‘Everything which goes to confirm its Jewish character has a bearing on the question of its date. If it is derived immediately from Jewish sources, it must either have emanated from a mere sect, which long preserved its Hebraic peculiarities, or it must have come down to us from the primitive age in which Christi- anity had but just separated itself from the parent stock of Judaism. The former alternative must be rejected, if at an early date we find it quoted with profound respect beyond the pale of Judaism; and we are thus finally led to regard it, in whatever may be its original form, asa genuine fragment of the earliest tradition of the Church.’
B. TRANSFORMATIONS UNDERGONE BY THE DIDACHE.—These have already been indicated in the section on ‘Materials for comparative criti- cism.’ But a few illustrations may here be given of the spirit prompting such efforts to adjust a primitive church-manual to developing ‘ Catholic’ ideals. For they show at once the reluctance of the revisers to break altogether with this vener- able monument of the first age of the Church, and the radical change in Christian ideals represented by the Catholicism of the 4th century. The only section in the Egyptian ‘ Apostolic Church Order’ at all parallel to the ecclesiastical element in the Didache runs as follows (§ 12), the significant changes | being in italics—
Thomas said: ‘Child, him that speaketh to thee the Word of God and becometh to thee part-cause (xeepairiov) of life, and giveth thee the seal in the Lord, thou shalt love as the apple of thine eye (=Barn. xix. 9); and thou shalt remember him night and day, thou shalt honour him as the Lord. . . . And thou shalt seek out Ais face daily and the rest of the saints... . Tho shalt honour him as much as thou art able, from thy sweat and from the toil of thy hands. For if the Lord deigned to give thee at his hands “spiritual food and drink and life eternal,” thou oughtest much more to offer the corruptible and temporal food’ (cf. Did. iv. 1, 2, xiii, xv. 2, x. 3, iv. 8P),
Here regard for the minister of Sacraments is added to that for those who minister the Word in any form. / ; £
Similar tendencies are seen in Apost. Const. vil.
Thus Did. vii. 1 appears as: ‘But touching baptism, O bishop or presbyter, . . . 80 shalt thou baptize as the Lord enjoined on us, saying’ (then follows Mt 2819-20), ‘And thou shalt anoint, in the first place, with holy oil ; next, thou shalt baptize with water; and, last of all, thow shalt seal with ointment’ (uipy).
So with the Eucharistic prayers in Did. ix. x. ; while Did. xv. 1, 2 is transformed so as to read—
‘But ordain («poxeipiowobe) bishops worthy of the Lord, and presbyters and deacons, men prudent, just, meek, etc...., dutiful (éciovs), impartial, able to teach the word of piety, orthodox in the doctrines of the Lord (éploromotyras ty tos tov zupiov déyeowv). But do ye honour these as fathers, as lords, as benefactors, as causes of well-being.’
Besides these extant recensions of the Didache, in which the idea of ‘ Teaching of the Apostles’ is turned into a pious fiction,—notably in the Egyp- tian ‘Church Order,’ which makes the several Apostles speak seriatim,—we hear from Rufinus of the Duce Vie or Judiciwm Petri, possibly the Two Ways in a setting adjusted to the taste of the Roman Church. Finally, there is some ground for supposing that an abbreviated edition of the full Didache, omitting archaic parts such as those touching Apostles and Prophets, was current in certain circles in the East. This would be ante- cedently probable, as an alternative method of
* With the widest and most varied consensus of scholars, cf. A. Ehrhard, Altchrist. Litteratur und thre Erforschung von 188/,-1900, p. 63. A weighty addition is the name of J. Reville, Origines de U Episcopat, 234-261.
+ In the shorter form of Cod. Ottob. (see p. 441> note) such changes are fewer.
450 DIDACHE
DIDACHE
preserving an ancient book in current use; and is the most natural explanation of the size of the Didache as known to Nicephorus or his (? Pales- tinian) source of c. 500 A.D., viz. about two-thirds of our MS. Another possibility is that this Didache was the fuller form of the Two Ways in Apost. Const. vii. (used in the ascetic maxims printed in Orzens Christ., 1901, 49 ff.).
C. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DIDACHE FOR EARLY CHRISTIANITY.—The historical value of the Didache is (a) direct, as. it casts light on the first century of Christianity ; (6) indirect, as it shows, by its wide and long-continued circulation, how such primitive ideas and usages continued to find a certain recognition after they had, on the whole, been forced into the background, or totally sup- pressed by the characteristic forms of Catholicism.
Under (a) the gain lies not so much in the way of new facts, as in the fresh light cast upon things already witnessed to by our existing documents, though in a manner too implicit to attract atten- tion or win general assent as to their meaning. This is notably the case with the primary ministry of the Apostolic and sub-Apostolic ages—an un- ordained and largely an unlocalized ministry of the Word, including functions closely connected therewith, such as Eucharistic prayer—the ministry of Apostles, Prophets, and Teachers in the Spirit. Lightfoot, for instance, had already anticipated much of the truth as regards these ; yet only for the few who could ‘read between the lines’ of our existing texts in the face of misleading traditions. With the aid of the Didache the blindest can, if they will, perceive the distinction in kind between the higher ministries of the Spirit and the minis- tries resting on gifts of a humbler but most neces- sary order, such as Bishops (Pastors) and Deacons. But there are other points almost equally im- portant, even where less obvious. Such are(1) the congregational character of primitive Discipline, resting on the collective responsibility of all for each (xiv. xv. 3), side by side * with the existence of executive officers for this and other purposes (xv. 1, 2), whose appointment is attributed solel to the local community ; (2) the Eucharist as still of the nature of a sacred meal of religious com- munion, in which, in some regions at least, the blessing of the Cup preceded that of the Broken Bread (ix. x., so Lk 22, cf, 1 Co 101%) ; (3) the semi-Jewish nature of the two fixed Fast-days and three hours of Prayer, which passed into Chris- tian use as suggested by, and in rivalry with, the practices of unbelieving Judaism (viii.); and (4) the idea of Christian Baptism as involving vows of renunciation of the Way of Death and self- surrender to the Way of Life.