who were present at that service seem to have been at first of various kinds; but afterwards a rule was made limiting them to bread and wine or corn and grapes (Apost. Can. 3); and still later, those which were not consumed at the time were divided in fixed proportions among the clergy (Apost. Const. viii. 31). But the canon he refers to is suggestive of a view of the Eucharist very different from what he is emphasizing; it runs thus: "If any bishop or presbyter, otherwise than our Lord has ordained concerning the sacrifice, offer other things at the altar, as honey, milk, or artificial alcohol instead of wine, or birds or animals or vegetables, otherwise than is ordained, let him be deprived; excepting grains of new wheat, or bunches of grapes, in their proper season. For it is not lawful to offer anything besides these at the altar, and oil for the holy lamp, and incense in the time of the divine oblation. But let all other fruits be sent to the house of the bishop as first-fruits to him and the presbyters.' 1

L.

THE TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES.

(See p. 247.)

THIS document was discovered in a MS. in Constantinople and given to the world in 1883 by Bryennios, archbishop then of Serres and afterwards of Nicomedia. Another edition of this and the related documents (the Apostolic Church Order, and Book vii. chapters 1-32 of the Apostolic Constitutions) by Dr. Harnack, in Texte und Untersuchungen ii 1, followed in 1884.2

It will be convenient first to summarize the contents and estimate 'the character of the document as it stands, then to examine briefly its relation to other documents, and finally to make some attempt to fix within rough limits its time and place.

1 Prof. Ramsay (Ch. in R. E. p. 367) also suggested that the 'episcopus' did not originally hold a permanent office, but that the name was given to any presbyter appointed to 'superintend' a special work, particularly that of corresponding with foreign churches. Yet the 'episcopi' of Phil. i. 1, Acts xx. 28, Tit. i. 5-9, Didache 15, are permanent officials, identical with presbyters; and the title 'episcopus' is specially connected with the superintendence of the local church, Acts xx. 28, 1 Tim. iii. 5.

* Other discussions of the Didache that belong to the first years after its publication are:-P. Sabatier, La Didache, Paris, 1885; P. Schaff, The Oldest Church Manual, New York, 1885; B. B. Warfield in Bibliotheca Sacra, January 1886; C. Taylor, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, Cambridge, 1886-a very important commentary on the Jewish relationships of the book; G. Salmon, Non-Canonical Books, 1886, afterwards incorporated in the later editions of his Historical Introduction to the Study of the Books of the New Testament. Some more recent contributions to the criticism of the book are examined below, pp. 373 n.', 374.

It may be divided into the following parts :

1. Rudimentary moral instructions about the two ways of life and death, as an address to catechumens just about to be baptized (cc. i.-vi).

2. Instructions to a community of Christians, addressed as a whole, about the proper method of baptizing, the Christian fasts, the use of the Lord's Prayer, and the celebration of the Eucharist (cc. vii-xi).

3. Further instructions about 'apostles' and 'prophets,' in their relation to the local Church, about the Sunday service, and about the election and functions of the local ministry of bishops and deacons (cc. xi-xv).

4. A final section about the second coming of Christ (c. xvi).

The moral instruction is of an intensely Jewish character. It is indeed not wholly Christian-not by any means on the level of the Sermon on the Mount, or of St. James who has so profound a grasp on the principles of the law of liberty.' It belongs rather to the enlightened synagogue than to the illuminated Church. 'Whatsoever thou wouldst not have done to thee, neither do thou to another.' 'Thou shalt not hate any man, but some thou shalt rebuke, and for some thou shalt pray, and some thou shalt love above thine own soul.' 'If thou hast, thou shalt give with thine hands as a ransom for thy sins.' 'Fast for those who persecute you.' 'Let your fasts not be with the hypocrites: for they fast on the second day and the fifth, but do ye fast on the fourth day and the Preparation [Friday].' 'If thou canst bear the whole yoke of the Lord, thou shalt be perfect; but if thou canst not, what thou art able to do, that do. As regards food, bear what thou canst. But from that which has been offered to an idol, be greatly on thy guard. For it is the service of dead gods.' This advice about 'bearing the yoke' and 'bearing the burden' of Jewish observance only up to a man's power, reveals the intensely Jewish atmosphere out of which it comes. It carries us back in its very language to the circumstances of the Apostolic Council (Acts xv. 10-28). It is also very noticeable that in place of our Lord's spiritualizing of the law, which makes the inward sin of intention equivalent to the outward act of commission (St. Matt. v. 28), we have in c. iii. a Jewish method of making a fence to the law,' which is a very different thing; 'Be not lustful, for lust leads to fornication,' etc. This impression of a Jewish tone about the moral teaching is deepened at every step of closer study.

