The Didache: A Missing Piece of the Puzzle in Early Christianity

Conclusion: Missing Pieces in the Puzzle or Wild Good Chase? A Retrospect and Prospect Jonathan A. Draper 1. Why the Riddle? In his groundbreaking commentary written soon ater its irst publication by Bishop Bryennios in 1883, Adolf von Harnack1 highlighted its signiicance: he more one immerses oneself in the context of the Didache, the more clearly one sees that its author has exhausted, to his mind, everything which belonged in a short evangelical-apostolic manual for the Christian life of the individual (in everyday dealings and in the community). One could not deny that the evidence provided by this writing is quite irst rate. So impressed was Harnack with its evidence, that it formed the key to his picture of the evolution of the early church from the writings of the New Testament to the emerging institution of “early Catholicism” in his massive two volume work, Das Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (1902).2 Ater one hundred and thirty years, 1. Adolf von Harnack, Die Lehre der zwölf Apostel nebst Untersuchuingen zur ältesten Geschichte der Kirchenverfassung und des Kirchenrechts, TUGAL 2.1, 2 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1884), 36–37 (my translation). Harnack’s contention concerning the comprehensiveness of the instructions has been speciically questioned by Georg Schöllgen, “Die Didache als Kirchenordnung: Zur Frage des Abfassungszweckes und sinen Konsequenzen für die Interpretation,” JAC 29 (1986): 5–26. Schöllgen argues that the Didache simply presents an ad hoc collection of burning issues of the day and what is absent from the text is irrelevant for its interpretation. 2. Translated into English as Adolf von Harnack, he Mission and Expansion of -529- 22.Didache.indd 529 3/2/15 12:09 PM 530 THE DIDACHE: A MISSING PIECE OF THE PUZZLE such conidence has proved to be short-lived. Almost every aspect of the evidence has been contested, almost to the point where scholars ceased to use its evidence at all for the reconstruction of early Christianity. Although there is still no consensus on the exact date, the range of possible dates suggested does seem to have narrowed signiicantly among modern scholars, with few arguing for a date later than the beginning of the second century CE, with others arguing for a much earlier date from the mid- to late-irst century.3 Yet if this is indeed a genuine document of the irst or even early second century CE, it is hard to see how pessimism with regard to its use in the reconstruction of the emergence of early Christianity can be justiied, given that it contains practical rules for community rituals and common life as practiced at such an early time, evidence which is not really available elsewhere except incidentally from odd clues here and there in writings with other purposes. On the other hand, it is not surprising that the document is contested and has been from the outset, because it touches in a fundamental way on deep-rooted historical constructions of the early church that relate to legitimations and vested interests of particular denominations and their ecclesiologies. It presents a challenge to any theory of a straightforward evolution from origins to the institutional church of later times, representing a subjugated voice of an alternative strand of the Christian tradition which fell silent. Consequently, any theory of origins that ignores this inconvenient and Christianity in the First hree Centuries (London: Williams & Norgate; New York: Putnam, 1908), esp. 319–68. 3. Most recently Aaron Milavec, he Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life of the Earliest Christian Communities, 50–70 CE (New York: Newman, 2003), has made a claim that the work represents an oral catechesis dating from 50–70 CE. He is followed in this by homas O’Loughlin, he Didache: A Window on the Earliest Christians (Grand Rapids: Baker; London: SPCK, 2010), although he leaves open the question of the inal version of the text within the broad range of the irst century CE: “In all probability a version of the Didache was being committed to memory by groups of followers of Jesus by the middle of the irst century—and what we have relects a very early stage in that text’s life and inluence.” Proponents of a later date at around 110–20 CE include, hesitantly, Kurt Niederwimmer, he Didache: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 53; Huub van de Sandt and David Flusser, he Didache: Its Jewish Sources and Its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity, CRINT 3.5 (Assen: Van Gorcum; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 45, “turn of the irst century”; and Clayton N. Jeford, “Didache,” EDB 345a–46a., who allows 70–150 CE as the furthest extremes but prefers the early second century. 