We will use, for this exercise, the translation of the Didache made by Charles H. Hoole, which, because he died in 1902, has passed into the public domain. The first chapter consists of six short verses, and many are even shorter:

1 There are two paths, one of life and one of death, and the difference is great between the two paths.

The first verse of the Didache is referencing Deuteronomy 30:19, where, as Moses is concluding his presentation of the covenant, he sets obedience and disobedience in these terms. The Deuteronomistic content of the Didache has led some to speculate that it is a re-working of a document designed for Jewish proselytes. Whether that is true or not, this series will primarily concern itself with what the document sets out to teach, not how all its words found themselves here.

2 Now the path of life is this — first, thou shalt love the God who made thee, thy neighbour as thyself, and all things that thou wouldest not should be done unto thee, do not thou unto another.

It’s a curious set of things that summarize here the path to life. The whole path of obeying God summed up in many different ways in the Bible: as the first two of these commands (Matthew 22:40), as just the first commandment (1 John 5:2-3), as the manifold fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:16-24), as the golden rule positively stated (Matthew 7:12), the eleven principles of Psalm 15, the six principles of Isaiah 33:15, the three principles of Micah 6:8, and the famous single principle of Habakkuk 2:4 [1].

The Scriptures contain such a wealth of summarizations that the author of the Didache could not help but try his own hand at it. And he didn’t do half bad: he took Jesus’ own summary of the law from Matthew 22:40 and added the Old Testament’s statement of the golden rule (in its negative form) to produce a three-fold summary attested to by both the Old Testament and Jesus. Not bad, Didache guy. Not bad at all. Then he starts working through these “maxims” in more depth, working from the Beattitudes. (It turns out that it is not just modern Christians, including Mennonites, who treat the Sermon on the Mount as the “Constitution of the Church.”

3 And the doctrine of these maxims is as follows. Bless them that curse you, and pray for your enemies. Fast on behalf of those that persecute you; for what thank is there if ye love them that love you? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? But do ye love them that hate you, and ye will not have an enemy.

The comparison and contrast between the text as found in Matthew and the text of the Didache is interesting. The explanation begins with simple re-printing of Matthew (or pre-printing, if the Didache was written before Matthew), but moves on to something not found in the gospel: ‘Fast on behalf of those that persecute you.” That the church after the departure of Christ should have an increased emphasis on fasting is entirely fitting in light of Matthew 9:14-15. And the Didache also goes a bit further than Matthew, as Matthew tells us “love your enemies”, while the Didache, reflecting on Jesus’ commands, notes that Jesus’ commands concerning enemies cause those enemies to disappear.

The friendliness toward enemies which is characteristic of Christianity operated, as a sort of relational aikido, to conquer the Roman Empire without the use of force, saving it from injury in the process. The writer of the Didache appreciated the transformative and even conquering potential hidden within Jesus’ words.

4 Abstain from fleshly and wordly lusts. If any one give thee a blow on thy right cheek, turn unto him the other also, and thou shalt be perfect; if any one compel thee to go a mile, go with him two; if a man take away thy cloak, give him thy coat also; if a man take from thee what is thine, ask not for it again, for neither art thou able to do so.

It’s hard not to see the Didache as a pacifist document. It not only teaches the standard wording about turning the other cheek, but develops the principle far enough to require that one not even ask for the return of stolen goods. It would be easy to suppose that such as would fall off the face of the earth if it refused self-defense, and perhaps Josephus assumed they would when he said that the tribe of Christians had not yet disappeared, but if that is what he had in mind, he repeated the common fallacy of underestimating the power of the non-violent. But the Didache goes on even deeper into the seemingly impractical. One is not only to allow theft, but to give indiscriminately, it would seem.

5 Give to every one that asks of thee, and ask not again; for the Father wishes that from his gifts there should be given to all. Blessed is he who giveth according to the commandment, for he is free from guilt; but woe unto him that receiveth. For if a man receive being in need, he shall be free from guilt; but he who receiveth when not in need, shall pay a penalty as to why he received and for what purpose; and when he is in tribulation he shall be examined concerning the things that he has done, and shall not depart thence until he has paid the last farthing.

