Links to The Didache
Below are links to sites that have various versions of the the Didache.
The home pages of each have other gnostic and ancient texts
.
Click here
for the full text of one translation of the Didache, with notes and links ( the links are typically to related text from the Bible )
The mission of the CCEL is to build up the church by making classic Christian writings available and promoting their use.
Click here
for the home page of this library.
Click here
to see what the Didache looks like in one early form. This site has a number of translations and and comentaries by various scholars.
Crossan observes the following on the text of the Didache (The Birth of Christianity, p. 364):
The scribe who copied those seven texts signed the last leaf as "Lean, notary and sinner," and dated that completion to June 11, 1056. . . The Didache, then, was a small text, fifth among others mostly larger than itself, lost in a small library in the Fener section of Istanbul, halfway up the west side of the Golden Horn. Now known as Codex Hierosolymitanus 54, that volume was removed to the Patriarchate at Jerusalem in 1887, where it remains.
Click here
for links to a very extensive library of early documents found on this site.
Click here
for an article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Didache ( Koine Greek for "Teaching") is the common name of a brief early Christian treatise (c. 70–160), containing instructions for Christian communities. The text is possibly the first written catechism, with three main sections dealing with Christian lessons, rituals such as baptism and eucharist, and Church organization. It was considered by some of the Church Fathers as part of the New Testament but rejected as spurious by others, eventually not accepted into the New Testament canon with the exception of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church "broader canon". The Roman Catholic Church has accepted it as part of the collection of Apostolic Fathers. It is the only rediscovered Christian text during the last 150 years of discoveries in libraries or in papyri to receive wide acceptance by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
The home page of the Wikipedia is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page .
Click here
for further history of the Didache.
Here is a short comment from Enrico Mazza giving the reasoning for giving the Didache a very early date:
The express conception of the eucharist in Didache 9.2 supposes a Judeo-Christian Church with a primitive Christology, one that considers itself to be part of Judaism and its messianic expectations. This situation is no longer present at the time of the Council of Jerusalem [48-9 A.D.] ... Therefore I suggest that the two eucharists of the Didache were composed before this date ... 1 Corinthians is familiar with and uses the Eucharistic Liturgy of the Didache and ... bases itself on these texts of the Didache in order to express the Eucharistic theology that Paul shares with the community at Corinth ... Paul evangelized Corinth between 50 and 52.
( These 2 books "The Celebration of the Eucharist: The Origin of the Rite and the Development of Its Interpretation"
and "The Origins of the Eucharistic Prayer",
covers the matter much further { available from Amazon}.)
For the home page of the site
click here .
Click here
for a site that covers many different aspects of the Didache and its history ( follow the links on each page to another aspect ).
The Didache (pronounced 'Didarkay'). It is a Christian manual giving unique details regarding baptism, eucharist and church leadership from an early period of Christian development. Its name comes from the title, 'The Teaching (Didache) of the Lord, by the Twelve Apostles, to the Gentiles'. A rough table of its contents runs as follows:
Didache 1-6 - a collection of Jewish moral instructions to be adopted by Gentiles who want to be baptised.
Didache 7 - brief instructions for the baptism service itself.
Didache 8 - instructions for fasting and prayer, including a version of the Lord's Prayer that is very similar, but not identical, to that in Matthew's Gospel.
Didache 9 and 10 - two sets of eucharistic prayers.
Didache 11-15 - various instructions regarding church leaders and visitors.
Didache 16 - a warning about the events of the last days.
Click here
for other pages about various aspects of the Didache
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