22.Didache.indd 530 3/2/15 12:09 PM DRAPER: CONCLUSION 531 enigmatic voice that was lost in the march of time is let with a missing piece or pieces of the puzzle—rather like infuriating puzzle pieces of the plain sky that just will not it in at the end of the puzzle or, worse still, that fell of the table and got lost. Whatever date is advocated for its inal redaction, there is broad agreement that it contains early source material, whether originating in oral form or already in written form, so that its inal date does not determine its value entirely. For instance, historians of the Eucharist mostly see very early material here, older than the Didache itself, deriving from Jewish prototypes.4 However, an alternative origin in the Hellenistic symposium is proposed by Matthias Klinghardt,5 although while one should allow for the inluence of Hellenism on irst century Judaism on a wide front as argued by Martin Hengel’s epic work,6 this should also not be allowed to suggest the complete eclipse of culture-speciic elements of Jewish society.7 Almost all scholars since Jean-Paul Audet’s comparison of the Two Ways in the Didache and the Manual of Discipline (1 QS III, 4. So Enrico Mazza, he Origins of the Eucharistic Prayer, trans. Ronald E. Lane (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), places it at the center of his reconstruction of origins, while Jonathan Schwiebert, Knowledge and the Coming Kingdom: he Didache’s Meal Ritual and Its Place in Early Christianity, LNTS 373; (London: T&T Clark, 2008), traces it to the early originating moment of an alternative tradition of the Christian Eucharist to that represented by the words of institution. Gerard Rouwhorst, “Didache 9–10: A Litmus Test for the Research on Early Christian Liturgy Eucharist,” in Matthew and the Didache: Two Documents from the Same Jewish Christian Milieu? ed. Huub van de Sandt (Assen: Van Gorcum; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 143–56, takes a middle line arguing that early meal thanksgiving prayers like those presented by the Didache may have existed alongside the Eucharist ofered using the words of institution at a yearly “Quartodeciman Passover with an etiological function which gradually replaced the communal meal prayers.” 5. Matthias Klinghardt, Gemeinschatsmahl und Mahlgemeinschat: Soziologie und Liturgie frühchristlicher Mahlfeiern, TANZ 13 (Tübingen: Francke, 1996). He is followed by Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: he Banquet in the Early Christian World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), and Hal Taussig, In the Beginning was the Meal (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009). 6. Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, 2 vols. (London: SCM, 1974). 7. he experience of the modern form of imperial domination on a far more widespread scale than was possible in the ancient world shows that subjugated cultures are certainly inluenced, even changed in important respects, by the imperial culture, but are not obliterated, reemerging ater the collapse of imperial control even ater hundreds of years. 22.Didache.indd 531 3/2/15 12:09 PM 532 THE DIDACHE: A MISSING PIECE OF THE PUZZLE 13–IV, 26) agree that the material is older than the Didache and represents an originally independent and widespread early Jewish and Christian text or trope.8 he theory of a late literary iction does not seem tenable any more, since at every turn new textual discoveries tend to support the authenticity of the kind of world described in the Didache. he many echoes it inds in multiple early Christian texts evidenced in this volume indicate that it stands in a continuing and evolving tradition. In any case, even if it were to represent a ictional and imagined ideal community, it could only be constructed on the possibilities ofered by real historical experience in its day. Even dreams and visions are rooted in a particular cultural and social reality. 2. The Didache and Jewish Christianity One signiicant development in recent study of the Didache is the result of a greater awareness of the broad span and diversity of irst century Jewish/ Israelite culture, which tends to conirm that this text originates in a Jewish Christian context. here was no overarching monolithic Jewish/Israelite religious expression in the irst two centuries CE but rather a contested public space. Rabbinic Judaism represents only one strand in an evolving tradition battling for hegemony ater the collapse of the Judean temple state. he Didache represents another such strand of Judaism, basing its claims on the acceptance of Jesus as the descendent of David and the Messiah who would return as the Son of Man on the clouds. Its rituals and Christology diverge signiicantly from other types of Christianity known through Pauline Christianity, which became dominant in the West and erased earlier memories but can now be seen to be close to patterns found in other Jewish and Jewish Christian groups—in particular Matthew and James and Revelation. he correlation of the Didache with these texts and other known Jewish Christian writings, such as the Pseudo-Clementine texts and the Odes of Solomon, might provide a focal point for the reconstruction of early Jewish Christianity.9 A particular point of interest is the 8. Jean-Paul Audet, “Ainités Littéraires et Doctrinales du ‘Manuel de Discipline,’” RB 59 (1952): 219–38. 