Editing Didache (section)

==Date, composition and modern translations==
[[File:Didtitle.jpg|thumb|The title of the ''Didache'' in the manuscript discovered in 1873]]
Many English and American scholars once dated the text to the early second century,{{sfn|Cross|Livingstone|2005|p=482}} a view still held by some today,<ref>{{cite book|last1=Slee|first1=Michelle|title=The church in Antioch in the first century AD : communion and conflict|date=2003|publisher=T & T Clark International|location=London [u.a.]|isbn=978-0567083821|page=58}}<!--|access-date=8 March 2016--></ref> but most scholars now assign the ''Didache'' to the first century.<ref>{{Citation | title = Dictionary of the Christian Church | year = 2005 | publisher = Oxford University Press | isbn = 978-0-19-280290-3 | contribution = Didache}}.</ref><ref>{{cite book |last =O'Loughlin |first =Thomas|author-link= Thomas O'Loughlin |title= The Didache: A window on the earliest Christians|date=2011|publisher=[[SPCK]]|isbn =9780281064939|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=IfpqBgAAQBAJ |access-date= 2 July 2015}}</ref> The document is a composite work, and the discovery of the ''[[Community Rule]]'' among the [[Dead Sea Scrolls]], has provided evidence of development over a considerable period, beginning as a Jewish [[catechetical]] work which was then developed into a church manual.{{sfn|Draper|1996|pp=74-75}}

Two [[uncial script|uncial]] fragments containing Greek text of the ''Didache'' (verses 1:3c–4a; 2:7–3:2) were found among the [[Oxyrhynchus Papyri]] (no. 1782) and are now in the collection of the [[Bodleian Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library]] in Oxford.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GaYKGrqXCwEC&pg=PA364|title=Birth of Christianity|last=Crossan|first=John Dominic|date=1999-04-01|publisher=A&C Black|isbn=9780567086686|pages=364|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d4N1Mhlv50UC&pg=PA213|title=The Didache in Context: Essays on Its Text, History, and Transmission|last=Reed|first=Jonathan|date=1995|publisher=BRILL|isbn=9004100458|editor-last=Jefford|editor-first=Clayton N.|pages=213|language=en|chapter=The Hebrew Epic and the Didache}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://163.1.169.40/cgi-bin/library?e=q-000-00---0POxy--00-0-0--0prompt-10---4------0-1l--1-en-50---20-about-1782--00031-001-0-0utfZz-8-00&a=d&c=POxy&cl=search&d=HASH01d452200ced30a2577b95b6|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171215001147/http://163.1.169.40/cgi-bin/library?e=q-000-00---0POxy--00-0-0--0prompt-10---4------0-1l--1-en-50---20-about-1782--00031-001-0-0utfZz-8-00&a=d&c=POxy&cl=search&d=HASH01d452200ced30a2577b95b6|url-status=dead|archive-date=15 December 2017|title=P.Oxy.XV 1782|website=POxy: Oxyrhynchus Online|publisher=University of Oxford|access-date=2017-12-14}}</ref> Apart from these fragments, the Greek text of the ''Didache'' has only survived in a single, 11th-century Greek manuscript, the [[Codex Hierosolymitanus]].

Dating the document is thus made difficult both by the lack of hard evidence and its composite character. The ''Didache'' may have been compiled in its present form as late as 150, although a date closer to the end of the first century seems more probable to many.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Harmer|first1=J.R.|translator= Michael W. Holmes|first2= J.B. |last2=Lightfoot |title=The Apostolic Fathers in English|date=2006|publisher=Baker Academic|location=Grand Rapids, MI|isbn=978-0801031083|page=159|edition=3rd}}</ref>

The teaching is an anonymous pastoral manual which Aaron Milavec states "reveals more about how [[Jewish Christianity|Jewish-Christians]] saw themselves and how they adapted their Judaism for [[gentile]]s than any other book in the Christian Scriptures".{{Sfn | Milavec | 2003b | p = [https://books.google.com/books?id=17v6sT1l-aYC&pg=PR7  vii]}} The Two Ways section is likely based on an earlier Jewish source.{{sfn|Cross|Livingstone|2005|p=482}} The community that produced the ''Didache'' could have been based in Syria, as it addressed the gentiles but from a Judaic perspective, at some remove from Jerusalem, and shows no evidence of Pauline influence.{{sfn|Cross|Livingstone|2005|p=482}}{{sfn | Johnson | 2006 | p=38}} Alan Garrow claims that its earliest layer may have originated in the decree issued by the [[Council of Jerusalem]] in 49–50, that is, by the Jerusalem assembly under [[James, brother of Jesus]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.alangarrow.com/bntc2017.html|title=The Didache: Key to the Acts-Galatians Conundrum (BNTC 2017)|website=Alan Garrow|access-date=2021-03-26}}</ref>

The text was lost, but scholars knew of it through the writing of later church fathers, some of whom had drawn heavily on it.<ref name="EBOdidache">[https://www.britannica.com/topic/Didache "Didache."] Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 20 February 2016.</ref> In 1873 in Constantinople (now Istanbul), metropolitan [[Philotheos Bryennios]] found a Greek copy of the ''Didache'', written in 1056, and he published it in 1883.<ref name="EBOdidache"/> Hitchcock and Brown produced the first English translation in March 1884. [[Adolf von Harnack]] produced the first German translation in 1884, and [[Paul Sabatier (theologian)|Paul Sabatier]] produced the first French translation and commentary in 1885.<ref>Aaron Milavec in {{Harvnb | Jefford | 1995 | pages = 140–41}}.</ref>