Daniel Nessim - Torah for Gentiles? What the Jewish Authors of the Didache Had to Say

Abstract

T he Didache was written for a church enduring internal and external social and political stresses. In this environment it sought to establish norms for the individual and the community. Long looked to for insights into the life of the early church, the Didaches reception of the Torah has received significant passing attention, but has never benefitted from an extended systematic analysis. Well received in the early church, it reflects both a first-century and Antiochene provenance.

It is specifically in the context of its Two Ways teaching that the Didache adopted an established topos rooted in both the Torah and other traditions, accessible to Jew and gentile alike, to convey its teaching on the Torah. This teaching was established on the basis of the presumed authority of religious teachers and specifically that of Jesus himself.

On the basis of this assumed authority, the Didache mandated the Way of Life for Christian disciples, laying the foundations of its approach with the double command to love God and neighbor, reflective of the Decalogue, the two tables of the Torah. Tightly bound structurally and thematically to the following Two Ways, the sectio evangelica, a key section comprising known Jesus sayings, shows an affinity to Torah-affirming passages in the Gospels. As a prologue that bears comparison to the Two Ways yoke of the Lord epilogue, it places stress on the Torah as mediated by Jesus.

Within the Two Ways material itself, there is not only a marked structure revolving around the second table of the Decalogue, but a series of textual markers linking and equating it in some ways to the Torah as a whole. In this context, its endorsement of the yoke of the Lord is a striking Torah affirmative statement which reinforces the commitment to the Didaches teaching that is required of it.

It is this commitment to the Torah as applicable to all Christians that is enjoined upon the gentile disciple; the Torah presented in those respects that were deemed to apply to gentiles. Acceptance of this sine qua non formed the basis for induction into the church and participation in its eschatological hope.

The Didache is one of the oldest non-canonical documents of the early Jesus movement. It addressed a small but rapidly expanding community in an age of socio-political crisis. Composed in Antioch and written from within a Christian-Jewish milieu, its intended audience was primarily gentile. While attention has naturally been paid to the Jewish sources of the Didache, questions remain concerning its underlying presuppositions regarding the enduring validity, applicability, and authority of the Torah, particularly in regards to its gentile Christian recipients.

A constellation of issues remain to be resolved in Didache studies, and an accurate understanding of the role of the Torah in the Didache is a significant, if not the key, factor in many of these. The question as to whether the Didache may have implicitly or overtly sanctioned and advocated conversion to Judaism remains viable for a minority of scholars. Even more, there is the broader issue as to whether the Didache mandates Torah observance for its recipients. While having been partly addressed in a number of papers and short studies, the Didaches reception of the Torah has not been given sufficient attention nor been sufficiently examined, and this study attempts to address that situation.