9. In his response to papers in the SBL seminar of 2007 in Washington, Marcus Bockmuehl argued that the traces of Jewish Christianity found in the Didache might relect a much later romanticization of Judaism for which a gentile community is nostalgic. However, this does not match the very early textual traces of the Didache nor 22.Didache.indd 532 3/2/15 12:09 PM DRAPER: CONCLUSION 533 way in which such a Jewish Christian community orientated itself to a mission to the gentiles while seeking to remain Torah observant (6.2–3). Such a stance is well-known from Matt 5, but here it is leshed out by the instructions provided for community life. In the Didache there is a major focus on purity and holiness: from a koinonia of property in chapter 4,10 to the right kind of water to remove impurity and efect such a holy community in chapter 7, to an insistence on the exclusion of those not washed in this way from the pure meal of the community, since they are as unclean as dogs (9.5).11 his insistence on purity is repeated in the instructions ater the meal (10.6) and in the instructions on the Lord’s Day (14). Such an obsession with purity goes with a concern about boundaries in the construction of a new community facing a pressing external threat12 and matches the similar concern in other Jewish groups in the irst and second the way in which the arguments and practice of the Didache follows the inner logic discernible in early Jewish sources. See especially the work of Huub van de Sandt, “Didache 3:1–6:1: A Transformation of an Existing Jewish Hortatory Pattern,” JSJ 23 (1992), 21–24; “Was the Didache Community a Group within Judaism? An Assessment on the Basis of its Eucharistic Prayers,” in A Holy People: Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Religious Communal Identity, ed. Marcel J. H. M. Poorthuis and Joshua Schwartz, JCP 12 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 85–107; van de Sandt and Flusser, Didache; and Peter J. Tomson, “he Halakhic Evidence of Didache 8 and Matthew 6 and the Didache Community’s Relation to Judaism,” in van de Sandt, Matthew and the Didache, 131– 41; “Transformations of Post-70 Judaism: Scholarly Reconstructions and heir Implications for our Perception of Matthew, Didache, and James,” in Matthew, James and Didache: hree Related Documents in heir Jewish and Christian Settings, ed. Huub van de Sandt and and Jürgen K. Zangenberg, SBLSymS 45 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), together with his paper (“he Lord’s Prayer [Didache 8] at the Faultline of Judaism and Christianity”) in this volume; Jonathan A. Draper, “he Holy Vine of David Made Known to the Gentiles through God’s Servant Jesus: ‘Christian Judaism’ in the Didache,” in Jewish Christianity Reconsidered: Rethinking Ancient Groups and Texts, ed. Matt Jackson-McCabe (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 257–83; and “Pure Sacriice in Didache 14 as Jewish Christian Exegesis,” Neot 42 (2008): 223–52. 10. See too my paper (“Children and Slaves in the Community of the Didache and the Two Ways Tradition”) in this volume. 11. Note the paper of Huub van de Sandt (“Baptism and Holiness: Two Requirements Authorizing Participation in the Didache’s Eucharist”) in this volume. 12. According to the widely accepted anthropological model of Mary Douglas developed in Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1966), and Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology, 2nd ed. (New York: Pantheon, 1982). 22.Didache.indd 533 3/2/15 12:09 PM 534 THE DIDACHE: A MISSING PIECE OF THE PUZZLE century CE, such as the haburoth of the Pharisees and the yahad of the community of the Dead Sea Scrolls. 3. The Relationship of the Didache and Matthew he links with Matthew’s Gospel are very close and demand attention at every turn. he traditional argument has been about whether the Didache is dependent on Matthew, whether they are both dependent on a prior source such as is traditionally designated “Q,”13 or whether Matthew is dependent on the Didache, as some recent scholars have argued.14 A number of scholars, including myself, have argued for a more complex relationship between Matthew and the Didache as an “evolved text,” namely, a text which has had a long history of redaction as the community rule of a living and developing community, so that the earliest layers of the text may be among Matthew’s sources, while the latest layers of the