Two New Reviews

December 19, 2009 By 7 Comments

Didache Copyright Page - 1886A couple new reviews of The Teaching of the Twelve were posted this week.  The first, by Wes Ellis, is positive.  Wes particularly likes the modern translation of the Didache that we’ve provided, and calls that the best chapter of the book.  He goes on to write,

How does this fit in with Jones’ other works?

This question only needs to be asked because Jones usually writes about the Emerging Church and he usually stays away from such involved studies of ancient texts. So why does he care about the Didache? Jones says himself that “it represents a lost version of Christianity, and one that many of us long to get back to” (page 121 from the Epilogue). Jones, in all of his endeavors, is on the lookout for not only a fresh perspective but also for a way of getting back to the roots of the Church and he seems to have found both in this ancient forgotten text and in the community call the Cymbrogi.

For anyone interested in the Didache, this is a great read.

The second, by Bob Hyatt, is less positive.

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Publishers Weekly Reviews The Teaching of the Twelve

December 18, 2009 By 6 Comments

PW has posted their review of my new book:

The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community Tony Jones. Paraclete, $14.99 paper (144p) ISBN 978-1-55725-590-7

Calling the Didache “the most important book you’ve never heard of,” Emergent leader Jones (The New Christians) briefly unpacks the theological and practical lessons to be gleaned from one of early Christianity’s most overlooked texts. Less than half the length of the shortest New Testament gospel, the Didache (“teaching”) informed new Christians about spiritual practices like baptism, prayer, hospitality, fasting, Eucharist, generosity, and basic morality. Dated between 50 and 130 C.E., it is one of the oldest extant Christian texts not found in the New Testament. Jones writes engagingly, explaining the Didache’s meaning and importance while also introducing a surprising interlocutor called “Trucker Frank,” a Missouri truck driver whose house church has based its life together on the Didache. The great and unique value of this book is its vision of how Christians today might put the Didache in practice, rather than as a contribution to early Christian studies; in fact, biblical scholars and historians may raise eyebrows at a few of the book’s assumptions, particularly its oversimplifications about Gnosticism. Jones, however, has done a great service by recovering and interpreting this neglected classic for the ancient-future church. (Feb.)

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Where Are My Critics Now?

December 14, 2009 By 38 Comments
If only my critics were as honest as Waldorf and Statler

If only my critics were as honest as Waldorf and Statler

In his contribution to the Didache blog tour, Mike King wrote something that piqued my interest,

Those who have tried to “label” and “dismiss” Tony Jones will have a hard time believing that Tony would be so interested in a text that starts out, “There are two ways, one of life and one of death! and there is a great difference between the two ways.”  But, he is, and so we reap the benefit.

As anyone should who’s in the public eye (including most pastors), I have a couple “vanity” searches set up in Google to automatically search my name along with a couple keywords.  This allows me to keep an ear to the ground about what’s being said about me in the blogosphere.

And here’s something that hasn’t surprised me at all: There’s been nary a word by any critics about my new book, The Teaching of the Twelve.

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Didache Blog Tour – Day Nine: The Creeds

December 11, 2009 By 19 Comments

Didache Copyright Page - 1886Dwight Friesen has attempted to answer the compelling and important question,

Does the Didache teach or advise anything that substantively differs from what was decided at the earliest ecumenical church councils (such as Nicaea)?

In The Teaching of the Twelve: Beleiving and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community, I make a lot of how much the Didache is like the synoptic Gospels, and how little it resembles the Fourth Gospel, Paul, even more so, those who established the ecclecial hierarchy, like Ignatius.  I date the Didache early (AD 50-70) — we can talk about that more here if we need to.  But the point is that the Didache was seemingly unfamiliar with the writings of Paul.

So, the question this raises for me is, if the Didache portrays a different version of Christian faith than the early church councils, were the Councils overly Pauline in their perspective?

Dwight writes,

While the Didache is a one of our earliest glimpses into the practical life of primitive Christians; a glimpse into how the people gathering together in Christ and seeking to live in the way of Jesus actually engaged culture, economics, community, and ritual etc. it is striking at how little doctrine it presents.  While just the opposite could be said of the Creed born of our First Church Council at Nicæa (325) . . . in the document out of Nicæa we have a fairly clear confession of beliefs with no practices or rituals.

This to me is the primary difference between the two documents.  One is concerned with how we should live, the other what we confess.

You can go to Dwight’s blog to read his conclusion.

Online Resources:

Previously: Adam, Thomas, and me on chapter one. Amy, Ted, and me on chapter three.  Holly, Tripp, and me on chapter four.  Mike and me on chapter five.  Brother Maynard and me on chapter six.  Mike, Greg, and me on chapter seven.  Luke and me on the epilogue.  Jonathan and me on the importance of the Didache.

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Didache Blog Tour – Day Eight: A Special Question

December 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Facsimilie of the Didache Titulous

Facsimilie of the Didache Titulous

The inimitable Carol Showalter, marketing guru at Paraclete Press, put this blog tour together, and she had the good sense to ask Jonathan Brink to ponder a special question: Is this text – The Didache – really so important? Why? Do we know that it was important to the earliest communities of Christians?

Jonathan answers that question in the affirmative, and in two parts.  First,

The Didache focuses on what it means to be a follower through action, as opposed to a stricter western focus of simply belief.  The emphasis is on love, which reveals life.

And second,

We can’t ignore a book that focuses on love, which also existed before any Christian theology is developed.  In other words, the absence of a Christian theology means its raw.  It’s the first exposure we have to what the early followers of Jesus were wrestling with.  And it just happened to be on the practice of love.  They didn’t seem to get bogged down into doctrinal issues…They focused on love. This has to inform the conversation.

