The Christian churches are among the oldest organizations in the world. Over centuries they have developed systems of enormous diversity and complexity with bureaucracies, legal systems and communications networks that reach all over the globe. For some people all these hierarchies – note the word began within a church setting – and structures are a source of amazement: they live their lives within them, are formed by them, and are even sometimes more attentive to these systems than they are to the gospel these structures exist to serve. For others, these same structures are like millstones around the necks of Christians and are the antithesis of the gospel. Structures, they feel, are not only distractions but often replace the message of Jesus with a life-diminishing system of regulations that are more concerned with preserving power than reflecting the life-giving Spirit. But between those who embrace religious structures and those who detest them stands a simple fact: all human communities need structures. Structures are necessary both to enable a community to live in harmony and to ensure that it is not broken up by disputes. We see both of these concerns in the Didache. The community wants to make sure that it is not led astray by false teachers, yet also that it treats teachers properly, and that it asks the right questions about those whom it calls to specific tasks within the community.
Since long before the Didache was discovered in 1873, one of the questions about the earliest Christians that has exercised scholars has been the ‘church order’ question. By this they meant the question of the origins of what most churches today still see as the essential core of their leadership structures, the ‘three-fold ministry’ of bishops, presbyters and deacons. The churches who use these structures claim that it goes back to the time of the apostles, indeed to Jesus himself, yet the earliest references to such ministers do not follow the later pattern or else are in problematic documents (e.g. 1 Tim., 2 Tim. and Titus) in that they date from long after the time of Paul. The pattern only becomes clear with the writings of Ignatius of Antioch (early second century; > Foster, 2006) and even then we do not know how universal was Ignatius’s ideal pattern. But even if clarity came in the early second century that still left a gap of many decades that some people were anxious to bridge so that there would be a clear line of ‘apostolic succession’ from the Twelve to those second-century bishops. In this quest the focus of any examination was not to look at any particular text and see what it tells us about the community’s structures but to examine each as an ‘anticipation’ for what later became both normal and normative. Hence many studies of the Didache see it as but a moment in a process to where things ultimately led. This is fine if one’s question is focused on the origins of later structures (> Sullivan, 2001, pp. 81–102), or if one is trying to justify a particular pattern as ‘the only valid system’; but here I shall adopt another approach. Here the focus is upon the communities that used the Didache: their problems and their concerns, and what these can tell us about the life of the early Christian movement in the first century.
The Didache supposed a closely knit community where everyone would have known the other people in the community and where all could have assembled for the eucharistic meal. Hence we are thinking of a community of no more than a hundred people, and probably less. It is important to keep this question of size in the forefront of our minds as we read the Didache, as it is one thing to think of a single bishop (another second-century development) or a group of bishops (our earliest references to bishops is as a group with the compound title ‘bishops and deacons’, as we shall see further on) in a community of a hundred people, and quite another to think of a bishop who is at the head of a modern diocese with thousands of people and umpteen professional ministers. The situation in the Didache is vastly different. In a human-sized community – something that is always around 150 people maximum – there were several men known as ‘bishops and deacons’. This brings to mind the image of servants of the community; it was a situation that could not be scaled-up without the inevitable transformation of those servants into managers of plant, personnel and policy.
Another issue to keep in mind when reading the Didache is one’s image of ‘the church’. For some Christians this is primarily an international organization and they either do not use the term for an actual community or else use some term like ‘the local church’ which is then thought of as the equivalent to the local branch of other global organizations. For other Christians ‘the church’ is the actual community to which they belong, and ‘the Church’ above and beyond these communities is a less tangible reality and is more like a federation of local clubs. The first model, favoured by Catholics and some Anglicans, is really a product of medieval canon law: where each diocese is constituted by its relationship to a centre, while smaller units, ‘parishes’, are often thought of as geographical service points. The second model, favoured mainly by Protestants, is a product of the Reformation: the community is the church and wider structures are based either on political unities or on federation. Neither model is useful when we read the Didache for it predates the developments that produced our dominant models.