text may relect a knowledge of Matthew.15 Such an approach allows for the continuing inluence of orality and performance on the production and transmission of texts over time. A resurgence of interest in oral tradition has also raised the possibility that what are taken as literary sources in most of the scholarly literature may in fact be relections of a common oral tradition used by both texts. his is a particularly forceful argument if the Didache contains catechetical material which was designed to be memorized by catechumens under the guidance of an elder or teacher.16 However, oral tradition cannot, in my 13. As argued by Helmut Koester, Synoptische Überlieferung bei den apostolischen Vätern, TUGAL 65/5.10 (Berlin: Akademie, 1957), 159–241. Heavy counter arguments are ofered by Christopher M. Tuckett, “he Didache and the Writings that later formed the New Testament,” in he Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1 of he New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, ed. Andrew F. Gregory and Christopher M. Tuckett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 83–127. 14. See Alan J. P. Garrow, he Gospel of Matthew’s Dependence on the Didache, JSNTSup 254 (London: T&T Clark, 2004). 15. he concept was developed by Robert Krat, Barnabas and the Didache, AF 3 (New York: Nelson, 1965), 1–3; also by Stanislav Giet, L’énigme de la Didachè (PFLUS 149; Paris: Ophrys, 1970). Giet was published posthumously, but the manuscript is dated 1967. 16. See Jonathan A. Draper, “Vice Catalogues as Oral-Mnemonic Cues: A Comparative Study of the Two Ways Tradition in the Didache and Parallels from the Perspective of Oral Tradition,” in Jesus, the Voice, and the Text: Beyond the Oral and the 22.Didache.indd 534 3/2/15 12:09 PM DRAPER: CONCLUSION 535 opinion, replace studies of literary composition, because the irst century Mediterranean world was not a context of primary orality. Text and oral tradition were in a continuing and dialectic relationship, which continues to afect even the manuscript traditions of any writing.17 he question has far reaching consequences for the dating of the Didache, of course, but the question does not seem likely to be easily settled, as the diverse papers and positions relected in this volume testify. A more constructive way forward may be to explore the relationship between the praxis of the Didache and the clues in Matthew, asking different questions to chart the dimensions of a Jewish-Christian community life. In other words, could one read them together in the act of historical reconstruction, while leaving open the question of the direction of inluence? Such an approach certainly produced dividends in the two Tilburg conferences hosted by Huub van de Sandt in 2003 and 2007, which resulted in a rich and helpful discourse. he very intensity of the debate indicates the importance of the relationship. he continuing disagreements do not indicate a scholarly crisis but a creative vortex of research. Clearly the evidence is inconclusive and its interpretation depends on prior understandings of the researcher concerning the evolution of the earliest Christian communities. Perhaps instead of trying to determine the direction of their literary composition, future research should read the evidence of Matthew and the Didache (and possibly the epistle of James) together as data for the reconstruction of the praxis and beliefs of a particular community or set of communities that stand in the same early Christian trajectory. his Tilburg Conferences of 2003 and 2007 mentioned above have already opened up this possibility. Although the disagreements remained wide and are relected again in the current volume of papers from a decade of meetings by the SBL seminar so that one could not really speak of an emerging consensus, the range of issues has narrowed somewhat. Matthew and the Didache, whatever Written Gospel, ed. Tom hatcher (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), 111–36. See also the papers of Nancy Pardee (“he Didache and Oral heory”) and Perttu Nikander (“he Sectio Evangelica [Didache 1.3b–2.1] and Performance”) in this volume. Note, however, the cautions expressed by John S. Kloppenborg, “Memory, Performance, and the Sayings of Jesus” (paper presented at the Hensinki Seminar on Memory, Helsinki, Finland, 11 May 2011). 