The Didache has now turned a corner. Going from exhortation to boundless generosity, it moves on to discussing one of the pitfalls of generosity: people who take advantage of that generosity to enrich themselves at the expense of other. The phrase ‘until he has paid the last farthing’ is particularly striking. Here it is used for the penalty of the greedy charity recipient, while in Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, it is the penalty of the greedy unforgiving servant. But it would take a naive view of human nature to think that simply exhorting generosity on the part of givers and responsibility on the part of takers will do enough to regulate charity. Paul knew it wasn’t, and so did the framers of the Didache. Both Paul and the Didache demand, at least in some cases, investigation of some sort prior to giving:

6 For of a truth it has been said on these matters, let thy almsgiving abide in thy hand until thou knowest to whom thou hast given.

And so the Didache appears to have turned around. First we are told to give indiscriminately and not even think of getting anything in return, and then we are told not to give until we have checked out the recipient adequately. The Didache refuses to over-simplify things and gives full weight to the tension between the principles of generosity and responsibility. It simply presents them, gives some pointers, and leaves the reader to work out the implications in day to day situations.

As Gary North might put it, the text requires disciplined biblical intuition in its hearers. Or, as John Hobbins might say, it elicits strong readers. Regardless of how you put it, its approach is interesting enough that I look forward to putting together installation #2.

[1] I owe this list of summaries of the law to Greg Bahnsen’s book By This Standard, and especially page 126, where he collects most of these examples.

Constantly looking back to the past for authority, then, is essential to what Christianity is.  But one sad thing which continually occurs is that some, believing an idea, will pretend that their idea is the only ancient and original tradition of the church, when it can be easily proven that it is not.  Take, for example, all the varieties of OEC (Old-Earth Creationism), which hold that at least the first few chapters of Genesis are in some way metaphorical.  Now, it is true that much of the Bible is filled through and through with metaphor.  There is no doubting this.

And so an honest OEC argument is that the creation narratives of Genesis have been historically misunderstood for centuries as historical accounts when they are really theology written in story form.  Even though I disagree with this argument, I can admit that it is an honest argument.  But where the OEC argument becomes dishonest is when some pretend that YEC (Young-Earth Creationism) is a new idea.  More specifically, the pretense is that the historical view of creation which treats the creation of mankind and the genealogies of the Bible as straightforward history was invented in just the last century or so.  They are doing exactly as Ludwig von Mises described in Human Action (191):

[A traditionalist ideology] often constructs a “traditional” doctrine which is of recent origin and is at variance with the ideologies really held by the ancestors.

Drawing upon Luther, Calvin, Irenaus, and Josephus, Jason of Pastoral Musings puts this myth to rest.  His post is now added to my tiny but growing Scripture Index.

[update: about that scripture index . . .]

And so I’m reprinting Whiston’s hypothesis about Origen’s Contra Celsus comment about the Testimonium Flavianum.  First, the Contra Celsus comment, made by Origen, as reprinted in Whiston’s work:

(About AD 250. Id. Contr. Cels. 1.35-36. — I would say to Celsus, who personates a Jew, that admitted of John the Baptist, and how he baptized Jesus, that one who lived but a little while after John and Jesus, wrote, how that John was a baptizer unto the remission of sins;  for Josephus testifies, in the eighteenth book of his Jewish Antiquities, that John was the Baptist;  and that he promised purification to those that were baptized.  The same Josephus also, although he did not believe in Jesus as Christ, when he was inquiring after the case of the destruction of Jerusalem, and of the demolition of the temple, and ought to have said that their machinations against Jesus were the cause of those miseries coming on the people, because they had slain that Christ who was foretold by the prophets, he, though as it were unwillingly and yes as one not remote from the truth, says, “these miseries befell the Jews by way of revenge for James the Just, who was the brother of Jesus that was called Christ;  because they had slain him who was a most righteous person.”  Now this James was he whom the genuine disciple of Jesus, Paul, said he had seen as the Lord’s brother [Gal. 1:19]; which relation implies not so much nearness of blood, or the sameness of education, as it does the agreementof manners and preaching.  If therefore he says the desolation of Jerusalem befell the Jews for the sake of James, with how much greater reason might he have said that it happened for the sake of Jesus? etc.

