THE DIDACHE, OR TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES THE Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is one of the most important discoveries of the second half of the nineteenth century. There are several references in early Christian literature to a book with this or a similar title, and by applying the methods of comparative criticism to documents which had probably made use of it, especially the " Apostolic Constitutions" and the "Church Ordinances," a rough reconstruction of some of its features had been obtained; but it was not known to be extant until Bryennios in 1875 discovered it in the Patriarchal library of Jerusalem at Constantinople, in the manuscript which also contains I and II Clement and is quoted for them as C. This is the document of which a text and translation is given in the following pages. But the question still remains open how far it truly represents the original "Teaching." Since Bryennios' discovery two copies of a Latin version either of a part of our Didache, or of a cognate document have been discovered, and it would now be possible to use X at least four authorities for the text of the original "Teaching." These are :— (1) Bryennios' Didache = C. (2) The Latin version. (3) The "Church Ordinances" (usually quoted as KO). (4) The "Apostolic Constitutions," bk. vii. 66 All these authorities1 have to be considered in any attempt to reconstruct the original Teaching. Their mutual relations are not clear; it is possible that Bryennios' Didache, and the Apostolic Constitutions represent a second recension of the "Teaching" and that the Latin version, KO, and the reconstructed" fifth source" represent, though not in relatively so pure a form, the first recension. The question may be best studied in Funk's edition of the Didache, and in Harnack's Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur. as Besides this there is a further question: it is clear that the Didache or "Teaching was itself a composite document, and the first part is always known "The Two Ways." A moment's comparison shows that this part is closely connected with the last chapters of the Epistle of Barnabas. The problem therefore arises whether Barnabas used the Didache (or the original "Teaching"), or the Didache used Barnabas, or both used a common source. The matter is not clear, but probably the majority of scholars incline to the last view, and many think that the common source,—the original "Two Ways" 1 Harnack, probably rightly, suggests others as well. See his Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, pp. 86 ff. |