17. See the seminal work of David C. Parker, he Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 22.Didache.indd 535 3/2/15 12:09 PM 536 THE DIDACHE: A MISSING PIECE OF THE PUZZLE the direction of supposed dependence, are both now usually regarded as Jewish-Christian/Christian-Jewish texts. Secondly, if the Didache reached its inal form by the end of the irst and beginning of the second centuries CE, this puts it roughly in the same time zone as the composition of Matthew advocated by most Matthean scholars (give or take a decade or two). Given the diference in genre between the Didache and Matthew then, the question of literary dependence may be a red herring that has prevented scholars from moving on to delineate the nature of the community(ies) which used both texts simultaneously and found no contradiction in doing so. 4. The Didache, the Book of Revelation, and the Johannine Tradition he relationship between the Didache and Revelation has received little attention except from Alan Garrow, 18 but seems to call for further analysis—again taking into account their diference in genre. he Didache has prophets who “do a cosmic mystery of the ekklesia” within strictly prescribed rules; Revelation ofers just such a “cosmic mystery of the ekklesia.” No one has imagined the Didache to be a text of early Jewish Christian mysticism, and yet it not only allows but privileges (10.7) and regulates such a practice (13.7–12) in its community rule. Besides this, there are clear traces of the Two Ways trope in Revelation and a similar strict insistence of the avoidance of εἰδωλόθυτον. Relating two such enigmatic texts as the Didache and Revelation may present a daunting task, but may be a productive exercise. Given a date for the Didache between the end of the irst and beginning of the second century CE in the new emerging consensus, it is no longer appropriate to describe it as a Montanist document. Was there, however, a continuing early Christian mystical practice based on the work of “prophets” speaking in the spirit (evidenced not only in the Didache but also in Matthew; e.g., the false prophets of 7:15–23 and the true ones implied in 10:41). Could this prophetic tradition have issued in Montanism not as an innovation, but as a practice the emerging orthodox church sought to suppress? Its links with other works in the Johannine tra18. So van de Sandt, Matthew and the Didache; Huub van de Sandt and Jürgen K. Zangenberg, eds., Matthew, James and Didache; Gunnar Garlef, Urchristliche Identität in Matthäusevangelium, Didache und Jakobusbrief, BVB 9 (Münster: LIT, 2004); and Alan Garrow (“he Didache and Revelation”) in this volume. 22.Didache.indd 536 3/2/15 12:09 PM DRAPER: CONCLUSION 537 dition, such as John’s Gospel, 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John, have hardly been explored except by Johannes Betz’s brief study of the Eucharist.19 5. The Didache in Jewish and Christian Mysticism Despite the extensive instructions on Christian prophets and prophecy in Did. 10.7, 11.7–12, 13, and 15.1–2, there has been relatively little interest shown in this material on the part of Didache scholars or in the burgeoning study of Jewish and Christian mysticism emerging from a new understanding of apocalyptic as diferent from (though sometimes overlapping with) eschatology which arose from the work of Alan F. Segal,20 Christopher Rowland,21 John J. Collins,22 Peter Schäfer,23 and many others. It has been the focus of a long running section of the SBL’s “Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism.” he nature and evolution of this widespread inluence and practice of mystical ascent continues to be debated, but its existence as an inluence in Judaism can no longer be doubted in the light of recent studies of mysticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls24 and Philo of Alexandria.25 So it is surprising that none of the participants in the SBL seminar series on the Didache took up this quest with respect to the text. 19. Johannes Betz, “he Eucharist in the Didache,” in he Didache in Modern Research, ed. Jonathan A. Draper, AGJU 37 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 244–75. Like the Didache, John’s Gospel lacks the words of institution, utilizes the trope of the vine in the context of the meal, and applies the vine to Jesus. It is still an open question whether there are any connections between John and the Didache beyond the eucharistic parallels (e.g., could John’s failure to describe Jesus’s baptism by the Baptist relect a rejection of Christian baptism as one of “repentance for the forgiveness of sins” which is absent also in the Didache?). 20. Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism, SJLA 25 (Leiden: Brill, 1977). 21. Christopher C. Rowland, he Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (London: SPCK, 1982). 22. John J. Collins, he Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature (New York: Crossroad, 1984). 23. Peter Schäfer, he Hidden and Manifest God (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992). 24. See most recently the excellent study of Samuel I. homas, he Mysteries” of Qumran: Mystery, Secrecy, and Esotericism in the Dead Sea Scrolls, SBJLEJL 25 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009). 