Origins of the Didache: Adapting Judaism to Christian views
Similar to the religion itself, Christianity takes many beliefs, practices, and traditions from Judaism. Examples of this usage are apparent throughout the New Testament and recounts of Ancient as well as Modern Christian practices. These Jewish roots can especially be seen in the The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Διδαχὴ τῶν Δώδεκα Αποστόλων), or as it is known today the Didache ("The Teaching"). Didache is an ancient Christian and treatise containing information on Christian ethics that reflects issues and controversies present in the apostolic age. As a summary of sorts for the standards for Christian actions and behaviors taken from different parts of the Torah and Jewish views,…show more content… In the Jewish Encyclopedia, a 12-volume Jewish Encyclopedia published between 1901-1906 by Jewish Theologians of the 20th century, Theologian Solomon Schechter goes so far as to say “The whole book has fallen into disorder, and much of it is misunderstood and misinterpreted by Christian scholars, who judge it only from the point of view of the Church.” (Schechter) Schechter goes on to explain how the fundamental ideas of the Didache are “indisputably Jewish”. The first section of Didache that consists of the teaching of the "Two Ways," one of life and one of death, “runs as a leading thought throughout Jewish literature”(Schechter). In the Torah we find a parallel of this idea in Deuteronomy where Moses says to the people of Israel "I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil " (Deut. 30:15). Other texts that include this idea of the two ways include Deut 11:26-28, Jer 21:8, Ps 1:1-6, Ps 118, 139:24, and Prov 2:13, 4:18, 11:20,