After the ApostlesGuide
What is the Didache?
The Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is a very short handbook for early Christian communities. It is one of the oldest Christian writings outside the New Testament, and one of the few that shows how ordinary churches worshipped and organised themselves.
The short answer
The Didache (DID-ah-kay, Greek for "teaching"), also called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is a short anonymous Christian handbook from the early church. It tells new believers how to live (the Two Ways) and tells communities how to baptise, pray, fast, share the Eucharist and receive visiting teachers. Nobody knows for certain. Many scholars place it somewhere between the late first century and the early second, and some think parts are older than others. It was written before the church had settled the New Testament canon or a standard church order.
What is in it
The Didache has sixteen short chapters. Here is the whole book at a glance, with a link to each part.
- The Two Ways
A way of life and a way of death. The way of life is love of God and neighbour, with the Golden Rule in its negative form, and a list of sins to avoid. - Baptism
Baptise in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, ideally in running water. If there is not enough water, pouring is allowed. The baptiser, the candidate and others are asked to fast beforehand. - Fasting and prayer
Fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, not on the days "the hypocrites" fast. Pray the Lord's Prayer three times a day. - The thanksgiving meal
Prayers over the cup and the broken bread, and after the meal. This is the Eucharist, which the Didache calls the thanksgiving. Only the baptised may share in it. - Teachers, apostles and prophets
How to receive visiting teachers, and how to tell a true prophet from a false one (for instance, one who stays beyond two or three days or asks for money). Support for prophets and teachers. - Gathering on the Lord's Day
Come together on the Lord's Day, confess your sins, make peace with each other and give thanks. - Bishops and deacons
Appoint worthy bishops and deacons, who serve alongside prophets and teachers. - Keep watch
Be ready for the Lord's return. The Didache ends with a short warning about the last days.
Why it matters
The Didache gives a rare view of church life before there were formal creeds, church councils or a fixed New Testament. It records baptism, fasting, the Lord's Prayer and the Eucharist in practice, and shows a church still relying on travelling prophets and teachers while appointing local bishops and deacons. Its opening "Two Ways" teaching is shared, in a different form, with the Epistle of Barnabas, so the two works are often read side by side. Later church-order manuals drew on it. The Didascalia Apostolorum, a Syrian work usually dated to about the third century, used it, and the Apostolic Constitutions (late fourth century) reworked both: book 7 rewrites much of the Didache, and books 1 to 6 rework the Didascalia. The Didache as it appears inside those later books has therefore been revised, and is not a safe guide to the original wording.
Why people disagree about it
Different traditions read the Didache differently, and this site does not take a side. Some point to its baptism instructions (running water preferred, pouring allowed) and its simple Eucharist prayers. Some note that it contains no formal creed, and that its structure of prophets, teachers, bishops and deacons does not match any later pattern exactly. Others ask how much weight an anonymous early manual should carry. Read it and judge for yourself.
One detail belongs in that discussion. Chapter 7 baptises "into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit", and only then gives its practical concessions: if there is no running water, use other water; if you cannot use cold, use warm; if you have neither, pour water three times on the head, again in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So the Didache has no written creed, but it does have a fixed baptismal formula.
When was the Didache written?
Nobody knows for certain. Many scholars place it somewhere between the late first century and the early second, and some think parts are older than others. It was written before the church had settled the New Testament canon or a standard church order.
Who wrote the Didache?
The author is unknown. The title, "The Teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles by the Twelve Apostles", is a claim about the teaching it passes on, not a signature. Scholars usually treat it as the work of a community, most often placed in Syria, with Egypt as the other serious option, though this is debated.
Is the Didache in the Bible?
No. It was never part of the New Testament. Early Christian writers were divided about it, and in opposite directions. Athanasius, in his Festal Letter of AD 367, ruled it out of the canon but said the fathers had appointed it to be read to those new to the faith and wanting instruction. Eusebius, writing about forty years earlier, placed "the so-called Teachings of the Apostles" among the spurious books, beside the Epistle of Barnabas and the Apocalypse of Peter, though he adds that all of these may be counted among the disputed books. That disagreement is why this site places it on Shelf 2, Read but not received.
How was the Didache found?
For centuries it was known only from quotations and mentions. In 1873 Philotheos Bryennios, a Greek Orthodox metropolitan, found a complete Greek copy, written in AD 1056, in a library in Constantinople. He published it in 1883. Small fragments of early copies and translations have turned up since.
Where can I read the Didache?
The full text is on this site, free, in the nineteenth-century Ante-Nicene Fathers translation, with a button to print it or save it as a PDF.
Keep reading
The Didache, full text · The Epistle of Barnabas (its Two Ways parallel, chapters 18 to 20) · The Apostolic Fathers
Text source: Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7 (nineteenth-century translation, public domain).