And now Whiston’s comments on the <i>TF</i>:

VIII. The third author I have quoted for Josephus’s testimonies of John the Baptist, of Jesus of Nazareth, and of James the Just, is Origen, who is indeed allowed on all hands to have quoted him for the excellent character of John the Baptist, and of James the Just;  but whose supposed entire silence about this testimony concerning Christ is usually alleged as the principal argument against its being genuine, and particularly as to the clause, This was the Christ: and that, as we have seen, because he twice assures us that, in his opinion, Josephus himself did not acknowledge Jesus for Christ.  Now, as to this latter clause, I have already shown that Josephus here, in writing to Greeks and Romans, mean any such thing by those words as Jews and Christians naturally understand them:  I have also observed, that all the ancients allow still, with Origen, that Josephus did not, in the Jewish and Christian sense, acknowledge Jesus for the true Messiah, or the true Christ of God, notwithstanding their express quotation of that clause in Josephus as genuine;  so that unless we suppose Origen to have had a different notion of these words from all the other ancients, we cannot conclude from this assertion of Origen, that he had not those words in his copy, not to say that it is, after all, much more likely that his copy was a little different from the other copies of this clause, or indeed ommitted it entirely, than that he, on its account, must be supposed not to have had the rest of this testimony therein, though indeed I see no necessity of making any such supposal, at all.  However, it seems to me that Origen affords us several indications that the main parts at least of this testimony itself were in his copy: –

(1) When Origen introduces Josephus’ testimony concerning James the Just, that he thought the miseries of the Jews were an instance of the divine vengeance vengeance on that nation for putting James to death instead of Jesus, he uses an expression no way necessary to his purpose, nor occasioned by any words of Josephus there, That they had slain that Christ which was foretold in the prophets.  Whence could this expression come here into Origen’s mind, when he was quoting of Josephus concerning the brother of Christ, but from his remembrance of a clause in the testimony of the same Josephus concerning Christ himself, that the prophets had foretold his death and resurrection, and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him?

(2) How came Origen to be so suprised at Josephus’ ascribing the destruction of Jerusalem to the Jews’ murdering of James the Just, and not to their murdering of Jesus, as we have seen he was, if he had not known that Josephus had spoken of Jesus and his death before, and that he had a very good opinion of Jesus, which yet he could learn no way so authentically as this testimony?  Nor do the words he here uses, that Josephus was not remote from the truth, perhaps allude to anything else but to this very testimony before us.

(3) How can the same Origen, upon another slight occasion, when he had just set down that testimony of Josephus concerning James the Just, the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, say that “it may be questioned whether the Jews thought Jesus to be a man, or whether they did not suppose him to be a being of a diviner kind?”  This looks so very like the fifth and sixth clauses of this testimony of Josephus, that Jesus was a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, that it was highly probable Origen thereby alluded to them;  and this is the more to be depended on, because all the unbelieving Jews, and all the rest of the Nazarene Jews, esteemed Jesus with one consent, as a mere man, the son of Joseph and Mary;  and it is not, I think, possible to produce any one Jew but Jospehus, who in a sort of compliance with the Romans the and the Catholic Christians, who thought him a God, would say anything like his being a God.

(4) How came Origen to affirm twice, so expressly, that Josephus did not himself own, in the Jewish and Christian sense, that Jesus was Christ, notwithstanding his quotations of such eminent testimonies out of him, for John the Baptist his forerunner and for James the Just, his brother, and one of his principle disciples?  There is no passage in all Josephus so likely to persuade Origen of this as is the famous testimony before us, wherein, as he and all the ancients understood it, he was generally called Christ indeed, but not any otherwise than as the common name whence the sect of Christians was derived, and where he all along speaks o those Christians as a sect then in being, whose author was a wonderful person, and his followers great lovers of him and of truth, yet as such a sect as he had not joined himself to:  which exposition, as it is a very natural one, so was it, I doubt, but too true of our Josephus at that time;  nor can I devise any other reason but this, and the parallel language of Josephus elsewhere, when he speaks of James as the brother, not of Jesus who was Christ, but of Jesus who was called Christ, that could so naturally induce Origen and others to be of that opinion.