25. See, e.g., Baudouin Decharneux, L’Ange, le devin et le prophete: Chemins de la 22.Didache.indd 537 3/2/15 12:09 PM 538 THE DIDACHE: A MISSING PIECE OF THE PUZZLE he Didache provides instructions to regulate how things are to be done and what is to be forbidden. he rules on Christian prophecy that it provides are oten seen as merely demonstrating the decline of Christian prophecy and the beginning of its demise, yet they encourage it and value it positively as the spirit speaking through the prophet, so that to silence the voice would be blasphemy. Moreover, prophets are allowed to speak “as they will” at the Christian Eucharist (10.7). Indeed, true and tested prophets speak “cosmic mysteries of the ekklesia” (11.11), the kind of language for the mystical ascent to view the risen Christ enthroned in heaven in a number of New Testament texts, according to Rowland and Christopher Morray-Jones.26 Prophets, and to a lesser extent teachers, are the only resident leaders in the Didache community who are entitled to material support (13), and their work is so highly rated that they are to receive the same honor as the bishops and deacons—who are in danger of being overshadowed by the prophets (15.1–2). It is time that this aspect of research into early Christian mysticism was taken up in the light of recent studies of mysticism. An earlier generation of British scholars, led by R. H. Connolly27 and F. E. Vokes,28 regarded the Didache as a Montanist work because of its teaching on prophecy and prophets, but this assumes that Montanists was the originators of Christian mysticism and prophecy rather than a direct descendant of earliest Christianity. Harnack, with his usual acumen, remarked rather of-handedly: Down to the close of the second century the prophets retained their position in the church; but the Montanist movement brought early Christian prophecy at once to a head and to an end. Sporadic traces of it are still to be found in later years, but such prophets no longer possessed any signiicance for the church; in fact, they were quite summarily condemned parole dans l’oeuvre de Philon d’Alexcandrie dit “Le Juif,” SPL 2 (Bruxelles: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1994). 26. Christopher C. Rowland and Christopher Morray-Jones, he Mystery of God: Early Jewish Mysticism and the New Testament, CRINT 12 (Leiden: Brill, 2009). hey see 2 Cor 12:2–4, Colossians, Ephesians, Hebrews, and perhaps 1 John as relecting such a Christian mysticism. 27. R. H. Connolly, “he Didache and Montanism,” DRev 55 (1937): 339–47. 28. F. E. Vokes, he Riddle of the Didache: Fact or Fiction, Heresy or Catholicism? (London: SPCK, 1938). 22.Didache.indd 538 3/2/15 12:09 PM DRAPER: CONCLUSION 539 by the clergy as false prophets. Like the apostles, the prophets occupied a delicate and risky position. It was easy for them to degenerate.29 Sadly, the possibilities of this observation for further research into the Didache have not yet been taken up, particularly in the light of its clear and enduring inluence in North Africa and Ethiopia, to which Montanists from Asia Minor led for refuge.30 6. The Didache and Paul Since the early enthusiasm ater its publication in 1883 to ind traces of the Didache in every text of the New Testament and early Christianity or vice versa, there has been little research exploring points of contact or opposition relating the letters of Paul to the Didache. A notable exception was the work of Alfred Seeberg, who sought in many volumes to ind in the Didache an early Christian catechesis lying behind all the early Christian writings and particularly Paul.31 In his recent doctoral thesis, Paul’s Witness to Formative Early Christian Instruction, Benjamin A. Edsall32 reexamines Seeberg’s thesis again in the context of Paul’s practice 29. Harnack, Mission and Expansion of Christianity, 352–53. 30. Besides the manuscript evidence of the Coptic translation and Oxyrhyncus Papyrus 1782, there is the Vita Shenudi, the Ecclesiastical Canons, the Fides Nicanae, and the presence of large sections of the Didache in the Ethiopic version of the Ethiopian Church Order from the pre-Arabic period, including the whole section on apostles and prophets with chapters 11–13 excerpted. See the new text and translation of Allesandro Bausi, “La Nuova version etiopica della Traditio apostolica: Edizione e traduzione preliminare,” in Christianity in Egypt: Literary Production and Intellectual Trends: Studies in Honor of Tito Orlandi, ed. Paola Buzi and Alberto Camplani, SEAug 125 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2011), 19–69. he Ethiopian church was evangelized by priests from Asia Minor. his newly discovered text of the Ethiopic version of the Didache lends support to Jean-Paul Audet’s contention (La Didachè: Instructions des Apôtres, Ebib [Paris: Gabalda, 1958], 35–45) that the Ethiopic version is an important and early (fourth century CE) witness. 