feeling that though a certain perfection of self-mastery was the Christian ideal, it could not be insisted upon for all in practice, seems to have been rather general among the second generation of Christians, when as yet even the most exacting Gospel precepts were taken seriously by all as the law of their new life. It meets us not only in Did. i. 4, vi. 2, 3, but also in Barnabas, and that in a way which does not point to dependence of the one on the other. In Did. vi. 2,3 it takes this form: ‘If, indeed, thou canst bear the whole yoke of the Lord, thou shalt be perfect; but if thou canst not, what thou canst, thatdo. But touching food, bear what thou canst ; but of that offered to idols greatly beware, for it is worship of dead gods.’ In Barnabas we read of ‘the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ—without yoke of constraint as it is’ (ii. 6); and of the spiritual, not ritual, obedience which belongs to it. On the other hand, we have in his Two Ways the exhorta- tion, ‘as much as thou canst thou shalt be pure (éyvetces) in the interests of thy soul,’ following on a specially exacting precept as to control of the tongue (xix. 8, cf. Ja 32 for the tongue as test of the ‘perfect man’). This breathes the same spirit as speaks in Barn. iv. 11, ‘Let us be spiritual, let us be a temple perfect to the Lord; as much as is in us, let us practise the fear of God; let us strive to guard his precepts.’ Thus Barnabas has the same idea as Did. vi. 2, the meaning of which he helps to fix; but he puts it in his own way, without showing trace of Did. vi. 2 any more than of Did. i. 4.
Thus the author of our Didache intends his qualifying paragraph in vi. 2 to refer to the ‘teaching’ already given in i.-v.; and his recog- nition that ‘the yoke of the Lord’ includes what might overtax the moral power of some, becomes more natural if we suppose that he had in mind high counsels like those in i. 4, 5,+ which he had himself introduced.
So far there seems good reason for holding that the full Didache originally embraced the precepts in Did. i. 4,5. But was that all, and did it open, fitly enough, with the general precept, ‘ Abstain thou from bodily lusts’ ?