Anonymous or pseudonymous author
The Didache
An anonymous early Christian church order, giving moral instruction, baptismal and eucharistic directions and rules for travelling teachers. Read and valued in the early Church; never received as Scripture.
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- Dates
- late first or early second century — Dates proposed range from around AD 50 to the middle of the second century, and the work may have grown in stages. There is no consensus.
- Region
- Probably Syria or Palestine
- Language of composition
- Greek
Life
The Didache is not a person and not a letter. It is a short manual: how to live, how to baptise, how to pray, how to give thanks over bread and cup, how to tell a genuine travelling prophet from a freeloader, and what to expect at the end.
It was known to ancient writers by name but was lost for centuries, and was rediscovered in a manuscript at Constantinople in the 1870s. Its recovery changed what historians could say about the earliest Christian practice, because it describes ordinary congregational life in a way that no other document of comparable age does.
It opens with the Two Ways — a way of life and a way of death — a moral scheme that has parallels in Jewish literature and that reappears in other early Christian texts.
Works
Generally accepted as authentic
Theological and spiritual contribution
The Didache matters most as evidence. It shows baptism normally in running water with a Trinitarian formula, and allows pouring where immersion is impractical. It gives thanksgiving prayers over the cup and the bread. It assumes fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays and the recitation of the Lord's Prayer three times a day. It knows prophets and teachers alongside bishops and deacons.
None of that is doctrine defined by the Church. It is a photograph of one region's practice at an early date, and it has to be read as such — not as a normative order for the Church everywhere, and not as evidence of what every second-century congregation did.
In their own words
Every quotation below was located in the archived text of the edition named, at the locator given, by the build's own quotation check.
There are two ways, one of life and one of death; but a great difference between the two ways.
Related in this archive
-
The Shepherd of Hermas
A long Roman apocalypse of visions, commandments and parables, widely read in the early Church and in some places read publicly. It was not received into the canon of Scripture.
-
How Scripture was formed
A gradual ecclesial process, not a single decision — and certainly not one taken at Nicaea.
-
Nicaea did not choose the books of the Bible
A direct answer to the most persistent myth about the councils, with the council's own documents open.
-
Athanasius, Festal Letter 39
The earliest surviving list of the twenty-seven New Testament books — in a bishop's annual letter to his own churches, not a decree.
Your notes
Sources for this page
- Tier C The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, Chapters I-XVI translated edition of primary texts Archived in full. Source record (opens in a new tab)
- Tier C Eusebius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine Eusebius, Church History, Book III, Chapter 25 translated edition of primary texts Eusebius places it outside the canon. Source record (opens in a new tab)
- Tier C Athanasius: Select Works and Letters Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 translated edition of primary texts Names it among books appointed to be read, outside the canon. Source record (opens in a new tab)
Tiers are explained in the methodology. No page on this site has been reviewed or approved by any bishop, priest, synod or seminary.