When reading the Didache we have to keep in mind two distinct ideas simultaneously. On the one hand, they knew that they belonged to an actual community: into such a community they were baptized; that community ate together, heard visiting prophets, alerted itself to false prophets and frauds, and it was that group that appointed for itself ‘bishops and deacons’ (literally: ‘overseers and servants’) (Did. 15.1); and it would appear that these were not two separate offices but that there were several men who functioned as ‘bishop-deacons’ to the community. On the other hand, they were part of the new people of Jesus and as such were united with every other Christian. This larger unity was not just notional but made itself felt in many ways. Churches welcomed visitors from other churches; there were itinerant prophets and teachers; apostles moved around; and evangelists went from church to church preaching ‘the gospel’ (the recordings on papyrus of these preachers would become our four Gospels). This network also extended to money – there was a collection organized by Paul among churches in Greece to provide support after a famine in Palestine – and to books: the texts of letters were read in churches to which they were not originally addressed and the texts of the Gospels were read in communities that may never have heard one of the Gospels from the lips of one of the evangelists. We often use the slogan ‘think global, act local’. For the early churches it was more complex: they had to think and act local while thinking and acting global.
Networks
The first followers of Jesus lived close to the edge of the Graeco-Roman world. Stretching out to the west was the Greek-speaking world of the Mediterranean, stretching out to the east were regions that spoke Syriac, and beyond Syria lay the Persian empire and then the lands of India. South lay Arabia, and south of Alexandria lay Coptic-speaking Egypt, and beyond that lay Ethiopia. To the northwest, beyond the Greek-speaking areas (which could be found as far west as the Rhône valley in modern France) lay the Latin-speaking world. From scattered references it would appear that Christians spread in all these directions, but it is only from the Hellenistic world, the Greek-speaking areas around the Mediterranean, that we have early documents. Indeed, all the early documents we have originated in that world, and then were translated from Greek into the various languages of the east, or Africa, or elsewhere. Therefore, it is from the networks of that Mediterranean world that we have to build up our picture of early churches (see Figure 6.1 overleaf).
Figure 6.1 The eastern Mediterranean in the first century AD
This shows the Graeco-Roman cities with Christian communities in the first century: these churches formed a network with evangelists, apostles, prophets and other Christians moving between them. The Didache was not only diffused via this network but also provided guidance about the people moving within it.
By the time of Jesus there was already a scattering of Jews across that world. Alexandria was a great centre of Jewish learning and it was probably there that the Scriptures were translated into Greek – and this collection (rather than the shorter list of books that became normative in Judaism after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70) would become the Old Testament of the Christians. There were synagogues across the region we now call Turkey in Asia, and around the Aegean. There were synagogues in Italy (> Aharoni et al., 2003, p. 81) and by the early second century there were synagogues as far west as present-day Marseille and Toledo (> Aharoni et al., 2003, p. 104). This was ‘the diaspora’ (the dispersion; > John 7.35) and these Jews maintained links with the Temple in Jerusalem. It was this network of synagogues that Paul used when he was on his journeys announcing Jesus (> Acts 13.5, for example).
The new communities soon added networks of their own. Jesus gathered around him as his core group ‘the Twelve’. But already by the time Mark was preaching his Gospel (the 60s of the first century) these were being identified as ‘the apostles’ (> Mark 3.14), as it was taken for granted in the churches that the leaders were ‘those sent out’ (the literal meaning of ‘apostles’) to go from church to church preaching. They saw their task as announcing that ‘the time’ when God had finally shown his hand in history had arrived (> Meier, 2001, pp. 40–197). But there were many others, not just Paul and his companions, whose existence we glimpse in passing references: moving from place to place, establishing communities, teaching those groups, providing links between them, and giving them the sense that they formed this new community that broke existing boundaries of race and class.