Once again, the regulations given about baptism are thoroughly Jewish in character. In what sense? Not because they are minute regulations, but because baptism seems to be regarded, as a halfChristianized Jew might regard it,- —as a prescribed ordinance, not as a means of grace. He seems to have no grasp at all of the sacramental principle. Baptism and (as we shall see) the Eucharist are ordinances of the Gospel, like prayer and fasting and alms-giving-nothing more.

1

The meagreness and inadequacy of the whole conception of the Eucharist strikes every one at once. It is fenced indeed by the preliminary requirement of baptism 1 and the injunction of previous public confession of sins; it is regarded as the Christian sacrifice or thankoffering, in which is fulfilled the prophecy of Malachi about the ‘pure sacrifice' of the new covenant (xiv. 3), and which, it is probably implied, our Lord alluded to when He spoke of bringing our gift to the altar'; it is also called spiritual food and drink (unless indeed these words refer to the teaching of Christ), and is celebrated in definite anticipation of His second coming (x. 6): but the whole conception of it is more Jewish than Christian." Sabatier says truly: 'Our document cannot but surprise those who read for the first time its liturgy of the Eucharist. We have here a form without analogy anywhere. It separates itself much less from the Jewish ritual than from the Christian.' 'It is an ordinary repast just touched by a breath of religious mysticism, such as is the outcome of the importance which belongs, in Jewish and oriental idea, to repasts taken in common.' 8 There is, in fact, nothing to recall to our mind our Lord's words in the institution of the Eucharist, of which, we must remark, we have the form given us in St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians,-nothing to recall to us St. Paul's language about the significance of the communion. It is a Jewish feast Christianized in

1 ix. 5.

4 είν. 1: προ[σ]εξομολογησάμενοι τὰ παραπτώματα ὑμῶν, cf. iv. 14: 'In church thou shalt confess thy transgressions,' i.e. before public prayer.

" xiv. 2: 'Let no man who has a dispute with his fellow come together with you until they be reconciled [diaλλaywow, cf. St. Matt. v. 24], that your sacrifice be not defiled,' seems to refer to the saying of our Lord.

x. 3. See Sabatier La Didachè p. 104.

'See Salmon Introd. p. 607. There are, however, indications that these prayers in the Didache are really prayers for the Agape, and that the actual communion is meant to occur after x. 6. The word Eucharist may well include the Agape. Thus the cup in ix. corresponds (cf. St. Luke xxii. 17) to the second paschal cup. The expression after being filled' (x. 1) refers to the preliminary eating, and Dr. Taylor quotes a most suggestive parallel from Jewish language about the passover, p. 130: 'The chagigah was eaten first that the passover might be eaten after being filled.' Thus the occurrence of the Holy Communion after the Agape would rest upon a Jewish practice. Then the exclamations of Did. x. 6: 'If any one is holy, let him come: if any one is not, let him repent,' refer, as they naturally should, to the subsequent eating of the holy things. This again would explain the meaning of the rule of xi. 9, that the prophet who 'orders a table in the spirit' is, as a test of his disinterestedness, not to eat of it: he is not to eat of the Agape, not to 'fill himself,' and is, of course, to communicate at the subsequent Eucharist. This interpretation of the 'eucharistic' prayers would seem the most natural, I think, but for the immense difficulty for suggesting a reason for the silence about the Holy Communion, unless we can introduce the idea of reserve about the mysteries': cf. Taylor p. v. Perhaps, however, the difficulty is less great if these benedictions are based on formulas in use amongst the Jews at religious meals, as seems very probable; see Rendall Theol. of Hebr. Chr. p. 89 f.

• Sabatier, op. cit. pp. 109, 112.

a measure by the recognition of the Messiahship of Christ and the expectation of His second coming.

It must not indeed be supposed that the mere absence of later ritual would mean the absence of sacramental idea. This view has been combated already (pp. 163, 164). We find in some cases an absence of elaborate ritual coinciding with the fullest appreciation of the spiritual efficacy of a sacrament. In the Teaching it is the idea that is absent. This falls in further with the absence of grasp on the principle of the Incarnation. Of course Trinitarian doctrine is implied in the use of the Trinitarian formula of baptism,1 but the author seems to be quite uninfluenced by the teaching of St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. John on the Incarnation and the Atonement and the Holy Spirit. The Christology indeed is barely as full as that of the early speeches in the Acts. Perhaps, however, we can best characterize the tone of the Didache by saying that it would represent the beliefs of a Jewish Christianity yet unleavened by the deeper teaching of the Apostles,' which was to follow that first earnest emphasis on the Messiahship of Jesus, of which the early chapters of the Acts give us the record.

