The Apostolic Fathers and the Didache.

It was the Codex Alexandrinus that first made the Letter of Clement known in Europe, and when Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople, sent that manuscript to the King of England in 1628, one of the first acts of the royal librarian, Patrick Young, was to edit and publish the Letters of Clement in 1633. The subsequent publication of the Letter of Barnabas, the Letter of Polycarp, and the Ignatian letters made it possible for Cotelier in 1672 to publish the “Works of the Holy Fathers Who Flourished in Apostolic Times” (temporibus Apostolicis); when Ittig in 1699 carried on that task, he called his collection a library of Apostolic Fathers (Bibliotheca Patrum Apostolicorum). In the principal collections of Apostolic Fathers to this day (Severus of Antioch; Lightfoot; Gebhardt, Harnack, and Zahn; Lake), Clement has usually had the place of honor, at first probably because he was identified with the Clement mentioned in Phil. 4:3, but more recently because his letter is so clearly the earliest writing outside of the New Testament that we possess.

The Apostolic Fathers in the nineteenth century consisted of I-II Clement, the letters of Ignatius and Polycarp, together with the Martyrdom of the latter, the Letter of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hernias, and — because of a seventeenth-century error — the Letter to Diognetus, actually an apologetic work. With these writings was sometimes associated what remains of the writings of Papias, a contemporary of Polycarp.

In 1883, however, the situation was changed when Bryennius published, from the Constantinople manuscript of A.D. 1056 (now at Jerusalem), the text of the “Teaching of the Lord through the Twelve Apostles for the Gentiles.” This little manual of church discipline, usually called the “Didache” (“teaching”), immediately evoked a great deal of controversy, which is not yet at an end. The first six chapters of the manual contain moral instruction, largely Jewish in nature and partly based on the teaching of Jesus, which was to be recited before baptism. Chapters 7-10 consist of instructions about baptism, prayer, and what seems to be the eucharist. Chapters 11-15 deal with the reception of various kinds of ministers — apostles, prophets, and teachers — who are about to be supplanted by the appointment of bishops and deacons. The last chapter is an apocalypse, apparently based on Matthew 24. Naturally the question of the date of this book was raised, and it has been located all the way from A.D. 70 to A.D. 180. A terminus ante quern is provided by a quotation from it as scripture in Clement of Alexandria (Miscellanies i. 100), between 190 and 200.

The book was later known to Eusebius, Athanasius, and a few others and was incorporated in the third-century “Didascalia” and the fourth-century “Apostolic Constitutions.” In recent times two small Greek fragments of the fourth century (Oxyrhynchus Papyri xv.1782; Didache 1:36-4a, 2:7b-3:2a) and one Coptic fragment of the fifth century (British Museum, Or. MS, 9271, 10:3b - 12:2a) have been discovered. To the prayers over wine and bread, the Coptic fragment adds a prayer over chrism. In addition, Ethiopic and Georgian versions have been found. The situation became even more complicated when O. von Gebhardt, in 1884, printed a copy of a twelfth-century manuscript with a Latin version of the “Didache,” I:1-2.6a, and J. Schlecht, in 1899, published a Latin document (an eleventh-century manuscript) entitled “De doctrina apostolorum” (On the Teaching of the Apostles) closely parallel to Didache 1-6 and Barnabas 18-20.

All sorts of theories have been set forth to explain the interrelations of the Greek “Didache” with the parallel texts. Goodspeed argued that both Latin versions represented the original Greek edition, composed early in the second century, perhaps at Antioch; this was used when Barnabas 18-20 was added to the first seventeen chapters and also, about A.D. 150, when the existing “Didache” was compiled. A more likely view is that “De doctrina apostolorum,” which lacks the clearly Christian section in the “Didache,” 1:3-2:1, represents the Jewish original “two ways” on which the first part of the “Didache” is based, and that, in turn, Barnabas 18-20 is based on the “Didache.”

The ideas of the “Didache” do not vary greatly from those expressed in the Gospel of Matthew, and it appears that, at least in the latter half of the “Didache,” that Gospel was used. Some of the coincidences in the first part may have resulted from the use of common oral traditions. J: P. Audet, who published a very thorough study of the little work in 1958, has argued that the first half (through II:2) comes from about A.D. 70, while the rest was added not long afterwards. Perhaps as a whole the book should be dated about the last third of the first century, possibly around A.D. 90. Its Jewish-Christian tone indicates its place of origin as the East, perhaps Syria or Alexandria.

Later on, Eusebius puts “the so-called 'Teachings of the Apostles'“ among the books that are disputed and rejected (Church History iii. 25. 4). Athanasius, in his Festal Letter of A.D. 367, omits it from the New Testament but says that it and the “Shepherd of Hermas” may be read by new converts and persons preparing for baptism. The “Didache” is listed among the “apocrypha” or rejected books in the “List of Sixty Canonical Books” and in the “Stichometry of Nicephorus.” It was no longer especially useful, since it had been assimilated and modernized in later manuals of discipline, and it survived only as occasional reading among the monks of Egypt.