But how difficult would all this travelling have been? The sea was the great highway of the Greek world: that is why its culture had spread far and wide; it was the basis of the Athenian empire centuries earlier; and it was the basis of long-range trade such as that which brought Egyptian wheat to feed the burgeoning cities of Italy. Around the Aegean where we know from Paul and Acts there was a network of churches in the mid-first century, the sea was the normal route for most communications. From Corinth to Ephesus, for example, took from four to seven days going east (with the prevailing wind) and from six to ten days going west. From Ephesus to Troas took from two to three days going south (with the wind) and from five to seven days going north. From these coastal cities there were roads, some much older than those built by the Romans, that linked inland cities. A journey from Troas to Antioch in Syria, going via Tarsus, Paul’s home city, would have taken about six weeks (the sea journey would have taken about three weeks). From Antioch to Jerusalem would have taken eighteen days by land and perhaps half that by sea – but someone going from group to group might have preferred the longer land journeys as it would have allowed him to visit many more churches along the way (> Thompson, 1998). So all these Christian groups were not only linked by shared beliefs and a common language but also had these links maintained by visitors taking advantage of the imperial communications’ network.
Teachers
Conscious of all this movement between Christian communities, we can now read the instructions of the Didache on the matter.
Now, whoever comes to you and teaches all these things which have just been set out here, you are to welcome him.
However, if a teacher has himself wandered from the right path and has begun to teach a teaching that is at odds with what is set out here, you should not listen to him.
On the other hand, if his teaching promotes holiness and knowledge of the Lord, then you should welcome him as you would the Lord.
(Did. 11.1–2)
The community sees itself as having the duty to offer welcome and hospitality (> Riddle, 1938). And it welcomes good teachers ‘as if the Lord’ himself had come among them. This notion of welcoming someone ‘as if he were the Lord’ was clearly a core value for the churches as we find the theme expressed in the Gospels and linked to Jesus himself: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, he who receives any one whom I send receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me’ (John 13.20 [RSV]); and there are similar ideas in the other evangelists (> Mark 9.37; Matt. 10.40; Luke 9.48). We are given no clue about what these teachers did except that they were to teach the same teaching as the Didache – so presumably these were people with special communications skills such as the preacher’s skills of persuasive speech, or they may have had that rare ability to promote holiness/righteousness (dikaiosunē) and knowledge of the Lord in the community. It would seem, from the fact that teachers are mentioned in the Didache before anyone else, that these were the most common of the travellers that were going from church to church. Paul, writing in the mid-50s to the Corinthians to point out that the Spirit gives a variety of gifts, says:
And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, then healers, helpers, administrators, speakers in various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?
(1 Cor. 12.28–30 [RSV])
It is with just the first three groups, all of which are forms of service inspired by the Spirit, that there is concern in the Didache.
But two other points should be noted before we read more of the Didache. First, we are inclined to think of the early Church in romantic terms: then all were devoted, all were sincere, and all was well. We know from the arguments recorded in the letters of Paul, who had to upbraid the Corinthians and oppose Peter (> Gal. 2.11), and Acts, which tells the tale of Simon the magician who wanted to buy ‘power’ from the apostles (8.9–24), that there were problems right from the start. We see similar problems in the Didache. It is a concern of the Didache to distinguish true from false teachers: true teachers are in harmony with the Didache’s own teaching while listening to them promotes Christian growth. But there were also frauds: those who had gone astray from the Way, and they are to be recognized by the fact that what they say is different from the Didache’s teaching. We see the same concern with those who preach a different gospel to what Paul himself preached when he wrote to the Galatians (> Gal 1.7–11) around the same time as he was writing to the Corinthians. We will see other concerns about false visitors again further on in the Didache.