Internal evidence then shows that the Didache is the work plainly of a Jewish Christian. He is conscious enough of his alienation from the Jews proper, whom he calls 'the hypocrites,'' and there is no sign of any insistence upon circumcision; but we must bear in mind that there was in the age preceding Christ's coming a widely spread school of liberalized Jews, who had come to regard their religion as

1 Schaff maintains that the author of the Didache in the phrase Hosanna to the God of David' (x. 6) refers to Christ as God. If the reading is right, however, it more probably refers to the Father. Nor does the Lord' of xiv. 3 seem to refer to Christ as the Messiah of the Old Testament: it is a simple reference to the words of the original. It is not that the author is heretical, but he is inadequate.

Certainly the connexion of the Didache with the language of St. Peter's first sermons, and with the phraseology of these chapters, is very striking. It is more than a coincidence of mere language.

(a) With ix. 2 'Inσoûs ò mais σov, cf. Acts iii. 13, 26, iv. 27, 30. See Clement's Epistle, c. 59. In Mart. Polyc. 14, as in Hippolytus' Church Order and the Apost. Const., it has a new meaning; it is no longer servant as in the Didache (used alike of David and Jesus in the same clause), with reference to the servant of Jehovah in Isaiah; it has got the meaning of 'Son '—' My beloved Son.' See Lightfoot on Clement, in loc.

·

(b) With x. 2 quoted above, and ix. 2, cf. Acts ii. 28 ¿yvúpiσás por ddoùs Swns. (c) For the whole idea of the Acts, ii. 42 ἦσαν δὲ προσκαρτεροῦντες τῇ διδαχῇ τῶν ἀποστόλων . . . τῇ κλάσει τοῦ ἄρτου καὶ ταῖς προσευχαῖς, cf. ix. 3, xiv. I, τὸ κλάσμα, κλάσατε ἄρτον.

(α) With iv. 8 συγκοινωνήσεις δὲ πάντα τῷ ἀδελφῷ σου καὶ οὐκ ἐρεῖς ἴδια εἶναι, cf. Acts iv. 32 ovde eis T. . . ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι . . . πάντα κοινά.

(e) For the coupling of fasting and prayer, cf. Acts xiii. 3.

(f) With vi. 1-3, on 'bearing the yoke' and 'guarding oneself from that which is offered to an idol,' cf. Acts xv. 10-28.

(g) 'The way of life suggests the use of 'the way' in the Acts as a synonym for Christianity.

a vili. I, 2.

the 'school of the knowledge of God and of the spiritual life for the whole world,' and a Jew of this sort who had accepted Christ as the Messiah and become a member of His Church as being the way of life and learnt ardently to desire His second coming to establish His kingdom - such a Christianized Jew, living or having lived under circumstances which made him acquainted with the vices of the Graeco-Roman civilization, must have been the author of our Teaching.

Of course there is teaching implied in the writing which is not given. Why should Christians 'fast on Wednesday and Friday'? The answer to this question at least implies a record of historical facts about our Lord, though not more. Why should God be glorified 'through Jesus Christ' (ix. 4)? Here is involved some doctrine of mediation. Why are Christians baptized into the name of the Son and the Spirit as well as of the Father? This must carry with it some teaching about the Persons represented by these Divine names. Thus there is a teaching implied which is not given, and apparently, we must add, not realized.

Our mind naturally goes back to those Jewish Christians to whom the Epistle to the Hebrews was written. Here were Christians who only half realized what their religion meant-who knew its 'first principles,' those which a Jew could most easily realize, 'repentance from dead works and faith toward God, the teaching of baptisms and of laying-on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.' Is not the Christianity of this Teaching very much the sort of inadequate Christianity which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews sought to lift into a complete realization of the divine majesty of Christ, of the mystery of His eternal high-priesthood and the Church's fellowship with Him and in Him? Not indeed that our document presents all the features of the Judaism which the author of that great Epistle had in view; there is no sign here of falling away, no craving after the 'worldly' ritual of the old covenant; but the instruction given in the Didache embodies 'first principles' closely resembling those which the Hebrews had made their own: the belief in God, and the moral duties of obedience and repentance which follow from that belief; the due and careful performance of the ceremonial and religious duties of religion, and the reverence due to its teachers; the keen expectation of 'the end' and the coming of the kingdom, with the judgment and the resurrection.

3

So much for the character of the document as it stands. Something must now be said about its relation to other early Christian writings.

This s Athanasius account of Judaism (de Incarn. c. 12). On the liberal Judaism of the Roman empire, see Harnack Dogmengesch. i. pp. 73 f. [ed. 4 pp. 121 f.]. See the list of vices which characterize the way of death, c. v.

Sabatier calls attention to the entire absence of any mention of women, as emphasizing its Jewish origin and early date (op. cit. p. 153): 'La plupart des documents d'origine juive ignorent la femme.