Of course, I agree with Jonathan.  I think the Didache is going to catch on, in a big way, and especially with those of us who are scouting out new and primitive and “authentic” (overused, I know) ways to follow Jesus.  And, if you read the book you’ll see, the best way for us to do that is to really get inside the heads of the earliest Christians who put the Didache together.

Online Resources:

Previously: Adam, Thomas, and me on chapter one. Amy, Ted, and me on chapter three.  Holly, Tripp, and me on chapter four.  Mike and me on chapter five.  Brother Maynard and me on chapter six.  Mike, Greg, and me on chapter seven.  Luke and me on the epilogue.

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Didache Blog Tour – Day Seven, Epilogue

December 8, 2009 By 1 Comment
Philotheos Bryennios who discovered the Didache in 1873

Philotheos Bryennios who discovered the Didache in 1873

Luke Miller takes a look at the epilogue of The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community.  Although at first skeptical, he ultimately embraced the Didache,

You won’t often see me advocating for a return to the old-time religion. I’m dubious of those who preach about the need to get back to the first-century church. What we need is to figure out how to be a faithful church today, in 2009 (though I’ll rant about that another day). Being a student of history, however, I do see immense value in learning from our foremothers and fathers. In the same way that a constitutional scholar tries to get inside the heads of the first Americans, we do well to peer into the minds (and lives) of the first Christians.

The epilogue, in full, below.  I post it in hopes that, by reading it, you will feel my great affinity for the Didache, and your curiosity might be piqued enough to read the book.

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Didache Blog Tour – Day Six, Chapter Seven

December 7, 2009 By 1 Comment
The Four Riders of the Apocalypse by Albrect Durer

The Four Riders of the Apocalypse by Albrect Durer

A couple more bloggers have written up the final chapter (“The End Is Nigh”) in The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community.  They both point to modern apocalyptic media to elucidate the brief apocalypse at the end of the Didache.

Mike Stavlund writes of a professor assigning the Lord of the Flies in an effort to introduce undergrads to the metaphorical power of apocalypses.  He then writes,

Taking a mere 20 minutes to read aloud, the Didache is refreshingly simple.  It is less about studying, and more about living.  Less about preaching, and more about practicalities.  And it leans away from Paul’s seeming perfectionism toward an ethical system that is much more manageable– ‘do the best you can‘ is a dictum that is mentioned more than once.

So when the Didache community considered the end of the story, and all of the apocalyptic prognostication that existed then (just as now), they were refreshingly truncated in their advice.  Stay faithful.  Be true.  And (as Tony summarizes), God wins.

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Didache Blog Tour – Day Five, Chapter Six

December 6, 2009 By 1 Comment

Over at Subversive Influence, Brother Maynard has written a thorough and wonderful reflection on The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community, the sixth chapter of which is, “Living Together in Community.”

The Didache has a lot to say about how a Christian community should get along.  In fact, it can be argued that the entire document is really a manual for church harmony.  Bro Maynard does a great job of walking us through the chapter, finding notes of agreement and even some of slight disagreement.

But what I found most interesting is his conclusion, in which he revisits his conversation with Frank Viola over the controversial book, Pagan Christianity,

Tony Jones calls the Didache “the most important book you’ve never heard of.” While I’m familiar with it myself, I concur with his assessment that most Christians today are not, and that it is an important work with which we should be grappling. In fact, the omission of any mention of the Didache was one of my major criticisms with Frank Viola’s Pagan Christianity, and my discussion of it actually centers on the very passages discussed in this chapter of Tony’s book. I gave Frank the opportunity to respond in an interview, and he did. You may note there the implied ascription of a second-century date for the Didache, but an early date makes it that much more important for Frank to have dealt with in his work, and this is in my mind what makes Pagan Christianity more of a popular than a scholarly work. (Note that Ben Witherington also goes to the Didache in his critique of Pagan Christianity.)

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Didache Blog Tour – Day Four, Chapter Five

December 5, 2009 By 1 Comment

A wonderful post yesterday on The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community, by Mike Todd at Waving or Drowning.  They’re tackling Chapter Five, “Sex, Money, and Other Means of Getting Along.”

The Didache speaks often of sex, and of money, and I spend some effort in this chapter of the book laying out the context of both in the ancient world.  In order to understand any ancient document, be it the Illiad, the Bible, or the Didache, we’ve got to attempt to understand the world in which it was written.  And the Didache was written in a world very unlike our own.

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Didache Blog Tour – Day Three, Chapter Four

December 4, 2009 By 7 Comments

Didache Copyright Page - 1886Yesterday, Holly Rankin Zaher and Tripp Fuller both weighed in on The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community.  Their assignment was to reflect on Chapter Four, “There Are Two Ways.”

Holly is a committed youth pastor, and has been for years.  It’s from that perspective that she writes,

In my context of a youth ministry trying to live out the way of Jesus, I can’t help but wonder what our confirmation process look like if we used the Didache to shape at least part of the process. Might that help reshape the notion of confirmation and discipleship from ritual-driven to apprenticeship? Would a frank discussion on ethics and living life in a certain “way” help people understand a relational understanding of faith? Could it be that in discussing a way to life we might discover a deep vat a grace that Tony highlights?

Indeed, that’s exactly what what the Didache’s original purpose seems to be: as a catechetical manual.  It’d be interesting to know if any youth workers out there have used the Didache in confirmation classes.  If I were teaching confirmation today, I would use it.

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