Second, we live in a literate culture: we all read books, papers and information on the internet – and absorb it for ourselves through reading. However, ancient culture was aural: you listened to speech, you heard speech that had been recorded in marks on papyrus and converted back in sounds by a reader. Note that teaching is not something you read, but something to which you listen (> Achtemeier, 1990). There is always a real community of a teacher speaking and a disciple or disciples listening. We see this aural culture in Paul’s statement: ‘So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ’ (Rom. 10.17 [NRSV]). Moreover, it should remind us not to push our assumptions about reading, which is essentially a private activity, and books back into this period. The Didache was a document that was memorized and heard – and also had its sounds recorded on papyrus for safekeeping; the epistles were speeches whose sound was recorded so that it could go where their writers could not go; and the Gospels were the recordings of the evangelists which enabled them to be heard again and again after the evangelist himself had moved on.
Apostles and prophets
When we think of the term ‘apostle’ we tend to think of the Twelve – the disciples around Jesus, many of whose names we think we know – rather than the larger group mentioned by Paul when he wrote to the Corinthians, but unless we recall this larger group moving around the churches we cannot understand the seemingly harsh instructions of the Didache:
Now, turning to apostles and prophets you must treat them according to the rule of the gospel.
Every apostle who arrives among you is to be welcomed as if he were the Lord.
But normally he must not stay with you for more than one day, but he may stay a second day if this is necessary. However, if he stays a third day, then he is a false prophet!
When he leaves you, an apostle must receive nothing except enough food to sustain him until the next night’s lodgings. However, if he asks for money, then he is a false prophet!
(Did. 11.3–6)
Religion seems to attract charlatans, then as now: people who want to make a living out of the generosity of God and his people. The Didache takes the clearest line possible: no money and only the food needed to perform the task involved and get the apostle to the next community – anything more and they are loafers. Seen in this light we see the actual situation among the churches that may lie behind the statement put into the mouth of Jesus by Luke when ‘the seventy’ – who seem to be the prototypical apostles – were sent out without purse or bag and told to ‘remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the labourer deserves his wages; do not go from house to house’ (Luke 10.7 [RSV]) – significantly the only ‘wage’ they are entitled to is their lodging, food and drink (which is exactly what the Didache prescribes). This issue of false apostles and those making a quick buck out of the gospel was obviously a contentious one in the early churches. Paul takes the position that an apostle is entitled to a wage – presumably board and lodging – but is so concerned that his preaching might be impugned by taking even that which was his right that he chose to support himself, and probably his wife, by carrying on his trade. He told the Thessalonians:
For you remember our labour and toil, brethren; we worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you, while we preached to you the gospel of God.
(1 Thess. 2.9 [RSV])
He repeated it later:
[W]e did not eat anyone’s bread without paying, but with toil and labour we worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you. It was not because we have not that right, but to give you in our conduct an example to imitate.
(1 Thess. 3.8–9 [RSV])
While to the Corinthians – to whom he wanted to prove his authority – he wrote:
Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a wife, as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living?… If others share this rightful claim upon you, do not we still more?
Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ… What then is my reward? Just this: that in my preaching I may make the gospel free of charge, not making full use of my right in the gospel.
(1 Cor. 9.5–6, 12, 18 [RSV])
What exactly ‘the rule of the gospel’ was with regard to apostles is unclear – there is no statement mentioned in the four Gospels that could be construed as being a rule – but the most likely statement we have (remember that the ‘good news’ cannot simply be identified with our four Gospels) is that the rule is that apostles should be welcomed as if it were the Lord himself: ‘He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me’ (Matt. 10.40 [RSV]). However, while the ‘rule’ may be uncertain, that there was a concern over the arrival of false prophets among the early churches is clearly shown in our four Gospels, when this statement is put into the mouth of Jesus by Matthew: ‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?’ (Matt. 7.15–16 [RSV]).
Testing prophets
The statement that ‘you will know them by their fruits’ was a touchstone for the communities of the Didache in making sure that they did not become victims of fraud or get saddled with ministers who were out for themselves. Its instructions are clear, precise and sensible – and many distractions and much nonsense would have been kept out of Christianity over the centuries if these guidelines had been strictly applied to clergy:
Now if any prophet speaks in the Spirit he is not to be tested: for every sin can be forgiven but this sin cannot be forgiven.
