About a year ago I read and wrote a post on 1st Clement, arguably the earliest Christian document outside of the New Testament. I finally got around to reading the Didache, a Christian treatise that is also in the running for oldest authentic Christian document after the apostles (the confidence intervals for the documents coming from the “Apostolic Fathers” tend to overlap), which makes it relevant to our understanding of the Great Apostasy.  

While 1st Clement is a document by a named author who was very clearly trying to make things work out in the aftermath of the apostles, the Didache is a treatise by an unnamed, unknown Christian community around the same time trying to do Christianity with only a few epistles and lived tradition to work off of. (Although my understanding is that stylistically some think it has some kind of connection to whoever authored the Gospel of Matthew). While it’s less personal than 1st Clement, it provides some of the earliest accounts outside the New Testament the rituals, ordinances, and beliefs of some of the most “original” Christians. 

With regards to whether these rituals represent the more authentic ordinances and are therefore closer to the “real deal,” two things: First, even the earliest dating puts this solidly after the apostles, probably about 70 years after the death of Christ. Given the problems Paul had in keeping the different branches on the same page theologically even in his day, it’s not much of a stretch to see the Didache as a post- or during-Great Apostasy document from a Latter-day Saint perspective. Second, in the same way that pre-mass communications you could have completely distinct dialects evolving within a few dozen miles from each other, and given that a significant chunk of the extant post-Jesus New Testament is essentially the story of dealing with different variations in Christian practice and belief, it’s likely that the Didache simply represents one of many different forms of early Christian practice at the time, and we shouldn’t “overfit” the Didache’s data to our picture of early Christians just because it’s one of the only available documents from the immediate post-Apostolic era. At the end of the day the Didache only gives us the rituals and beliefs of one particular group, when, as we know, Christianity has always had many different practice and belief systems, so we should avoid the temptation to see the Didache as the real deal just because it’s one of the oldest non-biblical Christian documents we have access to. 

A few odds-and-ends observations. 

• The first half is very 3 Nephi-ish, where they rely a lot on the Sermon on the Mount; there isn’t much new here to anybody who’s already familiar with the language of the New Testament. 

 

• Unfortunately, the Didache transmits the Pauline teaching that slaves should submit to their masters. So while Christianity was essential to banning slavery later on (and I’ll go the nine rhetorical rounds with those who claim it was incidental), this provides evidence that the pro-slavery  interpretation of Christian thought had been transmitted to the earlier Christian communities in the first half-century after the apostles. 

You shall not enjoin anything in your bitterness upon your bondman or maidservant, who hope in the same God, lest ever they shall fear not God who is over both; for he comes not to call according to the outward appearance, but unto them whom the Spirit has prepared. And you bondmen shall be subject to your masters as to a type of God, in modesty and fear. 

• It has become fashionable in some circles to claim that religious reservations about abortion is a relatively new phenomenon. There’s a whole post to write about this, but suffice it to say, while it is true that the conservative/liberal split on abortion is relatively new (although that cuts both ways–yes, in the pre-Roe days many conservative Christians didn’t care as much about abortion, but by the same token many otherwise liberal Episcopalian types saw anti-abortion advocacy as an extension of their social justice viewpoint), religious reservations about infanticide and abortion are quite old, with the Didache perhaps providing the first evidence for this kind of religious ethic of life that we see in a lot of Christian communities today. 

Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not corrupt youth; thou shalt not commit fornication; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not use soothsaying; thou shalt not practise sorcery; thou shalt not kill a child by abortion, neither shalt thou slay it when born; thou shalt not covet the goods of thy neighbour.

• They give very precise details about how to baptize and perform the Lord’s Supper. Again, neither the Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, or us follow this exact formula, nor should we feel obligated to from any of our respective religious paradigms, but it is an interesting insight into how one Christian community delineated the rules around these central Christian ordinances. For example, the preference for running water for baptism, the requirement to say the Lord’s prayer several times a day, etc. 

 

• Their take on authority is much less concrete than 1st Clement’s. I’d almost say it’s very Protestant-sounding. Prophets and apostles are treated as wandering holy men, more akin to the Old Testament, who needed to be discerned from congregation to congregation instead of hanging their validity on an unbroken line of priesthood succession running back to Jesus. 

 

• I suspect at this point the early Christians had already experienced the moral hazards of having all things in common like in Acts, as it goes to some length stipulating that people who will not work will not eat. 

 

• It makes a reference to the Anti-Christ as an imitator of Christ that is much more detailed and clear than anything we get in the canonized works. I get why the Lahayes were able to create such a bestselling series about this concept. 

 

And then shall appear the world-deceiver as the Son of God, and shall do signs and wonders, and the earth shall be delivered into his hands, and he shall do iniquitous things which have never yet come to pass since the beginning.