Catholic ping!
Protestant ping
Above link, no worky .
“you shall not murder a child, whether it be born or unborn”..... Interesting
I would say the main value goes much deeper than that.
NYer, thank you for this post; and to iowamark for further posting of the text. Had often heard of the Didache, but had never taken the time to look at it.
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When I was a boy, Orthodox “catechism “ was part of Greek school. The first theology we were taught was from the Didache.
What do they go on to prove the Greek copy written 1000 years AFTER the time the original was supposed to have been written is an accurate copy? And how could such an important document - if it really was that important to the church - be lost for all that time? I think whatever the Didache states should be taken reservedly and not be used to base church doctrines and practices on.
Which is more Catholic sophistry, for the sure Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles is what the Holy Spirit inspired men to write, and if the Didaché is apostolic doctrine then Catholics are guilty of not obeying it.
The Didaché, a brief, anonymous Christian treatise, was written between the years 65 and 80 (according to most scholars) and held in the highest esteem by the early Church Fathers.
It is considered that the Didaché, also known as “the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” or simply “The Teaching” (“Didaché” means “teaching” in Greek), is a letter that belongs to the very first Christian corpus of literary production. It is considered the first and oldest written catechism, and as such has been respected and preserved to this day.
Both the author and the place where the Didaché was written remain unknown. The original text of the Didaché has survived in a single manuscript, the Codex Hierosolymitanus. Some scholars speak of a compiler instead of an author, who might have also written down some teachings directly from apostolic preaching, either in Syria or Egypt. After the text was lost for years, the Metropolitan of Istanbul, Philoteos Bryennios found a Greek copy in 1873 and published it in 1883. The copy had been written 1056.
The main value of this treatise is that it provides us with extra-biblical data regarding the institutions and life of the earliest Christian communities.
There are very few quotations from the Old Testament to be found in the Didaché; instead, the author speaks of the “Gospel of the Lord” (without specifying which of the Synoptics he or she might be referring to), and quotes and alludes to around twenty sayings or statements of Jesus Christ: ten of them literally, and others in paraphrase. Moreover, the author seems to ignore the Gospel of John, and none of St. Paul’s epistles is formally cited.
Sounds like something that; if you hung your hat on it; you might have to pick it up from the floor.
Tony Jones's book, The Teaching of the Twelve, unpacks this ancient document with insight and perspective, and traces the life of a small house church in Missouri that is trying to live according to its precepts.
Listen to Tony Jones read the complete text, or download a pdf, or read the complete text online.
The Didache includes two primitive and unusual prayers for the Eucharist ("thanksgiving"),[3] which is the central act of Christian worship.[39] It is the earliest text to refer to this rite as the Eucharist.[39]
Chapter 9 begins:
And concerning the broken bread:
The Didache basically describes the same ritual as the one that took place in Corinth.[40] As with Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, the Didache confirms that the Lord's supper was literally a meal, probably taking place in a "house church."[41] The order of cup and bread differs both from present-day Christian practice and from that in the New Testament accounts of the Last Supper,[42] of which, again unlike almost all present-day Eucharistic celebrations, the Didache makes no mention. Scholars once traced the Eucharistic prayers back to Jesus' words at the Last Supper, but contemporary scholars emphasize Jewish and gentile sources instead.[41]
Chapter 10 gives a thanksgiving after a meal. The contents of the meal are not indicated: chapter 9 does not exclude other elements as well that the cup and bread, which are the only ones it mentions, and chapter 10, whether it was originally a separate document or continues immediately the account in chapter 9, mentions no particular elements, not even wine and bread. Instead it speaks of the "spiritual food and drink and life eternal through Thy Servant" that it distinguishes from the "food and drink (given) to men for enjoyment that they might give thanks to (God)". After a doxology, as before, come the apocalyptic exclamations: "Let grace come, and let this world pass away. Hosanna to the God (Son) of David! If any one is holy, let him come; if any one is not so, let him repent. Maranatha. Amen". The prayer is reminiscent of Revelation 22:17–20 and 1Corinthians 16:22.[43]
These prayers make no reference to the redemptive death of Christ, or remembrance, as formulated by Paul the Apostle in 1Corinthians 11:23–34, see also Atonement in Christianity. Didache 10 doesn't even use the word "Christ," which appears only one other time in the whole tract.
John Dominic Crossan endorses John W. Riggs' 1984 The Second Century article for the proposition that 'there are two quite separate eucharistic celebrations given in Didache 9–10, with the earlier one now put in second place."[44] The section beginning at 10.1 is a reworking of the Jewish birkat ha-mazon, a three-strophe prayer at the conclusion of a meal, which includes a blessing of God for sustaining the universe, a blessing of God who gives the gifts of food, earth, and covenant, and a prayer for the restoration of Jerusalem; the content is "Christianized", but the form remains Jewish.[45] It is similar to the Syrian Church eucharist rite of the Holy Qurbana of Addai and Mari, belonging to "a primordial era when the euchology of the Church had not yet inserted the Institution Narrative in the text of the Eucharistic Prayer."[46]