However, not everyone who speaks in the Spirit is a prophet: only those who show that they follow the Way of the Lord. It is by the way that he lives that the true prophet can be separated from the false one.
Now if a prophet speaking in the Spirit orders a banquet, then that man should not partake in it; if he does eat the meal, then he is a false prophet.
And any prophet who teaches the truth, but does not live according to his teaching is to be considered a false prophet.
. . .
Now if anyone should say in the Spirit ‘Give me money’ – or anything like that – you should not listen to that man; however, if he tells you to give something to other people who are in need, then he is not to be condemned.
(Did. 11.7–10, 12)
Speaking in tongues, here referred to as ‘speaking in the Spirit’, was a feature of the early communities that was seen as being open to abuse or of being an end in itself. Paul was concerned that ‘tongues’ might be seen as sufficient, without love, to exhibit life in Christ (1 Cor. 13.1) and also points out that ‘tongues’ is a useless gift without interpretation to build up the Church (1 Cor. 14.5–6). This same balance is to be seen here in the Didache: you must not dismiss tongues, because they are a gift of the Spirit, but at the same time there must be no false opposition between the teaching and tongues: anyone who speaks in tongues must also be an adherent of the Way of Life. Paul has almost an echo of the Didache when he, rather than speaking in tongues, asks the Corinthians: ‘how shall I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching?’ (1 Cor. 14.6 [RSV]). The test of speaking in the Spirit is that the speaker knows and lives by the didache. Moreover, it is easy to spot the conman: he orders a free meal ‘in the Spirit’. The Didache has almost a touch of humour in its reply: yes, let him order it, but if he is genuine, then he will not want to eat it himself. For a prophet to benefit himself would undermine his credibility – even if he did genuinely speak in the Spirit, when he asked that a table be laid – and this is probably the background to Paul’s not even taking the food to which he is entitled from the community but rather working to pay for his own upkeep: by getting no benefit, he was stressing that his service was genuine.
The final note is interesting in that it sets the actual walking of the Way as a test for anyone who acts as a prophet. The correct teaching is not enough in itself, it must be backed up by the correct form of life. The Didache has a bald statement intended as a test for the community to use to distinguish visitors in two groups: false and genuine. The same basic teaching comes in a more nuanced form in a scene in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus tells the crowds and the disciples that the scribes and Pharisees preach the law (and so they should be listened to) but do not practise it (and so should not be imitated). In his community all were to be brothers, and he would be the only teacher (23.1–8). Just as the Didache is concerned with charlatans living off the communities, Matthew seems concerned about those who are seeking positions of power and respect within those communities.
In Mark’s Gospel we hear a very strange utterance from Jesus that has baffled interpreters down the centuries: ‘Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’ (3.28–29 [RSV]) – and Matthew follows Mark but with a slightly different emphasis (Matt. 12.31). Here we see the same teaching in the Didache: all sins can be forgiven except that of casting doubt on the fact of a prophet speaking in the Spirit. In the Gospels the blasphemy consists in denying that the Spirit is working in the Christ, here that the Spirit is working in the prophets. The Didache’s sense of the seriousness of this sin is inexplicable: it neither helps us understand the Gospels nor do the Gospels help us to understand the Didache. It is a reminder that there are many instances where we do not really know what was happening in the world of the early churches: often we can make sound conjectures, and sometimes, as here, we have simply to note our ignorance. Some people find admitting such ignorance difficult and scramble for an explanation to cover ‘the gap’; such attempts not only pretend to understanding we do not have but also have the effect of bringing what we do know into disrepute.
