{"id":438,"date":"2014-09-10T10:39:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T10:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/09\/discovering-a-lost-and-forgotten-early-christian-gospel.html"},"modified":"2014-09-10T10:39:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T10:39:00","slug":"discovering-a-lost-and-forgotten-early-christian-gospel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/09\/discovering-a-lost-and-forgotten-early-christian-gospel.html","title":{"rendered":"Discovering a Lost and Forgotten Early Christian ‘Gospel’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Imagine discovering a lost and forgotten ancient Jewish\/Christian writing, one not included in the New Testament, that dates to the earliest days of the emergence of Christianity. For historians of early Christianity or ancient Judaism, there is nothing more exciting \u2014 think of the amazing significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Nag Hammadi \u201cGnostic\u201d gospels.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

That is precisely what we have in the case of the Didache (pronounced \u201cdid-a-kay\u201d), an ancient Greek manuscript discovered in 1873 in a library at Constantinople by a Greek priest, Father Philoteus Bryennios. \u201cDidache<\/em>\u201d means \u201cteaching,\u201d and its full title is \u201cThe Teachings of the 12 Apostles.\u201d This precious copy of the ancient text, dating to the late first or early second century CE, is mentioned by early Christian writers but had disappeared. Few Christians today have even heard of it, but you can read it online, in several translations with commentary,\u00a0here<\/a>. This text allows us a glimpse into a largely forgotten form of early Christianity, one that stands in rather stark contrast to the Christianity developed by the Apostle Paul some decades after the death of Jesus.<\/span><\/div>\n
The Didache is divided into 16 chapters and was intended to be a \u201chandbook\u201d for Christian converts. The first six chapters give a summary of Christian ethics based on the teachings of Jesus, divided into two parts: the way of life and the way of death. Much of the content is similar to what we have in the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain \u2014 that is, the basic ethical teachings of Jesus drawn from the \u201cteaching\u201d source now found in Matthew and Luke. It begins with the two \u201cgreat commandments,\u201d to love God and to love \u00adone\u2019s neighbor as oneself, as well as an alternative version of the Golden Rule: \u201cAnd whatever you do not want to happen to you, do not do to another.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
It contains many familiar injunctions and exhortations, but often with additions not found in our Gospels. Here are a few examples:<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine discovering a lost and forgotten ancient Jewish\/Christian writing, one not included in the New Testament, that dates to the earliest days of the emergence of Christianity. For historians of early Christianity or ancient Judaism, there is nothing more exciting \u2014 think of the amazing significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Nag Hammadi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nDiscovering a Lost and Forgotten Early Christian 'Gospel'<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Imagine discovering a lost and forgotten ancient Jewish\/Christian writing, one not included in the New Testament, that dates to the earliest days of the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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