The Didache: Faith Hope & Life of the Earliest Christian Communities 50-70 C.E.

About this book

Most Christians believe that everything about Jesus and theearly church can be found in their New Testament. In recent years however the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas and the reconstruction of the Q-Gospel have led scholars to recognize that some very earlymaterials were left out. Now due to the pioneering efforts of Dr. Aaron Milavec the most decisive document of them all namely the Didache has come to light. Milavec has decoded the Didache and enabled it to reveal its hidden secrets regarding those years whenChristianity was little more than a faction within the restless Judaisms of the mid-first-century. The Didache reveals a tantalizingly detailed description of the prophetic faith and day-to-day routines that shaped the Jesus movement some twenty yearsafter the death of Jesus. The focus of the movement then was not uponproclaiming the exalted titles and deeds of Jesus - aspects that come to the fore in the letters of Paul and in the Gospel narratives. Incontrast to these familiar forms of Christianity the focus of the Didache was upon "the life and the knowledge" of Jesus himself. Thus the Didache details the step-by-step process whereby non-Jews were empowered byassimilating the prophetic faith and the way of life associated withJesus of Nazareth. Milavecs clear concise and inspiring commentaries are not only of essential importance to scholars pastors and students but also very useful for ordinarypeople who wish to unlock the secrets of the Didache. Milavecsanalytic Greek-English side-by-side gender-inclusive translation isincluded as well as a description of how this document after beingfashioned and used 50-70 C.E. was mysteriously lost for over eighteenhundred years before being found in an obscure library in Istanbul. Thestudy questions bibliography and flowcharts enable even first-timeusers to grasp the functional and pastoral genius that characterized the earliest Christian communities. Please note that Milavec has published two commentaries that carry the title The Didache. The "mouse" is the shorter hundred-page student edition published byLiturgical Press. The "elephant" is the thousand-page Paulist Presscommentary intended for those who want to examine in full detail howMilavec arrived at the conclusions in the "mouse" and how his pioneering studies find agreement and disagreement within the wide field of Didache scholarship.