31. Alfred Seeberg, Der Katechismus der Urchristenheit (Leipzig: Deichert, 1903; Die beiden Wege und das Aposteldreket (Leipzig: Deichert, 1906); and Die Didache des Judentums und der Urchristenheit (Leipzig: Deichert, 1908). See also Gunther Klein, Der älteste christliche Katechismus und die jüdische Propaganda-Literatur (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1909), who provides a commentary on the text of the Didache from this perspective. 32. Benjamin Edsall, “‘As I said to you before’: Paul’s Witness to Formative Early 22.Didache.indd 539 3/2/15 12:09 PM 540 THE DIDACHE: A MISSING PIECE OF THE PUZZLE of Christian initiation. It seems that the time is right for a reexamination of the questions raised by suggestive parallels and oppositions between Paul and the Didache, without necessarily invoking the kind of grand scheme suggested by Seeberg.33 To what extent does the Didache stand together with Matthew and the epistle of James as evidence of reaction to or as a counter community(ies) to Paul’s mission? If the Didache presents ancient catechesis for Christian initiation of gentiles, especially the earlier Two Ways tradition that was incorporated into it,34 to what extent might such a pattern of catechesis have been known to and perhaps even utilized by Paul? Might the Christian community in which Paul himself was catechized have used such an (oral perhaps) Two Ways pattern which he modiied in his own practice, as argued over-elaborately by Seeberg a century ago? 7. The Didache and Early Christian Initiation his raises a question as to whether the Didache as a whole represents the earliest manual providing rules to initiate new members and regulate their life in an early Christian community.35 It cannot, of course, be itted into some supposed genre of the “church order,” which did not exist until much later, but it does stand at the beginning of an emerging and multifarious tradition taking up a prior (oral or written) Two Ways teaching and being taken up in its turn into other later such manuals (e.g., the Didascalia, the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons, and the Testamentum Domini). At the heart of it seems to be the practice of Christian initiation for new members who are depicted as gentiles in the “longer title” of the work. he Christian Instruction” (Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 2013); see also his “Kerygma, Catechesis and Other hings We Used to Find: Twentieth-Century Research on Early Christian Teaching Since Alfred Seeberg (1903),” CurBS 10 (2012):410–41. 33. See the paper of Taras Khomych (“Another Gospel: Exploring Early Christian Diversity with Paul and the Didache”) in this volume; also Jonathan A. Draper, “he Two Ways and Eschatological Hope: A Contested Terrain in Galatians 5 and he Didache,” Neot 45 (2011): 221–51; and “Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and the Catechesis of Gentiles in the Didache,” Relecting on Romans: Essays in Honour of Andrie du Toit’s 80th Birthday, ed. G. J. Steyn, BTS (Leuven: Peeters, forthcoming). 34. his would be especially likely if van de Sandt and Flusser (Didache) are right that the Two Ways in the Didache is evidence of a pre-existing Jewish Greek Two Ways. 35. As was claimed by Aaron Milavec, Didache: Hope, Faith, and Life. 22.Didache.indd 540 3/2/15 12:09 PM DRAPER: CONCLUSION 541 community into which they are initiated appears to be either a JewishChristian/Christian-Jewish community or to stand in the tradition of such a community. Further research into Christian initiation and identity formation in the Didache and a comparison with other such early documents would seem to be called for, moving beyond older debates.36 While liturgists have long valued the Didache in their reconstructions of the earliest form(s) of the Eucharist, as we have seen, particularly because of its divergence from the accounts of the Last Supper in the Synoptics and Paul and because of the absence of the words of institution, they have tended to use chapters 9–10 in isolation from the ritual praxis of the whole text. Likewise, the instructions on baptism have been isolated from a consideration of its place in the rest of the Didache. Can the Didache be analyzed as a coherent manual of an early Christian community’s life and praxis at a particular moment in its development, whatever the origin of the tradition in prior sources which may have been used in the process? he purpose of the collecting and codifying of the tradition would have been to stabilize and regulate the new community. What appears important and appropriate to modern scholars seeking to deine the form of the Didache as a “church order” does not mean that it would have appeared that way to a irst century Jewish-Christian/Christian-Jewish community. he material in the Didache cannot be simply dismissed as the result of an ad hoc and therefore random evolution simply because it does not meet our expectations. 