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Welcome to another in the series of 'Why Study', which is being produced by the department
of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham. I'm joined today by Professor
Tom O'Loughlin, who is Professor of Historical Theology at Nottingham, and he is going to
answer the question: Why study the Didache? So Tom -why study the Didache?
Well first of all let me tell you a little bit about the Didache because it's one of
those documents that a lot of people have heard about, but very few people know anything
more than the name. We have known for the whole history of Christianity that there was
a document wandering around the early church called the Didache. The word 'Didache' is
the Greek word for training or teaching, but let's not get hung up on the idea of teaching,
the real thing is the instruction - the training. And Eusebius says, at the beginning of the
fourth century, well there was this document which everyone thought was terribly important
called the Didache, but it's now disappeared and no one knows where it is. And then low
and behold in 1873 a guy called Philotheos Bryennios was routing through the manuscripts
in a library in Constantinople (Istanbul), and he found a little text and it was called
'The Didache of the Twelve Apostles', the instruction of the twelve Apostles. Now, unlike
most librarians at the time, this guy had actually been trained in early Christian history,
so the minute he saw this he realised he had struck gold. So in 1873 suddenly a text that
had been lost for fifteen hundred years came out into the open again. He had been trained
in Germany, so within a couple of years, he had produced an edition in Greek, and then
it was translated into German, French and English, and from the 1880s this document
has been available to us. And as a training it is one of the oldest documents of Christianity,
it belongs to the period before 70 CE, it belongs to the period before the synagogue
and the church have drawn asunder. So here are a community, who to the outside world
would have looked like Jews, but they themselves were followers of Jesus. Now Christians of
course know lots of documents from the first century, they know the Gospels, they know
the Epistles, the Epistles are contemporary with the Didache, the Gospels are later then
the Didache. But they're so used to them and they've often failed to see how different
the world of the first Christians was. And number two, St Paul is a theologian answering
questions, the Gospels are big narratives and we tend to look on them as books, but
the training, the Didache, is rules. It's about how the community lived. So you don't
get theory, you don't get big stories, you get an insight into how people thought and
lived as Christians.
So what does it actually say?
Well it begins with something that looks rather boring - it's called 'The Two Ways'. On the
one hand there is the 'way of life' and on the other hand is the 'way of death'. And
the way of life is a whole series of 'thou shall not's', very similar to what Christians
would call the ten commandments, except there's an added section there's the golden rule in
its negative form; 'do not do to others as you would not have them do unto you', and
there is the whole Christian message of 'love thy neighbour'. But the really important thing
to remember is where does the idea for the way of life and death come from? It comes
from the very last words that are put into the mouth of Moses, in the Book of Deuteronomy.
So these people are seeing themselves as the community of the covenant with God, and this
covenant is the way to life, but this covenant has been renewed and transformed through their
encounter with Jesus. So it shows us that they don't see themselves as primarily followers
of Jesus, they see themselves as having been shown by Jesus how to be the perfect followers
in the perfection of the covenant, and they're now addressing God not as a distant being
but as Father. And so, for instance, we hear in the Didache that they're going to pray
to God as 'Our Father', and they recite the Lord's Prayer three times a day. So it shows
us a community which is steeped in the practices of Judaism, but they see these practices as
transformed and given a new insight through Jesus, whom they're addressing as 'Son of
David' and as 'the Child of the Father'.
So why study the Didache? If you want to see the earliest Christian community, at work
and at prayer, then in twenty minutes you can get an insight. So this film is going
to last for ten minutes, twice the length it takes to watch this film, is as long as
it takes to read the Didache. And you will see how they saw themselves as a community
of the covenant, the first several chapters, six chapters. Then if you have decided that
you're interested, the Didache by the way is instruction for people who were thinking
of becoming followers of Jesus, and it assumes that many of the people who are going to become
followers are actually gentiles, they're not people who are Jews. So the first thing is
they've got to learn the way of the covenant, they've got to learn how to behave, it's not
about, you don't begin to be a follower of Jesus by a whole series of beliefs, you begin
to be a follower of Jesus by learning a way of life, and this is the way of life. And
then the next thing is to identify with the community - so it gives instructions on baptism.
And it sees baptism as not a declaration of what you believe in, though it has the famous
formula of Trinitarian baptism that Christians are familiar with from their own liturgy and
from the end of the gospel in Matthew, but that's identifying, you're identifying with
a group. This would have been a small group, this would have been a group that could have
gathered for a meal in a house. So having talked about baptism and gathering, the next
thing it moves onto is the Christian meal - this would later become formulised a very
ritual thing called the Eucharist. In the Didache it's called the Eucharist, it says
when you want to say your thanksgiving give your Eucharist to the Father, this is how
you do it, but you're actually doing it in the context of a big proper meal. So this
is a community that is small enough to know one another, it's small enough to gather in
a house and to actually have a real meal, and we know that they were gathering weekly
for this meal, and we know the prayers they were saying. And then, well any community
has got to have organisation, so we hear about the group who are organising it, and you as
a theologian will be glad to know the great, very important group travelling around these
communities are the teachers, and it's these sort of travelling teachers that will later
produce our Evangelists. And within the community itself, well communities need organisation,
so there were a group called the Bishops and Deacons. Not Bishops and Deacons as modern
Christians would expect, but the overseers, the Bishops, are also the servants, so there's
only one type of people but they've got two names, it's like sort of like a 'victualler
and contractor.' The Bishop's Deacons and they organise the group, and then of course
in every group you've always got to be worried about people who are on the make, so there
are instructions about how do you know the people who are visiting you are actually genuine
people, who are actually in need of your hospitality - well it says feed them, give them three
days hospitality and if after that they don't want to work chuck them out. So the community
has to be... it shows you the nitty gritty of what it was to be a disciple of Jesus in
the first century. And then finally, it ends with the statement of Christian hope. So there
you are - I've tried to summarise twenty minutes in less than ten.
Yes that's extraordinary. Okay, so I'd like to read the Didache, what should I be reading,
how can I read the text and what can I read about the Didache?
Well the Didache itself is available in umpteen translations and it takes twenty minutes to
read, and there is actually a translation at the back of this book, done by myself.
If you want to read about the Didache I'm going to be immodest and say, you've heard
me now for ten minutes, that's the result of twenty five years trying to teach the Didache.
And I'm not finished with the Didache by any means, I've been amazed, it takes twenty minutes
to read and I've got lectures for the last thirty years out of it, and I suspect I'll
do it for the next thirty, but this is the book.
Thank you. Well thank you very much Tom, I think your enthusiasm for the Didache has
come over to us very powerfully. It's extraordinary to me that an account of the earliest Christians
can have remained undiscovered until 1873. Thank you very much Tom.
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