Clivedurdle

Didache

This link to BBC Radio 4 is to a progranne broadcat yesterday that comments it is necessary to "rewrite vast swathes of our understanding."

Comments? Click on First Christian document to hear programme.

spin

The programme was 90% mush and no attempt to justify the central claim that the Didache was the 1st xian document. We merely get introduced to someone who believes it to be so. In short the programme was FOC (or FOI if you are even more polite than I am), though this doesn't mean that I think the claim is wrong.

It is certainly an early document and deals with a plague on early churches, the itinerant preacher, who went around spinning religious tales for his daily bread, picking up traditions as he went, sort of like a bee that flits from flower to flower drinking of the fruit and inseminating flowers on the way. This is how the religion did much of its spreading in the early days, I think. Remember Paul talking about all those other gospels -- of course only his was the correct one, and of course all the itinerant preachers said the same thing.

The Didache could be seen as providing the community with a basis of religious belief and cultic practice which made it so they were not at the mercy of the itinerant preacher.

As I see the gospels are probably rather late and we have to wait until well into the 2nd century for people to quote them, then the Didache could quite easily be an earlier document, though it does assume that there were several gentile xian type communities.


spin

rlogan

Shucks - what can you do with this thing. (I did not listen to the program, but rather have read the Didache and a few commentaries)

We can't assign authorship or locality. Many scholars suggest it is a redacted multiple-source document.

On the one hand in reading it, there is a primitive quality to it and also some interesting distinctions with the gospel dogma:

Not one mention of Jesus being Crucified. nothing about him dying for our sins. David is mentioned in the Eucharist, but no blood of Jesus/Body of Jesus cannibalism.

What is more, on the Lord's day: "after that ye have assembled together, break bread and give thanks, having in addition confessed your sins, that your sacrifice may be pure."

and

"In every place and time offer unto me a pure sacrifice, for I am a great King, saith the Lord, and my name is wonderful among the Gentiles."

If this is purportedly the teaching of the path of life, then it is suggestive, I think, of an early development. It is a time and location where the practicioners themselves are making sacrifice. More a Jewish idea.


Obviously there is no inter-regional church structure, but rather itinerant preachers and local elected Bishops/Deacons.

There is an instruction to give firstfruits of wine presses/threshing floors, oxen and sheep to the prophets. Even when you open a jar of wine or oil you must lay some down on the prophets. (I want that job).

If you have no prophet - then give it to the poor.

I can see why this did not make the canon. (Oh-and there was the prohibition on sodomy with young boys. To this day the Church fathers have therefore resisted incorporating this into canon)


On the other hand, in contrast to the primitive elements, is the trinity. I'm no trinity history buff, but I'm pretty suspicious about this as a blatant interpolation.

For that matter, sticking Jesus in a total of three times (Twice in ch 9 and once in 10) seems to me indicative of interpolations.

We get through all of the sayings with no accrediting to Jesus. It ends with the coming of the Lord. Not the return of the Lord.


In sum - I think this an early document. Predating gospels. With interpolations. But suggestive of an early church arguably without any reliance on Jesus.

I would not want to hazard a guess on dating except to say that I do not buy into any first century gospels, and do not see first century Christianity as having grown large enough to be noted, if it existed as "Christianity" at all.

Clivedurdle

Alan Garrow's ideas, who is proponent of early Didache and was key to programme is here,

Garrow

rlogan

I see. Didn't like the formatting there. Not conducive to study.


One of the striking things to me is the lack of gospel material in the Didache, whereas Garrow glosses this over and in fact gives an impression of correspondence.

That the sayings are there is true, but they are without attribution in the Didache. More importantly - not a word of the gospel Jesus story. No role for Jesus in the remission of sins. Where the name appears at all, it is fleeting and begs the interpolation question.


The prominence of local prophets in the Didache is also striking:

Every first-fruit, therefore, of the products of wine-press and threshing-floor, of oxen and of sheep, you shall take and give to the prophets, for they are your high priests.


This cannot be squared with Jesus as the Christ. Once the gospel story of Jesus arrives, what role do local prophets have?



Garrow reads the gospel story into the text in places. For example, in the Didache final chapter we have the resurrection of the Dead (again not a word about Jesus) where:

Which Garrow interprets to mean refers to resurrection of those:


The Didache has a total of one time that the lord comes. At the end time. There is no prior coming.

I do not disagree with the Didache as an early document (well- its progenitor pieces are, anyway)

But it is better viewed as a Jewish/proto-Christian precursor without the gospel Jesus.

Chris Weimer

The funny thing is that most Christians are actually Didachists fused with apocalyptic Jews. The didache contradicts a lot of the OT, especially concerning abortion (the first thing I noticed). I've been using this for a while now to fight Christians. All thanks to Peter Kirby.

Clivedurdle

The programme and Garrow's web site seem to be assuming Didache should be seen as the first christian document, but a very different xianity, without Jesus, resurrection uncle tom cobbley et al.

They were unwilling to throw xianity out - isn't Garrow an Anglican priest? - and therefore "read back" later xian assumptions.

If Didache can be proven to be the first xian document it does mean a rewrite of what xianity is.

What happens if we build a chronology that goes Didache, some Roman Jews write Mark and invent a messiah called Jesus?

rlogan

OK, I didn't listen to the show. If I misrepresented Garrow, sorry. I found navigating the web site annoying and didn't read the whole thing.


That was my take on it. But this seems to conflict with your first statement above.

heh. I should say so.


The Didache (minus interpolated stuff) provides evidence of a disparate movement ripe for co-opting.

It does not need to be the "only" precursor to Christianity. A cousin, so to speak, of similar phenomena stemming from the crisis of the late 1st century. The faith in the formal heirarchy had been dashed. Local groups, with some similar ideas (Essene-type piety and an eschatology)

The question is: how do you centralize a "movement" that has local prophets as their chief priests? How do you trump local brands?

You need Jesus.

Clivedurdle

This conflict is to be expected - xians will try to bring together current beliefs with original concepts.

Can it be proven this is a key early xian document and later concepts are acretions? Garrow - as a xian - is arguing it is! If he is correct we should strongly support him and then ask the second question - where did all the other stuff come from?

rlogan

Oh, "proven" is a pretty strong word. A good case can be made for it. Dating is problemmatic, of course.

I didn't follow closely the arguments he used in comparing its relative chronology to Thessalonians and etc. Good approach. Lazy me.

But I did get a good whif of Essene-type philisophy out of the source material itself. This suggests early origins to me.