36. Social Identity heory seems to ofer a promising way forward. his theory was developed by Henri Tajfel and John Turner: see “An Integrative heory of Intergroup Conlict,” in he Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, ed. William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel (Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1979), 33–48; Henri Tajfel et al., “Social Categorization and Intergroup Behaviour,” EuroJSP 1 (1971): 149–77. A useful overview of the theory is provided by Stephen Reicher, Russell Spears, and S. Alexander Haslam, “he Social Identity Approach in Social Psychology,” Sage Identities Handbook, ed. Margaret S. Wetherell and Chandra T. Mohanty (London: Sage, 2010). Social Identity heory provides a particularly interesting perspective from which to view a text oriented towards initiation into a “sectarian” community. Garlef (Urchristliche Identität) took up this challenge, seeking to use the theory dynamically to determine the direction of the trajectory of the tradition from Matthew to the Didache to James. See also Stephen Finlan’s paper (“Identity in the Didache Community”) in this volume and Jonathan A. Draper, “Mission, Ethics and Identity in the Didache,” in Sensitivity towards Outsiders, ed. Jacaobus Kok et al., WUNT 2 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming). 22.Didache.indd 541 3/2/15 12:09 PM 542 THE DIDACHE: A MISSING PIECE OF THE PUZZLE 8. Conclusion Despite a hundred and thirty years of research into the Didache and a renewed lurry of research on this text in the last three decades, it remains a challenge to any reconstruction of early Christianity that cannot be ignored. he later the text is dated, the more puzzling its data. Where does one place a late community that still speaks of visiting apostles, prophets, and teachers and values speaking in the spirit and mystical revelation; a community that practices community of goods; a community that seems to regard circumcision and Torah as “perfection” without requiring it; a community whose baptism does not mention repentance for the forgiveness of sins and focuses on the ritual quality of the water; a community whose Eucharist makes no mention of the words of institution, the body and blood of Christ, the new covenant; a community that believes in the imminent return of the Lord with the holy ones and a resurrection of the righteous only? he later the text is dated, the more its data presents a problem to reconstructions of Christian origins: those scholars who date the text late end up consigning it to some forgotten rural backwater, a iction or a romantic reconstruction based on nostalgia for a bygone era—without explaining how in that case it came to have such a widespread inluence. Or the earlier the text is dated, the more plausible its data but the more challenging its picture of the early church and its relation to Pauline Christianity. Yet it makes the continuance of the traditions of Jewish Christianity (such as the Pseudo-Clementine writings) into the second and third centuries, and perhaps even beyond, more understandable. Perhaps it exercised an inluence in the emergence of the twin streams of Montanism and Donatism, which contributed to its marginalization and inal disappearance in the West, but with continuing inluence in North Africa and Ethiopia as well as in Syrian Christianity and Edessa. It speaks with a “subjugated voice” from the earliest period of the emergence of Christianity, an alternative trajectory that was not in the end triumphant, but that has let traces in or together with a body of Jewish Christian or Christian Jewish texts that the emergent orthodox Church sought to co-opt (as in the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons) or suppress. he contours of this alternative trajectory are important for our understanding of the canonical texts but also in its own right as a different understanding of and response to the life and teaching of Jesus. It is certainly not a wild goose chase in an age where the rigid orthodoxies of Western Christianity are being questioned by Christians seeking alter- 22.Didache.indd 542 3/2/15 12:09 PM DRAPER: CONCLUSION 543 native expressions of their faith!37 If we “understand all this,” perhaps we might airm the Jesus saying in Matt 13:52 that, “Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” 37. hese orthodoxies rightly have their place in the canons of Christian tradition, but they are rooted contextually in historical debates that no longer necessarily match the debates facing Christians today. Understandings and practices of ancient Christian texts such as the Didache, which was also regarded as orthodox and useful for catechesis although its authorship was disputed (e.g., by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.25), may provide helpful material for relection. 22.Didache.indd 543 3/2/15 12:09 PM 22.Didache.indd 544 3/2/15 12:09 PM