The issue of ‘the unforgivable sin’ is not the only topic where the Didache’s concern about the behaviour of prophets is obscure. Here is an instruction which has not only baffled modern scholars but was already beyond the understanding of those who translated the Didache into Ethiopian and Georgian – and who were much closer to the world in which it was written (> Niederwimmer, 1998, pp. 180–2):
Any prophet, who has been proven to be a true prophet, who acts out in his life the earthly mystery of the church (provided that he does not teach everyone to do as he does) is not to be judged by you: leave his judgement with God. After all, the prophets in olden times also acted in that way.
(Did. 11.11)
Most attempts to explain this statement are based on noting, first, that there is a link between ‘mystery’, ‘earthly’ and ‘church’ which is reminiscent of what we find in Ephesians 5.22–33 where the relationship of husband and wife is seen as somehow being an image in this world of the relationship of Christ to the church which is said to be a ‘profound mystery’ (Eph. 5.32). Second, whatever these prophets are doing is like something that the prophets did in Israel, and this may refer to something like the marriage of Hosea to the prostitute Gomer and having children with her (Hos. 1—3). That marriage was intended to demonstrate in an earthly way the divine mystery of God’s continuing love for his people even when they were unfaithful. So did early Christian prophets enter into marriages as demonstrations of the love of Christ for the new Israel? There have been as many theories as commentators. Some have seen this as ordinary marriages after which these prophets held that they had a right to support for both themselves and their wives (this would fit with Paul’s obscure statement in 1 Cor. 9.5). Others have seen it as some sort of ‘spiritual marriage’ in the sense of a man travelling with a woman who is not his wife – which would have been seen as scandalous within their cultural world – but who remains his ‘betrothed’ (this would fit with Paul’s advice, also obscure, on not marrying for anyone who does not need to marry ‘but having his desire under control, and has determined this in his heart, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well’ [1 Cor 7.36–38 (RSV)]). Which is the more likely explanation? Probably the second, for the simple reason that it would throw some light on what Paul clearly thought was a practice in the communities with which he was in contact. Clearly, some in these communities were suspicious about the whole matter: well, they were to leave it to God’s judgement. Meanwhile, we should remind ourselves, yet again, of the limits of our own knowledge of early Christian practices.
Other visitors
As we should expect, there were other Christians – not teachers, apostles or prophets – who were moving about the Roman Empire and who made themselves known to the communities they passed through on their journeys. So the Didache has guidance on how they also should be treated and what they should expect from their sisters and brothers in Christ. The same basic approach is taken towards these ‘ordinary’ Christian visitors as with visits from the apostles and prophets, which shows us that the communities were taking the position (also advocated by Matthew) that they were not to give special honours to the apostles and prophets but treat every Christian equally as a brother (Matt. 23.1–8).
Now anyone coming in the Lord’s name should be made welcome; then you can test him, using your own insight [into human nature] to see if he is genuine or a fraud.
If the visitor is someone who is passing through, help him as much as you can. However, he is not to stay for more than two days – or three out of necessity.
If the visitor wishes to settle in your community, then, if he is a craftsman, he should work for his living.
But if he does not have a trade, then use your own judgement to decide how he is to live among you as a Christian: but he is not to live in idleness.
If he is unhappy with this arrangement then he is a ‘christmonger’. Be on the watch for such people.
(Did. 12)
Everyone who has been involved in running a charity knows this dilemma in one way or another. Welcome and support is something that Christians should give; but at the same time no one should be allowed to abuse that generosity and sponge rather than work. Such people are not brothers who should be welcomed in Christ as coming in the Lord’s name but people who are using the name of Christian for their own ends. The name the Didache coins for such a sponger is christemporos (literally: one who trades on the name of Christ), which is sometimes rendered, as here, by the word ‘christmonger’.
The community was based on all pulling together and sharing the task of welcome: so no individual was to live within a community and take advantage of it. The cases were to be decided as the community saw fit: in the case of someone with a skill, it was simple – they were to work; but it was to be left to the community’s discretion in the case of those who had no trade to ply – but they were not to feel that they had to support someone who would not work.
