A field-defining translation and commentary on the Didache, one of the earliest and most important texts of early Christian instruction
Since its rediscovery in 1873, the Didache has been considered an essential window into early Christian practice. Its treatments of baptism and Eucharist, along with passages that echo the Sermon on the Mount, have made it a foundational source of information about Christian ritual, ethics, and community life. But what if the text that has been accepted as first-century evidence is largely a fifth-century composition? In this volume, Clayton N. Jefford argues that the received Didache is the end product of centuries of revision—and that earlier, divergent manuscript fragments tell a substantially different story.
Jefford offers a detailed historical and textual analysis that reflects the diverse sources, traditions, and compositional history behind the texts of the Didache tradition. He considers its roots in Jewish ethical instruction; its early Christian characteristics, which blended Pauline tradition with features of wisdom and apocalyptic literature; and its later, post-Constantinian edits and insertions in the fourth and fifth centuries CE—elements that have received far less attention in recent scholarship. Comprehensive, accessible, and deeply insightful, this definitive volume recovers the Didache as a living tradition, continually reworked by the communities that carried it.