Malachi151

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/didache.html

This is quite an interesting document. It barely mentions Jesus, and when it does its quite interesting.

One has to notice the lack of association of the Eucharist meal with the deal of Jesus or the body of Jesus, but also I notice that the story of the bread directly mirrors the story of the passion of Osiris!

The body of Osiris was said to have been torn apart and scattered over the lands, and then gathered up and put back together by Isis, and the body of Osiris was said to have been symbolized by bread because it represented the rebirth of the grain crops.

At any rate, people bicker of the dating of this, and there also seems to be many interpolations, so what can we learn from this document? Does it have value or is it too speculative to try and figure anything out about it?

Toto

Last thread on the dating of the Didache

Malachi151

Here are my concerns with Didache.

#1 All dating for this document relies on the supposition of a real Jesus. The reasoning for the "earliest" dates proposed all rely on the assumption that this had to have started with Jesus around 30 CE.

#2 Given the content of Chapter 9, I don't see how anyone can claim that the document is reliant on Matthew.

In fact, I don't see how Didache can be seem as reliant on the Gospels at all. The issue is that the Didache contains teachings that are also found in the Gospels, but can't the Gospels be reliant on Didache instead of the other way around, or both on them on a common source?

I would also say that I don't see how chapter 9 could be written based on any reasonable telling of a "life of Christ" if the Gospels are the account of that life.

I think that the most straight forward explanation is that this was written in Alexandria before the idea of a "flesh and blood" Jesus developed, and this ritual ties into the rituals of Osiris, which are reflected here only as a matter of cultural fusion.

Toto

Ellegard thinks that the Didache contains a purely Jewish, pre-Christian part. (See Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ (or via: amazon.co.uk), but I'm not sure what that is based on (I can check his footnotes later if I can find my copy).

From hereThere are some online materials here

gstafleu

What do you mean by "only as a matter of cultural fusion"?

Let us consider for a moment what the Wikikedia page on Osiris (Section The passion and resurrection) says:
Just like grain is "sacrificed" (buried, sown) so that grain may live (by growing and producing more grain), thus is Osiris sacrificed so that he may live after being harvested (gathered). In other words, in order to obtain life it is necessary to sacrifice a death. Here this theme is focussed on grain, but it reflects the general cycle of nature where the death of one organism is necessary for the life of another. A fact of nature that I'm sure was well known to hunters, gatherers and agriculturalists.

Next we see that in Christianity we have exactly the same theme, although phrased differently. Here we have a sacrifice of a god, who then resurrects, in order that man may live without sin. We still see they old myth that focussed on food via the wine and bread from the Eucharist. Upon seeing this, wouldn't it make sense to assume that the two mythologies are related? Either the one derived from the other, or both share a common ancestor.

Now in the Didache we see an intermediate stage where, as you very perceptively remarked (kudos for that), the bread of the Eucharist is scattered and gathered like the parts of Osiris. This, I would say, reinforces the connection. It looks like we have either Osiris->Didache->Christianity or the reverse. Now I think that the myth of Isis and Osiris was around well before Christianity (Wikipedia page on the legend), so that would mean that the direction I indicated is the correct one.

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

As an after thought, it is of course also possible that the Didache is older than early Christianity, but that it belongs to a Christian tradition that has kept the older theme linking the Eucharist to food production. This tradition would then later either have vanished or have been subsumed into orthodoxy.

Gerard Stafleu

jgibson000

There are two big problems with this view. The first is that that you've been beguiled by, and done your "exegesis" of the passage on the basis of, an English translation of the text of 9:3-4 rather than the Greek text of the passage which, contrary to what you think as well as to a major premise in your argument, does not speak of "broken" bread in either 3a or 4a. (on this, see Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache: A Commentary [Hermeneia: a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible], p. 148 as well as his earlier article "Texteprobleme der Didache", WS 16 [1982] 124-124 and Klaus Wengst, Didache, Barnabasbrief , Zweiter Klemensbrief, Schrift an Diogenet [Wiss. Buchges., Darmstadt, 1984] 98). All 3a has is ARTOS. And 4a does not have the word "bread" at all. Rather it has OUTOS (the antecendent of which is the ARTOS of 3a).

And without "broken", the alleged parallel with (or allusion to) Osiris' "brokenness" (was his body actually "broken'??) simply isn't in there. And if it's not there, claims about an Osiris influence on Did. 9:3-4 fall to the ground.

The second problem is that you assume (without acknowledeging that you are doing so) that the bread referred to in 9:3-4 is thought of in this passage not only as Eucharistic bread, but as Jesus' body. But not only does the Didache not identify Eucharistic bread (if such the bread mentioned in chapter 9 actually is -- see the discussion in Niederwimmer who, with a host of other scholars, denies it) with Jesus' body or think of it as somehow Jesus himself; the bread referred to here -- the bread recollected as having been scattered and collected -- is not even the bread Jesus is said by the Synoptic evangelists to have broken and distributed (but not, notably, regathered) at the last supper. Rather it is the bread that the evangelists say was blessed, broken, and multiplied for, and then gathered up in fragments after, the feedings of the four and five thousand.

So giving kudos is not only premature. It is totally uncalled for, since you are seeing parallels where absolutely none exist, even overlooking the fact that the torn and scattered limbs of Osiris were never eaten by his followers or ever regarded as something that should or could be consumed.

And moderators: will you PLEASE change the header of this thread to read "the Significance of the Didache"! Done

JG

jgibson000

May I have a reference for this please? Where specifically in ancient literature -- and especially ancient literature predating the Gospels -- is it "said" that the body of Osiris was "symbolized" by bread or that bread was the "symbol" of Osiris?

JG

spin

I just wonder whether this is the classicist falling over his/her presuppositions. It's all well and good to know the origins of a word, but to carry them over into English usage is a certain overgeneralization. With the exception of Merriam-Webster every single dictionary (of seven -- M-W was online) I've consulted over kudos gives it as singular with definitions all of the uncountable kind, "glory, fame, renown," etc. OK, so one knows where a word comes from, but that doesn't explain its usage in the current language. One Oxford dictionary goes as far as to say, "Despite appearances, kudos is not a plural form. This means that the use of kudos as a plural, as in the following sentence is incorrect: he received many kudos for his work (correct use is he received much kudos for his work)." Nevertheless, hilariously, kudos has spawned a back-formation, kudo! M-W's analysis is But kudo does exist; it is simply one of the most recent words created by back-formation from another word misunderstood as a plural.

We could go to town working from the original language and bitch severely about the monstrosity of a verb, "to edit" -- indeed! Or what about when English speakers say the spaghetti is ready? Spaghetti is obviously plural.

But don't let me stop you from using kudos as a plural, or to use the odd kudo here or there.

While we are here, I note the name diversely spelt as Neiderwimmer and Neidewimmer, of which I take the latter to be a simple typo: the finger just didn't quite make it down hard enough. I wonder if this name has anything to do with Niederwimmer? -- not that I know the person from Adam, of course.

Yes, these things do grate, but at times we should learn to live with them -- as typos happen frequently when one is in two minds or rushing --, though a gentle request for change is worth the effort.


spin

:angel:

DramaQ

Like "pube".