These regulations help us to understand Paul’s concerns about any implication that he was making a living out of the gospel (1 Cor. 9.1–18), but also to understand this instruction he gave to the Thessalonians:
Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is living in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, we did not eat any one’s bread without paying, but with toil and labour we worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you. It was not because we have not that right, but to give you in our conduct an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: If any one will not work, let him not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work in quietness and to earn their own living.
(2 Thess. 3.6–12 [RSV])
The community was to be welcoming and generous, but they did not have to allow themselves to be used by those just looking for an idle life.
Supporting the prophets and teachers
Paul in 1 Corinthians 9.14 says that ‘the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel’ (RSV) even though he does not make use of that right himself. What that right meant in practice we see in this section of the Didache:
Any true prophet who wishes to settle down among you is worthy of his food. In the same way, any true teacher is like a labourer who is worthy of his food.
So take the first fruits of the vine and the harvest, of cattle and sheep, and present these first fruits to the prophets because they are, to you, the high priests.
But if you have no prophet [settled in your community], then give the first fruits to the poor.
When you bake a batch of bread, take the first loaf and present it as it says in the commandment.
Do likewise when you open a fresh flask of wine or oil: take the first portion from it and present it to the prophets.
So also with money and cloth and other commodities: set aside the first fruits, and give it – as much as seems right to you – according to the commandment.
(Did. 13)
We have noticed in earlier chapters that the community of the Didache was very familiar with the normal practices of Judaism as laid out in the law of Moses. Perhaps nowhere is this closeness between the communities of the Didache and contemporary Jewish communities better seen than here (> Niederwimmer, 1998, pp. 192–3). The Christians are to keep up the practices of ‘the first fruits’ that were prescribed in the law as being offered to the Lord by way of support for the priestly tribe of Levi (> Draper, 2006b). The Didache says ‘according to the commandment’ and we must read this as meaning ‘as lawfully commanded’ for there was not one single commandment regarding ‘the first fruits’ but many scattered across the Scriptures. For instance, the rule about ‘the first fruits’ of wine/grapes is found in Numbers 13.20 and Deuteronomy 18.4; that about the harvest in Exodus 34.22; that about bread in Leviticus 23.17; and that about oil in Deuteronomy 18.4. Among the Jews this offering was a way both of honouring God for his goodness and of supporting the praise of God through supporting the priesthood. Now, in the Didache, it is carrying on these two functions: it praises God and supports the work of the prophets who seem to have inherited the rights of the ‘high priests’.
When we read in Matthew that the labourer deserves his food (Matt. 10.10) – Luke says he deserves his wages (Luke 10.7) – we see that these labourers are the apostles, prophets and teachers: they are to be offered support as the Levites were offered support by being given a share in the food available. And, if there is no need to offer them support, then those first fruits are to be given to the poor.
This presentation of ‘the first fruits’ to these prophets and teachers as if they were the replacement for the ‘high priests’ appears to be inconsistent with the emphasis earlier in the Didache on the prophets and teachers not earning a living from their Christian service except for basic food while they are present in a church (Did. 11.3–6, 9, 12). However, this inconsistency shows that the Didache was a living document that was being adapted to circumstances as times changed. Such inconsistencies are an inherent part of most practical literature: one rule emerged in one situation, another when the situation changed, and no one noticed the lack of consistency. Textual consistency is something that belongs to works that emerge from the scholar’s study or the lawyer’s office: documents produced and amended in the course of the evolution of living communities rarely display such neatness.
‘Bishops and deacons’
The apostles, prophets and teachers seem to have been mainly people who moved from place to place, working with one church after another. There are those who settle in a community – one cannot remain always on the move – but this seems to be the exception, for there are communities that do not have such people living with them and they are to use the ‘first fruits’ for the poor. By contrast, each community has to appoint people from among them to provide leadership and service in the community, and these are to come from within the community, live there, and be part of the church in that particular place.
Select for yourselves bishops and deacons: men who are worthy of the Lord, humble, not greedy for money, honest, and well tested, because these too carry out for you the service of the prophets and teachers.
Therefore, you should not despise them but treat them as your honoured men like the prophets and teachers.
(Did. 15.1–2)
In some communities it appears that the men chosen to take the lead in the community were known as ‘presbyters’ (literally: elders) while in other communities they were called ‘bishops and deacons’. In these latter communities ‘the bishops’ were not one group and ‘the deacons’ another, but rather the leaders were known by this double-barrelled designation to bring out the twin aspects of their task: to have a watchful eye over the community and to be its servants. So we could render ‘bishops and deacons’ as ‘bishop-deacons’. There is no hint that there was as yet only one bishop, but rather in each church there were several men – there is no hint anywhere that women could perform this service – who were ‘bishops and deacons’. Likewise, there is no hint that these ‘bishops and deacons’ were those who offered the blessing to the Father at the Eucharist or that they baptized new members.
It was only later, in the early decades of the second century, that this whole matter of leadership began to take on its more developed structures of a bishop, with presbyters, and then deacons (all arranged in a pyramidal structure of authority), and then still later emerged the notion that only bishops and presbyters could preside at the Eucharist with the deacons acting in an assisting capacity.
Other concerns
The Didache contains one final set of instructions relating to the interaction of people within a church:
Now when you come to correct one another, this is to be done in a composed way, and not in anger, just as you find in the gospel.
And when someone does wrong against his neighbour, let no one speak to him, indeed he is not to hear anything from you, until he repents.
Now with regard to your prayers and almsgiving, indeed all your actions, do them all in the way that you find them prescribed in our Lord’s gospel.
(Did. 15.2–4)
We know from scattered references in later documents that Christians sought to offer correction to one another just as is mentioned here. The concern is that this correction should be a composed affair aimed at showing the Christian who had gone astray the right way, rather than becoming, as is so often the case when someone offers another ‘correction’, the occasion for ‘tearing a strip off them’ in angry denunciation. In every community there are going to be actions by others that irritate us, other actions that annoy us, and still others that ‘drive us up the wall’ because they seem so silly or wrong-headed – it is all too easy to offer angry ‘corrections’! Indeed, this problem was so serious that there was not just this teaching on the subject, but the matter was included in the preaching of the good news. However, what form this teaching took in the kerugma is unknown to us; alas, none of the four preachers of the gospel whose Gospels we still have seems to have addressed it.
By contrast, we do have a Gospel setting for the teaching on prayer and almsgiving and other works of piety:
Beware of practising your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
(Matt. 6.1–6 [RSV])
What is laid out in the Didache as simple guidance takes on a larger context in story form in the preaching of Matthew. Here we have another indication that the communities that were inspired on hearing the narratives of the great preachers, the evangelists, were the same ones that were formed in discipleship by texts like the Didache.
Their concerns, our concerns
Some of the problems that so exercised the formulators of the Didache are unknown to modern Christians, and vice versa. Some of the problems have remained constant in the churches. The benefit of reading this ancient text – and other ancient Christian texts – is that it shows us both similarities and differences. Those issues that are common are often the key issues of discipleship; those which are specific are very often secondary and derivative issues. There are some today who may wonder that there was so much concern about frauds and spongers – but this is what was their most pressing issue. Likewise, there are those who will wonder why I have not spent most of this chapter looking at the ‘three-fold ministry’ or the necessity for a duly ordained presbyter for a ‘genuine’ Eucharist because this is, today, their most pressing issue, but these were not even topics within the world of the Didache.
However, all those shifting concerns about structures might reveal a deeper truth about Christianity: it is a faith that makes demands within a real community and about how it lives in the world as it bears witness to the Christ. From this need flow all those structures that we as human beings need: they are but means to an end, and always somehow provisional relative to the end. From this also flows a warning: when concerns over structures become noisy and strident – the sort of thing that can cause Christians to split into hostile groups, as has happened all too often in our history – then we have confused means with ends.